Here is a gorgeous picture of my gorgeous friend Steph, and some people in the background. 

Ok, so there's something else on my mind. I'm sitting here diligently going through my accounting 202 for tomorrow's exam, and I can't get out of my head what happened at dinner today. Ryan came with us to be exposed to my dad's side of the family for the first time ever (as well as meeting my brother, thus confirming his existence), and did the Easter dinner thing at my aunt's house. There were a good...15? of us there, and it's a given that my family will always have a lot of leftovers after a big dinner. Everyone's family has a lot of leftovers after a big holiday meal - I think that's a law. But the salad ran out before it got to me and Ryan - we were salad-less. That's not a huge deal, I know, and once everyone realized it there were jokes all around, but it kind of made me feel like, here's my family, they didn't make enough salad. Like an inadequacy thing.

Then there was everything else, which there was a lot of, and then there was dessert, which there was much too much of. And my grandma was unintentionally hilarious.

So tell me (via comment), am I overreacting about the salad thing?

Easter Sunday night - just got settled in back at school. I have an exam tomorrow morning...who DOES that?

So, I have a minor tragedy on my hands. If I remembered how to create titles for these posts, this one would be entitled "The Saga of the Tweezers." Yes, tweezers. Here we go.

Once upon a time, in a house in Waterbury, a young woman was struggling to pluck her eyebrows with a standard beauty tweezer. Her father noticed her difficulty, and gave her a set of his own that he had used in conjunction with his photography pasttime. The young woman tried said tweezers, and found them amazingly effective. They gripped well and with precision, much better than any shape of beauty tweezer available at the local pharmacy. She kept them until well into her adulthood, sharing with her daughter once she was old enough. The tweezers were inscripted with "Bart", the first four letters of the daughter's maiden name, and her father's nickname. Her father passed on before the young woman married, and when the young woman's daughter went to college, she brought the treasured set of tweezers with her. One Easter weekend the daughter was hurredly packing a back to bring home, and tossed the tweezers into an outside pocket. Upon arriving home, she checked the bag only to find the treasured tweezers Gone. She hoped she had simply left them in her desk drawer at school, but when I got back they weren't here. I think they fell out on the way to the car, somewhere between here and S-lot.

Now, I know that's an odd heirloom to have, but YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT THESE TWEEZERS. They are AWESOME. I don't understand why beauty products manufacturers don't design them like this...I've lost them several times before, but I think this might be it. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, the young woman is my mother.)

Time to pick up my spirits with a Cadbury cream egg and my giant accounting book. If any of you notice my eyebrows starting to get straggly, just you think before you judge...and remember that heirlooms come in all shapes and sizes. It's never easy to adjust to a replacement of something precious in your life (ie, a parent remarrying, a new pet, or a new beauty product) - I'm dealing with my new standard beauty tweezers the best I can, and at the end of the day, that's all any of us can do.


PS - I just found out that my friend Paul has a new blog. Check it out.

Do you have special tingly giddiness?

This week, inspired in part by my friend Sam, I started to attempt to eat healthier and to cut back on caffeine. The other inspiration was the discovery that my blood pressure has been creeping up. I had none on Sunday, half a cup Monday and Tuesday, maybe 2/3 yesterday, and close to a full cup today. But you know what? I feel GOOD, and I felt much much worse this morning BEFORE that coffee. I think I'm emotionally addicted as well as physically.

Yesterday my back was worse. I took the climbing orientation class at the gym (there's a newly constructed rock wall there) and was on duty, and both those things require mobility of the neck/shoulder area. I never realized how much I depended on looking over my shoulder while on duty. And when you climb it's a good thing to be able to look up. So I finally gave in and took the advice of my boyfriend, a fellow CA, and my mother, and took some Advil. I grudgingly admit that it helped. Today I feel better. The lack of a snow day is disappointing, hence the tiredness (I didn't bother to try to go to bed at a decent time last night), hence the increasing coffee worship. What a wonderful, wonderful drug caffeine is.

My friend Brian (that would be linked if he had any kind of blog) is getting his big red fro cut off today in order to appear professional. If I'm not too late to get before/after pics, I'll be posting that here.

I'm in OPIM 204 right now, so it's time for me to get back to work (ie, work on my Yahoo Word Racer rating).

Ryan: I'd say you could do a nice entry to your blog with this weekend's events.
Ryan: My main reason for a suggestion is I am sick of looking at the pic of brandon and kim when I look in to see something new.

Who am I to deny my boyfriend? Don't answer that.

This. Weekend's. Events. I know everyone who blogs must have this dilimma - how much do I write? How much is appropriate? How much do I want YOU to know?

Well......ok, we can start with Friday. Friday there was a CDN gig I found out about at the last minute, as well as at least two other sets of plans up in the air. So it looked like I was gonna be heading out by myself, since I couldn't get anyone else to go short notice. So I'm drying my hair about 10 minutes before go time and there's a knock at my door - Ryan's there, and the first thing he says is "you didn't think I was gonna let you go alone, did you?"

