changes

Wow. Three months and no new blog? I need to up my game in 2011.

First things first, I have officially moved in to a new apartment! I've been here a week now, and I absolutely love it. I am still getting all settled in.

I am very excited for Christmas. Mainly having a week and a half off! I love that my job allows us to take off for the extended holiday season (makes up for not having as many holidays off...I'd take that over getting President's Day off)

I would write more, but I'm pooped, and unlike my teacher friends, I have work in the morning :)

Merry Christmas my beautiful friends!!

music that moves you

Music is an amazing thing. I personally am listening to music probably 60% of my day....either driving, showering, working, or falling asleep. Nothing is better than finding a new band or artist and sharing it with your loved ones. My wonderful friend Liz just happened to introduce me to a band a few weeks ago when I was up in Chicago called The Black Keys. And to my surprise, I find out they are the opening act for Kings of Leon next Monday! For those who don't know, I'll be heading out to Raleigh, NC on Friday to visit some old college friends for a long weekend, and will get back Tuesday night. I am beyond excited, because I find their music upbeat and unique.

I name the post "music that moves you" and the one band I come back to time and time again is Explosions in the Sky. I can't sing their praises (pun intended) any more than I already have. They are extremely different in the sense that they don't sing a single lyric. Now, for a band to create music that moves me so much with just a couple of guitars and drums is extremely impressive in my book. I own all of their albums and listen to them daily. They are relaxing, and more importantly, they make you just sit and think. It's hard to put in to words...listening to them just makes you question just about everything. Very emotional. If you do want to check out their music, I highly suggest the album "How Strange, Innocence". I want to see this band perform live more than anything, and I without a doubt will see them one day. I know that they did the score for the movie "Friday Night Lights" (not the TV show), so if they sound familiar then that's probably where you've heard them before! :)

On a complete side-note, painting bathrooms sucks. It's so small, and I found myself constantly bumping in to WET walls, got oil-based paint in my hair, and dropped paint rollers on the carpet (twice) but it was well worth it...I think??

Have a fantastic (short) week my friends...mine's even shorter :)

-LV

Air Conditioning

Don't. Ever. Take. It. For. Granted.

Lesson learned.

Saugatuk

Two weekends ago I went to Saugatuk, MI with a group of girls, and it was glorious. I had never been there, and we stayed at a cute little bed and breakfast on the water. The weekend consisted of AMAZING weather, delicious food, drinking, and friends. I think it would be amazing to go there in the fall. There were so many cute shops and restaurants. We went on a ferry ride out to Lake Michigan. I was really grateful to have been part of the group! Of course, here are some of my favorite pictures:

Thinking...

There's a reason my blog is called "random thoughts". Sometimes I think people would think I'm crazy because of how much day dreaming I do on a daily basis. For instance, whenever I drive by a pool and see the lifeguards, I remember of what a good life I had as a teenager. Lifeguarding was the best job EVER. Killer tan, minimal effort (don't worry, I was paying attention to your dumbass kid who kept dunking people), and my favorite, A LOT of thinking time. What else was there to do up in that chair but do some major thinking?

I wish I had worn more SPF instead of tanning oil (idiot).

New Layout

You like? I found these jelly beans as a background and thought it was adorable (yuck to butter popcorn flavor).

More to come...

It's So Damn Hot

Okay, summer is my least favorite season. I'm putting that out there. Soak it up. Most people think I'm crazy for not liking summer, but after lifeguarding for 5 summers growing up, it's ruined it for me. It's humid, muggy, and just overwhelming. Summers were fun when I was a kid, with ZERO responsibilities and playing all day. Now, I'm just waiting for it to be fall (coincidentally my FAVORITE season).

Everytime I get on here, I apologize for not keeping up with the blog. But cut me some freaking slack. Weekends yield my only down time, and I find Saturdays to be a blur and Sundays filled with cleaning and preparing for the week ahead. Right now I'm blogging in between cleaning rooms.

