I don't like thick things in my mouth.*

What a crazy day! Sort of. I had brunch this morning with my friends and there were two happy additions to the group today. First was Kyle who is almost never available to dine with us Friday mornings and then there was my Hebrew Friend's mother. Sometimes we see in her in the mornings but she has never joined us. It was nice to have the two new additions this morning. I also brought flowers to breakfast. Pink carnations, nothing too exciting. I bought the flowers because for one thing it adds something nice to the table early in the day and also because Cynthia has finished working at one of her jobs. I'm glad I brought the flowers because I found that more than just Cynthia enjoyed them. If I had known that they were appreciated I would have gotten a better bouquet, but there's something nice and simple about carnations especially when they are fully bloomed and look like big ruffled buttons.

The second crazy part of the morning was that I lost my keys. It sucks but I'm actually surprised that I hadn't lost them earlier in my time here in Philadelphia. I do stuff like that, but fortunately I didn't loose any important keys and the ones that I did I have back ups of until I can get a new set made. It also means that I have to get a new key chain, preferably a grosgrain ribbon one or one with little anchors on it. I'm also really appreciative to the nice Mexicans at Produce Junction who broke into my car for me so I could grab my spare and get to brunch in time.

First job was also crazy busy. We were handing out books for next semester to the students. I had to organize fifty bundles of business books for the students and make sure that they were all labeled appropriately. It would have been fine if I had known who got what and whether or not we were missing anything before I got the task underway. Thank god for P90X, it helped with lifting and moving all of the boxes and bags of text books all over the office.

Second job was perfect. I worked on a party all night with two other women and we successfully sold over $500 of alcohol to them. We just got a shipment of new wine in and we ended up selling all of the bottles in stock to the party. It was amazing how much money a father was willing to throw down for his daughter's rehearsal dinner. It was great that I made over $100 on one table, which is way more than I've made on a Friday night in months, but it sucked that I didn't get out past 11:30pm, long after the closers. I was going to go to the bar after work but when I sat down in my car I was so sweaty that all I wanted to do was take a shower and then once I got out of the shower I didn't want to leave my apartment. I was going to invite a friend over to watch movies, but since I'm so tired now and I have to be up at 7am for work it just wouldn't be fair to them to watch movies while I'm sleep/drool on the side of the sofa.

*The things that happen at work just slay me. 

I need to get better at my vacation days.

Tibby died! And now I know why Anna wouldn't tell me what happened when she read the book earlier in the summer. I was so not expecting a sister to die that I spent the first half of my day reading in bed and crying because there would no longer be anymore Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants because one of the sisters had died, and in Greece! I feel in love with these books when I was in high school. They tell a beautiful story about four close friends and their summers during high school, college, and then the summer before their 30th birthdays. I always felt that the movies were really stupid and offered no really validity of what the books were about, so you really have to read the books to understand what I'm talking about. Each of the four girls had extremely different and vibrant personalities with their own problems on love and life issues. Despite all of their differences they still managed to stay close and best friends. And while I am still shocked that Ann Brashares offed Tibby, I will agree that if she had to do it it's best that it was Tibby. It's not like she could kill Carmen or Bee or Lena. Especially not Lena because then she and Kostos would never have had a chance to be together. That is officially my favorite literature romance ever, but after Anne and Gilbert and Elizabeth and Darcy. Kostos and Lena had to wait ten years for everything in their life to work out and to realize that they were meant to be together. Sigh.

I've been reading a lot lately. I go in spurts. Usually my peak is during school breaks and vacation and my lows are during the school year when I am too consumed with other things to read that I usually put off anyways. This past week I've read five books, not an all time high but still respectable. Books are not the only thing that I've been reading this week. One of my best friends sent me the world's greatest facebook message that I will always treasure, at least while I have a facebook account (my friend I will cherish for always). If I get my friend's permission, I will share it with you all because it's really part of a much larger story that is both incredibly funny and incredibly creepy. 

Now as promised it you follow me on twitter, here is a sample of a short story that I wrote for one of my creative writing classes. As always please feel free to contact me with any thoughts or criticisms about the piece, I need all of the help I can get.

