100 Things About Me

In honor of Jenni's VERY AWESOME post, I will post 100 Things About Me. It's copied almost exactly from hers (irishjenni.blogspot.com), I just revised each item to reflect me, or in cases where it REALLY didn't apply to me, I changed it completely. :-)

100 Things About Me
1. I am very anti-pets (this stems from being allergic to most animals)
2. I'm a Christian (and I will never forget all of the God-talk Jenni and I had during tennis sophomore year of high school)
3. I like martinis... my favorites are cosmos and apple, or any from Portland City Grill
4. I adore red wine, especially since I've moved to Portland.
5. I was a cheerleader in high school.
6. I've lived in Houston, Chicago, Iowa City, and Portland
7. I'm a fifth-generation Texan, my great-great-grandfather was even a judge in the REPUBLIC of Texas.
8. I like preppy clothes... Banana Republic and J Crew are my faves.
9. I'm a Republican, but a very liberal Republican.
10. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie.
11. Iwent to Florida for spring break every year from kindergarten to sophomore year of high school except two.
12. I love playing X Box, but I only have 3 games and they're all at least 3 years old.
13. I have learned, especially recently, that I know myself VERY VERY well, better than most.
14. I love camping... both real camping and the "go to an RV park" kind.
15. I love Chinese food, but I really think Thai is the new Chinese.
16. I met James Van Der Beek when I was 17.
17. I'm obsessed with reading the message boards at theknot.com. Not the wedding related (WR) stuff, but the NWR postings on the Planning and Ettiqutte (P&E) board. They're all about the acroymns on the knot.
18. I get irritated when people use bad grammar, and even more irritated when they spell grammar grammer.
19. My favorite movie is The Saint.
20. I really love TV shows on DVD, even though they're probably one of the more pointless things in life. I need to get the new Tivo that is $400 but lets you record all of your Tivoed shows on DVD.
21. I've been driven in a stretch Hummer limo to many places in Chicago.
22. I was on the park district swim team from 5 - 8th grade.
23. I was "supposed" to be a lawyer, everyone else in my family is.
24. I love how close my sister and I are becoming.
25. I really like living alone, but even more than that I like having the "right" roommate... Michelle, Dena, Addy... I've been lucky roommate wise. :-)
26. I have been to 49 states.
27. Breakfast food is one of my favorite types of food, especially at Walker Brothers in Chicago.
28. I worked at a store called Card and Party Outlet for 3 years in high school.
29. I love technology.
30. I don't believe in love at first sight.
31. Lately I much prefer buying stuff for my house than new clothes.
32. I want to run a half-marathon one day.
33. I've wanted to get my tounge pierced since freshman year of college.
34. I've been in and out of love... but it's debatable about how many times.
35. I have Crohn's Disease.
36. I was a big fan of the 90's Chicago Bulls. Fair weather fan, if you will.
37. I love SUVs.
38. I absolutely adore my apartment.
39. I thrive on being around other people.
40. I have never been skinny dipping.
41. I like Chris Tomlin way too much, but not for the reasons you'd think.
42. My mom is the person I'm closest to in my life.
43. I can't STAND Oregon drivers.
44. I was a big fan of Hello Kitty in 7th grade when it was popular.
45. I've owned 2 cars. ('Scort and Jake)
46. Greek IV was by far my favorite college activity.
47. I had a crush on Joey Larocca from 5th grade probably through the end of high school.
48. I've never done a "beer bong" or "keg stand", but that shouldn't surprise you.
49. I love my major - industrial engineering.
50. My second cousin is an identical twin who has a set of identical twins and a set of fraternal twins.
51. The number one place I'd like to visit is Thailand. (woah, Jenni, that is so weird... maybe we should go together!)
52. I was a lifeguard one summer, and hated it even though I had wanted to be a lifeguard for about 10 years.
53. I did the best in my class on almost all of the simulators in drivers ed, including the stick shift one.
54. I know nothing about wine, and only what Vinnie has taught me about beer, which is enough to get by.
55. I was in a sorority with 100 girls.
56. I'm actually really shy, although most people don't believe that.
57. I love bike riding.
58. I don't like shopping with other people.
59. I spend hours at the library and bookstores. I got in trouble for staying up late at night to read when I was younger.
60. My parents just celebrated their 25 year wedding anniversary.
61. When I start dating someone, I tend to fall very hard and fast.
62. My favorite TV show of all time is Friends.
63. I love brain teasers.
64. I might get my MBA one day.
65. I'm probably much too reflective of a person.
66. My favorite dessert is cake.
67. I played the flute for 8 years and took private lessons. Since college I've played only a few times, except when I was in orchestra at church last year. My flute actually is in Oregon with me though.
68. I love skiing.
69. I hate Arizona. (Don't hate, Hart)
70. I think any city smaller than Chicago is too small... so much for Portland
71. I have 20-15 vision or something like that, but I wear glasses with just prisms in them for when my eyes get tired (I have some weird muscle thing that I don't really understand)
72. I have never had a cavity.
73. Chipotle is my favorite fast-food.
74. I have never been overseas, but I've been to Mexico several times and 3 Canadian provinces.
75. I love waterparks and amusement parks.
76. I like going for random drives.
77. The three food establishments I miss most: Panera, Steak & Shake, and Noodles.
78. I've been climbing and repelling thanks to gym class in high school.
79. I call one set of grandparents Mimi and Gaggy and the other Mommom and Poppy.
80. I sleep in a queen size bed.
81. I have two ear piercings in my left ear and one in my right.
82. I love water sports, but don't get to do them enough.
83. I would rather have the internet than cable or a dishwasher.
84. I really love cooking, but it's no fun to cook for yourself.
85. My current favorite three shows are ABC Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The OC, and 7th Heaven. WHAT? Seriously though, 7th Heaven is my new addiction. I don't even like TV that much but Tivo makes you watch more TV, and it's nice to chill for the hour or so I have between sleeping and work.
86. My favorite vacation of all time was to Yellowstone.
87. I really want to go on an Alaskan cruise.
88. I get my hair cut sporadically on a whim, never planned out ahead of time.
89. I love my birthday probably more than any holiday.
90. I would rather be cold than hot.
91. I'm very hardcore about God and what I like to call my "personal relationship with Jesus", but I can't stand the terms 'devout' or 'religion' (and even 'Christian' is questionable... too much negative connotation).
92. I've had my heart broken.
93. I started as a computer engineering major in college.
94. I tend to find happiness no matter what the circumstances, where I am, or who I'm with.
95. I was never grounded or given detention.
96. I have a good relationship with my parents and family.
97. I got waitlisted to Duke.
98. JetBlue is my favorite airline.
99. I loved my internship with UPS.
100. Vinnie and I broke up tonight. Way to sneak that in there, huh? But yes, I'm okay, blah blah blah... I'll be fine. It's a long story, and I'm sure I'll post it, or at least parts of it, tomorrow. It kind of came out of nowhere, neither of us expected it, but I'm not that surprised by it in a lot of ways. Again, I'll explain tomorrow.

For the record, this took about 40 minutes to do. But SO worth it. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed reading Jenni's and updating it for myself!

I'm not very consistent...

I just want to acknowledge that I do realize I'm not a very consistent blogger on the back half of the week. But I work, sleep, and eat. And that's it. That's my entire life from Wednesday night to Saturday or Sunday morning. And this week it happens to be Sunday morning.

Go Cats... we MUST beat Michigan this week.

Vinnie worked from home yesterday (Wednesday) so that was cool. We just kind of chilled in the morning (he was working, seriously) and then met a co-worker of his for lunch at Olive Garden. Then I took my nap (HAVE to take a nap, so that I can be ready for work Wednesday night) while Vinnie worked. Then we had the most productive talk of our entire relationship before I went to work, so that was stellar. He told me all the things he doesn't like about me. ;-)

Not too much else going on... no amazing thoughts, nothing stellar really happening. Sleepy... and it's only 2 AM. I have a feeling it's going to be a long morning.

The Kelly Weekend

So yesterday Kristie and I went to see our friend Camille, who works at the makeup counter at Nordstrom. She wasn't there when we first got there, so we did some shopping... I bought some candles from the Gap and a shirt at J Crew. We also looked at the Coach store... SO CUTE. I used to be such not a fan but at least now I think they're cute. So then we went back to Nordstrom and this makeup artist named Jen did Kristie's makeup and Camille did mine. It was absolutely adorable. Then we went to Starbucks for some yummy yummy coffee (Peppermint Mochas are BACK!!) and then met Vinnie for dinner at a Mexican place. Then Kristie and I went to a Creative Memories (scrapbooking) party. So fun. :-) We were the only 2 there which made it a little awkward but I love scrapbooking! Then I came home and had a night to myself for the first time in a loooooong time. I did some scrapbooking and a lot of thinking and reflecting. I've been so used to having time to myself over the past 3 years. I wasn't dating anyone that whole time except for Doug, and he lived 2000 miles away the entire time we were dating (Portland/Chicago, Chicago/LA, Portland/LA). I became very comfortable with myself and the fact that I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I could go out, I could stay in, I could talk, I could sleep, I could work, etc. I didn't have to think about anyone else. Now there's someone else in my life that I have to care about and think about. I absolutely adore him, it's just something to get used to. It's not bad by any means, just different. I was able to do some thinking and it was cool last night. I'm just really independent and sometimes it's good to just be comfortable in that.

Today I had a meeting at work in the morning, and then Kristie and I caught our usual Tuesday afternoon movie. Today was The Incredibles -- very cute. :-) I have yet to see a movie with Vin! Then we went to Wherehouse Music (didn't find anything of interest) and then to a few scrapbooking stores. We got a few things like stickers and paper. Then we went back to my house and made tea and scrapbooked for the rest of the afternoon and early evening. Tonight was the night I've been waiting for forever -- dinner with lots of cool people! This guy Doug that I work with and his wife Sheila, Camille (the makeup woman) and her husband Chris (who works same job but different shift, different factory), Kristie, me, Vin, and another guy that works Chris's shift all went to Old Chicago together! Goooood times. Poor Vin was sitting over with all of the girls until Sheila was nice enough to trade seats with him. He claims he had a good time after that. It was definitely very girl talk / guy talk all night, but that was okay. One of the cutest things I've seen in a long time was Doug going "hello wife" to Sheila after the end of the night (cause they sat apart all night) and just putting his arm around her. I'm used to goofball Doug for work so that was cute to see. Vin said later when I commented about it that "guys have to do stuff like that, make the wives happy and just pay attention to them a little bit at the end of the night if they haven't all night"... and I was like "oh, I'm so going to be a bad wife... I don't need that kind of stuff". But please, who am I kidding? I SO do. I didn't think at the time I did... I wasn't just making that up, but I do. Sometimes I like to set myself apart, but I'm such a typical girl. Vinnie really understands the male/female dynamic VERY well, in a very realistic way. And I'm sorry if you guys get sick of hearing about him. I'm kind of gaga about him, moreso than I ever was about Doug (in that cutesy annoying sort of way, but I don't really know what to do about it... we're very couply, which is partialy, and maybe mostly, his influence).

