31.1.10

Domesticity is the name but it should be called "work your ass off for the 2 days you aren't being paid to work your ass off else where."

I have never felt more domestic in all my life. Seriously. I think I covered ALL my bases this weekend. The check list included:
Laundry including bedding and towels - check
Cleaning up leaves and pulling weeds in the back yard - check
Cleaning the apartment top to bottom - check
Getting needed household items from Target - check
Grocery shopping - check
Home cooked meal with leftovers for the week - check
Taxes done - check
Homework done - half a check :)

Oi! Too much for me really. All I need to add is baking cupcakes and I'd be on overload (which is why I plan on making them tomorrow night, I mean, I've got a reputation to uphold after all.)

On Friday night I went to Brewbakers with Meg and Dee and Bryan and Matty. Super fun. Ate some uber spicey pizza that is pretty much one of the hottest things I've ever eaten. The name should have given it away, Diablo. Note to self- pay attention to play on words from now on.

While cleaning up my sorely neglected back yard I made a gruesome discovery. I was sitting on my behind pulling weeds and reached towards the back of the flowerbed and what did my wondering eyes see.....but a freaking HUGE ass rat carcass. Yeah. Sick. So I used my new shovel and scooped it into the garbage bag. Then I promptly walked in the house and gave Heimy a generous helping of treats. Goooood kitty. :) Not that I advocate the killing of any animals, but I really don't like the idea of a 1.5 foot rat from head to tail scampering about and getting in my apartment. Sorry Mr. Rat, sometimes it pays to be at the top of the food chain.

Saturday night I went out again (I know, 2 nights in a row, unheard of for this old lady) to watch Bryan play with a band called Lit Up. They were pretty freaking awesome and had a great turn out. Now if only going out in this town didn't involve seeing people I'd rather not run in to, it'd be even better. Stupid small towns.

Lastly, I've been thinking long and hard lately about the idea of consuming meat. Weird you might think, but not really. I'm exposed every day at school to the world of Food Animals and meat consumption and don't get me wrong, I've been an avid carnivore since my teeth sprouted and I could wield a fork. But lately it's just been getting to me. I see these sentient beings everyday and while I know they're here for many reasons, including to promote the continuation of life through their death, I'm finding it harder and harder to be ok with eating them. Do I think I can completely go vegetarian? I don't know. But I'm going to give it a shot. Will I never eat meat again? I don't know, the thought of never having a steak or hamburger again or turkey during the holidays makes my stomach punch me from the inside to tell me no fucking way is it not going to enjoy that again. But I'm going to actively try to consume little to no meat. So, in lieu of that at the grocery store today I bought a meat substitute or vegetarian meat, and used it to make stuffed bell peppers and DAMN they were tastier than when I used ground turkey. See for yourselves.

MMmmmm Mmmmm good.

25.1.10

Cheers and beers, those were the days....

Today is a memorable day. Why you ask yourself? Because exactly 1 year ago today I was on my way to London. Actually, right about now I was in London passed out in bed from freaking exhaustion, but, nevertheless, it's amazing how quickly time flies. I can't believe I left a year ago today to spend four months going on amazing adventures and living in what I consider the best city ever.

So here's to you London Town, I'd raise a glass of cider in you honor if I could find a decent place around here that had it on tap. And also? if I could make it there because my ass and thighs are so sore from the gym right now that I've been contemplating getting a glass of water for about 2o minutes but still haven't mustered the energy and gumption it would take to get up and get it. Wait, where was I? Oh yes, here's to you, ol LDN, you brought many adventures, great times, new friends and I can't wait to see you again this summer!

24.1.10

Sunday funday? or just the day before Manic Monday?

Ah, Sundays. How I love, I mean hate... I mean love....or.. wait. I can't decide how I feel about you Sunday! My goals for today included: going to the gym, cleaning my apartment, reading for Animal Physiology and hanging out with Dee and Meg. I accomplished one of those things, can you guess which one? Yup, yup. It was totally reading for animal phys. JUST KIDDING! har, har, no brainer, I hung out with Dee and Meg. Which was super-duper fun, and chill, and great and included lots of laughing and making fun of Dee.... I mean.... love you Dee!!

I do enjoy the laziness that Sundays usually bring. Most Sundays I sleep in late, catch up on my DVR shows, which is check and done for this week, and then dread going to work, and now since the semester started, school just hours out. Boo, boo, BOO!

My favorite part of Sundays however, is this:


Snuggling with my old man is the best part of any day, but particularly on the weekends. We sleep in late, we wander to the kitchen to get breakfast, and then lay in bed watching TV most of the morning. :)

Now, I know when I told you all about my fabulous trip to Tacoma, I mentioned my recent love for the show Weeds. Well, I should also mention my recently found love for Chuck as well. This show is awesome! It was basically cancelled but was saved by another network and is back. on. You, right there, yes you, need to watch it because it's so ridiculously fantastic.

*sigh* I am now going to watch a bit of a movie before admitting defeat that Monday will surely arrive tomorrow and pass out to save my energy to survive another week.

