quiet week

so it was a quieter week with the hurricane. luckily we didn't have it bad in no.va - i didn't have work monday & tuesday, i didn't loose power, but some of my friends did. it was pretty windy and the lights flickered a few times, but i was lucky to be home and take it easy. 

new jersey on the other hand... i still can't believe the devastation of my home state. all monday and tuesday as i was seeing pictures and the news i was in shock. while my family is from northwest nj -but we always went to the shore growing up and i have countless friends who live or have houses along the shore. seeing places where i've been destroyed, in the ocean or covered in sand is just so surreal. you never think a storm like this is going to effect your area - especially a hurricane. my hometown was hit with pretty high winds and a majority of it is still without power and a few roads are still closed. my parents were lucky and it came back on thursday afternoon. it is bad in our area because most people have wells, so without power we have no water. so compared to other parts of the state not having power for a week isn't bad, but not ideal. so it will be interesting to see when full power is restored to my area. also with the gas rationing - it is just crazy.

so it was a quiet week after work - halloween party at my apt on wednesday, happy hour drinks with a friend on friday. i'm hoping for a little bit more fun next week! but i was excited because my first birchbox arrived! it is fun little samples and it was really exciting! i LOVE the lip butter that was in my box! and i'm excited to try the others. each month you get a box of samples to try. i'm not that big into hair/makeup but it sounds like a fun way to try new things and to learn more. if you are interested in getting one let me know and i'll email you the link to sign up! i'd seen it on twitter but one of my hs friends was all about it so i decided to try it!

but my big fun was my friend kelly's wedding! i went to her bachelorette in baltimore a few weeks ago and had a blast there. the wedding was so much fun! great to see so many college friends - and the last time i saw a few of them was at my little's wedding two years ago! we had a fun night dancing and chatting. it was also great to see a few friends parents too! so i forgot my camera so i only took a few on my phone. i can't wait to see the wac photo from the professional ones. i love the alumni photos that end up in the college magazine!

little and i!

kelly and i 

brandon and i - we were history majors together and good friends in college. 2 years ago at little's wedding he randomly picks me up, we have since made it a tradition at weddings. brandon gets an invite to my wedding just to continue the tradition. 

so it was a lazy sunday after i got back home. watched football and actually menu planned for the week - yay for thinking about dinner more than when i get home! so ready for a new week. and i'm going to be like everyone right now - omg. how. is. it. november?!? and i hate time change. it was dark at 5pm. it makes me so sad! and it made me realize i need to print my favorite 2011 photos for the album as 2012 is almost over! crazy!

how was your weekend?

jfk, concerts and hurricanes

last week ended up being a great week! my big things were going to a talk at the archives on the cuban missile crisis and then going to an Kip Moore/Justin Moore/Eric Church concert! woooo!

so i get emails from the archives among other places on their events and when i saw they were doing a talk on the cuban missile crisis i decided to go. apparently jfk (and many other presidents until nixon) taped their conversations and a book came out on jfk's tapes - including some recordings and since last week was the 50th anniversary of the cuban missile crisis there was a talk by 3 historians and caroline kennedy was introducing the event. so i mentioned it to my friend linds when we were running and she decided to go with me - so we had a fun evening! and what else made it fun was one of the historians - ted widmer used to be the head of the history center where i spent a lot of time in college. and while he left at the end of my sophomore year i saw him a few times and had a chat with him about the american studies major. so we mentioned wac and he chatted with us a little longer and personalized our books! and then caroline chatted with us too, while signing our books! yay! 

the historians and my book - haha!

ted and caroline signing books!

so that was pretty fun! i love going to random events like this and making the best of living somewhere where i can go to these fun talks and lectures! i need to start checking out all the dc colleges to see what they have too for their lectures! (i'm such a dork!)

and the other event i was really looking forward to was seeing kip moore, justin moore and eric church in concert!!! i saw kip moore over the summer when he played at party in the park in charleston and then justin moore last year when he opened for darius rucker and i saw eric church twice back in 2006 when he was just starting out when he opened for rascal flatts! and it was at the patriots center which is small and i went by myself and had a side stage ticket, which i'm a big fan of! so i had a blast hearing 3 guys i love and managed to get some great pictures!

kip moore

kip moore!

