Here we are, 2010, and I’m right back where I started fitness wise.  I was running this summer, made it to week 5 of the Couch to 5K Program, but since school started, and the weather changed I went right back to my old tricks (watching TV,  and eating skittles for dinner.) So I feel very blah again, I was actually starting to feel better about how I looked too. I know I shouldn’t let my weight rule my self esteem, but it’s a hard habit to break. I’ve been pudgy since junior high, never huge, but haven’t been anything you would label skinny since high school. In college I started an exercise kick…even taking GYM classes as my electives (YES, I WAS INSANE) but that insanity worked, as I lost 30lbs and kept my weight in a spot that was perfect for me (no where near a size 2 but it was just right for my frame) until graduation. I lost that exercise desire in Grad School, and then, after college, the free gym was not an option anymore. Work happened, stress happened, and weight happened.

This summer was different, I was actually enjoying going for my runs, and I was stubborn, I didn’t want to quit no matter what, I needed to finish that week…and then…it fell apart and went in a completely different direction…hospital, funeral, cleaning out a house, then work started.

I do enjoy doing my Walk Away the Lbs days at work, Angela (the Health Teacher) and Lois (my Aide) do 1-2 miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Amy and Bonnie want me to go to spinning with them, thought it is also Tues and Thurs.  I bought more exercise tapes, and weights, I OWN a big elliptical, but still lacked the push to get going.

I bought myself the Wii and Wii Fit plus over break, and this might be the kick I needed. I don’t like the game telling me I gained weight, or making fun of me, so I replay the games over and over until I don’t get called “unbalanced”  After a week it’s still fun, and I enjoyed that I can run in place, or even on the elliptical with the wii fit counting my distance. I ran 3 miles while watching Bones the other night.

I think this might be the thing I need to wake me up, make me more accountable for my weight. Not that I think I will lose 20lbs using the thing, but I think it is getting me out of my exercise funk.

I also just joined the 100 mile fitness challenge, which looks like another way to motivate myself. Again, accountability, and an excuse to  keep moving. I’ll start my counting on Monday and see how many miles I can get in a week. I think with the walking times after school, and the Wii fit I can actually do this…I hope. If there is anything else you can suggest health wise, I’m all ears.
100 Mile Fitness Challenge

I’ll update weekly, I PROMISE, as I do this challenge. I even set up an “I’m in shape, ROUND IS A SHAPE” tab to my blog to showcase blog entries that are exercise related. I think having a whole section dedicated to my health and fitness will make me get things done, because I’ll be ashamed to have it empty, haha.

As usual, I’m late to the party, the Bloggiesta party that is. Last weekend I went a bit nuts on updating my blog adding new sections, and a new layout, all of which I am very pleased with, but I still have a some tweaks I have yet to do. I kept seeing the hashtag # bloggiesta on twitter and realized that this weekend is a big blog updating party, and that I was missing out on the fun!

This weekend I am setting some time aide to get some things done around here, both little and bit:

-Update my widgets, they match the old layout

-Update my picture, and my about me page moved the about me to the sidebar instead, made more room for content

-Update my blogroll,

-transfer my Quote Page from Livejournal to Wordpress, probably it’s own subpage

-Blog entry: Book Review of “How to Say Goodbye in Robot”

=Blog Entry: Mel’s Musings (probably in the “I’m in Shape, ROUND IS A SHAPE” heading ;) )

-Update 2010 Reading Log

-Pick up some new blogs to follow

-Comment Comment Comment

-Join one (or more) mini challenges

-Try to hunt down a fitness challenge for my personal blog section, or challenge myself

perfect!! 100 Mile Fitness Challenge

-sidebar clean up

-reorganize site all entries show on main page, but Books, Diet/Exercise, Personal Blog, and Project 365 have tabs at the start that will only show those entries

I’m excited, the Blog is starting to look better, but with some tweaks, and some more CONTENT, I should be back in action. I have been updating my Project 365 daily, but everything else hasn’t been that consistent.