An excerpt from Sauce Story:

Late at night after work, and dinner with his family, after all of the dirty dishes were cleaned and put away my father would get out his largest stockpot and all of the ingredients to make his marinara sauce. It was a recipe brought over from Naples that became lost in translation as each generation made it to their own taste.  My father would start by dicing onions and letting them slowly sauté in the olive oil that he would pour from the large canister kept under the Catering Kitchen table. Before my mother would shoo me up to bed I would spy my father sorting the various cans of diced tomatoes that he would later use and pull out the necessary spices. Salt, pepper, garlic, onion, basil, and oregano would all be lined up ready to be used later to taste.

I was in middle school before my mother relented and allowed me to stay up past my regular bedtime. I was watching television when I heard the clanking of the pot being brought out onto the stove and cans of diced and crushed tomatoes stacked together on the butcher blocker countertop. I sauntered out to see what was going on, barely able to hide my eagerness at being able to stay up to watch the wondrous process that had been handed down through our family’s generations. My father noticed me and told me to stir the onion, browning in the bottom of the pot. I had to be careful not to burn the onion and ruin the sauce. When it was time, he helped me add the tomatoes and taught me how to add spices to taste. He showed me when it was the best time to add something new and that a cup of water to the mixture could correct most taste mistakes. With everything slowly simmering away over low heat my father sent me to bed while he read a book in the living room until it was time to take the sauce off of the flame and let it sit.

If you want the full version of the story just send me an email, unless you're my Hebrew Friend and you've already read it a hundred times.

In conversations we want him to read our mind and in bed we want him to read our vagina’s mind.

Yesterday I went to the beach. It wasn't anything special because the waves were nearly dead and I was by myself, but the water was warm and I was able to finish a book and start another. It was great though because it was extremely hot out, but on the beach there was a nice breeze that kept things even and helped keep me in the sun longer. Don't worry Mom I wore my sunscreen. I also wore my polka dot one piece. I bought the bathing suit last summer when I was at the peak of my weight gain and couldn't face myself in a two piece but didn't want to look like I was eleven or my mom in my lap suit. I like the suit because it has a cutout in the back and it can be worn strapless or with a halter-type strap. It's already a bit loose, but I can still get away with it for the rest of the summer. It's my last one in it though because I don't intend to ever get that fat again unless there is a baby in my belly. I just don't think that this suit will still be in style in ten years.

No waves. Sad panda.

I've finished the Hunger Games. That's ALL I'm going to say since I already almost screamed at my friend about how I felt about the series conclusion and I can't relive that here. 

I actually put effort into making something for dinner or at least put the effort into assembling things on the same plate to make a meal since it's summer and it's too hot to actually cook anything in my apartment. It was brilliant and now I feel very full and content and will soon fall asleep from food happiness. I went to the store with the intention of picking very specific things up because I thought I was in the mood for something very specific, but once I got there I discovered that I was really in the mood for something else and brought home goat cheese, tomatoes, and pita chips. I also purchased a personal favorite from my childhood for dessert. 

Dinner for me was a full head of romaine. Actually I picked off the the tops because I don't like the soft dark green parts of the lettuce. I usually just do oil, vinegar, and cinnamon, but I wanted something different so I mixed olive oil, lemon juice, spices, and tarragon and tossed that with the lettuce. I added a tomato and some goat cheese for extra awesomeness. The tomato was slightly under-ripe, but what can you expect from anything outside of Lancaster County. The goat cheese was what really made the salad. The tangy cheese combined with the salty lemony dressing made fireworks in my mouth. 

I love goat cheese so much that I ate almost most of it with pita chips on the side of the salad. I've become more and more a fan of pita chip over potato or corn chips. They are just more filling without actually eating more of them. The Sandy's kind that I get also come in a bunch of yummy flavors. My favorite is the Naked kind with just a little salt, but I also love the cinnamon sugar kind. They are just the right amount of sweetness. 

