giving thanks.

job.
B.
home.
family.
friends.
ultimate.
health (ish).
kitties.
bunny.
boston.
madison.
mudderburn.
cmu.
mellons.
food.
socks.
hugs.

thank you.

:)

all of the aminals! :)

we got kitties!!!

Meet Pistachio, or just 'Chio for short.

And Basil! :)

as you can probably tell, chio is significantly more outgoing and friendly compared to basil. we were originally only going to get one kitty, but then realized that since we'll be travelling sometimes, especially when ultimate season rolls around again, it'd be good for two kitties to be able to keep each other company. also, these two were just such a good pairing.

chio had been living on the street, but was being fed by a local taxi driver. unfortunately, the taxi driver couldn't take him home with him and take care of him, so he was brought to the shelter. basil was also a stray, but he just showed up on his foster mom's back porch one day. basil didn't warm up to anyone or any of the other cats much until he found chio's crate. he apparently sat in front of his crate until he got let in, and he never left chio's side after that. since it looked like chio was helping basil come out of his shell so well, we very well couldn't separate them. plus, chio was just SO friendly! so now we have two kitties! and basil has slowly been getting better and better around us. he doesn't just hide in the dark anymore. he comes out for meals, and explores the apartment with chio. he's even started playing with the toys and knickknacks lying around the apartment.

the best moment so far has been when i woke up one morning with a strong urge to turn over in my sleep, before realizing it was harder than normal to flip over. in my groggy state, i slowly realized it was because there was more weight than usual on my legs! i just figured it was chio so i paused to see if i could move without waking him. then the weight started shifting...there were two weights on my legs! basil had come up to snooze in the crook of my knee! and chio had snuggled up on the other side of my leg. alright. it was decided. i didn't move and proceeded to lose all feeling in my right arm. then mr. aaron "fidgety-when-sleeping" magil briefly sat up to turn himself over. this apparently scared the shit out of basil, who then bolted off the bed and god knows where...dammit, magil. le sigh. oh well...here's hoping they do it again soon. :)

for now...more kitty pictures!

chio: "what....what are you..? and what are you eating??"

look who's curiosity outweighed his scaredycat-ness!

chio + basil | sitting back and observing.

"any idea what that is...?"
"nope...also, your butt smells..."

most adorable snapshot to date | kitty snuggles!!!

he actually fell asleep like this...on my hand...

shipped back up to boston.

so on february 1st, aaron and i emptied out the apartment, stuffed what was left into the car, and took off on another journey: back to boston.

after two days of driving approximately ten hours each (day and person), we're back in beantown. we stopped briefly in pittsburgh, for the sake of having somewhere to rest up and crash, and to see some friends, attend our respectively practices as creepy alums and give puppy a break from the stress of sitting in her cage crammed into the backseat of an 03 camry.

tobyfair, she actually took to the drive a lot better this time (the last time being the pittsburgh-madison drive), and this one was twice as long. she's now sitting in my room adjusting to a) being out of the car, b) being in a different place altogether and c) hardwood floors. let's just say her first time taking a leap out of the cage and onto the floor was somewhat comical, in a sprawling, scrambling fashion. she has figured out that the hallway outside is carpeted though, and that she can use my suitcase to gain enough traction to jump up onto the bed, where she can quite easily wander around as she pleases (as long as nibbling on random things she finds is kept to a minimum).

considering this was my first time driving long distance, it wasn't too bad. i took my fair share of approximately half the hours, and i don't think i did too bad (except for one minor incident when the cruise control went creepy weird on me and temporarily wouldn't go off).

some photos from along the way:

sad, empty apartment once again...

rd leaving wilson bay apartments for the last time...

rd in pittsburgh with the cathedral of learning! 

for old times with the money mellons, rd at a sheetz.

puppybutt taking a nap in the backseat.

on another note, being sick seems to have waited until i got back to boston to appear. i'm now somewhat sniffly and sneezy. gross. though i will admit that i'm glad i didn't have to deal with this while driving. that would've made things significantly worse. 


future plans
+ superbowl sunday at brayden's new place out in worcester!
+ continue writing more urbdezine articles.
+ successfully find a job.
+ find a new apartment.
+ move into said apartment.
+ finally adopt my adorable graduation puppy.
+ finally live the life i had been hoping for post graduating from college with an unfortunately-specific, though professional degree.
+ be happy.
+ call up them madison friends and have them come out for a visit (clambake!).


sounds reasonable, right? :)

a bunny named puppy.

who's my little cutie?? :)

just to see what all the fuss is about.

so puppy's taken up a new habit. licking rugs. for approximately five mins at a time. i blame reggie.

on the other end of things, apparently reggie has taken to standing in the middle of my old bedroom where puppy's pen used to be and whining. he misses the stinkyface. that is both adorable and a little sadface.

it'll be nice to go visit them after their move.

