Banana Bread Disaster

Not much new to report here. We played another round of "Show Us Your Hidden Talent" last Friday night, and there was a lot more nudity than the first time. In fact, for the grand finale, just before the bar started closing and the bartenders started kicking people out, the last guy of the night took off EVERYTHING except for his SOCKS!! And it was FREEEEZING out that night! Weirdo! Yes, we had lots of participants, but this time I'm just going to mention a few of the results: 10 middle fingers, 3 DOUBLE middle fingers, 6 moonings, 2 backflips, 3 little dances, 2 boob flashes, 4 tongues to nose, 2 guys pretended they were pregnant, 1 curtsey, 15 dirty looks, 1 talking belly button, five hot dog tongues... the list goes on and on. It was really fun. As I was writing those results, the tune of "On the 12th Day of Christmas" kept running through my head.

Last night I made chocolate banana bread, but it didn't turn out NEARLY as good as when I made it the first time. First I put one banana more than i was supposed to. I halved the entire recipe and then without thinking (duhhhhh) halved the TIME too (Obviously I WASN'T thinking!). So after 30 mins. (it was supposed to be in for 60) i pulled it out and it was still gooey and i kept putting it in for 7 more mins, 5 more mins, etc. and eventually i thought it was done and gently shook it over above a plate and it sorta ripped in half and wobbled, so i put it back together, put it BACK in the oven for 10 more mins, and then pulled it out. i dumped it over onto the plate AGAIN and this time the insides fell out but the edges stayed in the pan!!! Luckily i was able to gently lift the edge out of the pan and fit it over top the insides, so it sort of resembles a banana bread...

Hmmmm this has been a pretty normal week. Monday night, Julie, Jason and I hung out because it was Jason's last night in Athens for awhile. He left for LA on Tuesday! He's driving! By himself! Crazy! He was supposed to call us Tuesday night but he didn't. I wonder what he's up to!

Tonight I went to Zachary's with Summer to meet up with Julie and her roommates. Every weeknight, from 7-9, Zachary's has this thing called "Zachary's Daquiris," where daquiris are only $2! So I got two mango daquiris. Mmmmm....

And I think that's all I have to say.

New Car!

Ahhh! I have slacked on my journal. How awful of me. But I've been pretty busy. Let's see if I can remember everything that's happened since my last entry. Last Wednesday, the only thing I remember doing for sure is lying around watching TV. Dawson's Creek and Glory Days, I believe. Thursday was Valentine's Day. Adam and I ordered dinner to pick up from Mistretta's. It was delicious! And we drank some wine. Mmmm.

Friday, right after work, I left for Detroit with Summer and Rabecca. We got to Leighanna's place after midnight. On Saturday, we drove to Ann Arbor to meet Emma and go shopping! We went around downtown for awhile, then went to Briarwood Mall, where I've actually been a few times when I was little. I went with my grandma! It was weird seeing that mall, because the last time I saw it I was a lot smaller! Saturday night was the night of the Breeders concert. It was in a place called the Magic Stick, which is connected to a place called the Majestic, which is a restaurant. Enclosed in this huge building, spread out over a number of areas, are a couple bars, a restaurant, a pizza lounge, a bowling alley, a pool hall, and a concert area. It was fun! We ate dinner at the Majestic. Actually, we just ordered appetizers and drinks. Our waitress was SOOOO NICE!!! And cool. She recommended appetizers to us, and also her favorite shot - an 18-wheeler. It kind of tasted like chocolate milk. After dinner, we went upstairs to see the Breeders. It was so fun! They were cool.

On Sunday, we went to the Gap Outlet and the Nike Outlet on our way back to Athens. That was great! I love outlets!!!! Monday I stayed home from work because I wasn't feeling well. So nothing eventful happened. Monday night I was feeling well enough to see a movie, so Jason and Julie and I saw Crossroads. It was definitely an experience. We were laughing the whole time. It was just ridiculous. Some parts of it were actually funny but mostly we were laughing at how dumb it was.

Okay but now I'm getting to the big news. On Tuesday, I BOUGHT A CAR!!!! Totally unexpected. The Volvo isn't doing too well, and needs a lot of work done to it, so Mom was going to buy a new used Subaru for herself and give me her old Subaru. I asked if it would be possible for me to trade the Subaru she'd be giving me in for a smaller Subaru. She said that she was going to Parkersburg that day to look at Subarus and that I could come. Well, while we were there, she decided that she didn't want to buy a new car til Fall anyway, so somehow we decided that I would buy myself a car! That is something I hadn't even considered! But it made sense. I got a white 2000 Subaru Impreza 4 door sedan. I LOVE IT! It was owned by this doctor who buys a brand new Subaru every 2 years and trades in his old one. And he took PERFECT care of it when he had it. So it is in great condition and I love it!!!! I am so excited! Not excited for car payments but hey, it's worth it! And that's my big exciting news. And that brings us around again to another Wednesday night, which I just spent watching Dawson's Creek and Glory Days. Fun fun fun!

