Lots of Driving and a Tale of Two Cities

Last week, I got to go to Philadelphia for a week long trip that was kind of an Alternative Spring Break for grown ups. It was hosted by the Sisters of Mercy, who are really cool nuns, and so all of the service we did was at Mercy ministries in Philly. I really didn't know what I had signed up for, but figured it would be a cool chance to see a new city, get a break from Detroit and my super stressful job, and tack on a trip to NYC while I was out East.
First, I had to go to my co-worker's wedding, because we are work friends and I got a real grown-up invitation and everything. I couldn't get drunk though, because I had to leave early and drive overnight to get to South Philly by Sunday morning. I napped in a parking lot in Pennsylvania, and it's the closest I've ever come to pulling an all-nighter, which is an experience I don't really recommend.
The trip was super fun, and I learned a lot about poverty and service and the intersections between government assistance and private charity work. These are all things that I get to learn about in Detroit, too, but it was a quick crash course and definitely a different setting with different issues and challenges. Detroit is very different from Philadelphia (and New York) and I think I prefer a city with a few less people and a little more open space and air. But cheesesteaks are really good.

I also got to learn that Philadelphia is across the Delaware River from Camden, NJ! Who knew? Unfortunately, I learned this too late to plan a visit to Kathleen, who lives in Camden. I did stop for gas in Princeton, NJ, though, and was fairly underwhelmed by the small part of campus I saw. Michigan is better.
After being in Philly Sunday-Friday, I packed up my dad's car Saturday morning and drove to Mary Walle in Harlem. I got to take the bridge that has been causing Chris Christie so many problems and learned that Harlem is part of Manhattan which is one of the bouroughs and also an island. This blog post is very educational for all the readers out there who might be as geographically inept as myself.
Mary has a roof deck where we got to skype call Amy Ketner, who is the CART-ay blog's favorite reader. We also had a view of Yankee Stadium (located in the Bronx across the river from Manhattan), and this would have been more exciting if the Yankees weren't the absolute worst.
Walle and I walked through Central Park

and across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Also it is apparently a thing in NYC/grown up life to have boozey brunch. By the name, we can tell that this is a wonderful thing, complete with botomless mimosas! The restaurant we went to had terrible service, but a great view of Times Square. Probably Tina Fey is somewhere down in that mass of people.

All in all, I had a really fun 10 days, but maybe I won't drive that far alone for a while. The radio stations kept changing and every time I found a new one it just played the same three songs the last station had played.
Soon, I will be visiting my cousins in Virginia, and hopefully when I figure out those times I can also plan a quick trip to see R+Z in Crystal Dizzle! Who knew I'm such a world (country) traveler?

How To Turn Your Roommate Into Your Best Friend And/Or Henchwoman

Allow us to present you with a hypothetical situation. In this hypothetical situation, you are a typical suburban housewife. You have the two kids, the husband, the mini-van with the little stick figure family in the back window—life is good. Then, gradually, you begin to feel uneasy in your own home. There’s this constant nagging feeling that someone is watching you, even when there’s no one there. There’s a funny smell that you just catch a vague whiff of once in a while. You’re pretty sure that there was more organic, all-natural peanut butter (you’re a health conscious mother, in this scenario) in the jar last night than there is this morning. The final straw is when you think you hear noises coming through the air vents, even though your whole family is in the living room watching Full House together. You call the police. They do a search of your house and discover that a drunk vagrant has set up shop in your attic, and he’s probably been there for months without you noticing. In fact, the police tell you, he’s been living there for so long that he now has a legal right to inhabit your attic, and you’re just going to have to deal with it because he’s not leaving.

New roommate is excited to move out of his boxcar and into your attic!

Surprise! That hobo is exactly like getting a roommate in college. You’re not really sure you want them around, they steal your food, and they probably don’t shower often enough. You certainly didn’t get to pick them. Regardless, you’re now going to have to find some way to get along with one another, because the police told you so.

This is where we come in. We were successful roommates for four years (like, in the same room roommates, so suck on that) and we have lots of helpful tips on how to make things go smoothly. Let’s get started!