Mini Challenges:
Footer Mini Challenge
Labels/Tags Clean up
Dead Link Hunt
Hours:  5

I REALLY should be turning on one of my exercise dvds, or the Wii fit right now, since I am at my parents’ house for the Holiday, and they are at the YMCA. That should be inspiring me, and also…it’s my one chance at using their TV! So I’ll post this quickly.

Other than the 50 books in a year challenge I’ve never done a reading challenge before. When I saw the 2010 New Author Challenge I thought this would be a great one to start with. Since I got on twitter I’ve heard about so many great upcoming books, and got to chat with some new authors, and I really want to support book publishing in general. Best seller’s and famous authors are fun to read I guess, I usually hide from the trendy mass population books (anything with an Oprah sticker for example) haha, but I love to find new exciting things to read.

Here is the scoop on what I am going to be doing, as explained by Kristi, you can find more information at the Story Siren’s Site:

•The objective is to read a set number of YA (Young Adult) or MG (Middle Grade) novels from debut authors published this year.* I’m going to challenge everyone to read at least 12 debut novels! I’m hoping to read at least 30! You don’t have to list your choices right away, but if you do feel free to change them throughout the year. I will also be focusing on mostly Young Adult novels.
•Anyone can join, you don’t need a blog to participate. If you don’t have a blog you can always share your views by posting a review on Amazon.com/BarnesandNoble.com/GoodReads/Shelfari, or any other bookish site.
•The challenge will run from January 1, 2010- December 31, 2010. You can join at anytime!

Look at all the great books that will be coming out:
Debut Authors
The Tenners
Class of 2k10

Ahhh! So many new books, I guess I’ll never get to my TBR Shelf that I spoke about in my last post.

Right Now, I really want Brightly Woven, as I am a sucker for High Fantasty. I have it pre-ordered. Hex Hall, Firespell, and Before I Fall, and 13 Treasures look like Melissa Books as well.

Instead of working organizing/cleaning the parts of my apartment that really need it I decide instead to focus on my living room. I have a tiny apartment, it’s larger than my last one in Binghamton which was 2 room, and the back half of a Funeral Director’s garage) but it’s in the basement of the building and very cold. Every other apartment has access from inside the building, and I have lovely wooden steps of doom that are very high and were once knocked down in a storm by a large wall (leaving me no way down to my apt.) Needless to say, I’m not going to be staying here forever. Where I live though getting an apartment is a miracle, there are only a handful of places, and there is a college right down the road, so I’m completing with lots of other interested parties (who are having parties.) I plan to stay here until I have tenure at my job (one more year!) and then look into something more settled, maybe renting/purchasing a townhouse in the area. I should probably stop probably buy less books so I can start saving ;)

So while my apartment isn’t the best thing in the world, it’s small and cute, and I like to decorate it. The focal point of my living room is the side wall, where there are two inset lights that can be turned on right above the spot. I decided to make this my reading corner, and plopped down a bookcase and my Pier One Pillow chair. But…This is also near my TV, so my bookshelf (also from Pier One) started to become a DVD shelf. I bought two more bookshelves, and also stole my brother’s that he used back in college. But this left basically one shelf per room, and everything in a bit of chaos organization wise.

I haven’t quite decided which books to put on what shelf, I change my mind often, but I do have my YA shelf all arranged in the computer room (it’s my tall shelf of course.) I was looking at my living room the other day and thought it looked a bit bare and I wasn’t getting enough use out of the space 9plus I had books that had been kicked off the shelf to make room for the DVDs that were now homeless, and laying on top of my old PC:

So I kidnapped the matching shelf from the backroom (computer and laundry room) and stuck them together in that spot. I grabbed many of the books I have yet to read from all the other bookshelves and make a TBR shelf (well the first two shelves, the last shelf is some of my favorites/classics:

I like the space better now, I guess Sadie does too. I still don’t know where to put those decorative wall shelves you see on my couch, but I’ll find a place, I mean it only took me a year to finish hanging my paintings. Yes, that is a Shirley Temple Poster on my wall, judge me all you want :P

