every day comes with a day after

So as most of you know (since I think only like 3 people read this blog and I've already told all three of you personally), I moved out on Saturday and so far, so good! My roommate is really cool and seems very normal, so I feel super lucky to have found her. I seriously came across some sketchy people in the process of looking for a roommate, and while I have only known her for a little over two weeks now, we're getting along great so far. :)

And as for living on my own, I am sooo happy that I finally made the move. It was really time for me and while I was definitely getting frustrated trying to find a place, I am so happy I waited for something that fit everything I needed. I'm not sure if I've even really gotten my head wrapped around the fact that I did move out quite yet, but I think that'll just come with time. It almost just feels like I'm at a hotel right now, lol. But I was pretty excited to go grocery shopping for myself and to get to make a lunch for myself this morning with the groceries that I bought, lol. It's still the little things for me. :) The walk to the metro is also pretty sweet! Mjk and I went out Tuesday night and it was wonderful being less than ten minutes from walking out my apartment door to standing on the metro platform - and it was wonderful going out on a Tuesday night and not feeling like I was gonna get one of those parental looks when I rolled in at 1am or whenever I got home, lol. Oh oh and mjk and I went to IKEA yesterday and checked out furniture, which after double checking measurements, I am ready to go back and purchase! My father did always teach me to measure twice, cut once - so this is more like measure twice, purchase once, lol. It's not much, just a small book shelf and a nightstand, but it's still me buying my own furniture, so yay!

All in all, things are really moving up in my life... I have my fingers crossed that 25 is gonna be a good year for me! :D

You say you gotta go and find yourself
You say that you're becoming someone else
Don't recognize the face in the mirror looking back at you

You say you're leaving as you look away
I know there's really nothing left to say
Just know I'm here whenever you need me I'll wait for you

So I'll let you go, I'll set you free
And when you've seen what you need to see
When you find you, come back to me

...

And I hope you find everything that you need
I'll be right here waiting to see
You find you, come back to me

I can't get close if you're not there
I can't get inside if there's no soul there
I can't face you, I can't save you
It's something you'll have to do

Come Back to Me
David Cook

I just wrote a long rant, and then it got deleted. I think it was a sign.

Can you believe it's August already? Crazy how fast this summer has flown by... now if only this upcoming week of work will fly by! I must admit I was a wee bit spoiled in July never having to work a normal 5-day work week once, so this first week of August is gonna be rough, lol. Oh well, I'm just happy that in 5 glorious days mjk and I will be on our way to Hilton Head Island for a week of relaxation - yippeeee! :)

In other news, the Crab Feast was a SUCCESS! The rain might've tried to stop us, but NEVER! We perservered by eating crabs in the garage (instead of the backyard) and drinking beer while sitting in the hottub during a downpour, lol. All-in-all, a good time, if I do say so myself. :) And now I've got lots of yummy party leftovers to keep my tummy satisfied.

I just caught up on my sister's last bajillion blogs and I feel totally behind on my own!

So I just got back to work this morning after a week of training in Hilton Head and the guys I work with decided it'd be funny to move EVERYTHING on my desk just a little (since I'm totally OCD and notice the slightest change anyway). Just imagine a bunch of post-its cock-eyed and my calendar hanging side way and my monitor pointing the wrong way and my stapler on an angle... I'm sure you can visualize. Real funny guys, reeeeal funny.

Anyway, so Hilton Head was sweet, I learned all kinds of OSHA goodness and I started working on a nice little tan (which will hopefully be perfected when mjk and I go BACK to Hilton Head in two weeks, lol). Okay, back to checking email. :)

So July is seriously FLYING by! On July 3rd mjk and I went to the AT&T Golf Tournament at Congressional and I got to see Tiger Woods!!! Mjk had already seen him play, but it was a first for me so I was super excited! Then Friday night we went to a house party and watched fireworks, then on Saturday we drove out to the Eastern Shore to go to a 4th of July party and watched fireworks over the water. Then Sunday I flew out to Jacksonville, Florida for work and was there from Sunday until Wednesday night. Now, while Florida sounds great and all, the weather absolutely sucked - all it did was rain! But I did go to an alligator farm AND I went to where Ponce de Leon landed and I even got to drink from the fountain of youth! So then I got back to Maryland on Wednesday night and Thursday I had a meeting all day (an awesome meeting, by the way) and now it's Friday and tonight mjk and I are driving out to the middle of nowhere in Virginia to spend the weekend at a cabin with some friends. Yay! Then I have Monday off and Tuesday is mjk's wisdom teeth day and then this upcoming Saturday I fly out to Hilton Head Island for training from the 19th to the 24th and by the time I get back it will be the end of July already!! Geesh! So yeah, if you don't see any other posts (aside from this one) in July, that's why.