Kristie thinks I should break up with Vinnie until after Christmas, which I think is a great idea. My past 4 relationships have all started within 4 months of Christmas. UGH! Why do I do that? Why can't I wait until January? I HATE buying Christmas presents for guys. Luckily Addy has a pretty cute idea of something for Vinnie, so hopefully that will work out. As Vin says, Valentine's Day falls right after January though so you don't want to start dating then... good point, except we all know how I feel about Valentine's Day. NOT A FAN. Maybe I can just ignore all holidays except my birthday which I happen to think should be a national holiday. I LOVE my birthday. February 19th for those of you who forgot -- don't forget. :-) I like birthday lovin'! ;-)

So that's my story and my deal of the night. Vinnie had me psycho-analyze myself which was quite interesting. I'm pretty good at it (he said I couldn't and that's why he uses his ex-girlfriend's to psycho-analyze me). I told him some very interesting stuff about me and the control I like to have in my life even when it's not good for me. And he was suuuuper tired, and when he's tired he doesn't think or talk straight, so he was babbling on and on about how he's not ready to get married. Um, OKAY!!!

And I'll just leave you with that for the night.... 'cause I don't think there's anything of interest to report other than that. I can't wait until my sister gets her internet back, I need to talk to her online late at night. And my dad had a great job interview today so I pray that that will work out for him...

AWESOME weekend!!

This was one of those weekends that just turns out totally awesome even when you're not expecting it!!!

Saturday Vinnie and I kind of got stuff done... he helped me put air in my tires and fix my computer and stuff. And then he went to get a haircut so I took a nap... and then we realized we were late to go to Harvey's downtown (a comedy club we were going to go to with some of his friends). So we kind of putzed around talking to Addy online (we were silly, sitting across from each other on the couch and talking online to the same person... dorks!!). But it was just one of those really good conversations. And we were in a chat room with her... but I know Add and Vin were talking to each other on the side too. They chat it up about me, no doubt. So then Vinnie and I were trying to decide where to go to dinner... and we talked about Chili's or Chevy's and then drove down to TV Highway to consider maybe a Mexican place down there or an Italian place that he likes... but then we were like "let's go downtown"... he wanted to go to this place called Pasta Bella that he'd been to when he was interning here about 3 years ago. So we went and had THE MOST ROMANTIC AMAZING EVENING EVER. Seriously. He asked me when the last time I had a romantic date was and I told him the first night I went out with him. But he asked about before that and I had nothing. Once I had a pretty nice evening with Julius, but it was after we had already broken up. And Dustin and I went out a few times and had decently nice evening, but it was nothing like this. It was just so so cute. I will spare you all of the details though... don't worry. And at the end we were talking to the owner of the restauraunt for like 15 minutes and she was like "well, you guys just make the cutest couple". So that was awesome. I was like glowing for the whole night. :-) :-)

Sunday we went hiking... it was supposed to be 9 - 3 but it was 9 - 5:30 and those extra two and a half hours make a difference!!! I was totally exhausted when we got home... ugh! And my stomach was bugging me on the way up (York I know you can relate on that one...) But it was AWESOME. We got to see Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. St Helens, 3 Sisters, etc. So worth the hike up there!!! :-) Totally cool. Then Vinnie and I were STARVING so we went to Red Robin, yum. I always love the Red Robin. He picks out the best places. Then we went back to his house and worked on decorating it... he says it needs a female touch, and I'm all for that. Super fun.

Since we didn't get back until 5:30 I missed church so I was way sad about that... I don't remember the last time I didn't go to church... I was like traumatized. So I had the most amazing quiet time ever, which clearly isn't the SAME as church but it was super good! I like how different things allow us to be close to God in different ways. And even though I have my quiet time every day, somehow sometimes it's just extra special. I've had a few like that lately. I am really enjoying where I am in my life right now and who I am and who I'm becoming. I'm smiling more than I've smiled in a long time and I'm just enjoying the day. Each day, for exactly what it is (and we all know that I'm the worst about planning and looking ahead and analyzing the past... so it's fun not to be doing that... as much. :-) )

This morning I slept in super late and so I'm just chilling and putzing around all day. Not true... I have fun plans with Kristie for the day, but you'll have to wait until I blog them later on. :-)

Kelly and Vin on South Fork Mountain

First of all, Vin would like to apologize that he doesn't know how to use his camera... he needs a point and shoot camera sometimes when he's being dumb. He's sorry for the noise in the picture and the darkness. He'll try harder next time. But to clarify, we are ON South Fork, but the mountain in the background is Mt. Hood. :-)

And yes I know I still owe all of you Halloween pictures. I need Vinnie to make me a CD. :-)

Hahaha

p i d a t 42 0 (11:02:30 AM): In Portland, Ore., a city so staunchly liberal that it is sometimes called the People's Republic of Portland, the outcome of the presidential race was absorbed with the levity of a mass funeral.
p i d a t 42 0 (11:06:29 AM): is that like you?
p i d a t 42 0 (11:08:02 AM): Down the coast in Santa Monica, another place often referred to as a people's republic, the mood was no better. A man named Jerry Peace Activist Rubin sat in his stockings in his dark apartment, flummoxed and disoriented, taking condolence calls from well-wishers and rank-and-file left-wingers.
p i d a t 42 0 (11:08:22 AM): you used to travel often between these two cities
p i d a t 42 0 (11:08:52 AM): are you hiding in your dark apartment crying too?

More news on the home front...

Sooooooooo... I walked into my class this morning (I worked today instead of tonight because I had a training session alllll day long), and who is the first person I see? Addy's "friend" from Saturday night. OH MY, are you kidding me? And he is like "HEY!!!!" and talks to me like I'm his best friend, so I sit down with him and we chat it up all day. Addy, if you're reading, he really did actually feel bad about that night... he was like "I feel like we left on bad terms, I hope she doesn't hate me". So he's not as bad as we though. He definitely wants us to go salsa dancing which is fun! It was just rather amusing to talk in and see him first thing "Monday" morning.

Then tonight I went to a dinner party thing at my old bosses house, all of the women in my extended group at work were there, so that was awesome!!! I love hanging out with women, it's like my new favorite thing. As I get older I see much more of a different dynamic between women and men. I used to much prefer hanging out with men, now I see the advantages of hanging out with women and I absolutely adore it. Women will have the candles going and make you a cup of cider or offer you a glass of wine and watch Sex and the City with you. Men are great companions and confidants, but it's just different.

THEN... and this may be the best part of the day... I came home and saw two men (about 25ish?) walk into BatWOMAN'S house. Now, I've always just assumed that she was Batwoman because my mom said she once saw my next door neighbor and she was a woman. So now I don't know if there are two men and a woman or if they're her kids or husband or boyfriend(s?) or what to think. Maybe they're all roommates? They're definitely living in a two-bedroom apartment, whoever lives there. Maybe just the men live there. Or maybe they were just visiting. But they had a key I think. Anyway, WHACK. My mom and Vinnie joke now whenever I have to park far away that the Batmobile can take me to my parking spot. My mom has resorted to calling the far away parking lot "Batmobile territory". HAHAHAHAHAHA I'm so glad that I know Addy will be getting as much of a laugh out of this one as I am.

I don't really know if I have too much more gossip or rants and raves. I'm trying to get away from just listing out the events of my days, because we all know THAT'S no fun. So I'll report back soon when I have something of interest to say.

Oh, I know. Today was my parent's 25th wedding anniversary! So congratulations to them. :-) (and for the record, no, they don't read my blog!)

FUN DAY!

Soooo Addy had to leave yesterday which was so sad. But I went downtown to the camera store with Vin and then I went to church -- A-MAZ-ING. This band that I love, Scarlet Cord (Sunset's youth band) played and it was GREAT. They even played 3 Chris songs!!! What could be better in life? I was totally all jazzed.

Today I went to the dentist who told me I had beautiful teeth... yay! I have been to the same dentist my WHOLE life so I was a little nervous (and he wasn't even that good)... but she was amazing! So that made me happy. Then I dropped off our ballots and went to the gas station. Then Kristie and I went shopping... we hit about 12 stores in 2 or 3 hours and tried stuff on in at least 6 and bought stuff in at least 7. Vin thinks we're awesomely fast. After that we went to Starbucks and then Barnes and Noble, then I went home and showered. Later we met up with Vinnie for some dinner at this great little sports bar he found for us. YUUUUUM. Good food. Vin and Kristie played Keno, that was super funny. Now Vinnie and I are being dorks.

So I sent HMG, JJ, and Brownlee an email with this huge update on my life and JJ IMed me tonight and told me I inspired them to have a little pow-wow on Friday. So that made me super happy!! I only wish I could be there with them but I can't wait to hear every word of what they talked about. It will be great. I miss those girls and GIV and GIV exec and all of it so much. Tear.

Now a rant, because I know at least Jenni approves of them. WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH ARBITRARY DATES? Like people who tell their daughters they can't wear makeup until they're 13 or date until they're 16. Why? What is so special about that? What's with people who won't get engaged until X number of years, or people who don't want to have kids until they're X years old? I'm just so anti. YES, I agree that you have to wait for things in life. But I'm more laid back I guess... a go with the flow kind of girl (my exes might not agree with that..hehehe). But for real, you may know you want to marry someone after 6 weeks (my parents), 6 months, or 6 years. Why not just let it be. (This is not at ALL a rant about anyone, just something that seems to come up in conversation a lot lately). So I just think people should let things be. Not just about getting engaged, although that seems to be the hot topic, but just about life. Maybe more on the arbitraty date thing tomorrow

Word of the day: jerk-a-saur-ous-rex. Referring to Addy's Halloween party guy. :-)

Oh my....

