so who's with me???

now, i know it's not quite chilled out just yet, but i'm thinking maybe we should put some camp-out plans in the works...eh? whaddayasay?

so here's what i'm thinking: how about either the weekend of october 7-9 or 21-23? heck, i could do both! doesn't have to be hard core, doesn't even have to involve the whole weekend. i just miss those camping days of college where we'd decide on a whim to pack up and go camping, setting up camp by the light of the car headlights. ahh, the good old days. but i recognize that we've all become busy important people, thus necessitating a little forward planning. so that's what i'm doing. i'm putting it out there. who's comign with me?

copy cat strikes again...

so my brain hasn't been working so well lately. lots of not so good stuff going on. but, to keep it light and unoriginal, i'll copy (but add in my own details) an idea from someone else's blog post.
10 years ago:
1. I was a freshman at Mount Saint Mary Academy
2. I loved going to CHS football games, but I always got really nervous about talking to new people
3. I spent 4 hours a day on the phone to a boy that would never become my boyfriend (but who would break my heart...the little troll)
4. My bedroom was half of a garage and had no windows (but was painted pink...which i didn't actually like)
5. I had fewer friends than I'd like to admit

5 years ago:
1. I was a sophomore at UCA
2. I had a massive crush on a friend who shall remain nameless (not that he didn't know it...not that i didn't tell him...)
3. I played a lot of ultimate frisbee, kinda sucked, and got a stress fracture in my leg
4. I made out for the first time with a boy that wasn't already my boyfriend
5. I started boozing it up and going to (and throwing) some awesome parties

1 year ago:
1. I was a first-year MSW student
2. I lived in an awesome house with Leah
3. My laptop was brand new
4. I went to school without a group of people i was already friends with for the first time since the fourth grade
5. We only got 3 channels on the tv

Yesterday:
1. I watched 7 episodes of Dawson's Creek
2. I cried a lot (not from Dawson's Creek)
3. I ate boiled crab legs
4. I ate some more of those delicious cookies (see below post)
5. Ashley was an amazing friend

5 songs I know all the words to:
1. hook, the blues traveler (yep, worked really hard on that one in 9th grade)
2. american pie, don mclean (another massive effort)
3. livin' on a prayer, bon jovi (since i was like 5)
4. wagon wheel, as done by old crow medicine show
5. baby i got your money, odb (that's right v, i still got it)

If I had a million dollars I would:
1. give a lot of it away
2. pay off my student loans and pay for my next degree
3. buy a hybrid
4. get out of my flea-infested apartment
5. fix up trevor's car

5 things I would never wear:
1. a ski mask
2. a long jean skirt
3. a short jean skirt
4. a chain around my stomach
5. a hat with an umbrella on it

5 Bad Habits:
1. saying the f word
2. scratching my head (it really is a habit i've had since forever...not a result of the fleas)
3. gossiping (oh, come on, we all do it)
4. smelling my armpits
5. procrastinating

5 Biggest Joys:
1. trevor seth
2. my neices and nephew
3. hot showers
4. sleeping in
5. plants and animals

well, that's it. i commend you if you made it through the end. so here's a question for the night...is it possible for a blog post to hold its own without photos?

milk and cookies

sweet mother! okay, so i totally don't generally condone pillsbury products, mostly because of their advertisement tactics (my man's so big and strong, me woman gonna make him some biscuits...oh, we can heat our dinner rolls up one at a time so our family never has to eat together...you get the point), but holy crap! i stumbled upon something i'd never even imagined today at the grocery store. an additional disclaimer: i also don't usually support the very ready-to-bake cookie sort of thing. but they have smores cookies! that's right, folks, smores cookies. graham flavored cookies with chocolate and marshmallow chunks. now the marshmallow leaves a little to be desired, but on the whole, i'm impressed. and here's my rationale: i am not exactly what one would call a baking connisseur. i'm actuall not so great at it. would i buy chocolate chip break and bake cookies? no. but smores, come on, there's no way i'd be able to craft that one up. though if i could, maybe i could get on martha's next season.

alright, so moving right along in this here commercial...and on to my favorite buy each week. all natural milk from mountain springs creamery in marshall, arkansas. yep, you can get milk from healthy (read: hormone and antibiotic-free grass-fed ladies) from a local consumer. wow, you must have to drive to marshall, one might think. nope, you can get it in several (and increasingly more) locations around town. the best pick is hardin's river mercantile in the river market (not just because they're my friends, but also because it's owned by local folk and not by a corporation). a handful of kroger stores in little rock have also caught on to the craze (notably hilcrest and the heights). glass bottles, pasteurized at the lowest allowable level (better flavor, good bacteria, but still no fear of the bad germs), and available in skim, 2%, whole, creamline (whole, un-homogenized milk...closest you're gonna get without milking the cow for yourself) and chocolate (tastes like what you make at home, only just right every time).
okey dokey, i'm insane. i just promoted 2 entirely different food products, one of which is a bit beyond my food ethics. but let's call it even. i just plugged some awesome local milk, and hope that all you arkies go out and get some.

