TGI-Thursday

I am so so so happy it's finally Thursday this week, since it's my last day of work for the week, I am acting like it's Friday, aka getting no work done and contemplating a long lunch. Tomorrow is Danny's BIRTHDAY and I am so so so excited to celebrate with him. I'm going into Chicago to pick him up from the airport tomorrow and then it's out on the town! Then we're coming back home and celebrating some more, basically it's another birthday extravaganza weekend! I plan on spoiling him rotten but not before I rub it in his face a couple times that he is 3 months older than me, practically ancient! Obviously, I am ridiculously excited to see him, as it's been 3 weeks since the last time. The great thing about Danny weekends is that we both go out of our way to plan extra fun things to do with each other so we can make our visits even more special, so I am trying to make this weekend no exception! We'll go out in Chicago on Friday, then come home and hang out by the pool for awhile, then have a special birthday dinner on Saturday, then go out again, then Sunday I'm sure we'll be nursing a double-hangover so it might be back to the pool and then Sunday night we're going to cook out! Such a fun weekend! I am definitely ready to go out and dance the night away :)

I <3 Hairspray!

Melissa and I went to see Hairspray Monday night and as a musical nerd, I was in heaven. The songs are great, in an awesome Broadway kind of way, the dancing is great and I can honestly say there wasn't a character I didn't love. My only small foible with the movie was John Travolta in drag. To be honest, I think he did a great job of embracing the character of Edna, and when he was speaking, he pulled off a decent Baltimore accent to make me forget even further that it was actually John Travolta on the scene. However, when he sang, the accent was gone and it was all John Travolta's voice coming out of that big lady and it freaked me out a little.

I was sooo impressed with Nikki Blonsky, who plays Tracy Turnblad. You would never know she was a newcomer to the business because she did such an amazing job. Zac Efron is obviously adorable, as is James Marsden. Ever since What a Girl Wants, in all it's teeny-bopper glory, I've loved Amanda Bynes, and this was no exception. Seriously everyone was good, even the villains, Michelle Pfeiffer and Brittany Snow. Oh and I have to mention Elijah Kelley, who plays Seaweed. He's one of the few less corny characters in the movie (nothing wrong with corny though) and he was excellent, I really hope he continues to get parts that have him singing and dancing because he was exceptional at both.

This movie was not afraid to be corny, after all, a large portion of it takes place on the set of the Corny Collins Show! No matter what though, the movie sends a great message about accepting people of all sizes, shapes, colors and backgrounds and it is so much fun to watch. I can't wait to own it on DVD, I have a feeling it will be one that I will watch over and over again!

My super rockin' weekend!

This weekend was great. First and foremost, it was Jenny's birthday and we had such a good time and it was so fun to see her! We went to Sheffield's which is this awesome bar on Sheffield (weird) that has a great outdoor beer garden and is really chill and fun. Luckily my family friends, the Flynns, happened to be there and so I managed to weasle out of the constant shot-taking by talking to them for awhile and I didn't get to hammered. I can't say the same for the birthday girl, but it was her birthday after all, so she was pretty much required to take them.

I have to say, it's a good thing that I love Jenny so much, and fear her wrath if I had missed anything, because Jenny's birthday (Saturday) was the same day that Harry Potter 7 came out. I got my book late by Potter-fan standards, at 12:30 pm and literally read for 5 hours without stopping, seriously, I took it with me when I had to pee even! Then I had to tear myself away and get ready for Jenny's birthday extravaganza. Still obsessed though, I got home a little after 1 and even in my mildly tipsy state, read HP for another hour. Of course I still wasn't done, being 758 pages and all, so when I woke up in the morning, instead of vegging at my apartment for awhile before heading back to South Bend, I got on the road pretty much immediately and then read until I was done, some of the time at Melissa's pool, thank god I saw some sunlight. Since Danny reads this and I know he's not done, I'm not saying anything about liking or not liking the book. All I will say is that J.K. Rowling is brilliant in how she ties everything together, seriously brilliant. I can't imagine having the attention span to keep track of 7 books worth of information and make it all piece together, hence why I can't do puzzles either.