So this weekend I went to my first DC Photography Group meetup! We all met at the National Mall for the Folklife Festival to wander around and take pictures. It was definitely fun, but now I'm hankering for a sweet camera... I just feel like if I'm really gonna get into this stuff, my point and shoot might not cut it anymore. I also realized during this outing that humans aren't really my favorite subject. They move around too much and are hard to capture (especially without a fancy-schmancy camera). But I do love inanimate objects, lol. I like capturing things from different angles and trying to give them life through the picture. Okay, am I being too cheesy for you? See, this is why the DC Photography Meetup Group is perfect for me! It's a whole bunch of people like me! That's even what I said in my intro, "Hi, I'm Erin and I'm here because I love to take pictures and my friends make fun of me for it, so I figured hanging out with a whole bunch of people just like me would be perfect." :)

Btw, I didn't take this picture (obviously), but Rifat and I were having fun trying to squish the Washington Monument and one of the other group members shot this and sent it to me later. :)
http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/9/6/3/c/highres_9398460.jpeg

Anyway, I'm bummed I won't be able to make the next few meetups because of summer plans and travel for work, but they're going to the Montgomery County Fair in August and then in September they're doing a tour of the US Capitol and I've RSVP-ed yes to both! I'm really pumped about the Capitol tour because I've never been in the Capitol before (unless maybe I went for an elementary school field trip or something? obviously even if I did it wasn't memorable to me, lol). So yay for fun photography trips! :)

At least I have facebook, gmail, cuteoverload, textsfromlastnight, failblog, blogspot, craigslist, ebay, and of course mymilktoof (ickle and Lardee's Grand Adventure was kind of awesomely precious), but even still... 9 hours is a loooot of time. Sigh... c'moooon 4pm so I can peace out.

Living really ass far away from everything is getting extremely old. And so am I. Maybe it's time.

Just thought I'd share some pictures from my cooking class this weekend!

First Course: Tomato and Basil Soup with Avocado Mousse
Rating: It's served cold (which I'm not normally a fan of) but it was light and fresh and delicious and the avocado mousse was a great accent!




Side Dishes: Potato Gratin & Haricots Verts with Fine Herbs
Rating: The potato dish was deeeelicious - but super rich! And the "haricots verts with fine herbs" was totally just green beans with a lot of butter and herbs, so it was fine, but nothing amazing.

Main Dish: Open-Faced Beef Wellington with Tarragon Jus
Rating: So it's basically a flattened puff-pastry with little chunks of beef and then sauteed mushrooms and onions on top (oh and a little tarragon jus on the side). It was really quite yummy, but not what I expected and the tarragon jus was totally over rated in my opinion. But the glass of wine definitely got 2 thumbs up!

Dessert: Raspberry and Orange Napoleons with Chocolate Creme Chantilly
Rating: Evidently my group over-whipped the chocolate creme chantilly, so that's why it looks a little lumpy :( but I still thought it tasted deeeelicious, so I wasn't too worried. :)

All-in-all, I had lots of fun, learned some good kitchen techniques - like how to make garlic paste and how to dice an onion the right way, and got to eat a yummy meal, so I'd say it was a success! My only other comment is that since it's a team effort, it probably would've been even more fun if I'd known the people I was cooking with, lol. Soooo who's up for the basic knife skills class??? I hear it fills up fast!

Mjk gave me roses yesterday... just because... :)

So yesterday I was super productive at work... and today I'm writing this blog... I should know by now to pace myself, lol. Anyway, life has been good this week, it seems like a small acheivement, but every bit counts. Last night mjk and I cooked dinner - I bought some chicken breasts and breadcrumbs and we attempted to fry little chicken chunks. In the beginning the chicken chunks were too big and the oil was too hot which resulted in burnt breadcrumbs on the outside and raw chicken on the inside, lol. But after a few lessons learned, we chopped the chicken into smaller chunks and mjk mastered the frying part and in the end I thought it was quite delicious! Tonight mjk is grilling pork tenderloin... mmmm!

