I have spent the afternoon thinking of all the things I truly love to do and here is my list.

To go to the movies alone in the middle of the day when the theater is empty.

Spend the day on the dock at Tanglewood playing skipbo with my best friend

Reading and rereading the glass lake by Maeve Binchy, I can read it over and over again and have had at least 3 copies of the book.

Cooking for my friends and family, nothing makes me happier than serving dinner to all the people I love whether it is taco soup or thanksgiving dinner.

Baking with the Linebarger girls, I think more frosting ends up on the floor or in their mouths than on the cookies, but I love to share my love for sugar cookies with them.

Cookie Cutters, yep I have like 150 and I am always looking for a new one or new design.

 Driving

any activity with the youth group I work with, they keep me on my toes

the watch with kirsten website on eonline.  

swimming lots of laps as fast as I can for 45 minutes, there is no better way to clear my head

painting pottery, except this one I don’t get to do all that often

sleeping in until 10 or 11, I love it…

staying up until all hours of the night even though I have to work in the morning

playing games, all kinds of games, I am competative and I like to win

the movie circle of friends

all things civil war related

camp

the sale rack at ann taylor loft

the 7.50 movie rack at target

my dansko shoes, i wear them at least once every day, if not all day long

colorful socks

well the list could go on and on but I will stop with one last thought

gilmore girls

5 years ago today I packed up my little honda accord and a uhaul and traveled 3,300 miles  from Spokane, WA to Dallas, TX.  I was so excited and nervous all at the same time.  It was the first time I really felt like a grown up.  The night before I said goodbye to all my friends and cried both tears of sadness and joy.  The trip took 3 days to complete, and the entire time I was alone in my car with just a walkie talkie and a cell phone.  Oh yeah at that time, I still had a stereo in my car, so I did have all my soundtracks to keep me company.  Most of the trip my dad used the walkie talkie to tell me all about how he used to make the same stretch of the drive from Montana to Colorado during college.  Every year on this day I remember because for me it was life altering.  There is so many things about the trek I will never forget.  Like how the first couple hours I spent on the phone to my dear friend Kim, helping her choose an outfit to wear on her first day with her now husband Chris.  If I remember correctly we decided that the weather was apporiate and she woud look cute if she wore the red sweater that tied around her waist (although I could be wrong).  I ate at resturants my dad remembered and loved, and thought to myself I was crazy for making this trip.  We arrived in Dallas at 8pm on the third night, and the traffic was something out of the world.  I think my dad vowed never to visit me after trying to switch lanes on I 35 and I 30.  Almost every hotel was booked because of the state fair, and the uhaul wouldn’t open.  However all turned out fine, and I quickly set up house with Carlee and Marisela in Lakewood greens.  5 years have come and gone, I have held three jobs since then, lived in 5 different places, had my stereo stolen out of my car 4 times, and had the worst luck in the world with my tires.  There are times I think life would be so much easier if I just stayed in Spokane, and then I realize that I would not trade the last 5 years for anything.  I have made so many great friends many whom I don’t tell enough.  I mean Marisela and I didn’t even get along when I moved in with her, and now she is one of my close friends.  I have learned and loved living in a big city.  I work with the most wonderful youth group ever, and I have expanded my game playing skills tremendously.  I have fine tuned my cooking skills (still working on the clean up).   There is just so much that I have learned and loved over the past 5 years.   So even though I really don’t feel any love towards Dallas, I do love my time here.  Here’s to the next 5 years!

So yesterday was my day off, and guess what I did when I woke up?  Yep went straight to target and bought season 6 of Gilmore Girls.   I really do love that show.  I mean, I wish at times I could be either Loralai or Rory, I love that they have dark hair, always have great classic clothes and can say the wittiest things around.  See I am not witty at all.  It takes me 5 days to come up with a comeback so when I enter the land of Gilmore Girls, I lose myself in all the comments and references to pop culture.   Greatest things about TV on DVD I can have it on in the background as I do other stuff.

