First day of school and I'm prepared

We were only able to spend the weekend in Chicago because we had to be back in town for the first day of school!

I found a printable and had a little photo shoot with her before we left for the morning

she sure loves her silly faces lol

Her good friend is in the same class so we met up with her and her sister to walk into the school. We had a few minutes to wait and then we had to wait some more while the teacher checked in all of the kids - I forgot how hectic the first day of school is! But by the time we left, she was all situated and ready to go!

She is loving her new school so far and I'm so glad I was able to go with her on her first day. It was so fun to see all the kids!

Throwing hunnids, hunnids, hunnids, hunnids.

Even though I failed miserably at my Oscar Challenge this year, I still wanted to see the Artist, especially after it won Best Picture.

It was still playing at a theater downtown, so my mom, my uncle's girlfriend and I went to see it last week.

Honestly, I was a little nervous about being able to sit through a silent movie. It's only been a recent development (like the past two years) that I've been able to sit through a movie on a regular basis (sad, but true lol) But! I loved it! Jean Dujardin was amazing, as was Bérénice Bejo. I just died over the costumes too-the flapper dress was my absolute favorite!

The next night, my dad and I went to my old high school to watch the last basketball game of the season.
They were ranked in the Top 10 in the state so we wanted to be sure we saw them before the season ended. They played really well-in fact, they were winning by almost 20 at the end of the 3rd quarter! We ended up leaving not long after that, but it was nice to watch them play and spend some time with my dad :-)

But man, it was a trip to be back in my old high school! I can't believe it's been 6 years since I graduated! AH!

Did any of you see The Artist? What'd you think?
Ever make a trip down memory lane (To an old school or otherwise)?

Take me for what I am, who I was meant to be.

Even though, on paper, my life looks only moderately busy, this week I've literally felt like I've been on hyper-speed. I've kind of wanted to pull my hair out everyday this week. I'm not even sure why. I suppose going to school part time, working full time, still trying to maintain a social life and fit some "me" time in, is more exhausting than it seems.

Maybe that's why I spent most of the week at my parents. Ha! I was supposed to house sit for a friend at work, but she got sick and ended up canceling her trip. I had told my roommate I'd be out of the house for most of the week, and she had invited her boyfriend and his puppy to stay for the week. SO between that, and my stress, staying at my parents was a much needed break.

Another source of stress, might be my seemingly endless car issues. On Tuesday, I met with my friend Ian for coffee. When I pulled into the parking structure, I noticed my brakes felt pretty mushy (i.e. my foot went all the way to the floor). I didn't think too much of it, but when I got back in the car after coffee, they still felt the same and when I was pulling out of the structure, the brake light on my dash came on.

I ended up taking it over the shop, driving super carefully (read: slow) the entire way. They called the next morning to let me know that the brake fluid hose was cracked so I needed to replace those. Ugh.

I took the day off of work because I wasn't feeling to well to begin with. So I basically sat around and waited for my car to be done. I got a call around noon and Leto came and picked me up to get my car. I bought him some ColdStone ice cream as a thank you (and had a little bit myself hehe)

Since Thursday and Friday are my regular days off, I ended up having a "three day weekend" of sorts. On Thursday my mom and I ran some errands and ended up at Value World (2 pairs of jeans for $3 each!) and Savlation Army. I rarely buy anything but jeans from thrift stores, but they had brand new, in the box little Crock Pots! I think they are like 2 qts.-perfect size for someone who's by themself. Plus, it was only $7.50! :-) I'm so excited to use mine!

The next day involved a lot of catching up on the DVR, watching the snow collect (back up to 8inches, ya'll!) and very little of anything else. But I did get to see this on Glee:

I was seriously so happy when I heard they were doing this-and I love it!

Me=Nerd.

