Dreaming

I'm dreaming of completing my 27 item long to-do list.
I'm dreaming of being focused.
I'm dreaming of being perfectly content.

That's why I said I'm dreaming :)

So now after saying weird, embarassing things - I'm going to embarass three more people.

Phil and Beth rocking a "couture" pose.

Benny Ninja - don't you just love us?

Love

Birthday Fun

I woke in the morning to breakfast in bed, specifically Toad-In-The-Hole (or as other people call them, Egg in a Basket) and some of my favorite candy - white chocolate and sour patch kids.

Then off to my surprise! My guess was that we were going to the mall and Nick was going to pay for me to go shopping which is a present to me a lot because I always need more clothes. He didn't know my guess. We drove past the highway and Nick said "oh I must be on autopilot, I drove right past the highway" and he pulled into a parking garage entrance. I said, "ok, turn around back up" and he is obviously looking at the sign. I was so confused! He really tricked me! Turns out we were going to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology! Every time we drove past it for the past 2 months, I've been saying, we need to go there, I want to go there! Nick planned it all out and we had a great time.
The exhibits are amazing and contain so much information. The museum didn't have that many visitors in the early morning and it was quiet and soothing. Then we headed to an Italian deli for lunch, having really missed good sandwiches in California. After, we visited two wedding places which you can check out on my other blog. We returned home and hung around until dinner time at a yummy Thai restaurant with Jill and Mike. Afterwards, we came back to our place and played Cranium. And there's the factual description of my birthday!

Some thoughts:
- Air guitar is really hard to guess when someone is using your hands to play and it is already air guitar!
- I really need to read some history type books about Egyptian culture and history. Love it!

I feel like I've been using this blog as a description place holder and I know that isn't what I want it to be. I want to be able to get my thoughts out, sure, but I don't think all in terms of what I did that day! Hopefully, little by little, I'll be able to express more creatively and emotionally!

Friends

Jimmy came on Saturday evening and we cooked my mom's famous meat sauce.
Famous with me and Nick at least.

Mike and Chrissy being their silly selves!

Jimmy, Emily and Jordan at the Eternal Flame, it was only 100 degrees out...

Terrible picture of me (what's going on with my bangs!) and as usual good picture of my photogenic boyScott being very proud of his Chemistry PhD

Me throughly enjoying my birthday presents from these friends! Thanks Fizzies!

Things Are Finally Coming Around

Hello friends. It has been a long, long time and I'm not going to apologize anymore. I'm just going to post more. How does that sound? Life has taken me pretty far since you last heard from me.

I managed to:
A) Get a job
B) Nick got a job
C) Heard back from the catering place and in the midst of visiting places for the reception
D) Heard back from the cat adoption place and in the midst of visiting kitties

I really don't know how everything I've been worrying about for months came together all at once. It would have been less stressful if it had been stretched out a bit... but I'm definitely not looking the gift horse in the mouth so to say.

Nick started his temporary (but money-supplying) job on Wednesday and I start on August 11th. Since my old job ends on July 31st, I've got a whole week to hopefully hang with our new kitty. We looked at one yesterday and looking at a couple more on Sunday.

This week/weekend has been one of the craziest in a very long time. Monday was the 2nd to last ultimate frisbee game, Tuesday was grocery shopping day, Wednesday was more grocery shopping and Nick's band had practice at our place, Thursday was a kitty visit and a surprise party for our friend's birthday last week, Friday is Nick and my 8 year anniversary!, Saturday is my birthday! and Nick is surprising me with something then we are visiting two wedding reception sites then my MOH and her boyfriend are going out to dinner with us and then I requested a game night because I love my games (whew, big day), Sunday is another kitty day, then Monday is our last frisbee game.

In San Francisco, I made a lot of friends at work and had people to hang out with. Nick's only friend was a friend of both of ours from high school (love you Scott!) Now that we are in Philadelphia, Nick has tons of guy friends and I have my very special MOH but that's it! It is quite a role reversal and we are still trying to get used to it. I have another good friend somewhat nearby but she is in the suburbs so I hope I get to see her more than I have so far!

