It's All a Big CARTay!

Mini Vacation

2015-11-25T11:53:00.000-05:00

Hello friends! This might be the most pathetic post ever because I'm laying on the beach using my phone so there will be no pictures. But I want to make sure you're all enlightened on my life, so here we go!

Over the weekend, we went to my cousin Spencer's (the real one, not the one where Bobby pretends to be Spencer so we get free putt putt) wedding in Georgia. We stayed with my aunt and uncle and they happen to like football too so we had a full day of Big10 sports on Saturday. Like the rest of my family, they support that other school in Michigan so it was a good day for everyone! Go blue! In case anyone didn't see, Harbaugh smashed a buckeye in front of Bo's grave so I think that is some good foreshadowing for next weekend.

So anyways the wedding was nice. We got home from that on Sunday night and got on our plane to Fort Myers the next morning. Our first day we checked into our hotel and headed to the beach. It was a little windy and cloudy but definitely an improvement from Midwest weather. At night, we drove to Naples for dinner. We went to this delicious Italian place that had 2 entrees and a bottle of wine for 29.99! Yay for wine wasted! Afterwards, we walked around a little which was fun because there are lots of cutesy shops and it's all decorated for Christmas!!

Tuesday was another beach day. We walked down the beach and searched for cool shells. The highlight of our walk was definitely when this old lady captured a pelican in a fishing net. I felt a combo of amused and sad for the bird. My dad and I played some cornhole too. I lost all three games but it's a new day and I'm determined to win. I'll keep you posted on the results. That night we went out for dinner and drinks and then came home and crashed. {this portion of the post has been removed due to viewer complaints}

Now it's Wednesday and almost time for my departure. The rest of the fam is down here for another week still but some of us have gotta work. Luckily I'm going out with a bang. We had the best continental breakfast ever complete with omelets, chocolate chip waffles, biscuits, and mimosas. We'll be spending the day at the beach, having sunset shots, and then closing the vacay with yumyums and cocktails at a rooftop bar.

And of course I will have my awesome fiancé waiting to pick me up bright and early Thanksgiving morning. Enjoy your turkey my friends :)

Memo Week ---> Memo Weak

2015-10-07T17:05:00.000-04:00

This gif is all I can really say about this week. Our first memo is due Friday. But the upside is that if I make it through, then I get a week off. Highlights should include:

Seeing Zacky for our 6 year anniversary
Seeing Reba and my mom and my dad
Seeing Teeners and Taylor
Not seeing Ashulee and Bobby
Just kidding
Eating a lot of carbs and dairy
Still studying a lot
Going to a real mall with actual stores
Going to DC
Having bottomless mimosas at brunch
Not writing this memo anymore

I'll try to write more later, but I don't want Teeners to dominate the blog, so I figured something short was better than nothing. Also, feel free to ask me about joint ventures if you want a noncommittal and very confused answer, which I'm sure is what most people are looking for when they want legal advice.

Half-Master

2015-10-06T14:25:00.001-04:00

This is (probably) the last Fall semester I will ever have, which is weird and makes me think I should be more nostalgic and emotional but really I am just ready to finish this up and become a real person finally. My classes are interesting, although sometimes I tell myself I don't need to pay attention/attend them because I'm not getting a PhD so this theory stuff isn't important. This is probably a mistake...

As you've all heard (unless you are not ART and are a stranger reading this...), I have a new favorite class. I still really like public health genetics, but I'm not taking any classes in that field this semester and instead am getting really into social epidemiology. This is where we look at how social inequality generates health inequality. Some of it is super obvious, like low SES being associated with pretty much every disease ever. Other stuff is more surprising, like having greater social stratification in a community being associated with lower average height. Even if you are rich, your health is worse in some areas because of the presence of inequality. CRAZY! So I might need to get on board with Patrick's communist revolution soon.

Classes are only a small part of my schedule this semester and it seems like all the other things are making me feel busy. I have a problem where I fill out every google interest form that gets sent to me, and then I just go ahead and sign up for leadership positions that I really wouldn't be good at. I also have been swimming most days, because for one of my classes we have to make a health behavior goal and write a report on it and also because if I get to campus early and swim before class I miss traffic (#commuterlife). I think I've got a grip on things now, though, and hopefully will be a little less crazy.

Here are some pictures of activities so far this semester:

First football game!

Michael's last juggling show before moving to South Sudan:

Bobshley visit!:

The class I am in right now:

Apple picking with mostly people I've never met:

Osaka, Kobe, Taipei!

2015-07-28T02:42:00.000-04:00

We've been packing a lot into our days in Japan so I'm just going to give a rundown of everything we've been doing instead of trying to remember each day.

Things we're seeing

This is Meriken Park in Kobe. Kobe might be my favorite city in all of Japan. This park is huge, on the water, has a lot of shopping malls and very pretty. We ate pretty good Indian food here and walked around!

We went to a Hanshin Tigers baseball game! Everyone in my family and in Japan seemed really nervous about us doing this? My grandfather has been a fan for practically forever and has never actually been to a game. Despite the HUGE crowds at the game everyone insisted that no one goes to see the Hanshin Tigers.

We had a great time. The woman next to us lent us balloons so we could participate in the 7th inning stretch activities and the end of game celebration. The couple on the other side of us explained to us who the players were and who was a closer and stuff. It was very nice of all of them. And the Tigers won! They beat the Giants, their biggest rivals! Wooooo!

We went to the Osaka Castle. It was hot as hell that day. Which explains Zack's sweatspot. But, when we went inside the castle, it was air conditioned! So much for keeping things traditional...

Right before we went to the Castle we went to Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium. It was maybe the most crowded place I've ever been. In retrospect, we probably picked the worst day ever to go--it was the Sunday of a long weekend, so no duh there were a ton of people there! We saw some cool stuff, but kind of agreed that people never enjoy your pictures of aquariums. It never looks that cool in pictures.

We were going to go to the Umeda Sky building after the Osaka Castle since we were in Osaka that day, but it was way too freaking hot, so we went home. In the end if was the right decision because we were able to go back a few days later and see it.

So here's some crap. The Sky Building is this huge sky scraper and you're supposed to go up to see the "Floating Garden" as the sign above indicates. BUT when you get there this is all you see:

THERE ARE NO FLOWERS OR NATURE IN THE FLOATING GARDEN. Granted, I did think that we got a particularly bad day because it was raining pretty steadily and was super gray out. But for real. This is not a garden. AND they don't let you carry umbrellas up at the top because they're afraid it will blow away. So you just have to walk around in the rain if it's raining. What crap.

This is in Taiwan. Zack is afraid I won't differentiate enough between Taiwan and Japan. This is the Chiang Kai-Sheck Memorial. Chiang Kai-Sheck is a former Taiwanese president. His memorial included a lot of anti-Japanese propaganda inside. That was kind of cool to look at, but I don't really know enough about Taiwanese or Japanese history to get the significance of their words and descriptions.

It's very pretty, but we also went there in the rain, so I don't think we got the optimal experience. I was also very nervous I was going to slip and re-shatter a kneecap. Also I was a little crabby because we woke up at 4:45am, took a train, a bus, a plane, and another bus before we actually got to Taiwan.

This is the inside of that memorial. Very beautiful!

This is what you see if you stand of the steps of the memorial and look out. Yes, I did use a filter.

This is the 228 Peace Park. On 2/28/1947 there was a huge antigovernment uprising that resulted in many deaths, a lot of destruction and the beginning of 50 years of martial law. Taiwan has a very interesting history and we saw a lot of propaganda and there is certainly a lot of contentious point in history. I don't pretend to know much about it, but if you need someone to go more in depth, tweet at @Zackymatthews.

This is the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial. He was Taiwan's first president and is like the father of the nation. We spent extra time in his memorial because he was a cool guy, but also because it was pouring outside and big dumb Bert didn't bring his umbrella.

Also there was a mini sculpture exhibit inside and a bunch of dancers outside. So we chilled there.

After it stopped raining we met Zack's friend Gino at a night market! Taiwan is famous for night markets. It's like if a farmers market, flea market, and a carnival all met up and joined forces every night. Lots of food, games, and trinkets for sale everywhere.

This is a wind damper at the 101. I didn't know what one was until I went to the 101. I still don't super get what it does, other than help buildings not collapse during earthquakes, but you should know, this is a huge wind damper. So I've been told.

This is the 101 from afar. We went up to the top if it. This is the world's second tallest building, but still has the world's fastest elevators! It was a beautiful view from up there. It was a little crowded and kind of expensive, but I'd say worth it! Also you get to walk through a bonus coral museum no one tells you about until you there.

This is the ticket for the metro! It's a plastic coin! Weird.

This is the National Palace Museum! It's HUGE and has a ton of artifacts, that some people would argue are stolen from China. We saw a lot of cool pottery, weapons, jade, and historical documents. We did not look at the Jade that is shaped like a cabbage though. Because there was like an hour long line to do that. We were not feeling it.

This is Chiang Kai-Sheck's presidential residence.

This is also the presidential residence. It was also HUGE and very elaborate. Definitely did not feel like it belonged to a single person, even if that person was the president.

Zack's other friend, Laurent, paid for us to get 45 minute massages. We were kind of nervous since that's kind of a long time to have a stranger you can't really talk to touch you. My massage was kind of rough and was definitely sore the next day. I do think my feet hurt less though. For reference, in the past week we've walked 59.5 miles. So I guess we earned a massage.

We went to Tamsui, which is at the end of the metro line in Taipei. It was beautiful but so freaking hot. There was a British fort there. That was surprising.

After going to Tamsui, we went to the a Beitou Hot Springs. Remember how I said it was hot? It was even hotter at the hot spring.

People we're meeting

This and the picture below it are of my cousin Karin. She's 12, and was born in America. She's been going to "English camp" with us. She's pretty shy, but I definitely think she's understanding more and more English. She's very sweet and is very excited to go to Universal Studios Japan with us.

So I didn't actually meet this guy--I just made him take a picture with me because he's wearing a Princeton football shirt and I used to work with a guy that played football at Princeton. He was uncomfortable.

This is Laurent. He used to work with Zack's organization in DC. Now he lives in Taiwan again. He was very nice to us. He bought our tickets to the National Palace Museum, our lunch, our massages, and our dinner! He got us very drunk and took us to places we wouldn't have seen otherwise!

This is Gino. He's hilarious. He speaks amazingly good English for someone who has never been to the US. He's sort of YouTube star in Taiwan and apparently had a small role in a movie! There was a billboard for his movie in our metro station so we took a picture of him with his billboard self! He also took us around, helped us order food and made sure we had a good time.

We're also obviously seeing my grandparents, aunt and uncle a lot. They aren't so much into pictures though. They never want to take selfies. Rude.

Things we're eating

Most of this does not need an explanation. It's all delicious.

There was $5 beer at the tigers game! Too good! Also, it said you weren't allowed to bring cans or bottles into the stadium. Which we took to mean, you can't bring beer. NOPE. There was a line where they took your bottles or cans of beer and poured it into paper cups and you're allowed to have that! Can you imagine how insane that would be in the US?

My grandmother was super worried that we wouldn't have enough to eat so she packed us hard boiled eggs. As we were leaving she told us "It's hot, so be careful!" "There are crazy people so be careful!" "You're cute, so be careful!" And then "Sometimes eggs make you cough! So be careful!" What? So I ran that by my mom. And she was like "yeah! eggs do make you cough! You should be careful!" Is that a thing?

We didn't actually eat this. But it's very realistic penis ice cream in Taiwan. Why.

This is the dinner Laurent got us. It was SO good.

We both super liked octopus mouth. I guess I'm more surprised octopus mouth is a thing you can eat that I am that I like it? How do you even get the mouth like separated?

Mos Burger! Instead of a bread bun, it's rice!

That's it for now! We leave Saturday so we're wrapping up now, but I'm sure I'll have another absurdly long blog post to share!

Uganda Be Kidding Me: 10 things I learned this summer

2015-07-19T10:02:00.001-04:00

I'm thinking "BuzzFeed Editor" would be a good fallback career if we run out of public and health in the world, so here is a summary of my summer in listicle form. Also CAN'T WAIT TO REUNITE WITH YOU ALL SO SOON!

1. "African" souvenirs are usually made in China or India, just like everything else in the world. All the colorful fabrics and crazy pants that white people on safari like to buy are about as Ugandan as French fries. Still, they are awesome fabrics/pants so can you really blame us for buying them and acting all cultured when we get back?

2. Peeing in a whole in the ground is something you can get used to. It's not really pleasant, but it gets the job done. I only had to use a latrine on days that we worked in the field, so I can't pretend to have had an authentic village experience. At night, I got a hot shower and a flushing toilet. So really we should all just appreciate indoor plumbing.

3. On long layovers, you can totally leave the airport and get a bonus vacation! We did this in Amsterdam because we had 6 hours between flights so I'm pretty much an expert. We saw the outside of the Ann Frank house, ate frites, walked around the museum quarter, and wished we were as adorable as all the Dutch bikers.

4. Knowing other languages is really cool. So I guess I am not that cool. Everyone I met in Uganda speaks like 5 languages and I could barely remember any words in Runyankore. I did meet a Burundian man, though, and exchanged like 2 sentences of French with him!!

