Hello - haven't posted in a while because I spend the majority of my time at my internship and I cannot post in detail about it (why some previous things were deleted)... ANYWHO.. where did I leave off.. June 3rd I was in Mississippi for work and then promptly headed downtown when I got back to run the Harbortown 5K with Zuzanna. It was HAWT outside and woof that first mile... I kept looking for a mile marker and then I told myself oh I guess they are only marking every other mile. wrong. But my only goal was to not walk and to finish under 32 so I was happy I accomplished both of those things. It's a really fun race because you run through the neighborhoods along the river and people stand on their front porch and spray their hoses at you (this can become dangerous/NC17 if you are female and wearing a white top) and have their sprinklers out and at the end there's a big part with a fun band, free Smoothie king and a lotta free Nike Swag. Yes, I got myself a boys tshirt and I grabbed some shorts even though they ended up being manpris so there is no way I can even justify saying they are dual-gender sportswear. Maybe I will mail them to Rafael Nadal since he is the only person manpris have ever looked OKAY on. Note: Okay, NOT good.  Zuzanna told me after the race that when she was running she took a dixie cups full of jello that some neighbors were handing to runners as they ran by their house and then she realized later that it didn't taste like normal jello. Yes, I don't think a bunch of grown men and woman were so excited to be grabbing baby cups of strawberry jello. As Lil Jon once so poetically said: shots, shots, shots, everybody.

June 4th/5th I have no idea what I did. So it is probably not worth me writing or you reading. I went to the farmers market at the crack of dawn, running, to yoga, played tennis - read some. All that good stuff. OH and saw Leah and Beth's new AWESOME house. Oh my gosh so cool - cannot believe they are real people now. They have a backyard, a washer/dryer AND a bowflex. Emphasis on the bowflex. If I were them, I would spend my days doing the whole Jersey Shore GTL. Or if that didn't work out, they can always make a flower wreath from their garden and hang it on their bowflex and declare it a neat alternative statue. Like the modern day roided up version of Duchamp's Fountain.


Monday I was interning all day and then went to this Leadership Academy thing with Zuzanna. Josh Pastner (UofM bball coach, clarifying since Zuzanna didn't know)was the speaker for the kickoff of this summer series they have for "college students who are interning, graduates and you professionals." Okay now that was the description on the website but when we got to Felicia Suzanne's downtown where it was being held we were the only ones who weren't handed a ticket to get some wine. I think we were the only two people in the whole place drinking water but for all people know maybe we had brought our own vodka because we were above (say in snooty voice) wine. Just kidding, and as we all know I am FORBIDDEN to touch the wine since I got kicked out of volunteering my time to serve it at the youth symphony gala. It's okay no one really needs to worry about me. I'd rather drink chocolate milk than wine any day so no one fear! Zuzanna really wanted food but we only saw waiters walking around with platters of eggs. It was like 100 degrees and that sorta weather is just not really conducive to stuffing your face with eggs. mmm, I am craving some just thinking about it. People were mingling about -- good for them, the young folk of Memphis while I made us sit in the corner and be antisocial because that's how I'm going to live my life, okay? Just buy me three cats and call it an evening. Actually, please don't - I really don't like cats. So maybe I will rebrand what people think of as an old hag/recluse and live alone in a mountain cave with like a lizard instead. Before you know it... people will think of loners as having lizards and you'll have me to thank for starting this trend! You're welcome. Anyway, after we decided to leave after 30 minutes, we got back to Zuzanna's house and I discovered I had locked my keys in my car. Oh man, I was doing good today. After calling triple A and watching astounded as they broke into my car in a record speed of 4.7 seconds, I found that actually, my keys were in zuzannas front seat. Whoops.

Tuesday I had the pleasure of having an eye doctor appointment. Only special people get to experience the joy of reading a line of letters 7 different times and having to pretend you hadn't already memorized it so they could acurately check your vision. And by special people, I mean the blind. The ocularly special--did I make that up? Doesn't appear so since it's not underlined in red indicicating it's misspelled like 75% of what I have already written. I think at this point, so much is misspelled/underlined when things aren't they pop out more and I think something must be wrong there...