Good. Boy.

Friday was also my former boyfriend's birthday, which I never made it to. Slight guilt. My theory for using the term "former" instead of "ex" goes as such - in the military, you're not an ex-soldier or an ex-Marine unless you're dishonorably discharged - otherwise, you're former. So this was a former boyfriend. Not an ex. I think things are cool though.

Skip over Saturday to today for now, because there's something really pressing and I want to just type it now - I have a pinched nerve or two in my back and IT SUCKS.

Moving along...most of the weekend I spend with Ryan, having nice alone domestic time. Friday was awesome. He did the classic wonderful little things like going out to store 24 late at night because I mentioned I never made it out to Big Y to buy juice. He worked on the knots in my back today at least three times. He bent down to kiss me every time because he knew it hurt me to look up. He made me not want to leave today.

I skipped Saturday....Saturday was good too, but if there was a downside that was it. Aside from a problem I (and Ryan) had, there was one thing that kind of broke up the weekend for me - like a sub-plot of sorts. My friend Brian (there are several), is trying to meet a girl he found on facebook, and we spent some time scheming on how to initiate contact. That was fun.

So what have I learned.....my management professor can act like a condescending jerk, I don't get work done on weekends, Ryan's a good man to go to when your back's twisted up in knots, one can NEVER BE TOO CAREFUL, and one should never write off the possibility of being pleasantly surprised once in awhile.

Enjoy your week.

Brandon and Kim. I work with him. 

.....'nuf said. 

This place tries to drain my soul... 

This is my cat, on my bed, I think either earlier this year or last. 

I think it's safe to say this year's Spring Break was neither Springish nor Breakish. There was a helluva storm on Tuesday close enough to rush-hour time to turn I-84, I-91, and everything else in between into parking lots. It took yours truly three hours to get home from Hartford, because Tuesday was the only day I had to be in Hartford. This month. Love it. Then early today there was another random seven inches of snow. I worked on a group project and didn't work on another, and didn't work on either of my honors projects. I got to see my brother, who recently broke up with a girlfriend and totaled his car. My mom turned 51. I drove up to UConn on Thursday partially to rescue Ryan from his week of boredom, and partially so I could remember that I'm 20 and I'm supposed to have crazy fun. We went to Julie's, which is in Cromwell, which means Laura = lots of driving. I realized today that I forgot to write Paul back....

I just downloaded Hello (which is the thing I use to post pictures to my blog) onto my desktop. Before I only had it on my laptop, which means limited pictures available. Now it's 1am and I have several things I should be doing (not the least of which is sleeping), which is why I'm going to post pictures. They should be above this post momentarily.

Nite!

The afore mentioned sex positions site.

The Happy Family - my mom's 51st birthday. Note my dad's closed eyes and my sister's blank, red-eyed stare....and the fact that my mom, brother, and I managed to get the least flattering angles possible. Oh well, we look good in person. 

I am going to bed soon, I swear.

I can't get figures of thrusting mannequins out of my head. I admit it, I was looking at that sex positions site that uses those wooden figure-drawing models as...models. I'll put up the link, I promise. You'll waste at least a good hour of your life, but you'll feel as if you've really learned something. That, or like I said, thrusting mannequins.

Tomorrow (actually today) is my mom's 51st birthday. We're celebrating by taking a ride to Hartford to scope out my new workplace, IN THE MORNING, then going to Costco ON THE WAY HOME (it's not on the way home), and worrying and pissing about my brother who never returns calls and who is supposed to come out to dinner with us, but if he doesn't everyone will be gripey.

I'm tired of Spring Break already. I miss Ryan. The mannequins gave me ideas.....ok actually they didn't, but you know what did? Nip/Tuck. Definitely seen a couple inventive positions on that show.

Last night I wrote a post and then shifted position slightly, which caused my mostly-broken Ethernet cable to slip out of position, thus my internet connection was lost, as was my post. I started out by saying that it was easy to make resolutions at night, as in the "I'm not going to eat a gallon of ice cream tomorrow night and I'm going to do four hours of work every day this week" variety. Now that I'm a day wiser, I say that it's easy to MAKE resolutions at night, but very hard to keep them. Ask me my weight in a month - we'll see how good I do.

There is a need right now for me to be in bed. G'night.

I'M SO BORED I WANT TO STAB MYSELF IN THE EYE.

My adorable, if unfortunately red-eyed, friend Jess. 

Almost two years now of bloggage - go me!

One thing I've noticed about blogs at UConn is the housing question - it happens right around this time of junior year too. I have one - if I get an apartment CA job (crosses fingers, hopes against hope that I get picked out of the 5,000 CAs doing the same thing I am), and my side of the apartment (which would be a quad) is vacant, I get to pull someone in. AHHH WHAT DO I DO?? I have two best friends, but it's pretty much unthinkable to split them up.

Class is over, time to go.