Now, I am ashamed to post this, because I KNOW that trouble I will be in.  But here is a closeup of the To Be Read Shelf. I know there are so many great books on there, especially the conclusions to two of my favorite series (Funke and Bray…and my unread new Shannon Hale Book.) I know how bad this looks, but I was waiting until I got out of my reading slump to enjoy them, and then Library books happened and got in the way. No more excuses, posting this here will MAKE me finally get to those books on the shelf….after I finish my three Library Books I have out

-The Awakening

-Bras and Broomsticks

-Poison Study

Then I’ll start back to work on this pile:

If anyone is interested in new shelving, I would recommend these bookshelves. I have these two of the 3 shelves, and one of the 5 shelves. They have made moving (from State to State, or just moving from one room to another) much easier as they are folding shelves, but still very solid. They are from Pier 1 as I mentioned, there is a non-iphone photo you can view here

If you are really bored, or love to look at how people decorate (or fail to) I have a Flickr photo-collection of many of the apartments and rooms I have lived in. I have yet to update it with the decorating I did in the new place, but I will get to that next week, as I get to work on the rest of the rooms.
The Ghosts of Apartments Past

I spent much of the first day of 2010 tweaking css coding, trying to get my website into shape (I fully expect my own attempts at getting into shape will fail, so I’ll have to make do with my website.) Since bringing my site back after I…well, murdered it accidentally, I really never had a good picture of what I wanted it to be. At the time I was reading so many book blogs, that I felt this would be a great direction to go into, but I couldn’t get away from my personal blogging (ahem *babbling*) and felt the entire site was just a mishmash, and had no center.

Today I started breaking it apart. I was planning to perhaps made one book blog, and one personal, and I had already made a photoblog, when I had a thought: I have enough trouble keeping one blog going…three? really? Crazy much?

I happened upon, quite randomly, a plugin for Wordpress called Blog-in-Blog which has become a real lifesaver. It allows me post things from certain categories straight onto a wordpress “page” not the main /blog, so that when readers come they will mostly see my book related posts (from this point on) as soon as they get there. If they want to read about silly adventures my Day2Day Blog is available from the menu. Basically, things are more grouped, and you can pick what type of content you would like to read about, so it’s less of a mixed bag. I made sure you put the tag cloud wordpress tag back in, so one can use that to navigate as well. I’m pretty sure everything I post, in any category will be cross-posted to Livejournal per usual.

I changed the blog name to MELIScellaneous Reader since the first blog items available when you visit will be the Book-ish Content. I found this free template online that I tweaked color-wise and wordpress tag-wise. I made this background forever ago (using PaintShop Pro 7.0!) for myspace, but I have always loved how it looked, so I thought I’d get some more use out of it here. The whole site just feels more calm, less cluttered, and more me (except I am not calm, and AM very cluttered haha.) but color wise, it’s girlie without making me want to drown myself in pink glitter.

I also started Project 356 today, where you post one picture everyday for a year. I’ll mostly be uploading the pictures straight from my iphone using the Flickit ap. I can even blog them here from my phone directly. I’m trying very hard to streamline my web content, and how I produce it. I have the wordpress ap for my phone but…I don’t think I’ll want to be typing long posts on my iphone)

My goals for the site in 2010 are:

-More Content in general
-More Book Reviews, and have them be more detailed
-Less typing errors (*coughs* Typos and I are very close friends)
-Update Project 365 daily
-Transfer the Quote Page from LJ to Wordpress
-May Transfer my Education Blog to this wordpress account as well
-Get my blog out there more, often times I’m just talking to myself LOL

I did it! I met my 50 books in one year goal. I thought I was under, but I rechecked and found 2 books that I forgot to put in (The Summoning and Found) and decided since I put the work into reading my text books for class that they should count…unless I miscounted, which is very possible actually.

Last year I got to 48, so my goal for 2010 will be to beat my 51 from this year. I have three Library books out right now that I am looking forward to reading this week/weekend. I’m going to finish “The Awakening” tomorrow then move on to “Posion Study” probably…though the book Jeff got me for Christmas “The Seance” is looking very very tempting!