 

kip moore singing my fav song "hey pretty girl"

justin moore 

eric church!

more eric church

the fun thing about side view is they come over to the side all the time! i was 10 rows back!

 and then after the concert kip moore was signing autographs so it was great to meet him, especially since after the concert in july i fell in love with him & his music! so that was so fun!

meeting kip moore

kip signed my ticket

so friday night was a blast! i love going to concerts and i don't mind going myself so i'm glad i went. plus getting single seats often means you get better seats! saturday night i went to a coworkers party and because i'm not the biggest fan of halloween my last minute costume was my favorite jets player - darelle revis. in week 3 he tore his acl playing against miami so i wore my knee brace to complete my costume! i never thought i'd wear one of my knee braces for fun! 
and then on sunday i did my 8 mile run with lindser! we ran on the c&o canal path and it was a great morning for it! we did the 8 miles in 1:25 minutes which is around a 10:45 average mile. so i was thrilled with that! next week is 10 miles! and the half is quickly approaching! but the training is going well so that makes me happy!

and this is the 3rd weekend in a row where i've done something in the national park system and in the 9 weeks i've been in dc i've gone to national park 6 of the 9 weekends. yay national parks!

so had the day off today for weather due to the hurricane. it is pretty windy out and getting windier as the day goes on. the worst is to come tonight so hoping for the best. we are in the 5-10 inches of rain and have already gotten about 2, but luckily no flooding around here yet. i've seen pictures of the jersey shore, especially wildwood and it is crazy. hoping the damage isn't too bad. hugs to everyone!

last week in charleston

so i've been in the dc area for a few days now staying with friends, trying to find somewhere to live and had my first day of work! but before i get to all that here is my last week in charleston in pictures!

went to folly beach friday night for the sunset - i love the beach at night and it was just so nice to sit on a quiet beach and just read and take it in.

saturday morning i went downtown to the farmers market and walked around 

then i met up with my zta friend elizabeth at sullivans island and we hung out at the beach for the afternoon and had to swim across the gully to actually get to the beach. yes - swim, it was over my head. pretty crazy! then saturday night i went out to dinner with the girls.

one of the things i wanted to do before i left charleston was walk the ravenel bridge. so sunday morning before i picked up my parents i walked the bridge! 

so after picking up my parents & going to the tattooed moose for lunch we headed to patriots point as my dad loves battleships and the uss yorktown (a HUGE aircrafy carrier) is now a museum in charleston. the view of the ravenel from patriots point.

mom & dad with the yorktown

chocolate chip cookie recipe for
10,000 cookies

hanging out with a old fighter plane - being on a flight deck was really cool!

after the afternoon at the yorktown we went to sullivans island for a walk on the beach!

where i attempted to make my parents do a jump photo - they were hilarious!

us on the beach.  

monday morning we headed out to fort sumter - here are my momma & i with the flags that all flew over ft. sumter

my parents and i at the fort - i had a great time telling them about all the civil war history (plus got my park passport stamps!) so after fort sumter we headed back towards my apartment for the plantations. 

where we got to magnolia, walked around a little bit and while we were on the nature train seeing the property (where we saw so many alligators, even on on the path!) it started to POUR. so we got a little wet. and it continued to downpour for a while, so we cut our visit short. so after going home to change we headed out to walk around downtown charleston. so the plan for tuesday was to load the truck in the morning and then go back to magnolia in the afternoon and walk around downtown before driving a few hours north. butttt a new plan took place due to this!

so tuesday morning it was lightly raining but the forecast said it should be done by early morning but after getting the truck to my apartment it was POURING. by early morning we had gotten a few inches of rain and the drainage ditch behind my apartment was a river! and so we didn't do any thing except wait for the rain to stop - so we tried to leave my apartment to get lunch butttt we were a bit flooded. the water came up to my mid calf right outside my car and i wasn't driving until it went down a bit more. so it finally started to drizzle and the rain receded off the parking lot.

 

it was a little bit flooded.

but we started loading the truck at around 4 in a light rain and by 6 amy & i finished cleaning and turned in our keys. and my parents and i hit the road so we would have a few hours less driving to do. 

so leaving charleston was hard - i love it there but i'm ready to start a new chapter in my life and SO excited about dc! (or will be once i have a place to live)

new jersey

so i've been home in new jersey for the past few days and well really nothing going on. i mean besides doctors visits.

i drove up to jersey on thursday, stopping thursday night in dc with my friend ellie to break up the 13 hour drive, since i wasn't sure how i'd feel with my knee. and it was great to see her and i drove through clarendon where i lived in dc and it made me miss living so close to dc and all the crazy and fun of the summer and made me miss many of my friends. and then the rest of the drive up to nj was fine. i've decided though i rather just do it in one 13 hour stretch than stop. i don't like driving for two days, i'd rather just go.

i will be in nj until at least the first week of january. and i'm already going insane. since i'm not working i have no money and can't really do anything. i am hoping to sub a few days while i'm home though.

and yes, i was correct. i did tear my ACL and i'll be having surgery on december 19th, but hopefully sooner. i asked if there were any cancellations to be moved up as i need to be in nj for at least 3 weeks post op, as i can't drive for 3ish weeks and need physical therapy every day for the first 2 weeks.

it doesn't help that the weather has been cold and dreary in jersey either.

happy thanksgiving!

