I can’t believe I just spent 3 hours of my life watching The Bachelorette related stuff tonight…

… and they didn’t even tell us who the next Bachelor is going to be! WTF, ABC, WTF?!

Now, as I mentioned in prior posts, I only watch The Bachelor/ette because my sister made me watch it when I lived with her. But since I like to follow through with shows, I stuck it out to the end of this season to see who Ali would pick – Roberto or Chris L.

(SPOILER ALERT)

Ali was a rock star and broke it off with Chris so he wouldn’t have to get dumped during the final rose ceremony. And even though I wanted Ali to pick Chris, she seems to be legitimately in love with Roberto – Awwww!

Poor Chris, though… the man looked heart broken 😦 He seemed like such a great guy – and looked ridonkulously good throughout the entire season, and especially during the After the Final Rose show that aired after The Bachelorette.

During said show, Chris perfectly executed one of the best fashion-oriented things a guy can do – he wore a shirt that accented his eye color (I can’t find a good pic online yet to show this… sadness!!). Guys – girls loooooooove this, even if they don’t know that they love it. Brown eyes are great, but if you’ve got blue, green or gray eyes, you are in luck. If you wear something with the same blue, green or gray in it, your eyes will POP like whoa. Don’t over do it, or anything (Like, if you have green eyes, don’t wear a green 3-piece suit), but just a hint of that color on your shirt/top will totally make your eyes look even more glorious than they already are. Girls notice these things… for serious.

I’m super tired, so you’re just going to get the highlights from the day:

– I actually worked on thesis proposal stuff all morning and took 9 more pages of notes. I have a few more websites to go and I just ordered 5 books from Amazon/Half.com, but I should feel comfortable enough with all of my research to start typing up my Introduction and layout/outline my Literature Review this week!

– I watched only one episode of Dexter today. And I love that show with each episode I take in – I like the dynamic between Dexter and his sister Deb. (Partially b/c it’s an interesting pair… a foster brother serial killer working at the same police station as his cop sister. And partially b/c Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter are now married… and I think that’s adorable.)

– I kicked my mom’s ass in Yahtzee today.

– My parents are still the most adorable people on the planet. Today at dinner, I was talking with my mom about the commercials for The Bachelorette and how it looked like Ali’s dad had a problem with the time frame of his daughter’s relationships with the two remaining guys. I said something along the lines of “well, they only knew each other for, like, 6 weeks.” And my parents looked at each other and I asked, “What?” And my mom said, “Well, we pretty much knew after a week [that we were going to get married]”. Awwwww, parents.

– Watching my parents be cute together and watching The Bachelorette final really made me think about love. And I’m not going to expand on this too much since I am super tired, but love is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. And that’s not a bad thing… Love is lots of things. But like they said on The Bachelorette multiple times tonight – it’s a two-way street. And that is always a good thing to remember 🙂

– Random flashback while I was reading Denis Leary’s “Why We Suck” book and he mentioned firemen – I was grocery shopping at the good Kroger in Bloomington and I saw a group of firemen in the frozen foods aisle and I suddenly realized why it’s always said that women dig firemen… I don’t have stereotypical swoony girl moments very often, but as I looked up from my grocery list to see a bunch of young, muscly guys wearing dark blue t-shirts and firemen pants and books, my heart did skip a beat. It was like something out of a movie… (or Modern Family)

*smile*

Well, tomorrow’s forecast includes more thesis proposal notes… and probably another episode of Dexter. Plus some Leonardo DiCaprio (we got Shutter Island in the mail…) Woot. Have a good one!

 

Friends (people, not the show) and Serial killers (a show, not people)

I woke up this morning and walked upstairs to greet my parents and dogs only to find that my mom is still not feeling well. I didn’t expect her to magically get rid of her cough overnight, but I feel bad because she just keeps coughing and her throat is all scratchy and I can tell that it hurts and that she does not want to keep taking it easy. Poor my mom 😦

My throat is getting super scratchy too, but so far I’m not coughing yet. I did have 2 mugs of tea today, so hopefully that’ll help a bit… I also have a throat spray next to my bed and cough drops not too far away. I don’t want to get sick! Especially since my brother will be in town next week and we’re all going to be playing golf for a fundraiser/charity next week and I gotta be healthy for that – my family members are not golfers, so it’s going to be hilarious!