---

oh yea. HAPPY JUNE, EVERYBODY! :)

it's the best that i've ever had.

I'M FINALLY DONE!!!!


just had my one and only final for Issues of Practice today.  after the ridiculous document submission deadline we had just yesterday, I am done.  sadly, I had to pull my third official CMU all-nighter sunday night to get shit done.  in my opinion, it wouldn't have been necessary, had everyone just done what they were supposed to.  i'm angry.  but it's done.  whatever.  compared to that, this final was an f-ing walk in the park.

3 hours.
71 questions.
all multiple-choice.
answer options? A-U.


just a few examples of answer options that came up:
a) true
b) false
c) bunnies

c) whiskey distributors, whiskey distillers and catholic altar boys

f) definitely f
g) f and g
h) f,g and h

d) definitely k [NOTE: this question only went up to d)]

a) true
b) false
c) none of the above

a) everything is forced -- FOLAN!

#71. If you could be anyone for a day, who would you rather be?
a) Dick Butkus
b) Tinkerbell
c) Justin Bieber

a mystery box could be anything! even a bunny!

i am officially done with f10, and into my last semester of architecture undergrad. holy shit.

:D

<3

finally.

an epically accurate fortune i got out of a cookie yesterday with dinner. boomtown.

i am officially done with my final studio of my undergraduate career at cmu.

sure, next year i'll have thesis, but that's different. at least it seems different. it's different. this semester was definitely hell, but its finally over.

now to finish off issues, udm and modern architecture & theory with a bang. and hopefully, somewhere in there, i'll have time to add to and resubmit my thesis proposal before dec. 15th. it's just for the grade, but still. it's actually something i want to do, not just for the grade, but for the project. i think i can do it. i'm hoping i'm right.

for now, a chill night of laundry, a bunny, a kitty, some tv, some B, and most of all, some sleep.

:)

<3

early morning without warning/woke me with a scare.

:: quick recap of summer 2010 (by category of events) ::


work
i essentially spent the summer working for the national park service. initially, i was just an intern in their historic architecture program, which was actually quite interesting in itself since it consisted of working at/for various sites, including the adams national historic park, the frederick law olmsted national historic site, and the nps regional office in lowell, doing things like helping them photo document the site and the house, cataloging their historic items, database entry, architectural descriptions, with a little CAD-ing thrown in. then, since my summer budget was winding down a lot faster than i had planned, i "applied" for a contract editing job, didn't take 'no' for an answer, and spent half of july and all of august editing the historic structures report for the new bedford whaling museum as the last step of the editing process before the book went out for publishing. so that was pretty awesome. something i had a decently large part in is being published! it was an achievement. and the $2400 i got for the job wasn't a bad perk either.

club ultimate
after ending the college season of 2010 with a decent showing at sectionals and breaking seed to finish 5th (the same result as the year before, just sans approx. 10 seniors who had graduated), i jumped right into the club scene trying out for ballometrics, a mixed team out of boston, at bell crack, a co-ed tournament in philly. after making that first round of cuts, since starting tryouts (i started late in the process), i didn't feel like i was quite playing up to scratch and, surprisingly, not having as much fun as i would've liked with them. unsurprisingly, i got cut not long after in the next round of cuts. meh. no biggie. at that point, i hadn't really decided if i was really feeling the people on the team anyway. then, i decided to try my hand in the women's ultimate scene in boston, since my college coaches had pushed for me to play women's more anyway, and tried out for hatch. again, made the first round of cuts, which i was pretty happy with. unfortunately, i then followed that up with a couple of pretty embarrassingly bad practices. talk about conservation of greatness. who knew it applied to a much bigger picture. again, unsurprisingly due to my disappointing showing that week, i got cut. by this point, i was seriously burned out. had figured i'd just train and condition for the summer. get into better shape for the next college season and then try again next year. cue unexpected email from 7th wheel, another mixed team out of boston, sent out to ultimate players known to be in the tryout process for teams announcing their final tryout and an invitation to join them. for shits, i said "why not?". it's more practice in a tryout situation. what harm could it be? plus, another chance would be nice. day of, started off by appearing pretty damn stupid getting lost and going to the wrong fields. got there late. turned out we hadn't missed too much, so jumped right in. unfortunately, we also had another event planned later that day and had to leave early. so here was my thinking: i got here late (super late in the whole process), and have to leave early. man, i must look like a jerk. two days later, to my surprise, i get an email offering me a spot on the team. well, crap. i was burned out. but excited! i would end up playing for the club season after all! :) so far so good. i'm happy i've gotten the chance to gel and play with a great group of people and having fun. i feel terrible for having to start school so early, but i'll still be flying back to boston for club sectionals on sept. 10th. again, excited. :D