January:

1.) Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George 352 pages (4 stars)

2.) The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Standard Edition by J. K. Rowling (4 stars)

3.) A Lion Among Men (The Wicked Years, Book 3) by Gregory Maguire 336 pages (3 stars)

4.) Gifts (Annals of the Western Shore #1) by Ursula LeGuin (3 stars)

5.) Chalice by Robin McKinley 263 Pages (finished last 68 pages on Feb 1, during the Super Bowl) (4 stars)

6.) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (4.5 stars)

February:

7.) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (3 stars)

8.)  The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier (3 stars)

9.) Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn, David Levithan

10. Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner

March:

11.  Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell (4 stars)

April:

12. Kin (The Good Neighbors, Book 1) by Holly Black (3.5 stars)

13. Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (4 or 4.5 stars)

14. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (5 stars, not quite Speak, but excellent!)

15.  Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale (Graphic Novel of a Cowgirl Rapunzel, um, this can’t be anymore of a Melissa Book)

16 Amulet: Book 1 (Amulet) by Kazu Kibuishi

17. My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison

MAY

18.Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars (Smart Pop series)

19. Atlas: Poems by Katrina Vandenberg

20.  Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson (finished in June)

JUNE

21. Thirteenth Child (Frontier Magic Book) by Patricia C. Wrede

JULY

22. City of Glass (Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare (4 star series, actually got into this even if the WTH factor of the first two books ha)

23. Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale by Holly Black (I expected to love this one, as I am more of a fairy and magic person, than vampires/werewolves, but maybe I would say for me a 3.5, I couldn’t really get into it, it reminded me of so many other books, which is a shame because this is one of the books to start the big YA Urban Fantasy kick, and the books it reminds me of are really inspired by this one, I guess as a teenager I wasn’t at all like this, so I couldn’t relate, I think Holly Black in general is awesome though, she reminds me of me, if I were awesome)

24. Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow A new paranormal YA series that has potential, a bit like watching Supernatural, but with the main character as a teenage girl, nothing ground breaking, but enjoyable

25. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins finally, a book I can get emotionally attached to, I like to feel my books, and like everyone has been saying, this one is a winner. Interesting story idea, well written characters, highly recommended reading!

26. Troy High by Shana Norris (3.5-4 stars)

27. Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink (5 stars)

28. The Summoning (Darkest Powers, #1) by Kelley Armstrong

August

29. 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

(4.5 )-Usually I hide from realistic YA fiction, especially the one with random faceless girls on the cover, I’m not a girlie book lets talk about boys and our period type of reader. If I did not already know Maureen Johnson is freakin’ hilarious I might have passed on this book. Glad I didn’t. Okay, so there is some talking about boys, one in particular, but he’s got an accent, so I’m good! haha I love mysteries, and this one kept me thinking “Okay what random and insanely funny thing will happen next?” Loved it. :D

30.  The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry

(2.5 )-Oh how I wanted to love this book, It had all the classic Melissa Elements…magic, pretty dresses, thieves,  pretending to be what you aren’t and having it nip you in the bud, cinderela-like qualities, a donkey that acts like a dog. It wasn’t even the WTH orign of the “witch” (because I already knew that from an amazon review, I don’t mind spoilers really) It just fell flat for me, not enough characterization, or really details. It was a quick little thing, and Okay book but nothing to write home about sadly. Someone compared it to things by Gail Carson Levine, and while it’s probably a good fit from those readers Middle School and my late elementary princess book crowd, Gail Carson Levine’s works seem much stronger. This left me with a okay, that was….cute and all but I need some Robin McKinley to remind myself how real YA fantasy feels.