Today was another day full of Yahtzee and Netflix… mom won some, I won some, then there was a lot of Dexter.

I had full intentions on working on school stuff today – I did put 3 books in my Amazon shopping cart. But I didn’t poke around any of the guild websites I have bookmarked. Whoops.

However, while I was Facebooking instead of homeworking, I saw that two of my friends from undergrad won Regional Emmys for a project they worked on!! I am so happy for them – they are great guys and totally deserve this kind of recognition for their work 🙂 Congrats Zac and Falk!!

A Facebook message from a close friend of mine also got me thinking more about something I’ve been thinking about a lot – friendship.

See, I just spent 9 months with a small group of people going through our one and only year of journalism graduate school. Over this time, more than several of us spent a lot of time with each other and formed friendships over the course of our school year. School has been “out” since June 11th and it seems that once school stopped being in session, so did a lot of the friendships.

In response to my friend’s Facebook message, I sent a response saying that I noticed the drop-off in communication among a lot of us too… and I likened us to being on a j-school island where people had to befriend/tolerate everyone else, but now that we’re all off the island, no one has to talk to each other anymore. It’s kinda depressing, but that seems to be a reality that we are facing.

And what blows my mind is that all of us have Facebook, cell phones, email, etc… and it seems that the more options we have to communicate with someone else, the less we actually communicate with him/her.

I know I’m not the best person at keeping in touch with people, but I try and make extra effort with the people who I consider my closest friends. The thing is, though, that hasn’t been going to well as of late. One of my friends (who I know I upset a few weeks ago) said she needed some time before we could talk. Though there has been some email communication, I haven’t spoken with her in weeks because I promised I wouldn’t call her and so far she hasn’t called me (but I respect that). Another one of my friends who I used to text with for hours a day almost every day for awhile has pretty much stopped communicating with me full stop. There were a couple super brief texting conversations last weekend (and I mean like 1 or 2 texts apiece) and he made a comment on something i posted on his Facebook page. But he doesn’t text me anymore… which I am pretty sure I know why. But what really sucks is we were friends the whole school year and when I said goodbye to him a few weeks ago, I asked him to please keep in touch and let me read some of his stuff he’s been working on. He said we would and that he’d send it to me to read. See, I know he’s a brilliant writer, but I have only been told bits and pieces of his stuff. Also, he was one of my only friends I could talk/argue pop culture with. Alas.

Lucky for me, though, that I have another friend who I talk with at least once a week who I know is also going through similar stuff – RD! Though it kinda blows that we had less than a year to hang out, I’m super glad I did get to know you over these past 11 months 🙂 You are a rock star!

I knew I was always a bit of a loner (trust issues?), but I do love my friends. I just hope everything works out with everyone

So, besides thinking about friends and playing Yahtzee with my mom, I think we watched 6 episodes of Dexter today 🙂 We finished Season One and watched the first episode of Season Two. I. Love. This. Show.

I love that Dexter is constantly thinking about how he doesn’t fit in and how he has to pretend to be normal. I also think it’s great how he’s involved with so many different relationships and the challenges he faces in each one – with the people at work, his sister, his (adopted) father, his girlfriend, her kids, etc… Sure, he’s a serial killer, but I find myself rooting for him anyway. (It’s just a TV show, folks. I would never, ever, ever root for a serial killer in real life.)

And I am beyond fascinated by Michael C. Hall. As I mentioned in an earlier post, he’s got a great voice for voice over (and the show relies on that heavily). My mom keeps saying he’s creepy – I think it’s because his character looks directly into the camera (and by looks, I mean stares down with an intense look in his eyes) multiple times an episode. I think it’s a cool premise for the audience to be able to hear what’s going on inside his head.

Tomorrow my mom and I have decided to both get back to work on our respective projects, so I likely won’t be watching much Dexter tomorrow. However, I will totally be watching The Bachelorette – it’s the finale! If Ali doesn’t pick Chris L., he best be the next Bachelor b/c he’s friggin’ adorable 🙂

Have a good one!

 

“Guard and protect your heart”

Yes, I watched The Bachelorette Men Tell All episode.