First of all, I've been enlightened on my readership levels. I found that not only does Jenni read it... Addy, Heather, Grant, Brian, Marie, and Dana all read it too! Oh and I know Brownlee reads it! WAY TO GO GUYS. I hear you were chattin' it up about me and the blog last night. Good times... so wish I had been in Chicago. But I will come sometime and hopefully we'll all hang out. Oh and if you SLACKERS would post comments I would give you more information on what you want to know.

Like I hear you guys want to know if Vinnie and I are serious... and consensious was not too much but it has the potential to be very good for a very long time. I agree with that. We just started dating, but we're pretty hardcore. We definitely hang out a lot... but I think a lot of that is the newness and also not having a whole lot of other friends here in Oregon. I'm sure we'll simmer down. (Addy says "get married and have kids")

My new phrase is so "_____in' it up". Like chattin' it up, sluttin' it up, flirtin' it up, etc.

So Addy and I definitely slutty hoed it up. We got all of our cute accessories and then got dressed and sexy. We took pictures, Vinnie is burning a CD for us right now so I will post one later today maybe. Or tomorrow. At any rate, we were definitely the hottest people at the party. No offense to everyone else involved, but with me in slutty ho nurse attire and Addy in slutty ho flapper dress... yeah. Everyone else was married, older, and not wearing cute costumes at ALL. A lot of people dressed as "grandmas"... added some pillows under their clothes and got a little bit. Yeah, the competition wasn't too steep. (Addy says "I don't even understand what she was supposed to be... what was she besides cottage cheese butt or something?")

So Addy and I were drinking a little... oh my. (Addy says "more than a little... a lot") And we were scoping out a guy for Addy to make out with. So we finally found someone... I won't give all of the details of Addy's life... but it was a shady shady night. So then the guy brought Addy back to my apartment and Vinnie and I came back. He ended up leaving a few hours later and then Addy, Vinnie, and I all slept in my bed together. Craziness. I know I know. It was crazy. Addy and I are like "NEVER AGAIN".

Now we're on our way to Chipotle... it's weird, there are two different things going on today. The typical "dress like a burrito, get a free burrito" for Halloween and the buy a burrito get a free one on election day. Can you get two free ones?

Okay we've returned from Chipotle... this year they didn't have "Boo-rito" which is their typical Halloween dress like a burrito get a free one. Sad. But I'm excited for Tuesday!!

So the woman who lives next to me has this floormat that says "THE BATCAVE: No Solicitors or Villians". HAHAHAHAHA I just started cracking up just writing that. I've lived here for 3 months and I STILL haven't stopped laughing about it. Vinnie thinks I'm retarded. (We're being dorks, lying on the living room floor next to each other both doing work... if you call blogging work, but he's writing patent applications... but we're using THREE computers. Only lame Intel people need THREE computers even during their personal time.) But seriously he thinks I'm ridiculous. Back to the story, the first time I saw that I just cracked up. And every time I see it I still crack up, and so does Addy. It's just funny. All we do is talk about Batwoman and we're rolling on the floor laughing, and I'm not even kidding. YAY Batwoman

Tomorrow I'm going to post about arbitrary dates. You'll see what I mean tomorrow. ;-)

Halloween and Chris Tomlin!!

Okay, I forgot I made my blog pink... what do you think? Too much? I kinda think it is. Let me know.

So Thursday I worked... met Vin for dinner at Old Chicago, that's about it though.

FRIDAY was the best day ever!!! I slept until about 2, then went with Vin to get a Halloween costume for him. Then we waited at my apartment for Addy to come. When Addy got here, we went to go see Casting Crowns, CHRIS TOMLIN, and Steven Curtis Chapman downtown at the Rose Garden. SOOOOOOO amazing. :-) Such good times. I heart the Chris and it was just a totally amazing night. I need to stop being all about Chris, but I get all excited whenever he has a new CD out or when I get to go see him live. He's GREAT live. Sooooo much fun. Then Addy and I acted like such roomies... we were on my living room floor side by side, both on laptops just being super cute. And we tried on our Halloween costumes and she practiced my makeup. She's SO GOOD at makeup! YAY!

Today we went on a million secret little shopping missions... getting our last minute "slutty ho" Halloween stuff. We should be good to go for tonight. I'm SO EXCITED for our Halloween party. I will definitely post pictures tomorrow or later this week... Vinnie promises to take them of me and Adds... YAY! :) Good times. Time to go get dressed...

Wednesday...

Tuesday... Tuesday I attempted to get done the rest of the stuff that I didn't get done before book club Monday. I went and got new ballots for me and Vinnie (we both screwed ours up), got a Halloween costume for the party this weekend, worked out, went grocery shopping, etc. GREAT day. It's the kind of day that makes me appreciate having Monday and Tuesday off, they're just such productive days! Then I went over to Vinnie's and he made me a fabulous dinner and we had a wonderful bottle of wine. Yummy. We also went through our ballots together (Oregon has vote by mail ONLY, that's why all of this ridiculous voting business is going on). We talked through all of the issues (like local Oregon measures) and people. We didn't always vote the same but it was good to have someone to talk through them with. Really really fun night.

Wednesday... Woke up, waited for the cable guy who was supposed to come between 10 and 12. Of course he didn't come, so I ended up waiting for him for an extra hour (the hour I was SUPPOSED to be working out) and then went to bed for my afternoon nap before shift. That is so irritating. Now I'll have to call and reschedule and all of that annoyingness. Then I couldn't fall asleep because I actually got a really good night's sleep last night, but I just made myself lie in bed and I got a couple of hours at least. This may become a very hard night in about 2 or 3 hours. Hopefully I'll go downstairs and get coffee with Kristie around 2 AM.

As far as my whole "becoming an adult" thing... I'm still thinking about it, because sometimes I do feel very much like a kid still. But I'm definitely enjoying an adult relationship!

Meeting the mom...

FIRST, a huge shout-out is owed to Jenni, without whom I wouldn't be so inspired to write. She is a far greater reader than I am a writer and I am so glad that she is there, listening and responding to everything I'm writing.

So this weekend was pretty fun!!

Saturday: Woke up sort of lateish as always, kinda just chilled most of the day. Got a Halloween costume because I decided I was going to a Halloween party that night. Went to Widmer, which was this AMAZING brewery downtown, with Vinnie and his mom. Had the 14 beer sampler... oh my! But at least now I have a great basis for what types of beer I like and don't like. Yay for me! I was so proud. Meeting the mom was great. I was a huge fan of her. Then we went to the Krispy Kreme... yum. Then we went back to Vinnie's house and talked for a while, then I went to the Halloweeen party with Kristie! Had a LOT of fun and met a lot of cool people that work the same hours as me, so that was really nice. Got very inspired for my Halloween party this weekend with Vinnie and Addy!!!!

Sunday: Woke up around 10, hung around the house until 3 when Kristie and I went to get my car (someone else drove us home the night before, definitely a smart choice). Then at 5 I went to church all by my lonesome. :( Then I gave Vinnie and his mom a tour of my building (work), since I told them I would the night before. Then we went to dinner at Red Robin... yum again. I love eating out. I talked to Sarah on the phone for about an hour and a half Sunday and a fair amount of that time was spent talking about food. We are admittedly a little ridiculous, and yet fun. :-)

Monday: Woke up at 7:00 when Vinnie called my cell phone. I was like "what, who's calling me in the middle of the night?!" "wait a minute, it's 7:00, maybe I'm late for work" "wait it's 7 AM and Monday" "wait do I have a meeting?!" "wait it's VINNIE calling!!". Hahaha... anyway, he took his mom to the airport so then after that he came by and just hung out with me for a few hours before work since he was up so early anyway... so sweet! :-) So then when he went to work I became PRODUCTIVE!!! From like 10 - 12:30 I did laundry, vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, had quiet time, hung some pictures, talked to Russ, went through my mail, and did some other stuff. From 12:30 - 2 I read the book for book club tonight. Then from 2 - 4 I went shopping with Kristie, but it was a very unsuccessful shopping trip unfortunately. :( So from 4 - 6 I'm supposed to be reading (although I'm blogging and talking online...) and then we're going to book club. After book club I'm hanging out with Vinnie cause I haven't had any really quality time with him in 2 weeks!!! Tomorrow night we are making dinner together, I'm REALLY excited for that. And I already have a list of stuff I need to do tomorrow... I don't know what I'd do with a weekend that was less than 4 days long! I'd never get anything done!! ;-)

FOUR MORE DAYS 'TIL ADDY COMES AND WE GO SEE CHRIS TOMLIN!!!!!!!!!! :-) Yay for the two loves of my life!

It's an interesting thing, transitioning into the life of an adult. I am starting to make better use of my time... enjoying cooking, reading, going to a book club, things like that. Just something I'm thinking about... maybe I'll ponder that and write some more about it soon.

Thanks for reading!

Back to work

Well, Wednesdays always bring work for me. :-) Not that I'm complaining... by the time Wednesday night rolls around and I've had a 3 or 4 day weekend already, I'm sooooo ready to go back to work. I get bored with those weekends. If I worked the front half of the week instead of the back half, I might never take a day off! Anyway though, so Vinnie stopped by last night and we had the most AMAZING talk ever. He'd said something a few days ago that had kind of been bothering me and last night he was like "yeah, no, I was totally wrong". So that was cool... just made me feel better.

This morning I woke up at 9 AM and couldn't go back to sleep and had all of this energy, so I went downstairs and went on the elliptical for a while. I'd much rather run outside but it's not as easy as it was in Evanston. So then I pretty much just had a chill day... got a surprising amount of stuff done, like cleaning and organizing and stuff. Still have a lot to do. Next Monday and Tuesday are going to be hardcore work days... getting lots done around the house. The highlight of the day was the most amazing conversation I had with Addy. It was one of those times when you know that God is using a conversation that you're having with someone to tell you something. In this case it was something I've been trying to figure out for about a month so I was THRILLED!! Good news and happiness all over the place. So yeah, that was good.