5. Sexism. I just learned about sexism. Obvi I have seen this my whole life but it was different to observe as a foreigner. My first day working in the field, one of the health workers we partner with invited me to spend the night with him and it became pretty regular for men to ask if I was single or tell me they wanted an American wife, which is awkward. But the real sad thing was hearing from women about sexual abuse and domestic violence and just the general experience of being expected to garden, cook, clean, raise babies, make money, etc. sometimes with no help. And then it was sad to hear men talk about how they were expected to pay for everything but if you're poor you just feel disported and become an alcoholic and OK clearly not everyone does this but just for real why can't we all just work together and not force people to live and work and be a certain way just because of their sex??

6. Electricity is dangerous. My laptop charger taught me this lesson when it exploded and nearly took my head with it. Which reminds me that I need to check amazon for a new one...

7. I talk really loud and might be hearing impaired. Or Ugandans are just really soft spoken? I don't know if it's a consequence of having lots of cousins or something but I have discovered that I shout when people don't understand or acknowledge me speaking and it's super annoying and why do I have any friends? But then also I can never hear anything the first time so probably you should be nice to me I might be deaf.

8. I always thought I was kind of low-maintenance, but it turns out I am super spoiled. I really struggled with the unreliable electricity and internet connection in Mbarara. One time I spent a whole work day reading Mockingjay and waiting for the power to come back on so I could use my laptop that can't hold a battery charge, and it was the worst thing ever. Also I'm bad at flies. I just don't like them, especially when I'm eating, and one time I even skipped lunch because I couldn't handle the flies in the village which is super weird for me because I LOVE eating.

9. At airports it really is important to get there early for your flight. And then once you are there, you should probably stay close to your gate so they don't close it while you are on the other side of the terminal being an idiot. I learned this lesson in Miami, but it all turned out OK because I got on a new flight and Marco Rubio was there which is basically a celebrity siting and I made friends by having a tide-to-go in my purse.

10.I really like travelling, but it is so great coming home. I am already planning my future trips: Paris to see Rachael, Poland to see the Pope, Uganda again to see my frands. But I definitely realized that I can never live anywhere but Michigan, at least not long term. I just missed everything too much!

Tokyo!

2015-07-16T03:29:00.001-04:00

Which is in Japan, in case you're confused.

I hate goodbyes and had to do a lot of goodbye-ing the whole week. Monday I had lunch with my boss. Tuesday was an office going away party. Wednesday was the going away happy hour. Thursday I ran around to find my birth control before our trip, and Friday I had to officially say goodbye to my coworkers.

One of them surprised me with this picture frame! It's hard to tell but it's the entire ACS Staff with RBG! I think I'll use it as a way to humble brag in my new apartment. "Oh yes...in the course of my nonprofit work I got to meet two Supreme Court Justices...social justice is just soooOOOooooOO rewarding...blah blah blah."

Also on my last day we got burritos at my favorite burrito place in DC! I can't think of a better way to go out than that! Then walked to the White house and ate lunch there. Later my coworkers brought out wine, cheese, grapes and crackers and we had another little mini party. I was actually pretty busy though helping tie up loose ends, but that was a welcome distraction from all the people trying to hug and cry over me.

This is how goodbyes make me feel.

After work I went to CVS, went to Walmart, went to CVS again to get my birth control and finished packing. It was a pretty unceremonious exit to DC, but in the morning when I woke up, there were prostitutes outside! I'd never seen them before. And it was warm and raining so they were kind of like splashing around in the puddles in between trying to entice people. It could've been a lot sadder.

I flew to Toronto, met up with Zack and then we flew to Tokyo! It was a pretty uneventful flight and Zack even managed to sleep a little--good work Zack!

Zack wearing a bib to prove to the waitress we
understood her instructions

Then we had to make our way to our hotel, which, according to google maps, looked really difficult. It wasn't that difficult, but it did involved three separate trains. Also, I asked for instructions to Yotsuya and it turns out we wanted to go to Yotsuya Sanchome. They're only about 3/4 of a mile apart, but we had all of our luggage, so we asked a police officer how to get to the right place and he showed us. But, in the course of asking him, I left my directions with him! It was a only a little bit of a bummer though because we knew we were close and the map kind of sucked anyway. BUT, when we got off the train at the right stop, the police officer was there on his bike and gave me back the directions! He biked to the next stop just to return basically useless directions. Very Japan.

Then we got to the hotel, showered and went out to dinner. we were so tired we just stopped at the first restaurant that advertised an English menu. It turned out to be sukiyaki, which is sort of like what they do at Benihana, but smaller. The waitress made us wear bibs. At first I was not about that life, but it turned out to be a good plan because a lot of the fat/grease popped up and would've gotten on our clothes otherwise. It was really good and there was a group of families getting absolutely wasted next to us. They gave us some of their fried rice, and probably would've given us some shots, but we were too tired to stick around.

We struggled to make it to 8:30pm before going to sleep, and ended up waking up at 5:45 and leaving by 6:15 the next morning. we were too early for Starbucks and had to walk around a little bit to find somewhere selling coffee. In the end it turned out to be okay that we woke up so early because we walked around this shrine in the middle of Tokyo called Meiji Jingu that's really beautiful, but would've been way too hot later in the day.

After walking around there we walked around Harajuku, which you might remember from Gwen Stefani. It was full of a lot of cool shops that were closed. We're probably going to go back when we're in Tokyo at the end of our trip.

After that we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which is really tall so you can get a good view of the city. And, unlike the Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree, it's free! And, we were also super into that it was air conditioned. It was also really nice because they labeled all the buildings we were looking at. This is a picture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building Number 2. And if you follow we on snapchat, which I mean, everyone should, you got to see a video from the top as well.

not Niagara at all

After that we walked around another park, which advertised "Niagara Falls Tokyo." We thought that was hilarious, and we were correct in expecting it to be underwhelming. It was. It's a fountain. A pretty decent fountain, but definitely just a fountain. Then we went and got lunch. It was actually a Chinese restaurant, which made it super difficult to order, because it's like Japanese translations of words I don't know. Finally the waitress just asked us "chicken or pork?" and brought us what she thought we wanted. It worked out.

Then we walked around Shinjuku and the department stores. There was even a Krispy Kreme. After that we were pretty much dying so we went back to the hotel and took a two hour nap. Then we woke up, went to Ginza, and had some pretty mediocre Thai food. We managed to stay up til 11, but that was only because of the nap.

Tuesday we went to the Edo Tokyo Museum to learn about earlyish Japanese history. I used my excellent Japanese skills to lie and say I'm a college student so I could get a 120 yen discount. I mean...I will be a student in like a month. So it's not really a lie. This is a part of Japan's history that I'm not sure familiar with. I've never really committed to keeping my Shogunates separate--I only know about the last one that collapse and made things change. The museum was interesting, but I still haven't really internalized the history at all. Oh well. I'll just watch the Last Samurai a few more times and hope that straightens me out.

The museum was really good for reminding me of CART though:

Here we have Taylor teaching some young students in Edo era Tokyo

Here we have Ashely helping a woman give birth.

The last sentence of this description shows that Ashely's techniques at this time probably would've hurt about as much as they helped. Get it together, Edo era Ashely.

This is a list of epidemics that hit Edo. I can't tell what they are, but they made me think of Teeners.

This is Zack on two ridiculous bicycles.

One woman told him he was "the coolest" while I took his picture on this bike. What.

This is Zack as a sumo wrestler.

After the museum we went to Asakusa, which is a more old-timey part of Tokyo. Mostly it was an incredibly touristy and crowded part of Tokyo. the main attraction there is Senso-ji, a buddhist shrine, surrounded by a ton of cheap, crowded shops selling stereotypical Japanese stuff. I was too hot to care a ton about it. If you follow me on instagram, which should be everyone except Taylor, you already saw a picture of the pagoda there. We ate lunch, walked around, and then got moving onto Akihabara.

you weren't supposed to take pictures, but I did!
I'm a real rebel.

Akihabara is called the "electric city" and has a ton of video game/electronic/sex shops. Definitely a weird vibe, but worth seeing. A lot of the video game and manga stuff was lost on me, but it was all unique and would be hard to find in a different city! We went into a 6 story sex shop, but I was only allowed on the first four floors and had to send Zack up to the top two. He said there wasn't much interesting except those fleshlights and a bunch of nervous dudes. I'll pass.

Then we wandered into an arcade. I think they're too whelming. There's music from like 19 different games, lights all over, and just generally too much going on Also, probably my lack of interest in video games makes them less interesting. But, we did play air hockey though and I beat Zack! Worth it.

Zack was so into his big toast.
And it was HUGE.

After that we went to Ginza to see the imperial palace. First we needed a snack though so we stopped at this fancy French cafe. It was overpriced, but pretty worth it since we were so hot and tired. Also this ended up being our dinner, even if that wasn't the plan.

Then we walked to the imperial palace and managed to find like five exits, and not a single entrance. I guess that makes sense. You don't want a bunch of ways to get into the castle?

Then we went home, collapsed and rested out feet. Tuesday we ended up walking around 32,000 steps. Which is like 14.5 miles. Props to Fitbit for keeping those stats. It takes an hour and a half to get to the airport so we had to wake up pretty early the next day anyway to get ready to come to Osaka.

While we were at the airport this absolutely wasted man walked up to us and tried starting up a conversation. He told us how we used to live in Finland with his wife. But that was too cold. So they moved to Japan. But then he decided to move to Melbourne for three months, and his wife wasn't happy with that. But then he came back after 10 days and was going to surprise her. But she said she wanted a divorce and that he friend was staying at their house so he shouldn't come back. Then he passed out on the seats and almost missed the flight.

Then when we landed we heard him yelling into his phone that he was going to "fuck someone up." So yeah, he's really our new best friend and it's sad we didn't get to know him well.

Now we're in Osaka with my grandparents and things will probably move a little slower. And that's not necessarily a bad thing!

Vacation with a side of Engaging!

2015-06-23T15:25:00.002-04:00

SPOILER ALERT: I'M ENGAGED!!!

Just thought I'd throw that out there so you didn't have to wait in suspense for too long. Anywho, this is the story of BobShley's adventures through the southeast. Enjoy!

Stop 1: Nashville, TN

On Friday, we managed to get our butts out of bed and out the door by 6:20am. We journeyed to the faraway land of Nashville for the sole purpose of experiencing the WORLD'S GREATEST BISCUITS. Loveless Cafe is a motel-turned-restaurant that is known for its homemade biscuits and jams/jellies. As Teeners knows, I could probably win an eating contest involving these biscuits, so I had warned Bobby that I planned to eat 17 of them. He didn't believe me, but I did it!....almost...I ate 4, which is essentially a synonym for 17. Then we drove home.

Just kidding. We headed to downtown Nashville for CMA Fest. For those of you who are not country savvy, this is a four day long country music festival where there's pretty much live country music everywhere all the time. We wandered Broadway (the main drag) for a while and then made our way to the riverfront stage where we first saw some old dude singer and later Eric Paslay and Chase Rice (I know them so this was exciting!).

Listening to good music and getting burnt

Other things we did included getting free samples of scented wet-naps, having a margarita flight at Margaritaville, and playing cornhole with our new friends! We played against this guy and girl, and while the boys took the game very seriously, the girl and I were busy talking and I discovered that she's a nurse practitioner who works in labor and delivery and is applying to midwifery school! So we're basically best friends. Also, don't worry, team BobShley won.

Margarita flight, best flight

We had planned to spend the night somewhere around Nashville, but by late afternoon we were super sweaty (which became a major theme of the trip) and ready to move on so we got back in the car for another four hours and headed to Atlanta. But before we left, we were lucky enough to run into Blaine and have southern style fried chicken with our friend Emily.

Mini-Stop: Atlanta, GA

We spent the night with my aunt and uncle in Atlanta, and then got up in the morning to go see one of my favorite things.......babyyyyyyyyy! My cousin Garrett just had his first baby a couple weeks ago (well his wife Ava did the actual baby-having), and it worked out perfectly that we got to stop and see her! Her name is Leighton.

Baby Leighton!

Stop 2: Savannah, GA

On Saturday afternoon, we arrived in Savannah aka our new favorite place. The weird thing was that when we checked into our hotel, there was a bucket with champagne sitting in our room. After much investigation, we learned that it was free (remember this detail....it will come up later in the story). Savannah is pretty cool because it's super easy to walk around and it's known for its 22 squares. Each square has lots of pretty trees and places to sit with a statue commemorating someone in the middle. Someone we got to know really well was James Oglethorpe. Not only did he found the city of Savannah, he also fought lots of battles and did many positive things for the city. He even has his own road!

They're basically the same person

We spent a lot of the day wandering into cute shops. One store we really like is the Savannah Bee Company. They make every honey and honey-based product you can imagine. They also have lots of taste testers (another theme of the trip), and Bobby may or may not have tried all 20 flavors at all three of their stores. Another food we got to sample lots was pralines. These are pecans coated in a sugary, carmely substance. Every candy store gives out free samples, which tend to be the size of a full cookie, so that counted as our lunch several days along with a side of ice cream/gelato.

Honey everywhere!

Desserts everywhere!

At night, we went to the city market, which is just a little strip of shops, bars and restaurants at the city center. We ate outside and listened to live music/stared at all the adorable dressed up babies. ALSO, we saw someone walking a cat! And it was actually successful!

