!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Twenty-one minutes left of work before vacation and I CANNOT CONCENTRATE!!  This time tomorrow I will be in the airspace over the Pacific and that is all I have been able to think about for the last hour.  I was super productive up till then, crossing things off my list left and right.  But after lunch it all went down hill.

I should really take my bosses up on their offer to skip out early.

What I've Been Listening To

I have always loved lists.  And it turns out, according so social media research and stuff, people like reading lists.  Something about a short attention span or whatever...I didn't finish the article to find out why. ;)  So here's a list of my favorite music right now.

1. The "Some Nights" album by fun.  Because they are good, and it's cool that I saw them before they got really big.
2. Tower of Babel by Elton John.  I just heard this for the first time a few months ago, but it never gets old.
3. The "Brothers" album by the Black Keys.  Because it's groovy and a little rough (vocally that is)
4. Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.  Because, duh.
5. Fluorescent Adolescent by Arctic Monkeys
6. Rumor Has It by Adele.  Because her voice is on my list of people I would kill to sound like.
7. That song about being beautiful by the British boy band "One Direction."  Because boy bands are totally making a comeback (thank you, Big Time Rush), but mostly because it always comes on after Call Me Maybe on the radio
8. Twist and Shout by the Beatles, because I have started exercising to it again (used to be our exercise jam when we were younger, too).
9. Drink to That, by Rihanna. I don't like much by Rihanna, but "Cheers to the freakin' weekend, I'll drink to that, yeah yeah" pretty much sums up my outlook on life recently.  Also it was on Smash.
10. Sail by AWOLNation.  Just because it's cool, and there is this awesome video set to it.

Pretty eclectic, I know.  But if there is anything you haven't heard, LISTEN to it!  Andrew will tell you, I have fantastic taste in music.

*Note: I originally posted this yesterday, to count for the countdown to Hawaii blog challenge, but I noticed today that I accidentally posted it on my other blog.  My bad!

Base Tan

An hour ago I got back to Brooklyn after spending Saturday and Sunday in Mattituck, LI, a small beach town on the North Fork of Long Island.  As I mentioned, we stayed at Andrew's aunt's beach complex, so we spent the two days sitting on the beach, eating and playing Kan Jam.  Today the cousins pushed a big-ass dock out into the water to float on, and beer kayaked, which is like shower beering, only instead of taking a beer with you into the shower, you take it out on the water in a kayak.  My new favorite water sport.

Despite some rain this morning, we had excellent weather and I successfully managed a base tan, or "practice" for Hawaii.  So it was a successful weekend.  Our arrival date is officially in the 5-day weather.com forecast and there are only two working days left!

Also I bought chocolate covered almonds which I have been LOVING lately.  So that was awesome.

Oops

Ok, so I only made it two days into the "blogging every day till Hawaii" challenge.  I totally planned to blog yesterday, but everything at work was so boring I couldn't think of what to write about and then I came home early (we closed at 2:30, yeah!) went to Target, took a nap, watched Captain America (pretty good), had dinner and then went over to Matt's house for some beer pong.  So...blogging accidentally slipped by the wayside.

However, one exciting thing that happened is Megan realized her FB was broken and finally wrote back about fun. and confirmed that she is still coming up!  So my fifth epic weekend is still in play! 

Now I'm off to Mattituck, Long Island for some (hopefully) beach time.  Happy Memorial Day and see y'all tomorrow (I promise)!

The Summer of Spontaneity

Andrew and I have declared this the Summer of Spontaneity.  Actually, I have declared it such, Andrew has asked to rename it the Summer of George.  We’ll get back to you on the final name.  I always want to be spontaneous and fun and not care about staying out later than I should or getting into a little bit of trouble.  But I never end up being that way.  I can’t help it.  I like schedules, and I like knowing what time it is, and sometimes it seems like my life is a series of small countdowns to the next thing I have to do.  I just arrived home from work, and have 5 hours till I need to go to bed.  I just left the studio—7 seven days till I have to go back.  It is kind of depressing and annoying and I want to be different and more fun!  Thus, the Summer of Spontaneity.

