recovery week..

Well, it was a crazy weekend back in Kansas. We had a good time and the festivities that went from 9 am Saturday morning to midnight (for me)/2am (for some of the others) Sunday morning left us feeling not so great for the drive back to Colorado on Sunday. By not so great.. I mean awful.

We made it back safely Sunday night, though it took a lot longer than it should have.
Pretending I was a college student again left me with a broken phone and a lost sweatshirt that is hanging out somewhere in Aggieville. Good thing I don't make these trips too often!

So, between two weekends of visitors and a trip back to Manhattan, I cannot wait for payday on Friday! I also am excited for a month of straight Denver. Thanksgiving we will be traveling back to Kansas, but that will be for longer than a weekend, thank goodness.

Since the funds are low, I have been trying not to go to the grocery store. I remembered I had bought some goods to make tortilla soup, which I had recently found a recipe for. So I made that Monday night and had 4 meals out of it! I also have a lot of leftover tortillas from the pinwheels I made for tailgating a couple weekends ago, so I made my own tortilla chips. Those are tasty and you really just need some olive oil. I also added seasoning salt and paprika to them. I will be making much more, as I still have a lot of tortillas.

The rest of this week is dedicated to figuring out the halloween costume! Everyone have a good week!

long week

Well, I guess the week hasn't felt that long, but it's been busy! Work has been busy and, of course, frustrating.. I need a totally anonymous blog to do my work talk though, so I shall not go into it.

but we shall have a picture showing some emotion...


So, anyway, I am leaving town today to go back to the ol' alma mater. We are going to the football game... against OU.. so the outcome is not looking favorable to us, but sometimes we pull off some amazing games!

There are a lot of friends coming back for the game, so that's good, considering I barely know anyone that still goes to school there. WHICH IS SO SAD! Not so many options on where to stay the night... very soon I will need hotel rooms when I go back to visit. There are about 8 of us going back from Denver, so of course we will have a good time! It's always fun to go back to where I spent 5 great years of my life! Seriously, I miss those fabulous days.. even though in those 5 years there were a lot of long days and nights spent slaving away for my architecture degree. It was all fun, though - through the panic, high stress, no sleep, - we had a good time in the sleepless deliriousness that happened in that architecture building. We all survived and look back on it with some pleasure..

We have a long drive ahead of us. We're all leaving work around 3 and getting out of town as quick as we can, but I'm sure it will take a little while to get going. On the way to Kansas, the time skips ahead too, so that's no fun when you're trying to get back and go to the bars and realize you will have one less hour.

I'm hoping to come back with some k-stats swag that I somehow lost over the years. I need to make a trip back to Varney's, the k-state merchandise, books store. I need to get the OU license plate holder off of my car (belonged to the parents) and replace it with a K-State one. I'm thinking about getting the dog a little k-state shirt as well and I need a K-State hat. Yes, there will be lots of purple.

I will also need to eat at my favorite spots, although on game weekends all the great Aggieville eateries will be packed.. but I just may stop by Jimmy John's at 2 am like the ol' days.

Okay, um... back to work. Woops.

7 things

So I actually thought of a few of those 'weird things about me'... A couple just popped into my head after grocery shopping today.. so obviously the first ones I thought of have a bit to do with just that.. grocery shopping. I seem to be on a roll, so hopefully I will complete the 7 right now!


_ The grocery stores I go to seem to always put the seasonal candy at the front of the store.. by the check out lanes. So you don't seem them when you walk in, you see them after you check out and by that time I've already paid. I'm not about to grab some candy and go through the line again. Pretty much EVERY time I walk past this candy section I have to resist the urge to just grab a bag on my way out. It always looks to me like it's saying "Thanks for shopping here, have a free bag of candy". A party favor if you will..

_While on the topic of candy... I cannot go into Walgreens without getting candy. Walgreens and candy are one in the same to me. If I make it out of Walgreens candyless, I am very proud of myself.

_When I'm driving, I HATE when a big car is directly in front of me. I'm sure this is directly related to me being short and hating big people standing directly in front of me. It just drives me crazy, though, when I can't see what's going on in front of or around this huge car in front of me.

_I do not like water chestnuts... at all

_I am not ADD at all, but at work I suddenly feel very ADD.