Savannah City Market

On Sunday, we did some more explorin'. We wandered through some of the squares and saw more trees and statues. Our ultimate destination was Forsyth Park, which is the most awesome place in Savannah. The park is pretty big with lots of room for activities, but the main feature is the fountain in the middle. The fountain was built in 1858 and resembles this fountain in Paris.

Fountain at Place de la Concorde in Paris

Forsyth Park- maybe this is the true Paris of America

Later, we walked along the river and stopped in some of the little gift shops. Mostly we just wanted to steal their air conditioning. One cool thing about this area though was that you're allowed to drink on the streets, so we got to refresh ourselves with some beers as we strolled.

He could get used to this

**If you're only reading this post for the engagement story, here is where you should start paying attention**

We had dinner reservations at a place called the Olde Pink House. It is the oldest mansion in Savannah dating back to 1771. Not only is it beautiful, it's also really a unique building. The outside stucco is pink (hence the name) and it still kind of looks like a mansion inside with several different dining rooms decorated with paintings, mirrors, and chandeliers. Our food was amazing and the wait staff was fantastic! The weird thing was that multiple waiters/managers came up to us and asked if we were celebrating a special occasion, and we just kept saying no just vacation, so I think they might be psychic. It is a stop on the ghost tour after all.

Bobby got chicken, sweet potatoes (which I
discovered I like), and collard greens (which
we discovered we hate)

I got filet mignon, asparagus, and a twice baked
potato. We like all those things.

After 700 attempts, we finally got a decent picture in front
of the Olde Pink House

After dinner, we headed to Forsyth Park again because we wanted to see it lit up at night. We walked around a little and then made our way towards the fountain. Bobby started to tell me that he knew where the mystery champagne had come from (I told you it would come up again). He said that my dad must have sent it because he was the only one that knew where we were staying and he was the only person who knew....I never really got to hear the other half because at this point I was balling my eyes out (in a happy way, duh). Bobby managed to get out "Will you marry me?" and pulled out the most gorgeous ring I can imagine! I obviously said "yes" and I'll spare you the rest of the details because it gets pretty sappy from there. But we did top off the night with a stop at Lulu's Chocolate Bar. This place is known for its desserts and dessert flavored martinis. It was the perfect end to the perfect night <3.

First photo as an engaged couple! One thing
we've had to get used to is having me stand on
Bobby's left side because notice in all previous
pictures I'm on the right. #engagedwomanproblems

Lulu's. Get used to seeing this hand. It made
many appearances for the rest of the trip.

Celebrating with our champagne! Side note:
My dad actually did not send the champagne,so it
will always be a mystery as to where it came from.

On Monday, my fiancé and I drove to Tybee Island, which is a beach town just outside Savannah. We spent the morning laying on the beach and playing in the water. Oh, I also made Bobby take really cheesy photos like this one:

Whoever wrote that did a really good job

At night, we wandered around and got some sweet daiquiris. There's a chain in the region called Wet Willie's and they have about 20 daiquiri flavors that you can mix and match together. Yum! Also, this happened. Some guy just backed into it....casual.

Normal

And the night ended with some fascinating people-watching on the pier. It was a combo of adorable babies chasing doggies and fishermen with very unique clothing styles. More lovey-dovey and ring pics were taken of course.

We're really good at sunset pictures

How did that hand get in there? My bad...

Mini-Stop: Beaufort, SC

On Tuesday, we ventured to Beaufort in the morning. This is another historic town along the coast. We had lunch at a restaurant called Plums and then strolled down the main street with shops. After getting nice and sweaty, we got back in the car and headed to Charleston.

Two of my favorite things!

And the heat index was 111

Are we in love or what?

Stop 3: Charleston, SC

We arrived in Charleston in the afternoon, so we did some window shopping at the high-end stores. Then we got cleaned up and ready for our dinner cruise through the harbor. We were seated with another couple for dinner, who we liked but probably wouldn't be friends with because they said things like "the Mason-Dixie Line". Our food was pretty good...mostly we liked the bread they served beforehand. We also saw lots of cool things from the boat including a sailboat race, Fort Sumter, and water.

Go sailboats!

Fort Sumter

Another very successful sunset pic

On Wednesday, our tourist game was strong. We took our pal, Fodor's, and followed its walking tour through Charleston. We saw lots of churches, government buildings, and famous hotels.

St. Philip's Church

I fit right in with the locals

The guard at the custom house wasn't very social

St. Michael's Church and the Post Office. Rachael,
you would like this intersection because it's called
the "Four Corners of Law". There's also a city hall
and courthouse right there.

Pineapple Fountain! Ahh I'm sorry, I really
don't know how that hand keeps getting in
the way

After our walking tour, we went through the city market, which looks kind of like a flea market but much classier! There are lots of handmade things to buy and it is also surrounded by more stores (another theme).

City Market

In case you didn't know

In the afternoon, we went to Folly Beach for a couple hours. It had really nice sand, and the waves were fun! The only thing I disliked about it was that I had to take my ring off for this adventure.

Watch for us on the cover of SI July 2015

Our evening activities started with walking to the Battery, an area with cannon replicas, a park, and lots of HUGE mansions. Then we strolled by Rainbow Row...no explanation needed, just see below for picture.

My future home. Yes, this is someone's house.

Rainbow Row!

We had dinner at a southern BBQ place. So much good food! Then we went to a rooftop bar called the Pavilion. I had a mango mojito, and now I've decided I need more of that in my diet. Even though we like being super classy, we were getting antsy, so we looked for a more chill bar. And we found a Big Ten one! We watched the basketball game, and then played some darts. I lost, but it was still pretty fun! I even got a bulls-eye once!

View from the Pavilion Bar

My view of the basketball game

Go Blue!

Stop 4: Gatlinburg, TN

While we loved Charleston, we were very happy to get out of there, as the church shooting happened about 5 miles away from us while we were out that night. It was pretty scary that such a horrific event was going on so close to us. So we hopped in the car and drove to Gatlinburg, which is in the Smoky Mountains. One exciting thing that happened was that when we were about an hour out, we got hit with golf ball sized hail for 20 minutes. That was a new experience for both of us.

We first had to stop in Pigeon Forge to check into our cabin. Since I can't do the awfulness of Pigeon Forge justice, I'll just say imagine all the things you hate and that's exactly what this city is. Luckily, Gatlinburg was way less gross and over the top. Our cabin was called "Cuddly Bears' Lair" and had a hot tub, sauna, and awesome mountain view. We went grocery shopping and then made a honey themed dinner with the honey we bought in Savannah. The rest of the night we just relaxed, hot tubbed, sauna-ed, and started to wedding plan!

Honey grilled carrots, honey soaked fruit salad, honey fried
chiken, and honey beer!

On Friday, we biked the 11-mile Cade's Cove Loop. The scenery was beautiful with the mountains in the background, and there were several stops to see old churches and houses. The unfortunate thing was that we had to share the road with cars, so that made it kind of stressful. But we survived! And almost saw a bear!

Professional bikers

Since we're so athletic and fit, we decided to take a hike to Laurel Falls after our bike trip. It was all uphill on the way there, but it was ok because we saw lots of babies and even one Michigan one! The waterfall was pretty too, and then we got to go downhill all the way back.

Professional hikers

After a long day of strenuous activities, we had a relaxing night in the cabin and drove home the next morning. And I think it's only right to end this post with one last picture of the lovely Smoky Mountains :)

Thank you for reading!

Teeners isn't the only one doing cool stuff

2015-06-19T23:36:00.000-04:00

I do things too...sometimes...

It's been so long that I posted, so I'm just going to share photos of stuff I've been doing and comment on them:

These are my coworkers at happy hour. We went to the bar that is literally underneath our building. It's German themed kind of like Heidelberg, but they actually have a woman walking around with an accordion. Accordion is far from my favorite instrument, but she's really sweet and makes up funny songs about who is in the room. Also, we always get kind of too drunk when we go there. It's German magic.

I saw Love and Mercy with Brie. There's this theater here where they sell alcohol while you watch! I realize now that the first two "cool things" I said I do involve drinking, but I didn't actually drink at the movie theater. But it does seem like movies are more fun knowing I could drink. Instead I just ate way too much popcorn.

Love and Mercy was actually a really great movie that I wouldn't have seen without Brie asking me to. It's about Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. The only thing I knew about him before came from the Bare Naked Ladies' song, but apparently he had like a complete mental breakdown and an almost complete recovery! And I guess it was pretty close to his actual life story, which was kind of a gripe I had with A Beautiful Mind.

I also ate maybe the biggest piece of carrot cake I've ever seen in my life right after the movie. It went with my huge bag of popcorn. It was at this really cool bar called Ted's Bulletin. They sell homemade poptarts too and a bunch of signature cocktails. If you guys ever come back/visit with me, we should definitely try to go here!

I went to Drag Brunch at the gay sports bar in town! It was definitely worth the money! It's $35 all you can eat with one drink, and a whole drag show. I went with Zack, my coworker Stephanie, her sister and her boyfriend. It just sort of ended up that Zack and Steph's boyfriend sat on the inside table, but I think that was for the best--the drag queens danced up on a lot of the men who were on the ends of tables and Steph's boyfriend for sure wouldn't have been okay with that. I think Zack would've been fine, but didn't NEED that kind of interaction.

The food was pretty good, if maybe a little too varied. Like, who wants hummus, fajitas, grits and bacon all in one meal? The only other sad part was that we forgot to stock up on dollar bills to give out! They definitely deserved dollar bills! They were so great and beautiful. Also the MC of the whole thing told us how she volunteers with a bilingual multicultural LGBT shelter called Casa Ruby, which seemed like a great cause, and kind of brought a more real side to drag brunch. Like, it's one thing to enjoy all the fun stuff that the gay community brings, like drag queens, dancing, fun entertainment, but I do feel like it's a little too easy to forget about all the real issues a lot of people face.

Lady Gaga Realness.

Another arguably cool/fun thing I did was Convention. It was actually really terrible in preparation for Convention. Everything I needed to do was dependent on someone else's work/approval/input and everything was super behind schedule. So I ended up having to do a ton of work at the last minute when I would've gone a much more reasonable pace if I'd been able to. But whatever. I did it. It worked out.

Mostly once Convention started I just had to sit at the help desk and reprint name tags for people who lost them. That should've been low stress but someone took my box with all the supplies I packed myself! Like it literally just disappeared. And then my printer broke. So I really wasn't very helpful at the help desk.

Christen and I matched one day. That's a big deal in our office, so we had to take a picture together and sent it around so people could marvel at it.

One of the receptions was at the AFL CIO and they have a really great view from their balcony. This is a picture of my boss there. It was great, but super muggy that day. But more importantly I got to meet three Cornell Law Students! They were all super nice! And two were from the Midwest, which was kind of something I was worried about--that everyone at Cornell is from New York or New Jersey and that they'd think less of me for being from the Midwest. That was super nice.

This is Max. He's a good dude.

Wendy Davis spoke at our Convention. The video is pretty interesting. She seemed really chill. No security detail or anything. Also, some law student really geeked out when she saw her and pulled out a pair of pink tennis shoes and rushed up to get a picture with her.

One of the two panels I actually broke away from the health desk to see was about reproductive rights and how poorly that fight has been going. Wendy Davis didn't actually speak at that one, but it was a very informative, if a little bit depressing. I did tweet a lot and got a few new followers! So I guess that's a success.

I also went to a panel on the death penalty. That had a way different tone. That's definitely a battle "we" ("progressives") are winning. It was mostly the speakers guessing when capital punishment will be fully abolished.

Also I got to meet another Cornell Law grad. He's also a Michigan grad and is an anchor on MSNBC. His name is Ari Melber. I only talked to him for a few minutes, but he was very nice, and willing to take a picture with me--and I'm pretty much no one!

I tried to organize an all staff picture. People acted like that was an insane request. It was surprisingly harder than I thought.

The highlight was definitely seeing RBG speak! She's very funny in person. And also so tiny! One of our former board members clerked for her so he interviewed her and they talked about feminism, gay rights, rap, and a ton of other stuff. Everyone at work was really nervous we wouldn't have a full house for her because she wasn't scheduled to speak until the very end of a three day conference. SO WRONG. It was so crowded!

They told us that we definitely would not be able to take pictures with her, which was kind of a disappointment, but understandable. Not everyone can be like Sotomayor and take tons of pictures with staff. In the end, we got one single picture with her as a whole staff. Which, I mean, is pretty much good enough.

I was SO tired after convention. It's like working around 40 hours in three days, so it super sucks, but it's only once a year and is for a good cause, so you can make yourself do it. Plus I got Monday off.

On Sunday we went to Pride! It was really fun! We went last year too and that was also fun. Zack did not try on undies this year though. He just took a picture with the Shalom Felicia sign. I almost had to join a Queer Drum Troupe. Just like how I almost joined a sorority. The guy in the booth asked "Are you gay? Do you live in DC? Can you spin a flag?" And even though I answered no to all three, he still said I should come to try out. I def thought I had struck out. Other highlights include: A guy offering Zack many of the gold (big) condoms, seeing a Taylor Swift impersonator, and getting pretty bad tan lines.

On Monday I took it easy, watched 50 shades of gray while drinking sangria with my coworkers and played trivia at a bar. My team won though! There were 10 people from work, and they're all kind of used to me bossing them around, so no one noticed when I made myself a dream team! The only kind of sad thing was that the prize was $100 off your bar tab, which would've been great, but I had already closed my tab so I didn't get any of the money! I guess knowing we won is enough. Or something.