Why?

Because I like to follow through with seasons of shows that I have started. Need I remind you that my sister is the one who sucked me into the world of reality shows, more specifically The Bachelor/ette (among others…). So I watched tonight’s Men Tell All. And I come away with this – Kasey was a bit much (see title of post, and then add some awkward songs) and I felt bad for Kirk. The end.

But let us start at the beginning…

Today started off with my kidney getting stepped on.

True story

My dad had an early doctor’s appointment (to get the staples removed from his head from last week’s accident), and afterward he and my mom were going to go to breakfast and run some errands. They asked me if I wanted to come along, and I said yes. So, my mom woke me up around 7, as we had to be out of the house well before 8. So, I woke up on my own accord when my clock said 7:02, but I shut my eyes to wait for the official wake up from my mom. Moments later I heard my mom open my door and I opened my eyes in time to see both of my dogs running into the room and up to my bed. Yukon knows enough to just stand by my face and breath on me while she wags her tail. Moose, however, leapt up onto my bed and stepped all over me while she licked my hands and face. I love my dogs 🙂

My mom, dad and I piled into the car and went to the doctor’s office. What should have taken 15 minutes ended up taking an hour and a half. The hospital never gave my dad any sort of papers, they just told him to get his staples removed after 5 days. Well, it had been 7 days, so we thought he was good to go. However, without the paper work, a nurse couldn’t take out the staples, a doctor had to. We were sent upstairs, then back downstairs and he had to wait to get squeezed in to see his doctor. My mom and I were prepared with our respective books (she was finishing up a book she borrowed from my sister, I am rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – woot). We read and read and read some more, freezing in the waiting room surrounded by a bunch of coughing and sneezing people who weren’t doing anything to cover their mouths. Gross.

I hate doctors offices and waiting rooms. I still remember sitting in the waiting room at the ER at Akron General with my sister when she thought she had some sort of skin disease on her arm. We sat for 3 or 4 hours in the tiniest waiting room ever. The guy sitting across from up was spitting/throwing up into a plastic bag for the entire time. That grossed me out like whoa (I’m not good around people who are vomiting), but I knew I had to keep it together for my sister because she thought she was going to die. (She didn’t – it turned out to be nothing serious… just some sort of oil had gotten onto her skin and looked like it had killed her skin and was spreading all over her arm. Nothing a little rubbing alcohol couldn’t fix…)

After awhile, my dad walked out sans staples and we headed to Panera. (Carbs!) It was here that I found out that I owe my parents around $2000 from me taking classes last summer. Whoops… Lucky for me they are not expecting me to pay it back right away/any time soon. They know I’m good for it 🙂

After that, we went to Half-Priced books. I wanted a bunch of DVDs, but I didn’t get any. (I was in search of Pushing Daisies – of course they did not have it. Although they had Wonderfalls – another Lee Pace series – but I’m not gonna buy DVDs until I get a job. Duh.)

While in the bookstore, we got a call from my younger brother. Turns out he got a GA position for next school year that will seriously help him/my parents out financially. We were super happy for him and very proud – so much so that both my parents teared up. Awwwwww…

From there we went to Target because we needed a sympathy card (one of my dad’s friend’s dad’s passed away) and some tea for my mom. My foot was hurting again so I pushed the cart. (A couple days ago, both dogs mashed my foot while they were barking/jumping while I was answering the door because someone had rung our doorbell. My foot has a few bruises on it, though I’m not sure if all of them are from the dogs… more than likely yes.) I stopped to look at the Woody and Buzz Buddys and my parents walked ahead. Pushing the cart behind them, I got to see the two of them share a little moment… it was adorable. I have the cutest parents known to mankind – fror serious 🙂

Upon arriving home from errands, mom and I played some Yahtzee and then made some pancakes for lunch. We thought we were being all creative – we had an apple cinnamon pancake mix, so we added toasted pecans and mini chocolate chips. but the mix must have been old, because they were the densest pancakes ever. They weren’t horrible, but they weren’t awesome either. As we choked them down, we kept saying “Man vs. Food” because you just can’t let food beat you.

