Thursday, March 18, 2010

New job!

So I have a WHOLE LOT OF STUFF to tell you about my new job. But it will have to wait. Basically, I have been getting up at 6:30 am to get to my new job...and it sucks. The job is awesome, but getting up that early, when it's still dark outside, is not.

But yeah, so much exciting stuff to talk about, but I am going to bed now. Eventually, I will post all about the new job. But not right now. Or tomorrow. Or Saturday. Or Sunday.

I'm busy! Sheesh.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

So much!

I feel like a lot of stuff has been happening lately, but I think it's more that the ball is rolling on change, not that change is actually happening yet.

I only have two more shifts at Borders, which I am very excited about. I work Sunday and Wednesday and that is it there.

Friday, March 12th, is my first day at Living Classrooms. I'm not sure what the schedule is going to look like, but I am very happy to be stepping away from retail. Granted, I'll be keeping my job at Teavana for now, but I'll only be there one to two days a week while we are doing spring training.

Once summertime hits, I should be pretty busy with Living Classrooms. We'll be going on 9 day trips, as well as the normal day trips.


I don't have much in the way of pictures to post. I haven't been able to find the cord for my camera, so I have mostly just been using my iPhone. It takes good pictures if there is enough light, but the rest of the time, they are quite blurry and grainy. Apparently Apple needs to come out with an iPhone Flash!

Last Friday was Chris Jordan's Birthday party. He turned 25 on Thursday, so we went out to celebrate on Friday. We started the night at Applebee's drinking random shots and sangria, then headed back to Chris' for copious amounts of alcohol. To celebrate the fact that he is a butcher, I made special cupcakes, just for him. Sorry my picture's not so great. Like I said, the iPhone is not so great in anything other than bright light.

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I made chocolate stout cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting and little fondant cuts of meat on top! He LOVED them, so I was quite happy.

The next step will be a true fondant cake, instead of cupcakes. I'll be doing one for Ariana's birthday, which is in a couple of weeks. I already have the design picked out, and I think she'll love it. I will try to have better pictures of it!


Saturday night, after I got off work, CJ went to hang out with his buddies, and I joined Ariana, Heather, Mary and a bunch of Ariana's VetCentric co-workers for a Madonna vs. Prince vs. Michael Jackson DANCE OFF at the ottobar in Baltimore. It was a lot of fun to actually go out clubbing in the city. I feel sort of lame for living so close to a major city and not taking advantage of it! I didn't stay super late Saturday, since we partied Friday night and I had to open Saturday, and again on Sunday, but it was still fun to get my dance on with a big group of people I sort of knew (as opposed to total strangers).

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Once again, sorry for the crappy picture. I didn't take this one though, obviously. Rob took it, so blame him for the blurriness. There may have been drinking involved though.

In other news: BETH IS HERE!

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Beth was my co-worker from this summer. We spent many an early morning together, freezing our butts off, counting barnacles. She's living in Laurel, MD for the next few months for a US Fish and Wildlife internship. I'm super excited to have her here. Last week, we went to Baltimore and wandered around Inner Harbor, Fells Point, and then went to Security Square Mall. It was definitely an adventure.

The mall was super ghetto, but we shopped at Old Navy, where we tried on sunglasses(hence the picture), and I bought a $3 pair for being out on the boat. I also found a $5 McDonald's giftcard on the ground. We also went to the Asian market that was in the mall. Yes, an Asian market in the mall...it's a weird place. I bought durian flavored popsicles, which taste like Emmenthaler cheese. When we left, they gave me a 200 count package of napkins to thank me for my patronage. All in all, full of LOLS.


Tonight, I am going to a tapas place in Baltimore with Chris. He mentioned something about cupcakes and cocktails, which sounds like a FANTASTIC combination. I told Heather that, if it's awesome, we might need to make a weekly thing of it.

Here's 'til next time, bloggers!

Book reviews

Here's what I have read lately:

The River King's Road

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Reminiscent of George RR Martin's series "A Song of Ice and Fire", this book brings to life a myriad of realistic, like-able characters in a medieval, war-torn setting. This books depends a little more heavily on magic than Martin's series, but does so without making light of the character's struggles, or making the story less interesting. The creation of the setting and history of the realm is well done, and makes me want to read more about it, and the characters introduced in the book.



Born Under a Million Shadows

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Born Under A Million Shadows was a well written, and interesting account of war-torn Afghanistan. Using the narrative voice of a young boy made the story accessible to a wide audience, and gives an uncomplicated and humorous view of the events in the story. Over all, I really enjoyed the story, but felt that the ending was too sudden and too happy; unrealistically so. It was a very happy ending, but I wanted to know more, and felt that, it focused too much on giving everyone a fairytale ending, however unlikely that may be.


Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

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Within the first five minutes of reading this book, I was wiping tears from my eyes. Heartfelt, eye-opening and raw, this story is great for all ages.

The main character is a little girl with all sorts of physical limitations, but no mental limitations, in fact, she's incredibly smart, she just has no way to share it, until she gets a computer to speak for her. This story makes clear the frustrations that come with a physical disability, and the strength of character it takes to overcome those disabilities.