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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Embracing My Inner Old Person

I would like to introduce you all to a friend of mine:



This is my shopping cart. Yes, I have an old lady shopping cart at age 23. And I think it's awesome! I haven't come up with a name for it yet, since I'm apparently not creative at all when it comes to making up names for anything (watch out, future offspring). But Shopping Cart makes my life so much easier! If I don't have a car to go grocery shopping, it's a life saver. Even if I do have the car, Shopping Cart will still help me carry everything upstairs. Still think I'm weird? Let me see YOU lug four bags of groceries (including a gallon of milk) across a parking lot full of maniacs, then play Frogger crossing Rockville Pike, then walk back to your apartment, go up the elevator 11 flights, and around the corner to the very end of the hall. I bet you would wish you had Shopping Cart with you, too.

And that is the only part of my life that even slightly resembles being an old person..........

Okay, who am I kidding? There are actually several parts of my life that make my loved ones wonder, and sometimes make myself wonder, if I am actually 90 years old.

As many of you know, I'm a pretty active person. I love being on the move, trying new things, being around people, and I'm finally getting some semblance of a social life back now that I'm living on my own. I'm even starting the process (yes, it's turning out to be a bit of a process) of signing up for Events and Adventures, the singles activity slash dating club (well hello, Future Husband, you look rather dashing in your hiking/kayaking/skydiving/happy hour attire). But I'm all about balance in life, and sometimes you just need to take a little break from all the crazy hustle and bustle. For me, sometimes that means doing things ever-so-slightly differently than the average 23-year old.

Take right now, for example. As I write this post (actually, as I've written just about all of my posts), my Pandora station of choice is the Frank Sinatra station. I LOVE Frank Sinatra and all those crooners from back in the day. There's even a Frank Sinatra station that normally plays in the lobby of my apartment building, making it incredibly difficult to leave for work in the mornings. Instead I just want to curl up with a book in the comfy chairs in the lounge and bask in those wonderful sounds.



I also love drinking tea in the evenings. I'm drinking a cup right now in fact, a scrumptiously soothing cup of Earl Grey tea. And yes, for those that are going to point out the obvious, I realize that this blog is called Heather's Coffee Break and not Tea Break. Get over it. If I actually managed to write in the morning I would be drinking coffee. I love them both!




That's not so bad, right? Frank Sinatra and tea? I actually know several people that enjoy both of those things!

But wait, there's more...

Sometimes I would love to just be sitting in a rocking chair, on a porch, overlooking some gorgeous landscape, wrapped in a blanket AND sipping tea (or coffee). Any one of these could totally be me when I'm actually an old person:







And aside from relaxing, what about my mini panic attacks when I'm up past 11 on a work night? It's ok to worry about that, right, getting a good night's sleep? Totally normal...

I feel like I could go on and on, but 11 PM is approaching faster and faster and I'm already starting to get a little antsy. But let's face it, there's a part of me that's just an old person at heart. But you know what? I'm totally OK with that. I have fun in life, but I enjoy my down time as well. So rather than trying to fight my inner old person, I'm just going laugh at it and embrace it.

Side note for my worrisome loved ones: I promise I don't actually play Frogger on Rockville Pike. I'm a good girl and use the crosswalk (although let's be real, even that can be like Frogger sometimes)!!!

Side note 2: when I did an image search on Google for a clock showing 11:00, all of the pictures that came up were showing other times. Really, Google? Really?




Frank Sinatra photo from imdb.com. 
Tea photo from http://www.loosetealeaf.com/blog/
Rocking chair cartoons from http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/r/rocking_chair.asp


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

A Weekend of Epicness

Gahh I have so many awesome things to write about from the last few days...but I don't have any time!! My deadline of Tuesday night is quickly dwindling away, and I'm just now starting to write at 10:30 PM! Is this what happens when life gets busy again? My blog has to suffer??? Oh well, hopefully I'll get better about managing my time and schedule better for the next post, but for now I'll just have to do my best writing as quickly as possible so that I can actually get a good night's sleep.

In a way, my weekend started on Thursday night. Thirsty Thursdays, wooo!!! Yeahhh, no. Not really. My Thursday was a bajillion million zillion times better than that....

I GOT TO SEE MUMFORD AND SONS LIVE IN CONCERT!!!!!



I went with Dad, Kathy, and my friend Katie Purple, and I don't think there are enough words to properly capture how epic that show was. We were all completely blown away. Awesome and amazing were the two main words that kept coming out of my mouth but they didn't do the show nearly enough justice. I think my high energy and continuously enormous smile throughout the entire the next day, despite the fact that I was running on 4 hours of sleep and had to endure the day at work, spoke much more. Mumford and Sons are absolutely incredible performers, highly entertaining, and even better live than on their albums...and their albums are pretty darn good. We had awesome center seats and for part of the encore they came back to this little platform that was RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!!! One of the band members even waved at me!! I haven't been to many concerts, but this is by far the best one I've been to and it made my dad's top 3 list. Such an amazing night. 


