randomness

I hate laundry.
Any other household chore gives you a sense of accomplishment. You spend a couple hours scrubbing your bathroom, it's done and you get to leave it alone for the next month (or year if you're me). You vacuum your carpet and it stays clean until you need to do it again. But laundry, laundry...it's immediate. You're wearing clothes while you're doing the laundry (usually) and they'll need to be cleaned too. So by the following day, unless you wear all whites or all darks, you have at least 2 loads that need to be done again. It's ridiculous. Dishes are similar, but I hate dishes on a whole other level. I hate dish hands. Yuck.
My contract has been extended at Morgan Stanley (again) until the end of July. I have mixed emotions about this. One of the reasons I took the job in the first place was because I was certain it would be a temporary job. It still is I guess but it's less temporary. On the other hand, the pay is good and the people are tolerable so what better job to mark time until school starts again? All in all I'm ok with it.
I'm going to a student art fair in Denver this weekend. I'm really excited about it, I love going to art fairs and a student art fair should be somewhat affordable, hopefully. I really miss the Dogwood Festival back in Atlanta. Eric and I went every year and there was some really amazing art there. They have a lot of art fairs out here but they're usually on a much smaller scale and most of the art has a mountain theme (wonder why?), which is not really my style. The Cherry Creek Art Fair is huge though, so we go to that one and see some pretty awesome, and extremely pricey stuff.
That's all.

hello world

I swear, if I ever update more than twice in a month I'll eat my hat. Any one of them, I have tons of hats.

I can't seem to get this blogging thing going on a regular basis. This time I have a bit of an excuse though, my laptop's power cord kinda fried on me so I was computerless for a couple of weeks and just couldn't bring myself to sit in Eric's dark office to do an update. But that only accounts for a couple of weeks, I know.

In the past couple months or so, I've started work temping at Morgan Stanley. It's an okay job, okay pay and pretty nice people, but mostly mindless and dull work. I'm thinking this job will be ending for me within the next week or two, but I have an interview next week for a School Age Care program with Boulder Valley School District that I'm holding out some hope for. I, apparently, suck at interviews so I'm a little worried about it. I think the job would be perfect and I would be perfect for it, but I have such a hard time getting that across to people. I say all the wrong things, but I don't know what the right things are to say so I don't say them. I'm missing the brown-nosing/tact/little-white-lie genes and that doesn't seem to carry over well. We'll see what happens, I'm just trying to stay positive about the fact that they called me for an interview at all. I also got my Substitute Teaching License (finally!) so, barring 3 recommendation letters, I can start that in the fall as well. Now the question just remains, what to do with the 2 months of summer left between jobs? I say relax, Eric doesn't agree.

I went out to LA again to see my best friends in the universe. It was really awesome, all of my closest friends gathered there from around the world (well, just CA, CO and Korea really) and it was awesome, we had a great time. I'm flying out to Chicago at the end of the month for my cousin Seth's graduation party. He got his Masters out in London and he's just now coming home and his mom is throwing him a party and offered to fly Heather and I out for it. Of course, we jumped at the chance. I love our Chicago family, it's always a good time going out to see them. It's crazy to me how John's family can be so awesome while he's such a shithead.

I went to see REM at Red Rocks last night. It was really cool. I've loved REM since I was a little kid and it's amazing to see them live and just how together and passionate they still are about their music. I also heard a lot of songs that I hadn't heard before that I actually really dug! Maybe I should check out their new album. Modest Mouse was the opener, another of my favorite bands. I don't really like their new album, except for one or two songs, and I'm pretty much neutral about Good News, but I love love love all their other albums. They only played about 10 songs since they were the opener, but about 5 of them were oldies, so that was pretty sweet. Much better than when I saw them in Atlanta and they only played one old song and everything else was from Good News. It was funny too, there were just a ton of old folks at the show and one of them, sitting next to us, was asking if we were there just for Modest Mouse. We explained that no, we bought the tix to see REM and Modest Mouse opening was just an amazing perk we found out later on. He said he asked because his 14 year old babysitter had never heard of REM. These kids today...