The rest of the week is looking up as well. Friday is my regular day off, so I'm gonna relax during the day and then eah and I are going shopping at the outlets in Leesburg! *crossing my fingers I find something fun at the Coach outlet* And Saturday I signed up to go to a cooking class! I'm usually hesitant to do stuff alone, but I decided that was boring, so I threw caution to the wind and registered!

Here's the class I'm taking:
http://www.lacademie.com/Recreation/RecreationalHome.aspx?event_id=1814

I'm looking forward to it and really hoping it's fun because there are a ton of other classes I want to try as well like the Saturday night "Two Cooking" class which is like a date night and the "Basic Knife Skills" class and definitely the "Fun With Food and Beer" class! Lol. I'll have to post after this weekend and fill you in on how it goes. :)

So today at work I actually felt useful in a very awesome way. It wasn't just the monotonous day to day stuff that I know if at any point I dropped dead, someone else could easily pick up and keep running with - mind you, they probably wouldn't be as OCD/anal retentive/organized at it as I would be, but they'd get the job done. But today! Today I was part of this committee and I was requested to be part of this committee because of my knowledge! MY KNOWLEDGE! How cool is that?? :) I was literally sitting in the meeting HAPPY because I was adding value and I could tell the other people in the meeting appreciated the value that I was adding. YAY! I'm so used to being in a meeting and either being 1) not allowed to talk, or 2) clueless, or 3) bored out of my mind. This was so refreshing! I'm also really excited about the possible outcome of this meeting. I mean, if I could be a part of a positive change, that would be so awesome! I'm sure I'm being totally over excited and positive and cheerleader-ish right now, but you know what? I need some of that in my life these days, so I think that's okay! So yay positivity and yay feeling useful at work! :)

P.S. The new Cheddar Potatoes with Broccoli Lean Cuisine is excellent. I highly recommend it.

So a few days ago mjk discovered the fact that I'd never seen Saving Private Ryan. Well of course, this was just unacceptable, so last night he decides that's the movie we'll watch while eating dinner (the boys still don't have cable, so it's either using the PS3 to play Rock Band or watch a dvd... thank god for the latter). So we throw the pizza into the oven and sit down to watch what I discover is the most depressing 20 minutes of a movie I have ever seen. In my life. I mean, Tom Hanks tops his goodbye to Jenny level of depression in this movie. The scene that really sticks out in my head specifically is the slow-mo when you see a disoriented man (missing an arm, mind you), looking around and then bending over to pick up his arm. Heart breaking! And it's all true, of course. True story movies are always way more heart wrenching (did I spell wrenching right?). Okay, well anyway, I'm sitting there just sort of in shock (not crying, just feeling overwhelmingly sad) and then of course DING! dinner's ready! Somehow my appetite just wasn't the same at that point. And then SPOILER ALERT: Tom Hank dies at the end?! Talk about even MORE depressing! He goes all this way to save Matt Damon and then he dies! He doesn't get to go home to his wife and her rose garden! And it's the stupid German dude that he let go that is the one that kills him?! The one that the dorky dude totally should've killed, but instead just froze. I mean literally like 4 of the awesome characters died b/c the dorky guy just froze. Ugh. I hate that guy. So yeah I got into the whole thing, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't completely depressing.

And on a completely separate note, why is it my boyfriend can be completely shocked that I have not seen Saving Private Ryan and it doesn't somehow work the same way when it comes to Little Women?! Hey C, I think it's time to have a double dinner and a movie date... WE pick the movie.

Last night I went to bed at 8pm. I'd like to say I fell asleep watching a movie in front of the TV and at midnight dragged myself upstairs, but no, at 8pm I washed my face, brushed my teeth and put myself to bed. It was still daylight out.

Ten hours later, my alarm went off for work, and somehow, I was still sleepy. How is that even possible?

http://mymilktoof.blogspot.com/

so precious.

I used to have a blog and was quite the active blogger, but my last entry was from May 08, and two before that was August 07, so yeah, you get the point. Anyway, I figure I'll try this and see how it goes. I'm not sure I really have enough interesting things going on in my life, but here goes nothing...

So I must admit I had a pretty perfect morning today. Not only did I get to wake up, get ready for work AND get a good morning kiss, I also had a sweet commute! I literally left after 630am and was to work before 7am and I got a parking place (a LEGAL parking place nonetheless)! That is a pretty gosh darn successful morning, if I do say so myself. :)