20.1.10

Fork you, Fork you very much.

Hey'ya! As promised, here are the photos from Seattle. Not that most of you care since you've seen them on Facebook likely already, but for those who haven't, TA DA! I'm amazing, I know, it's ok, you can say it. There, don't you feel better? *ahem* Onward. ***Ignore the wacked out formatting at the bottom, I don't know what happened and I don't really care enough to spend the hours it would take to fix it, so enjoy!***

Getting ready to head into Pike's Place Market

Rawr. This shop had AMAZING finger puppets, I may have been a little too excited.

Lovely view of Seattle from Kerry Park.
I need to stop being friends with super models, they're bad for my self-esteem.
It's space. It's a needle. It's the space needle.

I want a wall like THIS!

Look, I'm being that guy from that drawing by that famous dude. You know, that one.

Road trip day! First stop: Port Townsend (PT). Read: Cold, windy but beautiful port city.



We finally made it all the way to Forks. It was kind of ghetto, let's just be honest. But still nifty.
PT

Road trip day continued through Olympic National Park. Jaw dropping beauty!

Say Cheese!
Bella's ride ya'll!

Final stop on road trip day was La Push. Gorgeous beach and cliffs but as you can see here from my "Oh my fucking god this beach is freezing and this California girl is not used to this on a beach" face, it was a tad chilly.



















La Push Beach is COVERED in drift wood. It was such a spectacular site. I had another picture uploaded on here that was a great view up the beach, but my dumb ass just deleted it and I'm not taking the time to upload it again. Get over it.
















And yes, the treaty line is posted. Legit.

Last day in Tacoma was spent hanging out with my bestie and enjoying some sunshine outdoors. We checked out Stadium High School, which is featured in the 10 Things I Hate About you movie, walked around a bit, then finished up with some frozen cokes. The life.


And last, but certainly not least, we had dinner with Nicole, the best college roommate a girl could ask for. This face, right there, with the blond hair? I haven't seen since my 21st birthday. RIDICULOUS. Such a good dinner. Not good? Is what happened after dinner...

Unfortunately after dinner we discovered Katie's poor car Bonnie had a flat. No problem right? We coast to the nearest gas station, a mere 5 blocks from her place, and roll on up to the air thinking we'd air that bitch up and deal with it in the morning. HA. Fucking air machine was out of order. Right, we can change a tire. Jack it up, take the lug nuts off. Wait, damn lug nuts are on so freaking tight we can't get them off. So the nice gas station attendant takes loosens them for us. We try pulling the tire off, it won't budge, and by trying to get it off the car falls of the jack. Seriously, I almost crapped myself and felt so bad about the situation. So a nice (COMPLETELY HOT!) stranger stopped to help us, got his jack since ours was mangled, jacked up the car and it rolls backwards. This is like the tire changing story from hell! Finally the tire is almost off but in a precarious position and the jack is wobbling so I told Katie to call a tow truck so her car didn't die a painful, sad death in a gas station parking lot. 30 minutes later, I've never been so happy to see a large tow truck in my life! Note to self: No matter how nice the weather is in the day, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT wear cute little flats out in Tacoma at night or your feet will freeze when standing on pavement for an hour and a half or more.
Needless to say our last night was a little stressful, and definitely lacked the chill vibe we had all weekend, but it was still a bloody fantastic trip and I can't wait to repeat it again in May!
Now, can someone find me an inflatable boat, I need a ride to my car, these heels aren't ment for wading in parking lot sized puddles.

8.1.10

Hump day is never as exciting as the name implies.

Pain. Immense pain is what I'm in. Why? Because I agreed to train for this damn half marathon, THAT'S why! Not that my ass didn't need to get back in the gym. After about an 8 week hiatus during the most hectic semester of my life, I needed it... bad. But now I realize how out of shape I got in those 8 weeks, like seriously? Who knew. I feel like a banana that's been placed in a refrigerator and miraculously becomes bruised and nasty even though no one physically man-handled it.



The sister and I went to see Daybreakers , sans the brother because he's a giant wussy. I've been over at their place a shit load lately for no particular reason, and it's been pretty great! Love hanging out with those two, and getting yummy yummy free meals :) And they like my Wii, so it's a win win situation for all parties involved!

I just got back from a little vacay up to Tacoma to hangout with my favorite lady, Katie. We went to Seattle, which was awesome, and then took a drive in the North of the state through Olympic National Park and on over to Forks. Yup, Forks. Sadly? The town is kind of bunk, but they're all over the Twilight bandwagon there, and at least we can say we went there :) We took Butch with us, he was way excited. We also jetted on over to La Push, which was a beautiful beach covered in drift wood and had gorgeous cliffs all around. Pictures of this trip will follow soon. It was great spending time with Katie and just getting to veg out inbetween our adventures. I was introduced to the amazingness that is Weeds. Seriously, check it out if you're up for completely inappropriate shows, because it's awesome.

