'Tis the Season To Be......(fill in the blank)

As soon as we fill our bellies on Thanksgiving, we wake up the next morning with a hangover of Tryptophan from the turkey and sugar-high headaches from all the pie and we go SHOPPING! Yes, I am talking about Black Friday: the official start to what I call Holiday Shopping Madness. I am talking loads of people in mall isles not meant to fit that many people, cash register lines 10 people deep, oh and who could forget the insane bargains and deals and our wallets filled with coupons (but unfortunately, they always seem to exclude the things we actually WANT to buy....why is that?) Anyway, I will be honest:

I love this time of year, but it also gets to me by about the 15th day of December. Why 15th you ask? Well, hopefully by this time, I have finished my holiday shopping, so all I have to deal with is the traffic caused by those who are doing their last minute shopping and creating the madness that this time of the year causes. It is quite silly really, it is supposed to be the time of the year that we all love, time for us to sit down with families, retell stories from the year by the fireplace, drinking wine (if we are of age of course, hot chocolate for the kids, or just spike it with Bailey's?????), and watch the snow fall.....but nope. Quite the opposite. I try to stay as calm and relaxed while I watch everyone else run around like they are chickens with their heads cut off (best reference I could come up with). By the 15th, I am tired of hot chocolate, tired of traffic, and especially sick of hearing the Christmas music! Why is it that we have to start listening to it the DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING??? At least give me a week to digest my food before you start singing about Christmas. Do we really need a whole month to sing songs? Though I am quite pleased to see that GLEE came out with a Christmas album :)

Oh and those people at the Kiosks??? They drive me INSANE!!!! They are just waiting in the main walkway of a mall, purposely in your way, so that you HAVE to practically walk into them, which, by that time, it is too late and you have been seduced by the mall sirens! They lure you to their kiosk to share what they are selling. The other day, some lady grabbed my hand and put salt on it. My friend and I were both puzzled, staring at this pile of salt in our hands thinking, "what do we do?" Well, in order to wash it off, we HAD To to go her cave of a kiosk. While we both knew we weren't going to buy any of her products, it was quite fun to get hand make-overs....Dead Sea Salt exfoliates, lotions, gels, nail buffers, it was quite nice. She was disappointed when we said we were cooks, so there is no point in spending money to have nice hands, and that we are college students who don't want to buy an $80 dollar jar of gel stuff for our face. We walked away without buying any products, despite the incredible "deal" she was going to give us, but with super soft hands that even two days later are still soft!
Earlier this weekend, another man at a hair straightening kiosk put a black packet of gel into my hand and pulled, literally grabbed my wrist and pulled, me over to his station where he tried to let me let him straighten a piece of my hair. I held onto that free packet of hair serum and walked away, feeling a bit like a B****. But the next day, I tried that serum on my hair before and after straightening it and holy smokes, it was amazing! My hair was so smooth, for the WHOLE day, I did not even have to brush it throughout the day. I give him kudos.
I decided to return to buy the serum....I am always having problems with my hair frizzing up after straightening it and becoming ratty looking, requiring a brush, and finally I had found a serum that did not grease my hair up! When I returned, a different man tried to sell me a straightener. I WILL NOT GIVE IN, I told myself. He wanted so badly to show me how well it worked, but when I explained I already had one, he asked which one I had. " A CHI..." I responded, confidently, knowing that CHI is the best brand out there. And he had an immediate look of, "shoot, I won't be able to sell my straightener to her", but he continued. "But THIS one has ceramic plates"...."So does mine," I said to him, "how many times do you have to go over a piece of hair to straighten it?" he asked, "Only once," I said, "And how long does it take you," he asked? "Only 15 minutes," I was truly loving this. I continued to shoot down every single angle he had been pulling on everyone else. And then for kicks and giggles, knowing I had won the argument that mine was better and I did NOT need a new one, I said, "And mine has pretty red felt on the outside, so its nice and soft!" He was pretty frustrated with me by this point, But I was still buying his hair serum, he had something to be happy about.....