I love September, not just because it means that summer is over and fall is beginning, September also means the start of a new TV season.  I wait all summer for it and finally this Thursday it starts with the new season of Survivor.  Every year I say I am going to watch less TV, but then the new promos for new shows start and I say I will just watch an episode, but then I am hooked.  This year I am looking forward to Studio 60 on the sunset strip, ugly betty, greys anatomy (the summer repeats have me interested), and six degrees.   That is in addition to my current favorites, Gilmore Girls, Lost, 24, Survivor, prison break, and CSI.   I didn’t always watch all those shows, I started watching 24 and survivor with my dear friend Leslie.  And I know that a few shows may be added as friends and family suggest others, and some of the new ones will drop off because I don’t like them.   However I still love my TV.  I probably watch too much TV, but I don’t care, I have a job that I love, I see my friends and even occasionally work out.  I could probably clean more but I live a normal life except I love TV.  There are days I wonder what would happen if I had TIVO or cable, would my life be easier or just more complicated?  You know what else I am looking forward to, finally the release of Beverly Hills 90210 on DVD.  

Growing up in the northwest I took rain for granted.  If you have ever lived in
Oregon,
Washington or
Idaho you know what I mean.  Rain is part of life up there, you keep umbrellas in your car, and you actually own a rain coat and wear it for its intended purpose instead of a fashion statement.  Since leaving
Washington 5 years ago, I haven’t really missed the rain until this past summer.  See at first I was just so excited to live in a warm climate all year round.  However this past summer I have begun to miss the rain of the northwest.  This past summer the weather in
Dallas stayed about 100 degrees for almost a month straight, and we didn’t have any rain for months.  In the last couple of weeks as I drove around, the entire area began to look incredibly ugly.  Everything has turned this ugly brown color. 

 So this past weekend when the clouds came rolling in, I got excited, finally cool weather and rain.  In cruel irony the clouds stayed gray all weekend, but not a drop of rain.  This morning though, I awoke to rain.   All day it rained, just a dark gray day with lots of rain.  I couldn’t wait to get home from work to relax and curl up on the couch.  I made tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich (with Tillamook cheese) curled up on the couch and reread one of my favorite books, The Glass Lake and just watched the rain from my window.  I even just stood out on my deck and watched the rain come down.  This day has made me appreciate the Northwest and the rain.  I hope it is here to stay for at least a few more days!

 

P.S.  I find it odd that I am enjoying this whole blog process, although maybe it is because the only people who read it or no about it is the Linebargers.

So all day at work, I kept hearing other associates say “let me get Caity, she is our expert.”  Here is the funny thing, I do not like espresso at all.  I mean, I can count the times I have had a cup of coffee or an espresso drink on one hand.  However, I spent most of my day explaining the ends and outs of purchasing a $3,200 espresso maker.  I can tell you how to program it, make a latte, an extra strong cup of coffee and even how to clean the machine.  I made 22 cups of cofee for customers today, and during the entire process I am thinking to myself, I really wished I liked this stuff.   It is ironic that one can become an expert at something they dislike so much!

I love books, and I love to read.  I will read most anything or at least give it a good shot.  In fact there are very few books I haven’t finished.  I tend to read a wide variety of books, ranging one minute from a pulitzer prize novel to a summer beach read.  I will take suggestions from almost anyone on books to read, so the other day when a friend from work handed me this latest book, I figured it would be good.  Here is why, every other book she has given me has been excellent, and I had heard incredible things about this author, Jodi Picoult.  However I could not have been more wrong.  I read The Pact by here all day yesterday staying up until 1:30 to finish it.  You may ask why if I didn’t like it did I keep reading?  Because I wanted to believe that somewhere the story was going to change and get better.  It never did, in fact this may be the most horrible book I have ever read in terms of the subject at hand.  Stop reading if you actucally want to read this book someday.  The Pact is about a 17 year old girl who commits suicide with the help of her boyfriend.  However, he survives and the entire book goes back and forth between past and present.  I will say this thought, Jodi  Picoult is an excellent writer, and manages to tell an good story.  I personally found it to be awful, wishing for a good few hours last night that I hadn’t read it at all, and wanting my time back.  I also found myself wishing I could talk to anyone at that moment because it was such a depressing book and that is when I realized that a blog had some good things about it, I could write my thoughts down and get them off my chest…..So now because of this book, I wasted a lot of time yesterday reading and ended up starting a blog.  Two things I don’t really like!

I have never quite gotten the idea of blogging, it seems crazy to me to write random thoughts for everyone to read and comment on!  In fact I have refused to even comment on my friends blogs.  Don’t get me wrong though, I do love reading my friends blogs.  However it never seemed to be for me until last night.   So now all of a sudden I find myself at the computer trying to figure out how to post something and make my blog look like anything special.  We will see..stay tuned for my reason to even start a blog