Amanda 1's Visit, Part 1

I realize this happened like a week ago, but it was also my first week of school. YEAH SCHOOL!! So last Friday, Amanda 1 was arriving for a visit. Her plane was supposed to land at like 10:20 pm CST, which is already well past my bedtime. BUT....her plane was delayed and so she actually landed at 12:05 am Saturday morning which is SOOPER DOOPER past my bedtime. Not to mention there was a crazy traffic jam at the airport baggage claim. Where were cops enforcing the "pick up only. Do not stop and park" thing?

The next morning we got up and like any normal person would do on a Saturday morning, we went to the liquor store. I didn't have ANY wine on my wine rack which is absolutely unheard of. We arrived at Big Top liquors and discovered that it was a discount liquor store. Have you ever been to a liquor store that has a 50% off clearance bin? Bargain shopping and wine?!?! How did you know it's what I've always wanted? Obviously we had to buy like kinda a lot of stuff.
See the yellow stickers on some of the bottles? Those were 50% off!

Then we went to the cupcake shop, Cupcake. We had lunch there too. I had a fantastic black bean burger. We bought cupcakes, of course. You can't go to a cupcake store and NOT buy cupcakes unless you're a communist.

Starting in the upper left corner and going clockwise, those are Amaretto (with actual Amaretto in it), Razz-ma-tazz, Treehugger, and Lemon Raspberry. All pretty delicious. SN: If you come visit me, you will get to go to the cupcake store too because I want to try all of their cupcakes! That's not a bribe. It's just a fact. We returned back to my apartment and watched the neverending Notre Dame football game from hell. The bandaid method apparently applies for football games too. Rather than just drag out the pain, just do it all at once and get it over with. My parents actually left the game early. UNHEARD OF. I told them if Notre Dame had comeback and pulled out a win that they wouldn't be able to go to any games the entire season. We made a pizza and wings in the oven, set off the smoke detector, broke the smoke detector, watched more football, and went to bed.

I'll probably blog Day 2 (and possibly Day 3) tomorrow because I actually don't have that much homework this weekend.

Fantastic Savings

Today on campus they were giving out free student planners that had lots of coupons in the back. Here's my favorite ones.

"$50 Brazilian Waxing: Quick, Professional, and Pain Free" -- Now, I've never had Brazilian Waxing, but I can't imagine that it's truly pain free.
"Free Pint of Glueck's Beer. Come Party where your parents met." --Not really a selling point for me.
"All Glass Pipes Buy One, Get One Free at Piecemakers. Also selling hookahs, grinders, and scales." AND...
"20%off Glass Pipes at Happy Buddha. Also selling, Vaporizers, detoxifiers and blunt wraps." --Come on. Like any of us don't know what these stores REALLY are.
"Free Bag of Clay at Continental Clay Company." --I don't even know what to say about a free bag of clay.
"Free Pregnancy Test at First Care Pregnancy Center." -- Now that's a deal.
"Free shot of Tequila with Valid ID." -- Possibly the cause of the need for the free pregnancy test.
"$25 off Carry Permit Classes and $3 Off Mace at Koscielski's Guns & Ammo." --what a wide variety of coupon offerings!

So many good deals! Where do I even begin!

My New Winter Coat

I'm in the market for a new winter coat because if you didn't know it gets hella cold in Minnesota. I like to look at the negative reviews for products because I want to see what the potential issues could be to determine whether they might be a big deal or if the people are just idiots. I came across this one and thought it was worthy for blogging. My snarky remarks are in parens.

"Just to help you make a good purchasing decision: I'm 5'7" and 140 lbs. I'm proportionally sized. (a. I'm not sure what proportionally sized is. Are you pear shaped? apple? box? what? and b. No woman EVER thinks they are proportionally sized.)

I was soooo looking forward to getting the black jacket. (It's a coat. how much anticipation could there really be?) It's not black. Repeat: It's not black. (I think I comprehended what you were getting at the first time). It's gun metal gray.

I have a black jacket and held this one up to it and asked my husband 'does this look black?' And he answered 'no, it's gray.' (Lemme picture this. You are freaking out because your black jacket is not black and shockingly, your husband agrees with you? Smart man.)