I think we played some more Yahtzee… then I know I was reading my Gilda Radner biography when I fell asleep. Usually I can’t nap, but it was another one of those days where I pretty much just passed out on the couch and slept for 2 hours. I don’t know what was up with that… but I woke up and it was 4. Whoops… so much for working on any school work today.

I got up and played with Moose for awhile while mom paid bills and dad was on his computer. At 5:00 I fed the dogs. Then I helped my parents get dinner together. Dad grilled burgers while Mom and I set out everything else. She started feeling super tired and achy – I know it’s still from that huge trip she took w/my sister. But she doesn’t have time to recuperate.

See, my dad is leaving for Ohio tomorrow to help Sarah pack up our apartment. They’ll start driving to Kansas on Wednesday (my sister is going to KU for a doctoral program). My mom is going to meet them there later this week to help unpack (my brother is too). We (my sister and I) have moved around a lot in the past ten years, so the whole family is used to this by now, but it’s still a pain in the ass. Moving sucks.

After dinner we all went about our own business until The Bachelorette came on… and that pretty much brings us up to par on how uneventful today really was.

Tomorrow my mom is bringing my dad to the airport really early in the morning, then I know she and I will run some errands later in the day. Will I get more school work done? Maybe… I know I need to organize my room and continue the job hunt too…

I need to make an epic list of what I need to get done and by when. Thesis stuff and job hunt are definitely going to be on the top of said list. Then we can fill out the rest of it with stuff that would be nice to accomplish… like figure out what I want to be when I grow up, or where I might like to apply for doctoral programs upon completion of my thesis sometime this year. Soooooo much to do!

 

“Bring the noise!”

(*note* once again I’m too tired to link out to stuff I mention… I will do that at a later date. Thanks and have a swell evening)

So, I got bed late again last night and woke up at 5:30. I could hear my dad upstairs (he had to get to work early today), but I was determined to fall back asleep. Usually once I’m up, I’m up. To get myself to fall back asleep, I need to clear my mind of all the stuff I’m worrying about and concentrate on an alphabetized list. Usually I do movie titles or actor’s names, but this morning I opted for all things Broadway. I started from the end of the alphabet. It was hard thinking of “Z” stuff, so I finally just thought of shows, actors, characters or songs that had a “Z” in their name. I think I went with “Wizard of Oz,” “Liza Minnelli” and “Crazier Than You” (I always try and name at least 3 things per letter…). I had to do the same schtick when I got to “X,” as the only show I could think of was “Xanadu“. I got up to “R” and then must have fallen back asleep because the next think I knew I was being woken up by the sound of barking dogs. I looked at my clock – 8:42. Awesome 🙂

I crawled out of bed and went upstairs. Cue massive amounts of kisses from the two best dogs on the planet. I let them out and gave them breakfast while I started chopping bananas for my own food needs. I took the dogs outside again, fed the fish/leeches/snails in the tank, poured some granola and watched the rest of the episode of Pushing Daisies I had started last night.

I cannot stress how much I friggin’ LOVE this show. I like it more and more with each episode I watch. I’m sad I only have 9 more episodes left of the whole series. I want the DVDs sooooo bad 🙂 I love Lee Pace and the way he delivers all his dialogue. Brilliant. In fact, I love Lee Pace so much, that he dictated which movie I decided to get in the mail from our Netflix queue while my dad is away this week. I was wrestling between Taking Woodstock (which would have fulfilled my love for all things Jonathan Groff) and The Fall (Lee Pace movie from 2006 where he plays a stunt man who is now a paraplegic, and he tells stories to a little girl where he is a Bandit.) I watched the trailers to both movies and the comments… The Fall is supposedly one of the most gorgeous movies made in the past few years, cinematographically speaking. So, The Fall will be here soon… I can’t wait!

This morning I heard from my mom and sister who were on their way to Charleston, SC. I multitasked and painted my nails. I also made my sister laugh so hard that my mom had to take the phone away from her because she was choking too hard from laughing. Yeah, I’m that funny 🙂

I called two of the apartment places my dad and I looked at yesterday and will be touring at least one of them tomorrow. The second one might now happen, as the guy never called me back to set up the time. I will call again tomorrow morning before I head out to the first place.