Not too much else to report... working during the day tomorrow. I'll holla soon.

Let's see, where did I leave off?

Alright here's the lo-down peeps:

Thursday: Worked. :) Had a meeting for a social club that I'm the social chair of, that's about it.

Friday: Worked. :) Had a zillion 1:1 meetings with people I work with.

Saturday: Worked. :) This was a fun night because my co-workers gave me a hard time for about 2 hours about me being a player. They think it is illicit dating multiple guys at once... but I figure I'm only young once! And I'm not really dating multiple guys at once. But all of these other things kept happening and coming up (like the lunch guy hitting on me, which is nothing new, he does it every night, but this was the first time they saw it) so they were just having a grand old time. It was quite amusing. So now I'm the group player... SO AMUSING! The other fun thing about Saturday was that I went to my friend Lisa's baby shower. It was my first baby shower and was SO much fun! The most amusing thing was that one of the games was guess the baby food... EW!!! The people with kids were obviously way better, and this one woman (Keith you know her... Holly, that amazing singer from Sunset!!) was SO GOOD!! She even realized the apple was actually DUTCH apple, meaning it has cinnamon unlike the regular apple. She got 2 points for that one and ended up winning the game. I personally got two out of 7 right... apple and carrot. They had like sweet potatoes, beef and vegetable, and who knows what else. DUDE, and you could look, smell, and TASTE to figure out what each thing was. AHHH. I'm never having kids!! Although for the record, that baby shower made me REALLY want to have a baby... for about 12 hours after that. Then, I came back to my senses. :)

Sunday: Scandalously slept until 2:30 PM. Good times. Then I went to church with Andrew at 5. He was a big fan of Sunset and we're going back next week! YAY! I have an official church-going partner now. WOO HOO!!! I'm not such a fan of going to church alone (hence the big ole' Vineyard carpool) so this is so great for me. I can hardly wait 'til next Sunday!!!

Monday: Slept until about 7:30 AM... this may seem early but I fell asleep around 11 on Sunday night so I had plenty of sleep. My partner-in-crime, Kristie, also told me she woke up around 6 or 7ish too... when you work weird hours you just sleep when you can sleep. There have been times before when I fell asleep around 8 PM, woke up around 2 AM, and was just awake for the rest of the night. Luckily I'm on a slightly more normal schedule this week, although I definitely am going to bed and waking up early. So I had lunch at a nearby Thai place with Vinnie (I went and met him at his cube at work) and then went shopping with Kristie and then we saw a movie. After that it was one of the first cold and rainy nights of the year so we both went back home and took naps and then just sat around our respective apartments and watched movies and stuff. I was going to go to HOAG but I slept through it unfortunately. I ended up falling asleep again early (it was funny because Vinnie called and woke me up and I remember really wanting to talk to him so I wouldn't get off the phone but I said absolutely nothing constructive. I asked him about it today and he said that yes I definitely was being an idiot). Oh and actually Vinnie stopped by on his way from work last night, that was cool because it had definitely been a while since I had seen him (at least other than that brief lunch).

Tuesday: Had lunch with Vinnie again... ridiculous. Fun though!! Went to Quizno's today. Yummy. Then wasted the entire afternoon talking to people online... grrrrr. Vinnie got his hair cut today so he stopped by for about 5 minutes just to show it to me -- HUGE fan!! So that was cool. Other than that I've literally been a pile the whole day. Oh I blew up the blue ball... Erin and Dena will get that joke. So that wasn't completely pile-ish.

Now I'm talking to Vinnie, Christine, and Christine's brand new boyfriend online. It's quite good times. So I think that's all. At least that's all for now. I start work again tomorrow so I'm sure I'll think of something to write then. :)

Yay yay. :)

Sooooooo, it was a super fun weekend, which was to be expected! Saturday I chilled with Vinnie... didn't get much sleep which was unfortunate, but what can you do? We ate a wonderful (very filling) brunch at Hale's, which the lovely Keith Prickett introduced me to last year. Then we met up with some friends and went downtown to Barracuda, allowing me to take advantage of my Saturday night off. We were starving after that so we went to Wendy's on the way back... the crowd couldn't take another night at Montage. I don't think they'll ever let Vinnie live that down (he took the blame for Montage, a great cafe in Portland, being so far away after a late night out a few weeks ago).

Sunday I went to church and lunch with Andrew, his friend Robbie, and his girlfriend Summer. It was so funny because I saw my manager from my internship just randomly sitting in the row right in front of me at church! So totally unexpected, but I wasn't at my church so it somewhat made sense. Sunday night I had dinner with Vinnie at Chipotle.

Monday I had lunch with Vinnie at PF Changs, which just opened about 2 blocks away from my apartment about a week ago. Super yummy, but that was to be expected. I then took a super-long nap that afternoon and got a surprising amount of work done around the house. He came over later that night and did some work while I did some scrapbooking, and then we got Chipotle and had a late dinner.

Tuesday I had coffee with my friend Sara in the morning, which was really nice because I hadn't seen her in almost a year! We took a lovely walk around this little park and lake area, it was a gorgeous day out and was just fabulous. So much fun! Then I had lunch ALONE, yay for me. :-) I was so proud. I was also thrilled because I've been eating out SO MUCH lately, ugh. That's why dating is so not fun! I mean, it's fun, but it's just not good! Then of course I had to take my nap... only 40 minutes, I was so proud. I had to be at work at 8:30 AM Wednesday so I knew I couldn't take my typical 4 hour nap. Then I went over to HOAG (Hang Out at Geoff's) for my typical Tuesday evening fun. We got some food from a Teryaki place.

Today I worked from 8:30 AM - 3:00 PM, then I'm working tonight from 12 AM - 7 AM. I know, I have weird hours. I actually met Vinnie for lunch because I was working in his building, and my whole team met him as well. They gave him such a hard time... poor guy! Doug was like "hi I'm Doug Robinson, Kelly's older brother... what are your intentions with my sister?" SUPER funny. After work I stopped by Vinnie's cube to check it out, it was fun and his group kept coming in and being like "Hey Kelly, what's up?". Apparently I've come up in group meetings over there too.

So I know I've seen Vinnie a COMPLETELY excessive amount, but you'll all be pleased to know that his mom is in town for the next 12 days so I won't be seeing him which is nice. Unfortunately this is my long week at work so I have to work Saturday night, but that's okay. I plan on using my weekend really well this week and getting a lot of stuff done. And this is a short night at work so there's only 3 nights left after this, YAY! Plus I have a baby-shower on Saturday and that will be lots of fun.

I think that's all for now... more juicy gossip to come later! :-D

Too much to tell

THE FUNNIEST THING EVER JUST HAPPENED! I heart the night shift. So this one woman on our shift is AMAZING and buys huge bags of candy from Costco for us all the time. She went on sabbatical and so she bought us a ton of extra to get us through the whole time. She locked it up in a file drawer and told one guy the combo so that we could get to it. Since then he’s been doling it out about once a night, and things have been going smoothly. PROBLEM: He’s gone tonight, and he didn’t tell anyone the combo so that we could get to it. There are only 4 of us here tonight, so earlier one of the guys was lurking around looking for candy in other cubes since we can’t get in there. Then about 30 minutes ago the other guy was in her cube trying to get in there and asking us the combo. We didn’t know it, so we were trying to think about going through all of the numbers to get to it, or calling security to cut the lock, or calling the guy on vacation or SOMETHING. It was a dire situation... it was 3 AM and we were running low on fuel. And clearly we didn’t want to resort to the vending machines (that would be too easy!). So one guy is playing with the drawer and realizes that you can kind of wedge it open a little bit, so he’s sort of doing that. He’s like “I need someone with a little hand and a lot of trust”. Clearly, that’s me. So I pull out the bag of Twix – problem… only 2 are left! He’s like “we’re going back”. We get like an eraser and stick it in there, and my hand is little enough to put in there to get things out. So we get a ton of good stuff (this all took a lot longer, because for a while the other guy was trying to reach in there because he has longer fingers, but I could fit my WHOLE hand in and he couldn’t). We took a lot of “loot” and left a bunch… just freaking hysterical. And we had to be quiet because we didn’t want our employees to think we were NUTS. But it was definitely a good time. Once again – I heart the night shift. Oh, and for the record, we DO actually get work done around here. :-)

On the guy front... I've seen the one guy every night this week. Twice tonight, for dinner and then coffee during my lunch break. And we basically have the whole day planned together tomorrow... intense I know, but I guess we're both intense people. BUT, the other guy is sort of back in the picture now so I don't know. I just don't know what I want and I don't even want to decide. So I'm going to hold off on the updates for a while... at least in as much detail. I'll keep you up to date though, not to worry. I'll just include more fun updates like the candy situation. ;-)

This is getting excessive

So, since I worked so late yesterday I didn't come in until about 10 tonight. Which means I woke up at 7 and called Vinnie, who happened to not have had dinner yet. So we met up at Chipotle for dinner -- YUM. I heart the Chipotle, obviously. It's a little insane because we weren't supposed to see each other Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday but it's just sort of happened. So we discussed that we will HAVE to see each other Friday out of principle, because you can't just see each other 6 days out of the week... if you're gonna do it, you might as well do it right. So we're having an early dinner tomorrow night. Then Saturday is our "hot date" night. ;-) And something tells me I may see him a few times on the Kelly weekend as well. His mom is coming into town next Wednesday for like 10 days, so I won't see him for a while in that timeframe. But we do have a lunch date next Wednesday because I'll be over in his building.

YES, I realize that we cannot see each other every day. It's kind of one of those "this is new and we want to see each other as much as possible because it's still exciting" kind of things. It will die down. Might as well enjoy it while I can, right? And I'm still not committed... just kind of seeing what's happening. That's how I feel about it anyway. But I definitely really like this dude.

Only 18 more hours of work until the weekend... woo hoo! I can't wait. :) Thank goodness this is a short week because I'm all about having fun this weekend.

Nothing else super exciting going on. More updates soon though! The feedback I've been getting on these have been good so I figure I might as well just keep updating even if I'm just talking about all of this dating nonsense. Maybe it's not the greatest thing to share with the whole world, but as long as I'm not committed I'm not too scared about it. :)

Insanity!

