Thursday, December 10, 2009

Mason Nation

So I'm now a Senior at George Mason. I would like to introduce you to my schedule from Hell:

Cell Structure and Function MW 5:55 pm - 7:10 pm
Cell Structure and Function W 10:30 am - 1:15 pm
General Chemistry I TR 9:00 am - 10:15 am
General Chemistry I F 8:30 am - 11:20 am
Abnormal Psychology TR 1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Introductory Statistics I TR 10:30 am - 11:45 am

Because this was my first time registering I was practically last but luckily I won't ever have to do that again. Orientation was pretty overwhelming. Everything from the fact I don't have all the shots required for College to barely getting one of 3 seats left in a 250 person lecture. I'm going to have to plan another trip over to GMU since I have no idea where anything is and it's such a large campus it'll take me forever to learn my way around campus.

I'm thinking about getting everyone George Mason sweatshirts for Christmas - what more could anyone want?

Favorite Christmas song this Season - "All I want for Christams is a Hippopotamuses"

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Mt. Vernon Candlelight Christmas Tour

We finally got Tickets! Erik and I have wanted to get tickets to this Candleight Christmas Tour since we moved here.  We started out our Christmas themed night with a delicious meal at Columbia Firehouse in Old Town. The food was fantastic and the building is 126yrs old and gorgeous. It's like an old fashioned cigar bar with intricately etched wood paneling, funky staircases and old phone booths.

After dinner we went to Mt. Vernon and drastically underestimated how hard it would be to find in the dark - it's pretty rural (compared to DC) out there. Once we finally found Mt. Vernon we realized how much of the "tour" was outside. We naively thought the "tour" referenced the inside of the home, not the grounds.

Mt.. Vernon on a nice, warm, sunny day :)




Mt. Vernon does a great job shepherding hordes of people around the grounds. We were given the nametag of a famous visitor (we were Silas D.) and we went around in a small group of about 10 people. One of the highlights of the tour for me was the fact they handed out gingersnaps and hot cider to everyone before we entered the house. Unfortunately, we were the last group through and they'd run out of cider before we got there! I debated asking for a refund but Erik wouldn't let me.

So they have a camel at Mt. Vernon... who knew? His name is Aladdin and as you can tell he wasn't very interested in having his picture taken. This is the only picture I have of the whole night because you aren't allowed to take pictures inside the house and it was dark outside, duh.

Little Aladdin



He looks like he is in trouble and somebody made him stare into the corner and think about what he did wrong.

The three most striking things to me were 1. George Washington is buried at Mt. Vernon, 2. The View from Mt. Vernon is drop dead gorgeous and probably worth billions considering it's right on the Potomac and it's across from a National Park (aka no lights), 3. The house is really small, but it's probably not fair to compare it to something like the Biltmore... The only big things were the chimneys





You could rent that chimney for about $600 in DC.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

GMU Orientation

Welcome to College Round II - George Mason University, Biology Major

Well I'm off to orientation tomorrow. I got accepted to GMU and I'm off to College in Jan.  It's definitely going to be a lot different than little 'ol Salem. There are boys and thousands of students and multiple campuses. The biggest thing I need to get tomorrow is registered for all my classes. Hopefully that won't be a huge deal and I can meet with an advisor that actually knows something!

I'm also interested to see how long it will take me to get to Fairfax at 9am...

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Turkey Success

The turkey finally thawed and it was a smashing success at 11pm on Friday night. Therefore, we had Thanksgiving round 2 at 11pm on Friday night and Thanksgiving round 3 at noon on Saturday - luckily everyone was flexible.

Here's the stupid turkey again



And puppies holding hands because they're thankful for each other
Ella's on the left and Nike's on the right with Sheepie

 

Friday, November 27, 2009

Stupid Turkey

So Erik and I are the hosts for Thanksgiving 2009 and we've got 7 people here; mom, dad, Aunt Renie, Uncle Casey and my cousin Clark.  Because we have travelers from NC, TX and NY we decided to do Thanksgiving on Friday. Well today is Friday and this is what our turkey looks like...




Well, according to the little booklet that came with the turkey it said that it takes 24hrs for every 4 lbs. So I took the turkey out on Tuesday night and it should've been ready by this morning. In case the picture wasn't abundantly clear - the booklet lied! Luckily my dad and Erik went up to the Lexington Market in Baltimore and got the best crabcakes on the East Coast. These crab cakes have won about 12 awards in the last 15yrs for best crab cakes.

They were amazing and gigantic!!



The pecan pie was delicious too!





In other words, Erik and I will be eating turkey for the rest of the month. Turkey Fail.





Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving

My family doesn't have too many holiday traditions but one thing we've done for the last 10yrs is some sort of Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. Turkey trots usually support great local charities and really its just a way to make people feel less guilty about eating as much as possible later that day. The best one I've done so far was an 8mile YMCA Turkey Trot in Dallas with 35,000 people. I have never done a race with so many people before or since - it was incredible.

This years Turkey Trot is the Arlington Turkey Trot and it supports the Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless (AACH), Doorways for Women & Families, and Arlington Food Assistance Center. It's a "fun run" which means a nice, easy course with lots of strollers, babies and dogs. My mom and dad drove up from Davidson for the holiday and they are participating along with me, Erik, Nike and Ella. As a sidenote, I did this race last year with Nike (we didn't have Ella yet) and I registered Erik but somehow ended up doing the race with just Nike. Erik was stricken with a serious case of "it's 20 degrees and I really need to sleep in" so he didn't quite make it.

Me and Nikester last year - she's ripping my arm off!




Happy Thanksgiving! Remember everything you have to be thankful for :)

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Welcome to my Blog

I have finally joined the masses and started my own blog. I'm really excited about this even though I don't know what direction this blog will take I love the idea of having a medium in which to share things with friends. I have really enjoyed reading my friends blogs and hopefully mine will be equally entertaining. Giving credit where credit is due, Emily is largely responsible for convincing me to start a blog about my day to day life. Thanks Em!

One thing I am sure of is that a lot of this blog will focus around my 'puppy girls' Nike and Ella and their attempts to drive me out of my mind.  They are retired racing greyhounds from a track in Orlando.  We rescued Nike (Jimbo Monday was her racing name) in April 2008 and when her acutal littermate - Ella aka Jimbo Friday - came up for adoption  in December and we couldn't let the opportunity to re-unite them pass us by.

Nike is very smart (more on this later), pretty and smaller than her sister




Ella is big, not what we would call smart but very friendly :)



Yay for starting something new :)