You Might Call it Far, Perhaps, But What Does that Matter?

Hello, everyone!  It was brought to my attention that I haven't done a blog post in a while, so here goes.  As always, things are busy around here.  By the end of next week I'll have three thirty-five+ hour weeks at work, I'll be done with finals, and I'll have a new couch!  Yep, I ordered the traditional grey one from Amazon and it should arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Expect a putting-it-together post.

During my nightly free time I've been indulging in one of my favorite things to do; watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  It is fascinating, every time I watch, which is usually about three times a year.  I never get bored with it.  How could I, when I have the extended versions complete with commentaries and hours of making-of vignettes?!  It is inspiring.

Anyway, this time I decided to watch them backwards, starting with Return of the King, currently watching The Two Towers, and next will be The Fellowship of the Ring.  I chose to go with the Actor Commentary this round, which is interesting.  They share details about character choices, different ways they filmed different scenes, what was a set and what was on location, and other good little tidbits.  And after each one, I watch the Making Of, with some of my favorite behind the scenes people.  Richard Taylor, who is the head of Weta Workshop, the production house that did everything, has a very distinct New Zealand voice, and is very knowledgeable on different details.  Alan Lee and John Howe, who did all of the conceptual design work, are interesting to watch.  They were famous before the movies, as they had done most of the well-known illustrations for the book up to that point, and it's very cool to see these typical, weird art guys work.  And then the stunt guys always have funny stories, and there's some great shots of Art Director Dan Hennah and the set-builders.  Oh, and the miniatures!  As you can see, I am quite fascinated with all of it.

I did choose a bad week to start the viewing party though, as this is Book Week, the last event of Cleanse Month.  Andrew, Taylor, and I decided to all read A Brave New World, and finish it before the end of the week.  Taylor figured out that it would take about twenty-five pages a night to get through it all.  Let's just say I have a lot of reading to do this weekend...

I hope you all have stayed dry over the past rainy week.  I don't like rain, but it's ok now because it helps keep the temperature in my apartment down.  I'm a little nervous about this summer: I only have one AC fan unit and it is in the living room.  Dad has a few ideas, like using a small floor fan to blow the cool air towards my bedroom, but maybe once I turn it on and get it going for a few days it'll cool the whole place.  It is a pretty small area, so we'll see.  Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

(photos collected from tumblr, cracked, forum.drawmixpaint, bradleybasement.wordpress, rebloggy, waymarking, tumblr, wanteddeadoraliveproductionblog, and reddit)

Nostalgic Leanings

After a little apartment time on Friday I headed back home for a pre-dinner cocktail.  Andrew got in a little earlier and we sat around catching up before walking downtown to Dewey's for some salad and pizza.  As always, it was delicious.  After that Andrew, Taylor, and I drove over to the Bottleworks where Dad was playing music.  Taylor and I set up camp near the stage while Andrew mingled with a bunch of his old high school friends.  A good time was had by all.

The next day we met up at Kaldi's for a pastry and coffee.  It was a beautiful morning so we sat outside.  The plan for the day was to clean out the Black Hole storage room in the upstairs attic.  The collection of boxes, furniture, and old toys had pretty much taken over the room over the years.

That first picture was taken after a couple hours of clean-out - look how much stuff is still in there!  Most of the boxes were pretty easy to tell whose stuff it was, so we just went through our own.  There were piles for Things to Go Back In, Things to Keep, Things to Donate, and Trash.  Once everything was out of the room, it was much easier to organize.  Andrew and Taylor fixed some leaning shelves and everything was vacuumed out.  Here's the final outcome!

Looks pretty good, no?  It was pretty fun going through our old things.  Some of it was more of a 'Why on earth did I keep that?!' but some it was pretty cool.  After freshening up a bit, we walked downtown again for dinner.  Once we got home it was pretty late, and we were all exhausted from the day.  I left to go to bed so I would be in a good mood at the work the next day.  They all went to Easter brunch with the family, and I made myself a special frappuccino at work.  Hope you all had a nice Easter weekend!

(photos by e.hunt)

Bloom Baby, Bloom

Wow, was your last week as crazy busy as mine?!  Between work, trying to get my assignments done before Andrew got home, studying for a test, doing my exercises, and trying to get some sleep, I feel like I had been going going going until last night!  It was a good type of going though.

On Friday I woke up early to meet Mom for coffee and a little shopping trip.  We used to do this more often when I lived at home and last week we both realized we hadn't had an outing since before Christmas.  We both happened to be off work and I was wanting some help in picking out some balcony flowers.  We started off the day with a Kaldi's coffee and headed to the mall for a little summer shopping.  I found two dresses that will be perfect for our beachy trips!  After that we stopped by a small plant nursery out by the mall to see what they had but everything was too expensive so we decided to go to Home Depot.  It was pretty though.