I see why people are saying the arms are too short. They are on the short side, but if the jacket had been black I would've tolerated it. (A quarter of my arms freezing? ok. GUN METAL GRAY???? UNACCEPTABLE!)

Overall the medium was a bit too snug. (Maybe your not as proportionally sized as you thought.) Just slightly on the tight side. And when I zipped it all the way to my mouth area and put on the hood it really was too tight. I looked sausagy and silly. (It's a parka! If I zip it the whole way up and put the hood on, I expect to look sausagy and silly.) Not attractive at all. (Note to self: Don't go picking up guys in my new parka.)

I'm actually feeling so annoyed that I'm calling LLBean next and asking them to send me a free return label. (Take that, LLBean!)

It just wastes everybody's time to call a gray jacket, black. (This is a little dramatic. I mean, you just spent time writing this ridiculous complaint. How valuable is time to you?)

On the plus side: it does seem like a warm (gun metal gray) jacket with plenty of (gun metal gray) pockets which is why I wanted it in the first place (in black not GUN METAL GRAY)."

The Minnesota State Fair

Yesterday, I went to the state fair. I had an awesome time though there weren't any swimming pigs like at the Dixie Classic Fair. I also would recommend not going into the Miracle of Birth center if something (like a cow) is actually giving birth. ::shudder::
Ok, now onto fair show and tell.

Will you look at all those people? It was absolutely packed with wall to wall people.
Fried Milky Way. First of all, will you look at how sharp that stick is? As I was eating it I kept getting bumped into and was scared that it was going to pierce through the roof of my mouth and into my brain. It was delicious though. Better than the fried Reese's that I had last year. The chocolate and nougat and caramel were all warm and melty. Only complaint was that it was too much. I needed like a snack size fried Milky Way.

Dole Whip Float. I've mentioned during previous Disney posts how much I love Dole Whip Floats...just put in "Dole" at the top search box to see my previous posts. I would seriously give up a finger (and possibly multiple fingers) if I could gain regular access to Dole Whip Floats.

Fried Alligator. In hindsight, I'd skip this. It's a good conversation piece, but it doesn't really taste like much other than the breading and the barbecue sauce that I was dipping it in. It was also really chewy which just wasn't that great.

BUT...it did come on a bed of alligator shaped fries.

Did I mention that there were two somewhat creepy gopher mascots name Fairborn and Fairchild wandering around?

TC-ers Love Their Bike Paths

Is this not the most ridiculous bike path intersection you have ever seen!!

Midwestern Graffiti?

The University of Minnesota has the weirdest bathroom stall graffiti that I have ever seen. Normally you expect to see so and so is a bitch or EB hearts RS or whatever, but at the U of M it's the most uplifting graffiti I have ever seen. I leave the bathroom with higher self esteem. My first run in with it I thought was a fluke. There was a poster on the wall for some sexual assault support hot line and people had written things all over it. It said things like "you are amazing. Don't let anyone make you feel differently" and "stand strong. you are not alone." and a quote from Psalms. Like I said I thought it was just a one time occasion, but then today in the bathroom there are things scratched into the paint on the wall. "I lost it, but found myself." "My roommate is an ignorant racist. Please pray for her." "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." Seriously, who are these good meaning people defacing property?

All the Pictures I Meant to Post But Couldn't

Finally, I have transferred all my pictures from my camera to my computer, so here's all those pictures that I had previously wanted to post but couldn't.

This is my leftover sushi from last sushi at Ichiban. Going down the left hand side, those are the Fiesta Roll, Fire Island Roll, Tiger Roll, and Salem Roll (my fave). Look how good those look. I really need to find a sushi place in St. Paul. Also, look how excellently they are packed. Good job, Andy. (That has Army training written all over it.)

Zoe's chicken pot pie. Not the Pennsylvania version of pot pie. The rest of the world version of pot pie. My mouth is watering just looking at that thing. That's like a warm hug with a crust on top.

Zoe's banana pudding. It's in a to-go box which is why it's a giant pile. It was still delicious.

Cookout Milkshake. Doesn't look like much. But inside is Reese's Peanut Buttery Icecreamy deliciousness.

Chocolate covered potato chips. Some Japanese guy gave them to my mom. They were actually pretty ok. They needed salt. I'm thinking of coming out with a whole line of chocolate covered crap. Chocolate covered bacon, chocolate covered cheese curls...what else can I cover in chocolate? I thought that I took pictures of the Jumbo Jelly Beans, but I apparently didn't. So you'll just have to check them out here.