That's all for now, I'll post more when I think of more stuff to say.

the past week

So not a lot has been going on in the past week. Eric and I took our little mini-trip to Vail and it was...fun. Like I said before, he won us tickets to see Ben Harper so we got a hotel room for one night and even went a little fancy (although there aren't really any un-fancy options in Vail). We ended up getting there around 3pm but their check-in time isn't until 4 (weird, huh?). So the lady said our room wasn't ready and we could explore the hotel if we wanted. So we walked around for a little while and then Eric casually asked her if she'd just let us know when the room was ready, so she found out it still wasn't ready so she bumped us to another, much better room. We were pretty excited, it had a fireplace and a whole lotta room. We were going to be on the bottom floor, but now we were on the top floor with an awesome view of the chairlift (the hotel had it's own chair lift, how cool is that?). So we hung out there for a few hours and went to their jacuzzi and steam room. Then we headed out to Vail Village to grab some dinner before the show. Now I've got some complaints about the skiing/snowboarding life in general (ie, it's only a sport for RICH white people) but one of the things that bugs me the most is that these places are supposed to be luxurious right? Well we wanted to grab just a regular old dinner, nothing crazy nice. But one of the cheapest spots we could find was still about $25/plate and the food was crap. I feel like just because it's Vail, they're not held up to any kind of standards you know, because it's VAIL. But anyways, we took a 1/4 mile snowy walk over to where the concert was, which had already started (at 7:30). The concert was pretty good, I love Ben Harper, but the crowd definitely left something to be desired. Like I said, it's just a bunch of rich white people and at the show it was mostly just rich white high school/college kids. Who were drinking and being fools. So after the show we headed back to the hotel and hung out in their fireside lounge until we got sleepy and went to bed. The next morning, Eric went skiing and I opted to use the money that skiing would've cost to get a hot stone massage instead. I'd never had a hot stone massage before, it was lovely and I'd recommend it for everyone. So yeah, after that we checked out and headed home. It was a nice, short trip to Vail but I think I'm kinda done with the whole ski scene. I don't really like to ski, personally. I don't like to do things I'm not good at. And I'm not good at skiing. It's especially hard when everyone you go with is super good at skiing and then you're just stuck on bunny hills and greens and they're doing black diamonds. So yeah.
Other than that weekend trip, my life has been pretty much the same this past week. I took the Morgan Stanley job, which I'll be starting on Wednesday of next week. I'm pretty much the opposite of excited about it, but it'll be good to have my own money in my pockets again. And besides, it's only temporary and I can quit whenever I want.
This weekend my friend Ted is visiting from San Jose, CA. It's supposed to be nice and warm but I think those dumb boys are going to waste the nice weather and go skiing instead of something awesome like hiking. Oh well, what's a girl to do? I hope everyone has a great weekend. I'll leave you with some peaceful mountain scenery.

return from vacation

So I'm back from Florida. Overall it was a great trip. We had amazing weather pretty much the whole time; hot and sunny days turning into cool and rainy evenings almost every single day. And not once did it rain during the day when we were wanting outside time. Any of you who have been to Florida know that this is quite the meteorological accomplishment.
It was really good to see my family but I would like to reiterate the point that I do not regret moving 1500 miles away. I'm sure it's the same with everyone, but I can only take so much face time without wishing I were elsewhere. I love my mom and sisters very very much, but we are oh so different in far too many ways. My mom and I had a talk about it and I told her sometimes I feel like I just don't belong in the family, the others share many of these very specific traits that I just somehow missed out on and that really irk me sometimes. Like poor time-management skills. It took us 4 times as long to do pretty much anything than it would have taken me to do on my own. But all my bitching aside, it was really great to see them. My sisters are growing up, people. It's scary.

Aly's two friends ended up coming along (they're the two on the right in the above pic) and it was very interesting to me to see how she acts around her friends versus how she acts around me. She is pretty much the opposite of who I was in high school. She's a cheerleader, she loves country music and hanging out at Wal-Mart, her boyfriend is completely devoid of any personality, etc. But I know from hanging out with her on my own that there's so much more to her that she doesn't show to people her age. I wonder why. Mary, on the other hand, is pretty amazing for someone her age. She's very funny and wise and just has a great outlook on life. She reminds me a lot of Heather when she was that age, but in a much more positive light.

The trip ended up being very strenuous physically. We went on a 10 mile bike-ride around Sanibel island's nature preserve one day. Another day we went kayaking for 3 hours. I'd never kayaked before but I really really liked it. I'd do that again in a heartbeat. Other than that, we didn't really do too much touristy stuff. We had A LOT of beach time, which is really what I was hoping for. I got a nice brown layer of tan, which I'm certain will disappear within the next couple weeks. I got to eat a bunch of delicious seafood, which is a rare and expensive pleasure out here in landlocked Colorado. So yeah, overall the trip was great. I'm very glad that I went and I wish I could do it more often.

