If only they were smiling...

Getting stuff up on the walls

A week ago today, I got the keys to my new place. It already feels like home and I love it!

Finally!

Well, thats one way to unpack

This afternoon I decided that I was tired of looking at boxes, so I emptied most of them. A lot of things found homes on shelves, but a fair number ended up stacked in various piles. But hey, at least all the big boxes are gone!

She approves!

Can't wait to sit out here!

I have a table! And chairs!

With a HUGE amount of help from Alex, Ando, and Matt, we moved all of my big stuff to the new place. Thanks to my Mom and her master interior design skills, its really starting to feel like my own place with my own style. There are still tons of boxes to be unpacked, but I am loving how its all coming together!

In addition to being a rockstar moving crew, Ando even gave me a table so now I have a place to eat! My Mom and I found these chairs yesterday at Crate and Barrel outlet and I am seriously in love with them. It annoys the heck out of my brothers that there are two orange chairs, but I think it is fun and funky and awesome. And hey, I'm a designer, so things should be a little edgy and abnormal :-)

Thanks again to everyone (including those not mentioned) for their help!

New digs

A balcony AND a nice view?! Love it!

Its official!

Got my keys and some adorable coasters from my mom, so its all official now! I made a couple of trips between the two houses moving some small stuff, but somehow I think the boxes are reproducing because there are more every time I look! A couple more small loads tomorrow, big stuff on Saturday, then sleeping there Saturday night! YAY!!!

Creative packing

It turns out chunky necklaces pack well into a shoe rack. If it goes as planned, they won't all be in a giant knot when I unpack at the new place!

S'mores

There is officially no need to ever go camping again. Megan got Veronika this awesome s'mores kit for her birthday and V let us borrow it tonight for our dessert. I'm already looking forward to the next time we get to use it!

Just a few more days!

Delicious surprise

Soccer games at 8:30 am are never desirable, but add to that the gross rain and the fact that we barely had enough people to play, and I was in need of a little boost after the game. When I got back to my house I found this lovely bag from my Dad and it was just what I needed. Donuts have never tasted so delicious!

Thanks Dad!

Books are packed

Ignore the dust and we'll call it progress.

Insightful

Note to self:

Even if you are SURE the self-tanning lotion has dried, you still probably shouldn't sleep with your watch on...

On the bright side, at least I know its working and helping to get rid of my neon glow!

Time to update

I don't know where, but my new place will definitely have a photo wall with new pictures!

Happy birthday Mom!

We love you!

Discovery Flyover

I took this while waiting to see the space shuttle Discovery fly over the Potomac.

It was AWESOME. Seeing it, being so close, everything was just amazing! These are a couple of my favorite pictures from my real camera.

Hokie Pride

Its a bit hard to see, but they are all decked out in VT gear.

It doesn't seem possible that it has been 5 years already. Once a hokie, always a hokie.

View from my bed

90 minutes of soccer at 9 am. 50 minutes of hockey at 5 pm. Lots of sorting and packing (until I ran out of boxes) and laundry in between. Needless to say, it was a very busy day!

Tired came and slapped me in the face around 7:30 tonight. While trying to convince myself that 7:30 is just too early to go to bed, I was looking at the fan and realized I didn't take any pictures today. And thus you have today's photo of the day.

Early birthday

Megan will be out of town for Veronika's birthday and I won't be able to make it to her birthday brunch, so we decided to celebrate it early. Megan made her famous chocolate cake and I got to have some fun with the yellow icing. It was a great pre-birthday celebration!

Packing Progress

Linoleum block

I sorted through some old art tonight while watching the Caps game and found this from 10th grade.

T-minus two weeks until I get the keys to my new place!

My room

I'm going to miss these orange walls when I move.

Strongest chick in town

Its been a long time since I gave Liesl's loyal fans an update, so here it is:

A couple weeks ago she had an MRI which showed that her airway was stable, but the cyst was disfiguring it and they wanted to do another round of sclerotherapy asap. She went to the hospital this morning and had the procedure done, and the doctors were able to drain a significant amount of fluid. When she woke up she was a bit surly, but thats to be expected after being knocked out, intubated, and having super strong chemicals injected into your neck. (Older patients who have this procedure report a burning sensation and general discomfort.)