31.  Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

Solid YA fantasy, with all the right elements, to make it a young adult fantasy lover happy (danger! forbidden magic! cute boy with dark side! trees that can kill you! hints of romance and star-crossed love!) Liza, the main character, lives in a town run by her father’s strong fist, a fist that has come down on Liza many times along with his belt. The story is set after the great way between the Faerie people and Americans (? the world?) Liza is taught by her father that all magic is evil, and must be purged from society but when her own sister is born with Fae characteristics and Liza herself begins to experience magical abilities her father’s view of the world begins to make less and less sense. As she travels in search of her missing mother, she must try to unravel terrifying visions, and learn to trust in what she was taught to fear and hate.

32. Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman Graphic Novel Version of Gaiman’s short story of the same name from “Smoke and Mirrors” I do love me some creepy Gaiman with murdered angels, and a pointless starting narrative which becomes way less pointless after reading the murdered angel bit- that man’s mind must be a scary scary place…and yet he is always so cheery, hmmm…

33. Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson

34. Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

35. The Stolen One by Suzanne Carlisle Crowley

36.  Wings by Aprilynne Pike

37.  You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay

September

38. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

39.  Catching Fire (Hunger Games, #2) by S. Collins

40.   Snow White And Rose Red by Patrica C. Wrede

October

41.  Dreaming Anastasia: A Novel of Love, Magic, and the Power of Dreams by Joy Preble

42.  Rampant by Diana Peterfreund

43. Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1) by Maggie Stiefvater (5 stars, tied for favorite book this year, along with Hunger Games and The Forest of Hands and Teeth)

44. Found (The Missing, #1) by Margaret Peterson Haddix

November:

45. Eyes Like Stars (The Théâtre Illuminata: Act 1) by Lisa Mantchev Really interesting theater based (as in Characters from Shakespeare and other plays made appearances) YA book. It’s the start of a series. I can’t wait to keep reading, since it’s so unique (4 stars)

46. Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe I remember liking this book as I read it, but now (Dec 31) about a month after reading it I can’t remember the details of it very well at all…not a good sign haha, but I remember it was cute, if you want some light YA ghostly fun this quick read would work well.

47. The Garden of Eve by K.L. Going finally getting to some of my books I bought at the book fair, which willbw donated by myself into my library collections at school. This one looked good to me, as it had religious allusions, and ghosts. Slightly eerie middle reader that I know some of my students would enjoy

48. Sent (The Missing, #2) by Margaret Peterson Haddix I never read “Among the hidden” and the books by Haddix in that series, but I am loving her new series (The Missing) they are part science fiction, part historial fiction, and part mystery.

December

49. The Maze Runner (Maze Runner, #1) by James Dashner Loovvved it! Complete, WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE, but <3!

50. Suddenly Supernatural: Scaredy Kat by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel Another Book Fair pick,  read book 1 and really enjoyed it, as I was one of those kid’s glued to the screen watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark” back in the 90’s, so this really worked for me. Sure it’s for 12 year olds, but it’s spooky I swear lol

51. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink Read for a Class

51.5 . The Awakening (Darkest Powers, #2) by Kelley Armstrong Only half done with this one, but really enjoying it. An hour left in the year, but I’m going to spend it playing scrabble with Pam instead of finishing, because I am a bad bad person :D

Haven’t posted in a good chunk of time, as the Christmas Season usually kills me….not that I’m really busy or anything. I am a last min person, and stress myself out by not doing anything I should, when I should.

My last post was about how I was going to make all these wonderful healthy changes in my life, which is funny since all I have been doing lately is watching Lost Seasons 1-5 and eating Candy Canes. The Second to last episode of Lost is actually playing as I type this. LOST, BTW, is freakin insane, in a good way. I watched it often, but not EVERY episode until now, so I knew the major WOA moments, but it’s the smaller connections that is making it exciting to watch. I actually watched most of Season 5 as it aired, but watching it again, now with an understanding of all the other crazy not randomness,  is exciting.

Enough of my Lost babble, my goal of finishing this before Season 6 has killed all my reading time. I had to return three unread Library books, which I am ashamed to admit.  I am reading “The Maze Runner” now which totally fits into my Lost theme right now.

