Milk It

June is Dairy Month in America's Dairyland. The Walworth County Dairy Breakfast has been going on for 33 years. I've attended twice. The drive from Rock County up to Walworth is worth the gas money for the events at the fair grounds. Caitlin and I woke up early on Saturday morning and took a drive for our breakfast.

The main attraction is the food. Arriving at 8:30 AM, we missed the coffee cake, but got our $6 worth of pancakes, OJ, milk, string cheese, eggs, and sausage. (Above: Caitlin looking a little over-excited.)
Also featured: the petting zoo. It's a pretty basic array of ponies, sheep, roosters, and cows.

Favorite attraction: Cow Plop Bingo. (Chalk a grid in a pen. Keep feeding the Cow. Bet and wait.)

The main draw to this event is the company. I love watching the milk chugging contest and listening to the awards for dairy production in the county. It's nice to eat breakfast at a table full of families or to be a part of the crowd cheering on the Dairy Princess in her epic battle at the udder against the local State Representative.

I spent the rest of my day at the Farmer's Market back in Beloit, reading out in the sun. Went up to Kettle Moraine on Sunday morning to run trails with a few teammates. Barbequed in Waukesha and did an 11 PM grocery run to get set for the week. Spent Monday feeling wiped out, but I guess that's a sign of time well spent.

Good weather all weekend? Yeah, we milked it.

First Day of Summer: Friday Files

This week has been quiet. The Snapper's played away and the weather was erie and calm after last weeks light show. Today is the first day of summer and there's still not much to blog about. Here's what I'm waiting on:

• The Rock River to crest. The college is safe up here on the hill, but everyone down on the floodplane is still holding their breath.
• The Walworth County Dairy Breakfast tomorrow morning.
• Post-pancakes, catching the train into Chicago to visit with some Beloise and some Francais.
• SummerFest up in Milwaukee-- although I'm not headed up until next Thursday.
• Summer Visit Day #1-- next Friday.
• Tonight, when I will finish off my latest stab at homemade salad dressing over dinner.

Pictures captioned with exciting recountings of these events to come. Hope you're all on dry land!

Fast Forward

Six months later, I'm back in Admissions for the summer shift.

Let's bring the blog up to speed: France was lovely, thanks for asking. Yes, I'm psyched for autumn to arrive and seeing all the Beloise together again. Reintroduced myself to fast food and stick shift and drove 1300 miles last week to get here. Caught a little bit of Blues Fest in Chicago on my way through. That's about it.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, things are good. Sure, sure the Midwest is flooding, but my fridge is full of lettuce and the air conditioning is bliss. As my friends roll back through town on the road between semesters abroad and summer internships, I've had some great lunch dates, but between catching up and unpacking, I haven't got much in the way of blog-worthy news.

Ducking out (as it is a Friday afternoon), but leaving you with the promise of a beefier post next week. Cowabunga!

Off The Clock

It's Wednesday morning on the last day of classes before exams begin. After a week of procrastinating, last night saw some serious progress in packing up my room. Unfortunately, this inspiration hit me at 2am. So, I was running a minute or two late for anthro and there on the corner were the Head RAs, handing out donuts from the Old Fashion Bakery down the road. Angels, these kids!

I'll confess: I didn't take one. Donuts freak me out, but I did appreciate the sentiment. I sat through my first class on an empty stomach in favor of a bagel in the Java Joint (where I am now) and I can't say I regret my decision. I love a good bagel and OJ in the morning.

There was an ice storm in the midwest yesterday and all the sidewalks are nearly impossible to navigate. Still, the trees are beautiful and it's not too cold out. The Java Joint is warm and full and smells like the weak, horrible coffee they serve here. (Clearly, I have no real complaints today.) The fact that there are only a few class periods left seems to have mellowed everyone out, including myself. I am in an stress-free oasis. It's nice here.

This is my last blog of the semester, but also for the year. I'm off to Rennes, France for the spring. Next semester some new SOI will start up a blog of their own and fill it with Beloitian things far more scintillating than the details of the sidewalks and the color of the coffee. Thanks for reading along & good luck with all your college decisions this spring! I think it's time to sign off before I pretend to know anything about giving good advice.

Au revoir!
JuliaBeloit

I Made You Cookies! I Brought You Flowers!

Above: Sean Hershey holding flowers he swiped off the dining room table of the Spanish House at around 12:30 AM. He's clearly swept away in rapture with the spirit of the season. Or maybe just a little tuckered out.


Above: Anacelia Saenz and Ruby Jennings on cookie sheet tectonics. No two cookies may touch.

