Posting a day late due to a very busy weekend. Before we get to that though, let’s go back a week to Easter Sunday!

Sunday – Jon, Natalie and I all went to church at River Oaks in Goshen and then had lunch at Kyle’s parent’s house. They have a beautiful backyard so we all went for a cruise in the golf-cart and took some pictures down by the river. Notice their dog Brewster, he made sure he was in every single picture

Monday – Happy Dyngus Day!! I don’t completely understand it, but from what I get it’s the day after Easter, it’s a very Polish thing (food/music) and it kicks off campaign season. Despite not really knowing exactly what it was, I enjoyed it! Polish sausage, perogies and this amazing cabbage/noodle mix that was sweet and sour and oh-so-delicious!

Tuesday – I scheduled my first video shoot for the KREMC video I’m doing! So I ran around town before work and picked up some stuff to do DIY studio lighting since the shoot is an interview in a home. I got 2 lights, some umbrellas and a white board. I’m picking up the camera today and I’m going to test it to see if I need more or something different. So far I have 4 video shoots (for 2 different videos) set up in the next 2 weeks!

Wednesday – I watched something Tuesday night after work that had chocolate chip pancakes in it, so first thing Wednesday morning I was craving them (which is super weird because I don’t normally like sweet food or breakfast all that much). I gave into the craving though and made some for breakfast… and then didn’t want to waste the batter so made more for lunch… and then did the same routine the next day…

Thursday – In between prepping my paper/presentation for the conference I went through all my clothes. That involved one closet, 2 dressers, 3 under the bed bins, one giant rubbermaid and 2 trash-bags full of clothes (Goodwill junkie?!). I sorted through and packed away winter stuff, unpacked summer stuff, and went through everything picking out pieces that don’t fit or that I don’t see myself wearing. From there I sorted out one trash bag to go to Goodwill and one giant overflowing box that I’m either going to try to take to Plato’s Closet, or maybe have a clothing swap with the girls at work!

Friday – besides prepping for the conference all day, stressing about what to wear, posting about what to wear, going into Cerulean for a delicious snack half because I really wanted the special that my boss had tweeted about, and half because I needed my co-workers opinion on what to wear to the conference, I also went to dinner at don Quijote in Valparaiso! The food was good, but definitely didn’t taste all that legit to me. I’m not sure how much difference there is from chorizo in Spain vs. chorizo in Argentina, but according to this restaurant chorizo in Spain is more like thick cut pepperoni. Also, the sauce on the patatas bravas was like hot wing sauce. It was all still quite tasty though.

Saturday – the big day! I presented at the 2010 Clement S. Stacy Undergraduate Research Conference held on the Purdue University Calumet campus. The pictures are: me a few minutes before the presentation feeling a little nervous, a posed picture of me after the presentation when I’m all relaxed and relieved, all four of the presenters in my session during the Q&A time, and my publicist/driver/photographer Kyle doing his mock presentation I’ll blog more about the conference later this week. The rest of Saturday was busy busy busy! We went to the outlet malls in Michigan City, the mall in South Bend and had dinner with Jon/Nat and two of Kyle’s friends in Elkhart.

I guess that’s it, I will be posting more this week though! I’ve got 3 outfits to from the weekend to post, a paper to post about, a conference to post about… and I have a big week ahead of me: working 6 shifts, 3 video shoots (one of which is in Anderson – 2 hours away), one interview, and hopefully just getting a lot done in general!

I lost my camera. So I didn’t take any pictures until Thursday. Then I found my camera and still didn’t use it to take pictures, just kept using my phone to take pictures. I think I need to set an alarm on my phone to go off every day to remind me to take a picture.

The big photo event of the week was the amazing beer/pub-style food dinner at Cerulean.

A few notes about that night. My shoes were amazing first of all. Second of all, the food was crazy good. Fish and chips (Cerulean style, skate fish and okinawa “purple” potatoes with a mascaropone sour cream dip), roasted chicken and mac & cheese (chicken roasted with honey and saffron to complement the beer pairing, mac & cheese made with gruyere, each person got half a chicken, 2 POUNDS!), burgers (one was pork and beef with a fried egg and brie, one was kobe beef with oats, cherry and a homemade ketchup) and dessert was a chocolate banana cake and a raspberry/pineapple puree. I twittered the entire night and found out that the kitchen followed my tweets throughout the night, as well as 3 co-workers who weren’t working that night! It was such a fun night!

This is the swimsuit I ordered online (through modcloth.com) and got in the mail this week! It’s super modest and yet insanely adorable! I think I need retro sunglasses, wedges and an adorable sunhat to go with it! I ordered the retro high-waisted 2 piece also to see which one I would like more and ultimately I picked the one piece. While both were cute and flattering, I’m more comfortable in the one piece.

Apparently my dog-nephew Leo likes wearing the scarf I got Natalie for her birthday. I think he looks quite dapper

This is what my room usually looks like A mess created by me trying to figure out what to wear.

I came home today and this lamp was on. I never even use this lamp. So, I wondered, and even tweeted that perhaps it was the act of an intruder, or maybe the lamp is possessed. Then when I left for work and turned the kitchen light off (which I had flipped on when I walked in the door earlier) the lamp turned off. Apparently the switch is connected to that outlet, and I am both an intruder in my own house, and the evil mastermind behind my possessed lamp.