Today, I've been in kind of a funk :-( I'm back to work and after having three days off, I feel kind of out of the loop and things just haven't been going well today. I'm trying super hard to work on my temper and gossiping (not just today, but everyday) but today is *really* testing me. I'm really trying, but somedays, it's just really hard. Luckily, I only have one more hour and then it's home to restful night and hey, tomorrow's a new day, right?

In the fine print they tell me what's wrong and what's right.

This past weekend was the Ann Arbor Folk Festival. Each year, the festival is put on by a local concert venue to raise money. This was the second time I've gone. My work is a sponsor, so two years ago, I was able to snag a few free tickets and my and my dad went togther. It was really great! The seats were super close and we saw a lot of great bands that year (Old Crow Medicine Show, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Joe Pug, The Ragbirds, Ryan Montbleau Band, Katie Herzig, and Jeff Tweedy with Jim Lauderdale acting as MC).

I didn't get to go last year, but this year, a volunteer opportunity was offered and I was able to see the show for free. I had to help set up for the intermission, which wasn't too hard at all, and in return I got to hang out backstage and watch the show! Lucky me!

I had to be there around 6:15, so I left my house super early so I could get gas and some cash but the line at the ATM was hella long, so I skipped it. Big mistake! Of course, every parking structure downtown was "Cash Only" and it's next to impossible to find street parking on a good night in downtown Ann Arbor, let alone a Friday night. Long story short, I pulled into my parking space by the library, which is on the other side of downtown, at 6:09. I booked it to the auditorium and made it on time (which was nothing short of a miracle) but then went in the wrong door and got lost *inside* the auditorium! Only me, I swear haha I was supposed to be back stage and could not for the life of me figure out how to get back there! Luckily, a security guard helped me out and I made it back there only a few minutes late...phew!

We didn't have anything to do right away, so I was able to stand by the stage doors and watch the first half of the show, which included Theo Katzman and his band The Love Massive, Anais Mitchell, The Paper Raincoat, The Spring Standards, and Vienna Teng with Alex Wong. I use the word "watch" loosley, since, because of all the people and my lack of height, I wasn't able to see much. But I was able to hear everything and it was really great. I was definitely standing at the back of everyone, dancing by myself haha

After setting up and cleaning up intermission, we were able to stay and watch the rest of the bands. By then the back stage area had cleared out a bit so I had a little better view of everything :-)

I was amazed that out of the 7 or 8 people who were volunteering only 1 or 2 of us stayed till the end. I mean, how could you pass up free music to begin with, but great music that also happened to be free!?!?! Just plain craziness...

After intermission, Citizen Cope came out and did a solo set. I really, really like him. He has more of a hip hop vibe to him when he has his band, which I love and I was really stoked to see him do the acoustic set. A lot of people I talked to didn't like it as much, but I think maybe he was geared toward the younger people at the show. But for what it's worth, I was totally backstage singing (and dancing, of course hehe) along :-)

After that, the headlines came out. My dad had wanted to come and see them but didn't end up buying tickets in time. The Avett Brothers were *amazing*! They rocked the entire time-had so much energy, looked like they were having so much fun up there and played damn good music while doing so. If they come back to town, I would love to see them do a whole set.

I also had a few obersvations I made while there...

Folk Fest 34 observations

• Sweating profusely is never a good luck (see my sprint across downtown A2)
• Boys with guitars are cute.
• Boys with drumsticks are cute.
• Boys who wear hats are cute. (seeing a trend? hehe)
• If you are opening a Tunisian resturant, don't wear a harissa shirt.
• You and your friend can't wear the same dress, even if it's in two different colors. People can still tell, and it looks weird.
• I'm probably too judgemental for my own good.

After they finished up, I headed back home and it was back to the grind up Saturday morning. I was a little bummed I could only go to Friday night-Mavis Staples was headlining the next night. I saw her a few years back at a local music fest and I still remember it, probably 10 years later-it was just that good.

As far an my normal life, it's been a pretty average week at work and with school so that's good.

