Summer = delicious, cheap fruit

It's been a few weeks! I've been settling into a full time internship and trying to enjoy the beautiful weather before it gets too hot around here! I kind of hate the summertime.  I mean, I love the lush vegetation and abundance of fun activities, and there's nothing like a warm summer night spent outside drinking, but I wish it never got above 80 degrees.  Ever.

I've also been buying lots of fruit!  I offered to make jam for my friend's wedding favors, and even though the wedding's not for 2 months, the berries I'll be using are abundant (and cheap) now.  So, the other night, for instance, I came home with 7 quarts of strawberries for 10 bucks -- and they're even cheaper now! Serves me right for jumping the gun, I guess.

I'm freezing the berries until we get all of the other supplies -- jars and such -- and experimenting with freezing techniques.  The ones on the left are cut up and frozen with about a cup of sugar, which the internet tells me will help to preserve the fresh strawberry flavors.  The ones on the right are cleaned, cored, and frozen whole on a baking sheet before being put all together in the bag.  So far, I'm more excited about the whole ones -- they seem to be in better shape overall.  We'll see what happens when it's time to make jam, but I'll probably augment the frozen berries with some fresh ones.

Here is a batch of blackberries ready for the freezer.  I decided to go for the whole-frozen setup with these guys, and they're all washed and placed on a wax paper on a cookie sheet, not touching.  Tomorrow I'll bag them up and fill my freezer until it's time to get cooking!

The Twilight of my Unemployment.

Today is my last weekday off before I start interning full time for the rest of the summer, so I am trying to enjoy it even though there are about a billion things I should be doing instead.  Like finishing the last paper I have to do for this semester. The semester that ended 2 weeks ago. Whoops.

Instead, you can find me here, enjoying the one air conditioned room in our apartment and reading Twilight. Yes, Twilight.  I've resisted for a very long time, but now I am reading it and enjoying it, the same way I enjoyed the Draco Trilogy of Harry Potter fanfiction.  Terrible, but delicious.  I will, however, say that whoever published these books has obviously never read a lick of fanfiction, because Twilight is honestly more akin to fanfic in style and content than just about any book I've read, and I've read my fair share of fantasy series and historical fiction (read: socially acceptable romance novels for people who raise their noses at romance novels).  Before I ever read Twilight, people said that Bella was Mary Sue at its best, and it's true! She is!  An awkward, socially-reluctant bookworm who is snarky all the time and has never known how attractive other people find her?  Pure Mary Sue.

The text is absolutely dripping with adjectives, and full of awkward descriptions of clothes and hair and weather patterns using words that don't quiiiiite work. She overuses semi-colons, dashes, and ellipses. And dear sweet Jesus, if I have to hear about how god-like and statuesque Edward is too many more times, I might puke.

Again, the fabric clung to his perfectly muscled chest. It was a colossal tribute to his face that it kept my eyes away from his body.

HAHAHAHAHAH SEE?! SEEEEE?! Although, I'm not sure I could be too into his perfectly muscled chest were it peeking out from beneath his unbuttoned, sleeveless button-down shirt.  Yeah. This.  Edward dresses like a 40 year old man in 1993, cream colored turtleneck sweater under beige leather jacket and all.

And I won't even get into my huge issues with the romance going on.  I mean, you have Bella doing everything she can NOT TO DO ANYTHING THAT WOULD MAKE HIM KILL HER. Oh. Okay.  That sounds healthy. But she's ~*~sew in love~*~ and he loves her, too, but, like, he can't, like, control himself sometimes and, like, it doesn't mean he doesn't, like, love her.

Also they are already talking about doing the dirty and I'm like halfway through the first book and people let their young children read this?!

None of this is to say that I'm not enjoying it.  Quite the contrary.  I am devouring it. Bwahahaha.