The Best Years of Our Lives

.... Which is what I was always told would be high school. That was false.

For a little while, the best years of my life were college.

Then 2011 happened, and I'm pretty sure that it's been the best year for almost every single person I know. (Myself included)
I could list them all, but that would be ridiculously boring for my dedicated and loyal readers, plus it's a bit "why everyone else is having a better year than you"-ish, don't you agree?

Just an overview, though....

I will have been a bridesmaid/maid of honor in 4 weddings by year end. As far as I can remember. I may have lost count, because sometimes my brain tells me 5. But I might be secretly living out my own wedding on occasion in my own little fantasy land, so I'm pretty sure it's 4 real weddings.

Miss Rachel got married in February of this year.
Miss Angelica got married in April.
My sister will say her nuptual vows in November.
Miss Meredith will vow matrimonial happiness and loyalty in December.

(Yup, it's 4. Which means I've officially caught wedding fever. Sorry. I'm human. With 2 X chromosomes. It happens.)

At my last count 750, a whole bunch of people I grew up with or have known since it was socially uncomfortable to be pregnant have had or are having babies.

(I don't have baby fever. I still see LOTS of dollar signs and poo when I hear the word "baby" or "pregnant". It's a panic attack inducing word.)

However, this post isn't about me.

Anymore.

I guess. ::sigh::

Miss Rachel got a blog when she popped had little Molly, so it's only fair that Miss Meredith gets a blog because she's getting married.

And moved far away from the great nation state of Texas.

In November, I was text messaging regularly with Meredith because I had done this really brave thing and gave online dating a shot. And I managed to meet a man I really liked, and clicked with right away, and of course I had to tell some all of my girls about him, because well, it was my turn to meet a man that was good, dammit.

Back to Meredith.

Anyways, because Meredith saw me being brave, she decided that if I could do it she can. Then she almost chickened out, but I told her not to, and so she joined the big internet dating world too.

Then she sent me some text messages about not wanting to go meet this guy (or two, I can't remember) she had been talking to, but I told her (nicely) to put her big girl panties on because she could be missing out on her soulmate if she bailed.

And I was right. Ha! HAHA! I wiiin. Wiiiiiiiinnnnnnniiiiiiing.

Long story short, Meredith had some really long day dates with Chris, and made him drive an hour to see her, because she's worth it (which I'm also going to claim credit of teaching her by way of "good dating rules"), and it kind of went like this:

Chris asks Meredith to be his girlfriend.
Meredith says no, citing some silly reason of it being too soon.
Meredith changes her mind roughly three days later (not typical at all......) and decides that what other people think doesn't matter and says yes.
Mushy Mushy Romance stuff
Someone says they love the other first.
The other reciprocates said feeling.
Chris gets into grad school on another planet in Michigan
Meredith panics calmly devises a solution.
Chris plans a solution all on his own.
Meredith picks up on said solution and starts pre-planning.

Chris proposes to Meredith in some sneaky yet horribly mushy and disgusting romantic way.
Meredith says yes.

Meredith makes phone calls.

Facebook statuses change.

The Earth celebrates and floods Meredith's facebook wall (and maybe Chris's, but I don't know) with congratulations and good tidings.

I buy another bridesmaid dress that I will be dying attening Cross Fit classes to look good in. (Cause pictures are forever, y'all.)

I receive a save the date in the mail (even though I have a mental rolodex, I still appreciate the memo. And have a slight tinge of misery that my mental rolodex will not last forever.)

I check out Meredith and Chris's wedding webpage, because I should  be doing research and scientific article reading for a book project, but a 25 page paper on algae eyespots seemed daunting after reading 3 other papers.

And if you wish to check out the happy couple's very cute and witty webpage, I've linked it above, but it can be found here:

Meredith and Chris, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G


Much love and congratulations to the both of you!

PS: And thank you, Meredith, for not making me buy a dress made out of satin that cost $200 which I will wear once and may or may not have a marsupial pouch in the front which as much as I love you I will torment you for the rest of our lives for ::coughAngelicacough::.

<3

Home and Heart

Let me first preface this post with the following disclaimer:

I never do large picture posts because I find them to be horribly annoying and frustrating in terms of formatting. I have to upload, then rotate, and edit, and caption, and organize 21 pictures for this post, and I've already so far put them all on the new post document page and then deleted them all because blogger is not nearly as formatting friendly as Word. (I mean, really, I have a 24" computer screen and I can make the internet window as large as I want, but the formatting frame remains a dinky 5x7"). If I wanted to format a three page document on a notecard, then I'd have done that with scissors. And paper. Not really expensive technology. So, I'm sorry if it's poorly organized and/or frustrating. 

AND NOW......

The actual post. 

In early July, Matt and I moved into this new apartment. Which we love. And since then, only a handful of the people who helped us move have actually seen it. So, since between the two of us we've been basically inundated with requests to post pictures of our new home on facebook, I decided I may as well just make a blog of it. Because facebook isn't any easier to utilize, really, and it annoys me as well. 