So here is the craziness that has occurred since Monday -- I've seen Vinnie every day! It's SO weird, I know, and one would think that'd we'd be sooooooo sick of each other by now, but things are just going really really well. Monday I had to watch Kendra's husband's brother (as I think I mentioned), but then I went over to Vinnie's to watch Alias with him. SUPER fun. Tuesday I was supposed to have my Bible study kickoff (again, I think I mentioned that), but no one else ended up being able to go so I just scheduled a coffee date for next week with Sara. That freed up my night to spend with Vinnie... so we went out to Chili's (YUM!) and then for an amazing walk in a local park. Then we sat on the swings forever and just talked for an hour or so. He pushed me on the swings which I found incredibly cute. He had a presentation to give the next day, so we swung by his house and grabbed his laptop, then went to my apartment and just sat next to each other, him doing work and me writing in my journal. We turned off all the lights and just had candles lighting the room, it was adorable. Then we just sat there talking. He's just so super cute! It was definitely hard to say goodbye to him that night, since I knew I wouldn't see him until Saturday.

Or so I thought. We ended up talking online while I was at work around 10:00 Wednesday night, and he was like "what are you doing?" I was just checking email and going to lunch around 11, so he stopped by and I showed him my cube and stuff, and then we went out for a late night coffee date. Afterwards, my co-workers TOTALLY gave me a hard time about him! They were soooo funny. I walked into my meeting after lunch and they’re like “where were you during lunch?!” “way to grace us with your presence!” And I was like “sorry, I had a coffee date”. Then they were all “Date, what? Date?!” So they asked who Vinnie was and explained he is a guy that worked in JF (another campus)… I’m afraid he'll now forever be called “JF boy”. They asked how we met, and I said we met at an RCG (Recent College Grad) thing a few weeks ago and then he asked me out, so we went out Sunday… and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. So then they were like “um, does he really work in JF or just sit there during the day so that he can plan taking you out on dates at night?” Then one guy was like “dude, this is great – pool both of your incomes now and you can retire and sail around the world by the time you’re 26!” Then they told me they’re going to start up a pool on when we’re getting engaged – the big debate is if they should do it by month and year or month and day. Another co-worker has already called him “Kelly’s new boyfriend” which I found rather amusing. The third guy was like “you HAVE to bring him in… we have to tell you if he’s good enough for you. Plus, you know that if he can tolerate us that he’s the right one… we did that for Brett and now he’s engaged!” Then the first guy was like “are you seriously working until 11 tomorrow morning? You should have come in later tonight… now you’re going to need JF boy to page you all morning to keep you awake for training!” In case you can’t tell, I have THE most sarcastic team ever. I made the mistake of telling them Vinnie and I are meeting for lunch Wednesday (when I have a meeting over in his building) and the third guy was like “OH GOOD, now we know when we get to meet him!!” So now he has to meet the team sometime. It’s almost like meeting the fam.

So yeah... I'm definitely having fun. Don't know if I'll see him Thursday and Friday (I'm ASSUMING not), but we have a hot date planned for Saturday after I wake up. ;-) And it wouldn't be so weird to see each other 4 days in a row if they weren't the FIRST 4 days we'd ever gone out together... so strange! But something is just working, and we're not sick of each other yet.

So I'm on hour 10 of a 16 hour shift... almost 2/3 done! Then I'm only working about 8 hours tomorrow night, which will be awesome. Friday's normal 12 hour shift rounds out my short week and I get my nice long 4 day weekend! Woo hoo! More soon... and I promise not so many ooey-gooey details next time. ;-)

More gossip

So the date yesterday happened, and it was SURPRISINGLY great. We went downtown for dinner to a wonderful restauraunt called the Tuscany Grill that I absolutely adored. It was a great little Italian place in Northwest Portland, which I also adore because it's really kind of the trendy fun area of Portland. If I end up buying a house in downtown Portland rather than the suburbs, it will deifnitely be in Northwest. So we had a great dinner and a bottle of red wine, and had a wonderful conversation and laughs. It was super fun to have a real date -- Northwestern is really not down with the actual dates, so it's new and exciting! We went back to my apartment and talked after that. Fun night.

Tonight, I have a "date" I guess at 4:30 PM with a guy that works the same shift as me but in a different factory. We're just going for a walk in a local park, so that will be cool. I have much lower expectations than I did for last night, although I can't say that I had very high expectations for that one either, so we'll see. Hopefully I'll see the guy from last night again sometime this week too... I have a feeling that that's very likely.

After that tonight I am babysitting for Kendra's husband's brother that they're watching for a few months. He's a pretty fun kid so that should be okay. That's from about 7 - 10 so who knows what will happen after 10. Tomorrow is up in the air (and hopefully I'll be at least a little productive) but I also have my Bible study's first meeting of the fall tomorrow at 7. YAY because I miss those girls!!! So I'm busy from 7 - 9 tomorrow, so we'll see.

So much excitement going on!!! More soon I'm sure as the story unravels even more.

Hey peeps

Well first of all, GO CATS!!! Can you BELIEVE we won tonight? I'm super excited. For those NOT in the know, Northwestern beat Ohio State 33 - 27 for the first time in 33 years. Doesn't that little 33 just fit so nicely there? So that was just really exciting for Wildcat football fans across the globe. Too bad I wasn't in Evanston to see it.

So it's been a good night at work... I took a class and learned a lot, and next time I get to co-teach the same class. Eventually I will be a full-blown instructor for the course! I also spent some time kind of goofing off, but it's hard to get a whole lot done on a Saturday night. I know that's bad but I place a lot of merit in the value of getting to know my co-workers too. So it's been a good night at work. Definitely have been having fun in my 2nd Saturday at work.

I also decorated my cube tonight... the pictures that I ordered from ofoto on Wednesday came in today, and I ordered a lot of doubles (for scrapbooking and decorating) so I put those up to make my cube a happy place. It DEFINITELY is much happier than it was before! Just feels more like mine. I didn't have any pictures up for my whole internship so I'm glad I got on that. Chances are if you're reading this there is now a picture of you up in my cube -- exceptions are Jenni and Ryan. And that is only because I haven't seen either of you since May, and all of these pictures areMay and beyond. I do have pictures of both of you from January though, so maybe I should get some copies of pre-May pictures made that I can put up in my cube. I have a feeling I'm going to have to bite my tongue on saying that about pictures in my cube, cause I just realized there is no picture of my Rooms or McCracken in here either. :-( I really need to get doubles of some more pictures!! In the next order I will, because that would just vastly improve the quality of my cube. The problem is that I only order pictures about once every 6 months, so I will have to make a note to remember that in my next order.

Okay, anyway, after that debacle... on to the real news. I think I have TWO dates this weekend, and the crazy thing is they are with two different guys. The one I'm not sure about is on Sunday... the Sunday guy wanted to do something Monday or Tuesday evening, and I already have plans for both of those evenings (not dates!). So I emailed him about possibly Sunday, although I'm going to church with another guy and his friend and his girlfriend. So it would have to be before or after that, but I invited him to come to church with us if he wants to. The Monday date is at 4:30 PM and it's rather chill -- just a walk in the park. The Sunday guy wanted to go downtown for dinner and maybe something like pool. For the record, these are both people from work. So it should be a fun "Kelly weekend" as Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are now called. I'll of course keep you updated on that one. Hopefully this weekend will NOT involve any alcohol, and as it looks now it won't, which makes me happy.

Not all that much else going on, I'm looking forward to getting home and getting to bed in a couple of hours. It's been a long week! Hopefully I'll only sleep about 5 hours so that I'll be able to switch back to my sleeping nights... but we'll see. OH I just realized TODAY is Sunday and I could potentially have a date in like 8 hours. Wow.

Oh, my...

So much has been going on! It's craziness folks, I tell ya.

So Mt. St. Helens blew its top today... it was pretty minimal though, so we're good for now. When I first heard it could blow I asked some people at work what happens, and they said it sort of stinks. You're not supposed to drive, because it gets in your car and gets it all yucky. I guess that you have to get up on your house and like snow shovel it off too, otherwise your roof collapses. And you have to hose off your street and driveway. And they open fire hydrants at work so people can hose off their cars, because the windshield wipers won't even move. Nuts dude!! But Jake is fine and nothing serious has happened so far. They say it could blow again so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Good times for sure!

Here's the *BIG NEWS* -- Doug and I officially broke up. This happened actually almost 2 months ago, but so much has been up in the air and just generally happening since then that I didn't really announce it until now. I went to LA for Labor Day (post break-up) and it was nice to see him, but we've both been insanely busy since then and hadn't talked much until this week. We had a great phone conversation today, talked about what went wrong and how we let it go wrong. I know some of you are probably quite surprised by this, some of you probably aren't at all. I am sort of in between... the last 6 or so months with him has been a little bit of a rollar coaster (and I KNOW that people like Rooms knows this), but there were some things that were great. All in all though... I'm very happy. Oh, and for those of you wondering who broke up with who -- I broke up with him, but because I knew that he wouldn't be able to break up with me. So it was VERY mutual. He has a hot date with some girl to Disneyland this weekend so I'm really happy for him. It's nice that we can be such good friends. He's amazing.

Ironic note -- it was almost exactly a year ago that Doug and I started dating -- It was October 3rd by date, but it was this Friday (tonight) by time. Right about this time (9 PM) I was seeing my beloved Mr. Chris Tomlin at the Passion Experience Tour Fall 2003 (along with my dear friends Keith and Rachel), but in about an hour I would have been headed back to Portland to meet Doug who was driving down from Seattle. Insanity I tell you. I definitely wish I could be seeing Chris Tomlin right now rather than be at work, but the good news is that he will be in town in about 3 weeks!!!!!! YAAAAAAY!

So I've been enjoying my newfound "single life" in crazy ways... I've actually been going out. I kid you not, you would all be SHOCKED by some of my insane choices in the past few weeks. But I've been having fun for the most part. Last Friday I went downtown and stayed out until 4 AM... it was a super fun night. The week before that we went to a club downtown... I really enjoy dancing. It's really a toss up if bars or clubs are more fun. I think bars but clubs have their place every now and then. I've also gone to Portland City Grill (this amazing bar/restauraunt on the 30th floor of a building downtown) for Happy Hour a few times -- I LOVE that place. Sometimes it's stellar not working Mondays and Tuesdays, especially when you have other S6 friends you can hang out with. If you come to Portland I promise to take you there.