pitt & chs

fun with a coworkers sunglasses!

so i realized i never wrote about my pittsburgh trip last week! i had a great weekend working in pittsburgh at the conference. i was conference support, so i didn't have my own group of students but i was conference paparazzi and helped with whatever needed to be done and i was lucky to get to spend the weekend with a few of my favorite people. so really most of my weekend was spent laughing with my coworkers. and as i wrote about earlier this week it really gave me time to think about working in corporate leadership & development. so lots to think about and it was great to travel as i've really missed that. and i met a new awesome person who i was conference support with and we had a fun adventure sunday morning and also had one of our flights the same on the way home. and maria and i had fun hanging out in the charlotte airport while we waited for our flights home and we also saw catelynn & tyler from teen mom!  

so i didn't really get out to enjoy pitt except for the little adventure sunday morning, which i'm still waiting on the pictures of! but here are some pictures from the weekend. i love these conferences for the connections you make and meeting so many awesome people!

fun adventure!

gorgeous fall day in pittsburgh!

<3 the beach!

and this week was pretty crazy with work. i started in my new position and the next few weeks are going to be rough. with the store being a mess and the holiday season upon us i have a lot to do in the next few weeks! but i'm excited about it and man i'm getting a great upper body workout from constantly moving boxes and clothes! so today was my day off from retail job and after seeing my schedule for next week i decided not to sub today as i'm working sun-thursday next week and my last day off was october 29th so if i didn't take today off i'd be working until the 18th without a day off. so i had a lazy morning reading in bed and enjoying snuggling in my bed on such a chilly morning. and then this afternoon amy and i had an adventure to the beach! 

since we are 20 minutes from the beach we headed out to sullivans's island again to enjoy a walk on the beach and this time decided to head towards fort moultrie. so not only did i go to the beach i also got to see a historic revolutionary war/civil war fort on veterans day! i can't wait to go back and actually do the fort, not just walk by and hug it! so here are some fun pictures from our beach walk. and it was a but chilly today in charleston only getting about 60 today, but an absolutely gorgeous day for a beach walk! 

fort moultrie - the palmetto log fort here on sullivans island was super important in the revolutionary war

super excited to be at the fort and hugging history! i also frolicked to the fort to hug it. 

shadow fun at the beach!

gorgeous day!

sunset over the fort

so i had a wonderful day off! i'm headed out to a party tonight of a friend and i'm currently watching the unc-msu basketball game. to kick off the season and to honor veterans day they are playing on an aircraft carrier and it is pretty awesome! and tomorrow night i'm seeing darius rucker! such a great weekend!

what are your weekend plans?

oh and yay 11/11/11

charleston

i'm in charleston! wooooo! it has been a whirlwind last few days but things are looking up and i'm so glad to be in charleston and getting started on my little adventure down here.

my least fav to drive through

welcome to delaware! 

so was up at the crack of dawn on tuesday to try to avoid traffic. i had a 770 mile drive with about a minimum of a 13.5 hour drive without traffic and stopping, and since i was driving alone and all in one day i wanted to minimize my traffic. so i left my house at 6:02 am and made a quick pit stop to get gas and i was off! i was expecting traffic on my way to the turnpike and then again in the baltimore/dc area, but through some luck my traffic in jersey was minimal as i cruised down the turnpike. now seriously from about an hour into my drive and an hour at the end i was on 95 (or a 295/495) so about 12 hours of driving on 1 road. uuuugh! but was having a pretty uneventful drive flipping back and forth between talk radio - it always keeps me entertained on long drives and then country stations (i <3 my xm radio) i hear a quick blurb on a county station -- 5.8 earthquake outside dc, felt along mid-atlantic.

south of the border - i missed
the welcome to sc sign

  i'm like WTF? did i hear that right - so i quickly change it to CNN radio and yup, northeast of richmond. well at that time i was on 295 just south of richmond and didn't feel a thing as i was driving. so i listened to that for a while while my parents and sister called me and as i had just tweeted when i stopped for gas about how much i hated driving through va, so i had a few tweets about it. but after that the rest of the drive was great - i was making fabulous time! when i left my house i just popped the address into my phone to get an idea of time and it said 7:38pm. and when i stopped for lunch in fredricksburg, va and somewhere with about 20 miles left in north carolina i took my time as i didn't want to get in my car and spent about 30 minutes, plus another stop for gas (but colby had fabulous gas mileage 400 miles per tank!) and i was soooo happy when i pulled into the hotel at exactly 8:00pm. 14 hours after i left! with about an hour for stops which means i did the drive in 13 hours. BAM! i was pretty excited about that. but i was in charleston!

charleston!!

only another hour!

and so on tuesday i was still a bit concerned about the hurricane - they weren't sure where and they were thinking south carolina - so my first thought was great, an earthquake as i'm driving down and a hurricane my first weekend. seriously?!? maybe mother nature is telling me this move is a bad idea?