Everyone is gearing up for "Snow-pocolypse 2011" tonight. I've heard predictions with anywhere from 10-24 inches between now and tomorrow, but considering it's almost 6 and I'm nto seeing any snow, I'm starting to doubt the likelyhood of that. Also, the winds are supposed to be 20-30mph and the term "blizzard conditions" has been thrown around a lot today. Apparently, it's supposed to start around 7, pick up around 10pm and do the bulk of the snowing between 10pm tonight and 10am tomorrow morning. I'm staying at my parents so I can use my jeep to bulldoze through everything tomorrow morning, so it would be really helpful if the county/city would stay on top of the salting/plowing tonight, althought I seriously doubt that will happen.

But hey, I can hope, can't I? :-)

Play my little part in something big.

It's been an eventful January. Even though work has been pretty slow, school starting back definitely had an impact. Both classes I'm taking are online, so I don't actually have to *go* to school, but they are both a lot of work! So far, I'm doing pretty well and for now, I'm just praying the semester flies by!

A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night because my thumb was killing me. I tried to ignore it and go back to bed, as it was 3:30am and I had little motivation to actually do anything to remedy the situation but I did end up finding my metal water bottle (which was freezing because my house is always freezing! ugh!) and positioned it against my thumb to cool it down.

I got up the next morning to meet my parents at the gym and noticed that it was really swollen and red. I showed my parents and my mother suggested that it was from texting (har har har...) while my dad guess that I had an infection. I started popping some ibueprofen and went to work, where my parents showed up a few hours later with icthamol to try and draw out the infection.

I was being stubborn (suprise, suprise) and didn't really want to go to the doctor, but by Monday, it hadn't gotten any better-so swollen I couldn't move it, really warm and red-so I ended up going to the doctors.

I know they are pretty gross-sorry!

The doctor decided to try and puncture it to see if it would drain, but first wanted to inject some lidocaine to numb it. She stuck the needle in, and I swear to god, it was one of the worst pain I've ever felt. I have a really high pain tolerance and that really threw me for a loop! I almost fainted-saw stars, felt nauseas, clammy, the whole nine yards. She ended up not trying again (Thanks God!) but instead sent me home with antibiotics.

It took a few days, but the swelling finally went down (as Hannah told everyone "Let's just say, there was puss involved") but finally it seems back to normal. Although the skin in peeling, but it doens't really hurt anymore so I'm not too worried. It was kind of scary though-I mean, just wake up and my thumb is 3x its normal size. So weird.

Also, a few friends of mine got married this past weekend (Congrats Eileen and Gino!). Well actually, they had a vow renewal as they got married last year, but didn't get to have an actual ceremony. They are the absolute sweetest couple, and I was there when they fell in love canoeing down the river hehe

The day was pretty eventful in and of itself! It started with me driving all the way to the gym before realzing I wasn't wearing a bra, having to go get one and then drive all the way back to actually start my work out! After that, my mother and I ran some errands, which included finding something for me to wear since what I had wasn't "classy" enough (...grr).

Although, I probably shouldn't complain too much, because she did buy me this...

(Michael Kors Sequin Tunic in Dark Camel)

And I'm in love with it.

It was a little short, but I totally rocked it as a dress with black tights and Steve Madden black patent leather pumps. I've been racking my brain to try and find another event I can wear it to soon, but so far, no luck :-( haha

The night before, I had packed all my stuff-hair products, make up, jewlery options, tights, etc-because I figured I'd end up getting ready at my parents. So I get out of shower, do my hair make up and go to put on my tights and suddenly realized I had grabbed not one, but THREE pairs of brown and not a single pair of black! All I could do was laugh, especially considering the bra incident earlier in the day! I rushed home and luckily, was able to find some black ones quickly. But in the process, I forgot my earring and my cute clutch-oh well. I'm sure my dress brought me all the attention I needed :-)

Working at the bakery, I was able to provide a cake for them as a wedding gift. The cake ladies did such a fantastic job-I gave them the invitation and they just went at it! Everyone raved about how great they looked and tasted-It was great! The sheet cake was cut up for the guests and the couple took home the smaller cake to enjoy themselves.