I’ve been having a bit of an issue lately, a kid guessed my age at 55, either he was busting me, or kids really are not skilled at age guessing, since I still get handed Children’s menus at age 27. I went to a Mary Kay party, and was told I have to use Anti-Aging products…Maria was told she was okay to use the young people’s products but I being above 23, am a GONER. THEN a girl told me that I looked like a teenager…except for my skin, which I WANT TO PRETEND meant that I have better skin than a teen…right? That’s what she meant…do I suddenly have wrinkles? AHHHH.

So at the Party I bought some anti-aging face wash, and moisturizing cream, and something for dark circles that I fully expect will not work.

I’ve never been a product, or makeup girl, I use just what I need to get buy, foundation, blush, and lip color. I tend to buy fancy cleansers and such and never use them, so I fully except this to be the case.

Maybe if I actually start using big girl makeup and products I will no longer look 12 to the older folk (I don’t think the 10 year olds thinking I look middle age is a true testament to how I look.)

I’m debating on buying a wii/wii fit for my exercise funk I am in….or winter running gear and just force myself out of the house.

I like to make lists, To Do Lists especially, which is one of the reasons I bought a smartphone, I can make electronic To Do Lists…well that and I felt peer pressure from my Twitter pals :P But the trouble with me and my lists, I tend to load them up soooooo long that they are overwhelming and they scare me so much that I avoid looking at them and checking things off. Yesterday I was making a mental list of all the things I need to do to be healthy and happy and it was just so long that I thought I might as well give up before I begin, when I had an idea. I could challenge myself to do one thing at a time, and work my way through the list every week, look at short term goals, and not the mountain of I NEED TO LOSE 30LBS and do this this this this this and this thoughts.

So this week will be the start of my HHC, a personal challenge to develop one healthy habit at a time, some of them will be very simple and relate straight to health matters (exercise and eating specifically), but I some will be more for mental health, learning to de-stress (if that is possible for me.) my HHC will be one simple change I institute for the week, so that I start slowly changing over my daily behaviors to create healthy habits that I can stick with.

Every week, on Sunday or Monday I will blog my HHC goal (and update on how the previous week went)….Please feel free to comment on the blog entries, it might guilt me into sticking into the challenges if I know people are reading this. If you would like to do a HHC for yourself you can comment on the weekly blog entry with your HHC post and maybe stop by someone else’s to offer support.

if you want to play along I think the first step will be to start brainstorming a list (I told you about the list love I have) of weekly goals you might want to try to reach, just to have a starting point. As I continue I will be adding to my list, and maybe even taking suggestions, sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book…but you know with exercise haha

The List

Eat Breakfast (I never do this)

Eat Lunch regularly (I…sometimes do this)

Eat Dinner regulary (you’d think if the lack of food I eat I would be skinny, but then I do things like eat a bowl of goldfish crackers in the bath and ice cream for a late dinner and…yeah)

Exercise in the Mornings (my walk away the lbs DVDS)

Exercise in the Afternoons or Evenings (I have a lovely elpitial machine that I hang my clothes to dry on)

Wean myself off juice (I am a juice addict lately)

Wean myself off candy (I am a diabetic waiting to happen)

Learn to cook

Set up a cleaning schedule

Watch a movie a week

Read a Book a week

Those are just some ideas that will be fleshed out as I choose them for challenges. This week my HHC will be to eat Breakfast Everyday which sounds silly, but breakfast eating (and really a eating schedule in general) is something I have issues with. I know what I am SUPPOSED to do, but I can’t make myself follow through, but maybe blogging about it will make me do what I am supposed to.

I’m going to hold off on the exercise challenges until I am over this sinus infection. I’ll keep up with my twice a week exercise date with the girls from work, but for today at least my running is out. Since I am coughing up a storm, I thought it was safer to start of my road towards eating like a normal person this week.

What do you all eat for breakfast that might appeal to an anti-breakfast girl?