I HATE MOVING

So as all of you should know by now, it took 15 days for my things to get from Winston-Salem, NC to St. Paul, MN. It was apparently traveling via Conestoga Wagon and had to slow down because of some people suffering from dysentery (yes, that was meant to be an Oregon Trail reference.) On top of all that, some other shit has gone down since I got here. Brief rundown.

Stuff broken. I'll be claiming about $300 worth of damage. Nothing really horrible just a headless bobble head that's a little creepy.

Couch barely fitting into my apartment. Big purple couch made it through the door but almost didn't make the corner into the living room...but it did. It took the poor movers about 6 tries though.

Not getting mail. I expected after taking two weeks to move that my mailbox would be stuffed with letters or at least a notice telling me to pick up my shit at the post office. Nope. Now (after calling the post office twice) I'm getting mail that is sent directly to this address, but nothing forwarded here...so that's improvement I guess. (Where's my letter from prison, bitches?)

I forgot that there is such a thing as a regular Wal-mart, not just Super Wal-marts. I went grocery shopping at Wal-mart only to find they didn't have things like meat and fruit. They did have cheese and milk and salad dressing and other grocery-y type things.

My car broked. (That's a purposeful statement of poor grammar.) My car got stuck in park. I manually put it in drive and took it to the Honda place. Driving home, I discovered that they had replaced the cover on the manual interlocky thingy.

My first public transportation experience the bus driver forgot to tell me exactly where I should get off like he had promised (though he'll never admit it) and made me get off hella far away from the actual stop. I'm scared to take the bus again.

Minnesota DMV...nuff said.

Oh, and I have no friends here. That is all.

Psychotic Discussion of the Day

First of all, for those of you that are not aware, I have been in moving limbo for the past two weeks. My stuff was packed up on July 28th and until yesterday was in a warehouse in Winston-Salem waiting for a big truck to come rescue it and take it all to St. Paul. I was hanging out at my parents house in Indiana doing random stuff, and having my creative juices sucked from me...hence no bloggage.

A psychotic discussion of the day is similar to my previous psychotic thought of the day posts except that the thoughts were verbalized to someone else. Where my parents live in Indiana, the Goodwill has little huts in random parking lots of strip malls and big box retailers (wow, pulling out the MBA terms there.) The huts basically look like backyard tool sheds, but without doors and with two 2' X 2' holes cut into them for people to put the donation stuff through. My mom and I drove by one and noticed that they have signs that say "No person shall enter this structure." After discussing this, my mom and I decided that a Goodwill shed is probably a pretty good place for a homeless person to hang out. It's dry, and has piles of bags of clothes to make a soft bed. So instead of persuading me not to not climb inside of them as I'm sure was the intention of these signs, these signs have actually made me want to sneak inside of one at some point and see what's it's like. (SN: I've always wanted to climb on the big pile of stuffed animals at the Disney Store. I'm pretty sure those would be pretty soft too.)

The Final Countdown

I'm in Indiana right now waiting with baited breath for the call that will tell me that my stuff is arriving in St. Paul. I called the movers this morning to see if they could give me any sort of update, but all I found out was that my things are still in Winston Salem, which isn't that helpful. This blog is about my last few days in Winston Salem. I had taken pictures of some of the delightful food items that I had eaten, but can't find my cord to transfer pictures from my camera to my laptop which I had packed in an easy to locate location of course. I'm a little sad because there was a fantastic picture of some colorful and well-packed sushi leftovers from Ichiban.

Let's see....where do I begin? I guess I'll start on Wednesday. Last yoga class. I got a hug from Ana the crazy lady that takes yoga...she's ridiculous...and smells like moth balls and oranges which seems about right, but apparently is a well published author. I find her fascinating because she seems utterly confused by the world around her. If aliens landing in the parking lot of the gym, and randomly wandered into the building, I'm pretty sure they'd act about the same way as she does. It blows my mind that she's a life coach or whatever. I had movers pack me which is so worth it. They arrive and tell me that they plan to have my stuff packed up in 2 hours. I'm amazed. It takes them about 2 hours and 20 minutes, but I'm still rather amazed because I have a lot of crap. They however, do a stupid job with box placement. I have one small box in the entirety of my living room, but yet have to scale over dish boxes in order get to my fridge (and my yummy sushi leftovers from Andy and my last sushi lunch...sniffle...which I would show you a picture of, but can't) and I can't close the door to my bathroom because of heavy boxes wedged against it. Can't wait to see how the things are actually packed inside the boxes. I go for my last milkshake from Cookout on Wednesday...Reese's peanut butter cup. I also deal with some recurring friend drama which was not what I needed as I'm getting ready to move...but that's all I'll say about that. (None of you...I promise.)