I spent the rest of my morning waiting for that phone call that never came. During that time, I attempted to update/re-format my resume. Holy hell, that was an arduous process. I got it down to one page, but I think it still looks like a hot mess. Blah!

I managed to make lunch, watch another episode of Pushing Daisies (!) and let out the dogs again before my dad and I had to leave for the shooting range place.

On the way up there, we met up with my dad’s fellow gun enthusiast, Matt.

To preface this afternoon – both my dad and Matt are serious about firearms. Like kids in a candy shop, if you will. I, on the other hand, do not know a whole lot about guns, nor have I shot anything in well over a decade. Guns are fine for recreation and for cops and all, and I do respect their power and ability to physically/mortally harm people and such. I don’t mind shooting guns for fun with my dad, but I’m not about to join the NRA or anything.

So, the three of us got to the range and it was almost comical the amount of guns and ammunition that was unloaded from our van and Matt’s truck. We took up all four tables at the 200 meter shelter.

My dad brought a .22 for me, but I told him I didn’t just want to shoot this pussy gun the whole time. I did end up sticking with the .22 for a majority of the day – it was super easy to reload and I could shoot 10-25ish shots at a time if I wanted too. This gun also had a lot less of a kick-back that everything else I fired today. I have huge hands (for a woman) and am pretty strong, but some of those guns were too powerful for me. I will totally have bruise on my shoulder tomorrow… a badge of honor, if you will.

Matt had this .308 sniper rifle and some other super impressive gun (i’ll add pictures later). I actually was pretty good with the sniper rifle. I only took four shots at the torso target, but two were to the chest and one was right where someone’s eyes would be.

My dad had these two World War II rifles from Poland the former Czech Republic that were pretty sweet. One of them had a bayonet attached to it – awesome. They were really heavy and had a huge kick-back. And after you fired each bullet, you had to pull the lever thing to get the next bullet in the chamber, and the brass from the prior bullet would go flying… also awesome.

We shot rifles for probably three hours. Then we moved on to handguns. Talk about flying brass… I was sitting probably 5 or 6 feet away from my dad and Matt when they were shooting and I totally was getting hit with the shells! They let me try a bunch of handguns. My first few tries were not all that great. I definitely hit the wooden frame of the target way more than the actual target. Wood was splintering and flying everywhere. The .45 magnum handgun was my worst of the day… it was physically too big for my hands. My right wrist was going everywhere and I did some bad shooting.

We set up another torso target and stood about 7 meters away and let loose several magazines. I did way better doing this – I aimed first for the shoulder and then the stomach area and afterward the target actually reflected that 🙂

No, that's not the Smoke Monster from Lost...

We left the range after 4 1/2 hours… it was a nice day for being outside. The weather was ideal 🙂 I am going to be warn out tomorrow, though, I can tell.

By time my dad and I got home, Ali was on her second home date on The Bachelorette – it was Chris L! He’s too adorable. I’m so glad he didn’t get sent home tonight… I still am questioning Frank, though, especially with all those “Next time on The Bachelorette” commercials they keep showing.

My eyes are closing! I’m sure I could write more… maybe I’ll expand on this post at a later date. I’ll definitely link out to stuff so people (like me) who have no idea about gun stuff will be able to see what I was talking about 🙂

Have a great evening!

P.S. The All Star game is on tomorrow night!!!!! Let’s go American League 🙂

(*Note* – all links out were put in on Tuesday July 13th)

 

Dehydrated :(

I don’t know why, but I have been beyond thirsty today… was it the weather? Am I getting sick? (I do have some lumps on one of my tonsils… perhaps I am coming down with something?) Hopefully this will all get sorted out shortly.

Well, first of all – I am soooo glad Chris L. did not get kicked off on The Bachelorette last night! ABC was super tricky with past weeks’ commercials… I thought for sure he was going home and that she would be visiting Ty’s hometown. I’m glad I was wrong 🙂

Second of all – Jake vs. Vienna was delightfully horrible television. A car wreck of epic proportions. And the worst part? I came away from that rooting for Vienna. Albeit, she was the lesser of two evils during that interview. But a big part of me wanted to reach through my television set and smack Jake in the face for misusing the word “undermining,” having crazy eyes, and just coming across as a huge, misogynistic douche. He seemed uber controlling and even though she did interrupt him more than several times, he was being super disrespectful and condescending toward her. I don’t blame her for going to the tabloids first – I believe that she was right and that he would have done it first if he had an ounce of brains. But he doesn’t seem like he does… for example, today on Twitter, he tweeted a photo of himself in a cockpit of some plane. Was this to make us, the viewing audience, believe that he is still a pilot? There is no way that his acting career should get a boost from the shenanigans he pulled last night. I’m telling you – crazy eyes. Yikes.