Now all I have left to do is 1) move into Steph's apartment for 10 days 2) send all my stuff back with my dad 3) fly to Japan 4) enjoy my last real summer, like ever.

Gringa Amiga

2015-05-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

I went to Chile for the wine, and I ran into Amy Ketner!

(Amy, in case you forgot, is the one who loves Juan Pablo).

Amy lives in Santiago where she works in youth ministry and campus ministry for a Catholic church and nearby Jesuit elementary, middle, and high schools. She lives with three other volunteers and a pet cat named Pedro. She also speaks Spanish really well and really fast, which was fun and confusing to listen to.

In Chile, last Thursday was a holiday and schools had the day off. I think it was to commemorate some battle, but I'm not sure. I landed in Santiago Thursday morning and was met by this shining face and a lot of signs that I couldn't read.

The first day, we did a lot of activities. I met the roomies, ate a completo, drank Chilean beer, walked up Santa Lucia hill, and ate dinner with the host family of one of the roomies. The host family spoke little English, but they practiced some for their upcoming trip to Orlando with phrases like "this is a pencil" and obscenities not appropriate for this classy blog. I practiced Spanish phrases like "no espanol." We ate pizza, it was great.

Friday was a sandwich day, which means it was between a holiday and a weekend so it was another day off school! We took a day trip to Valparasio (AKA Valpo) which was so cool and is about an hour from Santiago by bus. Valpo is a port town and became really prosperous because of all the ships that had to stop there on their way around South America. Then the Panama Canal got built, and less ships come to Valpo now. Valpo is still beautiful, though, full of brightly colored homes built into hills that light up in the evening and twinkle off as night gets darker. There is also a lot of street art, exhibits A & B:

Saturday was another adventuresome day, but this time we stayed in Santiago. After breakfasting at noon on homemade bagels, we headed out to the mercado central (I put that in italics because it is another language). This was a really cool space that seemed to go on forever with fresh fruits and veggies like a farmers' market but also stalls for buying cleaning supplies and toilet paper and dry goods. We drank juice-smoothie-things and then walked across a beautiful park to the Pablo Neruda house. It was quirky and interesting and had an original Diego Rivera painting, which I liked because the DIA makes me think Rivera is from Detroit. Neruda was a communist and a big supporter of Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile who the U.S.ofA. helped to overthrow and replace with a dictator when we were in that phase (still in that phase?) where we try to control the whole world. Pinochet (the dictator) was a real jerk, so that ended badly. The house was restored by Neruda's lover-turned-wife after he died, and it was one of my favorite touristy activities that we did.

Saturday night we went out to a few bars Amy likes with her friend and I got to see Chilean night life, which goes on far too late for my liking.

Sunday was our relaxed day of hanging out on the porch and cooking together and sharing music. We also went to Amy's host family's house, which is right around the corner in the poblacion, which is what they call the poorer neighborhoods in Santiago. The family was nice to me even though I'm a dumb gringa and travel to Spanish speaking countries without knowing any Spanish. After hanging out with them we went to mass, roasted chesnuts over an open fire, and split a bottle of Chilean wine.

Monday was my last day, so we made the most of it by going up another hill (by fernicular, which is like an elavator/ski lift) and taking in the view of smog and mountains and the biggest city I've ever seen. There was a big old Mary on top of the hill and JP II said mass up there on his papal visit to Chile!

After the hike down we ate chorianna, which is like chili cheese fries but with way better toppings, and drank pisco sours, which is the name of Amy's cat. I did a little souvenir shopping, we toured Amy's school, and then it was time to leave.

All-in-all, TeenerAdvisor gives Santiago a 5/5 star rating, in particular the accomadations at Amy's casa. And although saying goodbye was sad, Amy will be back in the USA this December (and will probably promptly leave to explore some other part of Latin America).

Now on to the next adventure: Uganda catch that plane!

#SBORLANDO2015

2015-03-02T20:22:00.000-05:00

Our loyal readers have probably wondered of late, "What happened to CART? Why aren't they updating their blog? What will I read without them?"
I am here to answer your questions and to pressure the other 75% of our writing staff to pick up the slack a little bit (I'm looking at you Taylor).

So, what happened to us? Well, we all four have been busy with some pretty exciting lives since we last updated this blog, but one event in particular which all of CAR + the honorary B participated in was Spring Break 2015. Bobby and I are still students, so we get these nice little vacations throughout the year and are encouraged to spend them in sunny climates drinking and getting tan. Ashley and Rachael are working women, but they also get vacation time occasionally and if they don't use it all up on salmonella, they get to come to Florida, too! Taylor, unfortunately, is a teacher, and her spring break doesn't come until actual spring. This is a bummer.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Most Magical Place on Earth: Orlando!

Siesta Key Beach: #1 Beach

Right before we clubbed at club

We clubbed at Uncle Drew's, too

This is not actually us, but it's from the Book of Mormon song called "Orlando", so it seemed appropos

Mostly Sports, But Some Other Things Too

2014-11-16T20:19:00.002-05:00

So a lot of my life has been sporting events lately. I feel pretty good about it, but I'm also thinking maybe we should diversify our outings.

Aaron and I went to the Red Wings game. I was like 95% sure he wasn't going to go if Zack and I didn't go, so I decided I'd be nice and go with him. They don't come to DC often, so you gotta see them while you can. Also, the tickets were only $20! And you can buy tickets up to an hour after the game starts, which seems a little crazy. But anyway, that means tickets go down to like $7 if you're willing to miss the first few minutes. So that's useful if you guys ever find yourself in downtown DC with time to kill.

The game was super close and the Wings came from behind to win! But, I noticed the guys in front of us took a snapchat of me and Aaron, which seemed kinda rude. But then, I'm pretty sure they thought we were on a super bad date. Like no touching; not that much talking; a lot of texting--all the signs of a bad date. Jokes on them though! We'll never date!

We we were Kris Kross for Halloween. We looked like this and I had a lot of vodka gummy worms:

The next weekend we went to the DC United playoff game, which Zack was pretty excited about. The sad news was that DC didn't end up advancing to the next round. It's a weird play off system that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. The sad news is that I was pretty sick at this game and Zack also lost his voice.

After standing in the cold for like 5 hours, we had to go home and then come back out for Samantha's birthday! You guys remember her, right? She just turned 23 because she's a baby. It was really fun! We played cards against humanity, which is apparently a game I can get into, despite not usually liking games, especially card games.

We had to leave the party pretty early because the next day we needed to go to Baltimore for the Raven's game! My boss gave us the tickets because he has seasons tickets, but wasn't able to go. I was a little surprised he gave the tickets to me, Stephanie and Zack, because he sort of has a reputation for being part of the boys club. But I definitely think it helps that Zack and I went to an NFL game by ourselves earlier in the season and that I talk Michigan Football with him.

I'd never been to Baltimore before, and I don't really feel like this trip counted because we just went to like Camden Yards and the football field--no sightseeing or anything. But, I guess I didn't realize how close Baltimore is to DC! I think we're going to try to make another trip out--but probably not until 2015, which is a little crazy to say.

The game was really fun! The Ravens won, we had a really good view, it wasn't that cold, there were a bunch of drunk guys behind us, and even though one of them threw up on himself, none of it got on us! (I'm counting it as a victory, because it was a close call.) But, the drunk men did manage to spill beer on us. So that sort of sucked, but not like I was wearing anything important anyway.

The sad news is, this was not good my health and I spent a lot of last week sick. Even Veterans' Day, which was supposed to be a fun day off. Instead, I just spent a lot of time sleeping and coughing. Turns out it's an upper respiratory infection! Woooooooooo. It's mostly better now though--yay modern medicine.

#blackoutsparty

Which is good because yesterday I went to the Maryland-MSU game with Mattan and his girlfriend (who actually went to UMD)! It was a great time! So the Big House is amazing and I love it. Let's get that straight. But the thing is, this was so much more convenient than if I had tried to get three non students into the Michigan student section. We just bought the tickets, no validation required. We were able to sneak in two beers to the stadium. I got a free tshirt that says "FEAR THE TURTLE," which I think is an amazing slogan. We sat in the third row at the 10 yard line and had plenty of room to dance. Also, a freshman in front of me bought me hot chocolate for no reason? Maybe she was hitting on me. Maybe she was just super nice? Either way, it was only $4.25 so...I only feel a little bad.
I don't know what my rooting interests should have been, but both teams looked a little ridiculous. So I feel pretty good about us winning next weekend. One weird thing was that Maryland students didn't seem to get that MSU is not the same as Michigan. I guess they'll figure it out next week though. Jeez, get better at Big Ten, Maryland. Everyone else knows the difference.

Some random things I want you guys to see:. I made fancy brownies and my flowers are doing excellent:

Also, I have 4/15 law school applications in, so maybe I will actually go to law school. Who knows.

EDIT (11/16/14 8:48 PM): 5/15 law school applications in. Woo.

The Alumni-Student Paradox

2014-11-06T21:58:00.001-05:00

(I feel like this could be the title of an episode of the Big Bang Theory.)

I still love you, Brady

I finally got to watch some Michigan football this weekend now that my moonlighting job has died down with the wedding season. I have a 2-0 record, so using science I can say that I am the singular reason we won yesterday, and against App. State. I also left both of these games at half-time, because it turns out I am a much worse fan now than I was two years ago. Also I was afraid my toes were falling off, don't judge me for being a wimp.

It's weird being a student and an alum at the same time right now, because half the people I see around Ann Arbor are old friends and half are new. When I'm in class, most of the people I talk to are from out of state or out of country, and it's all pretty focused on getting that degree. But then I see old friends and I feel like I'm still in undergrad. As much as I love Ann Arbor, this has shown me that I should not live here as a non-student, I would just be too confused.

So cold

Blaine was in town this weekend for the Indiana game, and just because she sometimes gets a week off at a time with her wacky nurse schedule. This was great, because I like Blaine! I went to the game with her and Kathleen and then dinner and then to this bar called Bab's that I have never been to before because it isn't on South U. and charges 8$ for a drink. But it was way classy and worth the 8$.

Lately I've been super busy, which isn't a thing I'm really used to since my job last year was a joke and I spent most of college watching The Bachelor. I feel like I'm always in class or at work, and most days I'm gone from 8AM to 10PM. This isn't that impressive, though, because Kirstin is awake and at work before me and also usually gets home super late, so we are just both absent roommates. Now that midterms are over I will get a little break from proctoring, so I can finally catch up on episodes of The Voice. Even though Shakira is gone and she was my favorite.

Today I had a meeting for what I am calling "Uganda Club," which is actually a group of students working with Progressive Health Partnership, doing grant writing and fundraising for their work in maternal and infant health care. I'm hoping that I can put together a research project and do my internship with PHP this summer, too, which will hopefully be more exciting than writing grant proposals, because that is turning out to be kind of a bummer. But I'm pretty into moms, so at least the topics are a fun time.

I just did a countdown, and there's only 3 weeks till CARTSgiving! I'm really excited for all the mystery train and Mexican food and to be all together again!

What doesn't kill you...

2014-09-27T17:12:00.002-04:00

What doesn't kill you could still make you very red, itchy, nauseous and put you in the ER.

So after work i had to rush to Old Town Alexandria--Taylor and Ashley might remember it as that place we got ice cream the last day they were here. Aaron's parents are in town and wanted to take us out to dinner at this nice restaurant, which always nice.

We were a little late, and when we got there Aaron and his family had already ordered an appetizer. I was going to take a bite, but Aaron's mom let me know there was shrimp in them and so I told her "Oh no thanks, shrimp makes my lips tingle." And then she glared at Aaron and asked "Why are we here then?!" and I assured her I could eat things on the menu, just not shrimp. Some awesome foreshadowing....

All of the food was super good! I had a bit of Zack's crab soup; I had a lot of bread; I ate pecan crusted chicken with crab on top and then had a chocolate hazelnut creme brulee (so many things I like!) Then we decided we'd walk the mile back to the metro to walk off dessert. That was fine. Then, since I was short on my step count, I paced around the metro for a while. I noticed my armpits were like crazy itchy. But, I figured that it was just because I'd been out of the house for like 14 hours at this point and I just needed to take a shower and change.

What I imagine I looked like

I went to sit with Zack and Aaron and Zack tried to wipe what he thought was a bead of sweat off my face. Nope. Not a bead of sweat. It was a hive. My warning hive was already HUGE and my whole neck and chest were already covered in hives. But, the train was coming and there's a Rite Aid right by the metro so we figured that was the fastest means to get relief. I wasn't super worried at this point, but got kind of nervous when the train just stopped moving in between stops--I knew it was gonna get worse before it got better.

We went to Rite Aid to get Benadryl, and Aaron knew exactly the right aisle and type I needed, which was super helpful. And I popped two pills while in line and we started to walk home. Benadryl is some pretty good stuff! In the 10 minutes it took to walk home, I was already feeling better and my hives were leaving! My plan was to lay down and just chill and watch some Dexter while I recovered. BUT, I was super itchy and literally could not stop scratching myself, so I decided to take a bath.