Meeting a new roommate can be
as awkward as this picture

1. Make a bad first impression. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it really helps. There are plenty of ways to make a bad first impression on your roommate. When she tries to friend you on Facebook, ignore her friend request for long enough that she starts to sweat a little. Send her emails that make you sound like an idiot—like, maybe you can tell her about that time that you accidentally crossed the border into Canada without even having your drivers’ license on you. Be really crabby on the day you first move into the dorms. It’s all about setting the bar really low going into your initial in-person encounter. That way, it’s all uphill from there! Even if you have annoying habits, she’ll just be thankful that you don’t suck as much as she thought at first. Plus, if you end up being friends, you’ll have lots of fun stories to laugh about and tell people in the future.

2. Ask the tough questions. It's natural to be curious about the person you are about to share a room and a mini-fridge with. All roommates inevitably learn some small facts about each other, e.g. family background, weird eating habits, and favorite music. To have a really successful roommate-ship, though, you have to dig deeper. You can learn a lot by asking, for example, "If you could be any black woman for a day, who would you pick and why?" or "Code Blue?" An average roommate knows your eye color, a good roommate knows your dog's name, but a great roommate knows which hockey player you plan to marry. Questions can lead to equally heated debates on which post-colonial African president was the best or which Bachelor contestant is the craziest. Understanding your roomtart's interests can only bring you closer together (unless you hate his/her interests, then you're probably screwed.)
3. Say what's on your mind. Sometimes, being honest about what you're thinking can be really hard. After all, even if you have a big blow-up confrontation, you still have to live with that person, and then you run the risk of having them pee in your favorite shoes or something. Still, it's good to air things out. If you just silently fume about all of the little things that bother you, they'll just build up until you can't stand each other anymore, and that's no fun. So, if your roommate makes borscht in your carpeted kitchen and then leaves all of the million dishes, just politely ask him/her to do them! If her drunk cousins and his friends are loudly playing beer pong on your porch while you want to sleep, just tell them to shut up! (Let's be real, she's too drunk to really remember how you phrased it in the morning, so this time you don't have to be as polite.) And if she gets all uppity about going to study in North Quad, feel free to put that girl in her place.

Salmonella is for the weak

4. Bake together. I don't mean this in a marijuana related way, although this might also be a bonding experience. Better than any drug is the magic of brownies. There's a special form of communion created when you gather with your roomsicle(s) over a steaming pan of barely cooked desserts with nothing but spoons and the love you share. Some roommates have made the mistake of taking a box of brownie mix and following all of the directions. This is wrong. Once you know how much oil and eggs to add, throw that box away. Actually recycle it, because global climate change is real. Brownies/cakes/cookies not meant to be solid. Healthy roommate relationships are formed over hot, liquid desserts that represent the warm love that flows between two individuals.

Always be sure to look your best
for your events. Also,note that a good hench
woman allows you to ride on her back.

5. Invent Holidays and Events. If you live according to a normal calendar where your birthday only comes once a year and the holidays are few and far between, your life is a travesty. Celebrate half birthdays, quarter birthdays, 5/6 birthdays, the fact that Taylor lives here, June Day (Best Day), host an event called Dinner., have an ugly sweater party, have a toga party at which someone will bite lime and then be upset about it. Celebrations are happy, so many celebrations means you will have a happy household! And if you can somehow con the pre-med frat at your university into thinking that hosting parties at your house is a good idea, then life is all the better. They will bring the alcohol and you can steal a gallon of vodka, which you can later add Skittles to so you can taste the rainbow. (Which is kind of like baking. Look at how our tips correlate with one another!) Anyway, the point is, celebrate everything--including the fact that your roommate is awesome!

6. Have secrets. There is nothing that brings people together more than leaving other people out. Is that mean? Well we never said friendship was nice. To solidify your one-of-a-kind relationship with your roommate(s), it's important to have many inside jokes and perhaps even a secret language so that in a large group, it is clear that your friendship is better than everyone else's. This is a tricky step in the bonding process for several reasons. One, you cannot force a good secret. Work your way up to it in conversation (this goes along with asking questions) until your roommate is eventually spilling their guts to you and you alone. Also, sharing these special moments and memories will make people jealous of you, which is a good thing, but you don't want them to hate you. Good roommates have other friends, too, and these are the people you complain about your roommate to. The secret codes and knowing looks shared between roommates in a group setting must be kept to a minimum. Unless the roommates are in a group of people they don't much care for, in which case you should ignore everyone else and be really weird together, perhaps making drunken snowflakes or dancing by yourselves.