This weekend marks the second weekend in 7 weeks that I'll be working Saturday night (not bad for someone who is supposed to work Saturday night every other week). So that's fine, I need to recover still from last weekend. Sunday I may go to tango lessons downtown and then I'm going to church with a new friend of mine and some friends of his, and then maybe this other woman I know from work. Not sure yet, that's kind of up in the air. Monday I'm watching Kendra's husband's little brother and maybe meeting up with this person I met on Craigslist. Tuesday my Bible study is finally starting up again so I'm very much looking forward to that. Hopefully Monday and Tuesday I will get some chores done!! I've really been slacking on actually getting stuff done around the house, so I need to get on that. I can't believe it's OCTOBER already.

Yeah, I don't even know what else to talk about, I've been so overwhelmed with all of the craziness lately. I've joined a book club, so that's super fun. The first book was really easy and enjoyable, this book is much more intense. I'm having a hard time getting into it, but maybe I'll be able to do a better job this weekend. I also have been trying to do a lot of scrapbooking, which is going okay. I really just need a weekend WITHOUT plans where I can be hardcore about staying in my apartment and getting stuff done -- yeah right, like that's ever going to happen with me. Maybe I can just make better use of my time when I do have hours by myself. During my work week, I tend to get up, talk to a few people online, read email, watch whatever I Tivoed the night before, eat dinner, and then go to work. So I'm usually not getting much done then. Maybe I can be better about that and start making use of at least 30 minutes of that time. We'll see.

That's all for now... nothing to rant about or anything lately, but I'm sure I'll think of some stuff soon!

Me, Doug, and Russ in LA in July. Testing this out to see if I can really start posting pictures in my Blog!!! 

Life

Yeah, I have no clue what's going on in mine. And that's pretty much the moral of the story. I'm starting to feel like publishing a blog is maybe NOT the best idea in the world... I mean, you don't know who's reading it, and you don't really know what you're going to regret saying in the future! Everything changes so fast in life, and what you may say one day you may totally regret saying the next. Yes, you can edit or delete posts, but then everyone knows what you wish you didn't say, and that's just dumb now isn't it?

Such is life... :)

BOO

I kid you not, I wrote this great post last night that was not on my life at all, but rather quite amusing commentary about the Bachelor. I won't recreate it all because I spent the entire course of the show watching it, but this is the gist of my favorite part.

The Bachelor goes on and on about how he wants to find "unconditional love again" which I think is the biggest oxymoron in the world. If it was unconditional, why wouldn't you still have it? Why would you need to find it again? So then finally some girl challenges him on it, and he is like "yeah, well, it's hard to love someone who's never around". It's HARD?! Is that the best you can say? Of course! Marriage is hard! But unconditional love allows for hard... it allows for anything. HENCE, UN-conditional.

Whatever.

So much more to say... interesting things are happening. EXCITING things are happening... one could maybe even say ER nights are back. Since I know only about 20 people in the world know what that means, and no one from college or beyond, I'll just leave you with that. And that it's not with who you might think. :)

Slacker

Yup, I'm totally a slacker when it comes to my Blogging. I'm okay with that. See, here's the deal. I do nothing cool during the week when I'm at work. I guess that's the time when I should vent about random stuff and/or try to be funny. Maybe I'll make that a goal for this week. Check back tomorrow and see if there's another blog from me, then you'll know if it actually happened or not. But anyway, during the weekend I'm so busy trying to do cool stuff that I don't have time to sit around and tell you people about it! So here's the lowdown from this weekend:

Saturday: GREAT night. Went downtown to Barracuda with a bunch of random people. Had a great night -- met lots of fun folks, had a great time dancing, saw a few fights, and generally had all around fun. 4 stars for Saturday.
Sunday: The first church service held in the new sanctuary of Sunset! It was great! BUT, I didn't know that they had new start times!! The old 8:45 was now at 9 and the 10:30 was at 11. So I got there waaaay too early. It's okay, I just chilled and waiting for things to get going. In good news there is now a 5 PM service on Sundays which will be GREAT for me when I have to work on Saturday nights and really want that Sunday morning sleep. Also, the senior pastor was back from vacation and every year he sings a song about what he and his family did on vacation. They have 9 kids so it's always especially amusing. This was the 2nd year I had the chance to hear it, and I found out that he does it to the same tune every year. GOOD TIMES! Then my aunt and uncle and a friend of theirs was in town, so I had lunch with them, then gave them a tour of Intel and went to Tillamook, then had dinner at Thai Orchaid. Yuuumm. Sunday is 3 stars.
Monday: SUPER fun day. Went to Kristie's apartment, who is an OM on shift 6 (my job, my shift) in a different factory (right next door, I can walk to her cube in 2 minutes). She lives RIGHT near me, about a 1 minute walk! So we chilled there and then ended up going to Portland City Grill for happy hour -- AMAZING drinks and appetizers. If you come to visit me in Portland I promise to take you there and you will be VERY VERY happy I did, I think. You should be happy, anyway. It's a really great place. I can't wait to go back. Then we went to Geoff's house and played many board games with Geoff and Dave (some Hearts, then Settlers, then Puerto Rico). 4 stars for Monday
Tuesday: Another great one! Kristie had a dinner party with me and a few engineers who work in her factory. SUPER good food... she's a great cook! I went over and helped her out a little early, then we enjoyed great food, wine, company, and dessert. Then I met up with a woman on my shift in my factory and another woman who works the same shift, same job, in an entirely different factory for a late happy hour at Stanfords and then a late showing of The Bourne Supremacy. 4 stars for Tuesday!

Just an absolutely fabulous weekend... so great having 4 day weekends every other week now that I know what to do with them! And I didn't even mention the shopping I did, chocolate chip cookies I made, or all the reading I did for my new Book Club that meets at Kristie's next week (with a lot of IEs from my old group, YAY!). Definitely good times all around!

More soon. :) :)

So uncool!

So uncool = me.

Here's the thing. When one joins the working world, they just don't have as much of interest to discuss. I mean, when I was at school and enjoying the life of piledom, I always had Dena & Caroline antics to discuss, or whatever psycho thing Killian was doing at the moment. Now I'm like "uhhhh yeah, I worked, and then I slept. Then I worked. Oh yeah, and then I slept again." So yeah, Wednesday I worked during the day, then slept from about 3 PM - 9 PM, then worked from 12 AM - 7 AM. Then I slept and worked Thursday night from 6:00 PM - 7:30 AM Friday morning. HERE'S WHERE IT GETS FUN!

So most of you probably don't know that not all has been exactly stellar in Doug & Kelly land lately. To put all of the blame on him (ha), I'll just say that he does not handle this long-distance thing very well. Which is 100% accurate. We could say it's my fault for moving to Oregon or his for moving to LA, but in either case somewhere along the line we ended up 1000 miles away from each other (which actually is an improvement over the last 10 months). But somehow now it feels more permanent. He loves LA and I love Intel. I think he's just sort of realizing the enormity of all of that... and is freaking out. So all of this happened about a month ago (the beginning of him freaking out). About 2 weeks ago we talked about seeing each other for Labor Day and I went ahead and booked tickets. Then he realized this is like his only free weekend for over a month and was like "ummmm maybe you shouldn't come". So I spent most of Friday night (which I had off of work) talking to him and trying to figure out if I was going to LA Saturday morning or not. I kind of pushed (what can I say, I'm a pusher), and finally he was like "well, just do whatever you want". So I decided to go... I know, stupid decision. To make it even more fun, I had slept too late on Friday (I meant to sleep until 3 and I slept until 6) so I could NOT fall asleep at all on Friday night. So I take the bus and the train to PDX, get all checked in, etc, etc. Then they're like "uhhh the LA airport is closed due to a few security breaches". WHAT?!? So I call Doug and he's like "yeah, that's definitely a sign you shouldn't come" (sort of joking, sort of not). But I'm stubborn so I went anyway... my flight actually ended up being less than an hour late, luckily I was not flying United (where the breaches really took place and where there were TONS of delays). So Saturday we chilled a little bit and then hung out with a friend of his from work and his wife. We had SO much fun. We went to grab some lunch about 4 PM, then we played an insane amount of Halo and Tetris Worlds on XBox. I tried to take a nap (mind you I had not slept at all since 6 PM the day before since I couldn't sleep on the plane) but for some crazy reason I couldn't sleep still even though I was exhausted. About 10 PM we were starving again so we went to Denny's. After that we did a little bit of drinking and then they headed home. Doug and I talked for a little bit and went to bed around 2ish. Sunday was pretty chill... he had to pick up his cousin from the airport so we didn't get to go to church, but then we made some pancakes together. Then he had a guys night with his cousin since he hadn't seen him in 2 weeks so I went to a movie. He ended up spending the night at his cousin's house which was fine because I just fell asleep. Monday morning he came home and we ordered pizza at like 11 in the morning (yes I realize that's ridiculous but we were starving and didn't want to cook because it was hot). Then we chilled and watched tons of movies and TV, then we had a fabulous dinner and movie date. We went to PF Changs and then saw Wicker Park which we both LOVED. Very good movie. The night before I had seen Suspect Zero which was good but not as good as Wicker Park. Plus we loved seeing Wicker Park together because it brought us back to our roots and made us both miss Chicago a little bit. Don't get all excited though, we're still both West Coast people for life! (And I kid you not if you would have asked me if I'd EVER end up on the West Coast 2 years ago I would have told you no way, no how. It is insane that I'm here and love it so much!)

