It's Like Christmas Eve!

Tomorrow I'm getting an iPhone! (I've only been talking about it for three years.) Ask anyone who knows me, I'm the biggest procrastinator in the history of the world. I'm also a terrible decision maker. So I've put off joining the 21st century forever ever because I haven't wanted to commit to a data plan.

But I'm ready. And SOOOOO EXCITED!

Here are the top 5 reasons I'm psyched about getting an iPhone.

1. Instagram - I can't wait to document every single detail of my life via photo. You know you want to follow me.

2. Talking to Siri - I have a lot of things to discuss with her.

3. Blog stalking my internet friends from the comfort and convenience of everywhere.

4. Never getting lost again. (Who am I kidding?)

5. Words With Friends - I know I'm like 2.5 years late to the game...but someone will still play with me...right?

Saturday To-Do's Done

Today was the perfect balance of productivity and lazy. I did important things like pay my bills and mail my rent.

I registered to vote! (Deadline is Oct. 17th in Massachusetts. Not registered? Get on that!)

I shopped for groceries, picked up a museum pass for the PEM tomorrow, did the dishes, created more dishes by cooking dinner (vegetables included), picked up some ice cream at Kimballs (thanks Mary!), cleaned my apartment a bit, organized some craft stuff, and....

....set up my printer!

When I bought my Mac in January, I got a free printer/rebate deal thing. I waited until the last possible week to mail in my rebate form and now, almost 10 months later, I finally took the printer out of the box. I even went so far as to figure out how to download a software update. Currently, I can only print through the USB. Someone teach me how to get the wireless to work!

After I did all of those productive things I watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad, read for a bit, and am now playing blog catch up (I forgot my September goal was to completely catch up on all my summer adventures!) while watching some classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

   

PLC does not stand for Personal Liability Claim*

This year, I'm taking a graduate course offered by my school but not for graduate credit. Yes. I'm wondering about that too.

While the next class isn't until the first week of October, two assignments are due tomorrow. RUDE! So of course I waited until the last minute to do stuff. And the school email server is down which means that I'll be working on this REALLY last minute tomorrow. Oops!

I'm spending time at my favorite place for studying: Barnes and Noble with my first latte of the season. I know buying a latte in September violates my goals but I had a gift card that covered half of it and I paid for the rest in quarters...so it doesn't really count.

The class is Professional Learning Communities and the first chapter of the book talks about how students do their best learning by doing...hence the title. But I'm learning by reading instead. 

P.S. The class is being taught by the wife of my former high school band teacher. Small world. 

P.P.S. I almost wrote high school teacher instead of high school band teacher because I was unsure about sharing my band geek status with the internet world. But then I thought, I'm a grown up now, I should be proud of my musical prowess geekiness.

*PLC means a lot of things.

  

All The Rest...

Number 1: Find a job I love.

Well...I found a job I like. I am still a paraprofessional and still NOT a real teacher but I genuinely enjoy (most) of my days at school/work. After the drama that ensued post W-Ford, I really thought that I never wanted to work in a school ever again. But after some soul searching and complete lack of alternative career paths, I still want to be a teacher.

Number 4: (Private goal).

Accomplished...somewhat.

Number  9: Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Didn't happen. Still want it to. Maybe in April?

Number 10: Get all of my financial stuff in order.

Started to consolidate and file statements, bills, and old tax stuff. Will continue to pursue this as I work to declutter my apartment (and life).

Number 16: Shoot a gun.

The opportunity was there but I failed to carpe the diem.

Number 17: Go cliff diving.

Seasonal. Didn't complete in time. Thought about trying to locate a high dive at an indoor pool as a safer option. I still want to do this at some point in my life...maybe on a tropical vacation with high cliffs and crystal clear water that I can see through.

Number 21: Screen print a t-shirt.

Couldn't settle on a design. Thought about making a "race" shirt for my unofficial 5k but just didn't make it happen.

Number 22: Private goal.

Didn't happen.

Number 26: Spend 24 hours in bed.

I imagined a day of naps, reading, and movies under a canopy of sheer fabric and twinkle lights...kind of like this: 

but the closest I came was sleeping for 13 hours straight when I was feeling under the weather and spending the remaining 11 hours on the couch napping. Someday I'll have a twinkle light, canopy, bed fort.

____________________________________

I know the idea was to complete everything on The List before I turned 30 but as the year passed a few things happened. I procrastinated, I allowed myself to miss out on opportunities, and I changed my mind about some of my goals...and I'm okay with that. I enjoyed completing the things on this list and at the end of the day, that is what matters most.

Despite the apprehension I had about turning 30, it will be fun to look back on my 29th year and remember it fondly. Thanks to everyone who supported my endeavors, participated in the adventures, and followed along vicariously. Here's to another year and another list.

Right Now

Picture this:  I have to wake up in 7 hours to get ready before setting off on Weddingpalooza: D&O Get Married so naturally I am sitting here with my face covered in a face mask.  Basically I look like this:

except I am not wearing a plant. 

Until 10 pm tonight I didn't have a dress to wear to this wedding.  I thought I could be crafty and make one.  And when that didn't work, I thought I could make a different one.  And just for good measure I thought I could make one more.  But now I finally have something to wear so I will not be the girl at the wedding in jeans and a tank top.

I have yet to pack (or decide what to pack), shower, paint my toenails, shave, or sleep.  Ugh.  Reinventing hot mess since 1982.