I need to post a blog, I took all these pictures thought the cleaning out process of my Grandmother’s house, and I want to document it, to remember. But when I do it makes it official, over. I handed over my set (my grandmother’s actually) of keys on Saturday. The Woman already owns the house but she gave us permission to do a final walk through with the keys since she wasn’t ready to move in yet. So that was my Saturday. I know it’s a house, it’s shouldn’t be upsetting to me it’s a place. But I keep having these dreams, that I am talking to my Grandmother, that she is down the street watching her Polka on Saturday Night, and even though the house was empty none of it was complete real because I was still going there all the time, and now I will probably never go in there again, and it’s making me a sobbing mess all over again. I want my grandmother back, I want all my Grandparents back. I’m like a 6 year old. I wish I wasn’t such a mess, I wish I was a normal girl, who ould have made them proud, not this over nervous chubby unpopular, abnormal excuse for a girl. They wanted to be at my Wedding, I failed them all on that part…well, Nanny Banfield when I was 14..

Woa, extra self loathing, sorry about that.

I think now is not the time for those pictures. Now is not the time to close this, I need time.

This past weekend I drove to NJ to meet up with Kerina, Lauren, Katherine, Kelly, Kathy and Geoff for Irish Weekend in Wildwood (I drove to Kerina’s and she took me from there.) If you follow me on Livejournal or twitter (@thecatcheronrye) you might have noticed my, HOLY CRAP I AM DRIVING TO PHILLY AND HAVE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE, AHHH RUSH OVER TRAFFIC AHHHHH messages (okay, really it was more like “This is the most boring thing in the world…look a sign for Lansdale *12 hours later* Look a sign for Swathmore *1,000 years later* look an exit for Chester that I have to not make because Chester is scary) Glad I went though, because I got to see some of my Yorkies, true Artuso, Kat, and Kerina were at the May Reunion, but Kelly I hadn’t seen since graduating, and Kathy I knew a bit, and turned out to be awesome at Condo finding, and a sweet and fun person in general. Plus, we kidnapped Geoff again, like at our May Reunion, so that was fun, he’s a really nice guy.

I will admit, there was some bar hopping, and Irish festivities involved, but I only look under 21, remember? Plus my pink girlie drink matched my cotton candy from the Boardwalk. I find being color coordinated to be VERY important in life. I don’t really remember ever doing the Boardwalk thing, I probably did as a kid, but were ocean people, sand castles and what not, rides and junk food were saved for Fairs or trips to Knobles, so, while I didn’t do any rides (I did lose quite well at the water gun game) it was really fun to just walk the Boardwalk on the way to the Irish Festival, and to come back later that night to watch Kerina and Kathy fly through the air like superheros, and Lauren wack the heck out of the baseball in the batting cages. Friday night I went out and had creepy townie men trying to dance on me, and a hippie girl telling me to open myself up to the music. No thank you, no amount of pink girlie drinks could turn me into a dancing type.

The Irish Festival itself was fun, like a GIANT GREEN BLOCK PARTY, I didn’t buy any T-shirts because I couldn’t find any appropriate for work shirts, but they were really funny. I brought my camera, but I never used it :( I was trying to keep as little in my purse as possible as I’ve been back on the back pain train, but I collected pics from everyone else’s facebooks, because I’m sneaky like that

There was a classic car show on the Boardwalk. Kelly took this picture of my favorite car, it was parked by our condo when it wasn’t at the boardwalk. I’ve never been to Wildwood before, so the Boardwalk was fun!

We went out and I pretended to be Irish, but failed, haha, but Green is my favorite color. (Kathy, Kelly, me, Lauren, Kerina)

…Well, Kathy is Irish at least. Artuso and I…not so much

A Slushy…with Rum

Kat and Geoff

Gotta Love Bar Pictures

Kerina and Kathy decided being flung around by a giant slingshot on Saturday would be a good idea, haha. Not me, I was safe on the ground waving back at them!

Pictures from Lauren, Kelly, and Katherine. I uploaded all the ones where I did not look like an idiot here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27662031@N03/sets/72157622353154623/

The ride back was fine, super quick and no traffic, got back around 7, and ordered myself Chinese.