Also, my other happy thing of the weekend was falling in love with Kelly Clarkson's new album, My December and new artist, Colbie Caillat's album Coco. As far as Miss Kelly is concerned, I had actually purchased her album when it came out and knew that I liked at least 2 songs but didn't really truly listen to the rest of it much at the time. So for my roadtrip, I burned both CDs to listen to in my car and I have to say, anyone who is trashing this album and her talent are completely close-minded. It is definitely not Breakaway, not nearly so poppy, but even though I love pop music, I was so impressed with her growth as a musician. She has great variety on this album, which is clearly a break-up record by the way, and I am sad that people like Perez Hilton, who I usually like, are giving her such a hard time. It's sad that her record label wasn't willing to foster her talent instead of trying to force her into one particular style that wasn't her own. As for Colbie, the iTunes review is true, she is very much like a female Jack Johnson, I love her. Her style is light and pretty and she had a great voice and good lyrics. I would definitely love to see her in concert.

So those are the things that made my weekend grand. Danny's coming in next weekend for his birthday, so I'm sure that weekend will be even better, yay! This summer has been great, and I'm glad I'm ending it on such high notes!

I tried so hard to fight it

But I couldn't. With my love of celebrity gossip, sarcasm and poo jokes, it was inevitable that I would someday become an avid reader of Perezhilton.com, and alas, I have. So many of my fellow celebrity gossip-addicts would talk about reading Perez daily and I just kind of thought he was too bitchy and everyone reads him and I was trying not to conform I guess. I am a rebel without a cause. But one day at work, I was bored, and I just typed it in and after laughing out loud 3 times in 5 minutes, I knew I'd found a winner. Aside from his bitchy comments and drawings of penises and poo on people's pictures, here are the reasons why Perezhilton.com is actually a semi-decent celebrity website:

1) He does not take himself seriously at all. He has no problem making fun of himself or taking it like a man when people make fun of him. I respect that.
2) He's always making an effort to introduce his readers to new music and really supports unique and talented artists.
3) Yeah he's mean to some choice celebrities, but let's be honest, with some of the ridiculous stuff they pull, they deserved to get a little poo drawing thrown their way occasionally.
4) He posts new entries alllll the time, which for someone like me who gets bored every 10 minutes and has the attention span of a chihuahua, is perfect because I can check it several times a day.

So there you go. You win Perez, I like you. In fact, I like you better than thesuperficial.com now and that's saying something. Don't worry, I'm still reading the New York Times every day and trying to be an intelligent human being, but what can I say? It's a guilty pleasure that I don't really feel guilty about and after talking about my stupid job search for an entire week, it was time to talk about something fun! If only I could insert a poo drawing to really finish this off...

Monday grateful journal

I need to do one of these at least every Monday because it will definitely keep me going the rest of the day to focus on happy things. So here's what I'm most grateful for today:

1) almost being done with OCI (on-campus interviewing) scheduling
2) Danny being back safe from his trip
3) working on interesting things at work
4) buying new books to read
5) having a nice, quiet weekend

Actually, this Monday hasn't even been that bad. Once I figured out all of the firms I was trying to get interviews with for OCI next month, my day got much less stressful. I still have a lot to do with the job search, since smaller trial firms don't always come to OCI, especially firms from Salt Lake, but I'm checking things off day by day and that's all I can do.

I'm really looking forward to the December 1 deadline to be honest, because at that point, God willing, I will be accepting an offer and I will hopefully know where I am headed after I graduate. It will be a giant sigh of relief. Of course I'll have to work my butt off to make sure I get a permanent offer, but I'm not nearly as worried about that once I get my foot in the door. It's really weird to think about how much of my life is going to be determined in the next 6 months. Where I'll live, where I'll work, what my finances will be like, that's a lot! I'm excited to take this big step even if the process of getting there is stressful. After working full-time and doing all this time-consuming job searching, I'm looking forward to getting back to school too. It will be nice to have a schedule that is more my own doing and to be back in my apartment and to see people again. I'm excited about all of it. Things are good :)

I suck at posting, but life has been boring these past few days.

These have been the exciting points of my life this week: yoga on tuesday and thursday, laying out with mel on wednesday and going out to dinner with the parents on wednesday. Not that any of those things were bad, they were great, but I'm so bored I could weep. Work has been busy, but with stupid busy-work crap and I even took a "sick" day on Wednesday to get stuff done at home but mostly because I just couldn't take it anymore. TGIF. Danny's on some camping trip with his lab this weekend, which I can't WAIT to hear stories about because I just really can't picture some of the people in his lab being real handy in the woods. But the bad part of that is that he's out of cell phone range, so I can't even talk to him at all until Sunday. You'd be surprised how much this bums me out, I mean it's only a half an hour a day max right? But talking to Danny every day calms me down, especially when I have stuff I'm having trouble thinking through, for example my current job search. The whole process of the 2L summer job search is painful. I'm currently "bidding" on on-campus interviews that will take place in August for jobs that aren't until NEXT SUMMER. So this of course requires resume updates and revisions, figuring out my schedule, blah blah blah. It's going to be a big old mess. But whatever, as long as I hopefully get a job out of it, I don't really care, I just want it to be over with as little stress as possible, HA!