Plus, this also allows me to blog, which I realize I haven't done a lot of lately. So now I'm playing catch up. 

This is what you see when you walk in our front door.  Please ignore the paint container on the first shelf. Our mover-friends sort of nailed one of our corners with my couch. We need to fix that.

The bowl on shelf one. Matt found these really neat looking pieces, and I feel it's only fair to pay him credit for his find.

Shelf Number Dos. 

Shelf Number Three. Which mostly happened this way because both my bookshelves are full and Borders is closing. I have a problem, y'all.

I realize all these vase pictures are annoying. I'm annoyed by them. But consider this a virtual tour of our home, and be happy that I'll never be a real estate agent. This sits at the top of the stairs before they turn.

Here is the living room from the top of the stairs-ish. That's my awesome couch that my movers friends hate. 

It's a kitchen. We cook here. And wash dishes. But we LOVE our granite countertops, and the real tile on the floors. (And in our showers. Whatwhat?!) 

More of the kitchen. See my fancy knives? I'm standing between the pantry and fridge. Which, really, you don't need to see. It's boring. Much like the rest of this post probably is to you. 

Dining room which we see from the kitchen. Yes, there is a shoestring tied to that chair for kitty. And that is a lot of booze, but I assure you, we have more. We like to party. We like, we like to party. 

That's what I fondly refer to as "the nook" and which kitty fondly refers to as "personal playgound". Which leads Matt to fondly refer to kitty as "Shkitty," which is a combination of "shitty kitty." And it's trademarked. You can't steal it.

The black hole of productivity entertainment center. I didn't pick that song, the cable TV people did. I did dance around to it though. 'Cause I'm annoying fun. 

Our porch. And for those of you who asked me what a zero gravity chair was recently, this is them. They get all lean-back-y (also known as recline-y) and you don't touch the ground at all. Sometimes you fall asleep in them. 

Our view from the balcony. It's kind of awesome for sunsets. And hummingbirds. And I was hoping I could birdwatch from there, and not be the creepy lady with binoculars, but even I'm not confident enough to risk being seen doing that. 

The master bedroom. I realize there are no sheets on the bed, it's laundry day. And I was multitasking. 

The other side of the master. From the closet. 

Master bath. Yup, more granite. And full tile showers. Which really just means that we're going to have to buy a really expensive house in a few years, because I'm getting spoiled. 

More living room. This is basically what one of us runs into each morning while it's still dark. 

The stairs to the split level. The guest room/office is up here, but that's actually where all the mess is still, so I didn't photograph it. On the left is the guest bathroom cat's room. So that obviously doesn't get a photo (who wants to see bowls of food and water and a hidden litter box?) Also a linen closet on this floor. With another vacuum. We have 8000 3 vacuums.

My parents have had this bronze in their house forever, and I mentioned to my mom one day that if they ever wanted to put something else in it's place that we'd take it. My parents actually have something else to hang on the wall where this was, so we got it. If I remember the story correctly it was a wedding present to them from my uncle. So it's like, a family heirloom. Sort of. 

This concludes our tour. We hung this nice little piece of metal art on the blank wall space here so that all of our guests can see something pretty as they leave. There's the door. ;-)

 Well, so that was maybe easier than I originally thought, but I hate how it's one picture per line. What if I wanted to put them next to each other? I realize there is probably a way to do this, but I just don't have the time patience to deal with it right now.

So there's our new abode. We love it, and like having people over for dinners, and I totally want to play drinking games, so let us know.... we're fun people. <3

The 5th H

Back in the Baylor days, Rachel, Meredith, and Sarah had a little group of four friends all with the letter H in their names.

I know, by now you've realized that you can count and I can't.

I didn't know the original 4th H, but I recall her name being Ashley. So, I can count, just stop getting ahead of me while I tell this story. Okie dokie?

Well, Ashley was one night abducted by local Wacoan aliens, and taken to a trailer park to be held hostage for the rest of her long long life without the privilege of sorority letters, Common Grounds coffee, obnoxious church songs sung in Chapel, and pretentious daddy's girls. No one ever saw her again, and Meredith, Sarah, and Rachel were all very sad.

Until Meredith met me in one of her classes, and decided that I was infinitely more cool than this Ashley chick and that I'd make an awesome replacement H because really, their lives were incomplete without me. I was one of those dreaded greek system "independents" and didn't belong to a sorority, so meant that they could brainwash me on their own without the worry of that silly Panhellenic council over their heads. And I could do things like get drunk and wait for the pizza man man man man man to show up at the apartment, and answer annoying repeat anonymous callers in a spanish accent with a short amount of sentences revolving around the singular statement of "Si, soy Nina."

But I digress. Because those are inside stories between myself and the other H's that they will understand but none of my other millions five readers will understand.