Happiness guaranteed

It is natural to be nervous when you get assigned a roommate for college, find a stranger to live with on Craig's list, or inevitably are forced to cohabitate with the smelly peanut butter thief in your attic. With these simple directions, though, all that awkwardness will quickly transform itself in the cocoon of your small shared space into a beautiful friendship that will last a lifetime, or at least until your youngest child turns 18 and your roommate is no longer bound in service to you as a live in nanny.

You're welcome ♥ Taylor & Christine

The Next Food Network Star?

Based on my Facebook feed, I know that this past weekend was a joyous holiday for the young folk, and that most people celebrated by drinking green alcohol and taking a lot of selfies. Apparently some people even got a snow day Monday to extend the celebrations. Apparently these same people get way too many snow days and it really isn't fair. Well, my St. Patrick's Day weekend in Detroit was not full of these traditional celebrations. Instead I went to a wedding shower, crafted, watched movies, and did other activities typically associated with middle aged women.

I'm the one on the right

First, I will review the movie I saw Sunday, which was Veronica Mars. It was really good. That's my whole review, I guess.

Teenage spy becomes grown-up spy is a good plot

The real reason I wanted to blog is because I was cooking dinner for my house yesterday and realized that I've become sort of decent at cooking and definitely the meals I make are pretty unique (because I'm recipe illiterate), and I also tend to talk to myself like I'm Bobby Flay. If we put these things together, I should obviously have my own show on the Food Network. It could be about cooking on a budget, because another skill I possess is being incredibly cheap.
I went grocery shopping yesterday and used the manager's specials at Kroger to inspire my meal. Here's my cooking blog:
Turkey Pot Pie-ish
Ingredients:
Ground Turkey - $2.99 (buy one get one free!)
Mushrooms - $1.29 (managers special!)
Celery - $I don't know because I didn't buy them
Carrots - $.99
Kale - $.89
Milk - $2.69 (but I didn't use the whole gallon
Flour - $we just have this in our cupboard
Pie Crust - $1.99 (for two pies!)
Pilsbury biscuits (or kroger brand) - $1.25
Add it all up and that's a dinner for six that costs less than $12. And it has meat. Win!
Directions
Step 1. Cook turkey and mushrooms in skillet. Add everything but the pie crust and biscuits and stir till it looks good.
Step 2. Pour into pie crusts, cover with biscuits, bake until it looks done.

It even looks healthy!

I took a picture of the pie-thing in process, but forgot to get one of the finished product. Let's assume it looks like this:

Wow, I'm a good chef

Anyway, you should all visit me and I'll cook you something weird, too! My new Rachel told me yesterday, "If you are what you eat, no one is really sure what you are." But I am definitely edible, so that's what matters.

How all of America Hates Juan Pablo

The Bachelor finale was this Monday night, and although I'm pretty sure it only took 10 minutes to dump one girl and give a rose to the other, this got drawn out into a 3 hour special. Smooth move ABC.

We've been telling you for a while now about the disappointment that is Juan Pablo, and it seems that this week all of America was united in hating him, but I live in Detroit now and we like to be hipsters so now that hating him is popular, I kind of love him all over again. Let me essplain why:

In the final episode, Juan Pablo has to choose between Clare and Nikki. We've liked Nikki from the beginning (because she is a nurse like Ashley!), but in the end it almost feels like she is too smart for this guy who clearly only cares about his daughter, sports, and being attractive. Clare, on the other hand, is super stupid, like, dumb enough to have sex in the ocean on national television, so maybe they could be a perfect match until they break up a month after the final rose? In a fun little plot twist, these two women also hate each other. It's funny how they didn't become best friends in a show that makes dating a competition between women...

Remember that time they had this awkward fight over nothing?