Dessert is something most people wouldn't touch if they've ever had the real thing, but I didn't want to bake in the heat so I bought the stale cake cups that are sold next to the fruit for strawberry shortcake. I love strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. If I had been serious about the dessert I would have soaked the packaged cakes in raspberry liqueur to soften them and give the dessert added flavor. Instead I just piled the cakes with layers of strawberries and whipped cream until the little mounds could no longer stand. The heat from my apartment melted the whipped cream a little and the cream helped soften the cakes which was an unexpected bonus. I almost never eat these, in fact the last time I did was two years ago when I was living in the house, but I miss this even if the real thing is so much better. 

*The title comes from article I read over at Hello Giggles. 

I'm going to the shore tomorrow. I'm planning on leaving fairly earlier, or at least earlier than I usually do. It's supposed to rain again like it did today so I want to make sure that I get enough beach time in. I plan on being back tomorrow evening so that I can tell you all how it went. Pray for some hot and sunny weather!

A walk by definition has no destination. Even a cat knows that.

Second round.

I'm in an office right now doing absolutely nothing and I'm unsupervised and if I were doing this four or five years ago this would have been a very bad thing. For example (and mind you I still do this) whenever I am in one of my parents' offices I tend to find things to amuse myself even if it means disturbing their papers. I can definitely say that one has a better collection of junk than the other. Anyways instead of being my usual moderately destructive self, and because I already know where everything is in here, I am blogging, which is way more productive than anything that I would be doing anywhere else. Run ons ;)

Friday a successfully busy morning/day for me. I started in Jersey and now I'm in Philadelphia. Along the way I have handed in my portfolio for my nonfiction shorts class, sorted a ridiculous amount of text books and watched leftover clips from old Chelsea Lately shows. Okay maybe it hasn't been entirely too busy, but I do have a busy night of work ahead of me. Hopefully. I feel extremely proud of myself for completing my portfolio on time and was particularly impressed at my own personal effort to actually make multiple drafts of a piece before handing the portfolio in. It was a little tricky for me this time to get everything organized and together because it had to be handed in one long single word document. Usually each piece gets printed out and I can sort through it all and make sure that I have everything. This time I had to keep scrolling up and down the document and do a lot of cutting a pasting. The portfolio ended up being 35 pages so I had to be extra careful about sorting and layout. I also became particularly paranoid about not saving enough and probably messed up the word program with all my command+s-ing. Either way I am proud that I finished it. My writing has greatly evolved because of it and I owe a lot to my Hebrew Friend for pushing me and making me write properly and for an audience. He's very good at pushing me to make a piece that  much better and if I ever get something published he is definitely getting at least a footnote.

This weekend I read the first two books of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I only really decided to start reading them because two of my friends are excited about the movie coming out and talk about it all of the time and I wanted to be able to participate instead of blankly sitting there listening to them talk. I first heard about these books when I was a freshman in college. I used to follow a Twilight podcast that was more of a book club than a fan site. After the podcast people finished the Twilight books they moved on to The Hunger Games books and of course I was still aboard the romantic vampire train and stopped listening to the podcast and forgot all about The Hunger Games. Three years later I could kick myself because these books are awesome. I read the first one on Thursday at the beach and then purchased the second one on Friday and finished it at work on Saturday. The bookstore near me in currently out of the third one so right now I am debating on whether or I want to drive to find it after work so that I can take it to the beach tomorrow.

I seriously need this book, now!