Georgie

Wow it's only Tuesday. It feels like Wednesday. It's felt like Wednesday ALL day! I'm pretty tired. Yesterday after work I worked out on the Nordictrack. I'm doing pretty good about exercising every day. My arms are sore. After that, Jason took me to the mall and I bought myself a GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL!!!! Which I've been wanting for a long time! It was SO EXCITING! Then we swung by Kroger's so I could pick up some veggies to try cooking on it.

Then it was time for the Real World/Road Rules Fantasy Challenge, so we went over to Julie's house, as is tradition for viewing anything Real World-related. Afterward, I grilled up some chicken to use for lunches at work this week. I made myself a chicken, lettuce, feta, and caesar dressing pita for lunch today and it was SOOOO GOOD! Today after work I did another turn on the Nordictrack. It was harder today, I felt really tired. Afterward I grilled some yellow and green zucchini on the Foreman grill and sprinkled some freshly grated parmesan on top. I'm turning into a little chef! I gotta split, because the Real World is on soon, and Jason and I are going over to Julie's! Yay!

Kara's Annual Birthday Weekend

Wooo! This was the GREATEST weekend! It was my friend Kara's birthday on Sunday, and Julie decided to have a party for her, so eleven people came into town, seven of whom stayed at my apartment! I love having guests, so that was exciting! Saturday night, eight people actually stayed over because Chris was hanging out with us and he didn't feel like walking home. It's great having so many overnight guests because it's like slumber PARTY fun the whole time. Anne, Tim, Joe, Clark, Jenny, Kelly, Schuster, Becky, Kara, Dan, and Chris were all in town! Friday night we all went to the Union, where the Party of Helicopters was playing. After the bands, Charlie (my friend, not my cat!) was running his dance event, Danceable Solution, which is always a fun time. After that we all hung out at my house then went to sleep. Saturday was a cool day. It was sunny and warm!

T-shirts in February! So a bunch of us walked uptown and at lunch on the college green. Then we went to the record store, and visited some uptown shops. Then we went back and hung around at my place doing nothing for awhile. Then Kara, Anne, Jenny and I went to buy beer for Kara's party, and we went to the mall. For dinner, Dirty cooked for EVERYBODY over at his house, and it was AMAZING!! He made meat lasagna, vegetarian lasagna, meatballs, garlic bread and salad. And it was all absolutely fantastic. Everybody had seconds. After dinner we all went to Zachary's for fancy drinks. I got a grasshopper, and it was DELICIOUS!

Then it was about time to go to the party. It was a fun party. I will have pictures soon. The most exciting event of the night involved Jenny Wray's disgusting orange drink. She had a bottle of that orange crap called "Orange Dream." It comes in a big plastic bottle, has alcohol already mixed into it, and is supposed to taste like a creamsicle. Jenny insists that this is a delicious drink, but all the rest of us agree that it is revolting. So Anne and I ran back to my house and grabbed a permanent marker (I live about 6 houses down from Julie) and went back to the party and wrote "Nightmare" over "Dream" in big black letters. I thought that was pretty funny ha ha ha! So it was "Orange Nightmare!" HA HA!

Anyway, Jenny kept saying that this drink was soooooo great, and in an effort to prove it, announced that she would, in fact, drink the entire bottle that night all by herself. So our next mission was to ensure that this happened. We failed. We did get her to drink at least one though! You're supposed to mix it with crushed ice. There was no blender to be found, so Clark made do with a meat tenderizer and a paper towel. Jenny successfully avoided drinking much at all. But she got a lot of random people to taste it. Several of them actually LIKED it, too! Yeah... maybe this story will make more sense when I get the pictures developed.

We stayed at Julie's party until about four, when we ordered a bunch of calzones and walked back to my apartment to wait for them. It was a fun party. This morning, we all went to Union Street Cafe, a little diner that ROCKS. There were 13 of us, so it was a little difficult for them to seat us. They ended up splitting us into three different booths. Breakfast was delicious. Afterward, everyone packed back up into their cars and departed. Sigh.