I have to go wash this thing off my face now...THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!

   

I'm The Girl...

Who ALWAYS broke the chain letter.

For those of you my age, remember back before email when friends would send chain mail to your house?  Like with the mailman?  You were supposed to then rewrite the letter and send it to (insert some number here) people or you would have bad luck for a billion years.  Come to think of it...maybe all that promised back luck is coming to fruition.*

Here is the part where I try to segue from chain mail to blog awards without making me seem ungrateful and making the people who gave them to me feel like they want to unfollow me.  For the record, I absolutely appreciate being thought of when it came time to forwarding awards (even if I feel like I didn't deserve them).  And the only comparison I'm drawing between chain mail and blog awards is the Amy ignores them aspect.

I've been given three awards by three wonderful bloggers and I've ignored all of them...until now.  Back in March, Miss Jenna bestowed upon me The Versatile Blogger Award.

Jumble Mash gave me an award for being an awesome guest poster on her blog.

And finally, Sunshine told me I am my blog is stylish.

To accept a blog award you are supposed to list some number of facts about yourself.  Because I love lists here are some more things about me:

-  The saying "better late than never" applies to 90% of my life.
-  I like to eat cinnamon Life cereal out of the box with my fingers.
-  Barnes and Noble is one of my favorite places ever!
-  I want to be an author. 
-  I just need a book idea.
-  I always liked the numbers 13 and 3.
-  But I think my lucky number is 4.
-  I made a delicious stir fry for dinner last night.
-  Baths kind of creep me out.
-  I need to learn how video G-Chat works before Friday.
-  My head wants to run a 5K but my body is not cooperating.
-  Sometimes I think I'm too cool for Blogger...
-  But actually I just think that Tumblr would be more receptive to my urge to post 4 blogs a day.

* This cannot be true as I make my own luck.  Just like that guy in Titanic who...um...never mind.

 

Seattle Mini Done At Last!

Way back when (in October) I started a minibook to chronicle my adventures in Seattle for M's wedding weekend.  I visited with my England ladies and got to travel a new city with them.  This adventure involved a suitcase and a hotel instead of a backpack and an airport bench but it was just as wonderful.

I have finally finished (minus one page) my Seattle minibook and I am so happy with how it came out.  (I'm also happy that my internal monologue loves to end sentences with prepositions.) 

Here it is...it's like 3 million pages so feel free to scroll.

4 Reasons I Probably Won't Leave My House Today Even Though It Is Sunny And Warm Outside

1. Stephen left today to return to VA and I am sad about that.  Last year he came home for almost two months but this year stayed 12 days.  It's weird to go an entire year without seeing my brother.

2.  It is already 1:00 pm and I am still in my pajamas.

3.  My hair looks like this:

4.  I still have 250 pages left to read of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest and it now overdue.  I am expecting an email from the library any day now telling me what a delinquent patron I am for withholding reading material from other patrons who are waiting for the book.  Although to be fair...I requested this book in August and had to wait until January to get it from the library.  This was probably my own fault as I accidentally requested the large print version.  Oops!

Try Something New

One of my October goals is to try something new.  Before I even made this into a goal I knew that I wanted to try the seasonally appropriate pumpkin spice latte.  This is what we call a win-win.  I get to set and accomplish a goal (giving my life a sense of productivity and purpose) while simultaneously providing myself a reasonable excuse to take a field trip to Starbucks. 

Because I knew what the end result of this goal would be in September, this goal could have been easily accomplished on October 1st...but in the land of Amy, procrastination is king, president, and prime minister.  So 22 days later (today) I FINALLY had my pumpkin spice latte. 

It looked...yummy.

It smelled...delicious...like liquid pumpkin pie in a cup.

 It tasted...like what I imagine drinking a melted pumpkin scented candle would taste like.

Amy = soooo disappointed. 

There was merely a faux pumpkin flavor and no spice to speak of.  This is what I get for procrastinating.  I should have just ordered one on October 1st and I would have known then...instead I talked about it for weeks.  Goal for November: Less talking more doing?

I sat at Starbucks listening to Jay-Z rap about his 99 problems and wondered if Jay-Z has 99 problems, then I must have at least 103 of them.  While wishing I had ordered my usual mocha latte, I made some extraordinarily easy Halloween cards.  (Seriously...I stuck a sticker onto an already made card.) 

Oh well.  Now I know.  At least I didn't get pulled over for being young and black with my hat real low.

Procrastination and Pasta

I've been talking about making my own pasta for a while now....like six months. So I decided to change my procrastinating ways and just do it!

That was on Wednesday.
On Thursday I found a reciepe online.
On Friday I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients.
And FINALLY on Saturday I actually made the pasta.

Here's how it went down...

It turns out there is not much in pasta dough. Some flour, eggs, and olive oil.

You mix it all on a cutting board! Just smoosh it until it starts to look like dough, then knead.

I took pictures of the dough going through the flattening and cutting of the pasta machine but my camera magically erased them on its own. Hmm...

It looks like pasta! It cooked very quickly but it tasted mostly of flour and egg which essentially is all it was. All in all it's way less of a project to cook pasta out of a box but that's not as fun and messy!

In other news, I cleaned my apartment for 2.5 hours today, napped, went to a booksale, and paid all my monthly bills.

How's that for kicking procrastination in the face?