So today, I got some thesis proposal stuff done… I think I read 6 or 7 articles and took 2-2 1/2 pages of notes. I did not have the motivation to do thesis stuff today, but I am proud of myself for reading a couple hundred pages of friggin’ boring articles and taking notes. Tomorrow I hope to get a few more articles read and some more notes completed. I don’t think I’ll end up going to the movies (it looks like maybe early next week I will venture out and take in some cheesetasticness), but I do still plan on looking at apartment stuff.

Tomorrow night I am going to the U of M campus with my dad to hear some sort of presentation about something. He totally told me what it was, but I either wasn’t paying attention or I am too tired to remember. Likely a combination of both.

(btw – Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” is playing on my iTunes right now… I friggin’ love this song, but sometimes I can’t listen to it. Like right now… *presses the skip button*… Mary J. Blige “Be Without You” … *skip button*… Daughtry “Life After You“… I’d skip this one too, but the line “All that I’m after is a life full of laughter / As long as I’m laughing with you” is too good to pass up, even though this song is equally painful after awhile… *skip button*… Jimminy Crickets, iTunes – David Archuleta’s “A Little Too Not Over You“. What the hell playlist is this?! *Puts on all-Glee mix*… there, that’s better 🙂 )

What else, what else…?

So, my good friend Robin (i.e. I’m pretty sure the only person who reads this blog on a regular basis – Robin = rock star, obviously!) has been trying to get her single peers to join a specific dating website. And today, I totally caved. A. I told her now she has a win in her peer pressure category and B. It would actually be kinda nice to meet someone in the area, since I’m going to be here for a year. I’m really not expecting anything to come out of this, but it doesn’t hurt anyone to give it a whirl, right? As a break from school work this afternoon, I filled out the silly questionnaire, posted some pictures and perused the profiles of some gentlemen in the region. I think it’s a good sign that I audibly laughed out loud reading some of these people’s self-descriptions. Sense of humor is super important to me – I like to laugh. A lot 🙂

I watched a couple episodes of Season 5 of Weeds and a few episodes of Saturday Night Live – the Bradley Cooper and Peyton Manning episodes still make me laugh! The “I’m on a Boat” Digital Short and Peyton’s “United Way” commercial are priceless.

I talked to my mom and sister this morning… My sister called to get the scoop about last night’s Jake vs. Vienna mess. I also told her that since she and my mom were visiting the Houston Space Center today, that she needed to work the phrase “Give me a go, no go for launch” into her conversation today. Hahahaha. I am super jealous that that is where they got to go today – I love space stuff. I’ve been to the Kennedy Space Center and love planetariums. In fact, one of the items on my Bucket List is to have my own planetarium at my house when I grow up. (Yep, I’m a dork)

Well, I am tired, so I should end this post… I hope you have a swell Wednesday and I’ll talk (write?) to ya later!

 

Multitasking!

No, I’m not multitasking doing school work… I’m typing this out while watching The Bachelorette.

Now, before you judge (and feel free to do so), I am tuning in because a small part of me wants to see the outcome of the Jake/Vienna fiasco that I knew was going to happen, another small part of me wants to see what is up with Frank – he was my favorite contestant at the beginning of this season, but I know he’s going to break Ali’s heart in an upcoming episode -, and another small part of me likes to see a seemingly nice girl get to go on crazy amazing dates with some seemingly nice guys (they are in Portugal this week, and the 5 guys that are left are the best of the guys from the season… I like Chris L. the best, but I think he’s going home tonight – sadness for him. Waaaaaay tangent – favorite contestant ever on this kind of ridiculous show is Reid from Jilllian’s season. I would have chosen him in a friggin’ heartbeat. Besides being adorable in those glasses, he seemed like a stand-up guy 🙂 ).