Last night after the library closed, my friend Danny invited a small crew over to the Spanish House for some much-needed stress relief and a cookie carnival. Admittedly, all cookies were baked from premade dough, but the decoration was all our own skill. My friend Anna has a famous stash of "Hanukkah Cookies" (read: shape of the Star of David, blue frosting, and appropriate sprinkles) she gets annually and shares liberally. There are a lot of cookies to be had on campus. My own family does a great job keeping baked goods flowing my way, especially during stressful times such as these, but sometimes it is necessary to strike out into the culinary world on one's own. Besides, half the fun of holidy cookies is getting frosting on your face.


Above: Anacelia and Ruby showing off their best work. I believe Anacelia has a duck and a star, while Ruby is displaying some perversion of St. Nick and a particularly lovely tree.

Below: Please forgive me for not posting any photos of myself in the wee hours of the morning. Instead, let me present you with my cookies. Yes, those are carrots mixed in with one particularly lovely red reindeer. He's got a little 'tude and a rather confuddling anatomy, but these things happen when you play with cookie cutters past midnight. Some of the shapes we had at our disposal were Easter-themed (hence, the crosses and the carrots and the umbrellas-- not pictured). Whatever the shapes of the cookies and however blue my hands are dyed this morning, it was a great study break to celebrate the passing of Hump Day.



Next week: finals and how Anacelia kicked Calc like a bad habit.

Stop Making Sense

Beloit College students love dance parties. I'm quite partial to them myself. There are some parties clubs hold annually that everyone looks forward to. This weekend, the Outdoor/Environmental Club held their Talking Heads Party. All Talking Heads, all night long.
It's the perfect theme: every song is danceable and it doesn't matter how familiar you are with the jams because the beat is loud and good and steady.

Clearly, I'm a fan.

I could fill this space with stresses or make some quip about the title of the reading assignment I'm currently wading through ("The Dead," James Joyce). I could upload some pictures of the delicious brie and multi-grain loaf I picked up at Cub today-- I promise I don't usually take pictures of my food. The lighting was just particularly lovely on the West side of Porter Hall this afternoon. Anyway, I won't do that. The pictures aren't readily here in Admissions and the stresses are just fine in their place, listed as assignments in my day planner. Besides, if you're reading this with the Common App open on another window of your browser, chances are you have quite a long list of your own to mull over. Good luck with that. I recommend dark chocolate.

Welcome to December! There's not much light, but at least there's good music.

P.S. In breaking out my winter jacket this weekend, I made a startling discovery: it has pockets. It would seem that my brown peacoat is a little too classy for me. The manufacturer tacked the pockets shut, so they seemed to be faux. Just part of the seams on the front. Just another reason my cell phone is always falling out of the back pocket of my jeans. I am in the habit of hooking my thumbs into the small hole that was exposed, but finally broke apart the stitch to claim full function of my coat. It's like a whole new garment.

Thought I would share in the interest of self-exposure. Ho-hum. Dark chocolate, anyone?

P.P.S. Please forgive this obnoxious, crunched format. Blogger is giving me 'tude.

It's Colder

Low and behold! Five-and-a-half hours north of Beloit, Wisconsin, Minneapolis/St. Paul are dusted in snow. I didn't bring my winter coat on my big Thanksgiving adventure because I don't learn from my mistakes (see: contents of my suitcase over Thanksgiving Break last year). It's colder farther north. It's always colder. This is a rule I learned this weekend.

I don't get a lot of chances to get up to the twin cities because rides headed that way are on the scarce side, but one of my dad's sisters does live up in that neck of the woods, so I take the opportunities when they drive down College Street. I spent Turkey Day baking a pumpkin pie with my cousins up in Minnetonka, Minnesota. They were a total blast. I don't spend a lot of time around 6, 4, and 2-year-olds these days, but they were super. I even got to meet new baby Caroline! I must confess that no pictures were taken the whole holiday, so I've got no proof of how cute these kiddos are except my solid gold word: they're adorable and blond and look entirely like the side of their family that I have nothing (genetically speaking) to do with.

I do, however, have evidence of the day I spent with my Beloit friends at the Walker in Minneapolis. We went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit and came out overwhelmed and thoroughly educated in her life and work. Naturally, this warranted a group picture. We were mere yards from the Sculpture Garden, home of the Cherry-Spoon-Bridge-Landmark Thing (pictured above) that every visitor in the world takes their photo with (see Quinn's latest post, where she unknowingly proves my point). So, we faced the cherry and had someone else's mom take our photo.

Above L to R and mostly very far from home: JuliaBeloit, Danny Zipse (Portland, OR), Anna Noyes (Sorrento, ME), Sean Hershey (St. Paul, MN), and Anacelia Saenz (Austin, TX)

No, Anna's sweater wasn't a planned promo. Yes, we were frozen by the time this photo was taken. In any weather, it was a great diversion and now my nose is pressed flat against the grindstone. I've got three weeks to pass all my classes, pack all my earthly possessions, get a visa for France, and get on a plane to Vermont.

Layer up. The pond in the Sculpture Garden is frozen and so is my nose. A hat might not be a bad idea either...