<The ice cream man just drove by. I feel it important to interject this post and share that the other day my mother told me that I used to scream pedophile whenever I heard the ice cream truck music. This may have had to do with watching the Memphis news since at one point there was a special segment about how 85% of ice cream truck men in Memphis are sex offenders. Anyway, that music takes on a different tone now/ why was I watching the news so young? The other story that I will always remember is when a baby got stuck in a dishwasher...Not a waterpark son>

So back to Tuesday... I went to a new eye doctor. He's a teacher at the optometry school so my mom and I went there and students did the pretest stuff. Needless to say, they did it all wrong and I ended up having to sit at that horrid machine that puffs air in to your eyes so many different times that I felt like my eyeballs had just been vacuumed. After leaving there, Wallis and I rode our bikes from our houses to the greenline! That was an adventure.. I'm so glad biking is becoming a bigger part of Memphis. After biking I went to yoga and got home and passed out.

Wed I worked, ran around the lake a few times at Shelby Farms..etc. Then Wallis and I hung out at Leah/beth/Lindsey's house which was really fun. It was Anna's birthday so she was there too which is always fun.funny.

Thursday I played tennis&went to yoga blah, blah ->if I think of anything else that is at all interesting that I did I will go back and edit this junk...

Friday I went to bootcamp (which I do every day so no sense in including that) went to my internship, went to Shelby Farms to run where i was unfortunately the same pace as an old man who was steadily running in front of me whose butt crack was waving hello. Obviously I know that's not a good expression but I thought it was sorta gross sounding to say you could see his butt crack smirking or anything that could actually have happened. Okay, there was too much butt and too much crack in that last sentence. Then I went to my mother's choral concert at St. John's episcopal church. She sings in the Memphis Chamber Choir and it was a joint concert between them and the Memphis Boy Choir. My favorite piece they did was Oh, Canada -- just because it was funny they were singing Oh Canada in a church in Memphis. They are actually singing it at the Canadian Embassy in DC on Canada day though so they were giving the audience a preview. Now that it sounds relevant and reasonable, it's not quite as funny or cool - but I will always love the Canadian Anthem because my sister went through a really strange Canada phase in Middle school where she bought all this canadian stuff and a clock that says "eh" and I just vividly remember her identifying with Canadians, it was strange but I'm not even going to get started about my phases.. or the time I use to wear a Tshirt that had a fire breathing dragon playing chess on it. After the concert, there was a reception and I decided that since i was running a 5k the next day, it was imperative I stock up on carbs. Poor boys from the boy choir, I was plowing them/other people down to get those mini spinach quiches. WOO those are GYOOD. I think I ate like 4, but who's counting. Oh, my hips probably. And those don't lie so they would probably give your a more accurate count of 6.

And we finally make our way to today! Oh hooray, something I actually remember (just barely). I got up at 4:20 to take my mom to the airport. Home alone for a week (Party at my house!) Except not. I will probably still go to sleep at 9:30. The last time I spent a week home alone I ate a Ghiradellis baking bar of chocolate for almost every meal. Let's hope I've progressed/matured and know better than to do that now. (That was only 2 years ago...) I'd say if anything I've dematured.... Anyway, then I slept (and missed yoga in Shelby Farms but I decided to prioritize and catch some Zs before my body was complaining Y.. okay so I was trying to create an alphabet pun there with Z and Y but it didn't work.) Then I went to film this project I'm helping out with. After that, I was going to go to Wheel of fortune tryouts in Mississippi but I couldn't successfully force Wallis to go with me so I decided that's one of those things you just don't do alone. That and climbing a mountain. In both cases you need a spotter. Moreso with the wheel of fortune thing, you'd just need another person there so you'd have someone to make jokes to about all the people with rattails and jorts.) Next I went to DIck's sporting goods where I almost started crying it was so beautiful. That place is a mecca of wonderfulness. They had like a billion different pairs of Nike border shorts in the brightest colors and coolest patterns one could ever imagine. Neon galore, It was total bliss. After trying on like 13 pairs so I could get some new ones to wear for the 5K tonight, I layed them out on the ground to decide and pulled a muscle in my thigh. HA. ha. ha.