Thursday: movers arrive. They get sooo pissed with the packers who apparently left a bunch of stuff unboxed. A for instance. My quesadilla maker which has it's own box apparently should've been put in a larger box with other stuff, but wasn't. They get even more pissed when they see that my golf clubs weren't boxed up. Not sure why. Even though I had neatly piled everything that wasn't to be loaded, and said "Everything else goes" I was constantly asked "Does this go?" I wanted to respond "Is that part of everything? then yes." I tried to stay out of the way and as they loaded I cleaned. I got annoyed at having long hair (and excessively thick long hair at that) because as I clean, I shed and find hair everywhere...annoying. For lunch I have a fab chicken pot pie (not PA style pot pie, rest of the world style pot pie--which again, I would show you a picture of if I could) from Zoe's. I return back to cleaning and get a nice surprise as Erik and Will who live across the street (Will doesn't officially live across the street, but for the most part does) come over to say goodbye and chat until Will starts talking crap about the upcoming Wake/ND football game, and I kick him out of my apartment. I take my cable box back to the Time Warner place at the mall which is quick and easy since I know exactly where it is in the mall thanks to helping Kathleen take hers back. Load my car, take a shower cause I'm gross from cleaning. My maintenance guy comes with a painter and they start prepping my apartment for the new tenant. I would've thought they could've waited till I got out. Heard the best southern simile EVER. My maintenance guy was exploring a mystery wet spot on my floor and says "well, it couldn't come from over here because that wall is as dry as a popcorn fart." As dry as a popcorn fart....are you farting popcorn? or is the popcorn itself farting? I love random Southern expressions!

My original plan was to spend the night on a blow up mattress in my empty apartment. Andy convinced me that that was stupid (it was), so I was just waiting for him to get off work in order to check into his guest room. He calls and says he's on his way home. He has some work thing later that evening so I go to pick up dinner at Dioli's before heading immediately over to his place. Dioli's apparently has implemented "summer hours" and is closed...which pissed me off...it's 5pm and you're a restaurant. I don't care if you're mostly a sandwich place or not. I settle for Subway instead. blech, but fits my qualifications of nearby, quick and not total crap...Check in to Andy's place. I eat, and we talk about our day as well as a wealth of miscellaneous other things including but not limited to pickles, gin, psychology, diary farms, etc. It's actually very homey having dinner and talking at a kitchen table. He gets a beer bottle from the fridge and no matter how many times I've seen him do it it still amazes me when he opens it on his forearm. Before he leaves he shows me how to use the TV, where an extra key is in case I want to go somewhere, where towels are in case I have a sudden urge to take a shower, wifi access, etc and gives the all encompassing "help yourself to everything, call if you need anything" host like gesture and leaves. I eventually tuck myself in between the black sheets and lay my head on the gold pillows (Wake Forest colors, of course) of his guest bed and fall asleep before he gets back home.

I wake up to find that he has already left for the gym. How someone can go to bed at 11pm and wake up at 4am, I still don't understand. I help myself to breakfast and wait for his return. He had asked me the night before if I could hang out until he got back so that he could see me off. Of course I could. He gets back from the gym, loads me up with snacks and Diet Cokes for my long drive, and we head out to my car for a somewhat ridiculous, tearful, and sweaty (it was apparently treadmill day for him at the gym) goodbye. I cry for the first half hour of the drive. I had a great time at Wake Forest and in Winston Salem. I met great people and did great things, and my heart is a little broken.

