Day Eight Hundred Thirty Seven

10 days with no blog post?! Madness. Just madness. Things have gotten progressively busier as the holidays have crept up and the semester has started coming to a close. Exam grading and gift buying and......massages? I had a horrible knot in my upper back that I first noticed a week ago, so I decided to schedule a 15 minute chair massage. Because those are supposed to be relaxing and peaceful and soothing, right? Um, no. Not even close. What happened was a 15 minute deep tissue massage during which I learned that I had way more knots in my upper back and neck than I realized, and attempting to get rid of them resulted in tremendous pain. Some of them surrendered, others have remained stubborn and are still present. So because that first massage was so pleasant, I scheduled another chair massage for next week. Because this has now become a personal battle of me (and the massage therapist) versus the monster muscle knot. I will keep you all apprised of who comes out victorious. At this point it feels like it could go either way.

But for now, Happy Thanksgiving from Virginia! I left Austin bright and early this morning in order to make it to Richmond in time for some turkey, and am very very happy to have a break from all things grad school. The second leg of my trip today took place on what could only be described as a toy plane. One seat on one side of the aisle, two seats on the other, and a ceiling so low that if I had been even an inch taller I would have had to hunch over to make it to my seat. So that was an interesting 3 hours. But the flight was relatively smooth and I made it to my destination unscathed, so I can't complain too much.

Time to go rest up for some shopping tomorrow! Bring it on, Target. Bring it on.

Day Eight Hundred Twenty Seven

On my visit today to Ulta to buy some new concealer, I got sassed by the lady that was helping me. I acknowledged that I'm pretty pale, and she immediately responded with, "oh, we don't use that word." Then proceeded to tell me how she had to go on a quest for the "fairest of fair" concealers for me.

.........I just didn't have the heart to tell her that we literally said the same thing.

Day Eight Hundred Twenty Six

Yesterday waaaaas......Wurstfest day! Every year in New Braunfels, TX there's a German festival called Wurstfest in which people put away entire pitchers of beer as soon as the gates open (around 11am). It's a festival where you're lucky if you can get through it without having beer spilled on you (I was not lucky), and all the foods are greasy and fried and some have names I cannot pronounce (I planned ahead and snuck almonds in). I also get to say hello to my parent's friend from college, Charlie, who I always enjoy talking with. Thanks for finding me an excellent parking spot, Charlie! You're the best. Once I got in the gates, I met up with my old roommate Kelly and some of her friends and we took in all the weird food and fun music and overpriced lederhosen.

Kelly may have had the authentic outfit...but she didn't have my excellent hat. At least Charlie and I were able to match on that front.

Today I made sure to wear my Seahawks jersey and go grocery shopping to maximize the number of people that experience my Russell Wilson jersey. I feel confident that they all appreciated it. Then I did four loads of laundry...why does every other piece of clothing seem to have different washing requirements? We should only make clothes that can all just be thrown in the washing machine together without worry.

Day Eight Hundred Twenty One

Let me give you the timeline of my day yesterday.

3:30am - wake up for midnight bathroom run, notice odd unpleasant smell in apartment. Decide it must be because I turned my heater on for the first time in a few months so I turn it off, turn the air purifier in my room on high and go back to sleep.

4:45am - wake up for second bathroom run (don't judge me), notice that smell is exponentially worse and is emanating from pipes and wall vents. Rearrange standing air purifier and fans to maximize fresh air intake from open windows. Lay frantically under my bed with my comforter over my face and attempt to avoid the situation until it goes away.

6:00am - smell is now suffocating and pounding headache is present. Call mom for moral support, who advises me to call emergency maintenance since they can actually help remedy the situation.

6:15am - talk to slightly cranky emergency maintenance man and convince him that he in fact does need to come to the apartment now because I can't breathe. Call mom again for more moral support until maintenance arrives.

7:00am - maintenance finally gets here and tells me he doesn't know what the smell is from and that I should probably find another place to go to.

7:30am - arrive at the Avants house, who once again play the role of saving grace and let me sleep on their couch.

11:30am - wake up, go to lunch with the wonderful wonderful Avant family, attempt to avoid returning to my apartment of death.

1:30pm - get back to apartment to find it mostly aired out, until I open the cabinet doors under my sink and the horrific odor returns with a vengeance. Again rearrange fans.

2:00pm - sit and wait in the leasing office to relay the story about the ungodly smell and wait for the maintenance guy from earlier to tell me what was going on to fix it (the answer at that time was nothing, so Louise and I put on our best stern faces until said maintenance man agreed to come within the next half hour to figure things out.

3:00pm - maintenance man arrives at apartment, seals all pipes under sink, and goes on quest to find source. Fans once again rearranged.

3:30pm - mystery solved. College guys in a close by 1st floor apartment decided to cook noodles in the middle of the night, then proceeded to pass out and let the noodles burn for hours. Good job guys. You all fail at life.

The take home messages of my day yesterday - college guys make bad (and potentially dangerous) decisions, noodles smell rancid when burnt for long periods of time, and the Avants are once again my favorite people to ever exist. That being said, I'm still exhausted from the entire ordeal one full day later. And the fans are still being rearranged.

Day Eight Hundred Nineteen

I had another fantastic weekend. Yesterday was a relaxing day full of book-reading and movie-watching (and work, but we won't count that) and today I got to see my big brother! A training assignment from the Air Force sent him to Texas  today, and since his training doesn't start until tomorrow he drove to Austin for the day. We ate good food and visited all the grandparents and watched football and went book shopping. It was very busy, but also the very best because I got to spend it with Jeff. Thanks for flying him out here Air Force! Feel free to do it more often.  :-)

Tomorrow......back to work. But it's been nice and cool outside recently, and if we drop just a few more degrees I may get to break out a sweater! Winter, just get here already.

Day Eight Hundred Thirteen

This was my day yesterday, and it was the best ever.

Seahawks WIN 13-12.