I don't know if it was because of the bath, or that the timing just lined up, but I started to feel really sick. Then I threw up all of my dinner. It was super gross. And Zack seems to have spidey senses about when I'm at my worst and came into the bathroom. So then I tried to rinse off, but couldn't really stand and was super miserable. So then Zack came in and saw me hunched over in the shower unable to stand and called Aaron's (she used to be a peds nurse) and asked if they thought it was time to go to the hospital. She said yes, definitely.

So then I had to get clothes back on, try not to puke, walk to the car, and go to the GW Emergency room. I had to remind myself that it was important not to faint. And I'm super glad I didn't, because Aaron and Zack seemed really nervous already. Luckily it's really close to us--like 10 minutes driving. and it was nice to have Aaron to navigate and walk me into the ER while Zack parked the car. Also I had Zack call my mom and let her know my allergy is for real. She had been joking earlier in the night that all I needed was a shower, some water and rest. Typical my mom--she's pretty sure most things will fix themselves. Usually I am too, but this felt different! I'll never understand how people in super rural areas can get by living 30 minutes from anything, let alone a hospital.

The coolest Friday night hang out

It was also super lucky that they saw me very quickly. I mean I still got to see the homeless man try to scam the hospital out of pain killers--he refused to give his id, and just wanted the intake people to give him drugs for his back. I also got to see a very well dressed French lady declare she was having a heart attack, lay down in several places on the waiting room floor and yell at the intake people that even though her vitals were all fine, she was most definitely dying. It was an adventure.

When they took us back the nurse told me he thought I was right on the cusp of needing an iv or taking some medicine orally, which seemed like a good sign. They also said they weren't sure how much of the Benadryl was actually absorbed because I threw up so soon after taking it. In the end, they decided I needed an iv. My first one! The nurse apologized to me after he put it in and said he was kinda messy doing it, but I don't think it seemed that bad. The nurse was really nice. He got me blankets when I got cold and shaky and explained a lot of stuff to me, which I know they don't have to do when they treat you.

Then Zack and I waited. And waited. They said they'd let us go around 1:30 after my hour of observation was over. Right around 1:30 they came to take my registration information. At 1:45 the doctor came back and explained what he was going to prescribe me and said he'd be right back and I could get going. At 2:00, two gunshot victims came in. At 2:15 a girl that got caught drunk driving and then fled from the cops came in and was making a real big scene about being cold, not speaking English (though she clearly did) and not wanting to be deported back to Brazil. Also, that's about the time all the way too drunk people show up too. So, I fell way down on the priority list.

I was really sure they'd just forgotten about us. We were in this huge private room with the door closed. I KNEW there were people who needed my room more than me. Especially because at this point all of the redness was gone and I felt a lot better. I wanted to use my call button and ask for water and maybe remind them we were ready to go, but Zack told me I wasn't allowed to.

Eventually at 3:00 my nice nurse came back, gave me the prescriptions and took out my iv. Taking it out hurts so much more than putting it! Then we walked to the car, came home and passed out until 11:00. Then I went to CVS, filled my prescriptions and came home to load up on pills and take a nap. I feel pretty good...but so hungry! Also, my joints feel awful. No one warned me about that! Hopefully Michigan wins and I can count on that to cheer me up!

So now Zack and I are an epi pen couple. Except that he let his expire, so it's really just me. I'm not really looking forward to having to tell all my waiters to extra for real make sure none of my food touches shellfish. But, I don't think I can super handle another reaction like that!

Sundays are for cooking

2014-09-14T23:08:00.001-04:00

I bet you've been wondering what we eat on a regular basis here. Or maybe you haven't. But either way, you're about to know!

I spent all day today cooking so I wouldn't have to during the week. If I don't make my lunch for the whole week on Sunday, I end up not doing it and having to eat out. So here are some of my cooking adventures!

When we visited Bobby in Cincinnati, he mentioned that sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night, it's because your blood sugar is out of whack. He said he eats a banana to fix it and it helps him go right back to sleep. So, since Zack like NEVER sleeps, we decided we'd get some bananas in case he wakes up and can't get back to sleep. But...he didn't have the problem before the bananas went bad. The only thing left to do was make banana bread. And probably buy more bananas, because eventually he'll wake up and be crabby about not being able to sleep.

And since everything is better with chocolate, I cut up some of the many Hershey kisses my mom sent me for my birthday and threw them in there. I should have used the dark chocolate ones and not the regular ones, but I wanted to save those for myself.

From what I hear, it's pretty good banana bread. I haven't actually had any yet, but I don't know how it could be bad.

While it baked, I decided to make something new! I'm doing this thing where I track my calories with My Fitness Pal. I wouldn't call it a diet, but it just kind of makes you eat less because you have to be honest with it and say what you ate. Anyway, I'd been reading about steel cut oats and how they're so good for you and whatever. The only catch is, it's not like instant oatmeal--it takes like half an hour to make.

Usually I don't make it a point to buy organic food, since it's more expensive. But, I couldn't find the nonorganic version at Harris Teeter, so I guess I'll just be extra healthy. Basically all you do is measure 4 cups of water or milk, and then 1 cup oats and boil it til its not water anymore. I felt like it'd be weird with boiled milk? So I used water.

It took a while, but eventually became just mushy and not watery. I like it! I usually like mushy things. I added some sugar and walnuts so it'd be less boring though. So my plan is to eat this for breakfast for four days and see if I still like it. Sometimes the texture of yogurt makes me want to gag, but hopefully this doesn't have that effect.

Then I need to make lunch for the week! I have a lot of extra vegetables that need to get used so I decided to do stir fry! I cut up onions, zucchini, and broccoli and set it aside. I needed to go work out, so I didn't want to get too deep into the cooking process. This also gave me time to soak the rice before I made it! That's something my grandmother always does, but I never really have time to because rice takes so long to begin with.

ThenI went and ran. I wanted to watch football while I ran since that's the only tolerable to distract myself from the fact that I'm running. BUT, only 2 of 4 treadmills had working TVs and the 2 good ones were taken. So I just had to listen music and struggle through the three miles. I've definitely had a better half hour. When I came back, I was too hot and my feet hurt. So I had to take a shower before Zack and I embarked on a shared culinary adventure.

We'd read online about Shooter sandwiches. We thought they looked kind of cool so we decided to make some for ourselves! Some people do crazy things with them but we decided to keep it simple! Ours was just steak, onions, mushrooms for Zack, and bacon in a hollowed out sourdough bread loaf. I'll just post pictures of the process instead of explaining the entire thing.

Our loaves of bread!

Steaks! We originally thought we could fit two in each, but the loaves were too small!

These are the mushrooms Zack made. I still think mushrooms are gross.

Bacon! We eventually cooked six strips. We did not share this since strip between us.

Sauteed onions! way better than mushrooms!

Me hollowing out the bread loaves.

All the bread that came out of the two loaves.

Adding stuff into them!

Right before putting the lid on.

Them in the process of being smushed!

These were supposed to be bread crumbs, but I dropped them all over the floor so we couldn't eat them. It was kind of a bummer, but since everything else turned out well, I'll count them as a sacrifice to the cooking gods.

After we smushed the sandwiches, I went back to the stir fry! It's pretty easy. I basically just cooked all the vegetables and chicken in soy sauce and siracha and put it over rice. Our kitchen was just super hot from all the cooking and our super loud fan ended up turning on. Every time it turns on, I feel like it's judging me and calling me a bad cook.

At 5 we had to go to this Michigan in Washington dinner and meet all the interns for this semester. The last two times I've just stayed home by myself while Aaron and Zack go, but this time they put that you could bring a "life partner" or spouse with you if you wanted. So Zack put me down as a life partner, which I feel like is a big step in our relationship! Or maybe it just makes us sound like a gay couple from the early 90s. Who uses the term life partner anymore?

Very smushed. Very good.

The dinner was fun! I mean there's no real point. You're just supposed to mingle with the new interns and talk yourself up. I don't have a lot of talking up to do, and interns are only so interesting, but the other people sitting at our table were for real adults and were super nice. Also, I mean, you can't really be upset about free dinner from a program you didn't even participate in.

When we got back we cut open our sandwiches to see if they were sufficiently smushed! They looked pretty good! I'm excited to eat it for lunch tomorrow!

Also, you probably all got the snapchats, but for our work party on Friday my coworker Stephanie and I decided we'd try to extra celebrate the baby shower aspect of it and make a watermelon baby carriage! I didn't get many pictures of the process because my hands were mostly covered in fruit guts all the time, but it wasn't so bad making it! Stephanie did the carving of the baby's head, but I hollowed out the watermelon and made room for the pacifier in its face.

It was definitely one of those projects were the longer you look at it, the worse you feel like it looks (much like at Painting With a Twist). We were worried it looked like a severed baby head. Then we were worried it looked like dog/bear and not a baby. I was also worried that Steph would have a really hard time getting it to work. I guess it was easy enough because she showed up at work with it on time!

At the party everyone was really impressed with our skills! A lot of people didn't get that we made and thought that we bought it! I mean, it ended up kind of cute, but I wouldn't definitely not pay money for this quality of work. We have another baby shower coming up in November, and obviously need to celebrate it in a similar fashion so it doesn't look like we're playing favorites. I'm not sure how to up our game though? I guess we have some time to brainstorm.

Anyway, sorry this isn't about actually interesting things, but this is all I've been doing this weekend.

Miss

2014-09-04T17:57:00.002-04:00

So I guess I am going to bow to peer pressure and write a blog post.

Like the Teeners, I started school this week. However, unlike Teeners, I did not start school as a student, but as a teacher! That's because I am way smarter than her, and people like her need help from intelligent people like me. (JK Teenie you're smart.)

Anyway, I really started last week because I had new teacher orientation and three professional development days (although one of them was a work day, and I don't really think I developed much on that day.)

In addition to professional development, I had to go get fingerprinted for the seven bazillionth time. I have basically admitted defeat when it comes to this process. It is always expensive and time consuming and somehow way more complicated than it seems like it could possibly be, and I have had to get it done far more than make sense. But whatever. This time was a unique and interesting experience because the police officer who took my fingerprints was extremely admiring of my fingerprints. The first indication of this came when he told me, "You know, your fingerprints are really nice and clear." I asked him if this meant I should never commit a crime and kind of laughing because that's sort of a weird thing to say and I wasn't sure how else to respond. A few minutes later, he said, "Your prints really are nice." And then later, "It's really a pleasure printing you." And then later, "Don't you dare ever let anyone else print you." It was confusing because it felt like he was hitting on me but also it's hard to be flattered when the only compliment you get is about your fingerprints. I was somewhat tempted to shout "I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!" and make him feel as awkward as I felt, but I didn't because he had a gun.

Not nearly as nice as mine.

Anyway, my seductive fingerprints passed the "Don't be a criminal" test and I have now been a teacher for two days. I'm not going to describe my days in full because we just did basic first couple of days stuff--syllabus, icebreakers, book inventory, etc. However, I will include a short list of some things that have happened, and you can feel free to just imagine the rest.

One funny thing is that everyone thinks that Evan is my boyfriend because in a distinct effort not to share my love life with them, I included no mention of my actual boyfriend--but I did put a picture of Evan on my "important people" slide and EVERY class asked if we were dating, and then acted very suspicious when I said no. Whoops. Guess in the future I will only have female friends.

From now on, nothing but CART. Except maybe then they'll think I'm a lesbian.

Also, I have realized that middle schoolers get excited about really weird things. Today, one of my 7th graders said to me, "Miss, I saw you in the hallway today!" (Also, sometimes some of them legit just call me Miss. What?) This set off a chain reaction of everyone in the entire class saying places that they had seen me. "I saw you walking in from the parking lot!" "I saw you in the 7th grade hallway!" "Hey, I saw her there too!" "I saw you talking to another teacher!" "I saw you looking in the supply closet!" and so on and so forth until finally I had to be like, "Guys, I work here, and sometimes they let me leave my classroom, so you're going to see me around. It's not that exciting and we don't need to talk about it for 5 minutes while you're supposed to be writing in your journals."

A recreation of Miss talking to Mr. Teacher from across the hall. Especially accurate because Miss's face says "I have no idea what's really going on."

I learned we have a school iguana that lives in the lobby.

Not our specific iguana but you get the idea.

Anyway, even though I have only had two real days of school this week and both of them were good, I am happy tomorrow is Friday! I think that once this week is over things will feel more normal, and less like I am an imposter teacher who is going to be thrown out at any moment.

Epidemiwhat?

2014-09-04T15:55:00.001-04:00

I started school this week!!

So did Patrick. Isn't he cute??

I feel like I sort of started last week because that is when we had orientation and I had to make friends all over again. Normally I'm all:

But lately I've been pretty friendly. It helps that everyone in my program seems pretty cool, and they all like public and health so we have that in common. So far I've gone on running dates, played kickball, and biked in the rain all in my effort to be social. And I even remember the names of some of the people I've met. Success!

My classes this semester seem pretty much like and undergrad course load (5 classes, 16 credits, mostly in class from 8am-1pm). But I'm sure they'll be harder, so I'm bracing myself for lots of studying. My favorite so far is public health genetics, which I have Mondays/Wednesdays. I learned already that it's been recently discovered that 75% of our DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is not what I learned 3 years ago in undergrad genetics. Also we are going to talk some about GMO food, which is a thing I've recently become more interested in as I dabble in being a vegetarian hippie.

I also have intro to epidemiology (which is good because I'm still not entirely sure what I'm training for a career in), biostatistics, biological basis of disease, and a programming class in SAS.