My mom and I have decided that we are going to try and see all the films nominated for Best Picture this year. We were able to cross another off the list when we saw:

It was pretty good. I *adore* Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth was really excellent as well. It kept my attention, which isn't always an easy thing to do. All in all, I really liked it! Can't say whether or not it's the best picture of the year, as I still have a few more to see :-)

The List

1. Black Swan
2. The Fighter
3. Inception
4. The Kids Are Alright
5. The Kings Speech
6. 127 Hours
7. The Social Network
8. Toy Story 3
9. True Grit
10. Winter's Bone

Well, I think I've wasted enough time at work hehe I'm going to go listen to Something Corporate Radio on Pandora and *try* to be productive :-)

I woke up in a car, traced away the fog so I could see the Mississippi on her knees.

That's literally what I feel like. It's as though I went I went to sleep on October 31st and woke up on December 23rd. A lot has happened in between then and now (obvs...) but here are the highlights:

My parents spoiled me for Channukah and got me three (yes 3!) new purses, fleece lined leggings (amazing), clothes, books and a lovely, comfy new Tigers hoodie. Basically, a bunch of awesome stuff.

Helped Hannah put up her Christmas Tree, which was taken down approximately one week later because her kitties terrorized it.

The Metrodome in Minnesota collapsed, leading to the Giants v. Vikings Monday Night Football game being played at Ford Field. They gave out free tickets at 9am the morning of the game, but I didn't get a chance to get down there because of work.

Luckily, my boss, Jaison, is amazing and let me use his stub from the Sunday Lions v. Packers game (which they won!) so I was able to go.

I tried to find someone to go with me and after calling/texting/begging about 15 people, I finally found someone. Clark and I ended up sat 12 rows behind the Vikings end zone.

The game was pretty routine, except that it broke Brett Favre's streak of games started at 321. By the end of the game we moved down to row 4.

It was pretty fun-made for a long night, but definitely worth it.

Spent the night helping my mom in Jackson at one of her trainings and ended up driving through the Holiday Light Show at the Jackson County Fairgrounds.

Recieved quite possibly the best cookbook ever from Kim, my friend at work. With the inscription "Now that you're all adult and shit, get cookin'!" Love it.

Made a "Pimp Cup" for Randy, our sales guy at work.

Attempted to make a fondant covered, two tiered cake with my mother...

"Attempt" being the key word.

Also, even though this happened before Thanksgiving, it's definitely worth mentioning. I met up with John and Scott, who are friends from high school (which was the first time I'd seen anyone since graduation) and headed down to Detroit to eat at Slow's BBQ. Oh. My. Lord. So good! I had a pulled pork sandwich and mac & cheese. It was delicious and I was so stuffed by the time I left! And now, they are one of my customers at work, so hopefully I'll be able to eat there more often hehe

After we went there, we drove around the city for a bit, before ending up at this really cool art deco, jazz bar called Cliff Bells. It was so cool-a really great vibe, beautiful architecture and art, and when we were on our way out the jazz band started playing. It was a pretty perfect end to the night actually :-)

All in all, it's been a pretty busy month, on top of finishing the semester and taking my finals (I ended up with an A and a B-whoo hoo!) and spending $900 on my car for new tires (planned) and a new catalytic converter (unplanned). We also had a record year at work and were pretty much way over our planned sales every week, which is great but tiring! But everything worked out and Holidaze 2010 are officially over! I'm basking in the post-Christmas lull, before we get busy again for Valentine's Day. There's no rest for in the bakery world.

