The Road Chronicles: Day 1

Well we made it safe and sound (to JonMarke's parents house in Escondido)!

We woke up at about 4:45 to finish packing and getting all the stuff into the car and we left right at 6am. Went to Noah's and got some breakfast, and to Safeway and got some water, string cheese, apples, and blue Doritos. Driving snacks are awesome!

We actually got on the road just before seven and drove to Yucaipa to visit his grandfather and aunt. We had some awesome Chicago style pizza and then drove the rest of the way to Escondido.

Nothing (that we can tell so far) broke in the car or got smushed, and the seat stayed on top of the car just fine. However, it is now TOTALLY covered in dead bugs. Eww. I forgot to take a picture when we got here, but I'll take one tomorrow and add it in. [Here you go!]

I did get a picture of the pretty purple hills and the disgusting disgusting smog however. The purple hills were pretty, and the smog was really really bad. I kept cleaning off my sunglasses thinking that something was on them; it was blurry and fuzzy and just plain hard to see through. The mountain in the bottom picture is totally covered by smog. We couldn't see it at all, and it was only about a mile away.

Tomorrow we hang out in San Diego/Escondido and take a break. Then we leave again bright and early Wednesday morning!

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I'm engaged!

My boyfriend of three years proposed to me on Friday, right after we got back to our hotel after the first day of my family reunion! I had sort of been suspecting that he might be about to propose for the past week, but when he actually did it I forgot all about my previous suspicions and it was a TOTAL surprise!



He picked out the ring all by himself, with no help from me whatsoever, and he totally managed to find the perfect ring! Simple and elegant and totally my style. The picture is a bit bad but the top strand is tiny diamonds and the bottom strand is white gold that wraps around the top one.

So exciting!

Oh, and packing is all done, except for the things in the shower that I will pack tomorrow morning. We leave at 6am, wish us luck!

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Quilt is done! Packing, not so much...

The quilt is finished! Like, totally finished and done and ready to be packed. After I lint roll it; there is a lot of dog hair floating around, plus all the little threadies are sorta stuck to the microfiber on the front and the fleece on the back.

The thing is huge! You know how big a full sized pool table is, right? I had to stand on a chair to get the whole thing in the frame.


It falls off the edges of the table! The back is super soft and good. It's just one giant piece of gray fleece with a bit of purple border. The quilt ended up being a bit over 8'x6' though, thus the border because there was no one piece of fabric big enough or soft enough to make the whole back.


And now I have no excuse to not pack. Urg. I've started packing and it's not even going badly, it's just that I'd rather spend my last few days here relaxing and enjoying the (finally) good weather. Also, my boyfriend gets here tomorrow so I wanna drag him around to meet all of my friends. But instead I think we're going to mostly be packing. Bleh.

But I'm definitely excited for the family reunion, and for visiting people in San Diego and Tulsa on the way to Chicago, and for then being in Chicago! The next two weeks of my life are going to rock!

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Yay!

The quilt is done! Or, at least the hard part is done. All that is left now are the two borders for the front, the back itself, and putting it all together! But I'm done with the small crazy strips of black fabric and I'm done with lining up lines and praying that it all turns out square!



The colors are not nearly as pretty in this picture as they are IRL. The light from the pool table and the general iffy quality of photos taken from my iPhone are to blame...

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It's time for another post I suppose

So I talked to Whitney today for like half an hour, which was fantastic because I'm pretty sure the last time I talked to her was at graduation. Yeah. A year ago. :-(

And I'm figuring out plans for moving to Chicago! I'm hoping to spend a day in SoCal and a day or two in Tulsa on the way, so I'll keep all of you people we know along the way posted.

I can't believe we're moving in two weeks. That's insane. TWO WEEKS! And I haven't even started packing!

But in other more awesome news, I have started making myself a quilt. It's going to be fantastic.


I'm taking fifteen of the ginormous tshirts that we got for free at TU (that I will never wear again, see: ginormous) and turning them into an awesome soft warm quilt for when it gets cold in Chicago! It's an important project right now, cuz the sewing machine is the first thing on the list that gets left behind if (read: when) we run out of room for stuff in the van!

Also, Watson got his summer haircut...


Now we just have to actually wait for the summer weather to finally begin up here. Poor dog, got all his hair cut off so that he won't be horribly hot, and he's probably a bit cold, given the recent lack of good weather!

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Chicago!

We're moving to Chicago!!! How exciting is that!?!?!

Actually, I've known this for a little while, but my boyfriend was going back and forth between schools for a while, so I didn't want to say anything until we were absolutely positively 100% sure what was going on. But JonMarke accepted the University of Chicago's offer and will be attending their master's program for a year! Very exciting!

So we're gonna move out to Chicago in June, hopefully somewhere near the university in the Hyde Park area. Any thoughts or advice?

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A job! Oh, and cooking...

So I found a job, and actually, Friday was the end of my second week there. I'm working for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and it's totally awesome! I sent out emails to a bunch of people over my years at college (or at least I made an effort to) in order to keep them posted on what was going on. So I sent out a final one after graduation saying that I had graduated, but still had no job. And I got a reply from the Senior Director at the society saying they had a position open!

It's really a great job, and I really enjoy getting up every day and going to work. That said, it has absolutely nothing to do with either of my majors, but it's a fun job, it's a great non-profit company, and it's temporary. I have the rest of my life to get on my "career track", I figure I can spent 3-4 months doing something totally fun if I want to!

So, the job thing is taken care of, at least until April. But now I'm looking for health insurance, which is a bit insane. I know absolutely nothing about health insurance because I've always been covered by my mom's plan at work, until right about now. So I'm learning all about premiums and deductibles and coinsurance, and trying to figure out if there is actually any way to figure out what the best plan for me is. I'm thinking there isn't really an objective way to doing this, which just irks the heck out of me. (Damn things that don't have an obvious right and wrong answer!) So I'm getting my parents to help me, and hopefully soon it will be over and I won't have to think about it for a while. And then hopefully I'll have a job that includes health insurance as a benefit, and I really won't have to think about it!

On another note, I realized that when I move out of my parents house (sometime between May and August probably), I will no longer have a) a cafeteria to go to or b) someone to cook for me. This horrible realization hit me about two weeks before graduation, and so I have decided that I have to learn how to cook. (There's no way my wallet or my health can afford to eat out every day...) So as part of my mom's Christmas present from me I am helping her get her recipe binder up to date, both in printed format and in digital format. And as part of her present to me, she's taking me shopping and making me help her cook. So I'm learning all about how to tell if oranges are ripe ("they're heavy" says Mom), how to buy ginger ("get the least knobbly, it's a pain to peel"), and how to cook.

I'm actually finding it rather fascinating because I had always seen cooking as a chore, even though Mom enjoys it so much. But I'm realizing that if there is someone around for me to talk to, I don't mind cooking at all. It's a very economical way to eat; it's fairly cheap and easy to make a lot of food that you can eat as leftovers. (All you people older than me who are reading this and going "Well duh!", you hush up! I'm 23 and I haven't had to think about it until now because Mom cooked or I ate at the caf in college!)

But I gotta go, I have to go "taste this soup and tell me [Mom] what you think"!

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