So things with Doug are okay. We've had a lot of fun this weekend but we still live 963.6 miles away from each other 90% of the time. I don't know what will happen, I guess only time will tell. Hopefully things will all work out and in any case I know that all things will work out for the best in a greater sense anyway. That's just not what I want to happen! We'll see. Tonight I'm going to hang out with Terry Miller which will bring me back to the good old days of Northwestern and the Elder Hall gang. If only Lucy could be here too. It should be a good time. Doug's hoping to tag along too since he loves meeting new people in LA. So hopefully that will be cool with Terry. I love Terry because he is the most chill and funny person I know. I expect nothing but a good time tonight. Tomorrow morning I'll be back on my LAX --> PDX route that I'm sure (hopefully) will become quite familiar soon, just as ORD --> LAX was once so typical of me. It will be interesting because I of course have to work tomorrow night so I need to try to get a few hours of sleep in on the plane and when I get home so that I can survive the night. I have a feeling Thursday morning is going to be some goooooood sleep. :)

So this weekend was a little bit more exciting than my weekends have been lately, mainly just because I have a partner in crime I guess. It sure does change things. Once fall starts and things at church get going and I see more of my old friends from Oregon and meet new ones, I think things will start to look up again too. I need a new singles group somewhere too... the one at my church is being a little weird lately and I'm not sure if it's right for me. We'll see! I'll keep you posted. To be honest I've been struggling a little bit lately and I feel very refreshed after this weekend and excited to go back and be more exciting. We'll see if that really happens. :) I can always put some more miles on Jake and go exploring the great Pacific Northwest.

Just checking in...

I don't really have too much going on, unfortunately. Everything is pretty chill. Addy was here this weekend!!! Sooooo fun. Friday night during "lunch" I went to go see her and my friend Dave and this kid Steve at 24-hour Starbucks, then I gave Addy the tour of Intel and then finished up work while she slept like a normal person. Saturday morning I got a few hours of sleep in and then chilled with Addy. We went to lunch at Sweet Tomatoes, YAY!! And Dave came by my apartment so we got to hang out with him, it was great. He leaves for Russia for a year tomorrow, so that is sad. Sunday I went to church with Addy and heard Luis Palau speak (he is SO GREAT!) and Scarlet Cord (my favorite band at the church, a youth band) led worship. YAY! The new sanctuary opens up in 2 weeks! Then Addy went home and I took a nice long nap! Tonight Keith and I went to Chipotle for dinner... yuuuuuum. We're definitely keeping the Portland location in business!

I got my new Oregon plates and a new cell phone... check my IM for the number. :) Good stuff going on... I'm truly becoming an Oregonian... yeah right. I'll always be a Chicago girl at heart. There's no way I could ever learn to drive like these crazy people! Oregon is a cool place to be though.

My shift is really not so cool now that I think about it. I LOVE working nights actually, but the crazy thing is that every two weeks, I work 3 weekend nights (Friday, Friday, Saturday). The front end of the week night shift only works 1 weekend night (Saturday) in a two week period. I really get shafted as a young single person who wants to be able to go out at night. Oh well... live and learn I guess. I wanted that other shift but it just wasn't available. I better just make the most of my weekends when I have them... and maybe I will take weekend nights off when necessary for my social life!

So since Jenni and Ryan aren't updating their blogs, I haven't been as motivated to update mine. Peer pressure or something like that. I'm trying to be better about it, really I am.

I have 6 gmail invites now, so let me know if you want one. I'm always happy to give the fans gmail invites. :)

So this week I'm working Wednesday 8 AM - 3 PM, Thursday 12 AM - 7:30 AM, and Thursday 7:00 PM - 7:30 AM. Yes I know that's a little nuts... I have this training thing going on though so I have to work some weirdo hours. As though my "normal" hours weren't weirdo enough!

Made lasagna yesterday... lots of lasagna. At least I'll have food to eat for the week.

That's about all of the excitement in my life that I can think of right now. Oh, I'm still addicted to Craigslist and I got Addy addicted to it as well. Goooooood times. :)

Just a quick hello...

Use Windows Messenger! Talk to me people. :) I miss you.

P.S. -- I have FIVE new gmail invites... let me know if you want one.

More rants and raves to come soon!! (I have some good ones cooking up)

A quick one... what's the deal with all of these new CDs being "pre-released" to iTunes... a conspiracy I tell you! And I even happen to be an iTunes fan!

Pottery Barn

I've officially joined the Young Yuppie's of America Association (YYAA)... I received my first ever Pottery Barn catalog. LUCKILY, it's addressed to Kelvin Tang, apparently the previous renter of lovely apartment number 336. He's probably moved on to a nice yuppie house in the suburbs or loft in the Pearl. Who knows. All the same, here it is... and of course I'll be browsing it, looking for anything else I can add to my apartment. Who knows. Maybe I'll find a nice apothacary table... get the reference anyone? ;-)

Okay I'm back (again)

Sorry for the infrequency of my posts the last month or so. I know nothing is more annoying than trying to go to read someone's blog and having it not being updated, especially when you're bored. So I'm on this totally messed up schedule now... I have no problem sleeping during the days, which is good, but it's hard to switch back. In order to perfect the art of switching back, you have to sleep only about 4 hours on the last day of your work week, which is so hard to do. It's like, you KNOW you don't have to get up to be anywhere, and yet for some reason you "need" to get out of bed anyway? Somehow one's mind just doesn't work like that after 4 hours of sleep. So needless to say I slept until 3 yesterday and then didn't fall asleep until after 6 AM, then slept until after 1 today. This is unfortunate because I have a doctor's appointment at 8 AM tomorrow, so somehow I'm going to need to get up by 7! Yikes...

All in all the job is going well though. Many weeks I hope to not switch back to sleeping nights at all. Seeing as how I'm 22 years old with no husband, kids, or any real ties in life, there seems to be no reason that I can't just sleep all day every day. Obviously I'll have appointments and some traveling and other random stuff which will make me sleep the occasional night, but for the most part I plan on being a night owl. The other good option is to do the "half-switch", sleep from 4 AM - 12 PMish on the days I'm not working. The nurse at Intel recommends this because it does allow you to be awake and out and about during the day sometimes, but still maintains about 4 hours (8 AM - 12 PM) that you're always asleep, which is good for your body. I read quite a bit of information about the importance of sleep and a regular schedule for the body because of things like the fact that the body naturally cools down at night, etc. So like I say, tomorrow will be a little bit tough, but it should only go up from here.

The job itself is fun too (I know I started the last paragraph that way too, but I seem to just want to talk about sleeping). Seriously though, I've learned a lot already. It DEFINITELY helped that I interned with Intel, because otherwise I'd be so lost! I get my computer this week which will help to be able to be in my own office doing more of my own work. And obviously I'll be doing more work and less training as time goes on, which is nice.

http://www.3m.com/us/office/postit/research/largest_pink_ribbon.jhtml Check that out... for everyone who signs up, 3m is donating $1 for breast cancer research. All it takes is name and city, not even an email address! :)

Hello friends

From Friday when blogger was being weird and wouldn't post:

Yesterday was the last day my parents were here. We went to Tillamook, which is one of my favorite places! When Doug and I first started dating, we went there to the beach and the cheese factory, and it was a day I'll never forget. Yesterday was the same. My parents and I had lunch on the same beach and then went to the Cheese Factory, complete with ice cream at the end. Yuuuuum. Best ice cream ever! Then we had dinner at home and spent a last few moments talking.

Today I woke up and got my hair cut and car washed, then spent the rest of the day with Kendra! We went swimming, then had dinner and talked, then went to the Oregon International Air Show. Pretty cool... the Blue Angels are there tomorrow so that should be even better. I may go with Keith tomorrow but not sure yet.

My hair is SO BLONDE. It's scary. I didn't mean for it to come out that blonde, but oh well. What can you do? The two other times I've had it highlighted, it's been perfect. Definitely blonde chunks but not BLONDE. Yikes. Never going there again... that's the problem with moving. You miss people like the awesome dude at the Omni Spa.

Here's my to-do list for tomorrow, since Jenni says you can learn a lot from that:
- call Comcast
- car vacuum
- Sprint phone
- Call Sarah
- finish fixing up apartment
- mail in rebate
- Tell Cobra people my new address
- write blog
- pay CC and USAA bills
- grocery shopping
- mail Jenn book

I realize some of that is sort of vague, but I'm not going to edit it for your purposes. You'll have to figure it out or ask me about it if you're curious. That's my list as it stands for me.

I Tivoed the Opening Ceremonies and am watching them now. They're cool. This woman who basically brought the Olympics back to Greece was then fired for 3 years, at which time the Olympic Committee threatened to take the Olympics away from Greece because they were so far behind, so they brought her back and she whipped into action and took care of it all. Not such a fan of Katie Couric though. She's a little lame. Mike Kostas or whatever his last name is is way better.

Well, you're on my to-do list for tomorrow, so I guess expect another update then. And check out snopes.com if you never have before, it's been one of my top-5 favorite websites for YEARS.

Saturday:
Hung out with Keith today!!! Did some chores in the morning, then went grocery shopping with Keith. After that we had chips and salsa and made the BEST hamburgers. YUM. Oregon makes me think of BBQing because we always do the best grilling out here. YAY. We played a game of Egyptian Rat Screw (I won) and then watched the Opening Ceremonies on Tivo. Then we looked at all of my pictures from this year, then Keith played the guitar for me. Then we went swimming and then to the hot tub, then we went to Coldstone for dessert. YAY. Oregon is the most fun place ever. There's always so much to do with so many fun people. I heart the Oregon. Tomorrow we're going to New Song, which Keith promises me is an AMAZING church. We'll see.

More soon?

Still trying to get this to work.

Sunday: Went to church downtown with Keithers, then went to the Bite of Oregon (think Taste of Chicago). Fun was had by all, and then I came back home and watched the Olympics on Tivo per my usual as of late.

Monday: Went to work!!!!! Okay, it wasn't that exciting. It was NEO, which is New Employee Orientation. That's okay. I got to learn all about benefits and stuff so that was good times. And I met some pretty cool people including a dude who lives in the apartment complex right across from mine. Then I went by the post office and ever since then I've been scrapbooking and watching the Oympics. I've never watched this much of the Olympics in my life. Tivo is the greatest invention ever. Seriously. I used to think it was dumb and pointless too, but it's NOT. You can fast forward through all of the long swimming and Bob Kostas talking, and just watch the final laps. You can rewind. You can watch in slow motion. You can take an hour to watch the 4 hour opening ceramonies. I'm telling you, it's the best. I made terayaki chicken and vegetables with rice tonight for dinner, yum.

I need to join a gym with a pool. I miss swimming. Swimming a lot in the pool downstairs makes me miss it even more, plus watching it on the Olympics does the same. I just need to get back in the water. There is a discount for 24 Hour Fitness I think so I think I will join it and go swimming there at least on my days off. I can just start out doing 700 yards or so a day and then work my way up. Oh swimming, how I long for thee.

