Zombie Skills

Well we're getting to the end of October, and that means that very soon Halloween will be upon us.

When I was little my excitement was uncontainable! Because I loved trick-or-treating, and candy (obviously). But I've long outgrown the fun dress up candy eating phase of Halloween, and I have a job - so the Halloween festivities have since changed....

I still find ways to indulge :)

This is the best way to spend Halloween...find a friend or two and break this open, pour into a pan over low heat and add mulled apple cider spices as desired (it comes spiced as is, but I'm pretty sure Liz and I have at least added cinnamon). Pair with caramel apples and old fashioned donuts.

This year however, rather than a quiet night of mulled wine and a Stephen King novel, I decided to celebrate Halloween a bit early by going to "Santa's Village", an amusement park in East Dundee, where I went...


Zombie hunting!
(with paintball guns)

In the event of a zombie apocalypse, how prepared do you feel?
This Friday I entered a highly realistic zombie apocalypse simulation and put my zombie hunting skills to the test.

As soon as the first animated corpse (or whatever exactly a zombie is) popped out at me from behind the first barricade, my usual response in "haunted" settings (to grab onto the first person I can reach, hide my face and scream) was completely stifled by a new crazed trigger-happy lunatic!

 The problem is that my aim is awful...

Of all the ammo that our party was given at the start of the trail, I probably shot over half of it into the trees, completely missing the zombies altogether!

I can therefore say with a fairly decent level of certainty that given a zombie apocalypse, I would NOT be a good person to give a fire arm.

But before you leave me behind in the woods to fend for myself, you should know that I have other skills. They include (but are not limited to): cooking, hiding, building forts out of rubble, and running really really fast.

Happy Halloween

Handbag Love

In my life, I wear many hats...

But since hats are not really that professional (or in style, for that matter), and that phrase was really meant for men I think, I am hereby changing it to "In my life, I carry many purses."

As a teaching assistant, research assistant, and diligent student, I carry the computer purse. It has a laptop sleeve, a pocket for pens, and matches all of my professional outfits.

 Unfortunately today this happened :(

lets take a closer look at the damage

To make matters worse, I can't even fix it! (or if I did it wouldn't look very professional anymore)
So today I went SHOPPING! And clearly indulging in some retail therapy was exactly what I needed to get over the death of my professional computer bag.

I walked into our local TJ MAXX and instantly found this.

haha..look familiar? I didn't get too creative on my professional bag's replacement, but it gets the job done (and it's faux alligator skin accents match my favorite shoes).
The best part was that it was about half the price I was expecting to pay for a new bag! So I decided to replace another purse of mine that was in desperate need of replacing.

This is my casual purse! Or it was. While it looks alright on the outside, there is a bit of a problem.

Something about this zipper is a little off...

The fact that this purse is broken breaks my heart. Before I studied abroad in England I was looking for a good purse for international travel (it needed to have a long strap, and lots of zippers to combat pick-pockets), and I saw this one in a boutique fashion show. I loved it so much that I snuck backstage afterword to find out where I could buy it, and my Grandma gave it to me for my birthday.

This purse was with me the first summer I dated Eric, the semester I spent in England, and all of the adventures I've had since then. It snuck fast food and popcorn into movie theaters, transported bikinis and swim trunks, wallets, phones, keys, balled up sweatshirts, cameras, towels, and did everything else you could possibly ask a purse to do.

Now I won't name names, but SOMEONE (cough cough, Eric) may or may not have accidentally damaged the zipper beyond repair while retrieving something in the passenger's seat while I was driving.

Luckily, I love him a lot more than a purse :) Nevertheless, the time to retire the purse has been long overdue...so I found a new replacement for that one too...

I'm pretty excited to start using it, but only time will tell whether I will be able to love it as much as my old one.

Boyfriend Visits 2: Art Prize, Football, and GastroPubs

So this post is a bit overdue, but my life as a student has been incredibly busy in the last week or so.
However, last weekend was one of the best weekends EVER, because last weekend was a....

BOYFRIEND VISIT!!

but even better, I got to see a lot of other friends too!

The adventure started when I got out of my last afternoon meeting an hour early. Which is great, because although it only takes 4 hours to drive back to the Mitten, the time difference results in gaining an extra hour.

This is what my drive looked like

driving and taking pictures at the same time is a little dangerous, but the colors were really pretty (even if the lighting in this pic isn't great). It took me slightly less than 4 hours to get to Grand Rapids...my excitement tends to translate to a lead foot.
The first thing I did was meet up with my long lost roomie, Liz!

and her new apartment downtown! We caught up over some homemade veggie pizza and "witches brew" :)

looks good, right? We're pretty legit chefs - a few years ago we even boiled lobsters. Sometimes the best way to catch up with friends is over amazing culinary creations.
After a our delicious dinner I headed over to Eric's house to catch up with more friends :) After getting tackled with hugs, we headed out to a dance hall to celebrate Pulaski Days. This involved catching up, meeting people, and dancing a lot of Polka.

Here we all are after a few semi-failed attempts at Polka-ing. Alas, at this point I could barely keep my eyes open after a full day of school, traveling, ect., so we we headed home.
The next morning, I got to have breakfast with these two!!

but we had normal clothes on this time. Coffee and delicious sticky buns none of which I got pictures of, but were nonetheless delicious. We swapped all sorts of teaching and grad student stories all morning, but it wasn't long before I had to be on my way to fit in some Art Prize.
Eric and I spent the next part of the day wandering around downtown Grand Rapids, checking out the art!

There were penguins!

and dinosaurs!

and weird peppers made out of deflated balloons. But when it started raining we jumped in the car to grab some lunch at the Green Well (this is my new favorite restaurant in Grand Rapids, it's amazing). We couldn't decide what we wanted, so we got pulled pork polenta and mac and cheese, and shared them.

Both were delicious.

Before long it was time for some GV football tailgating, and a great game.
The weekend flew by so fast, and as soon as I was back on the road I was back to missing my favorite city.
So here's hoping I can go back for another visit soon. In the meantime, it's back to my hectic grad school life.