We are starting off well.  It’s not even technically summer, and I have 5 epic weekends planned.  Ok, well 1 already happened and 4 are planned (I know planning isn’t spontaneity, but just listen a minute, ok?).  The first was last weekend which was totally epic and spontaneous because Andrew and I decided on Thursday night to go to Maryland on Friday for another awesome MacDonald party.  That deserves its own post, because it was definitely the most successful party anyone in my family has had.  I’m an awful party thrower.  So you’ll hear more about JMac’s Grad Party later (that’s how I had it marked on my calendar, even though I wasn’t planning to go till the last minute).

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend, which means an extra day off work, shopping at the outlets and going out to the North Fork of Long Island where Andrew’s aunt has a beach complex.  I say “complex” because it’s a bunch of houses on the same property, not because she has some issue with the beach.  Hopefully we don’t get those intermittent thunderstorms the weather channel is talking about, because as I mentioned in my last post, I really need to “practice” for Hawaii.

Next weekend is Hawaii, so…duh.

The weekend after that we come back from Hawaii, which is slightly less epic, but then my awesome cousin Megan is coming to visit with her husband (of over one year, what??) and an Italian exchange student, which sounds random, but trust me, it makes sense.  Kind of.

Then the next weekend is the fun. concert with Megan Shook (hopefully, if she still comes, because I asked if she was coming on Facebook and she hasn’t responded yet, which is concerning, and Megan if you’re reading this you had better still come.)

So those are the next few weekends for me, and they are all before summer even officially kicks off!  So I can safely say this will probably be the most awesome summer anyone has ever had in the whole world ever.  Because I am also hopefully going to Cleveland, and I’ve made a whole list of things I want to do this summer which I will post later and which includes a lot of stuff like baseball games and concerts and—obviously—ice cream trucks.

I'm About to Get Really Annoying

As probably all of you know, I am going on vacation to Hawaii this summer...actually, make that NEXT WEEK.  It was suggested to me that I blog everyday between now and then to "build anticipation."  At first I thought, that would be cruel to my lovely readers who aren't going to be in Hawaii, but then I thought, if you aren't going to Hawaii, you might as well be happy for me that I am, right?  (Side note:  while I fully support this behavior in others, in the interest of full disclosure I must say that if you go to Hawaii or Australia or Europe without me, I WILL LOATHE YOU.)  So even though I'm mad busy between today and next Thursday (yep, that's when we leave) I will do my damndest to blog as often as possible about the things that interest me, just like I always do.  Here's a short list of things that are interesting to me this week:

1. Shopping for clothes to wear in Hawaii
2. Packing to go to Hawaii
3. Stopping the rain this weekend so I can lay on a beach and practice for Hawaii
4. Thinking about the weather in Hawaii
5. Getting a haircut, pedicure and base-layer tan for Hawaii
6. Cupcakes

Countdown to take off: 7 days 19 hours

Here is a List of Things That Would Be Totally Awesome

1. If I had a box of chipwiches in my work freezer.  I should definitely think about making this happen.  I have been an ice cream fiend lately.
2. If it were June 1, instead of May 1, so I could be drinking rum from a coconut in Hawaii (yes, just rum.)
3. If sugar wasn't so damn delicious so I wouldn't have such a hard time trying not to eat it (see #1, re: ice cream fiend)
4. If we could bake a cake out of rainbows and smiles and eat it and be happy.
5. If I could wear my new dress every day because it is pretty and twirly and grown-up and people keep telling me it is pretty, and I can't find a picture online so you will just have to trust me.
6. If I could get a recurring freelance gig that paid really well.
7. If it didn't cost $1200 to change a plane ticket from Hawaii so I could stay two extra days.
8. If laundry would do itself.
9. If puppies were free and didn't need to be walked, except in summer, so I could have one.
10. If I had a balcony instead of an extra-wide ledge, because I wouldn't trust myself on the ledge drinking sangria.