So far I'm loving being in school again, maybe I'll stay a student forever?

From 0 to 60

2014-09-04T02:24:00.000-04:00

Alright people. I know I'm probably the worst contributor to this blog, but it's 12:50 am and I have to stay up for another 7 hours, so I figure why not humor you. I have a cute little snuggle buddy on my lap, so he's going to help me write.

Basically what my baby friend looks like...same blankets and
pacifier even! But NOT ACTUALLY because that would be
breaking HIPAA and would be a bad start to my nursing career.

So, in the past two weeks I've made a lot of life changes! It all started on August 18 when I woke up to a call coming from the 3-1-3. I was super excited because this was the call I'd been waiting for for weeks. It was the HR rep at the DMC calling to offer me an RN position in the NICU!!!! I was so happy I even told the lady that she was my favorite person ever (which maybe is unprofessional?).

My approximate reaction to "the call"

A little more info about my new job. Orientation starts September 15, and I get to go to a bunch of boring seminars that week. Then, I'll start really being a nurse and will be working three 12 hour shifts a week. Some really awesome things about my job are that a) I get to work day shift so no more nocturnalism for me! and b) I already got a pay raise and haven't even started yet!! So far I'm really liking this job. But most of all, I'm excited to take care of babiessss and help them get better so they can go home :) Also, last night I ordered this super cool badge clip that I'm kind of obsessed with.

Mine won't say Wendy. Snapchat of the real
thing comin' at ya in a few days

I'm official!

After I heard the good news about my new job, lots of things happened really fast. The next big change in my life was that Taylor and I signed the lease for our new apartment. We moved in last week and are so in love with it! We each have our own bathroom and walk-in closet, there's an enormous balcony overlooking the pool, and it's 800 million times better than Blakely Court CART house (minus the fact we're missing half of us :/ ).

This is an actual conversation we
had this afternoon

My room. Taylor will have
to show you a pic of hers
so you can see how
coordinated we are!

Bathroom...obviously

View of the pool from our balcony.
The sad news is it closes in 4 days :(

Giant balcony where we sometimes
dine and watch netflix

Super modern couch aka your bed
when you visit us

The next exciting thing that happened was that I bought a car! Actually, the process of finding a car to buy isn't that fun. Howie and I probably put about 20 hours into searching that week. We went to tons of dealerships and had them price out different options, test drove the same three cars about four times each, and finally I made a decision. On August 25, I bought a brand new Chrysler 200!! It's awesome and I can't wait to take all of you for a ride in it!

To top it all off, my dad
surprised me with this
sweet license plate holder =)

Well that's my life. Hope you enjoyed! Excited to hear about yours :)

Cincinnati, Best Nati

2014-09-03T23:00:00.000-04:00

So we went to Cincinnati for the long weekend because...well...where else are you gonna go? Usually I expect things in the Worst State Ever to be awful, but we actually had a great time!

We flew out from the airport that is super close to our house, which is really the only way to travel--who wants to take a subway to a train to a bus and THEN fly? The flight to Cincinnati is crazy short so we left at 6:00 and landed by 7:15!

One thing that was kind of weird was that when we were walking toward baggage claim to meet our friend and driver both of the down escalators were out of order. So, it was annoying and everyone had to walk down carrying their bags. Zack and I joked that it was like using the DC metro, but as soon as someone heard us, they jumped in with "It's probably Michelle Obama's way of making us all lose weight!"--a comment that both isn't funny and doesn't make much sense. But, that was a quick reminder that we were currently in Kentucky, and not in the liberal wonderland that is NOVA.

She's probably yelling about how we all should eat vegetables. What nerve.

Once we made it outside, our friend Bobby picked us up and took us back to his new apartment. It was super nice! The good news is that even though he lives with an MSU grad, the decor is either neutral or Michigan themed. We'd like to commend Bobby on his constant vigilance for making sure the apartment never gets too Sparty-like.

The other good news is that his roomie was gone the whole weekend so Zack and I got to sleep in his bed instead of the couch! Also Bobby made us really good gumbo, which is a thing all of us weren't sure he knew how to make.

Then we went to this crazy bar in the OTR part of Cincinnati. We took a Lyft there so that we could all drink and ended up riding with a guy names Jason who looked a lot like the lead singer from Coheed and Cambria.

Well known artist, or cab driver in Cincinnati? Hard to tell.

Bobby warned us that this bar wasn't in a good part of town and that it looked kinda weird at first. Good thing he warned us, because the first two floors of the bar are like gutted and definitely look like a good place for sexual predators to hang out and discuss tactics. But when you get to the top, it's this huge warehouse with like 8 sets of corn hole, a foosball table, a bunch of tables and all the brewery equipment. It's huge and the beer is really good (but definitely not cheap) and incredibly hot! It's also got this really cool graffiti/art on the walls and seemed to be filled with pretty cool people. I normally don't like games, but we did play one game of corn hole while we waited for Charlotte and Charlie to show up. Tim (a rando at the bar that agreed to play with us) and I lost to Zack and Bobby, but it was a very narrow victory and I think they'd be hard pressed to repeat.

Charlotte and Charlie are really cool people! Zack and Charlie had a lot of common ground between liking every sport ever and Frat Lyfe at their respective colleges. After a while we decided we'd go to the next bar and Charlie was nice enough to drive us there!

The next bar was like a hipster bar that had a live band, which is apparently not normally a thing. I think the band was being bad ironically, but even if they weren't they were not great to listen to--lots of screaming, and the guitar was way quieter than the screaming dude. So we got our rum and cokes and went to the patio so we could play giant Jenga, which is apparently this bar's schtick. You all probably received the snapchats, but apparently giant Jenga is a thing I could get pretty into. It also causes a medium to large size scene when the Jenga tumbles, which is probably a good way to start a conversation and hit on people. I didn't try it out because Zack was cramping my style, but I watched that happen a few times. The rum and cokes were super strong though so Jenga got progressively more challenging after a while.

We eventually decided to head out. I was trying to keep it together, but in retrospect, I was pretty drunk. The thing I had been most excited about for visiting Cincinnati was to eat real, authentic Skyline Chili. I've only ever eaten it out of the can, and still like it, so I figured it's gotta be better fresh! I wouldn't say it's significantly better out of the can, which is both comforting and disappointing. At least now I know I've been pretty much enjoying the real thing for many years. Zack found the noodles to be a little too whelming, but everyone knows my carb game is way stronger than his. Another thing I didn't realize though is that Skyline Chili places stay open super late and know their a good drunk food establishment. I wish we had one here.

Then we went back, slept real late and woke up for the Michigan game. I'm sure Ashley and Christine can give better details and stories about the game, so I'll just highlight something that I think probably got over looked. This is Bobo Beathard and he plays for App State. I was happier Friday when I could pretend his name is pronounced either Bobo or Bob-o Beat-hard and not Bobo Bethird. Either way, I'm glad he has the name he does.

After the game we went to visit the med school. We walked over and Bobby showed us all the stuff he does in the med school. That included a bucket of eyes, a brain, and head cut in half. I don't feel like it freaked me out, but I didn't really need to see any more of it than we did--I did not find it interesting and that is why I'm going to law school and NOT med school, or nurse school. Bobby mentioned he couldn't take us into the cadaver lab because the school cracked down on that and I was pretty much entirely okay with that.

Then we walked around the undergrad campus, saw the absurdly nice gym they have and looked at their pitiful stadiums. There was a high school game going on on the practice field and we were gonna watch it, but then it started to rain. So we did the only reasonable thing and went to a restaurant to eat macaroni and cheese and drink beer.

The only sad news was the had to walk back to Bobby's apartment in the rain. But then we just took showers and got ready to go out to Newport. That was a pretty cool area! The aquarium is out that way, which Reba told me she loves. They also have a place that sells donut grilled cheeses, a gameworks, and one of those restaurants where they say mean things to you and make you wear hats--I know they definitely have the same kind of deal in Boston. It was also apparently Bachelorette Weekend! We saw 5 bachelorette parties and one bride!

We went and ate pizza because Bobby and his friend Buckley were super hungry. Zack and I were not because of all the macaroni. Then we met up with a few more med school friends at a bar near by called Brothers. They all had fun med school stories to share. It's weird that they've all sawed up dead bodies before, but aren't psychos, you know? I mean I guess all doctors have, but for us lay people, it still seems like something crazy only crazy people do. Brothers was the bar where I got a rum and coke for only $3.75! If there were those kind of specials in DC, I think a good 75% of the area would be wasted about 75% of the time.

After that we went to another bar that was kind of like Heidelberg--all German and stuff. You can either order a half liter of beer or a whole liter of beer. No boots though. At first we were just waiting for Bobby's high school friends to show up, and we were looking for a table, which is like the worst part of every bar experience. But then all of a sudden, both things happened at once and we had friends AND a table!

We just sat there talking, listening to an accordion band and occasionally doing the chicken dance. We also had to listen to Hey Sloopy. But to make up for it they played Sweet Caroline and Wagon Wheel, so there was some amount of redemption. It was a great atmosphere and no one was "too cool" to do the chicken dance and this is where we saw the bride in her wedding gown and everything! It was really unpretentious, which I feel like is sometimes hard to find in DC. We went home around 1:30 and slept in late. My tummy was full of beer and that was kind of uncomfortable.

The next morning we got up and hard brunch and looked at all the other people who were struggling, which were numerous. I got something called a "Hot Mess" and Zack got chicken and waffles.

A hot mess. It seems like things that I would put together when I was drunk--potatoes, cheese, egg, gravy.

Chicken and waffles. Looks the same everywhere.

Then we walked around all the suburbs of Cinci. We went to Mariemont, Indian Hills, some bar that had a beach volleyball court, somewhere that had great ice cream with huge chunks of chocolate in it and Bobby's high school. There some nice stuff back there! It was fun to see where Bobby lived and grew up and everything. He was not able to show us the bank where he banks though, which makes the Almont tour much more satisfying.

Then we headed back to Bobby's apartment so he could do his fantasy draft. Mostly I just played my own fantasy game, which is called Kitchen Scramble and I'm addicted to. Both are equally productive.

Then we went to Bobby's parents house, at take out and saw their Michigan basement! I was really happy to see them! They'd only gotten back to Ohio like a half hour before we showed up, so they were a little frazzled, but always nice to see! It was funny because even though we were having take out, we were eating off a formal place setting with multiple knives, spoons and bowls. We were initially planning to go see fireworks, or maybe hit up the casinos, but we ended up just talking with Bobby's parents until midnight! There was a lot of sports talk, but we also talked about law school, where Mrs. Slater had travelled to, and history. It was the kind of super nice family dinner we don't get to have very often living hours away from our parents.

Then we just went home, packed and slept! We had to leave by like 9:30 in the morning on Monday, which was nice because we were back in our apartment by 1:00, but didn't have to wake up crazy early either. Then we did chores and went to the pool since it closed on Monday. The only sad thing is that I've diagnosed myself with a sinus infection. Lots of coughing that sounds gross and lots of nose blowing. Gotta get it together by this weekend so I can eat falafel and watch the Michigan Notre Dame game!

I wanna hear about several things: 1) the Michigan-App State Game 2) the new apartment 3) Teenie's first day as a grad student 4) Taylor's first day at her job 5) Ashely's prep for her new job 6) anything else I might have missed. Get to work!

Lots of Driving and a Tale of Two Cities

2014-05-28T14:10:00.000-04:00

Last week, I got to go to Philadelphia for a week long trip that was kind of an Alternative Spring Break for grown ups. It was hosted by the Sisters of Mercy, who are really cool nuns, and so all of the service we did was at Mercy ministries in Philly. I really didn't know what I had signed up for, but figured it would be a cool chance to see a new city, get a break from Detroit and my super stressful job, and tack on a trip to NYC while I was out East.
First, I had to go to my co-worker's wedding, because we are work friends and I got a real grown-up invitation and everything. I couldn't get drunk though, because I had to leave early and drive overnight to get to South Philly by Sunday morning. I napped in a parking lot in Pennsylvania, and it's the closest I've ever come to pulling an all-nighter, which is an experience I don't really recommend.
The trip was super fun, and I learned a lot about poverty and service and the intersections between government assistance and private charity work. These are all things that I get to learn about in Detroit, too, but it was a quick crash course and definitely a different setting with different issues and challenges. Detroit is very different from Philadelphia (and New York) and I think I prefer a city with a few less people and a little more open space and air. But cheesesteaks are really good.

I also got to learn that Philadelphia is across the Delaware River from Camden, NJ! Who knew? Unfortunately, I learned this too late to plan a visit to Kathleen, who lives in Camden. I did stop for gas in Princeton, NJ, though, and was fairly underwhelmed by the small part of campus I saw. Michigan is better.
After being in Philly Sunday-Friday, I packed up my dad's car Saturday morning and drove to Mary Walle in Harlem. I got to take the bridge that has been causing Chris Christie so many problems and learned that Harlem is part of Manhattan which is one of the bouroughs and also an island. This blog post is very educational for all the readers out there who might be as geographically inept as myself.
Mary has a roof deck where we got to skype call Amy Ketner, who is the CART-ay blog's favorite reader. We also had a view of Yankee Stadium (located in the Bronx across the river from Manhattan), and this would have been more exciting if the Yankees weren't the absolute worst.
Walle and I walked through Central Park

and across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Also it is apparently a thing in NYC/grown up life to have boozey brunch. By the name, we can tell that this is a wonderful thing, complete with botomless mimosas! The restaurant we went to had terrible service, but a great view of Times Square. Probably Tina Fey is somewhere down in that mass of people.

