Category: Ruminations

Ruminations

Boom or Bust, Ed. 2

Molly On the Move
Egg, avocado, and toast
Egg + avocado + toast = EAT (see what I did there)

Boom: The mighty avocado does it again. I have seen this delicacy countless times on food blogs, but tried it myself just this week. For a quick  and scrumptious meal, toast a slice of bread. Take 1/2 a ripe avocado, scoop onto toast, and mash with a fork. Fry an egg and plop it on top. A dash of salt and pepper, and tell your taste buds they’re welcome.

Bust: Kroger couples. In Athens, they are everywhere – barricading your black beans with their hand-holding and slowing your grocery-store sprint. When did the grocery store become a dating hotspot? I know making eyes at someone over a bushel of broccoli is titillating but please, get a room. I will be shopping in advance of February 14.

Boom: Cross fit. As part of free week at the campus gym, I sampled a class and experienced exquisite levels of muscle soreness for the next three days. The class consisted of circuit training – easy to replicate at your local gym:

1. Run 200 yards (lap around indoor track).
2. Do 100 squats.
3. Lap around track.
4. 25 burpees. (Bane of my existence but works every muscle)
5. Lap around track.
6. 50 full sit-ups.
7. Repeat 1-6 twice for a total of three circuits. Well done, buff you!

The premise of the class is to time yourself and beat that time in the future. What are you waiting for?

Bust: My butt (and legs and abs and shoulders) after Cross fit.

Boom: Brilliant yet obvious insight for the week…Dora the Explorer is named as such because the Spanish word for “explorer” is exploradora. Coincidence? I think not.

Here’s to a fresh new week!

-MB

Ruminations

Boom or Bust, Ed. 1

Molly On the Move

 

Atlanta skyline from the Westin

Boom: Four days at the annual Passion Conference in Atlanta with three wonderful friends. I am always skeptical of mass gatherings, but this one was well worth it. And this (above) is the view we woke up to every morning.

“Merino Cool” by Essie. Amazon.com.

Bust: Sibling Two absconded with my only functional pair of jeans before I returned to college. Overalls anyone?

Boom: “Merino Cool” nail polish by Essie. It’s as if an eggplant was trying to get as pale as I am during the winter months. With much lovelier results, that is.

Bust: Sharing an all-female fitness class with my male Spanish professor. Asking “how sore are you?” in class is probably taboo.

Boom: A cure to my financial scatter-braindom. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mint.com. It’s a free service that streamlines your finances – checking, savings, and credit card accounts – and provides helpful budgeting tools. I’ve only been using it a week, but I already feel more in control of my (nonexistent) money.

Cheers!

– MB

Ruminations

Birthday cakes and writing weights.

Molly On the Move
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Snoopy’s nose knows.

We celebrated my dad’s birthday last night, and the man acted like a giddy little boy. He tore open the box of an iPad Mini and was transfixed for hours. He was, I might add, severely lacking in his ability to take selfies.

Attack of the cake gobbler? Not amused.
iPad giving and cake gobbling? Sibling Two was not amused.

In other news, I am writing my teaching initiative and personal statement to teach abroad. You would think that after writing hundreds of pages of history papers in college that I would be somewhat in touch with words. False. I am only now realizing how hard writing is when it is personal.

When I am churning out a history paper I am hundreds of years removed from my subjects. These people have come and gone, in the process leaving enough of a mark on time that I am thinking about them – indeed, losing sleep over them – 150 years later. Their deeds are done. But when I am faced with writing about myself, that comfortable barrier of time is removed. I have to concern myself with making a mark on my own time. And that thur is a little weighty, ya dig?

Ruminations

Final(s)ly.

Molly On the Move
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This year’s participants of my finals paper-writing blitz.

There comes a time in every student’s life when the only things less appealing than facing another day of finals are (a) bathing in orange juice (b) hot gluing your toes together and (c) napping with barbed wire.

At this point, barbed wire is sounding cushy. After 30 pages of paper-writing in less than a week, I am droopy and draggy and all things dull. I have no idea where my grades stand in my classes. I found a cereal bowl between my pillows. I have worn the same outfit for the past three days. I am typing words backwards on my keyboard.

But I am done with my last fall semester of college, and I must say it has been a marvelous one. If you’re still chugging through finals, ONWARD! The holidays await, my friends!

Georgia, On the run, Ruminations, U.S.A.

The Fourth in the Peach State

Molly On the Move

July 4 is probably not the day you would pick to run a casual 10k. But at 7:30am in Atlanta, 60,000 people were doing just that.

The Peachtree Road Race has become something of a tradition in my family. My dad and I have been running it together since 2008. It follows Peachtree Street through the city of Atlanta, winding between buildings short and tall and streets lined with thousands of spectators (also short and tall), and finally ends in Piedmont Park.

Yesterday’s Peachtree Race was my fifth, and decidedly less painful than Peachtrees past. The weather? Superb. Curbside entertainment? Stellar. And the finish-line peaches? Absolutely savory.

Wave L starts the Peachtree Road Race under a huge American flag by Lenox Mall
The finishing area at Piedmont Park, with the skyline peeking through the trees.
Georgia, Ruminations, U.S.A.

Fruits of summer

Molly On the Move


We now interrupt this glorious account of European travels to bring you some red, white, and blue.

I went berry picking with a few of my friends and came back with two buckets and six stomachs brimming with berries. The strawberries burst with sunny sweetness, and rock the patriotism palate when you throw blueberries in the mix.

Here’s to food, friends, the Fourth of July, and the country I’m proud to call my home!

Portugal, Ruminations

A trip overdue

Molly On the Move

This is quite overdue. But for once I may have the time to do it. What is “it,” you may ask?

Last fall, I not only went backpacking across Europe, but also studied at Oxford University for three months. Oxford University. It’s still surreal for me to say. And those were the best months of my life, I didn’t write about them as I told myself I would. Even though I wanted to remember every detail. Fortunately, I am a trigger-happy photographer, so my adventures are well-documented in images.

All this is to say…I am not in Europe. But in the coming weeks, it may look like I am.

Ruminations

Introducing the interns.

Molly On the Move

Just came home from dinner tonight with the summer work crew at the bookstore I am interning at for the summer – booksellers and interns, the whole tamale. One of the booksellers has only been in Athens for seven weeks. Originally from Arkansas, he visited a friend in Athens, ended up staying five days, then ended up getting a job. He unknowingly lived in the same dorm as another one of the booksellers at Belmont College. The two of them are presumably five years my senior. A hefty portion of the meal was spent talking to two fellow interns and English majors, the three of us wide-eyed and ogling as we discussed places we wanted to visit.

Then there was the double major-double minor girl who is obsessed with Disney princesses, and the English Ph.D. student with red lips.

It didn’t take long to come to the realization that eighty percent of the table had no idea what to do with their lives. One intern could not see past a two year stint in the Peace Corps. Another said she spontaneously signed up for the LSAT yesterday because she was freaking out about graduating in December.

So I suppose all this is to say that I am looking forward to working with some like-minded individuals this summer. They seem both befuddled and befuddling. But they all seem like the people who like their life wrapped up with some depth and wonder.