Currently on hold...

...with H&M. I should have known better than to try and do some cyber-monday shopping. LE SIGH!


What else is new? Well its almost 2014! And that means its almost time for you and me to start planning the worlds greatest Philippines trip EVER! Start brainstorming lady.


Also remember the world's most underrated flag football team I was on? and how we won our first two games!! Well! Hold on to your hat! Because after those first two wins we.... lost....... the next three(!) games...................................... dangggggggg................

BUT! just like in soccer we remained undefeated in spirit! and at least we left some room for improvement for next year!


Story time!


Once Upon a Time, I knew this amazing marine biologist in training. She was basically the greatest future marine biologist to ever exist and also coincidentally enough, the worlds greatest housemate. And she graduated! Becoming a real scientist! and NOW she's in the Philippines doing science and science outreach and who knows what else every single day!! WELL! I have taken the first step to joining her in the prestigious ranking of "real scientist", I have submitted my first ever manuscript for publication!!!!!!!!!! To a journal appropriately named Medical Physics!! So hopefully I'll hear from the reviewers in the upcoming weeks and then HOPEFULLY get published!


Note to my loyal readers,

I did warn you about the excessive use of exclamation marks as punctuation right?

Best Regards,

Xenia!


You just celebrated (or did you?) your first ever Thanksgiving abroad. How was it!? Back here in ye olde Texas I made our celebrated Nutella Cheesecake. Knocked the house down. Not mine thank goodness, it is sinking into the ground slowly enough on its own without a cheesecake amplifying matters. ALSO had my first ever fried turkey. Me being me, I thought itd be breaded and fried like fried chicken. FALSE. These (there were two) badboys were rubbed with two different rubs (one was somewhat more cajuny than the other) and then dipped into a vat of oil to fry. Jess...... they were so good! Crispy outside, juicy inside, hands down the best turkey I've ever had (and I barely like Thanksgiving!) Also due to my newfound (only two years old) obsession with sweet potatoes, I fell head over heels in love with the sweet potato casserole my hostess had made. It was so sweet I probably didn't deserve dessert but I got myself some Pumpkin Cheesecake anyways.


Quick aside to my quickly-losing-patience readers,

The parantheses are second only to the humble exclamation mark in value to your esteemed writer when she marinates on the assets of various punctuation marks. Lowest of importance being of course ye olde semicolon.

Well Wishes,

Xenia (yay!)

Secret Time!


I'm training for a half marathon with my buddy Olivia (it was her idea and Its been a while since I've been so thankful for anything!). Its not until early February and it is a Rock and Roll Blues one so there will be bands along the side of the course as we make our way along! Sounds like 13.1 miles of FUN! The BEST part is that thanks to my neighbor Sana, I'm already up to running 7.4 Miles!!!!! This week so far I ran 7.1 on Sunday (first ever 7+ mile run! AND it broke my 1k,5k, and 10k PR!!!!), jogged a casual 5 with Olivia on Monday, and then ran 7.4 today(granted! This time we took a pretty serious break after the first 5, before turning around for the jog home). Tomorow is a recovery day and then we'll see what happens the rest of the week.


p.s. Do you have enough books? I've been reading like crazy and have some suggestions if you're bored of all yours. Keep me posted.




“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” ~ Susan Sontag