All in all, I had a really fun 10 days, but maybe I won't drive that far alone for a while. The radio stations kept changing and every time I found a new one it just played the same three songs the last station had played.
Soon, I will be visiting my cousins in Virginia, and hopefully when I figure out those times I can also plan a quick trip to see R+Z in Crystal Dizzle! Who knew I'm such a world (country) traveler?

How To Turn Your Roommate Into Your Best Friend And/Or Henchwoman

2014-05-18T15:30:00.000-04:00

Allow us to present you with a hypothetical situation. In this hypothetical situation, you are a typical suburban housewife. You have the two kids, the husband, the mini-van with the little stick figure family in the back window—life is good. Then, gradually, you begin to feel uneasy in your own home. There’s this constant nagging feeling that someone is watching you, even when there’s no one there. There’s a funny smell that you just catch a vague whiff of once in a while. You’re pretty sure that there was more organic, all-natural peanut butter (you’re a health conscious mother, in this scenario) in the jar last night than there is this morning. The final straw is when you think you hear noises coming through the air vents, even though your whole family is in the living room watching Full House together. You call the police. They do a search of your house and discover that a drunk vagrant has set up shop in your attic, and he’s probably been there for months without you noticing. In fact, the police tell you, he’s been living there for so long that he now has a legal right to inhabit your attic, and you’re just going to have to deal with it because he’s not leaving.

New roommate is excited to move out of his boxcar and into your attic!

Surprise! That hobo is exactly like getting a roommate in college. You’re not really sure you want them around, they steal your food, and they probably don’t shower often enough. You certainly didn’t get to pick them. Regardless, you’re now going to have to find some way to get along with one another, because the police told you so.

This is where we come in. We were successful roommates for four years (like, in the same room roommates, so suck on that) and we have lots of helpful tips on how to make things go smoothly. Let’s get started!

Meeting a new roommate can be 

as awkward as this picture

1. Make a bad first impression. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it really helps. There are plenty of ways to make a bad first impression on your roommate. When she tries to friend you on Facebook, ignore her friend request for long enough that she starts to sweat a little. Send her emails that make you sound like an idiot—like, maybe you can tell her about that time that you accidentally crossed the border into Canada without even having your drivers’ license on you. Be really crabby on the day you first move into the dorms. It’s all about setting the bar really low going into your initial in-person encounter. That way, it’s all uphill from there! Even if you have annoying habits, she’ll just be thankful that you don’t suck as much as she thought at first. Plus, if you end up being friends, you’ll have lots of fun stories to laugh about and tell people in the future.

Ask the tough questions. It's natural to be curious about the person you are about to share a room and a mini-fridge with. All roommates inevitably learn some small facts about each other, e.g. family background, weird eating habits, and favorite music. To have a really successful roommate-ship, though, you have to dig deeper. You can learn a lot by asking, for example, "If you could be any black woman for a day, who would you pick and why?" or "Code Blue?" An average roommate knows your eye color, a good roommate knows your dog's name, but a great roommate knows which hockey player you plan to marry. Questions can lead to equally heated debates on which post-colonial African president was the best or which Bachelor contestant is the craziest. Understanding your roomtart's interests can only bring you closer together (unless you hate his/her interests, then you're probably screwed.)

Say what's on your mind. Sometimes, being honest about what you're thinking can be really hard. After all, even if you have a big blow-up confrontation, you still have to live with that person, and then you run the risk of having them pee in your favorite shoes or something. Still, it's good to air things out. If you just silently fume about all of the little things that bother you, they'll just build up until you can't stand each other anymore, and that's no fun. So, if your roommate makes borscht in your carpeted kitchen and then leaves all of the million dishes, just politely ask him/her to do them! If her drunk cousins and his friends are loudly playing beer pong on your porch while you want to sleep, just tell them to shut up! (Let's be real, she's too drunk to really remember how you phrased it in the morning, so this time you don't have to be as polite.) And if she gets all uppity about going to study in North Quad, feel free to put that girl in her place.

Salmonella is for the weak

4. Bake together. I don't mean this in a marijuana related way, although this might also be a bonding experience. Better than any drug is the magic of brownies. There's a special form of communion created when you gather with your roomsicle(s) over a steaming pan of barely cooked desserts with nothing but spoons and the love you share. Some roommates have made the mistake of taking a box of brownie mix and following all of the directions. This is wrong. Once you know how much oil and eggs to add, throw that box away. Actually recycle it, because  global climate change is real. Brownies/cakes/cookies not meant to be solid. Healthy roommate relationships are formed over hot, liquid desserts that represent the warm love that flows between two individuals.

Always be sure to look your best

for your events. Also,note that a good hench

woman allows you to ride on her back.

5. Invent Holidays and Events. If you live according to a normal calendar where your birthday only comes once a year and the holidays are few and far between, your life is a travesty. Celebrate half birthdays, quarter birthdays, 5/6 birthdays, the fact that Taylor lives here, June Day (Best Day), host an event called Dinner., have an ugly sweater party, have a toga party at which someone will bite lime and then be upset about it. Celebrations are happy, so many celebrations means you will have a happy household! And if you can somehow con the pre-med frat at your university into thinking that hosting parties at your house is a good idea, then life is all the better. They will bring the alcohol and you can steal a gallon of vodka, which you can later add Skittles to so you can taste the rainbow. (Which is kind of like baking. Look at how our tips correlate with one another!) Anyway, the point is, celebrate everything--including the fact that your roommate is awesome!

6. Have secrets. There is nothing that brings people together more than leaving other people out. Is that mean? Well we never said friendship was nice. To solidify your one-of-a-kind relationship with your roommate(s), it's important to have many inside jokes and perhaps even a secret language so that in a large group, it is clear that your friendship is better than everyone else's. This is a tricky step in the bonding process for several reasons. One, you cannot force a good secret. Work your way up to it in conversation (this goes along with asking questions) until your roommate is eventually spilling their guts to you and you alone. Also, sharing these special moments and memories will make people jealous of you, which is a good thing, but you don't want them to hate you. Good roommates have other friends, too, and these are the people you complain about your roommate to.  The secret codes and knowing looks shared between roommates in a group setting must be kept to a minimum. Unless the roommates are in a group of people they don't much care for, in which case you should ignore everyone else and be really weird together, perhaps making drunken snowflakes or dancing by yourselves. 

Happiness guaranteed

It is natural to be nervous when you get assigned a roommate for college, find a stranger to live with on Craig's list, or inevitably are forced to cohabitate with the smelly peanut butter thief in your attic. With these simple directions, though, all that awkwardness will quickly transform itself in the cocoon of your small shared space into a beautiful friendship that will last a lifetime, or at least until your youngest child turns 18 and your roommate is no longer bound in service to you as a live in nanny.

You're welcome ♥ Taylor & Christine

The Next Food Network Star?

2014-03-18T10:33:00.001-04:00

Based on my Facebook feed, I know that this past weekend was a joyous holiday for the young folk, and that most people celebrated by drinking green alcohol and taking a lot of selfies. Apparently some people even got a snow day Monday to extend the celebrations. Apparently these same people get way too many snow days and it really isn't fair. Well, my St. Patrick's Day weekend in Detroit was not full of these traditional celebrations. Instead I went to a wedding shower, crafted, watched movies, and did other activities typically associated with middle aged women.

I'm the one on the right

First, I will review the movie I saw Sunday, which was Veronica Mars. It was really good. That's my whole review, I guess.

Teenage spy becomes grown-up spy is a good plot

The real reason I wanted to blog is because I was cooking dinner for my house yesterday and realized that I've become sort of decent at cooking and definitely the meals I make are pretty unique (because I'm recipe illiterate), and I also tend to talk to myself like I'm Bobby Flay. If we put these things together, I should obviously have my own show on the Food Network. It could be about cooking on a budget, because another skill I possess is being incredibly cheap.
I went grocery shopping yesterday and used the manager's specials at Kroger to inspire my meal. Here's my cooking blog:
Turkey Pot Pie-ish
Ingredients:
Ground Turkey - $2.99 (buy one get one free!)
Mushrooms - $1.29 (managers special!)
Celery - $I don't know because I didn't buy them
Carrots - $.99
Kale - $.89
Milk - $2.69 (but I didn't use the whole gallon
Flour - $we just have this in our cupboard
Pie Crust - $1.99 (for two pies!)
Pilsbury biscuits (or kroger brand) - $1.25
Add it all up and that's a dinner for six that costs less than $12. And it has meat. Win!
Directions
Step 1. Cook turkey and mushrooms in skillet. Add everything but the pie crust and biscuits and stir till it looks good.
Step 2. Pour into pie crusts, cover with biscuits, bake until it looks done.

It even looks healthy!

I took a picture of the pie-thing in process, but forgot to get one of the finished product. Let's assume it looks like this:

Wow, I'm a good chef

Anyway, you should all visit me and I'll cook you something weird, too! My new Rachel told me yesterday, "If you are what you eat, no one is really sure what you are." But I am definitely edible, so that's what matters.

How all of America Hates Juan Pablo

2014-03-13T13:10:00.003-04:00

The Bachelor finale was this Monday night, and although I'm pretty sure it only took 10 minutes to dump one girl and give a rose to the other, this got drawn out into a 3 hour special. Smooth move ABC.

We've been telling you for a while now about the disappointment that is Juan Pablo, and it seems that this week all of America was united in hating him, but I live in Detroit now and we like to be hipsters so now that hating him is popular, I kind of love him all over again. Let me essplain why:

In the final episode, Juan Pablo has to choose between Clare and Nikki. We've liked Nikki from the beginning (because she is a nurse like Ashley!), but in the end it almost feels like she is too smart for this guy who clearly only cares about his daughter, sports, and being attractive. Clare, on the other hand, is super stupid, like, dumb enough to have sex in the ocean on national television, so maybe they could be a perfect match until they break up a month after the final rose? In a fun little plot twist, these two women also hate each other. It's funny how they didn't become best friends in a show that makes dating a competition between women...

Remember that time they had this awkward fight over nothing?

So the episode shows each woman meeting JP's family in St. Lucia (the whole family gets a free trip?? Jealous.), and JP's cousin with braces warns each woman of their boyfriends commitment issues. So that bodes well. Camilla continues to steal the show by being ADORABLE and her little cousin is super cute, too so basically JP for a second has won our hearts again by reminding us that he is a hot Venezuelan single dad. Don't worry though, we'll turn on him soon.

JP shows us a big diamond ring that probably came free from the jeweler, and Clare gets on a boat to go meet him, which seems like a poor idea because we just saw her curling her hair and doing her make-up and boats are usually windy and not conducive to looking like a barbie. She is all smiles and arched eyebrows when she goes to meet him in the middle of some forest on this tropical island and then... HE DUMPS HER. And makes the mistake of trying to hug her, which she rejects. The studio audience cheers for the woman who was previously the most hated contestant as she yells at the man who was previously an adored bachelor because apparently we thought he should have told her earlier he didn't want to marry her, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the show? Clare storms away as well as she can in heels in the tropics, and Chris Harrison and the studio audience wonder what will become of JP. Also, Clare is sent away in a boat which is much crappier than the one she rode over in. Just to really make sure she understands that she lost.

When you put your life on TV, it's easy to find ugly shots of you, Clare

Nikki also crosses over on a boat to Juan Pablo and walks carefully toward him in a dress with a really high slit. Like, her whole leg is showing and I'm concerned she might flash us more. When she gets to JP she tells him she loves him again and he doesn't say he loves her back, but instead tells her that he cannot propose because he isn't 100% sure and her dad told him not to. So that big old diamond was just a quick product placement, and instead he just gives her a rose and asks if she'll go out with him in a normal way and she says yes. Kisses are shared. The end.

See that slit?? So high.

Except it's not really the end! Because this episode was shot three (four?) months ago, and now we have to get the opinions of Sean and Catherine, Des and Chris, Sharleen and her buddies, and most importantly Chris Harrison. He interviews Clare in the "After the Final Rose" special and she gets a lot of cheers for being pissed at JP. He should never have led her on, she says. I'm not sure how else he wanted her to act on a dating show where there's one guy and 27 women, because she then tells Chris she doesn't even want to see JP and has nothing else to say. Bye Clare.

Nikki comes out and some people might think she's pregnant but she's probably not and she waves to her BFFs Sharleen and Kelly and then tells Chris and America that life is good and she still loves JP and is excited to see him because I guess for 3/4 months they've had to have a secret long distance relationship. JP joins her on the couch and is immediately asked if he loves her. He won't answer, which, if I'm Nikki, I appreciate, because I haven't seen my boyfriend in 3/4 months and I really don't want him to confess his love in front of a live audience and a million cameras. But Chris Harrison is not Nikki, and he is not OK with this. So he continues to badger JP and force him to say "I Love You" in order to appease the fans of the show. Nikki, for the record, is totally OK with him not saying it yet.