I've had a pretty uneventful summer. I haven't done much traveling, but the next 2 months I'll be going to quite a few places. I haven't seen my friend Liz since my birthday!! We are both super busy with work, and she works for Chase so she works on Saturdays half the time. I'm hoping to get up there in August when it calms down a bit. Next weekend I'll be going to Saugatuk, MI with a group of girls for some much needed R & R. I've never been, and I'm really excited. I took off Friday and we're leaving in the morning. Then the weekend after that I'll be heading to Milwaukee with my friend Kris to see our friend Gavin. I've also never been to Milwaukee, but Gavin tells me it's awesome in the summer. I'm REALLY hoping to go to Leinenkugel Brewery...we'll see about that.

August looks to be a relatively calm month (personally). Work couldn't be any more crazy. The next couple of weeks will be extremely hectic. One of my bosses is in Buenos Aires this week and the week after that my other boss will be in Paris for the week. We also have some of our consultants traveling to Warsaw and Moscow (those are firsts for us). In September I'll be heading to Raleigh, NC to see my friend Jess, as well as go to a Kings of Leon concert out there! Never seen them in concert, so that will be exciting! A lot of firsts for me in the coming weeks and months!

Relaxing Weekends...?

Aren't weekends supposed to be relaxing? Lazy? Sit-around-in-your-pajamas-watching-hulu-type-weekends? That sure doesn't feel like it anymore. Sleeping in? Negative. But on Sunny Sundays like these, I find myself sitting back, breathing in that Spring air, and enjoying what little time I have until 8 am tomorrow morning.

Oh, and playing softball with my neighbors is a nice, new Sunday tradition that I've come to enjoy :)

I put up this picture of my friend Sarah and I at a Red Sox/Reds game two summers ago. This weather makes me nostalgic for baseball, and that game was a BLAST. The Reds stadium is pretty fabulous, and I can't wait to go there again!

I miss the blond hair from time to time....RIP (for now)

we're gonna have a good time

So my birthday came and went, and it was truly amazing. I'm so blessed and lucky to have such great friends and family in my life. One of my best friends came in from Chicago for my birthday weekend (Liz), as well as my friends Sarah and Lindsey. We went to Scotty's downtown Friday night to watch the Purdue game (don't want to talk about it). We were going to "take it easy" that night, since we were going to go to Broad Ripple Saturday night. Funny how things never turn out that way...we ended up going to a place called Ike and Jonsey's and actually had a great time. We stayed until the bars closed, which I haven't done in a very very long time. Saturday was a day of recovering, shopping, and just relaxing. Saturday night we went to dinner at a new favorite restaurant of mine called The Corner Wine Bar. It's' in Broad Ripple, so we had a late dinner then went out after. Butler had just won, so needless to say the bars were crowded and packed with Butler fans. I actually go to see some old friends from High School, which is always fun. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend, and definitely took some time to recover!! Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!!! And, NO, my birthday IS NOT CURSED FOR PURDUE BASKETBALL (coincidence that they played on my birthday the past 2 years in the Sweet Sixteen and lost....)

they say it's your birthday

One of my favorite Beatles songs is "Birthday". What other band would make a birthday song? A total badass band, that's who.

This week will HOPEFULLY fly by, because Friday is my 23rd birthday. My friend Liz from Chicago is coming in to town, and a few of my friends here in Indy are going to celebrate this monumentous occasion with me downtown all weekend. We got a room at the Hilton, and plan on having some good, clean fun. The best kind of fun!

So the last entry was about goals, and working out more, and blah blah blah. Last week we did pretty good (Jeni worked out more than I did...over achiever). But since her basement flooded this weekend, and we moved/cleaned/walked up stairs 50 times, I am going to count that as a work out. And I can't move my arms, just a side note.

Wednesday my mother is taking me out for my birthday dinner, since I won't be home all weekend, and Thursday night I'm getting my hair did. It's been like 3 months, and I need some color.

That's about it...I'm sure I will blog more post-birthday!

P.S. BOILER UP! I realized that last year Purdue made it to the Sweet 16, and they played on my birthday. We all went to Harry's to watch the game and it was amazing. And what do you know? They made it to the Sweet Sixteen again this year and play...on my birthday. Can you say fate?

Goals Goals Goals

Sooooo...it's been over a month since I blogged. Maybe it's because it took me that long to get over the Colts Super Bowl (which so happened to be my last blog entry). A lot has happened since then...