So the episode shows each woman meeting JP's family in St. Lucia (the whole family gets a free trip?? Jealous.), and JP's cousin with braces warns each woman of their boyfriends commitment issues. So that bodes well. Camilla continues to steal the show by being ADORABLE and her little cousin is super cute, too so basically JP for a second has won our hearts again by reminding us that he is a hot Venezuelan single dad. Don't worry though, we'll turn on him soon.

JP shows us a big diamond ring that probably came free from the jeweler, and Clare gets on a boat to go meet him, which seems like a poor idea because we just saw her curling her hair and doing her make-up and boats are usually windy and not conducive to looking like a barbie. She is all smiles and arched eyebrows when she goes to meet him in the middle of some forest on this tropical island and then... HE DUMPS HER. And makes the mistake of trying to hug her, which she rejects. The studio audience cheers for the woman who was previously the most hated contestant as she yells at the man who was previously an adored bachelor because apparently we thought he should have told her earlier he didn't want to marry her, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the show? Clare storms away as well as she can in heels in the tropics, and Chris Harrison and the studio audience wonder what will become of JP. Also, Clare is sent away in a boat which is much crappier than the one she rode over in. Just to really make sure she understands that she lost.

When you put your life on TV, it's easy to find ugly shots of you, Clare

Nikki also crosses over on a boat to Juan Pablo and walks carefully toward him in a dress with a really high slit. Like, her whole leg is showing and I'm concerned she might flash us more. When she gets to JP she tells him she loves him again and he doesn't say he loves her back, but instead tells her that he cannot propose because he isn't 100% sure and her dad told him not to. So that big old diamond was just a quick product placement, and instead he just gives her a rose and asks if she'll go out with him in a normal way and she says yes. Kisses are shared. The end.

See that slit?? So high.

Except it's not really the end! Because this episode was shot three (four?) months ago, and now we have to get the opinions of Sean and Catherine, Des and Chris, Sharleen and her buddies, and most importantly Chris Harrison. He interviews Clare in the "After the Final Rose" special and she gets a lot of cheers for being pissed at JP. He should never have led her on, she says. I'm not sure how else he wanted her to act on a dating show where there's one guy and 27 women, because she then tells Chris she doesn't even want to see JP and has nothing else to say. Bye Clare.

Nikki comes out and some people might think she's pregnant but she's probably not and she waves to her BFFs Sharleen and Kelly and then tells Chris and America that life is good and she still loves JP and is excited to see him because I guess for 3/4 months they've had to have a secret long distance relationship. JP joins her on the couch and is immediately asked if he loves her. He won't answer, which, if I'm Nikki, I appreciate, because I haven't seen my boyfriend in 3/4 months and I really don't want him to confess his love in front of a live audience and a million cameras. But Chris Harrison is not Nikki, and he is not OK with this. So he continues to badger JP and force him to say "I Love You" in order to appease the fans of the show. Nikki, for the record, is totally OK with him not saying it yet.

How Chris feels when his questions don't get answered

So here's the part where I'll tell you why I like Juan Pablo and Nikki even better now. They seem actually to recognize how absurd the show is and how it isn't real life and it isn't an accurate way to actually get to know a potential life partner. JP is really pumped to finish recording and have a real life and a real relationship. So while I still think that they will probably break up really soon, I am glad that they aren't pretending to get married in the meantime. Also, I feel like it's not fair that all the women on the show get to talk about how sexy Juan Pablo is and it's OK for them to like him for superficial reasons but he's not allowed to be like, "Hey Clare, I think you're really hot but that's about it." It turns out he is exactly what we all thought he was: a hot Latino with a daughter. He really is just being honest.

This combination of man and baby is weird.

I went to bed around this point, but I hear that at the end of the 3-hour-special they announced the new Bachelorette, and (big surprise), it's Andi. She practically campaigned for it, and I wonder how she ever got through law school if she is dumb enough to put her life on TV. Get ready for people to hate you Andi, because that's what we like to do with famous people.

I'm not really sure what this picture is...

Well, now this blog will go back to being just our real lives. I hope you keep reading it, Amy!

