Day #9084 - Dear June

Inspired by EmilieOfNewGloom's Letters to July and the also popular Document Your Life project, I've decided that after a year of doing favorite things videos every month I'd instead try making a video-letter to the month that has just past.

Day #7984 - Oh me-o, Oh my-oh, Why are we in Ohio?

Well readers, after many many hours in the car today, I am back to home sweet home in Schaumburg. Yesterday was tubing down a lazy river with the family in Tennessee followed by dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.( heck yes, Forrest Gump!! And the food was really good!) and walking around Gatlinburg. Mom and I hit the road bright and early today and I am very much looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. The ride home was mostly uneventful except for the fact that we had pretty much no idea where we were going. The route that the GPS had us take going to Tennessee was not the same one it had us use to get home. We were driving along through Kentucky, crossed the state line into Indiana, and then ten minutes later crossed another state line into Ohio before we eventually got back to Indiana. A little unnerving, but we arrived back home safe and sound.

Almost done with Eat Pray Love - I seriously can't put it down!

The next few days will be filled with working out, laundry, going over articles, and finishing my paper before heading down to school on Wednesday. But more on all of that later - I am positively beat tonight. Keep it classy, readership =)

Day #7982 - Love All. Serve All. Save the Planet.

Happy New Month! Sometimes I think that January gets all the new month glory just because it's a new year. So here's to you, July! Live it up until the 4th and then live it up some more!

Today was my cousin's wedding in Gatlinburg. Or maybe it was Pigeon Forge. I'm not quite sure. Anyway, she looked beautiful and happy - a very quaint ceremony. It's been nice the last couple of days getting to see family that I haven't seen in a few years.

So the ceremony was at 2, then there was a short reception and we were back to our hotel by 5:30ish. I got to break in my brand new journal (old school writing felt so good!) before Mom and I headed back into town for dinner. She correctly predicted where I'd want to eat - the Hard Rock Cafe. Hard Rock is kind of my thing - any time I am traveling and find out that there is one nearby, I have to visit (the only exceptions being Rome and Venice because I was studying abroad in Italy and wanted to eat as much Italian food as possible). Even when I went to St. Louis for spring break with my friend Gail, we had dinner at HRC. I love looking at the old memorabilia from rockers past and re-reading the story about the original London restaurant where the collecting all started. It was nice being out with my mom. Then we came back to the hotel, hung out with my mom's aunt and uncle who came for the wedding, and now I'm just chilling in bed watching 27 Dresses on tv. All in all, a pretty good day I'd say.

So that's all from my corner of the universe :o)

Day #7981 Continued - Dollywood?

Well, after 11 hours of driving through Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, my mom and I have finally arrived in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Apparently Dollywood is nearby, but unfortunately I don't think we will have the time to take that in on this particular trip. The drive went fine, nothing too crazy or anything. I think the most "exciting" parts were when we were about halfway through Indiana and suddenly there were hills and then I looked at my cell phone a few hours later and realized that we had in fact changed time zones. I don't know why, but for some reason that hadn't occurred to either of us Tennessee was not only south of Schaumburg, but also far enough east where the time would change too.

I'm already about one-third of the way through "Eat Pray Love" and am really enjoying it so far, though it could largely due to the fact that the first part of the woman's journey takes place in Italy so it was making me homesick for Verona and really good pizza. But in a good way!

Anyway, we're here. I've promised to be on my best behavior and at least attempt to act like, you know, a responsible and respectable young lady. Yeah, I'm laughing on the inside, too...

Day #7981 - Really, really early

Awake.

It's bizarre - I can wake up and actually get up when my alarm goes off at 4:30am, yet on normal days when it goes off at 7:30, I sleep through it until 9.

Day #7980 - On the Road Again

Not going to lie, I wasn't going to blog tonight, but I like that today's day number is at a nice, round, divisible-by-ten state. Yeah...welcome to the inner workings of my mind.

Today was pretty meh. Went out to St. Charles to get my hair trimmed up for the first time since January. Let me tell you, it's almost frightening how slowly my hair grows. That was followed by a trip to Borders, coming home and taking notes for my essay, and then packing for the road trip I will be starting in roughly six hours. Woooooot. So not the most action packed of days, but I'll take it.

In other news, I rediscovered both my high school blog as well as my blog from my early years of college. Wow. I'm not even sure that I would have been friends with me, so to anyone who was, even if only for a little while, my sincere thanks. I'd like to think I've grown up since then and while my primary forms of humorous expression still seem to be sarcasm and self deprecation, at least now I'm saying it only when it's actually funny to people other than just me.

One thing I've been able to rekindle this summer already is my love of reading books that are not assigned for homework, but are just fun. I recently finished rereading the novel Austenland (a great read for any fellow Jane Austen addicts out there like myself) and started rereading Pride & Prejudice in the car to St. Charles. However, P&P isn't exactly roadtrip reading, so while I was at Borders I bought the memoir Eat Pray Love - total chick book, but I've heard wonderful things about it. I've always loved biographies and memoirs, and as a bonus, this woman was traveling - she lived in Italy for four months, then India for another four, then spent the remainder of the year in Bali. I'm feeling good about this book.

Well, I should really get to bed. Though I am absolutely a morning person, waking up at 4:30 is still really, really early...

Day #7286 - They Built It, So I Came

So I know I haven't written here in a while, but I have two reasons for that: I've either been incredibly busy and therefore haven't had time OR things have been so boring that there's nothing to say. However, the past few days have been pretty memorable.

The week itself was pretty standard - Mom finished up school on Thursday, I worked more on getting stuff for the apartment and finishing up my shopping for recruitment. The other night we watched Sweeney Todd as a family, which none of us had ever seen before - wow. Quite, quite bloody and incredibly sad, but really interesting and well done. Oh theatre! I also had a shopping and baseball day with Michele which was nice - the two of us haven't really gotten to hang out just the two of us much this summer.

Yesterday, Mom, Dad, Steven and I went on a mini-roadtrip. On our way to Iowa, we stopped in Freeport, IL (Home of the Freeport High School Fighting Pretzels) and saw Little Cubs Field. Basically it's a miniature-Wrigley Field, complete with ivy and a scoreboard. It was pretty cool. We continued on to Galena where we walked around the town and saw President Grant's home. After spending the night in Iowa, we woke up bright and early to go play some baseball on the Field of Dreams in Dyersville. Wow. That was just plain cool. I'm not the brainest girl in the world especially when it comes to sports. I rarely understand all the rules, but I can appreciate and enjoy watching the game. I actually made some decent contact with the ball when I was up to bat, roamed around in the corn, and saw the big white farm house. It was such simple fun and I couldn't have been happier just to PLAY. We drove home after that, stopping in Dickeyville to see a fake grotto and then Pitosi to a micro-brewery. All in all, a very nice little trip.

Oh, and most people know that I'm a lover of storms. However I'm not going to lie, tonight's storms freaked me out. I don't like it when it's quite this close haha. However, rain usually means I'll sleep well tonight, and I'm all for that :o)