longest day ever

yes, today promises to be quite the long one. it's my last day to be at the office before i get to see trevor again. hopefully i'll find enough to do to keep me busy...i am going to pick up nari at lunch and bring her up to the office. i'm tutoring this evening after work, and sarah wants nari and me to come in costume (we're party animals). so that should be pretty fun.

tomorrow i head to little rock for the women's foundation of arkansas "power of the purse" luncheon at which i will be awarded the check for the grant proposal i wrote. go me. and i've got a fun coworker as a "date", so it'll be good even if the luncheon is boring. it's at the peabody, so the food should be pretty good...just hope there's a meatless option...

thursday is the greyhound day. 14 hours on a bus. yuckola. but not as bad as 24, as it was when i "moved" to denver. thank goodness for that!

booo on blogger!!! i was going to post a picture of what trevor looked like before his trip, but it's not letting me...and i'm even on my office computer. booo! maybe i'll come back and try again later.

testing, testing 1-2

oh, so i guess i just have to post really small pictures and wait ten hours for them to show up...durn dial-up...

maybe when i have some energy, i'll post some more pictures. of last night's rockin halloween party at sarah & will's.

but for now, this is my house.

it's magarin!

yo, i'm so on a roll with this posting thing.

this is just a quickie to say: holy crap! my wedding dress was on tv last night! and it will be again on monday. now, i just want to go on the record as saying that i got the dress BEFORE seeing it on the bachelor, rome. but hey, it's a pretty dress. i'm no bachelor fanatic (in fact, this is my first season to watch it...i was a joe millionnaire fan, though), but it was totally the dress that the bitchy lisa had on in the preview for next monday's show. so if you want a sneak peek at what i'll be wearing at le wedding, just keep your eyes peeled for nutso lisa wearing it on her hometown date (who does that...seriously?).

and am i wrong to be obsessively worried that aunt margie STILL has not ordered the invitations. i mean, the wedding is just 10 weeks from freaking friday! i think i'll just have her hand-deliver them as punishment. i wish.

blogging...from...home...dial-up style...

first time blogging with dial-up. we'll see how that goes. i'm even going to attemp to post some pictures in here, and i'm a little nervous about it. yeah, that didn't work out so well; i guess i'll try to do that at lunch tomorrow.

things are alright here in bethesda. i'm still plugging along with this solo thing. less than two weeks now. still feels like an eternity. everyone else seems to believe that the time has just flown by. but they're not the ones with empty houses and needy pets (one of whom has decided she's no longer house-broken--that's a TON of fun, let me tell you) and boring drives to and from little rock and nobody to laugh with when the movie is funny. it's pretty sad, really. i really liked living alone when that was my life. liked having my own space and not cleaning up after myself unless i felt like it. and NEVER making the bed. trevor moving in changed a lot of things...i quit eating the same thing for dinner over and over (example: last week, from monday through friday, i ate either homemade vegetarian chili or three-cheese tortolini), i started making the bed every morning, sunday was "clean the house day", i got to get back in bed while he showered because i knew he wouldn't let me over-sleep. and i don't mean to say that everything is entirely different since he's been gone; it's just been lonely, and i can see the good habits slipping.

anyway, on to current events!

my biggest adventure of the weekend: getting myself and my captive passenger, anna-kate, extremely lost deep in the ghetto of little rock. as in college station. scary. freakin scary. but we had gelatto at the river market to calm our nerves, and all was well. had papa johns (soooo needed that) and a movie date with leah--marie antoinette. good quality time.

and although my sunday appt. with the alterations lady went well, the boobs at lens crafters "forgot" to call me to tell me that my contacts haven't come in, and that i have to come back yet again next weekend. which won't be a total loss, since i'll get my early voting in, and make it to some halloween fun!

oh, and happy thoughts for my nonie. she's in the hospital with pneumonia.

on the bandwagon

well, i guess i'm on myspace now. it's actually pretty ridiculous how i ended up on it...i've been trying to track down my former piano teacher for weeks so i can ask her if she will play the piano during our ceremony. so i finally got internet at home again. dial-up-is-pretty-slow. and i did a search on both her and her husband's names, and i found her myspace. well, it wouldn't let me send her a message unless i signed up. so i did. and now i'm finding all sorts of folks on it that i would have never thought to find. it would be pretty easy to stalk someone, you know. way easier than this blogger bit...i don't know how long i'll keep the myspace account, cause it's kind of freaky.

anyway, if you are as bored as i am, and you want to check it out, the link is http://www.myspace.com/abrookeje

and i'm trying to make it look nice. i don't seem to have many decent pictures of myself to put up...i'm beginning to think i'm even less photogenic than i once believed. hmmm.