but wednesday my main priority was apartment searching. amy had checked out a few complexes and i had a list to call to check out and i was checking craigslist too. so i find a complex that i liked the internet looks and i call and they have 2 opening up in the next week so i head on over to check it out. and i liked it - 2 big bedrooms each with a bathroom & walk in closet, a decent sized living room, dining room & kitchen with a washer/dryer in unit! and either a sunroom or sun porch. so i texted a few pics to amy and told the guy i was really interested. so amy met me after school at it and took a quick tour and we filled out the paperwork and are able to move in on FRIDAY! so tomorrow at lunch i'll be picking up the keys to my apartment! and i am SO excited about that.

so that is all my good news! amy and i went out to dinner to celebrate we are no longer homeless and i'm feeling a bit better about this decision now that i have somewhere to live. and i went to an employment agency this morning so hopefully i'll be temping in the next week or so so i'm not being a lazy bum.

so we are lucky down here that on friday we'll get some rain and then lots of wind on saturday but hoping all my friends on the coast in va/dc/md/jersey & ct are getting ready for the storm! it reminds me of freshman year of college when hurricane isabel hit in september and that crazy weekend of college!

little house on the jersey prairie

I've been home in jersey a week and I swear jersey is trying to kick me out. It has rained more this week, than it has all summer. And not just rain but huge crazy storms.
It rained Saturday night at the concert and stormed on the way home. Poured ALL day Sunday, stormed Monday, stormed Wednesday, thundered & lightened for 5 hours with a hail storm, and.Friday also a huge thunderstorm.
But to make it worse, Sunday something happened with our well pump. So we were without water for about 18 hours until it was.fixed Monday. And then in the storm.yesterday we lost power for about 6 hours (again no water). We were.lucky they fixed it so fast as we are the only house on our.road and not a priority. And apparently our phone line got struck as our house phones and the modem. So we are now currently internetless. So yay for.blogging on my phone.
So I'm packing like mad, my room is a disaster. I can't post pictures as I'm from my phone, but it is a mess. Spent some time with friends and.seeing family and I'm heading out on the road Tuesday morning.13 hour drive without traffic. Wooo!
Any fun weekend plans?

adios dc & kenny chesney

it has been a pretty crazy week! i finished work for the summer and moved from dc! i am currently in new jersey for 10 days and early on the 23rd i'm headed down to charleston! it is crazy how real it is right now. it really hit me this morning when i was unpacking from dc and then starting to go through my clothes and packing for the move. i'm trying to see as much of my family and friends this week as i haven't been home in months and who knows when i'll be back again.

my last week in the district/nova was good. didn't have much work - so mostly just hung out with my team and job searched. anyone have any connection in charleston? i'm still not sure what i want to do. so i'm having a hard time job searching. some things i would like to do or where i've been looking- higher education, education, travel, youth development, history, social media.... any ideas?

my team had an end of summer party - we went to dinner & had a fun game of minigolf! i totally surprised myself and my team and came in 2/8! wooo! and monday patricia and i went to a movies on the green in crystal city - which was fun! i love little things like that. thursday i had a goodbye dinner with patricia & mj. it was great to see those two and to have a fun night of reminiscing and talking about the future. and then friday i said goodbye to my team (which i was sadder about than i thought i would be) and immediately hit the road to drive home.

with my loves - patricia & mj

and yesterday was a fun day! my momma, sister and i went to the kenny chesney/zac brown band concert in the meadowlands! it was a fab night with 55,000 fans all decked out in cowboy hats and boots and for a moment i questioned was i really in new jersey! we were up in heaven and our section had quite the number of drama drunks - so it was entertaining. but we had a fun time singing along to billy currington, zac brown and kenny! my sister absolutely loves zac so she was in heaven, my mom was like ohhh i didn't know he sun that and i love all 3 so i was happy. this was my 6th concert this summer. zac was fabulous and it made me fall even more in love with them and kenny was good - he acoustics were off up top though - so you could barely understand him and it was super echo-y. which was weird as the 3 acts prior were great. the only downside was about 3/4 into zbb it started to rain and for all of kenny it off and on rained. oh well - it didn't damped the mood though!

yay! i <3 country concerts!

sister, momma & i 

zac brown band <3

sissy & i - yay rain!

kenny chesney

so now just unpacking/packing. i need to organize everything into stuff i fit into my car, stuff to be moved down in a uhaul, stuff leaving at home and boxing up, stuff donating/trash. so lots to do plus seeing friends! i'm going into the city tomorrow (first time since december, i can't believe it has been that long) to meet my friend suz for dinner and i'm super excited for it! and it has been yucky & gross in jersey. lots of rain and it is cold. booo!