Haha I Still Get a Spring Break

Ok after my long hiatus from the blog, here is the most recent update on my life.  As you all know thanks to my adorable postcards, I was in Florida for spring break last week.  Jillian and I planed down there on Thursday night.  It was -14 (non windchill) when we took off and 68 when we landed...just a minor difference.  My grandma picked us up and took us back to her house where my cousin, her 3 friends, and my aunt were already situated.  It was a little cramped in the two bedroom mobile home, but the good news was Jillian and I got the bedroom!  Everyone else crammed into the living room.

All the girls on Clearwater Beach

For the first few days, we went to various beaches.  One day we went to Clearwater which has really soft sand.  It was a little cool, but we persisted and laid out all day since it was our first day out of ice age Michigan.  At night, there are some fun tents with people selling stuff on the pier so we looked around those and some of the souvenir shops.  We also saw some street performers and that was pretty cool!

The guy jumped through this teeny hoop!

Basically every night we played games so that was fun!  I think I have an obsession with Mexican/Mystery/Marxican Train because I made people play it with me at least once a day.  Jillian had some sort of train super power because she won almost every game by a lot.  Another favorite nightly activity was shuffleboard!  I'm pretty good at it!  But sometimes I'm bad...

During some of the days we took bike rides.  One day we biked downtown and looked through the shops.  I've been in all of them lots of times so nothing was too exciting, but I always like looking at the chocolate wine and cute decorations and such.  Another day, we biked to Honeymoon Island.  I'm not really sure why it's called that, but it's just another beach that's close and easy to get to.  We even went in the ocean while we were there!  It was cold but refreshing.  A sad thing that happened though was I got really burnt.  I had to spray aloe with lidocaine on my back and legs for the rest of the trip.  I think I'm allergic to the sun :(

Sad Ashley

At night, we went back to Clearwater and went to this resort/nightclub/bar/live band stage thingy called Shephard's.  It was the only place we could go because two of Kenzie's (that's you Rachael!) friends were 19.  It was weird because they checked all our IDs and then the guy asked if we wanted to pay full price for cover and I was like uhh no?  So he made us pay 5 dollars instead of 7 so that's cool I guess.  There were lots of bachelor parties at the outside live band part.  They hung around us basically the entire night which was unfortunate because some of them were kinda boring, but they made up for making us listen to them by buying us drinks which were pretty pricey.  The inside club part included two 7/8 naked girls dancing on stage and lots of dancing.  There was also a very attractive bouncer who one of the girls in our group managed to exchange numbers with.

One of the highlights of the vacation was our trip to Busch Gardens.  Jillian's dad had free tickets so yay for not spending money! We went there on Tuesday which worked out great because there were no lines and the weather was perfect.  A weird thing that happened was right when we walked into the park, we ran into these girls who were on Kenzie's plane so they joined our wolf pack for the day.  Sadly, I don't like roller coasters so I was the mom a lot and held everyone's stuff while they went on.  I did go on the train and the cable cars though and then we finished the day off with the water rides and those were really fun and refreshing.

That night was Mardi Gras, so some of us went downtown.  Our intention was to play drag queen bingo, but since it was a special occasion, they didn't have it.  Luckily, it turns out that Mardi Gras is a pretty big deal in the little town of Dunedin, so we had fun anyways.  There was a parade and we managed to get some beads.  Then we talked to a few of the locals....one young guy who was really nice and telling us all the fun things to do and then another old man who was clearly high and crazy.  It was pretty fun just to see all the bizarre costumes and walk around the streets.

Mardi Gras friends

On Wednesday night, we went to this restaurant called Cody's which has peanuts you can throw on the floor and it was buy one get one free fajita night!  It was the 6 girls plus my grandma so we all paired up for our fajitas and she said she'd eat the leftovers.  Four of us also ordered buy one get one free margaritas.  Our intention was to each get one and split the cost.  However, our waitress interpreted it as us each wanting two (like we wanted to get wasted with my grandma??) and was really pissed when she had to throw away four margaritas.  Idk why she didn't just leave them with us at that point.  After dinner, we went to Derby Lanes, a dog race track.  We each made at least one bet, but sadly none of our dogs even placed.  Mine was called Jack's Tigress :)

Jack's Tigress: 8th Place! (out of 8)

Early Friday morning it was time for Jillian and I to return to the homeland.  The good news was that Bobby came up that day so at least I had something to look forward to.  We watched the Indiana game at Bdubs with some friendys and then had a game night where we played cranium and made playdoh!  Also, my phone went to the phone doctor and although I'm poor now, at least I don't have to screenshot all your snapchats and guess at the third answer for quizup!

