Christmas season

Today I listened to Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" guilt free :)

And yes, that is a Christmas tree on top of the space needle :D

Turkey Day

I am grateful...

(1) for my family and friends and a HEALTHY DOG (in like 2 weeks it will be the anniversary of Momo's death. It feels like forever ago).

(2) that I got into graduate school. Who knew that would happen?

(3) that I like graduate school and made friends and am pretty content with where I am in life right now. Who knew that would happen?

(4) for the food I just ate and all the food I'm going to EAT THIS WEEKEND! Wahahahahha.

(5) to be alive after tempting fate with all the plane rides I've taken since turning 24. Woo!

Thanksgiving

This year, on Thanksgiving I am thankful that my family is happy and healthy (well kind of healthy...we're all quite lazy :p). I am thankful for new friends as well as old friends - and hopefully they are happy and healthy too! I am thankful to be in school in a wonderful environment. And this is the silliest of them all - but I'm thankful the class I'm teaching doesn't hate me or think I'm a bad teacher.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

It's not me, it's you

I have always been a somewhat superstitious person. In the past two weeks, two people I know have passed away in fiery car accidents. In both cases, the people I knew were rear-ended when they were being completely safe drivers.

When I heard about the accidents my first thought was "Cars can actually light on fire? I thought that was just something that happened in movies"

The reason I bring up the superstition is because I am terrified there will be a third person. So please drive safe and watch out for people behind you!!

STOP THE SELF-BANG VIOLENCE!!!

Got a haircut, it's A LOT shorter than I meant it to be, and when it's down an straight I feel like Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. On the plus side, he fixed my bangs. I really need to stop believing I can cut them myself :)

gchat

Crouton visited me this weekend, and is currently in the bathroom...

Christine: Hello from the bathroom!!! :)

me: OH CHRISTINE.

True colors shining through

My walk to work is gorgeous right now. Thanks for a better Fall than last year, Seattle!

Veggie love

Purple carrot!!! My CSA is over next week and I'm pretty sad about it. At the very least, I've learned to love chard :)

Chapters

Rochester

Bagels. Snow. Nerdiness. The best friends that I've had since childhood. Even though I fought with my parents constantly, this was home, and I was afraid to leave it.

Ann Arbor

For some reason I will always associate college with being cold, with studying late into the night while the snow accumulates steadily outside and the windchill is negative twenty degrees. I miss these nights when I leave Ann Arbor, the sting of the cold when you step outside and eating hot soup with friends in the apartment on Packard and waking up every morning in a warm bed because hummusboyfriend had come back from the computer lab sometime around four in the morning. I miss the nights of going out on South U and throwing 16-person-dinner-parties and going on a mad scramble of having enough chairs. I miss Cottage Inn. I am nostalgic for these days for almost the entire first year out of college as I struggled to adapt to a new city and a new lifestyle and a place where not all of my friends were within a ten minute walking distance.

Cincinnati

I hated Cincinnati for the first few months. Moving three times in my first week did not leave me with a favorable impression of the place, and when I was attacked by an army of houseflies Drag-Me-To-Hell-style, I was pretty sure this was god's way of telling saying I did not belong in Cincinnati. For the first time in my life, I was alone in a strange city, and without the safety cushion of college where a bunch of young people are just as eager to make friends and start a new chapter in their life. My co workers were mostly around my parents' age, and the one young guy who started work on the same day I did was aloof and had no interest in being friends. Slowly, I began to meet people, our friendships reserved and awkward at first, but with time it grew into a solid group of six food lovers who did everything together, especially stuffing our faces. We went glamping in northern Ohio, a weekend in a snug cabin with a hot tub where we rotated kitchen duties and had fabulous homecooked food for every meal. We ate at every new restaurant in Cincinnati. We had bad movie nights. We raised my poor sick puppy Momo, and grieved when she died. In the end, my time in Cincinnati went from unbearable to something that I would miss dearly when I left, and it would have nothing to do with my quirky boss or the delicious black raspberry chocolate chip ice cream or the blonde-haired boy that kissed me good night and good bye on the doorstep, but six friends I had never expected to care for.

Atlanta

The transition to Atlanta and grad school was 6000 times smoother than my move to Cincinnati. Perhaps it was because I was ready to be back in graduate school, or the adorable roommate in a beautiful apartment that we decorated together (with a KITCHEN ISLAND!!!!), or the friend that I made on the first day of orientation that I hit it off with instantly and now we're pretty much attached at the hip, or all the delicious things I've discovered for eating. I'm stressed and overwhelmed and sleep deprived, and I'm nursing a head cold as I type this, but I'm pretty happy with where I am right now.

HOWEVER, this is the first time in my life that I have not had access to Brueggers or any sort of decent bagel, and that makes the New York snob inside of me rear its ugly head.

What's next...San Francisco?