Yes, folks, as much as I am the girl who would rather watch an action movie than most rom-coms, I still think it would be epically romantic to be somewhere in Europe getting to see those sites and being with some charming guy 🙂 Awwww…

But back to reality.

It was a muggy, stormy day in MN. As promised, my dad took me to Fleet Farm to get new tires for my car, as well as some windshield wipers. I freely admit to knowing not much about my car, so when I answered “no” or “I don’t know” to a lot of basic questions that my dad had for me about my vehicle, I knew I should probably listen to whatever he suggested for Blue Car.

See, if this girl can’t be all swoony in Europe with handsome gentlemen, getting to hang out with my dad and knowing that I am a loved kid is pretty great too. Spending time with my dad is a good time, regardless of whether he gets me new tires or not 🙂

It’s a real privilege getting to have a pretty lax summer and not having to worry about a bunch of bills and stuff, and I am completely aware of (and super grateful to my family for) that. I am not an uber religious person, but I consider myself very blessed to have been born into and raised as part of my family. I have two loving parents who raised me in a super loving environment, and who have made sure that my siblings and I have had everything we needed growing up. I know now that I had a pretty charmed childhood and I know that it is because of my parents and how they’ve raised us.

(So, on The Bachelorette right now, Frank just told Ali that he lives at home with his parents. And right now, I can be like, hey – I’m at my parents house right now too! But I also totally know that I will be moving into an apartment with my BFF in a couple months… but my parents always told me that I will always have someplace to stay if I needed to. I always joke that my degrees are going to lead me to living in a cardboard box… but my parents said that’ll never happen. Again – another reason why I love my parents!!)

Okay, I’m sure you are not super interested in how much I friggin’ love my parents. But my family is super important to me and I am so thankful that my family is my family 🙂

My dad and I were supposed to go fishing today, but since the weather was crap, we had to scrap those plans. He cleaned out the garage while I was supposed to work on school stuff. Instead I did the dishes (whilst singing to an excellent Broadway mix – woot) and then read a couple pages of school stuff and took a couple sentences of notes. (I am a waste of space, obviously). My dad finished in the garage so I packed up my computer and we watched some SNL on Netflix.

During the Paul Rudd episode, my phone rang and it was Robin!!! We chatted for almost an hour and solved some of life’s big problems. I am pumped to see her and some other grad school friends when I head back to town in less than a couple weeks. Big plans to work on thesis stuff, clean my apartment and hang out with peers 🙂 Seeing friendly faces within my age bracket is worth the 15 hour drive I have ahead of me… right? (Of course!)

Dad and I grilled out again for dinner – he made chicken while I made salads (w/lettuce from the front porch and spinach from the back deck – woot for fresh vegetables!).

Since I’m watching The Bachelorette, my dad has opted to clean his gun/work room downstairs. When this show is over, I’m sure we’ll watch some more SNL 🙂 As I inherited my dad’s sense of humor, we laugh at the same stuff and that seems to make things funnier.

( btw – Both my dogs are sleeping right now – they are kind of adorable.)

And since I’m typing this blog post out now, that means I can watch a movie or read in my room before bed! (I should be productive and work on school stuff, start a script [or at least an outline] of an idea that I kinda have, or work on some autobiographical short stories for the book I was working on… and maybe I will be. Blah! So much to do, so little time. Geez)

Anyways, this post wasn’t awesome – sorry – but today was relatively unproductive and I have a lot of stuff going on in my mind grapes. There’s so much stuff going on in my head that I physically cannot get it all down or express it in words properly. (Cue me not sleeping later!)

Well, I will surely get more school stuff done tomorrow. Dad has to go back to work, so I will have the house to myself (well, besides the dogs, of course). I also need to look at apartments, but I think I will do that on Wednesday. I want to go see a movie too, so maybe that will also be Wednesday… hmm.

Regardless of my plans for tonight and the rest of the week, have a great evening!!

 

I need to find a more comfortable spot to sit and do my thesis stuff…

This hard, wooden dining room chair (made by my dad, of course) is starting to hurt my back – I need to find a more comfortable spot to sit and do my thesis stuff…

So, today I got another 5 articles read and took notes on them bringing my total to 19 articles down and 9 1/2 pages of single-spaces notes… I’m sure I could have had more done by now, but perusing Facebook and watching old Tony Awards performances on youtube is just waaaaaaay to easy to do when you’re working on a laptop.