In other news, I got a job today. After looking for over a month, I finally landed something. I'll be working (temporarily) for Morgan Stanley as a consultant. It's just pushing paperwork I think, but I really truly need the money right now. It's far from my dream job and I'm very worried about settling for something I'm pretty certain I'll dislike, but it's just so damn tough out here, I couldn't find anything else. So I'm going to give it a shot and if it sucks, I'll quit and keep looking. Wish me luck on that front, it's the biggest stressor in my life right now.

Other than that stuff, not much else going on. I'm taking the CBEST on Saturday and then Eric and I are headed up to Vail. I've never been to Vail so that should be fun. Eric won us tickets to see Ben Harper there, who I adore. One of the best live shows ever, he's amazing. We are staying at a ski-in/ski-out resort, which I've also never done. I'll post some pictures of that for everyone.

And finally, I'll close with a lovely beach scene for those of you who won't get to enjoy such a treasure anytime soon. Auf wiedersehen.

long overdue update

It's been far too long, I know. I make no apologies, I just wasn't really feeling like posting anything. Now I'm back, but with very little to actually write about. Here's what has happened to me within the past 6 months (in no particular order):

-I quit my job at the end of December. I had to have surgery and my boss refused me the time off...good riddance.
-I had surgery on my uterus for fibroids and my ovaries for endometriosis and endometriomas which, so far, appears to be a success.
-I went home for Christmas and got to see almost all of my favorite people in the world.
-I am having a very difficult time finding another job (Boulder is a really tough town to find a job in).
-I am heading back east to go to Florida with my family this Friday. I'll be gone for 10 days and then return to resume the job search.
-I went to Seattle for Thanksgiving to visit Eric's grandparents and I really like it there. It's on my list for options of places to move.
-I decided I'm going to try again for graduate school, this time applying to several different schools and programs, aiming for starting in the Fall of '09.
-Eric got a new job with a company called GarageGames and he now works from home. Therefore, we are wide open to move anywhere, depending on where/if I get into grad school.
-I applied to substitute teach for Boulder County (which actually requires a hell of a lot of effort, not like in GA) and got screwed over for this school year. I won't be able to start until next school year.
-I registered to take the CBEST, the basic skills test for anyone wanting to obtain an education degree/career in California. I think I'm going to ace it.
-I've read about 20 books. It's fantastic to be reading regularly again.
-I've learned to knit, both with a loom and with knitting needles. I made about 7 hats and am at the tail end of my first scarf.
-I saw Wilco live for the first time. I was very very pleased.
-I joined Facebook.
-I have gotten really into yoga.


For 6 months of time passed, not much has really happened. I hope these fun facts have been enough to catch you up on my life. I will post pictures of Florida when I'm back, it should be a good time despite the fact that three 16 year old girls will be involved.
Kitty Cuteness:

It's been a crazy few weeks. Eric's parents were in town the last week in August. We had a good time with them, it was a really nice inaugural visit. We took them out to Rocky Mountain National Park of course. It was nice.

The next weekend was Labor Day. We had a party and way too many people showed up. It was pretty fun but our house is kinda little and there were like 30 people there.

The next weekend was our downtime and I honestly can't even remember what we did....oh yeah, we saw Built to Spill again and then played poker the next night.

The weekend after that was Monolith. It was great. Eric's sister Kristen came out and we camped and went to the show both days and it was really a ton of fun. The campsite was one we'd never been to but I would go back there in a heartbeat. It was beautiful. Here are some pics of my favorite bands there.
This was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I love their shows so it's a given that this one was incredible. My only complaint is that they had them go on at 5:45 and they were on the main stage. I think they make a much better small stage act than a big stage like Red Rocks, but it was still a really good performance.

This is Brian Jonestown Massacre, who I love, love, love. I was very pleased to see that Joel was back with them, he wasn't playing with them last time I saw them.





This is Art Brut, who I'd never seen before (or even really heard their stuff) but I really liked them. They were a lot of fun in that quirky British way, I loved it.






Next is the Flaming Lips show. If you've never seen the Flaming Lips (as I never had) you would be blown away, let me just tell you. If you ever get a chance, you must see it. It's a spectacle.




This past weekend, our only big plan was to go to Elitch Gardens, Denver's Six Flags type thing. It's right in downtown Denver so it's really pretty small, about a third the size of Six Flags over Georgia. It was pretty fun, we went with Heather and her new boyfriend, who had never ridden a roller coaster before.