Hope this makes up for my lack of bloggage in the last couple months :)  Miss you all!

The Women Tell All (or Cling to Their Last Moments of Fame)

The Bachelor is getting close to the end, and that means my favorite episode: "The Women Tell All." I think it's funny how they now decide to start calling them all women, because throughout the rest of the show they are just girls. Like, "Hi, I'm Claire and am 32 years old. But I still consider myself a girl and get in catty fights with Nikki, another girl, and our shared boyfriend thinks we are all girls, just like his 4 year-old daughter." As Reba might say, these are grown-ass women. Also girls dating men is illegal.
Well, anyway, Chris Harrison welcomes us all like we are old friends and then we get to be reminded of the people that left super early in the season. Some, like Victoria, we will never forget (because she got drunk and locked herself in a bathroom). Others, like this chick, we think may have just snuck on the set for this one episode.

Oh now I remember, you cried the first episode.

To start with, all the women jump on the Andi bandwagon and say how self-centered JP is and how he never really got to know them. Finally, Kelly has had enough of that, and she's all, "Gurl please, you never had any problem with Juan Pablo when you were in the house. Stop playing." Not that Kelly is defending JP, she later asks him why he hates gays. Turns out he said some dumb things in an interview once. To be honest, I care very little about Juan Pablo's opinions on social and political issues, and I doubt that he's much of an activist about anything. 

But this leads us to another common theme of the night, which is the women accusing JP of using his language barrier as an excuse for being rude. Victoria grew up speaking Portuguese, and she feels that it's not that hard to become quickly fluent in another language. Maybe Amy or Rachael can back her up on that? I find it pretty difficult so I guess I'm stupid.

I kept wondering how uncomfortable it would be to sit like this for several hours

So pretty early in the show we establish that these women are not members of the JP fan club. They also think he wasn't fair because he treated the moms differently, and kept telling Renee he couldn't kiss her and then turning around and having sex swimming with Claire in the ocean. But Renee was defending him. She thinks he was very respectful and really improved her dating self-esteem, so much so that she is now "in a

Renee and "The Situation"

situation," which I think means she has a boyfriend and is unrelated to Mike from Jersey Shore. So that probably leaves her out of the running for next Bachelorette. Good thing, because as much as I like her, she'd be way boring.

Besides Renee, the other women who got the most attention/ had little interviews with Chris Harrison were Andi and Sharleen. Also the two women who left the show voluntarily. Sharleen was beautiful as always. I think I'm developing a crush on her. But she would also be a boring Bachelorette because you gotta have more crazy on the show than I think she could contribute. Also I'm not sure she'd want to be on it. I have a theory that she still likes JP (she was defending him all night and they had some serious eye contact when he came out), so maybe she will take him as her Latin lover for a while. 

Andi, on the other hand, is clearly vying for the next Bachelorette season. She made sure to let us all know she is still single but believes in "that great love," which is just as weird of a phrase as "grown sexy." I think Lucy secretly wants to be on it, too. Remember her? She's a professional free spirit. That's not even the weirdest occupation I've ever seen on this show.

This is the weirdest job title.

After the women tell all, Juan Pablo comes out and they tell him all, basically attacking him. He says it's okay a lot, which is his catch phrase. He also says he has no regrets. Probably because no matter how the show ends up, he will be rich and can just go find some other women to date.

Next week, we get to see the Final Rose...... Who will it be?? Nikki? Claire? Or will Sharleen come back and steal his heart? Taking predictions in the comments section below!

Go West (But Not Too Far)

So, for the most part, my life is really boring and not progressing in any kind of way and I don't really want to talk about it, but a few interesting things have happened to me in the last few weeks and I will talk about those things!

First, two weekends ago I went to visit Ali in Chicago. She had time off because they were in between quarters, so it was an ideal time to visit. Our cousin Jesse also came, and I like him, so that was nice.