This post ended up just being a vent/excited post which is very backwards but something I needed. It is just very weird for me to be celebrating my birthday with only one friend. Usually, I'm surrounded by a lot of people but I guess I'm in a bit of a different place in my life now. Our high school friends (for those of you who may not know, Nick and I are high school sweethearts) came down last weekend to all have a mini reunion (except Danny which was sad). I"ll post pictures in the next post. I was very surprised and pleased when my friends brought Black and White Cookies from a NY bakery. They were delicious! I missed the original a lot while in California.

This is a very long post but I figured I should throw in some yellow photos since a lot of my favorite bloggers are involved! I owed at least one picture of the apartment so here is a picture of the living room area. The wall on the left that the bookcase is blocking is yellow as well as the right after the bookcases. Behind the curtains is an outdoor area that we haven't used much yet.
Part of my Nancy Drew collection that I am going to pass onto my kids. And you better believe that if I have 2 boys, they'll be reading it along with all my Babysitters Club!

Picture Picture Everywhere

My new favorite meme:

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search
b. Using only the first page, pick an image
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? (Jess)
2. What is your favorite food? (pasta)
3. What high school did you go to? (John Jay)
4. What is your favorite color? (blue)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (don't really have one)
6. Favorite drink? (root beer)
7. Dream vacation? (Italy)
8. Favorite dessert? (ice cream)
9. What you want to be when you grow up? (content)
10. What do you love most in life? (my fiancee)
11. One Word to describe you? (whoooo)
12. Your flickr name? (havergirl161)

I'd love to see yours too!

1. jolene and henry, 2. London Pasta Week: Day 1, 3. Blue Jay in flight by John K. Cassady, 4. When I'm sleeping, I slow down my breathing...Living in dreams, dreams that come true...thinking of the color blue... ZZZzzzzzz..., 5. Ladybug, 6. Mandolin, 7. Massa Lubrense and Vesuvio, 8. homemade berry ice cream, 9. We are choosing hope over fear., 10. inflection point, 11. Whoooo Are You?, 12. Sunflowers

A Long Time Ago...

In a galaxy far, far away - called California...
You've missed me, haven't you? Come on, just admit it!

I guess I should give a quick rundown of what happened in the last almost 2 months for the ones I haven't gotten a chance to tell...

-Left San Francisco Friday night to stay at Bethro's. The plan was to leave early AM on Saturday the 10th but considering we didn't get to her house until 11:30pm...
-Left Bethro's house at 1pm Saturday.
-Drove through Nevada: quick story -- pulled up to a gas station in Elko, NV to take a quick bathroom break and when I come out, Nick is talking to a mechanic.... turns out our back shocks are busted from throwing so much crap in the trunk, then when they have the car up in the air, they notice the tires are about to blow. So there you go Elko, NV - have fun with my 1200 bucks!
-Made it safe to the hotel, and drove and slept for the next 4 days. Our stops were in NV, WY, IA and OH
Let me tell you a few things about driving across the country. You may think it is fun. You are sadly mistaken. Hey, if I had an RV and places to see, maybe that would be a different story. But driving without getting off the highway too far because you don't have time or the money for more gas... yeah. BORING. The scenery is pretty for the first 30 minutes in a new state... then you are in the state for 4 more hours usually, at least. Thank God Bethro graciously gifted me with a new set of needles, 1 ball of white and 1 ball of blue yarn and instructions on making a cool little dishcloth.

