A quick yet well thought out vignette

Dear Reader(s?),

I think we can all agree that there is nothing more frustrating than word processing gone awry. I'm talking about those ill-timed crashes, missaved papers, forgot-to-save-it documents. I'm talking about that sumptuous wodge of words I slaved over for more than a couple hours this morning. Sometime between then and now, my beautiful and perfect blog entry - it was everything an entry could be AND MORE - became a truncated, wilted shadow of its former self. Cue seething annoyance on my part. And a worryingly strong urge to disembowel my laptop. I jumped (oozed) out of bed this morning, my fingers tingling and ready to write. I was aglow with inspiration! I would show the world what Winter Term at Oberlin was all about. German, food, and friends. Good times, free time, and endless hectares of vocabulary to learn. Co-oping, the present perfect, and the biting cold. It all came spilling out.

But now it's gone. And so with it, the desire to hammer out another semi-coherent, mildly to not-at-all engaging mishmash of words and my attempts at photography. Instead, here is a summarized and pragmatically organized look at how my Winter Term has been going and what I've been doing. Lists, yeah. They're one of the finer things in life. Think of the following as a quick yet well thought out vignette, with numbers. It will read better that way, I'm pretty sure.

1. KHC. Kosher Halal Co-op. It's where I've been eating this month. It's awesome. I've cooked one dinner each week and it's been a great experience. I am ready to venture outside the world of baking and am now prepared to embrace vegetables and what to do with them. Tonight I made potato-leek-carrot-pea soup. The first soup I've ever made, and it wasn't a total puddle of disaster. I'm pleased.

2. Not that I'm ready to leave behind the world of baking. Baking is an irreplaceable joy in life, and there have been a serious number of baking nights with friends this past month. I have made innumerable batches of cookies in the last few weeks, plus some cakes here and there.

3. And oh goodness, my love for the oven and the things that go in it has been reaffirmed by my first purchase from the used bookstore downtown, Mindfair Books. The Art of Making Good Cookies. It's a treasure. Remember, girls: "Gentlemen abhor tidbits that seem to melt in the hand and with which the tiny napkins supplied at party gatherings are inadequate to cope." I must remember to keep my set of voluminous serviettes on hand for the next social function that I host.

4. German German German. It eats away my time and brain, and it's great. I've never enjoyed learning a foreign language as much as I've been enjoying German. It's crazy! It makes almost as little sense as English... There's something so endearing about irregularity. I have my final German exam on Tuesday. It would be wunderbar! to pass it with the 80% or more I need so that I can take German 102 starting next week.

5. On that note, time to study. Strong verbs, anyone?