Goodbye, Winston Salem

Goodbye, Winston Salem. Goodbye, yummy chicken pie at Zoe's. Goodbye, crazy lady at yoga that gets tangled in herself. Goodbye, weird jacuzzi tub in my bedroom. Goodbye, waitresses that call me Hon or Sugar. Goodbye, Native Vine Green Tea delicious wine. Goodbye, bartender at West End Tap Room who doesn't mind when certain friends of mine bitterly throw their cell phones across the bar ::cough Kathleen cough::. Goodbye, 2 am "snacks" at Cookout. Goodbye, 2 am pizza and garlic knots at Burke Street pizza. Goodbye, creepy Deacon mascot. Goodbye, elevators from hell at Deacon Tower. Goodbye, Cheryl the lady that works in the student lounge food shop. Goodbye, 2 inches of snow citywide shut downs. Goodbye, bi-polar heating system in the Worrell Professional Center. Goodbye, random log cabin in my backyard. Goodbye, Wake Forest football games that no one cares about. (Hello, Minnesota football games that no one cares about.) Goodbye, donut day. Goodbye, "our" table at Ichiban. Goodbye, having to order unsweetened tea. Goodbye, references to the "war of Northern agression." Goodbye, Dewey's Sugar Cake. Goodbye, Atlanta Braves games on three channels. Goodbye, jar of mini candy bars in career services. Goodbye, weirdly designed Hanes Mall. Goodbye, sexist waiter at the Thai restaurant. Goodbye, maintenance man that always warns me that he might electrocute himself. Goodbye, Red Oak on tap. Goodbye, never wearing a winter coat. Goodbye, Team 9 lunches at Elizabeth's. I will miss you all.

YES!!

I'm now on Google + (I feel so cutting edge)....it's going to be so sad to watch Facebook slow demise....we've had such good times facebook.

The Basil Has Been Located

I thought I had told you all about this when it happened, but when I searched for that post so that I could reference it, and I couldn't find it. When I moved to Winston Salem almost two years ago, my mom and I unpacked everything, but two things were mysteriously missing: the basil from my spice rack and a thing of suntan lotion.

This morning I was putting a bunch of packing paper in my recycling bin. My mom had left two wardrobe boxes full of packing paper on my patio when I had moved just "in case I would need it" when I had to move again. If you know my mom, you understand this. Well, I don't need it, so I'm recycling it. I pull up a big thing of paper to move into the recycling bin and what do I find laying there...a jar of basil. I think Andy has put it best: "so much fail." It's surprising, but I have actually not bought a new thing of basil in those two years, and there was really only one time when I wanted basil but just used oregano instead. Now my spice rack it whole again. I know that all my spices were holding out hope that this day would come even when time passed and things looked bleak, and it finally has. Welcome home, basil, welcome home.

Love This Site

I'm basically sitting around exploring the ends of the internet all day, but doing so led to this discovery. I laughed so hard that I cried.

The Bridal Shower/Bachelorette Party

This past weekend I headed back to PA (AGAIN) for Amanda 1's bridal shower/bachelorette party. I'm not going to lie. Being a Maid of Honor and trying to plan a bridal shower long distance has not been easy. Assembling a multitude of mini paper purses as favors, communicating with bridesmaids that were sometimes incommunicado, and searching aimlessly for Robin's Egg blue table coverings was not always fun (and did I mention that I'm moving in 10 days), so part of me was just waiting to check this weekend off my to do list.

The bridal shower was nice. All the bridesmaids (is that the Bridesmaids or The Bridesmaids? ha) did an excellent job with their assigned tasks. Of course there were some minor snafus: a late bridesmaid, some forgotten prizes, somewhat loud guests, debate on whether the bows should be made into a bouquet or a hat and a little bit of a time crunch. Nothing major though, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves which is the important thing.

I went back to my gramma's house where I was staying, dropped off some things, and put on my appointed T-shirt for the bachelorette portion of the day.

The front says "Team Bride" and when the bridal party lines up, the back makes up the date of the wedding. (That's why I'm a 0.) Gotta love the construction pink color. The picture really does not do the color justice. Amanda also gave us part of our wedding party gift.

A glittery flask filled with coconut rum! BEST WEDDING PARTY GIFT EVER! Her mom is making us garters to go with them for the wedding. They're heavy flasks, so a normal garter just isn't going to work. After getting myself out of driving (Thanks, Troy, for agreeing to pick us up). We headed off to Hollywood casino. We had dinner at the Sports Bar there and then played a couple of penny slots. I lost. It's fun just walking around in our bright pink shirts. We get lots of smiles and one security guard even saluted us.