Another week has flown by. I have so many things coming up that I need to get ready for!!!

Real quick an old pic that I just found, all of us lovely servers on Valentines Day!! Three of us are sporting the orchid hair clips that I made for Jr/Sr Banquet last year

Ok, on to the week!! Monday I took my car in to the shop because when I had gotten it detailed the boys told me there was some diesel in the trunk and backseat floor area. At the shop they ended up replacing a hose that had deteriorated, I’m so thankful it wasn’t something more serious.

Spotted in Warsaw!! I want a “Hoyt” window sticker for my car.

Spring has sprung!! There are little flowers poking through in a few of Grandma’s flower beds.

My pretty shiny car. Her name is “Miss Daisy”

That would be me. In my pink motorcycle helmet and leather chaps. Oh yeah Wednesday Kyle and I went for a long ride around the lake in Syracuse and had some dinner at the Down Under (beware going in there, you will come out smelling like a deep fried cigarette).

My delicious lunch from Cerulean. Pork with a cassia apple chutney served over sticky rice, asian noodles, soba boodles and mung bean sprouts. This was the last week of training a new lunch hostess, so I won’t have as many opportunities to eat delicious lunches like this since I’ll be mainly on dinner again. It’s a good thing though, I need my daytime hours free to get these videos done!

Ugh. This was my Friday. Well, really my whole weekend, but mainly Friday. I felt myself getting sick on Thursday and pushed through to have a wonderful evening with dear friends, but Friday morning I was hurting bad. I ended up getting my shift covered that night and spending the entire day resting. It was a super bad head cold: congested, sore throat, swollen glands and a low grade fever. I spent Friday-Sunday all drugged up on DayQuil/NyQuil, Claritin, TheraFlu and nasal spray. I was pretty out of it, but survived!

Saturday I still felt like death, but couldn’t handle being cooped up for another whole day and didn’t want to miss my sister-in-law’s birthday festivities in South Bend. So Kyle and I met up with the birthday group for dinner at Backstage Grill, where the food (and service) ended up being pretty terrible. Jon actually ended up just eating fish and chips at Fiddler’s Hearth later. We left the party early because I was feeling so cruddy, but while I was still there I enjoyed a nice mug of TheraFlu, haha I am one classy broad out at an Irish Pub drinking TheraFlu!

Hope ya’ll had a great (and healthy!) week!

Only a few pictures this week.

I had a pretty busy week between a trip to Chicago, meetings, working, finally exercising (thanks to Toni), St. Patty’s day, a friend’s birthday, etc… A good week, but a busy one with not as much actual productivity as I’d like.

Toni and I left for Chicago Sunday morning, only an hour later than we’d planned despite my inability to correctly set an alarm with the time change happening. We got into town, bought CTA day passes and parked Toni’s car near Michael and Karina’s apartment, then we headed out for the day. We ate some delicious Chicago style deep-dish pizza at Giordano’s, walked around Millennium Park, went shopping… In the late afternoon we headed back to Michael and Karina’s to change for an evening out, we ended up going to see “Green Zone” (great movie!), walking around a lot more, and having a late bite to eat at the “Pick-Me-Up Cafe.”

Monday morning we spent some time with Michael, then headed out of town, making a very important stop at Trader Joe’s! I have wanted to go to a Trader Joe’s for years and years and this was the first time I got to! I loved it. I got feta cheese, hummus, cereal, root beer, fresh mint, limes, apples, dried mangoes with chili spice…. YUM!!

Tuesday I had the whole day off work. I had a great lunch meeting, cleaned my apartment, worked out with Toni, got my car detailed and made a delicious dinner with my friend Kyle! I sort of pretended I was going to cook and then just watched him do everything. We had cavatapi with a vodka cream sauce and sausage, garlic bread and salad!

Wednesday was St. Patty’s! I met up with three of the lovely ladies (and one of the wonderful gentleman) that I work with for dinner in Fort Wayne! I love these girls so much, it’s so wonderful to have such amazing co-workers who genuinely care about each other.

I have no more pictures from the week. I worked a double on Thursday, so nothing exciting happened that day. Friday I worked lunch, ran a million errands and then went to Syracuse for dinner with friends. After dinner I headed back to Warsaw for a birthday bonfire, first bonfire of the year and it was wonderful! Saturday I slept waaaay in (11:30am!), worked out with Toni and worked the dinner shift!

I’m excited to be working out again, changing my eating hasn’t had any results so hopefully the exercise will help! I know it makes me feel better and sleep better.

My advisor at Grace emailed me this week with an exciting job posting in Jacksonville, FL. It’s definitely something I want to pursue!

I feel like my to-do list is a million miles long between graduation, the Purdue conference, road trip in April, my video projects, stuff I want to do around the house, looking for a job, etc… And I feel like I’m just starting to get back into the swing of things since I got back from Argentina.

I’m headed to Michigan in the morning! Excited to go to my home church, hang out with my best friend, eat some Saucy Dogs food, and see “Beauty and the Beast” at the Sauk Theatre!!

Goodnight!