The way to a man's heart

I shared my lunch with a possibly homeless, but definitely hungry, fellow at the bus stop today. When he was finished eating, he asked me if I was going home. Yep, I said. To your husband? he asked. Nope, just home, I said. He then told me he loved me, but he said it over and over because he had a pretty bad stutter. I thought it was sweet, and I told him so. Then I think he proposed, but it was kinda hard to tell for sure. I thanked him for his kind offer and we both laughed.

Then on the way home, somebody yelled at me on the bus. Sigh....you win some, you lose some.

I'm done!

The home stretch into final exams was rough, but I made it through and may have fared better than anticipated.....won't know for sure until the official grades come out.
I hit the ground running for my summer vacation. The day after my last exam, I jumped on a plane to rendezvous with Sarah Dobra in New Orleans for the weekend. It was a busy weekend of eating, drinking, grad parties, meeting Sarah's friends, moving Sarah into her new apartment....the perfect antidote to my last few weeks of school. And today I got my first-ever pedicure (I highly recommend it) and went house-hunting with my soon-to-be-ex roommate, Kristin. Tomorrow, Rachel King and I will set off on an adventure to the Shenandoah Mountains to get out of the city and into the trees for a day. Then Sunday I'm cooking dinner for a bunch of people. A good start to vacation, I'd say.
I have a long list of summer adventures in my head, some interesting so maybe not so much. But, rest assured that anything worth writing home about will show up here. Eventually. :)

Green is one of my favorite colors, too.....coincidence?

To my Baltimore friends: This list of the 50 greenest cities in the US might give some insight as to why I have to fight the urge to go dumpster diving after that coke bottle you just threw in the trash can.

Problem solved

It is the plight of the short-legged that sometimes our feet don't touch the ground when we're sitting in a chair. Such is the case with my fantastic new desk chair from (you guessed it) IKEA.

But I can't blame the chair. The problem is actually caused by the desk. In order to sit comfortably at my desk, I have to raise the chair up. At that height, my toes touch the floor but my heels don't, and this gets old pretty fast when I'm sitting at my desk for hours at a time.

So what to do? Once, I cut the legs of a desk down a few inches, but that's not an option here (the legs on this desk are metal). So I went from the ground up: raided the basement for wood scraps and made myself a little stool.


It isn't the most elegant piece of office furniture ever created, but it does the job quite well. And I got to play with tools and make lots of noise in the process. Cheap entertainment.

Now, back to work....

Ah, Baltimore

I must be adjusting pretty well to city life because using an unattended row of shopping carts for slalom practice in the grocery store parking lot doesn't seem that odd to me anymore.

Dana got married!

Dave snapped this great shot while I was desperately trying to change the setting on my camera.

Weddings are my favorite reason to travel. I get to see new places, visit good friends, and there's always a big party involved. Last weekend was no exception. Destination: Kansas City. Tyler and Amy were so generous to let 5 of us stay at their house for the weekend. And chauffeur us around. And feed us. And let us play tennis on their Wii. In our pajamas. Oh, did I mention the ping-pong table in the basement? Yeah, that's right.
I had to bust my butt (and still am) to get 3 homework-free days for the trip and it was totally worth it. For my first Midwest winter experience, I was expecting it to be much colder and much more buried in snow. Not the case. In fact, the sunglasses came out on more than one occasion and I didn't have to wear snowboots to the ceremony. I was quite pleasantly surprised. On Saturday before the wedding we took a stroll around The Plaza, the first outdoor shopping area designed to accommodate automobile traffic. It did a pretty good job accommodating coffee-wielding tourists, too.
It was a quick trip, but good times were had by all. Proof positive that anytime this group gets together, fun will inevitably ensue. I suspect this is due in large part to the fact that we're pretty easily amused, but let's not split hairs. There are pictures on Picasa. Be sure to look at Dave's, too.

Life imitates art?

I recently purchased a Calvin and Hobbes anthology for $10. This strip alone makes it worth every penny.
I wonder if I could pull off a cape?