Louisville To-Do List

Only 1 month left until we leave for Boston. (And only FOUR MONTHS until the wedding!!!)

Things I need to do before I leave Louisville:

1) Eat at the IHOP that is less than 2 minutes from my house.  I've wanted to eat there since it opened almost 2 years ago and still have never been.
2) Go to Churchill Downs.
3-8) Eat at Havana Rumba.
9) Play Lazer Blaze with my friends.
10) Meet someone(s) early on a Saturday for donuts at Krispy Kreme.

Come on people. Let's make these things happen. Let me know if you're interested in helping me cross any of these things off my list.

Anyone else notice that almost every one of these has to do with food?

Orientation and LA weekend

This past weekend involved lots of traveling for both me and Chuck.

Chuck was in Boston for Orientation for the LGO program. Unfortunately, I could not join him because back in December I had planned a girls' weekend trip with Liz and Emily to LA. (Not unfortunate that I had a trip, just unfortunate they ended up being the same weekend.) So this past weekend, we were literally on opposite sides of the country. Seriously. On Saturday, Chuck hung out on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean and I was on the beach at the Pacific. Crazy!!

Highlights from Chuck's trip to Boston:
- It was orientation weekend at MIT, so he got to meet most of the people we will be surrounded by for the next two years. He told me that all of the LGOs and their SOs were all amazing people. We figured they would be but it was nice to have confirmation!
- They had the students do a scavenger hunt and the ending destination led them to the on-campus bar called The Muddy Charles. When Chuck first called and told me about it it, he said he was at a place called The Leaky Cauldron. The Leaky Cauldron is a popular pub in the Harry Potter series.
- Chuck got to spend some fun time with our friend Clayton who recently moved to Boston. We're excited to get to spend time with him and his girlfriend once we are up there!
- We are pretty sure we have secured housing for the summer as well as for the fall and spring semesters. Chuck got to see a sample apartment and tells me it is TINY. 550 square feet. But with an unbeatable view! Fingers crossed on this as we won't be 100% sure we have the summer and fall places for another couple of weeks.

Highlights from my trip to LA:
- I got to spend some valuable girl time with two of my favorite girls- Liz and Emily. We went on a gorgeous hike, saw Titanic in 3D, ate lots of good food, went to the beach and went SKYDIVING. And when we weren't doing all of that, we were mostly just chilling and having some quality girl time together which doesn't happen as often these days because Emily lives so far away. :( But if you visited LA, you would understand why she likes living there.
- It was a mini vacation for me which was nice and relaxing before life gets real crazy from now leading up to our move.
- I know I already mentioned this one but, WE WENT SKYDIVING.

General updates on wedding and life:
- Our wedding invitations came in and they are beautiful!
- Wedding planning is coming along nicely.
- I announced that May 17 will be my last day of work at the Kentucky Center. Sad day.
- I am actively searching for jobs in Boston and have had a couple of good leads, so, again- fingers crossed!
- After Chuck's weekend in Boston he is even more excited about the LGO program than ever, which makes me even more excited to move up there and start the adventure with him. Only about a month and one week until we go.

Remembering our second trip to Boston

This past November, Chuck and I decided to visit MIT for the LGO Ambassador Day again. He had already taken the GMAT and was most likely going to apply by the December 15 deadline, but we wanted to visit again just to make sure this was the right timing and the right move for him to make. As you read in one of my first posts, our first trip to Boston was less than great. So this time, we decided to do things a little differently.


Day 1: We arrived in Boston, took the T from the airport to the hotel and checked in. I immediately tweeted to Rondo and let him know that Chuck and I were in town for the weekend if he wanted to meet us for dinner or anything. (Sadly, he did not respond.)

You can see the map of the T behind Chuck. Not confusing AT ALL, right?

Our hotel was a good 15 minute walk from the T, so after we checked in, we headed back towards town and tried to find a place to eat. We started walking and then we accidentally walked all the way to MITs campus. There, we found a great place to eat- Cambridge Brewing Co., the oldest brewery restaurant in Boston and one of the first in the nation.

 Then since it was getting dark, we headed back to the hotel but stopped first at Trader Joes for some snacks and a bottle of Moscato I wanted to try which we realized once in the hotel we had no corkscrew for so Chuck attempted to open the bottle with a wire coat hanger and it did not work. Sigh.

Day 2: We slept in and hung out in the hotel until after lunchtime. Chuck prepared some questions for MIT the next day and I read magazines and I'm pretty sure we watched Casper because it was on TV. Also, I put $1.50 in the vending machine in our hallway for a Pepsi, and two Pepsis came out! Score!

Then my Aunt and Uncle who live only 1.5 hours from Boston came and picked us up! We drove to a shopping center and picked up my cousin Barby (their daughter) and then drove into downtown Boston to find a place to eat.  This is when I realized that if we ever moved to Boston, we most definitely would not be taking cars with us. Scary drivers and crazy intersections and Boston attitudes? No thank you! We ended up eating at Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in America.

My Massachusetts family!

After dinner we walked around a bit and then they took us back to the hotel. Since it was still early, we decided to meet up with my little sister Sami's best friend Ines who is a dance student at the Boston Conservatory. We took the T back over and found her, got some coffee and took a really long walk up and down a really nice road.  She was also kind enough to give us a tour of the Conservatory!

Me and Ines, outside the Boston Conservatory.

Day 3: MIT! All day.