_I really have no desire to watch most reality TV shows (The Hills is pretty much the only exception). I prefer to be entertained by the fake world I guess.

_I don't think I would mind being a housewife/stay at home mom later on...

laugh it off..

How great is it that we live in a country where we can flat out make fun of our president and the man who is going to be the next president.. on TV in front of the whole country? How great is that?!

It is great to watch these skits on SNL and see this whole election loosened up.

What if we had to be serious all the time!? yuck.

what a week!

So I've been busy at work getting drawings ready for a deadline that went out today. Busy, but not so busy that I had to work any over time (because this lady doesn't get paid over time)! Sweet, huh?

We've been planning our tailgating festivities for this weekend all week long.. I have friends coming in town and we're getting together with the Denver K-State crew and getting our tailgate on at the CU stadium.

I had some pumpkin carving going on last night..haha... seriously, I love pumpkin carving I think.

Tonight I need to get ready for the visitors, do some grocery shopping and some baking possibly... and I DEFINITELY need to go on a run.. I can barely even sit here because I just want to break out the running gear that's sitting in a bag next to me and go on a run.

So, once upon a time I had a story about getting an oil change and the mechanic going home with my keys in his pocket.. yeah.. that was fun. So, yesterday, I had a similar incident..

You see, I won these tickets to the K-State/CU game at one of our K-State watch parties. They are tickets to the Coors Suite, so that's pretty exciting stuff. So, the Coors guy in charge of these tickets dropped them off at the bar we have our watch parties and left them with a manager on Tuesday. Yesterday I headed over at lunch to pick them up... and what do you know.. the manager had stuck the tickets in his pocket and left with them! This is my second time for pocket mishaps! Who would've known..

I talked with that manager, I told him I'd come back today at lunch and he said he'd give me and a friend a free lunch! sweet! You know me and free stuff... I love it.

I found this here and I love it!



I have an old, kinda beat up dresser, but I love the style of it. It was handed down from the grandparents, so I want to keep it and fix it up. I'm thinking I might try something like this!

These are from this blog - the wish jar. They are by Keri Smith, she's a guerilla artist and does some really fun stuff!

rough

Today is ROUGH..

Everything I normally do throughout the day is proving to be difficult.

For instance,

__Eating healthy.. REALLY difficult today. I gave in at lunch and got a cookie. My body was screaming that it needed some bad stuff in it to continue on.

__Working... I started losing concentration at about 2:30.. I'm tired and cannot focus!

__I look pretty rough today..

__Staying awake. I'm super tired today.. seeing America's Best Dance Crew kept me overstimulated last night, apparently, and I couldn't go to sleep!

ugh.

quick post

Oh lordy, I'm taking a quick mental break from figuring out how to fit duct work, diffusers, wood blocking and drawings themselves into their given spaces. fun fun.

For those interested in learning more about this financial crisis going on, This American Life on NPR does a pretty good job of giving us non-financial people an idea of what in the world happened/is going on. I get the first part of it and then the second half I need to sit and not do anything else to get it all in, but in the end it gave me some info on some business I had no clue about.

Tonight, I will be going to America's Best Dance Crew! Apparently, they're touring around. I really had no idea and have only stopped on the show on TV for a few minutes while flipping through channels, but who wouldn't enjoy some cool dancing? A friend of mine works for a ticket office here in Denver and was offered free tickets, so he grabbed 8 and we've been inviting people. So, should be entertaining.

Friday night is beerfest! My first time to go, so not real sure what all to expect, except beer that is. We will have a good time, so that is expected as well. That and a fall mexican fiesta party for a friend's birthday and a visit to the zoo will be incorportated into the weekend. Hopefully, I will see no snow.

favorite quote!

I love this quote...

"Promise me you'll always remember: You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think..."

- Christopher Robin to Pooh Bear

Moving on and completely unrelated from the quote.. I just wanted to share it with everyone..

So, CC over at Fork in the Road has tagged me to create a list of 7 weird facts about myself. I always have a hard time coming up with these things, so I'm going to have to think on it and see what I can come up with. Hopefully, in the next post it will pop up here.