There is typically some pretty heavy swelling for the days or weeks following the procedure, so we won't see any immediate results. She is back home now and didn't have to go inpatient, which is a bit of a miracle considering how close it was to her airway! The worst of the swelling is expected in the days immediately following the procedure, so her posse will be walking on egg shells and keeping an extra close eye on her this week. 

At the end of the day, she is a rockstar and takes it all in stride. I hope I can be like her one day!

Cherry yogurt... gross!

I am a big fan of the little 100 calorie pack yogurts that have granola packaged with the yogurt for the ultimate in lazy, healthy eating. When I realized Harris Teeter sells the full size yogurt cup for 50 cents AND I knew I had granola in my cabinet, I decided to give it a whirl. So far most have been edible, but cherry was just gross!

I thought I would like it because up until now, I have had good experience with cherry flavored things... maraschino cherries, cherry gummies, cherry capri sun, cherry jolly ranchers, the list goes on.

Realization: I think I only like things with fake cherry flavor.

Old Town

Happy Easter!

I haven't had fun dip in ages, and I particularly liked that it wished me a happy Easter. The watermelon flavor was a bit much, but I just can't say no to a stick of sugar dipped in more sugar!

My job for Easter brunch was to bake and bring biscuits to my parents. Carter even told me which kind to get from the freezer section, so this seemed like a fool-proof plan. WRONG. I got up to bake them this morning (by bake, I just mean put them on a tray and throw them in the oven) and the directions told me to preheat the oven BETWEEN 350 and 400 degrees. WHAT?! Directions are not supposed to give me a range! Just tell me exactly what temperature to preheat the oven to! I don't know if my oven runs hot... I just know it cooks things when I tell it the temperature on the box. I finally settled on 375 and thought I had made it through the tough part. WRONG AGAIN. The cooking time: 15 to 20 minutes. SERIOUSLY?! Clearly whoever wrote these directions has never met someone with my level of cooking incompetency and they should find a more suitable career path, perhaps writing horoscopes or messages in fortune cookies. Directions are supposed to make things easy, not make your brain do a major workout before 9 am! In the end they turned out ok and I wasn't fired from biscuit duty for the rest of my life, so we will count it as a success. And next time I will choose my biscuits more wisely based on which ones have better directions!

I've got a couple scarves...

Allergy season

I managed to hold out longer than most people, but my time has come and I am powerless over my allergies. Not completely powerless, but the zyrtec-d, flonase, and gallons upon gallons of water have made no difference to my throat.

The timing is particularly annoying for me... No, not because it is Easter this weekend, but because I did a hard workout at the gym on Wednesday night and my abs are killing me! What do allergies and abs have to do with one another? Well, my throat hurts and is making me cough, but coughing makes my abs hurt, so I'm stuck in a bad cycle. I have been planning on going to another kickboxing class tomorrow, but I think breathing (without coughing) is generally a prerequisite. Come on allergy meds, work some magic here! This motivation won't last forever!

Grown-up food

I had lunch with a good friend today and when our food came, I had to pause and marvel at my grown up food choice (pulled chicken salad). Typically when going out to eat I look for something along the lines of chicken fingers, grilled cheese, quesadilla, pasta or pizza (i.e. all things typically found on the kids menu). Today I made an attempt at acting my age... even if it was only for lunch!

Bummer

When I pulled my iPod out of my sports bag tonight, I was bummed to find it in this condition. Its totally and completely my fault though... I kept it in the same pocket as my combination lock (and everything else) and use that bag for hockey, soccer, and the gym. During one of the many times I threw my bag on the ground, I suspect the iPod ended up on the losing end of a collision with the lock. Its not pretty, but at least is still works!

Not healthy eating

Chocolate-dipped strawberry creme Peep. Yes, it is as intense as it sounds.

An attempt at eating healthy

Its not cheese pizza, but I guess it was edible enough.