While Home Depot had less to choose from, their plant selection was nice and much more budget-friendly.  I was wanting a hanging pot of colorful flowers and maybe a bin of little plants to hang over the side.  We ended up finding a hanging one and a little pot of succulents for inside.  Mom even got some for the patio at home!

It turned out to be a very successful and fun morning!  By that time though it was the afternoon and we were both feeling the effects of waking up early.  Since Andrew was expected to arrive that evening, I went back to my apartment for a short nap and a shower before the festivities began.

(photos by e.hunt)

And I Think to Myself, What a Wonderful World

Ahhhh, another Monday.  I think one of my best work decisions was making Mondays my unavailable day.  It really helps because I'm always so exhausted after the weekend.  This weekend was no different.  I worked eight-hour shifts Friday-Sunday and they were crazy busy.  We had our first real Spring weekend, and people were out and about taking advantage of it.  I think I made more frappuccinos this weekend than I have over the last month!

On Friday I went out with some of my old sorority sisters.  Hannah was in town for Zeta Day and organized a get-together.  We started off at Schlafly for food and good beer then walked down the street to Boogaloo, a bar I hadn't been to in a few years.  It was really fun catching up and reminiscing about college.  One thing we all agreed on was how happy we all were at Drury and how going there and joining Zeta was one of our best decisions.  I think that officially makes us old now haha.

Yesterday I moved my patio chair back outside for a balcony re-opening party!  I celebrated the beautiful weather with a new bird friend and a beer!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and got some outdoor time.  I think we'll be staying up in these 70-80 temperatures but it looks like we'll be getting quite a bit of rain over the next couple weeks.  You know what they say about April showers though...

Anyway, No Tv Week is over and Andrew is coming home this next weekend!  

(photos by e.hunt, and a kindly bar patron)

Wherever You Are, Be All There

Well, we're halfway through No Tv Week.  How is everyone holding up?  It's amazing that even if you only spend an hour or two watching tv a day how much time it opens up when you don't.  I've been splitting up my newly acquired free time between reading, sketching, and homework.  It's that time of the semester where I have a couple research-type papers and a presentation due in the next couple weeks.  Feels kindof nice to get a head start on them.

I've also been doing some at-home workouts.  They're quick, and mainly consist of the basics; crunches, push-ups, squats, wall-sits, and planks.  I even do jumping-jacks every other day!  I also got some five pound weights at Target to try to tone up my arms a little bit.  Well, all of this is to just tone up everything a little bit.  After all, my first beach trip of the summer is only ten weeks away!

(photos by e.hunt)

Hello Spring

Also, happy April, my friends!  And a new month means we need a new color to be inspired by.  For this Spring month I chose that bright, minty green.  It's perfect for this month of waking up and going outside more often.  With all the rain the trees and flowers will be starting to really come out, and we can all start wearing our bright summery clothes.  Here's to April, here's to Spring!

(photos collected from instagram/cntraveler, dashofdarling, instagram/ranbeneli, elihalpin, pinterest, allbeautyallthetime.tumblr, houseofjadeinteriorsblog, backtothewall.co.nz, flickr, mantripping, amabiebeauty.tumblr, flickr, studded-hearts, instagram/jessonthames, thehunt, weheartit, loveliberally, mydomaine, idthrowglitterintheair.tumblr, instagram/brightbazaar)

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Happy morning, everyone!  Today marks Day 2 of our second annual No TV Week. It's not the same week we did it last year (I think it was sometime in February) but Taylor decided that April would be The Cleanse Month so it was fitting to have it now.  He's cleansing a lot of things, like controlling portions, no alcohol, no cheese, waking up early on a consistent basis, and exercising more often.  I already do a few of those, but I will be trying to wake up earlier on my days off and trying to drink less.  I won't completely cut it out because well, I enjoy having a beer with dinner!

We talked about no caffeine, which was immediately nixed, and having a no gasoline week, which would be extremely difficult.  A less-strict form of that may happen, but we'll see.  I'm planning on cleansing my apartment too.  It will mainly be going through my closet and getting rid of anything I haven't worn in a while or I just don't like it enough to keep.  Thrift store shopping is great but because of the low prices I often buy clothes that I only wear once and don't really feel the need to wear it again.  Cleansing works in the cycle though.  The bags of discarded clothes will be donated back to the store and I will receive a discount coupon to use on my next purchase.

Even if you don't participate in No TV Week, try to do something productive before the week is out.  That's what this week is about - being more productive than usual.  Happy productivity!

(photo by t.hunt)