Also, one of my dogs, Moose, has been guilting me into playing catch with her. She puts her fury head on my lap and looks up at me with the saddest (and eye-booger filled) brown eyes and just digs her chin into my thigh. You would cave too if you saw her face… it’s ridiculously adorable.

How can you say no to this face?

She’s sleeping right now, so I should be working on reading more articles, but since I didn’t post yesterday, I figure I would check that off of my “to-do” list.

Yesterday I tried to take it easy… I read 4 or 5 articles and drank a lot of liquids because I was still feeling a bit dodgy from the day before. Mid-day I took a lunch break and started watching the 2008 version of Brideshead Revisited. After watching Bright Star last week, I Netflixed whatever other Ben Whishaw movies I could (which turned out to be Brideshead and some other movie called Stoned, where he plays Keith Richards). I watched some more of it today, but I’m still not even 1/2 way done. It’s all right so far – I do enjoy period films, especially those set in England or other areas of the UK. I like those accents a lot… regardless what people are saying, it sounds way more intelligent than American English.

Oh, iTunes Broadway playlist… playing “Don’t Stop Believin'” from the cast of Rock of Ages. Did you see them at the Tony Awards last year? Sooooo good (esp. Wesley Taylor at 3:20!!!!!):

Okay, confession – I am still a little bit in love with Constantine Maroulis (the lead guy). Remember him from American Idol Season 4? Every time he was on screen, I would giggle uncontrollably. And it turns out, I still do… I can’t help it. I still want to see this musical sooooo bad. I have the soundtrack and love all of the songs – and supposedly there is a movie version in the works – but I want to see this on the stage. As everything is so much better on the stage 🙂

But I digress…

I started feeling better by yesterday afternoon, so my dad took me out to dinner and then we ran some errands. I got a MN library card and a stack of books – woot! When we got back to the house, we put groceries away and then I watched The Bachelorette (I watch so I can update my sister who is still on her road trip…). My dad went on Facebook and saw that my brother had updated his status to “thinking about a surprise trip to MN this weekend”. I had talked with my brother earlier, so I was aware of his plans to come up and visit this weekend (woot!), but we both weren’t going to tell Dad. If he found out on Facebook, fine, but we weren’t going to tell him. Well, he found out, and then he started to cry 😦 Ever since his accident several years ago and the passing of both his parents, he gets way more choked up than I ever remember from my childhood. These were happy tears, but I don’t like seeing my dad cry at all, so I joked, “What are you, on your period?” He laughed and shook his head at me.

See, as super lonely as I have been – missing my friends so much that I actually cried today while brushing my teeth this morning – this is why I am up in MN for the summer. Family first, right? I know my dad misses my mom a lot while she is on this trip w/my sister. He needs company – I am company.

However, this also means that I am super sad that I am hundreds of miles away from my friends. But I can’t tell that to him because I don’t want him to feel bad that I feel sad. And so I suck it up and put on a genuinely happy face when he gets home from work and we do our father/daughter stuff. But as I sit and work on my thesis stuff during the day, I have ample time to reflect on missing people and it sucks a lot. But – I’m going back to Ohio for a few days next month and will get to see some of my friends, so that will be really great 🙂 I don’t know when the next time I will get to see some of those people after that, but I will appreciate the time I do get to spend with my friends!!

Anyway, my brother should be here very late Thursday night and we’re all planning to go fishing and play tennis and hang out this weekend, so that will be tons-o-fun 🙂

Today I got 5 more articles read and I am in the midst of making chicken tacos for dinner. This is the first time I’m cooking for my dad, so I hope he likes it. I need to pick some lettuce from the front porch (yep, you read that right) as well as make some guacamole for myself (my dad doesn’t like avocados – he is obviously crazy). I also need to water the plants on the back deck… I will get to that when I am done w/this blog post.

I don’t think there are any plans for tonight. Maybe we’ll play some more Trivial Pursuit… I would like to win again 🙂

Have a great almost middle of the week!