so on a personal note...here's to me having a really productive week and getting to watch tons of dawson's creek, season 5. i love it. time management...who knew?
later peeps..

about darn time!

carnival in maastricht, the carnival capitol of the netherlands





finally got to have a chat with my old pal andy (he's not old, we've just been pals by far for several years now). we're not that great at keeping in touch, but it's pretty much always easy to catch back up. he's doing well...looking into moving from denver back to minnesota (yes, i do seem to befriend many minnesotans!), his homestead. andy and i were in maastricht in 2002 and lived in the same building. rock climbing buddies and daytrippers, we had a blast. so here's some photos of the beloved netherlands (and other visited places), as a shout-out for mr. andy nelson.

that's andy there at quirin chapel, just one stop on our busy busy day trip to luxembourg









how i wish i were there...neice is nice

winning the war

that's right, folks. today i'm finally winning the war against these freakin fleas! no more skirmishes, where i think i've gotten them and they manage to rally the troops for yet another assault on my ankles and belly. nope...i've called in for the big guns. i'm totally hacked with myself that i didn't do it sooner. i guess i worried that my landlord would just say, "hey, that's your problem". but he didn't, and today at 2 someone is coming to show those fleas some deadly business.
wow, who knew i could talk so much about fleas? that's ridiculous. well, i suppose that when most things are pretty stressful (as they are now, from family to wedding shakiness to schoolwork i can't make myself do), you just pick your fights, and the fleas have got to go. sad taht this seems to be the only thing i've really got some control over (okay, i can control how much homework i do in a night). okay, so this post is taking a turn for the worst. and i'm not even posting any pictures, which seems to be about the only way people will think my blog is interesting and comment on it. yikes. i think someone slipped a little sad into the water here. at least tonight i should perk up. got a show to go to at sticky's with ashely and some other pals.
oh, and i've got yet another girlfriend who has started a blog. be warned, she placed a disclaimer on her first post, so you never know what you're gonna read from virginia.
alright, enough is enough.

photo tour

so here's a little look at the quirky little apartment...well, everything but the bathroom (just inappropriate) and the kitchen (totally a wreck)...

dining room with awesome table and chairs and indian batik tapestry...
bookshelf with plants, painted chair, and window out of which the fire escape garden lives...
hallway to bathroom...
"bedroom" with tv and "fireplace"...
office portion of hallway...
front door, snazzy bike, pretty chair, tasteful nude...
view from front door of "living room"...

well, that's about it. it's not much, but it's home...and free of fleas for the second.

labor day weekend

so the weekend was without a labor day cookout, but it was certainly a good weekend. friday trevor came to town and we had dinner at vino's with ashley and joel after seeing ashley's new apartment (less than half a mile away). then it was to joel's sister's house to toast their brother andy for having passing "the bar". next to pizza d's where i suddenly didn't feel so well. but trevor had a good time and it was really funny watching him try to put sheets on the bed while a wee bit drunk. saturday we headed to perryville and hung out with some ranch kids. sunday we helped benjamin and stephanie with chickin' choppin' (see picture below), went swimming at the iron horse watershed, back for pizza lunch, then to two other watersheds for swimming adventure. the day was followed by a dinner get-together at jacob's new house. we were supposed to go camping but were scared off by tales of creepy seed ticks. yikes!
monday was spent trying to rid the apartment of fleas (gross!), only for me to find a few more this morning. out of desperation i threw out my prized bamboo floor mat because that seemed to be harboring the majority of the little buggers. i figure the mat is replacable, but my sanity is not!
school is still plugging along. by the end of the 11 hour school day i'm pretty desperate to get out. i mean, desperate...it's really hard being bored to death by 2 of the 3 classes i'm taking.
alright. i've got to go to bed now. internship in the morning and i'm prone to sleepiness.

so the picture is from last year's chickin choppin, but this is the general idea of what i do in the whole process. yes, the pictures sure can get more intense...

the W word

well, i've been nerdy and i've created a wedding web page through the knot.com. it doesn't have tons of info yet, and i'm not sure how much i'll actually put on there, but it does now exist. so for any interested parties, you can check us out at our wedding webpage.
i think we're about to head out for some perryville fun, so i'll have to post more later.