OKAY, brb, going to run the race... will post more in a bit...

Not much has happened in the past week. Thursday I went into my internship at 4 a.m. to do a shoot. Anyway, later I went for a run and saw Hangover2 that evening. That was an interrresting movie and not a good gift idea for grandparents.

The shelf that I built - after screwing in two shelves upside down and one backwards..

Friday I was at my internship all day and then went to Cafe Eclectic & to see the show Ragtime at Playhouse with Elise! It was pretty good but also fairly long and I have the bedtime of a Grandma with 4 cats (as opposed to the night owl grandma that only has 2). .>I was going to find a picture of a cat to put here but I'm too lazy.

Saturday - Gracie, Nat and I met up at 9:00 Bikram, went to brunch and then spent the rest of the day exploring downtown and attending "Blacksmith Day" at the International Metal Museum. I hadn't been to the museum in over 8 years and was very surprised it was the international museum but Gracie and Natalie pointed out they doubted there were many metal museums in the world so my idea that this particular museum was superior was slightly off base. There was a lovely exhibit of guns and another neat display of knives. That night I went to Sunset Symphony by the river at Tom Lee Park. That was pretty fun - there was a couple getting way too frisky standing right in front of my chair though so every time I was trying to look at the stage, I got a lovely view of the man's hands in places where they shouldn't have been. I was sitting with my mom, our family friends and their two 6 year old twin girls and I felt like it was a sight young children should not be witnessing. I mean, I felt too young to be seeing this and I'm pretty sure the grandfather sitting behind me felt he was too young to be watching as well. The concert was great, the band that played after the symphony went too long, but the fireworks afterwards were awesome and it was all worth it. We came with two musicians in the symphony so we parked literally behind the stage and it took FOREVER to get out after the show was over. We were probably just sitting still in the line for about 45 minutes. At one point, a guy walked by the car carrying a case of beer and dropped one so I got out of the car and rescued the lonesome can. Then I went home and ate expired nutella.

puppies?

Art

"Puppies for sale"

Walking around downtown

guy playing accordian

Then Gracie showed us the law firm downtown where she works

not sure why but I liked this poster..

swanky decor

Great view from one of the offices

boardroom.. so official

library.. so sophisticated..

Montage of Gracie

still a montage of gracie at her desk

still going..

making a fun face

you thought it would be over by now...

only a couple more..

congrats, you have reached the end

law firm is in the same building as the Belz museum

AH Maggie Moos.. so good

Metal Museum.. yeah, not that impressive looking

Metal flower

Small child getting eaten by statue

Blacksmith demo

Nice view from gazebo overlooking the water

Wedding @ metal museum

Statues of metal takeout boxes..

Metal takeout boxes..

You open it up and it's a grill!

This was a lovely piece

Wow.. literally everything was made of metal..

Backstage at sunset symphony

People gettiiin it next to me @ Sunset symphony

Irene looking on at the happy couple disapprovingly 

I wasn't the only one who got a little bored after the band kkkkept playing...

Mom laughing at people making faces about the people behind me...

Some weird maneuver going on here

Choc.vanilla swirl.. 

Sunday I went on a run, went to brunch at the Beauty shop (restaurant) and did who knows what else with my life.