We also had our first major snow/ice storm which put the entire state of Michigan out of commission for about 5 days. The roads were so slippery, my Jeep kept sliding around on the *surface streets*! I was too scared to even attempt to get on the high way. It looked really pretty though, but unfortunately, as soon as I have to shovel/scrape my car and thought of it being the tiniest bit pretty flies right out the window!

Christmas involved my uncle coming in from Chicago (to find a place because he's moving back!) dinner at my aunts with my grandmother Christmas eve (where I scored a few more vintage purses, including another Louis Vitton yippee!) brunch with at my grandfathers and then my mom's twin brother and his family coming in tonight. A lot of family stuff for sure, but on the up side I did find my Hanson Christmas cd, so all is well :-)

It's a wonderful life that I find myself living.

I have a few things to mention but first things first...

T-day.

Thanksgiving this year was pretty darn good actually. My Grandfather and his wife were in San Francisco visting her children and my grandmother decided she didn't want to celebrate, so we just did our own things at the house. My parents, little brother and I, along with my friend Rebecca who is going to school in Ann Arbor. She is from California and couldn't go home for the holiday and my mom was more than happy to have her over. Our neighbors ended up coming over for desert so, all in all, a low key, drama free holiday.

My mom made a *ton* of food. She brine-d a turkey, made green bean casserole (not the regular mushroom soup kind either, which I'm not a fan of. This one was actually really good!), Meme's sweet potatoes (my grandmothers recipe-actually more like desert than a side dish. So effing good), mashed potatoes and sausage stuffing. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie mousse with homemade whip cream and ginger snap cookies. We got most of the recipes from pioneerwoman.com. I wish I would have taken a picture of the spread-there was so much and it all looked so good! My mom is such a great cook-I can only hope to one day be able to cook food like her :-)

After eating all that food, I could *literally* barely move. Luckily, most some of my stuff is still at their place hehe Me and my mom got up at the leisurely hour of 8 am and were out the door by 9 to do some Black Friday shopping. My mom usually hates shopping, so I was super surprised when she suggested we venture out, but I am rarely one to turn down shopping, especially on someone else's dime! I ended up getting a new pair of black "boots with the fur" and we picked up the rest of Channukah presents, which are unfortunately still in her possession.

We went to a few shops, and were back by noon to eat some left overs, watch a movie and take a nap. Pretty much an excellent day after Thanksgiving.

Work slowed down a little bit this week, but it will be picking up again sooner rather than later. Luckily it makes the time go by quickly (as if it didn't to begin with lol) I'm finishing up my last 2.5 weeks of the semester, as well. Have to finish up planning and preparing for the next one...ugh.

Today was also our first snow fall, which is amazing considering I can't remember a winter where we didn't have any snow in November. But luckily, December 1st brought some.

This was the view from my office window at 9 o'clock when I got to work this morning.

And then 10 o'clock. By this time, I'm already dreading the drive home, and lamenting the fact that I need new tires and bitching about how much said tires are going to cost me.

But luckily, I live in Michigan and by 11:30, almost everything was gone. Meaning I can put off getting my new tires for at least a few more days :-)









And finally, a belated Happy Blog-iversary to myself!

I can't believe it's been a year already! I started this as a place to write poetry, because I am occasionally a 13 year old emo girl stuck in a 22 year old's body, and after me and my ex started having issues I stopped writing for a while. But I'm really trying to make an effort to blog more often, and I've been really enjoying it.

So here's to another good year of blogging!

Lord knows I'm weak and won't somebody get me off of this reef?

It's been a pretty eventful week, to say the least. It started out with a test in my Logic class (which I got an 89% on- Woo Hoo!), moved on to work being crazy busy (the Holidaze have hit, and with a fury!) plus some good stuff, but my hormones were crazy so I was one big ball of nerves (and tears) for most of the beginning on the week. Yay....or not.

