Saturday, August 25, 2012

The Art of Packing Light

So on this the eve of the eve of my departure to foreign lands I am consumed with jealousy. Jealousy? You may ask. Why would one who is about to venture off into the paradise formerly known as Italy have cause to be jealous? And well I see your point. My life is about to be pretty dang awesome. However, I am utterly filled with envy towards Mary Poppins and Hermione Granger. What I wouldn't give to have the ability to expand my bag and stuff all of the contents of my life into it and yet simultaneously suspend them in a state of weightlessness.

Packing geniuses! 

Lets just say packing has not been easy.

One suitcase. 50 pounds. The next 3 months of my life. Mission impossible.

After carefully shopping for every possible thing I could need and laundering every single item of clothing (some I didn't even know I owned) I began to sort it all out. 3 piles: definitely Italy, maybe Italy, and heck no! that stays in the states. After fitting all of the definitely pile into my suitcase I realized that I still had a significant amount of room for the maybe pile. So after deciding that my orange pants should were worthy of the voyage to Europe I began to fill my bag to the brim. After sitting on it my belongings were crushed to the point that I could safely close the zipper. Then came the weighing. And gosh darn it my bag was 5 pounds too heavy.

What to do? What to do? The answer: sacrifice my back. My carry-on backpack is now about twice as fat as I am and almost as heavy. So If I return from Italy looking like a hunched over 100 year old grandma you will know why.

P.S. Hope you like the new more travel-esque look of my blog.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Perpetually Single

Don't worry this blog post is not some whiney rant about my lackluster dating life, it's a tribute to this magnificentwonderfulmarvelousspectacularremarkablephenomenalprodigiousbreathtakingextraordinaryunbelievableamazingstunningastoundingastonishingawe-inspiringstaggeringformidableimpressivesupremegreatawesomesuperhuman past year. (Yes, I did just copy all of those synonyms from the thesaurus)

In our apartment we like to joke that we are perpetually single. We are cursed (or I prefer blessed) to always be in the friend zone. So I thought that our mantra would be the best title to this post. Don't worry, we've loved being single. This past year with all of our friends has been exactly what we needed.

So basically this past year has been the best year of my life. I already did a tribute to the school year in April, but this spring and summer has blown that out of the water. It's been great to come home from work and be able to spend the rest of the evening doing whatever I want. As a result I have gotten so much closer to my already existing friends and made some fantastic new ones. I am so grateful for these people. I love that we can do crazy things together, but that we can also enjoy just sitting around and talking. This summer I have been blessed to have incredible roommates. We had great roommates during the school year, but this summer our apartment has reached a whole new level of awesome. We were all close and there was literally zero drama. I can't even think of anything that would cause drama. It was great to continue living with Kathryn and Jordan. I love those girls! They are some of the best friends I have ever had. We are all so different, but somehow we manage to make it work and have a blast. The rest of my friends have been amazing as well. The mancave and Kevindrew are like the older brothers I never had. Everyone has just been so awesome and open to doing strange things and having a blast. Basically, life has been great.

Thanks for a great year! I'm sure going to miss it, but only nine more days until my next big adventure!