Monday was a special memorial day bootcamp at 7 AM rather than 5:30. I went into the Racquet Club to do some work afterwards and then went on walk, and started reading the Davinci Code even though my mom told me it was a "beach read" insinuating that it was stupid but I felt like reading a book and it's the first one I found in the house and I remembered my dad suggested I read it. It was a pretty slow memorial day...capped off the evening with a cookout. I had lemon ice box pie for the first time, and I was surprised how good it was. The only type of pie or dessert I tend to eat is chocolate, because I feel like anything that has fruit in it is healthy and therefore won't quell my dessert needs. That sounded really high maintenance. At dinner, my mom informed us that in the morning she had gone out in our front yard to kick over the mushrooms and she had built up frustrations from the week so she took a running start for one that she said appeared to be some "exotic" yellow mushroom. Turned out it was just a normal mushroom with dog poop on top and she said it was as if it flew up into the air in slow motion before coming back down and landing all over her. She also made sure to let me know that she was listening to Lady Gaga on her Ipod at the time which made it that much more of a stranger experience. I'm not sure what i thought was more interesting - the fact that my mother (who shops at Chicos) was listening to Lady Gaga or that she had mistaken a pile of dog diarhea for an "exotic yellow mushroom."

Reading Davinci Code outside

Tues I babysat and then went to Opera Memphis to help out with the Youth Symphony Gala. I was behind the bar until some big old man walked up and said "I just want to make sure the wine is not being handled by someone under age." Whatevs dude.. so I just stood at a distance and ate cookies and spent the night being totally unhelpful. It was fun... nobody really came to the event though (there were more fruit flies there than there were guests- take that as you so choose - that is either really pitiful or really gross or both) My sister Katie and her friend Laura handled the affairs of the bar while I filled up the vase we used as a water jug and stood there considering if it would be inappropriate to just fill up in the bathroom (we decided that would look bad so I walked to the kitchen even though tap is tap)  My mom baked 240 brownies for the event and there were probably like 200 left so I sat at home figuring out how to distribute them while watching a show that really helps me think; the Simple Life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richey. If I can't think of enough people to give brownies to, I could always build a brownie statue - I feel like that would be fun/gross/wasteful/awesome.

Opera Memphis  - where the Youth Symph. gala was

Laura and Katie prepping the sodas

wine wine wine

Not a very large crowd..

The vase that quickly became the water jar

Whoever brought these was confused that it was night time

There was a whole breakfast pastry buffet.. Katie shouted "Where are the eggs.."

Fried sushi

Off brand soda...classy 

ILLEGAL. back away from the bar you child. 

I ordered a Turkey debit card to be festive/spirited since the turkey is the mascot of St. Mary's aka my alma mater. At the top of the card it says Turkeys: Preserve, hunt, share. ..Oh well, not exactly what I was going for. The fact that the money for the card when to save turkeys so there would be more to shoot is funny and ironic in a couple ways...

Wednesday I missed bootcamp because I felt so sick from eating 8 billion brownies the night before at the youth symphony thing. I dropped off 72 brownies at St. Mary's and brought 44 more into my internship. Then I left with the crew to head to Mississippi for a shoot. I was talking to a little girl when we were doing a shoot that afternoon at a farm and was asking her what all her silly bands were. She pulled off the first one and told me it was her favorite one, a praying person. It was an outdoor shoot and we were there from 9-5:30 so when I got home afterwards I pretty much had no energy. I ate a salmon burger and woke up on the couch 2 hours later with my hand in a bag of leftover brownies. It was a really lovely way to wake up.

In Mississippi.. the kids don't play in the sand--

They play in the corn..

This morning it seemed as if there was a party on the St. Mary's track. When I was leaving the track at 6:30 a.m. there were 9 other people walking/running around so I sort of felt like I was at a block party. I got home, had my first experience with greek yogurt, went to get my break light fixed, fell asleep for 3 hours and am now watching some unnamed Lifetime movie where a guy just got shot in the chest but now seems to be totally functioning. I just got off the phone with Kathryn B & it's her bday! woop woop - it's weird to not be around college friends every day. Anyway, now I am just hanging around before I leave to have lunch with Zuzanna.

I have decided my theme for the month of June is discipline - be that with eating healthy, exercising, cleaning, or doing anything else I say I'm going to do and than will probably put off. This leads me to carry out my next endeavor - finally learning how to unicycle. I will let you know how that one goes...