This is kind of a weird scheduling week for me because I have two days off from work instead of my usual one. Last week a friend said that they wanted to go to the beach this week so I took tomorrow off of work to go. I love the place that I go because I have a yearly pass so I don't have to pay for parking and pay a separate admission fee to lie in the sand for a couple of hours. The place where I go is also a state park so the land is protected and natural. There aren't any beach combers tearing apart the beach and rebuilding it all of the time. It's really cool that way because nature controls it which means that each time I go it's a little bit different looking. I've also found that as much as I love being alone on the beach I also like to have someone there to go swimming with and to talk to just to break up the monotony. It's get too to have someone to ride down with and inexpensive too. All you really need is to stop at a store a pick up some cheap eats for the beach and that's it. Besides gas in the car that I already have and the $4 toll coming back, thank you EZ Pass for making me not worry about routing around foI'm in an office right now doing absolutely nothing and I'm unsupervised and if I were doing this four or five years ago this would have been a very bad thing. For example (and mind you I still do this) whenever I am in one of my parents' offices I tend to find things to amuse myself even if it means disturbing their papers. I can definitely say that one has a better collection of junk than the other. Anyways instead of being my usual moderately destructive self, and because I already know where everything is in here, I am blogging, which is way more productive than anything that I would be doing anywhere else. Run ons ;)

Friday a successfully busy morning/day for me. I started in Jersey and now I'm in Philadelphia. Along the way I have handed in my portfolio for my nonfiction shorts class, sorted a ridiculous amount of text books and watched leftover clips from old Chelsea Lately shows. Okay maybe it hasn't been entirely too busy, but I do have a busy night of work ahead of me. Hopefully. I feel extremely proud of myself for completing my portfolio on time and was particularly impressed at my own personal effort to actually make multiple drafts of a piece before handing the portfolio in. It was a little tricky for me this time to get everything organized and together because it had to be handed in one long single word document. Usually each piece gets printed out and I can sort through it all and make sure that I have everything. This time I had to keep scrolling up and down the document and do a lot of cutting a pasting. The portfolio ended up being 35 pages so I had to be extra careful about sorting and layout. I also became particularly paranoid about not saving enough and probably messed up the word program with all my command+s-ing. Either way I am proud that I finished it. My writing has greatly evolved because of it and I owe a lot to my Hebrew Friend for pushing me and making me write properly and for an audience. He's very good at pushing me to make a piece that  much better and if I ever get something published he is definitely getting at least a footnote.

This weekend I read the first two books of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I only really decided to start reading them because two of my friends are excited about the movie coming out and talk about it all of the time and I wanted to be able to participate instead of blankly sitting there listening to them talk. I first heard about these books when I was a freshman in college. I used to follow a Twilight podcast that was more of a book club than a fan site. After the podcast people finished the Twilight books they moved on to The Hunger Games books and of course I was still aboard the romantic vampire train and stopped listening to the podcast and forgot all about The Hunger Games. Three years later I could kick myself because these books are awesome. I read the first one on Thursday at the beach and then purchased the second one on Friday and finished it at work on Saturday. The bookstore near me in currently out of the third one so right now I am debating on whether or I want to drive to find it after work so that I can take it to the beach tomorrow.

I seriously need this book, now!

I love the beach.

So anyways to end this, I have a friend who is going through a rough patch right now and as frustrating and annoying it is to be around them when they are acting this way, I love my friend and I want them to be happy. It's just very frustrating because there isn't a whole lot I can do for them right now because they have a lot going on in the inside that they need to sort out first. The best I can do is just listen and be supportive as best as I can. Really though I just want to do what I do when Max crashes into something a little hard: pick them up, squeeze them tight and watch the adult equivalent of Thomas the Tank Engine episodes. Too bad I'm only a five foot girl with the inability to lift anyone other than Max.

PS. The title is a wonderful line from my favorite dog Wilfred.
r change, it literally costs less than $10 dollars to go to the beach with me :)

Did you all just vomit a little right then? Good, that’s what true love tastes like.

I wasted a perfectly good title on a lame excuse for a post so I'm thinking of recycling it down the line sometime. It was from Wilfred and if you're not watching this show by now get on it because you are missing out. This particular title is from an article I read on Hello Giggles. For those of you who haven't checked out all of the awesome giggles or if you're a guy you most likely haven't heard of the site, but it is Zooey Deschanel's answer to the lack of fun cute website geared specifically to women of all ages, just about. I love the site that she created with her friends because it has a wide variety of articles and essays written by all different types of women and the few select guys brave enough to submit something. The website is updated daily so there are always new things to read and see and there are also fun categories and series from regular posters. Once things calm down around here I am going to take a chance and try to submit some of my work to the site. I just don't know how I'll be able to compete with my favorite columns: Belz on Bell and Big Booty Power Hour. Lol catz.

