Hello Spring Break!

Someone started playing Rebecca Black's "Friday" at the end of chem lecture...totally an appropriate symbol of the start of the weekend and spring break, haha.

Even though break has just begun, I feel as if my brain has been on break since the beginning of the week. I had trouble waking up for class all week. I stopped reading for my classes. I dropped and broke a flask and ended up spilling dilute HCl all over myself in chem lab. School has just been overwhelming and frustrating. Break could not have come at a better time.

As frustrating as this past week may have been, it wasn't all so bad, especially toward the end of the week. I had the opportunity to reconnect with some friends I hadn't hung out with in quite a while. I met up with Jesson and went on a mini excursion to Oakland's Chinatown area to grab lunch at a cute little cafe. We had their famous pulled pork adobo sandwich. I'd never had adobo before and needless to say, I really enjoyed it! On Thursday night, I met up with Deanna and Rick for sushi at Joshu-Ya Sushi. This place has the most extensive specialty sushi menu I have ever seen. We shared some rolls, and had some nice conversations. Hooray for good food and good company!

As for spring break itself (this week), I plan simply to relax and catch up on my schoolwork. I know this isn't really exciting, but hey, it'll do.

flashback fridays: everything was easy then

Fridays will now be "Flashback Fridays"? Possibly maybe.

I was browsing through some old photos and came across these photos from a Cal football game back in 2008. To be honest, I've never really been that interested in college football, but hey, who can pass up free tickets?  Anyone who has not been to a football game should definitely go. The fans are so loyal and supportive and this creates just the most amazing environment of intense school spirit. Go Bears!

Looking back at these photos, I feel as if I haven't done anything as fun as attending a football game since my first year. As a third year now, I definitely feel more withdrawn and less social. School has been getting tougher with the years, and I feel like my workload is just barely manageable. I have also been thinking a lot about what post-college life will entail. Grad school immediately after? Take a year off? I am perplexed.

I was a carefree first year with not too much to worry about. Everything was easy then. What happened?

Things I'm Loving Thursdays: Cream Cheese Frosting & Cupcakes

I've been thinking that I should post with themes/features on certain days just to give this blog a little more organization beyond the random ramblings I do. So far I've come up with "Things I'm Loving Thursdays".

I've been loving cream cheese frosting on cupcakes. I've never been particularly fond of cream cheese by itself, say on bagels. I do however, love cheesecake, and I guess now I'm loving cream cheese frosting!

We made these carrot cupcakes about a week ago. They were absolutely delicious! We had a lot of fun frosting and decorating these too!

"Yeah, we're hungry"

It's Thursday night. We're all studying very hard. We hadn't had dinner yet and it was 9:30 pm. Someone suggests wings and pizza and next thing you know we have 55-pieces of spicy buffalo wings, a large pizza, eight cheesy garlic twisty sticks, and a whole lot of ranch dipping sauce delivered to the apartment.

Delivery man: "This is a lot of food!"

Me: "Yeah, we're hungry."

So for six girls, this was a whole lot of food--definitely a late night pig out. No worries, we didn't actually finish all this food. We still have leftover wings in the fridge because seriously, 55 wings is a whole lot of food.

I expect to have gained pounds after all this stress-eating I've been doing for this round of midterms.

eggplant parmesan & air conditioning?

The roomies and I made this eggplant parmesan a while back. I love love love eggplant, so I was super excited that we decided to make this. It was labor intensive, but absolutely worth the time and effort it took to make! We even made the sauce from scratch. I've never made sauce from scratch! Totally delicious.

On another semi-related note, I've noticed that the roomies and I have been cooking way more this semester than any other. I guess we've all just become super fed-up with eating ramen and cereal all the time. We're cooking so much more now that we occasionally joke around about pitching a show to the Food Network about college students cooking on a college student budget. We'll be famous like Paula Deen!

We'll probably need to put cooking on hold for this coming week though. It's midterms round two! I need to be spending more time in the library and less time in the kitchen. AHHH, wish me luck!

Oh, and our heater has turned itself into an air conditioner.  Instead of blowing out nice warm air, it has become confused and insists on blowing out cold air. It just decided that it wanted to malfunction on us in this ridiculously cold weather. I slept with four blankets last night. We're working on getting this thing fixed...soon!