So that's been the bulk of my life recently, job searches, being bored, yoga. I am probably the coolest person you'll ever meet. Oh and I've also been filling up time by re-reading Harry Potter 6, since the 7th book is coming out in a week. Maybe after I'm done with that I'll achieve my lifelong dream of solving the Rubix Cube, just kidding, I may be cool enough for that but I'm not smart enough for sure. Melissa wants to go out this weekend, and thank goodness for her because otherwise I wouldn't motivate myself to do anything but watch movies and go running. Also thank goodness it's Jenny's birthday next week. Maybe soon I'll find it in myself to be social again and remember that I can still go out and have a good time. Well, I better, or Jenny will kick my butt Texas-style.

Yoga Rocks!!

Today is Yoga Day, well Tuesdays and Thursdays are Yoga Days. My mom is actually getting certified to be a yoga instructor and as part of the certification process she has to teach free classes. Since my mom has been doing yoga religiously for quite some time, she's already an excellent teacher, which means Melissa and I get sweet personalized yoga classes for free every week. It's kind of an amazing deal. Also, if it's nice out, we'll do it outside on our deck and I have to say it almost feels like it's working better when you can hear the birds singing and the trees blowing in the wind, very hippie circle of life touchy feely stuff.

I'm not kidding though, yoga is addictive. Melissa and I both admitted to doing it on our own outside of class now. I love Sun Salutes, even when we have to hold Downward Dog, yes, it's just a yoga position, for way too long of a time. You just feel good after yoga class is over, or even now, after my own little practice sessions are over. I am definitely getting more flexible and stronger and seriously, I am/was the weakest person in the world, aside from maybe infants under 3 months. Now I actually feel like I can lift small things, so yoga is doing wonders for me. I really want to take a hot yoga class but I'm afraid I would pass out because I get hot during normal yoga, let alone a class that's over 100 degrees inside! But you supposedly can get into crazy positions when your body's all warm like that, and I'd love to see if I could do some of the positions I can't quite get into now. Right now though, my goal is simply to get my heels all the way down in Downward Dog, sounds small and silly but I will be thrilled when I can do it and I'm so close!

I definitely need to get myself into some yoga classes when I'm back in Chicago. I'm just too used to it now to give it up and it really does chill me out when I'm overwhelmed, hence why it would be good during school. Once I get my Downward Dog right I guess I won't be too nervous to take a real class :)

Back to the Grind

Today was the hardest day to come to work ever. The weekend in Salt Lake with Danny was soooo good, and then yesterday was a long travel day and I couldn't go to bed early because I was still hyped up from the weekend and I was awful at getting up this morning and it's Monday and I had lots of work on my desk and I'm tired and I wish I could take a nap and whine, whine, whine. I have to admit, the day has gotten better as it's gone on because one of my cases, the one I like the least, has gotten continued so I don't have to work the file anymore and I had delicious carry out for lunch, but it is still Monday, a very sticky, sleepy Monday. It is crazy though that I move back to Chicago in 4 and 1/2 weeks! I'm excited to get back to the city, but there is so much to do before then! I have to finish applying for jobs, choose this semester's classes, pack and the two most fun things, celebrate first Jenny's birthday and then Danny's!

Speaking of Danny, I am having a really hard time getting over my post-visit mope. Yesterday was awful, I seriously think I got teary a dozen times over the course of my journey home. I think it's because the weekend was so good though, so I'm just trying to focus on that. It was so great being with him. And the "camping" thing? Actually it was awesome, I made a big deal out of nothing. It was so incredibly beautiful up there I can't believe it isn't an area that Hollywood has discovered yet. It was a good 20-25 degrees cooler than the 100 degree valley, so sometimes you could almost feel chilly. It was nice to hang out with Danny's family too, I'm really comfortable with them now, whereas when we first started doing the visits, I would get way more nervous because his family just didn't know me as well as mine knew Danny, just because they were so far away. Anyway, we also got to make dinner together, watched Wedding Crashers, one of our all-time favorite sources of quotes, went to the pool, just lots of fun stuff together. I know it's stupid to say, but I missed him the second I walked through security at the airport (he's sweet and always waits until I make it through before he leaves), seriously though, I immediately felt blue. I would guess that's the main reason being at work is so hard today. This seems like the perfect time to do my grateful journal, to cheer me up for the afternoon. Today I am grateful for:

1) Having a boyfriend who is so great I miss him like crazy already (feel free to gag)
2) Looking forward to 2 yoga classes this week
3) Re-reading Harry Potter 6, pre-7th book
4) My silly little kitty
5) Officially renewing my apartment lease! I'm not homeless!

Thank goodness for Harry Potter, I may be a "serious law student," to quote my hero, Elle Woods, but I will probably start reading HP 6 and not put it down until I fall asleep on its open pages, what a good way to get over the mopes. :)

Weekend in Utah!

Today I leave for Salt Lake City to visit Danny, and I'm so excited I can barely sit still. I'm definitely ripping off my law firm right now because even though I'll be at work for the morning and getting paid for it, I already know I'm going to get next to nothing done. Whatever, I work hard some days :)

So Danny and I haven't talked a whole lot about what we're going to do over the weekend, but one thing (really two, but they're similar) has been thrown out there by Danny for Saturday's activity. His family is going to be camping up in the mountains while I'm there and we can either go meet up with them for the day and hike and canoe and do various other outdoorsy things or we can go to the ski resort where his brother works and ride the ski lift to the top of the mountain and hike there. I have to admit, I wasn't initially so warm to either idea because I am not exactly "Nature Girl." I don't really like getting dirty, I don't like bugs, I don't like being outside if it doesn't involve laying out or running because I have to. But then, I decided to have an open mind about both options. Because there are two things about these activities that I already know I love, spending time with Danny doing something new and the unbelievable beauty of the Wasatch Mountains. So I figure, I can suck it up for a day, give up my prissiness and just do something cool that I definitely can't do in the Midwest at all, with the person I love being with so much. Of course to balance out the sweaty, nature-y activity of Saturday, I'll probably insist that we go to the pool or the mall on Friday just so I can feel like myself ;)

I also realized because yesterday was the 4th of July (Happy 4th!) I neglected my grateful journal, and I'll probably neglect it all weekend, but I can assure you that I will be grateful for more than 5 things every day that I get to spend with Danny, so I guess I don't need it to cheer me up then. So for yesterday, I was very grateful for:

1) hilariously puny fireworks, which were actually still pretty
2) sleeping in for the first time in a long time
3) John Krasinski in License to Wed (he's just so lovable!)
4) Eat Pray Love being such a good book
5) My dad talking like a cowboy when watching Lonesome Dove

And today, well today just started, but I bet I can still come up with 5:

1) My kitty snuggling with me this morning instead of meowing in my face
2) picking out cute outfits to wear for the weekend
3) knowing I'm going to see Danny in mere hours!
4) a tasty breakfast
5) a quiet office for the day, where not much is expected of me, thank goodness!

Ok, that's about all the concentration capacity I had, so I'm going to go back to "working," which is code for bouncing in my chair!

Grateful Journal

When I was younger, like in middle school, I used to keep a "grateful journal" and every day before I went to bed, I'd write down 5 things I was grateful for. My friend Esther told me about it and it was such a great thing to do because even if I'd had a bad day (oh the woes of middle school) it would always force me to think of good things before I went to bed. And I hate going to bed angry or upset, which backfires sometimes. But anyway, I've decided I want to start doing it again, but doing it here is so much easier because 1) my handwriting stinks, 2) I like the pretty pink color of my font and 3) it's really better now to do it at the end of the work day because that is when I am at my most gloomy. So here I go, today I am grateful for:

1) Yoga on the deck tonight
2) My friends and family
3) Danny submitting his first Chicago secondary
4) Last full day of work for the week
5) Taking a long lunch

I'm in a good mood already! What a great thing! I think everyone should do it, the world would be a better place if people did that every day.