Sounds so easy

Attempting Kickboxing...

This morning I went to the gym and tested out a class called Body Combat, which I think is just a fancy name for kickboxing. It was a great class, but HOLY COW, I don't think I will be able to move tomorrow. Being sore all day tomorrow will at least remind that I got a good workout in today!

Just a couple wires...

Ok, 35 to be exact, 13 of which were on my head. Among the other leads were 4 for the EKG, 4 on my legs, 2 bands to measure breathing, 1 thing that could tell what direction I was facing, an oxygen-ish thing in my nose that measured the air I was exhaling, a snoring microphone attached to my jaw, pulse-ox on my finger, plus the others that I already forgot.

It wasn't AS annoying to sleep as I expected with all those wires attached to me, but it was a pretty restless night. But no more restless than a usual restless night in my own bed, so hopefully they got some good data. The technician was awesome and answered all of my questions, and this morning he could see when I was in a light enough stage of sleep that it would be easy for me to wake up. And it was. HOW COOL IS THAT?! Based on every other day this week, I should have been exhausted and falling asleep on my desk, but I wasn't... Not to be misleading, I did have some caffeine and felt tired.

There was a gentleman in his 50's or so getting all wired up at the same time, and he seemed pretty bland. While I was asking a million questions, he sat there like a bump on a log and didn't seem the slightest bit interested in it. When I looked at him, all I could think was "wow, you're life must be pretty boring. I'm glad I'm not you!"

As the technician was leaving the room last night, he asked if I had any other questions. I said yes, and asked how he got into this field. Apparently that wasn't what he was expecting, but he found it entertaining nonetheless and answered my question.

Unofficial results from the technician (who is not a doctor) were that my legs twitch and I occasionally clench my jaw. Everyone always jokes about having restless leg syndrome when they feel the need to get up and walk around, but I may actually have it! And if so, thats something that (I think) can be easily treated so I can maybe get restful sleep! I'll get the official results from my doctor next Friday, and of course I will share them with the world.

Oh, and the technician could tell by my brain waves that I didn't dream (or at least I wouldn't be able to recall any), and he was 100% correct. SO COOL!

Final interesting fact: of all the leads on my head, there were 2 that were special and were the "command centers". If either of those came off, the computer wouldn't be able to see any of the data from that entire hemisphere of my brain, even though all of the other ones were still connected. And if a non-command center one came off, it would just lose connection with that particular part. Now that I'm thinking about it, its a bit like an on/off switch in a room with several lights. The switch has to be on to get any light, and its possible for a single bulb to burn out while maintaining the other lights. This stuff is FASCINATING!

Sleep study tonight!

I'm having a sleep study done tonight so we can hopefully figure out why I am always so tired... I didn't sleep at all growing up (no joke... just ask my mom!) and now I get more than enough sleep but wake up exhausted. I'm excited by the idea of hopefully having restful sleep someday, but I'm even more excited to see what they attach to me and what they measure and all the nerdy medical details... the technician has probably never had as many questions as I plan on asking!

Tater-versary!

I met Megan at soccer practice on the last Wednesday in March 2011, and I started my new job at Knowland (where Megan already worked) that Friday. Ironically, we had practice tonight (the last Wednesday of the month) and it was even at the same field. Obviously we have become very good friends over the last 52 weeks and even share a brain... scary thought, I know!

Here's to finding one of your best friends by the most incredible circumstances!

(Its a bummer that the picture came out a little blurry, but our awesome soccer photo pose makes up for it.)

Dessert

Megan's dessert was way better than my dinner.

Good advice

Happy (early) birthday, Megan!

Tonight we celebrated Megan's birthday at Comet Ping Pong in DC and had a great time. Good food (pizza), fun games (of ping pong), and lots of laughter made for the perfect evening!

Rough Life

The foot really makes the picture.

Tasted better in my head

Fraps seem to be hit or miss for me, and today was a miss. While it was a bit of a letdown, my wallet appreciates that I won't crave it again for a while!

Of COURSE we have the same one

Turns out, Megan and I share a mind AND good taste in soccer balls!