So back to the title of my post: Tis the season to be......I don't really know. Some days I am quite jolly, just as the song suggests, and I even walk around thinking Falalalala. I try not to become one of those angry shoppers and drivers who roll their eyes when someone cuts them off...what is the point in getting frustrated? Like my mommy always says, Don't Sweat The Small Stuff....and to the ma'am in front of me in the line impatiently tapping her foot, I can guarantee there are worse things in life to be frustrated about :)

Happy Holidays!!!!!

PS: I have yet to break down and buy a new culinary gourmet gadgets...so Happy Holidays FRIENDS and RELATIVES!!! You know what is on my wish list!

MIA from CIA....but I'm back!!!

My sincere apologies for those of you who used to read my blog and have since my last post not had any evening reading. Life was crazy. But I am back and I have a specific topic to write about! I do not have enough finger endurance to type everything I have been up to recently. The main reason for this blog entry is REGISTRATION FOR MY NEXT SEMESTER CLASSES....its a big deal at this school because it is when the students choose which Wines trip they go on. Let me break it down for you: the Food, Wine, Agri(culture) class (official name of the course) is when we learn about the just mentioned, and we go on a trip to a wine country/region for 3 weeks. Well, I had the option of staying in the states or going to Spain or Italy.....first choice was Italy. I am taking Italian right now and just had my heart set on going. Ok, I don't want to keep you on the edge of your seat for too long to let you know where I am going, BUT I AM GOING TO ITALY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately, there is no way for you to see my expression of happiness through a blog, but the amount of exclamation points should be enough!

As for the remainder of the registration process, here is what happened. It was so nerve-wracking my heart was beating out of its chest. Imagine 160 students logging onto the campus's registration website all at once and clicking SUBMIT all. at. once. Yup. The website SHUT DOWN!!!!! We were allowed to register at 2:00 pm today, so EVERYONE was on the edge of their seat waiting to click SUBMIT....well, when we clicked submit, the server CRASHED!!!!!! It was down for 30 minutes.....meanwhile we are all FREAKING out because we all want certain schedules and want a certain trip (there are only a limited number of spots for each trip). So finally the website starts working again, and I had to navigate around it to figure out if I had to re-fill everything out....but here is the good news: in all that craziness, my schedule saved, so when the server came back up, it automatically registered me! So I got my first choice for scheduling!! Karma was on my side, it feels great, no stress!!! I could go on and on talking about the drama that was created from this with the other students, but I shall not bore you with culinary drama.

As for my past couple months, here is what I have been up to, in list format, Beware: Its long: Ask questions via comments if you care to do so.

-Milked a goat (named Audrey, coincidence)
-Went to DC for the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally
-Rode 30 miles on a bike tour to some farms
-Ran a 1/2 marathon
-Registered for next semester's classes GOING TO ITALY!!!!!
-Saw Harry Potter 7 at Midnight
-Saw Harry Potter 7 again the next night because it was SOOOO good
-Joined the cross country running team at school
-We won championships!!!
-Got my fastest time EVER!
-Found 10 dollars on the ground, that was pretty exciting seeing how I never find money
-Found out I love organic peanut butter
-Went zip-lining and obstacle-coursing in the beautiful Hudson Valley trees and foliage
-Joined the CSA on campus: Chefs Sustaining Agriculture (slow food movement, local, farmers, etc)
-Drank apple cider made only FIVE minutes earlier, hand pressed with an old wooden contraption
-Lost my cell phone to mouthwash: RIP Samsung cell phone
-Ran the Tufts 10 k for the 4th year!! (6 miles, ran under an hour!)
-Worked at the Hudson Valley Food and Wine Festival where I poured wine for wine snobs all day and talked about it...what a great day! I got paid to talk about wine!!!


That's about long enough of a post for now....what kind of questions do you have so that I can address certain topics in future posts?