On Friday night we saw this really great band called Perry Acker at a little bar. A few rum and cokes later, life was sweet. I might have consumed my weight in red vines for the 4 days I was in Washington, but I'm totally looking forward to repeating it in May. What I won't look forward to repeating is coming home to my cat. Wait, let me rephrase, I will look forward to coming home because he's so sweet and wants massive lovings when I get home which is great, but I won't look forward to looking in the kitchen again and seeing little shitty kitty paw prints and looking further to discover he was not feeling well while I was gone and didn't make it to his box one time... So cleaning up cat shit for 20 minutes when I just got home from flying/driving for most of the day? No bueno.

Tomorrow begins another semester, barf. Which should be 1 of the 2 remaining semesters of my undergraduate career. Thankthefuckinglordforthat! I'm ready to be on to the next chapter of my life in so many ways it's ridiculous. RIDICULOUS.

Photos to come soon. If not, then I either 1.) Died in spin class tonight or 2.) drowned in a puddle.

4.1.10

A lesson in curtesy that I should have taught someone but thanks to hunger, they were saved.

Ok, here's the deal folks, when I get out of the gym after doing 4 miles on the treadmill and then a kick ass yoga class, I want to be able to run to my car (ok limp) and get in as quickly as possible because it's A.) cold and B.) I'm stinking STARVING. So I get to my car and some ass hat with a giant truck has parked in their spot AND in mine. No joke, I could not get in my car, and frankly, I think I might have barely have been able to squeeze my chubby ass between the two. So I had to climb in through my passenger door and crawl across to my seat THEN I had to fold in my sideview mirror to make sure I didn't hit their car because I'm nice like that.

Needless to say, I was pretty much cheesed and later realized, as my sister pointed out, I should have gone into the gym and made them page the owner to move it but meh, it was too fecking cold and I was ready to gnaw my arm off.

SO here's the memo folks, make sure you're in only your parking spot because next time, I won't be so nice!

Resolve this.

Another new year has come, and I'll admit I'm sad to see 2009 go. It was a damn good year! Here's to hoping this one will be almost as good, cause I'm not sure it can compete. I mean, c'mon, this time last year I was getting my shit together to go live in London for 4 months!! I don't know how that can be topped. Except getting accepted into grad school next fall would you know, make it pretty close (fingers crossed!). And today is my first day back to work after a 5 day weekend, which in all honestly, was pretty fucking amazing. 5 days. FIVE! By Friday I was thinking I had to go back to work and then I realized I still had 2 days of freedom in front of me. Amazing. I might have not gotten out of my PJ's yesterday and got sucked into a House marathon so therefore spent all day snuggling with Heimlich. Might.

This time of year everyone is making their "resolutions" which are really "Things I should have been doing all along but was a slacker and haven't done so now I'm going to resolve to do them this year! Even though I really know that in a couple weeks I'll get tired of keeping it up and quit again, resolving to try again next year." So I'm not making any stinking resolutions. I should resolve to start posting on here more like I used to, but why do that. I'll only end up feeling guilty and you'll only end up feeling neglected and empty inside when I don't, so I say we make each other happy and just accept that I'm a slacker who will try in a non-committal way to be less slacker-like.

In all honesty, I can't really think of anything I'd blog about in the past weeks since I last posted. Most of it would probably be depressing, and I'm not a fan of bringing y'all down. I am going to the PNW, Washington to be exact, next week to visit my dearest Katie and hopefully Nicole as well! It'll be good times and I'm definitely looking forward to it. I'll be going again in May for Brent's wedding, but I can't wait that long. Which means I'm again going to getting dirty looks from my cat when I open up the closet and pull out the suitcase. And when I leave that morning he'll ignore me and when I come home he'll pretend to be mad but really just want lots of loving and then to go outside. He's reeeeaallllyyy going to be cheesed at the end of the summer when I go to London (and hopefully NY to visit Caitlin!) and am gone for like 2 weeks. Again, this is why I'd be a horrible parent. I fill up the food and water feeders, clean the shit-box, leave a light on and lock my door on the way out. Can you do that with kids? I mean, they potty train too right?

Sara and I and a couple of our friends are beginning training for a half marathon in September. I'll admit, I shat myself a little when Sara mentioned it. 13.1 miles... of running... seriously? You might as well call the paramedics for me now and have them on stand by with some oxygen and a defibrillator. But we've started training anyways. Yoga to stay limber, spinning for a small slice of hell, and they've started a power sculpt class which I just can't get myself to get up for at 8:30 on a Saturday. Pff, right. But that mixed with constant cardio is what we're going. If only I could get my ass to do the constant cardio part! It's not as easy as it would seem. I want to run, I do, but getting my ass in gear to do it, not so much as easy as the "wanting" to part. So this should be an interesting journey. Let's hope the chubrub stays to a minimum. Oh, but the best part is the half marathon we're looking at is the Disney one! So you run through Disney Land, awesome, and can get discounted tickets to the park, also awesome.

So that's my first post of the new year. I resolve to not resolve to do anything in particular. How's THAT for not cheating on a New Year's resolution. HA!