Thursday I went to the dentist for the first time in like 3 years. I know, I know, it's bad. I just kept putting it off and since I knew I was going to have to get work done, and I couldn't afford it, I really put it off. But my wonderful mother (and father too, although I'm not sure if he knows it yet) are going to help me pay for my dental work, which includes one filling, one crown and getting three wisdom teeth pulled. I'm getting the filling in two weeks and I'm going to schedule the appointment for the crown for January probably and I have to go see the oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth. Blech.

I was feeling pretty domestic this past week and ended up baking some Butterbeer Cupcakes (yes, from Harry Potter) in honor of the premiere hehe

The turned out pretty well:

They are butter cake (with cream soda and butter flavoring in the batter-yummy!), filled with homemade butterscotch ganache and topped with butterscotch butter cream and a butterscotch ganache drizzle (say that five times fast-whew!) I had a minor melt down, when I couldn't find mixing bowls in my new place and had to rush over to my parents house with all my ingerdients at 9:30 at night. But they turned out pretty darn good! I gave a few to my family to sample, and brought some in for my co-workers and everyone gave the rave reviews-so yay!

And speaking of premiere, you know I was at the midnight show!

They look so old! I can't believe it's almost over :-(

I liked the movie for the most part. The special effects were cool, the action scenes were pretty sweet and the I actually really liked the music too. But, they left out my favorite part of the book (with Kreacher and the locket-that part gets me every time I read it. So sad) and they shortened a lot, I'm sure because the book was so jam packed and even with splitting the book into two movies, there was just too much stuff to show. So, all in all, I liked the movie but the book was definitely better.

I already want to re-read the books again! I just re-read the entire series before this movie came out, so before the next one comes out (in July!!!) I'm going amp it up- re-read all the books *and* re-watch all movies.

Me= huge nerd

'Cause only in the movies can you replay every scene until it comes out clean.

I'm usually not too big a fan of movies.

For most of my life, I couldn't sit still long enough to watch a full length movie. I usually got distracted, or started day dreaming, or more often than not, fell asleep. It happened at home, at friends, even in the theater. It was bad. But the past few years, I've gotten over my movie ADD and started to enjoy movies a lot more.

The past few weeks I've seen some really good ones that I thought I'd post about.

First up:

City of God.

I saw this one the night before Halloween at the EMU Student Center Foreign Film Night. Leto convinced a Hannah and I to go see it. It's in Portuguese, with subtitles. It's about drugs and gangs in the slums of Brazil. It was way intense-lots of guns, and drugs, and blood. But really, really good. It could have ended up being a typical "redemption story" (boy grows up poor, experiences drugs/violence/etc, moves past it and becomes successful) but the cinematography was really great, as was the acting, so luckily, that set it apart from other films.

Secondly:

Due Date.

Zach Galifinakis is effing hilarious. I was late seeing the Hangover, but after I saw it I (along with the rest of the country) just fell in love with him. He's so odd, and his humor is kind of out there, but it works for him (probably because that's the roles he keeps getting cast in, but whatever). So him along with Robert Downey Jr, who is definitely having a career revival at the moment, were a pretty good pair. It was your average "cross country buddy movie" but I swear I didn't stop laughing the entire time.

Last but not least:

RED.

My mother and brother convinced me to see this. I wasn't that into it when I saw the previews. Action and action/comedy just usually isn't my genre. But mom was paying so I couldn't really say no :-) Luckily, I ended up liking it. It wasn't anything too spectacular-the action was exciting enough, the comedy was funny for the most part. Morgan Freeman pretty played his usual "wise old black man" and Bruce Willis did his best "action hero." John Malkovich was decidedly creepy, which isn't anything new but he was a close second to the best part of the movie. Miss Helen Mirren. I just love her-she's just so fierce. And pretty. And funny.

Oh, Mary Louise Parker was in the movie too. But I can't look at her without thinking of Nancy Botwin and Weeds. Blah.

At the moment, I'm having a study party and am almost all studied out. I mean, there's more to study, of course, I just don't know if I can do it! haha Hence, the procrastinating by writing this :-)