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	<title>Beauty and the Bug</title>
	<link>http://beautyandthebug.com</link>
	<description>Just another WordPress weblog</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:38:09 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Cutting Valerie to Val</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I love my name. Honestly, I don&#8217;t think my parents could have picked a better name. I look at people who hate their names for whatever reason, and I just can&#8217;t relate.
According to several baby name generators, Valerie means &#8220;strong&#8221; (though I grew up with my parents telling me that it meant &#8220;leader&#8221;). It was [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=329</link>
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		<title>Vivacious Valerie: When Things Come Full Circle</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When I was 15, I was working at the local grocery store to earn a little cash. I really didn&#8217;t care for that job much. So, when I saw a sign in the window of a newish downtown restaurant (a second location of a local favorite) for a waitress, I went in to apply. The [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=326</link>
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		<title>Ladybug Girl Grows Up</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, if you&#8217;ve looked around this site, you may have guessed that I like ladybugs. My mom would say, &#8220;Valerie, you have a ladybug problem.&#8221; She likes to say that when I own too much of something. When she helped me pack up my apartment last summer, she informed I had a sheet problem, a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=315</link>
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		<title>When Life Gets in the Way…</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This website is one of my great loves—the combination of so many of my “things:” writing, crafting, and just plain life. But, it has gotten the shaft recently. Life has gotten in the way…not just of this website, but of my writing and crafting in general. Two moves (plus helping my parents with two moves) [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=297</link>
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		<title>Last Class, Take Two: I’m Already Being Challenged</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My hope and goal was to be done with classes and have the diploma in hand about, well, right now. Due to circumstances I’m not going to publish on the web, my summer class did not work out. So, this week I started my last class, take two. In a lot of ways, I’m thrilled [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=293</link>
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		<title>First Days…</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am so excited and grateful to be back at the school I’ve worked at for the past year and a half. The job market is tough out there, and when it became pretty clear that I wasn’t going to find a job in my field within the next few months, I messaged my former [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=288</link>
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		<title>Life Imitates Life: It Must Be Friday</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday I had the great pleasure of seeing Julie and Julia with Mom and Vera. I had heard great things about the movie, and honestly? It had Meryl Streep playing Julia Child; I knew it would be a movie to remember. What I didn’t realize is that it would be a movie I&#8217;d relate to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=283</link>
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		<title>Winters&#8217; Snow</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Next week we start moving Mom and Dad to Michigan. This is a piece I wrote about our family and moving for a writing class during Spring semester. Gonna miss you, Mom and Dad!
Our last name is Winters. In fun sometimes people ask if we change our name with the seasons. Mom has a “Winter [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=280</link>
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		<title>Creative vs. Artist</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Countdown to graduation: 12 hours, 27 minutes and 3 seconds. Last night was the Honors Program Reception. Each Honors Program graduate (44 this year!) received their medal and had a little profile read about them. Joyce, the Honors Program Coordinator, writes lovely profiles for each graduate each year. You can see them read my profile [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=277</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Energy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I had promised count down updates back on June 27, 2008, but somehow I never really did that. So, here I sit, with my computer flashing 12 days, 1 hour, and 40 minutes, and I feel the urge to give you all a countdown update. It may be one of my great productive procrastination techniques, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://beautyandthebug.com/?p=275</link>
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