it's what trevor would call a boomshackalacka moment

yeah, baby. my first grant came in! a few months ago i wrote a grant to the Womens Foundation of Arkansas for their mini-grant awards. and i got it! well, i got $3000 of it. which is not quite how much we asked for, but every little bit counts around here. and i get to go to their luncheon to accept the award, and i get to bring a guest. it'll be pretty funny to have my boss, the ceo, be my guest to a luncheon. silly.
now, the down side is that it'll be my responsibility to put the program (an offshoot of our farm program, but just for the girls) into action. and my plate is getting fuller (on paper and in theory at least) each day. but i guess i'm young and can take the heat.
the only thing is...i got my one phone call from trevor on friday, and he's liking outward bound so much that he'll likely want to apply for a job. which would mean moving. and leaving stuff behind. i complain so much about my job, but i also kind of feel like i'll be leaving so many things undone. but everyone is replacable. and nothing is set in stone.
in other exciting work-related news...last thursday we had the arkansas field coordinator from heifer international come out to have a meeting with us. he showed us a video and we talked about the steps toward becoming a heifer project partner. which means we'll be getting trainings and money for livestock and garden stuff and all kinds of great things. i'm holding a more inclusive staff meeting in a couple of weeks to show houseparents, farm staff, etc. the video and to prep them for when mr. ashanti comes back to do a values training with all of us. i'm pretty pumped. because it was my idea...it's my baby. and it's really happening.

anyway, it was a decent weekend: friday i watched a video (imax videos can come on netflix) about dolphins and ate too many cookies. saturday i went to little rock and ran errands/had lunch with katie and then went to lenscrafters to be fitted for contacts. my eyes=horrible. they didn't even have my perscription in stock, my astygmatism is so bad. so i've got these "practice" ones that are the closest they could get. but i can't get them in. i got one out and one in on my own, but otherwise the dr. had to do it for me. she seemed really confident, but i'm a little worried i can't do it. my eyes are so small, and i can't seem to keep myself from blinking and flipping the contact inside-out on my finger. and my eyeball hurts from trying so much. and it's making the headaches worse. wah wah wha. but i'll be the little engine that could, because i want to have 2 eyes, and not 4 for my engagement photos, bridal photos, wedding, etc.
saturday night i went to sarah & will's for mike c's belated birthday party, which was a total blast and much needed. after the first wave of folks left, sarah, holly, kat and i had a dance party, which was loads of fun. i haven't danced like that in for-ever.
tonight i'm making vegetarian chili for my non-vegetarian brother. we'll see how that works out...

those were the days...

ha! i just found this on katie's ringo site. there is some editing, of course (nobody wants to see that...). this is from well over a year ago and it totally cracks me up. we're at heifer ranch's "northside" house where katie and her cousin ben used to live. i don't remember the occasion for the party, but it involved much drinking. at this point i had lost my clothes to travis (hence the overalls with duct tape around my chest), trevor had won them from travis, and i was trying to win them back from trevor. i'm pretty sure trevor just let me win. that's love, folks. the rest of the night included ali and me dancing on the counter to ocms wagon wheel song and my very first keg stand. yeah, i think i was already too old for that business. much sickness later.

how fun to reminisce...and to post pictures of trevor in my clothes while he's away in north carolina.

the weekend: meeting with melisa the photographer; hanging out with pals i haven't seen in a while; staying with meg and her crazy dog; telling the lady at clinique to help my face; buying too many clothes at banana republic (on sale); walking halfway across the big dam bridge with nari...while wearing burks--bad idea; dog park; meeting with sarah the photographer, and probably some other stuff...

the coming week: cpr/first aid in like 12 minutes; tutoring two nights this week; meeting with heifer international dude; meeting with the arkansas community foundation; GETTING A PHONE CALL FROM TREVOR SETH! i'm very excited about that part. but it might not happen...still have my hopes up.

well, that's enough blogging. just be glad i didn't blog about what ashley said i should last night. then you'd think i was the devil, instead of a girl in overalls taped to her...

off the deep end

it's official: i'm desperately hating living up here. i mean, i love my house and being in the woods a quarter of a mile off the road, but that's about it. work is alright, if you pretend that the big raise really was big and not small, and if you pretend that i don't still feel like a total fish out of water. i'm making more per hour tutoring after work than i do at work, and tutoring is just down the hall from my office. but at least i finally have an office door to close if i want to have a meltdown.
one good thing is that i've been hanging out with my brother, paul, for the past couple of evenings. monday night he cooked spaghetti for me, and last night i made tacos (taco tuesday!) for paul and his friend, jc. and saturday i went to a coworker's dad's friend's farm to strip sorghum. yep, that defines my social life in independence county.
i am going to be in little rock this weekend, so hopefully i'll see some friendly faces and drink some alcoholic beverages...anybody free for such a thing?
i'm still on the hunt for the perfect photographer, but at least i've got one meeting sort of scheduled--with sarah bussey or something. we'll see how that goes...