Now I work every day this week before heading out to LA on Friday to hang out with Jee, Justin, Baran and Robin. Then on Monday Jee and I head back into Colorado and Ted will shortly follow. I have all of next week off of work, so it should be pretty fun. I'll update eventually.

i need to change my profile picture

I don't even look like that anymore! My hair is a different cut and color and I have different glasses!
So camping was...interesting. It did rain, hailed in fact. As I predicted, rain and tent-camping is not super fun. Everything gets muddy and wet and we were at 10,000 feet elevation so it was also cold. Yeah, not super fun. We did see moose (meese? mooses?) though. Our friends got to see 2, we only saw the one. It was cool.

I need a haircut. If I were at home, I'd post a picture of my current hair, but I'm at work so I can't. I think this may only happen to people with short to medium hair, but do you ever just wake up one day and your hair that was looking so good the day before is suddenly just letting you down? It no longer does anything you want it do and sure, it's possible you'll get another few days scattered hither and thither where it looks right again, but overall your haircut has run its course. That always happens to me. However, I am trying to grow my hair out, so I'm waiting. And I will start to use bobby pins.

Eric and I are going camping this weekend with our friends Ryan and Miki. We're camping in a state park called State Forest State Park which, for some reason, is wildly amusing to me. You really should check out that link, some of their phrases/sentences scare the crap out of me. I may not come back alive: "The ultimate in rugged Colorado," "Never Summer Range"...yikes. I'm excited though, I like camping. The best part is the fire, by far. Also, that park is best known for their moose sightings. We saw a baby moose in Rocky Moutain National Park and it was really cool. But when we talked to the ranger about it, he said moose are really aggressive. I think they're just plain cute. This will also more than likely be my first experience with Camping + Rain - Camper. We're going tent only, so let's hope it doesn't rain too terribly much.

Next weekend Eric's parents are coming out for their inaugural visit. Our house is a mess, but you'll all be pleased to know that I used my half workday on Wednesday to clean out our closet and scrub down the bathroom (except for the toilet, I can't bring myself to clean toilets...it makes me gag so Eric did that part). However, that half day is truly the only time I had/will have free until they come. Eric really wanted to camp this weekend, so there goes that. I'm working all day Monday-Thursday of next week and they're flying in on Friday. Oh well. Not my parents ;). They're staying at a hotel anyways, so there won't be too much face time with our place. It's also Eric's birthday next Saturday, so it's nice that they'll be in town for that.

Speaking of birthdays, I had a lovely birthday. I got a lot of awesome presents: Eric got me a really cool ceramic coffee mug that he found in an art store, a purse from the same art store, an American Apparel hoodie (they're the best hoodies ever) and a really huge internal hard drive for my mac. Heather got me some beautiful stationary (which I've been asking for). Miki and Ryan got me a couple books from their favorite Japanese author (translated of course). My mom got me an awesome outfit from JCrew (seen here in heather graphite/muslin and here in deep amber). It's the first year that it's dawned on me that I could just send her links to exactly what I want and she will get it for me! None of her guessing my fashion tastes or anything, just getting exactly what I want! I loved it, it was such a pleasant surprise. So yeah, I'm pretty sure that's all I got. But it was good stuff.
That's it for me, have a good weekend and wish me luck to not get rained on while being attacked by a moose!

2.5 months later

I haven't really had much to say in the last few months. I still don't really have much to say, but I figured the silence has lasted too long. I'm trying to think of important things that have happened in the last 2.5 months...I've been working a lot. There was a point where I was completely ready to quit my job and I went out and put in applications at restaurants around Boulder. Nothing came of that, so I'm still here at the chiropractor's office and recently things haven't been so bad. My new, improved plan is to hold out until the middle of December, quit my job, go home for Christmas and then have surgery in January, after which I will have a good 4 non-drugged-up weeks to find another job. We'll see how that goes.
In other good news, Jee is coming back to the states for a few weeks. I'm really excited to see her. Combined with her visit will be my first journey to LA, where Justin lives and Jee is flying into. I'll head out there (by my lonesome, Eric couldn't take the time off) for a long weekend and then she'll come back here to CO with me, shortly followed by Ted (flying in from San Fran for the week). It's exciting to see almost all of my best friends in one week's time.
What else...today's my birthday. I'm 25 years old, a quarter century. I like birthdays, but I'm working all day for this one. I only have to work 4 hours tomorrow though, so that's a small consolation. No plans that I'm aware of, as of yet. Eric is planning something I think. So far I've gotten a really cool ceramic coffee mug from Eric. And we'll go out to dinner tonight.
Here's a list of some stuff that's happened since I last posted:
-Baran left town a week ago for San Diego. Godspeed.
-We went camping at Lake Carter, which was beautiful.
-We've done a fair amount of hiking, including a Foothills hike, which we'd yet to do even though we live 5 minutes from them.
-We visited Lakeside Amusement Park for my friend Case's birthday. It was fun but there are too many spinny rides.
-Our outside kitties got new homes.
-We went to Virginia/Washington DC for Eric's cousin's wedding.
That's all I can think of. It's been a pretty uneventful summer, despite the fact that it's felt like a madhouse.