7th wheel after our first tournament win!


summer club ultimate
i came back for another season with merge. we had quite a decent season, though again with a bunch of frustrations and annoyances. ended on a decent note. didn't get to where we wanted to be at the end of the tournament, but that's okay. had a great day one, going 4-0 against some pretty alright teams. day two, we tanked. the weather was meh. we had lost a few people. energy was low. errors were high. it was unfortunate. but we got to end the season with a fun team pre-tourney dinner at brayden's and a post-tourney meal at heidi's.


miscellaneous, but still awesome
-  got to go to DC with aaron. :) even if i spent half the time either in terrible pain or nauseous as all hell, it was still a good trip and i'm glad we got to do it. p.s. the national zoo is awesome! and free! which makes it more awesome. seriously, the number of photos we collectively take at zoos is ridiculous.
-  for the pre-tourney dinner, we whipped up a batch of chocolate guinness cupcakes from a recipe i had randomly found online awhile back. they were delicious. seriously. so good. i really should try and find time to make some more this year and share their glorious existence with everyone here.
-  went to the franklin park zoo. yup. more zooing. more ridiculous photos. it was brilliant.
-  watched a bunch of movies: despicable me (twice! so adorable!), karate kid, iron man 2, shrek in 3d, inception (so good! want to see it again.)
-  went to my first red sox game. it was the sox vs. d-backs. so much fun. we won. got some adorable photos out of it. yay. :) another thing off my bucket list.
-  went to toad & katie's wedding. it was beautiful. congratulations to them! i wish them all the best! :)
-  wildwood. won hardware - best in bracket, bitches!! didn't get ridiculously sunburned. had a lot of fun. may have given myself first degree burns on the bottoms of my feet from running on the sun-baked sand a whole lot.
-  had puppy come with me this summer! :) she lived with me in my room all summer and, though i may have developed an allergy thanks to all her shedding, i'm so happy she made the trip with me this summer. :)

summer 2010 :: it's a win in my book.

just to have some company.

meet puppy.

name: puppy

sex: female

d.o.b.: 03/30/2007

breed: american rex

color: bicolor - white with black spots

size: medium

weight: 4lb 8oz
favorites chew toys: colorful wooden ball, toilet rolls, cables, newspapers, carpets
favorite activities: running around, sprinting, binkying, sniffing, chewing, chillaxing in my corner, investigating, eating, pooping, eating + pooping simultaneously

took my bunny, puppy, to her first vet visit yesterday. since she'll be travelling with me to boston this summer, she needed to have a check up to get a 10-day health certificate in order for the pet transportation service to help me move her the 500-miles to boston.

i've had her for just over a year now (yes, it's still only been her first vet visit...). and she spent last summer with a friend in buffalo. :( i felt terrible and definitely missed her all summer. so this year, she's coming with! :)

she freaked out a bit in the car at first, and a little more in the waiting room, but other than that was impressively well-behaved.  i was pretty nervous that the dogs and (actual) puppies might scare her, but she seemed pretty chill about it.  getting back into the examination room, she came out for her weighing, nail clipping and ear cleaning session with the nurses. calmly came out. quietly sat there while they did their thing. same thing for when the doctor came in. she only flinched a little when dr. dorn checked her teeth, but other than that, did great!

super proud of my puppy. she did good.

i now have a healthy, content, 4lb 8oz bunny who is ready to set off on her new adventure to boston, mass.  fingers crossed that goes just as well.

thanks to ishan for giving me a ride to the West Liberty Animal Hospital.

oh hai.