The weather so far this week has been spectacularly fall-tastic. After all the browsing at stores this weekend, there are countless things I wish I would have (could have) bought to wear! The bad news is that there is a possibility of snow this weekend!! AHH! No good. Hopefully this snow never makes it way to where I'm at, because I don't think I'm down with that quite yet.

fall adventures with visitors

That was a whirlwind of a weekend! I feel like I did a lot. I got to take Friday off, thank goodness. Work last week was very busy and I couldn't take another day! I needed a break. So, thank goodness for friends visiting and me getting to take a day off to hang out.

-We went out to breakfast at Snooze downtown and it was very yummy. I went with an omelet and Laura went with the French toast. Both were stellar.
-We then shopped around, made our way to REI where I made the decision to bite the bullet and get the Colorado Pass - the season pass so I can snowboard all season at 5 different mountains. I know a good amount of people getting it, so I don't think I will have a problem getting out to the mountains enough. By the time you go about 6 times, you have paid for the pass, but it is quite a chunk of money. EEK!
-We stopped by the new Contemporary Art Museum and checked it out. We got in with a student discount and meandered around. There was not very much to see there and the museum was really small. Not terribly exciting, but whatever.
-South Pearl Street is a really cute street with boutique shops and cafes and bakeries, so we walked around there and grabbed some ice cream.
-We came back to my house, chilled, took Mia to the park to get some energy out. We then went to a couple of organic grocery stores in search of Quinoa flakes and other random ingredients. We found them and then made some super, duper healthy muffins.
-After this we had dinner, drank wine and headed downtown to meet up with all the girlies.

WOW. that was all in Friday.

Saturday we went to the mountains and hiked around a little. I was so excited to get out there to see the fall trees and I was not disappointed. The trees in the mountains are yellows and oranges and they are so bright. By bright, I mean that the mountains were on fire with these colors. We went out to Kenosha Pass, part of the Colorado Trail. It took a little over an hour to get to and we were in a bit of a time crunch so we could get back to watch some K-State football (which was not worth watching! they sucked). The watch party was fun as usual though. We couldn't hike for too long, but we definitely saw some pretty views.

(more pics of the hike when you click the photo)

So, after all this beautiful stuff we headed to the watch party to see some not so beautiful football. That night we all went out to dinner where we were all exhausted from midday drinking.. A lot of the girls were running the race for the cure the next morning, so we all took it easy that night. Laura and I got in some quality Saturday Night Live! I don't know when the last time was that I actually watched it on Saturday night.

Sunday, we took it nice and easy. We ended up seeing Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist... and not as good as it looks. Not quite as funny as you'd think..

After that it was time for Laura to go back to the airport.. and she also reminded me how I was supposed to go into work that night.. no good.
I'm so glad she came out, we had a blast and I really need to get out to Baltimore to check it all out over there!

In other news!! My good friend, Jessica, got engaged!!! I'm so happy for her! Woohoo! I'm already looking forward to the wedding.

Alrighty, that's the update. All I've got right now!

being nice

So, I mentioned in my rant about Spencer wondering about why he feels the need to be an asshole to everyone. Well, last night my neighbor was SUPER nice and it just made me think about why a person would ever want to be a mean, jerk of a person?

I was just watching some TV and the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find my lady neighbor there.

-There are two 50ish year old ladies that live next door (partners we assume) and they've been through some times with my brother and his friends living next door through college and such. There have been parties they have complained about and things like that. I think most people would kind of expect them to be grumpy and mean. Well, when I moved to Denver, I got to know one of them because she has a dog and we'd let them play around a little. She's a really nice lady and I never mind having a quick chat with her. Lately, we haven't really had the dogs play and just haven't talked much at all. -

Anyway, I opened the door and she informed me that our side of the street is getting cleaned tomorrow, so she didn't know when I was leaving in the morning and sometimes they come as early as 7:30. She said they get tickets because they forget, so she just wanted to let me know.

I thought it was so nice! I had absolutely no idea they were cleaning the streets and it would have sucked to get a ticket. I just thought it was really nice for her to go out of her way to let me know. I'm not sure I would have thought to tell my neighbor that.

(If it was Spencer that lived next door to her he probably would have been a jerkface to her and she would have let him get the ticket)

So, I'm just saying being nice is good for everyone! There is no point in just being a sour person.