-Let's start with the Super Bowl, shall we? I babysat that Thursday til the Monday after the Super Bowl for my boss' kids (is that right? boss'? I hate confusing plurals and since (multiple) teachers follow my blog, I get nervous). If you remember, that was the weekend we got 10 inches of snow dumped on us. So there was a little cabin fever, but besides that it was pretty awesome. I did watch the game, by myself. There was a lot of swearing, pacing, and anger on my end. I went down to bed, only to get sucked in to watching Titanic on TBS. So here I am, in a huge house alone with two kids and I'm crying watching a disaster epic. Can we all just point out how pathetic that is? Because I sure as hell thought it was.

-We had a HUGE report due mid-February at work, which I helped a lot with. I was nice because of the snow I got to work from home a couple days. But it's kind of a double edged sword, because it's great working from home (hello, pajamas and not showering!!) but at the same time, I worked 12 hours both days. There's no "time to go home/leave the office" when you are at home. Anyways, the report went down to the WIRE on a Friday, and I was living off of caffeine. That night I went to a jewelry party with a dear friend, where we had margaritas and basically were assholes while a poor jewelry rep had to present. It was fun I will admit.

-My best friend Abby and her husband Brandon came home a couple weekends ago from Austin. Her sister, Katie, had a beautiful baby girl, Hallie. She made her entrance in the world a little early, but she is happy and healthy. She's like a little peanut! Abby was pretty tired (so was I!) so we ended up having pizza at Katie's house and watched TV. It's nice having low-mantiencace friends!!

-I've been going to Maggie and Mairin's basketball games on Saturday mornings lately. It's been awesome. Since I can't sleep in anymore (I miss it!), I might as well be cheering for those doodlebugs

-I went to Chicago last weekend to visit Liz. We hadn't seen each other since November!! We had a BLAST. We went to a Blues/Jazz Club on Friday, went shopping/ate ourselves in to a coma on Saturday, then did some more shopping Sunday. I will note that my back was tweaked or something, and I was in excurciating pain. I'm not one to complain, but it was pretty awful. But my love for Chicago trumped any pain, so it's all good. Back to normal now!

-I joined a gym today, the Monon Center. It is pretty amazing. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'm a solid 7 on being out of shape. My legs were SHAKING walking down the stairs as I was leaving. I really thought I was going to tumble down them. And we will see if I can lift my arms in the morning. Jeni and I are going to push each other (Bring it!), as working out with a buddy is much more fun.

Well that's everything that's happened up until now. My birthday is in a few weeks, and some friends are coming in town to spend it with me. We got a hotel downtown for the weekend, so I need to get on planning fun things to do! AND I booked a ticket to Austin to see Abs and Brandon one more time before they move back. CANNOT WAIT for them to be home!!

As for some goals (name of the post), I want to just get in shape! I've been making a point to eat better the past month (apps for the iphone are amazing for that), so now it's just working out! I'm also wanting to get closer to finding a place to live. We'll get to that later :)

We Goin to the Ship

Let's point out the obvious...I blow at blogging lately. It seems like that is always my first sentence in the last couple blogs I've done. Anyways, just got done watching the Colts/Jets game. I have to admit I did my fair share of yelling. I've tried to not go back to my screaming ways, but I am so sick of announcers and ESPN saying every week that the Colts are going to lose. It was literally driving me insane.

In non-sports related news, work has been great. I've been given more responsibilities which I love, and the days seem to fly by. I've started to pay off my loans (ugh) but it's nice to get going on that. I also get my benefits in a week!!! AHHH CANNOT WAIT TO GET MY TEETH CLEANED. I have said it before, people don't realize how much the little things help when you aren't insured anymore. I need new contacts, too. See you in a week, Dr. Meyer.

I'm going to start planning some trips here soon. I want to travel more this year, and I'm planning on going down to Texas again to see Abby and Brandon before they move back to Indy this summer (can't wait). I also want to visit my friend Katelyn in D.C. I haven't been there since I was 13. Of course I'm going up to Chicago in February to see my friend Liz, and we are planning on a birthday celebration weekend for my birthday in March.

Believe in Blue!! Who do you want us to play? I am leaning towards the Saints (gotta rep Purdue alum Brees) but Jan is wanting the Vikings (shocking).

New Year

Happy New Year! Just wanted to say that. Nothing really new to report. Exciting life I live, no?