From there it was off to the Winner's Circle Saloon for line dancing. Everything was pretty low key as no one really knew any of the line dances until...we started doing shots...and broke out glow sticks. (Everything is better with glow sticks). After shots of Jager (blech...don't like licorice to start with), SoCo and Lime (the lime juice was in with the SoCo. Weird), Creamsicle (Whipped Cream Vodka, Something orange and something with dairy...not good), and a Dirty Girl Scout (delicious except that I started laughing and had it go up my nose), everyone was having a pretty good time. Amanda was not nearly as drunk as she should've been. We're almost about ready to leave, and Amanda says "I've never done a shot of tequila. I think it would be fun." Being the only one willing to take on tequila st this point (and being the Maid of Honor), I order two tequila shots (I should also mention that all these shots were not in shot glass and more than a typical shot). I proceed to give Amanda Tequila 101 lessons ("first you lick your wrist") and convince her to not to take a sip before doing the actual shot. Soon after the tequila, Troy comes to pick us up, and we have a mini-rave with the glow sticks in the back of his car on the ride home.

Blogging to Avoid Napping

Holy crap, I am freaking tired. Normally, I would just take a nap be done with this whole tiredness thing, but my sleep clock has been all sorts of f***ed up lately, and so I'm doing anything possible to resist falling asleep now. Hopefully if I don't sleep now I'll be able to sleep tonight. Do you know how hard it is to not nap when you really don't have anything to do and have an extremely comfy couch? Hopefully telling you all about my AMAZING trip to Baltimore (and simultaneously watching Celebrity Rehab) will help...plus some iced coffee.

Saturday morning I woke up and was like if I spend another freaking weekend in my apartment doing nothing, I will lose my mind. I still have my AirTran flight benefits. (Or as I now refer to them SWAirTran since they are technically now part of Southwest.) My one issue is that I'm currently having some cash flow issues as my expenses are outweighing my income. It will all work itself out soon, but right now I've been limiting my spending which thus limits my entertainment options. In order to have max entertainment and min costs, I was thinking of flying somewhere ridiculous for lunch or dinner or something and flying back the same day. Then I discovered that there were direct flights from Charlotte to BWI that were open, and my awesome friend Meredith just happens to live in Baltimore. I sent Meredith a text and then first thing Sunday morning I was on a plane (business class, woo!!) to Baltimore. I just threw a swim suit, flipflops and book in my purse and was off. I actually opened my trunk when I got to CLT, but then realized I had no luggage.

Meredith met me at the airport with a Nonfat Vanilla Latte from Starbucks because she's like the perfect friend. We went back to her apartment and picked up her boyfriend Mike. Then we went for breakfast/lunch at Paper Moon. It was SOOO good. They have a bacon milkshake on the menu. I wasn't really in a bacon milkshake mood though. I had a pesto chicken sandwich instead. Paper Moon also had lots of things all over the walls which kept me (the ADD kid) occupied (along with a crossword puzzle that kicked my ass) while waiting for our food.

After changing into our swimsuits back at the apartment, having a beer and making some punch, we headed to the pool. The punch was kinda of the adult version of when you were little and went up to a soda fountain and mixed a bunch of the sodas together. A bunch of stuff from the fridge and a bunch of stuff from the cabinet and voila...punch. We met Meredith and Mike's friend Erin at the pool. She brought some margaritas and some buttery nipple shots. We also were entertained by watching the somewhat tight ass Croatian lifeguard and the ADD 12 yeard old battle it out. Lifeguard benched him for 5 minutes for diving into the pool...kid claimed it was a belly flop. I didn't see it so I can't judge whether it was or was not diving. ::At this point in blog writing Danielle calls and I get distracted by Angry Birds, so writing will resume on another date.::

AND resuming: So the kid is sitting on the side of the pool, and every once in a while when the lifeguard wasn't looking he would "fall" into the pool, which did not make the lifeguard happy. The kid also went into the bathroom, hoping to waste some of his time out time, but the lifeguard informed him that that did not count.