One of the things that we did actually in the city was go to the Shedd Aquarium. We took the Metra into the city and then walked to the Shedd, which was like 2 miles--but luckily it wasn't one of the days that was miserably cold, so it wasn't bad. We also waited in a really long line to get in, and while we were waiting some man kept walking up and down the line asking people to donate money to the soup kitchen--which, great, donating to charity is a good thing, but he pretty much just stared awkwardly at you until you gave him money, so that was weird.

Us in front of Chicago! This is just before we got in line. Sad news--I accidentally left my scarf at Ali's house.

 It was a good time and there were lots of weird ass fish there. I don't have pictures from when we went, but fish look basically the same no matter what location you're looking at them from, so I found some pictures online of ones I remember seeing.

Japanese spider crab. Hard to convey how creepy it was without seeing it in person.

We spent a lot of time looking at the otters. They weren't stacking cups but for some reason I always think this is funny. The otter is so indignant. 

This picture is actually from the Shedd! They have a tank where they let you touch all kinds of starfish, like this baby is doing. The water is very cold and I couldn't reach all of them with my short arms, but I still touched some. We also got to touch a sturgeon, but I didn't really like it because touching fish makes me nervous.

This is an Australian lungfish. His name is Granddad and apparently he has been at the Shedd since 1933, but they didn't advertise that well there because I'm just learning that now as I looked for this picture. I do remember that lungfish have both gills and lungs, for during seasons when the water levels are low and there's not as much dissolved oxygen for them to get with their gills. Two interesting things for the price of one with this picture!

Anyway, that's enough fish pictures. Once we left the aquarium, we met up with my friend Marie from high school and she drove us to Chipotle and then back to Ali's house. At Ali's house, we had a tattoo party! It was a fun idea--everyone had to have a temporary tattoo in order to stay. I had a Mole Day (because that's also my birthday!) tattoo, and also Ali's friend Bobby drew a Red Wings tattoo on me. Jesse had a mermaid tattoo that I had in my wallet, Ali had a glittery shooting star tattoo that I also had in my wallet, and Marie had an Iron Man tattoo that someone bought.

Left to right: Ali, Jack (Death Eater), Taylor. Sadly, I do not have a picture of the Mole Day tattoo.

A bunch of Ali's other friends came over and we drank a lot and I learned some new drinking games, like Irish Poker. Jesse had lots of White Russians (which I had for the first time as well and I like them even though they sound gross!) and got very drunk. Ali and I both felt like we had to take care of him but didn't know the other person was doing anything, so she fed him like half a bag of pita chips and a bottle of Gateraid and I fed him a chicken breast with BBQ sauce, which was kind of funny to hear from him in the morning--he was like, "You guys just kept making me eat so much!" but he didn't stop us at the time, so how were we supposed to know?

Jesse and I rode the train back the next day, which was very uneventful.


The other exciting thing that happened to me was that last weekend, I went to Kalamazoo to visit my friend Hannah. I've never been to Kalamazoo and I guess she doesn't go out much, so it was an adventure for both of us. We went to a place called the Beer Exchange, which is based on a stock market type idea, I guess. There is this big board that has all of the beers and their prices on it, and as beers get more popular, they get more expensive, and as they get ordered less often, they get cheaper. The prices change every 15 minutes. And then, every once in a while, the stock market crashes and everything is super cheap! It felt like a place people in Ann Arbor would be into.

A picture of the board--the time in the corner is how much time is left til it changes again. 

We met some guys there who were trying to decide if this girl across the bar was pregnant (she definitely was, but they couldn't make up their minds) and they asked us to play pool with them. I'm very bad at pool. Their names were Charlie, Kurt, and Brian... but none of them looked like their names belonged to them? It's hard to explain, but Hannah agreed with me the next morning. Maybe that's why they're friends--their parents all sucked at naming their kids. Anyway, they hung out with us for the rest of the night but to be honest they were all pretty boring and not super nice. Later, we left and went to another place called The Gatsby, and Kurt was SUPER pumped to dance, which was amusing. Like, I have never in my life met a man who was so excited to just dance. Caryn would hate him.

That's all! I don't have an adventure planned for this weekend--probably I'll just see Evan, but I like him so that's okay!