Webcam

ARGH! I'm up too late again. I should be going to sleep NOW! But I will soon. I'm just so excited because I have a WEBCAM at work now! Tracy helped me set it up. It's so much fun! Now the whole world can know what I'm doing every second of the day (well, Monday through Friday, 9-5). I don't see why anyone would WANT to know that, but the point is that they CAN!!! Other than the webcam, nothing of interest has happened today. I nordictracked in front of the television, which was pretty cool. My arms and legs are TIRED though. I think that's adding to my drowsiness. Hmmm, I know that if I attempt to write anything more in tonight's entry, it will just be a long boring complaint about me being tired. So instead, I will go to sleep NOW!

Detroit

It's been a long weekend! I went out of town. Summer and I went to Detroit! I've never been there before. Her friend Leighanna lives there, and my friend Emma lives nearby in Ann Arbor, so we went up. Leighanna's sister Rabecca, and three other girls (Melissa, Maia, and Carrie) came also. It was fun! Friday night we went to a restaurant in Royal Oak called Sangria's. Guess what we drank?... It was my first time ever trying sangria. It's pretty good! It was so exciting to see Emma! Dinner was pretty fancy. After dinner, all the girls wanted to go back to Leighanna's except for Emma and I. We went to a bar called The Rock or something for a beer, and it ended up being somebody's 30th birthday party, which was weird! EVERYBODY knew each other there! It was fun, Emma had her laser pointer with her, and she has cool attachments for it like skulls and flying saucers. So we kept pointing the laser pointers at people and pretending it wasn't us. And it was fun! Nobody really noticed except this one guy that looked like Hulk Hogan, and he was trying to be funny, but he wasn't.

After that, Emma dropped me off at Leighanna's apartment. The next morning, Rabecca made everyone pancakes! MMM! And then we went to the Detroit Zoo! That was GREAT! They have this amazing polar bear exhibit. It is so cool! It is a glass tunnel INSIDE the polar bear environment, so they swim right over you and stuff! They were wrestling the whole time it was so cute! Cute, but they are the most vicious animals in the entire zoo, and would eat you in a second if they could. But that's easy to forget when there's four inches of specially made glass between you and them! I got some pretty cute polar bear ears in the gift shop. We ate lunch at a place called Smoky Bones or something. Then I took off with Emma to go to Ann Arbor. All the other girls went to a club in Detroit called Clutch Cargos. I was going to finally get to meet Emma's boyfriend Dave!! And see Emma's house. She lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright house! The Palmer House! It was AMAZING! Wow.

Then we went shopping downtown, and went to a bar called The Brown Jug. I had some pretty disgusting pasta, and some beers! That's where we met up with Dave. He was playing a show that night at a little student union place called the Halfass - he was playing for the first time with this band called Saturday Looks Good to Me, which I guess has several members and they change often? Or something. But he's a good drummer! It was fun! Then we stayed in Dave's parents' basement, which was funny because it was COMPLETELY seventies! There's even a roll of saran wrap in the basement kitchen that's from the seventies! Bizarre! Sunday we made the long trek back.

When I arrived home, Adam had a few friends over to watch the Superbowl. One of those friends was Jay, who I went to high school with, and who was down for the night from Columbus — his mom made CUPCAKES! They were AWESOME!!!

Then today started off pretty shitty, when I skidded off the road on my way to work. My office is in an old Lunatic Asylum, "The Ridges," and I was turning off the highway onto the long Ridges driveway and I didn't know it was icy and I skidded right off the road, narrowly missing the ditch. Ugh. So I had to walk up to the office and get Tracy and Dean (the only two guys who work at NBIA - they get stuck with a lot of fun tasks!) to come and help push me out. I drove my car up to the parking lots and as I was walking to the buildings, Adam drove by!! I said "How did YOU already know about this!?" I guess Sergio had driven by my car on his way to work, saw that it was skidded out on the side of the road with nobody in it, and called Adam. I thought that was funny. One thing's for sure about Athens — you do something stupid, and within ten minutes, everyone in town knows about it! Great start to the day!

Then after work I decided to go to Kroger's, because I needed lunch stuff, and knew that once I got home, I wouldn't want to go back out. So I went there, and while I was there, I decided that I would make lasagna!! I've never made it before, but for about 2 months, I've been saying that I will try. So I bought the ingredients, and made it!!! Adam's brother Jared stopped over right as I finished, so he stayed to eat too. He got seconds! Everyone loved it. I am very proud. That's about all I have to say for the first installment in February!