Day 4: Harvard, Freedom Trail, shopping AKA the day we probably walked 50 miles. We started early in the morning in Cambridge at Harvard. I was on a mission to find the Harvard Business School so I could see the dorm my Grandpa stayed in when he was a student there in the early 40s. While we were trying to figure out which direction to walk, I looked up and said to Chuck "Hey. Isn't this the bank they rob in the opening scene of The Town?" (Starring Ben Affleck- amazing movie).

After a couple minutes of googling, turns out, it was.

The scenery on the walk to Harvard Business School was incredible.

My favorite picture of the whole trip:

Seriously beautiful.

Found the dorm!

According to his yearbook, my Grandpa lived in McCulloch D.  That door you see on the left is door D so I'm guessing that was the section he lived in!

We then walked into the library and the football stadium.  I think we were trespassing at both places but somehow we went unnoticed.

Not the nicest looking stadium ever but still cool.

Next we took the T to downtown Boston to the place where you start the Freedom Trail. Friends and family beware- I WILL force you to go on the Freedom Trail if/when you come visit. It was so great.

We could not have asked for prettier weather that day....

This was my favorite building. The first time the Declaration of Independence was read in Boston, it was read from that balcony. Now it's surrounded by skyscrapers. Apparently a couple of years ago the city wanted to tear the building down to make traffic flow better. As you can see, they did not tear it down.

  After our tour guide ditched us, we walked a little farther, found Mike's Pastry shop where we had delicious treats, shopped at Quincy Market and then ate a little food at a pub right next to the Union Oyster House. We then made a decision to call it a night and booked it back on the T (by now we are T riding pros) to our hotel right in time to watch Glee. :)

Day 5: Our plan was to check out of our hotel, take our bags and check them at the airport, and then head back out into Boston for a little bit of exploring for a couple of hours until our flight. Unfortunately we didn't realize you can only check your bags 2 hours before your flight or something weird like that, so we got stuck sitting at the airport all morning.  Womp womp. We were bummed, but our feet were still tired from all the walking the previous day, so I think we may have been kind of relieved too. 

This trip was much better than the first time and actually made us excited about living in Boston.

Scary Closet: Part 2

This week I finished cleaning out the Scary Closet. This time was way less scary than the first. I didn't find anything nearly as exciting as a cow collage or any other really old electronic devices, but I did find a couple of gems. Starting with....

An old tutu from my dancing days. I have no idea why I still have this. I only wore it for one performance ever but I guess I loved it too much to get rid of it. Underneath the tutu I found my dance bag with all of my old dance shoes in it, as well as a box FULL of my other dance recital costumes.  So much fringe and glitter and sequins in one box... You have no idea.
Kept or trashed: Kept, with plans to give to Goodwill so someone can use this as an awesome Halloween costume someday.

Old softball trophies. Who doesn't have a few of these things lying around? As you can see, I was obviously never on a winning team. Most of these are all "Participation Trophies" aka "Trophies you get for showing up so that your feelings aren't hurt when you lose."  The two big trophies you see aren't even for first place. One is for second place in the league and the other is for second place in the tournament, both in 1998.  That was the year I played "bench warmer" every game and hated the coach and people on my team so much that I showed up to the end of the season team pool party, asked for my trophies, and immediately left without even going inside.
Kept or trashed: Kept. Too much time and effort went into 8 years of softball to throw those babies away.

Creepy framed picture of dolls having tea?
Kept or trashed: Trashed! Immediately! I'm going to be haunted by this picture for weeks.

This was a fun surprise to find.  Yes, this is a Frodo bobblehead, still in the box. Chuckie bought me this for Christmas the first year we were dating.  He got me several gifts that year and this was one of them. I can't even explain it because I don't really remember why he got me this. But I love that I still have it and I love that I thought it was too valuable to take out of the box.
Kept or trashed: Kept, for the memories.

So there you have it. Nothing else too exciting came out of this round of cleaning. I found a lot of marbles, old CDs, craft supplies, notes and drawings from people from high school, and all of my drum major binders and trumpet books. Some things got to stay, but two more bags of trash were taken out at the end of the night. So now... my closet is ready to be filled with storage bins of the things I DID save. 

Looking good already!

I still have a few areas of my room to sort through where stuff is just stored (i.e. under my bed, the other closet, in my night stand...) so I may post more pictures at that time if I find anything worth sharing. But so far I'm feeling very content with my plan.

Blending In

Ever since we found out Chuckie got in to MIT, I've been basing all decisions on the fact that I will be living in Boston for two years very soon.  One example of this is my clothing.  I've only been out shopping for clothes once since we found out and while shopping, all I could think whenever I looked at a shirt was "Would someone wear this in Boston?"

You see, the first time we visited Boston, we felt like we stood out the entire time. And I think it was my fault.  In a sea of black shirts and pants, I was wearing bright green and bright blue shirts. The first night we were there when we ate at John Harvard's, I swear everyone in there was staring at us the whole time, like they could just tell we didn't belong. And we continued to feel that way the rest of our trip. Apparently, people in the north don't like to wear bright colored shirts. At least not in October, anyway...

So the second time we visited Boston, this past November, I packed with that in mind. Black sweaters, black pants, black boots, black jacket. The only color I allowed myself was a dark purple scarf. Well? It worked. We happened to be in town on election day, and while walking down the street on the way to the train from our hotel, a lady handed me a flyer on the candidate she was supporting and asked me to vote for him. I was SO excited. I took the flyer and said thanks and then excitedly told Chuckie "She thinks we live here! We did it! We blended in!"

I have a bad feeling every article of clothing I buy for the next two years will be black.