back

So we made it home. The travel went relatively well and the trip itself was great. We learned a lot about Italy and ourselves. I'm having a really hard time just telling people how it went, I mean it was two whole weeks, that's really hard to summarize. I'll give a brief description of the entire trip and if anyone has any questions besides what I've said, I'll address those as well.
We flew out on time for Munich. Eric and I got the two very middle seats on the plane. International flights are generally set up like this:

ab defg jk

We were E and F. A little cramped, yes, but Lufthansa has a remarkable amount of leg room and the guy to my right (G) was very courteous. The flight to Munich took about 9 hours and Eric and I didn't sleep at all. From Munich we went through passport control and then headed on to Rome. Our car was there to pick us up and bring us right to the hotel. Not a very impressive room, as you'll see in the pics, but we soon discovered that it was a stone's throw from the Pantheon. Lovely. Rome was definitely one of my favorite places for the trip. We saw so many amazing things that you see pictures of and hear about your whole life, but I was there, I touched them and sat on one of the columns of the Pantheon and went into the Coloseum and walked the streets of the Palantine and the capital of ancient Rome. It was really an incredibly modern city there, mixed in with all of those ancient sites. I liked Rome a lot.
From there we took the train into Naples (Napoli) and then connected on to Sant'Agnello, the small town right outside of Sorrento where we were staying. The entire travel time took about 4 hours from hotel door to hotel door. Our Sant'Agnello hotel was a remarkable improvement, with a lemon grove right outside our window. We did a lot of sightseeing there, had a beer out on the terrace by the sea when we first arrived. The next day we went to Pompei. We absolutely loved it, but let me tell you, as a tourist attraction, it's a tough one. I think it would take the greater part of a day to actually get through the entire city. We were there for about 3 hours walking around and then we'd had our fill. Definitely check out the pictures from Pompei and if you ever make it to Italy, go there. Very interesting stuff. That night we went out to Sorrento proper. It wasn't that great. Only really different from Sant'Agnello in that it was much more loud and crowded. The next morning we went out to Capri on the hydrofoil. When we got there, we took a boat tour around the entire island. It was beautiful. Then we went to the other side, Anacapri, and took a chair lift to the very top and saw some amazing views. The next day we explored Sorrento and Sant'Agnello just a bit more before heading on to Cortona.
We took the train back to Naples for our connection and almost missed the very last train out there, but had a stroke of luck and caught it with about 10 minutes to spare. Travel time from hotel to hotel was a little over 5 hours this time. Our hotel in Cortona was very nice, but very expensive. Luckily we only stayed there for 2 nights. On the other hand, Cortona was one of my favorite places, so maybe not so luckily. Cortona is a hilltown in Tuscany that afforded us gorgeous views of the Tuscan countryside. We took a ton of pictures of the views there, so be sure to check those out. There were also a couple great museums in Cortona that we really enjoyed, not to mention the food...
A couple days later, we headed back to the train to set out for Firenze (Florence). Total travel time was only about 2 hours this time from hotel to hotel. Our hotel in Florence was by far my favorite and a good value to boot! We were about 5 steps away from the Duomo and the owner was crazy nice. Eric wasn't the biggest fan of Florence but I loved it. So many beautiful buildings and sculptures just out there for all to see. The Uffizi Gallery didn't impress us much, we were kinda bored, but I loved the Accadamia (where David is). The sculptures there are just downright inspiring and David was everything I thought it would be. Incredible. There is also great shopping in Florence and that's where I ended up buying a lot of my souveneirs. I bought a leather purse and a leather jacket, along with a lot of jewelry. I got a cold the second to last night we were there and I was kinda out of commission (aside from some light shopping/lunch/dinner) for our last day in Italy. It was kind of a bummer, but Eric and I were both completely pooped by this time, so in a way it worked out. We headed to the Firenze airport around 4:30 am and when we got there, it wasn't opened yet. Eventually our flight headed out almost on time and we connected in Munich again, got into Denver, went through customs and headed home.
It was a wonderful trip. Check out the pics and let me know if you have any questions on stuff I didn't cover. Grazie!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eandk (Just so you know, the photos are posted backwards for some reason, from the end of the trip to the beginning. If you want to see them in the correct order, I'd start from the last page and go backwards)