Anyways, we all grew up. And it was awful and scary and fantastic and horrible all at the same time.

I did a bunch of things involving not going to medical school, working with rats in the name of SCIENCE, starting my career and going to grad school.

Meredith got a million degrees. And is still working on one. And she got engaged.

Sarah also got another degree and had a big grown up trip to another big city far far away.

Then Miss Rachel became a teacher and was the first to get married.

And pregnant.

Not that I ever particularly planned to do the spawning thing before the age of 30, but she did beat everyone else to it.

Today we welcome Miss Molly Mahan to the world! She'll be the 5th H to our happy little group, on account of her last name actually having an H, and her mom being awesome.

Congratulations to the Mahan family. I'm so very proud of Mrs Rachel for growing a beautiful baby girl, and I just know she's going to be one fantastic momma. I can't wait to meet little Molly.

And one day, I'll catch up to the rest of the H's in my group. Apparently all I've done is work. And go to the gym.

<3

Weekend Wrap-Up

Such a totally cliche title, and not that any of you *totally* care about my weekend, but you know....

Friday night Matt and I had a cute little date night at my apartment. He woke up and thought "I'm gonna get a car today", so we did some errand-running in his new car, and then came home with some pizza and watched a movie.

We watched the new Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, because we've been watching the series and hadn't seen this one yet. I was less than riveted by the movie, and Matt spent much of the evening Google-ing things to do with/to his car, so he obviously wasn't too super thrilled with it, either. But I finished it and didn't hate it. I however, am desperately searching for something to replace the Harry Potter series once the last movie occurs next month, so I seek to be highly entertained by anything fantasy-like that I can find.

Next I will start watching the Game of Thrones series on HBO On Demand.... as soon as I get a decent way through the book. Just so that the important parts of the book aren't ruined for me, but I'm still entertained by the show. (This has been my strategy with the True Blood series, and so far, it's been successful.)

(Side note: have you noticed how good awesome I've become with these embedded Amazon links?)

Saturday was Miss Rachel's baby shower in Austin, so I woke up early to catch up on the Casey Anthony trial while getting ready for the drive. Lucky for me Judge Perry sent the jury home early and I was able to get ready for her and Molly's big day without too many distractions (This is coming from the girl who reads her Kindle while straight ironing her hair.)

I took the diaper cake and headed to Cedar Park for the much anticipated party. Rachel's friend Jenny did a fantastic job organizing the party, had tons of great food set out for the guests, an adorable cake for the party, and enough presents for one guest (totally not me) to exclaim "All this stuff is enough to make me want to have a kid!".

All in all, Miss Molly made a fantastic haul even while still in utero, and Rachel is an adorable mommy-to-be who even though she *claims* she is crankier than usual, I couldn't tell at all. For everything she's gone through to bring Molly to planet earth safe and sound, she makes it look easy, and for that I admire her. I know I for sure couldn't have done it with half the grace she has... I would totally have been a whiny bitch.I can't wait to meet the little spawn. <3

Myself, Miss Rachel, and Miss Sarah

On Sunday I made mini red velvet cupcakes with a white chocolate infused cream cheese icing for the premiere of True Blood season 4. I also made full size ones with the leftover batter, but really, the mini ones are like bite-sized bits of heaven and I ended up trashing a bunch of them because they're so damn tempting. 

We bummed around for some of the afternoon, then stopped at Staples so I could print copies of my resume and transcripts for a job interview this week (Friday at 10, y'all... keep those fingers crossed!) then met my parents, sister and future brother in law for a belated Father's Day dinner. We headed home afterwards to watch the season premiere of my favorite show, thereby wrapping up a fun little weekend. Which was sort of a glimpse of what life will be like once we officially live together in less than two weeks. (Squee!!)

This morning I totally had a moment of panic in which the 12 boxes I have packed of mostly books and art supplies is not nearly the dent I thought it was, and I need to start cleaning out stuff and packing boxes like, ASAP. 

Then I got to work and thought to myself "Dude, you've got two weeks and a few days off to sort that out... just chill for a bit."

So I squashed the "I need to do something to prepare for this move" itch and called Time Warner Cable to schedule an appointment to set up our cable and was thoroughly surprised by the awesome service I got. We pay $30 to our apartment complex for basic cable a month, but anything above that needs to be sorted out through TWC themselves. I was able to get the following package:

Digital TV package for 2 TVs

1 DVR

HBO

Free Showtime for 1 year (which allows me to watch Dexter when season six starts!)

High Speed Internet + Power Booster

HD channels

..... all for $77.50 a month. After taxes and fees. I seriously felt like I was making money off this deal. (Then I later remembered she removed the basic cable charge from my bill, so it's actually like paying $107.50 a month) Right now I pay about $120/month for my AT&T services, so I'm still happy. 

That's about it for the mundane and typical right now. Apologies for the lack of anything substantial or witty. 

<3