My biggest guilty pleasure

Danny, sweetie, you may not want to read this post. My guiltiest pleasure in the whole world is wedding magazines. And honestly, it doesn't stop there, I love going to weddings, I love looking at wedding pictures from friends and family, I love looking at the Vows section of the paper, which is, in fact, what prompted this particular post today. It's not even because I'm in a super big rush to have a wedding of my own (ok, Danny, you can breathe now), it's probably just because I have watched way too many romantic comedies in my life and I have been going to a lot of weddings since I was little, even being the world's best and cutest flower girl in one, if I do say so myself. My dad is from a family of 12, so most of my aunts and uncles got married after I was born. I cry at every wedding I've ever been to also, even some particularly touching weddings in movies or on TV. There is something that gets me every time and I can't even pinpoint it, but the feeling of weddings is so great.

I guess part of it is that a wedding is one giant theme party. Everything always looks beautiful, everyone is always happy and all dressed up, to quote Wedding Crashers, "There's music in the air!" I mean really, what's not great about seeing two people you know and care about ridiculously happy to be together and then celebrating by eating and drinking and dancing all night? That's the perfect party! The other really great part about weddings is that the couple have gone to such great lengths to put themselves into this great party. It's better than your average backyard bbq because every single detail has been planned to both reflect their personalities and to make the guests happy.

I think my love of pretty clothes has also heightened my giddy enjoyment of weddings/wedding magazines. The clothes for weddings, the dresses, the tuxes, the veils, the matching outfits for the attendants, they are the prettiest clothes ever. (Ok, there are some heinous choices out there, but for the most part, they're great.) They all have beautiful added details and they've all been fitted so they look great on. The wedding dress is especially so awesome, because as an incredibly girly girl, there's something so cool about knowing that the bride is wearing what is probably her favorite dress in the whole world. I know guys just don't get that, but trust me, if you're a girl, there is not much that is more exciting to you than that. Except of course, diamonds. And what do you know? That's another great part of weddings! You get to openly gawk at the bride's beautiful engagement and wedding rings. Well, maybe you're not supposed to, but I clearly do. I can't help it, I like sparkly things!

Thankfully Danny's friends from home are quicker to get to the alter than any of my friends because we have already gone to one wedding this year, which Danny was in (he is SO cute in a tux) and we're going to another in the fall, thank goodness! I haven't gotten enough of my fix yet this summer. My friends really need to step up, because I'm ready to partayyyy ;)

Happy Birthday Melissa!

Yesterday was Melissa's birthday, so this post should technically have been written then, but I was so tired from Melissa's birthday festivities of the night before, it wasn't going to happen. I love celebrating birthdays with my friends because the evening always begins with a nice dinner where we are very grown-up and sophisticated and ends in a divey bar with us screaming "Proud to be an American" at the top of our lungs. As my card to Melissa pointed out, no matter how old we get, our immaturity never really goes away, and I like it that way to be honest.

Melissa has been my very best friend since high school and then we went to the same college, studied in London together and lived together our final 2 years of college. This is the first time we haven't been in the same city in quite some time, but we've done a really good job of staying in touch, especially because we're not too far away from each other. Mel is in medical school and even though she'd never actually admit it, she's incredibly smart and really good at what she's doing. Despite the fact that she participates in idiotic displays of stupid dance moves and bad singing with me, I am positive she will be an amazing doctor.

We definitely have some very specific differences between us, but lately I have been realizing how similar we are. Well for starters, we are both blonde, we dress the same and we love the color pink, so if it's your first time meeting us, it might be a little hard to tell us apart. We're both incredibly girly and more importantly, we're definitely both Midwestern girls. We're friendly (Melissa more than me though), we're close with our families, we both love corn, you know the standard Midwestern personality traits. One striking difference between us is that I am confrontational and Mel is not. Both are advantages and disadvantages and I wish we could both be both at appropriate times, but even that I think we're both getting better at. We definitely balance each other out. I guess another very important similarity between us is that we're both very loyal to our friends and to each other. We're definitely there for the people we care about and I know without Melissa, there would definitely have been times that I wouldn't have been able to pick myself up again. We've seen each other at our worst and our best and have still been there no matter what, so I think that's pretty great.

OH and probably the most important thing that we have in common, we have brother and sister cats, Zac Morris and Kelly Capowski and we LOVE them. Yes, we named our cats after Saved by the Bell, the show had a really big impact on us, what can I say? They are the prettiest cats ever and we both dote on them a ridiculous amount. Anyway, that's just a little bit about Melissa, my very best friend. Happy Birthday Mel, now you're as old as me for 3 and 1/2 months, HA! (I had to end on something sarcastic, that's something we do too, tell jokes when things get sappy.)