We stayed at the pool for a couple of hours. We went back to the apartment, and I rinsed off and changed. Then we went for crabs. I had never picked a crab before. I usually have crab in cake or lump form, but Mike was nice enough to show me the finer points of picking. I'm a really fast learner. We had a couple of pitchers of beer, but when you're picking crabs you kinda forget to drink because you're so focused on the crab. Luckily, Mike would stop us for "designated drinking times." I was completely covered with salt and Old Bay when we realized "oh crap, we really need to get to the airport." Meredith and I rushed off to the airport. I was pretty inebriated, but luckily they had accidentally printed off my boarding pass for the evening flight when I checked in for the morning flight. Still it was pretty close. I used my secret special employee pass to rush through security. They were boarding Zone 7 (aka the very last zone) when I got to the gate. I walked right on the plane (which was leaving early. what?) and flew back to Charlotte. I hoped the guy in the seat beside me didn't really how intoxicated I was. Hopefully the overwhelming crab smell covered up the beer smell.

Letter from Prison

You thought there wouldn't be another one, didn't you? Guess what? I kinda did too. At least a decent one that was bloggable...but there is.

"How are you doing? Im ok, well when we were going thru the shutdown alot of people got time added..I ended up getting 2 weeks added (you got time added for doing something wrong? shocking!) so now I graduate (you graduate from jail? that's a graduation ceremony I'd like to see) the program (update: should was moved from legit jail to some rehab/anger management program thingy) Sept. 20th and won't get released until Sept. 25th so thats not too bad only 15 days..guess what I got extended for? (I'd say shanking someone, but I would think you would get more than 2 weeks for that.) for admitting to popping a black head in my cellys ear! (This imagery really disturbs me for some reason.) thats crazy huh? (nope. not really) Its cause it was 'physical contact' and that a cardnal rule. (I'm betting she doesn't really know what a cardinal rule is.) well so anyways theres not really anything gonna on my way. (gonna on my way? what?) so where is Kathleen moving and whats she plan on doing? (it's this thing called work. It might be a new concept for you.) yea it is sad to have to leave all your friends but Im sure you'll find some really cool new ones right away!! (I feel like I'm in 1st grade, and my mom is telling me about all the new friends I'm going to make at my new school.) but at least you can stay in contact with them all on facebook or something! (and that something is apparently google +...SN: if anyone has invites to google + to share, please send me one. I'll make you cookies!!) so whats andy gonna do? (probably go to the gym a lot...that's just me spit balling.) everything will fall in place once you get settled into school..maybe I'll be able to come there and visit you some time! (or maybe not) were gonna throw you a cave party for your 40th b-day. (ok, several notes. 1) this is in reference to my cousin Sandi's 16th b-day that was held at a place called the catacombs, and it was basically like having dinner in a cave. 2) I bet she could throw a kick ass party...not as good as Kathleen though just with more illegal things 3) we're discussing my 40th already? I'm barely on this side of 30.) LOL I want a welcome home cave party! (you just think life is going to be all fun and roses when you get out, don't you? and that's how you end up back in jail...she asked my mom to send her money at her rehab place so that she can have a pedicure and get her eyebrows waxed. My mom said no.) Well I guess Im gonna go."

Long Trout Winery

Not only does Long Trout have delicious berry and chocolate wines and hysterical wine names like Instant O, Waskully Wraspberry Red, Berried Alive and Sour Cherrieola, but they also have the cutest corks that I have ever seen.

Televised Fireworks

I don't really understand why anyone would want to watch televised fireworks. I've come up with four scenarios in which I think I would want to watch fireworks.

1) I can't go outside and see real fireworks either because I'm on death row or extremely old/ill and homebound.
2) I'm under the age of two and just like anything bright and colorful, but the loud boom is scary.
3) I'm abroad. I can see if I'm somewhere where no one really cares that it's the Fourth of July, if I can get fireworks over New York on some random channel or even over the internet, I might want to watch just to have a little happy America time in my life.
4) 3 words: Wicked Drug Trip

Random Sports Post

I'm watching the Phillies/Marlins game (thanks, mom, for calling to tell me that it's on TV) and something occurred to me. Why do baseball managers wear the team uniforms? I mean can you imagine if any other sport did this? Andy Reid in a football uniform. ::shudder:: Or Charlie Weis...good gracious, I would've thrown up at least once during every Notre Dame game. I threw up a little bit in my mouth just thinking about it.