How about I say a few nice things about our country...
Northeast CA - beautiful snow-capped mountains and lots of treesNevada - beautiful snow-capped mountains with almost a desert in between
Utah - saw the salt flats, pretty cool, saw the mountains that I really want to go skiing inWyoming - um, is it bad that I thought this was a plains state? Western part was very mountainous and you could see the Rockies off to the south. Then the Eastern part was very cowboyish and more like the plains you might imagine there.
Nebraska - oh what can I say about Nebraska besides I wanted it to disappear. The wind was horrific - and I mean BAD, we could barely drive because I have a pretty boxy car. The wheel was constantly kept at an angle.
Iowa - still freaking windy, please go away! Very green and lots of plains - saw/crossed the Missouri RiverIllinois - saw/crossed the Mississippi, still WINDY. Almost looks like Central Jersey with farms and trees. Unfortunately we couldn't see Chicago though I don't think we were more than 2 miles away from it on 80. I'll just have to go back and visit my friends there :)

Indiana - more like Illinois... I think... we weren't in it for very long. There was a toll though. Illinois had the first toll of a whopping 60 cents. I'm not sure how they were paying for all that construction we came across.Ohio - some nice tree-filled views, it has been a while. Hit up a delicious Applebees (2nd one) thanks to Bethro and Phil - love you guys!
Pennsylvania - FINALLY, yet we still had 6 hours to go in that state. Nick and I tried to figure
out where Jon and Kate Gosselin lived the whole time. Then last week we saw the original hour long special and they said the original town they lived in before they moved, silly us. I love them and that show. They are hilarous together and the kids are adorable. They make me think I can make it - hopefully I won't be having 8 kids though!
Philadelphia! We arrived on the 14th, late in the afternoon. Nick's best friends were really happy to see him and we unloaded most of our stuff at their house. Then we headed over to my friend's where we would be staying. I believe the apartment we are living in was the 3rd one we looked at, and we knew it would fit perfectly, gave our application and there ya go! Once we signed the lease we headed down to my parents in South Carolina (where they basically retired - though they still do work to keep a good income). We stayed there and ate a lot of delicious food and got a lot of love, and a little beach time until June 1st where we (parents, Nick and me) headed up in a U-Haul to Philadelphia and moved our stuff in. Thank God for one of my best friends Jill and her boyfriend Mike. They brought water and much needed extra energy. Mike was a workhorse. We couldn't believe how much time he saved us; he just kept lifting huge amounts of heavy boxes. We owe them a super nice dinner...or two!

That was a quick recap - good thing I didn't do a longer one, right? I'll talk more about the apartment in the next post!

Meme me

That sounds like I said me me me but if you don't know - Meme is a little survey that you fill out and then "tag" other people to partipate. My friends from high school will know how much I love surveys. I was always the one to send it out via email whenever I received one. I've been dying to do a meme, life has just been crazy.

I decided to take a quick break (probably multiple times) from work and fill this one out from one of my favorite bloggers: Pancakemama.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
This is going to make some people feel old but 10 years ago: I was 13 going on 14, I went on a disastrous cruise (my Dad had to leave midway through to go back to work, tropical storm = super rocky boat and bad seasickness, and I had that ship sickness that people get) but I also got my first contacts and my hair highlighted for the first time. I felt so grown up! Then I went back home and my boyfriend at the time didn't notice anything new about me. Broke my little heart/hopefully broke his eardrums when I screamed at him. Ah, high school.

My to-do list/ What I actually did recently
If I were you, I would run screaming now. Here is a slight bit of the list:
1) Sell the rest of my furniture
2) Pack everything I own (-1 carload) and ship to parents
3) Clean entire apartment and load 1 carload into car
4) Drive across entire country
5) Find new apartment
6) Miss Beth and Phil terribly
7) Fly down to SC and drive with parents and UHAUL with my stuff
8) Move into said apartment
9) See awesome friends/family I haven't seen in forever: Jill and Fizzies and Parents!
10) Get a kitty
11) Find a new job
12) Plan a wedding for July 2009

what did I do?
-sell some furniture
-pack and ship some stuff
-visited some cool places in SF before we leave - like Alcatraz and meet up with awesome Cali friends I'll miss

Snacks I enjoy
You don't even know how much I love snacks.
Cookies has been number 1 recently. Super bad for me. But I love chips, candy, you put it in front of me, I'll eat it!