Trying to post again...

Yay

My apartment is really coming together. I have pictures hanging and everything is pretty much set. Once I get all of my tables in, it will be perfection! Still no estimate on when those are coming in, but hopefully as soon as possible! I also have a fair amount of work to do in the guest bedroom, but I need to wait on that until my parents are gone. It's hard to do with them here. Ikea seriously is the best place for candles (among many other things, including frames and much much more). My mom even said that she's always thought Ikea was way overrated, but that they really do have decent stuff at very reasonable prices. Whenever I have the chance in Chicago or LA or Seattle I will try to stop in, because there's always more you can get at Ikea.

Sketchy people live in my apartment complex. I guess that's to be expected from any apartment complex, but it's just funny. I was at the pool today and overheard many a conversation. There was this group of girls a few years younger than me, only one or two lived here but they invited over a bunch of friends. They were all smoking and just chatting about their waitress jobs and whatnot. One of them didn't work at all. Then there are all of these "families" that I can't really figure out. One little girl called someone mama, and then "the dad" (?) said "That's not Mama, that's Tanya". And then later on some other little boy splashed me a little and "Tanya" said "Sorry!" and then said "It's not my kid... actually I don't even know him, I'm just apologizing because I feel bad for you". So what's the deal with that? And Tanya was sitting with the guy that I think is the dad (who seems to be dating Tanya), but in between them was another guy who looked a little younger (they are around 25, he was maybe 21). Who was he? Never figured that one out. Tanya started talking to him about how she sells stuff on ebay for a living, saying that she started 6 years ago when her parents discovered ebay early. Her first sale was an antique bedpan she bought for $3 and sold it for $70, so she got hooked on it. She shops at thrift stores, estate sales, and garage sales, for those who were thinking of going into the business. Anyway that's the gossip from the pool today. I'll let you know if there's more again.

cnn.com is really such a great website. Earlier today I read about this half-ton man who checked into the hospital 8 weeks ago (after several other hospitals rejected him) and has lost 300 pounds already. He hopes to lose at least 450 more and his ultimate goal is to be able to walk out of the hospital and go on a walk with his wife. They had to find a special ambulance to get him there and he is on two hospital beds. He is on a 1200 calorie a day diet. Previously he could not even turn over without help and had tons of health problems including diabetes. The hospital is expected to cover much of his several million dollar bill. Yesterday I read about conjoined twins who had been seperated from the head and saw each other for the first time. Both were more interested in watching TV and their mother. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I also read about some dude that pulled over a cop and said "arrest me". The cop was like "what the heck?" and the dude was like "I'm drunk". So the cop called for backup because it was admittedly kind of weird and they arrested the dude for driving without a license (suspended from an earlier DUI) and DUI. He was 4 times over the legal limit. They said he was hysterical and much nicer than most DUIs tend to be. Cool.

Okay I'm back (and it's a long one!)

Hey kids... sorry for the delay. So here's the update:

Reno/Tahoe: It was fun, as mentioned before. Not too many other exciting details. My sister and I rented tubes and floated down the Truckee River, that was super cool. I'd love to go back to Tahoe sometime.

Thursday: The drive from Tahoe to Portland. It took a lot longer than it was supposed to, but I got here, got the keys to my apartment and lease signed, and moved all of my stuff in. Ate dinner at Burgerville (a GREAT local place, the In N Out of Oregon if you will), then collapsed on the flor and fell asleep.

Friday: Went to the DMV, found out what I needed to get my Oregon Driver's License. Got my DEQ (clean air test)... $21. Ridiculous, it's free in Illinois. Although it's $50 in California, so I'm not doing that bad. Went to buy a new bed, my parents bought me one and I bought one for the guest bedroom as well. Did some unpacking, got my cable modem and cable TV installed, went back to the DMV to get my ODL and register my car here. Got a few things from Target, made my bed, got a little bit more settled in. Could NOT get my wireless to work, which became an ongoing project of the weekend, especially since I needed it for Tivo to work.

Saturday: The furniture day. Started at JC Penney at the mall where I got these GREAT new dishes that I've had my eye on for a while, and also a chip and dip tray and an oil dipping set that is absolutely stellar. PLEASE come by and visit, stay an hour or a month, I'd love to have you. I'm all about the guests. I looked at their furniture and found a few pieces that I really liked, but I continued looking. I went to like 5 more furniture stores and found a local places with really reasonable prices, great quality, and excellent service. So I picked out a sofa, a coffee table, 2 end tables, and a dining room table with 4 chairs. The dining room table is my FAVORITE, because it is "counter-height" (brand new, the guy special ordered it for me out of a 2 week old catalog). It's going to be really great I think. But he called me the next day and ALL of my tables are on back order. The couch he is going to deliver tomorrow (I haven't been home the last two evenings, when he's tried to deliver). So that was really exciting. My first big furniture purchase! Still could not get the wireless to work!


Sunday: Went to Sunset with my parents, they really enjoyed it. Then we went down to Woodburn to go to Wal-Mart and the outlet mall down there. We got lots of great stuff from Wal-Mart, just sort of the essential home items. We had lunch there, and went to the Kitchen outlet store, but I didn't find anything I wanted. We stopped by Fry's on the way home to return something from the Chicago Fry's and then headed home. After an hour on the phone with Linksys (with them walking me through stuff I had tried a million times before), they fixed my router. I needed a firmware update, which I had tried but wasn't able to install, but she finally showed me a "back door" to installing it. She had to ask a bunch of other people though. So YAY for wireless working. I started Tivo and could see that it was connecting fine, but didn't have time to set it all up that night. Saw a great desk in the Office Depot ad, including a bookcase and a filing cabinet, so stopped by there and got that.

Monday: A chill day around the house setting up furniture like the desk and getting things more unpacked. Finished Tivo, went to the Goodwill to get a black blanket to keep the light out of my room when I'm sleeping during the day. ;-) Chipotle is just opening up a block away from my apartment, so Keith and my parents and I went to Chipotle for a dinner. It was a free day for all food and drinks because it was like their "trial run". YUM. It was extra-good Chipotle. You know how sometimes it's way better than others? This was one of those great days. Stopped by Keith's house and saw it... very nice place. Got my renter's insurance and everything like that set up, and went to Intel to see Kendra around 11. We ended up looking for my cube which was already there and labeled, and ran into the hiring manager who knows us both. He asked me how I wanted my cube configured, so that was cool that I got to pick that out. I also met a woman from Northwestern (BME grad) who has the same job as me but works the opposite shift. SUPER cool. Tons of fun.

Tuesday: Went to Seattle! Went to Red Robin for lunch on the pier (I love watching the water and the boats), then went to Pike's Place for some fresh fish and flowers. I love getting flowers there, they're so pretty and cheap. Got sashimi grade tuna which will be soooooo yummy. One of my favorite things!! Then went to Ikea for candles, bookshelf, wine glasses, and some "art" to put on the walls. Anything is better than having the walls white. Which reminds me, I'm glad they are white now! When I moved in there were "accent" walls, some yellow and some burgandy, and they were like "we thought you might like them, but we can paint them back". And I was like "uhhh, yeah". So today they FINALLY painted them and they look so much better. Especially the kitchen, it was so dark and now it looks great. I'm glad that that is done. Tonight I've been putting together the bookshelf and getting pictures ready, etc. YAY.

More soon... hopefully more of interest, but at least you know what's been going on in my life lately!

RYAN BOYLE IS MY HERO!!

Because he gave me my long-awaited gmail invite. YAAAAAY for him. I'm SO EXCITED to finally have it, so now I can finally start using an email other than my Northwestern address. This is STELLAR.

To make a good day better, I got an email from Chipotle saying they're opening like half a mile from my apartment (only their second Portland location, the first opened in February) AND that Monday is like their "test day" with free food from 5 - 7 and I'm invited. YEAAH free Chipotle on Monday. :)

To top it all off, I got an email from a recruiter at Schlumberger, asking me for a phone interview. I applied their last October or November because I think it's a stellar company, but alas... they're just about 8 months too late. Still super exciting though, I'd love to work there sometime in the future!!

I'm in Reno... will be in Portland tomorrow. YAAAAAY. It's been an excellent trip, lots of chilling at the pool and at Lake Tahoe. I HIGHLY recommend Lake Tahoe, it's beautiful. We had a lot of fun there. I've been doing a tiny bit of gambling, really only with the money the hotel gave me. So that's fun. We have a long drive tomorrow but it's worth it! I can't wait to finally get there. I'm writing from the Java Jungle, this cute coffeehouse in Reno with wireless. Whoever invented wireless internet is a genius!

Okay so that's all of the excitement I have at the moment, on Friday I should have my cable modem hooked up if all goes well so you can expect a more detailed and exciting update then. :)

gmail, Chipotle, and Schlumberger, all in one day!!

RYAN BOYLE IS MY HERO!!

Because he gave me my long-awaited gmail invite. YAAAAAY for him. I'm SO EXCITED to finally have it, so now I can finally start using an email other than my Northwestern address. This is STELLAR.

To make a good day better, I got an email from Chipotle saying they're opening like half a mile from my apartment (only their second Portland location, the first opened in February) AND that Monday is like their "test day" with free food from 5 - 7 and I'm invited. YEAAH free Chipotle on Monday. :)

To top it all off, I got an email from a recruiter at Schlumberger, asking me for a phone interview. I applied their last October or November because I think it's a stellar company, but alas... they're just about 8 months too late. Still super exciting though, I'd love to work there sometime in the future!!

I'm in Reno... will be in Portland tomorrow. YAAAAAY. It's been an excellent trip, lots of chilling at the pool and at Lake Tahoe. I HIGHLY recommend Lake Tahoe, it's beautiful. We had a lot of fun there. I've been doing a tiny bit of gambling, really only with the money the hotel gave me. So that's fun. We have a long drive tomorrow but it's worth it! I can't wait to finally get there. I'm writing from the Java Jungle, this cute coffeehouse in Reno with wireless. Whoever invented wireless internet is a genius!

Okay so that's all of the excitement I have at the moment, on Friday I should have my cable modem hooked up if all goes well so you can expect a more detailed and exciting update then. :)