Anyways to make up for my lack of posting I have decided to announce that I have two days off this week and next week which means that there will be a continued lack of posting for a little while and then come to think of it I will be back in Vermont for a long weekend and I will have limited internet access there and hopefully it will also be the weekend of the Burton sale so I will be too busy loading up on new winter gear, shoes, and maybe even a new backpack. Please please let the Burton sale be the weekend I am home otherwise I will be sending Samantha to Burlington to do my dirty work. It's definitely time to get a new jacket and a new bag. I just can't the thought of retiring my white though, it has been halfway around the world with me and now is my day pack at the beach.

I'm big on plaid I just haven't settled on the color scheme yet.

Oh it is Penncock! Oh wait no, it's Pennock.

I just got back from a evening adventure with Chem Anna. We do this sort of thing periodically where we will drive around Montgomery and Delaware counties. Her family are all from Havertown so she has a couple of different places that she likes to go when we're out and about. This time we ventured out in a torrential downpour that turned into a inland hurricane. I didn't even realize what the weather was like until I was outside meeting Anna. Thank God I didn't wear one of my usual white shirts, I went with my Where the Wild Things Are one with Max on the front. We started out just driving along Montgomery and only got as far as Suburban Square before the fear of Baby Honda being swept away forced us into the Trader Joe's parking lot. After a dirty look from the lady in SUV next to us we bolted into the store. I got nearly completely drenched and then froze inside the store. I wouldn't walk down any of the refrigerated aisles until I had dried up. It was an excellent first part to our adeventuring. We loaded up on a snack in Baby Honda until the ran let up and then we traveled down Montgomery until we got to Ardmore where Anna decided to take a family tour. We got a bit lost until we hit Havertown and by then we were ready for round two which usually means Wawa. We've been to just about every Wawa on the right side of Township so for once we ventured down the left which mean Route 3 for us. After passing three or four Cuddy's we found a new Wawa and bought bananas. And sandwiches from the Hoagiefest menu. By then we decided that we were full and made our way back to home down City Ave. When we passed school we saw Dr. A. so I texted him and then he called us back and told us to be safe in Upper Darby. Hahaha Dr. A.'s the best!

I haven't posted in awhile and my mom noticed. She even called me and told me that she was worried about me because I haven't written about my recent goings on. Very thoughtful mother I have. Anyways I haven't written because my router died sometime this weekend while I was at work and I didn't know about it until I got home from work last night. I had to borrow a friend's internet to get some schoolwork done and then after work today I stopped at Radio Shack and picked up a nifty N band router that happened to be on sale and also a nice new power strip that expands to fit every single one of my power cords that I have on that particular side of my apartment. I'm glad I purchased it too because it looks like my old one had shorted out in certain places because electronics that I thought had broke awhile ago are now working once I plugged them into my new groovy power strip.

I also haven't posted because I've been away this past week and the internet up in the Great North can be kind of finagley sometimes and I just didn't have it in me to put up a fight while on vacation. But while I was up there I learned about Ashley Whippet. If you are like me and born after the early 80s you're wondering what the hell is an Ashley Whippet? Ashley Whippet was a whippet dog, a small version of a greyhound dog and this particular one was an ace frisbee player that began his career performing for students on the Ohio State University campus as they walked to classes. He really gained his fame as a mascot at Dodger Stadium and making appearances on Johnny Carson. One time the dog even performed the pre-game show for Super Bowl XII. Today there is an agility competition named in honor of Ashley Whippet. Now normally I don't care about frisbee dogs, but Ashley's owner happens to be a friend of my parents back in Vermont and he told me all about his famous Whippet one night at the Matterhorn, which happens to be the best place for sushi in Stowe and the only bar I actually go to when I'm in town. Best place ever, I even purchased one of their awesome shirts, well actually it was given to me because I'm a Purnell and let's face it, it doesn't get much better than that in town.