Things I would do if I were a billionaire
Buy a house in Hawaii and move there and bring my family with me
Travel all over the world (buy a house in Europe too so I could vacation there)
Give money to special charities
Do stuff I enjoy all day and eat healthy, good food and hire a personal trainer to make me exercise!

3 bad habits
Stress. My life is defined by stress. I'm not sure if it just a bad habit anymore - as much as it is a lifestyle. OCD just adds on top of that - but I'm not considering that a bad habit - just my favorite disorder.
Laziness. Lack of exercise is included here, also the whining "Niiiiiick can you get me ____" which is usually about 2 feet from me. I really try not to do this too often... I swear!
Procrastination. I'm an expert at this - once again, another lifestyle. I do it with EVERYTHING in my life. Including this blog.

5 places I've lived

Port Chester, NY
South Salem, NY
Haverford, PA
Palo Alto, CA
San Francisco, CA

5 jobs I've had

Library "page": stocking books, covering books, checking out books, and generally being a know-it-all. Yeah, I loved the Dewey Decimal system and if you had named a number, I could tell you what was in that section. Dork.

Retail: H&M, not entirely sure I actually made money that summer. I think I spent it all on clothes. Definitely made me appreciate the crap that retail people put up with.

Camp Counselor: Love little kids. But these weren't little. They were snobby, bratty, cranky 11-12 year olds at a sports camp, and I still loved them :) Except for the kid who threatened to bring in a knife and stab me, him not so much.

Research Assistant (various times) including: capturing about to mate female frogs - throwing them on ice - bringing back to lab until morning - and then play male mating sounds and see where they hop to; dissecting baby rat brains to get neurons to test - ultimately looking into what causes chronic pain; my senior thesis in which I was working with embryonic fly DNA to create genetic markers

Publishing: Editorial Assistant to Assistant Editor to Associate Technology Project Manager. This is where I am now. Quite an interesting ride.

5 people who have interesting blogs that I'd like to tag
I'll just say anyone who is interested rather than putting the pressure to perform on them :)

Now I Have

Officially fallen off the face of the earth that is.
You will not believe how many emails I'm getting per day in response to Craigslist/Freecycle postings of our furniture. The good news is that people ARE taking stuff. The big ticket items are still around but we just dropped the price a little and I'm hoping to get rid of them soon.

My poor blogging life (reading AND writing) has really suffered with this adventure in patience -- that is moving, people. I can't believe I only have a week left in California! It is completely unreal at the moment, except for the fact that our furniture is slowly disappearing, all our books and DVDs are gone, and Nick and I have gone absolutely bonkers.

One thing I'm looking forward to is going to Alcatraz with my favorite East/West transplant, Bethro and her husband, Phil. Then, I'm super excited for them to move back East in 2 years... yeah I'm already anticipating that (and I know she is too).

I'll try to post a couple of more times but if not... we should be arriving in Philadelphia on May 13th (possibly 14th). Watch out East Coast. I'm baaaack!

Face of the Earth

I didn't fall off it... the face of the earth, that is. I promise.

I've been so busy over here trying to see all my friends, pack and find a new job/apt before we move. Originally, I thought I would be able to keep my job and telecommute but orders from higher-up say no new off-site people. My boss is nice enough to give me temp work for him for up to 3 months (my company's max temp contract) but that means I still have to find other work. If you know anything in Philadelphia or telecommuting, let me know! I'm open to anything!

I was just talking to be my good friend Bethro about jobs. Senior year of college, I thought I might want to be a vet and did a lot of research into it. I've also thought of doing public health, public policy or some type of nutrition. All this indecision lead me to standing still and not doing anything to further my knowledge or help me make a choice. Now, it is 2 years later and I realize that going to vet school would change the rest of my life plans (in terms of children, money and location of living). So to make a drastic understatement, I'm stressed. If you have any insights, please feel free to pass them on.

Craftwise, right now I'm working on a Knit-A-Long for Amy March's Slippers. It's been an exercise in patience to say the least! I don't have a picture right now, but I'll post one later.