How Chris feels when his questions don't get answered

So here's the part where I'll tell you why I like Juan Pablo and Nikki even better now. They seem actually to recognize how absurd the show is and how it isn't real life and it isn't an accurate way to actually get to know a potential life partner. JP is really pumped to finish recording and have a real life and a real relationship. So while I still think that they will probably break up really soon, I am glad that they aren't pretending to get married in the meantime. Also, I feel like it's not fair that all the women on the show get to talk about how sexy Juan Pablo is and it's OK for them to like him for superficial reasons but he's not allowed to be like, "Hey Clare, I think you're really hot but that's about it." It turns out he is exactly what we all thought he was: a hot Latino with a daughter. He really is just being honest.

This combination of man and baby is weird.

I went to bed around this point, but I hear that at the end of the 3-hour-special they announced the new Bachelorette, and (big surprise), it's Andi. She practically campaigned for it, and I wonder how she ever got through law school if she is dumb enough to put her life on TV. Get ready for people to hate you Andi, because that's what we like to do with famous people.

I'm not really sure what this picture is...

Well, now this blog will go back to being just our real lives. I hope you keep reading it, Amy!

Haha I Still Get a Spring Break

2014-03-11T20:03:00.002-04:00

Ok after my long hiatus from the blog, here is the most recent update on my life. As you all know thanks to my adorable postcards, I was in Florida for spring break last week. Jillian and I planed down there on Thursday night. It was -14 (non windchill) when we took off and 68 when we landed...just a minor difference. My grandma picked us up and took us back to her house where my cousin, her 3 friends, and my aunt were already situated. It was a little cramped in the two bedroom mobile home, but the good news was Jillian and I got the bedroom! Everyone else crammed into the living room.

All the girls on Clearwater Beach

For the first few days, we went to various beaches. One day we went to Clearwater which has really soft sand. It was a little cool, but we persisted and laid out all day since it was our first day out of ice age Michigan. At night, there are some fun tents with people selling stuff on the pier so we looked around those and some of the souvenir shops. We also saw some street performers and that was pretty cool!

The guy jumped through this teeny hoop!

Basically every night we played games so that was fun! I think I have an obsession with Mexican/Mystery/Marxican Train because I made people play it with me at least once a day. Jillian had some sort of train super power because she won almost every game by a lot. Another favorite nightly activity was shuffleboard! I'm pretty good at it! But sometimes I'm bad...

During some of the days we took bike rides. One day we biked downtown and looked through the shops. I've been in all of them lots of times so nothing was too exciting, but I always like looking at the chocolate wine and cute decorations and such. Another day, we biked to Honeymoon Island. I'm not really sure why it's called that, but it's just another beach that's close and easy to get to. We even went in the ocean while we were there! It was cold but refreshing. A sad thing that happened though was I got really burnt. I had to spray aloe with lidocaine on my back and legs for the rest of the trip. I think I'm allergic to the sun :(

Sad Ashley

At night, we went back to Clearwater and went to this resort/nightclub/bar/live band stage thingy called Shephard's. It was the only place we could go because two of Kenzie's (that's you Rachael!) friends were 19. It was weird because they checked all our IDs and then the guy asked if we wanted to pay full price for cover and I was like uhh no? So he made us pay 5 dollars instead of 7 so that's cool I guess. There were lots of bachelor parties at the outside live band part. They hung around us basically the entire night which was unfortunate because some of them were kinda boring, but they made up for making us listen to them by buying us drinks which were pretty pricey. The inside club part included two 7/8 naked girls dancing on stage and lots of dancing. There was also a very attractive bouncer who one of the girls in our group managed to exchange numbers with.

One of the highlights of the vacation was our trip to Busch Gardens. Jillian's dad had free tickets so yay for not spending money! We went there on Tuesday which worked out great because there were no lines and the weather was perfect. A weird thing that happened was right when we walked into the park, we ran into these girls who were on Kenzie's plane so they joined our wolf pack for the day. Sadly, I don't like roller coasters so I was the mom a lot and held everyone's stuff while they went on. I did go on the train and the cable cars though and then we finished the day off with the water rides and those were really fun and refreshing.

That night was Mardi Gras, so some of us went downtown. Our intention was to play drag queen bingo, but since it was a special occasion, they didn't have it. Luckily, it turns out that Mardi Gras is a pretty big deal in the little town of Dunedin, so we had fun anyways. There was a parade and we managed to get some beads. Then we talked to a few of the locals....one young guy who was really nice and telling us all the fun things to do and then another old man who was clearly high and crazy. It was pretty fun just to see all the bizarre costumes and walk around the streets.

Mardi Gras friends

On Wednesday night, we went to this restaurant called Cody's which has peanuts you can throw on the floor and it was buy one get one free fajita night! It was the 6 girls plus my grandma so we all paired up for our fajitas and she said she'd eat the leftovers. Four of us also ordered buy one get one free margaritas. Our intention was to each get one and split the cost. However, our waitress interpreted it as us each wanting two (like we wanted to get wasted with my grandma??) and was really pissed when she had to throw away four margaritas. Idk why she didn't just leave them with us at that point. After dinner, we went to Derby Lanes, a dog race track. We each made at least one bet, but sadly none of our dogs even placed. Mine was called Jack's Tigress :)

Jack's Tigress: 8th Place! (out of 8)

Early Friday morning it was time for Jillian and I to return to the homeland. The good news was that Bobby came up that day so at least I had something to look forward to. We watched the Indiana game at Bdubs with some friendys and then had a game night where we played cranium and made playdoh! Also, my phone went to the phone doctor and although I'm poor now, at least I don't have to screenshot all your snapchats and guess at the third answer for quizup!

Hope this makes up for my lack of bloggage in the last couple months :) Miss you all!

The Women Tell All (or Cling to Their Last Moments of Fame)

2014-03-07T09:51:00.000-05:00

The Bachelor is getting close to the end, and that means my favorite episode: "The Women Tell All." I think it's funny how they now decide to start calling them all women, because throughout the rest of the show they are just girls. Like, "Hi, I'm Claire and am 32 years old. But I still consider myself a girl and get in catty fights with Nikki, another girl, and our shared boyfriend thinks we are all girls, just like his 4 year-old daughter." As Reba might say, these are grown-ass women. Also girls dating men is illegal.
Well, anyway, Chris Harrison welcomes us all like we are old friends and then we get to be reminded of the people that left super early in the season. Some, like Victoria, we will never forget (because she got drunk and locked herself in a bathroom). Others, like this chick, we think may have just snuck on the set for this one episode.

Oh now I remember, you cried the first episode.

To start with, all the women jump on the Andi bandwagon and say how self-centered JP is and how he never really got to know them. Finally, Kelly has had enough of that, and she's all, "Gurl please, you never had any problem with Juan Pablo when you were in the house. Stop playing." Not that Kelly is defending JP, she later asks him why he hates gays. Turns out he said some dumb things in an interview once. To be honest, I care very little about Juan Pablo's opinions on social and political issues, and I doubt that he's much of an activist about anything.

But this leads us to another common theme of the night, which is the women accusing JP of using his language barrier as an excuse for being rude. Victoria grew up speaking Portuguese, and she feels that it's not that hard to become quickly fluent in another language. Maybe Amy or Rachael can back her up on that? I find it pretty difficult so I guess I'm stupid.

I kept wondering how uncomfortable it would be to sit like this for several hours

So pretty early in the show we establish that these women are not members of the JP fan club. They also think he wasn't fair because he treated the moms differently, and kept telling Renee he couldn't kiss her and then turning around and ~~having sex~~ swimming with Claire in the ocean. But Renee was defending him. She thinks he was very respectful and really improved her dating self-esteem, so much so that she is now "in a

Renee and "The Situation"

situation," which I think means she has a boyfriend and is unrelated to Mike from Jersey Shore. So that probably leaves her out of the running for next Bachelorette. Good thing, because as much as I like her, she'd be way boring.

Besides Renee, the other women who got the most attention/ had little interviews with Chris Harrison were Andi and Sharleen. Also the two women who left the show voluntarily. Sharleen was beautiful as always. I think I'm developing a crush on her. But she would also be a boring Bachelorette because you gotta have more crazy on the show than I think she could contribute. Also I'm not sure she'd want to be on it. I have a theory that she still likes JP (she was defending him all night and they had some serious eye contact when he came out), so maybe she will take him as her Latin lover for a while.

Andi, on the other hand, is clearly vying for the next Bachelorette season. She made sure to let us all know she is still single but believes in "that great love," which is just as weird of a phrase as "grown sexy." I think Lucy secretly wants to be on it, too. Remember her? She's a professional free spirit. That's not even the weirdest occupation I've ever seen on this show.

This is the weirdest job title.

After the women tell all, Juan Pablo comes out and they tell him all, basically attacking him. He says it's okay a lot, which is his catch phrase. He also says he has no regrets. Probably because no matter how the show ends up, he will be rich and can just go find some other women to date.

Next week, we get to see the Final Rose...... Who will it be?? Nikki? Claire? Or will Sharleen come back and steal his heart? Taking predictions in the comments section below!

Go West (But Not Too Far)

2014-03-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

So, for the most part, my life is really boring and not progressing in any kind of way and I don't really want to talk about it, but a few interesting things have happened to me in the last few weeks and I will talk about those things!

First, two weekends ago I went to visit Ali in Chicago. She had time off because they were in between quarters, so it was an ideal time to visit. Our cousin Jesse also came, and I like him, so that was nice.

One of the things that we did actually in the city was go to the Shedd Aquarium. We took the Metra into the city and then walked to the Shedd, which was like 2 miles--but luckily it wasn't one of the days that was miserably cold, so it wasn't bad. We also waited in a really long line to get in, and while we were waiting some man kept walking up and down the line asking people to donate money to the soup kitchen--which, great, donating to charity is a good thing, but he pretty much just stared awkwardly at you until you gave him money, so that was weird.

Us in front of Chicago! This is just before we got in line. Sad news--I accidentally left my scarf at Ali's house.

It was a good time and there were lots of weird ass fish there. I don't have pictures from when we went, but fish look basically the same no matter what location you're looking at them from, so I found some pictures online of ones I remember seeing.

Japanese spider crab. Hard to convey how creepy it was without seeing it in person.

We spent a lot of time looking at the otters. They weren't stacking cups but for some reason I always think this is funny. The otter is so indignant.

This picture is actually from the Shedd! They have a tank where they let you touch all kinds of starfish, like this baby is doing. The water is very cold and I couldn't reach all of them with my short arms, but I still touched some. We also got to touch a sturgeon, but I didn't really like it because touching fish makes me nervous.

This is an Australian lungfish. His name is Granddad and apparently he has been at the Shedd since 1933, but they didn't advertise that well there because I'm just learning that now as I looked for this picture. I do remember that lungfish have both gills and lungs, for during seasons when the water levels are low and there's not as much dissolved oxygen for them to get with their gills. Two interesting things for the price of one with this picture!

Anyway, that's enough fish pictures. Once we left the aquarium, we met up with my friend Marie from high school and she drove us to Chipotle and then back to Ali's house. At Ali's house, we had a tattoo party! It was a fun idea--everyone had to have a temporary tattoo in order to stay. I had a Mole Day (because that's also my birthday!) tattoo, and also Ali's friend Bobby drew a Red Wings tattoo on me. Jesse had a mermaid tattoo that I had in my wallet, Ali had a glittery shooting star tattoo that I also had in my wallet, and Marie had an Iron Man tattoo that someone bought.

Left to right: Ali, Jack (Death Eater), Taylor. Sadly, I do not have a picture of the Mole Day tattoo.

A bunch of Ali's other friends came over and we drank a lot and I learned some new drinking games, like Irish Poker. Jesse had lots of White Russians (which I had for the first time as well and I like them even though they sound gross!) and got very drunk. Ali and I both felt like we had to take care of him but didn't know the other person was doing anything, so she fed him like half a bag of pita chips and a bottle of Gateraid and I fed him a chicken breast with BBQ sauce, which was kind of funny to hear from him in the morning--he was like, "You guys just kept making me eat so much!" but he didn't stop us at the time, so how were we supposed to know?

Jesse and I rode the train back the next day, which was very uneventful.

The other exciting thing that happened to me was that last weekend, I went to Kalamazoo to visit my friend Hannah. I've never been to Kalamazoo and I guess she doesn't go out much, so it was an adventure for both of us. We went to a place called the Beer Exchange, which is based on a stock market type idea, I guess. There is this big board that has all of the beers and their prices on it, and as beers get more popular, they get more expensive, and as they get ordered less often, they get cheaper. The prices change every 15 minutes. And then, every once in a while, the stock market crashes and everything is super cheap! It felt like a place people in Ann Arbor would be into.

A picture of the board--the time in the corner is how much time is left til it changes again.

We met some guys there who were trying to decide if this girl across the bar was pregnant (she definitely was, but they couldn't make up their minds) and they asked us to play pool with them. I'm very bad at pool. Their names were Charlie, Kurt, and Brian... but none of them looked like their names belonged to them? It's hard to explain, but Hannah agreed with me the next morning. Maybe that's why they're friends--their parents all sucked at naming their kids. Anyway, they hung out with us for the rest of the night but to be honest they were all pretty boring and not super nice. Later, we left and went to another place called The Gatsby, and Kurt was SUPER pumped to dance, which was amusing. Like, I have never in my life met a man who was so excited to just dance. Caryn would hate him.

That's all! I don't have an adventure planned for this weekend--probably I'll just see Evan, but I like him so that's okay!