Friday night I went from a loud concert hall to silence...literally. I drove to Upper Marlboro for my very first "silent" retreat. Why do I put that in quotations you may ask? Well, a few of us may have decided to talk a bit when we were back in our rooms. Did they really expect an all-women's retreat to be completely silent? But I have to say, having the majority of the weekend in silence was actually really nice. It was exactly what I needed to take a step back from my hectic life and give God more of the attention He deserves. Getting to talk to the girls occasionally was nice, too, and I think we managed to keep it at a nice balance. 

There were two particularly funny things from the retreat, though. 1. The "thing to do" was to get tea or coffee. It was so cold this weekend that we couldn't really walk around without freezing to death, we couldn't talk, and most of our activities involved sitting. You wanted something to do, you got tea. 2. As soon as an all-women's silent retreat ends, it gets VERY loud. 30 women who haven't been talking all weekend need to get as much speech in as they can!!

In all seriousness, though, I wish I had more time to write about this retreat and give it the attention it deserves. It truly was very beautiful, and even though I was hesitant about a silent retreat in the beginning, I'm very glad I went. I was also pleasantly surprised that several of the other women there were around my age, and I'm so glad I got the chance to meet them and hope we can all keep in touch [sadly no pictures for this part of the weekend, though :( ].

And finally, tonight. It's not exactly the weekend anymore since it's...well, Tuesday...and since I had to go back to work today (womp womp). But something exciting did happen...I finally made stuffed peppers for the first time and they were AMAZING!!! It was sort of a spontaneous decision while I was in the grocery store, but I'm so glad I went with it...despite the fact that I didn't eat dinner until almost 9:00 PM. I haven't been cooking anything besides quickie meals lately and I missed real cooking, so tonight was the night. My roommate Carolyn and I enjoyed dinner and a glass of wine and it was oh so yummy. Feast your eyes on this glorious-ness: 


NOMS. 

Monday, February 11, 2013

A Post for the Sake of a Post

Well, folks, it looks like that time has come. I knew at some point there would be a time when it would be much more difficult to keep up with my blog post a week goal, and this is that week. Not only do I have almost complete writer's block, but I feel like I hardly have any time. This week is going to be a fun one, but a very busy one as well. I have something going on every single day after work as well as throughout my entire long weekend. Trying to sit down and come up with something entertaining to write about just seems like such a daunting task.

And yet, before I finally sat down and started writing this, I was pretty much just procrastinating for half an hour. I had a very productive evening when I got home, but once things finally slowed down, I just sat on the couch and stared into space...and then at my many split ends (which apparently only white girls get by the way, according to my coworkers. They had a hard time grasping that the ends actually split). I could have also used that time to get some more chores done as well, but of course that didn't happen. Procrastination can just be so much easier than productivity!

Still, I figured I still needed to write something and I probably won't have time to do it tomorrow for my Tuesday deadline, so here I am. It's kind of like those days when you have to force yourself to workout even when you really don't want to. It's kind of a half-assed workout, but hey, at least it's something. That's kind of how this blog post is. It's not that I don't want to write, because if I had it my way I would do this all day every day. It's just one of those nights where the creative juices just don't seem to be flowing.

So while I brainstorm next week's hopefully much better post, here are some of my random thoughts for your enjoyment. Or boredom. Or brain cell destruction. Who knows, let me know how it works out for you when you're done:

1. THE POPE IS RESIGNING!!! I couldn't go without mentioning this since this crazy news just came out today. Oh Benny, how we'll miss you. It's also crazy to think about how I was living history just 5 years ago with my friends and classmates when he came to visit CUA. So. Awesome.
2. Speaking of working out, I should probably do that. Those 30 crunches I did this morning count, right?
3. I tried to kill a bug in my bathroom with a roll of paper towels. I knocked him off the wall, but then he just crawled into a little crack where I couldn't get to him. Stupid little bugger. And I also wasted a paper towel because there is NO WAY I'm going to use a paper towel that touched a bug.
4. Now I feel bad about wasting a paper towel. Two actually. There are poor people in this world that could probably think of a million things they could do with each of those paper towels. #firstworldproblems #guilttrip
5. I don't understand hashtags. I don't even have a Twitter. None of it makes any sense, but for whatever reason they're still fun to use.
6. I got to talk to a nun with an Australian accent today. Need I say more?
7. Half of the strawberries I bought this weekend turned out to be moldy and/or squishy. In order to make the most out of the remaining good ones, I decided to make strawberry sauce. Pretty much made it just like applesauce, but with strawberries. It's not bad, we'll see how it works as a breakfast topper.
8. Why am I still writing this? It's after 11:00 PM and I have to get up early tomorrow. Sigh...
9. I plan to write a post soon about "Embracing my inner old person." It's going to contain several awesome topics, including the minor panic attacks that I have when I stay up past 11 on a work night and listening to the Frank Sinatra Pandora station on a regular basis. Neither of which I happen to be doing at this very moment.......
10. I promise I'm actually an active 23 year old! I'm even going to a concert this week!! Yay, youthfulness! See, I'm not old yet! Right?....RIGHT???

Ok, well that's enough of my random insanity for now. Hopefully something more solid for you all next week!


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

"Les Mis": A Unique Theatrical Experience

When the lights came back on in the theater on Saturday night, my friends eagerly turned to me and asked the ultimate question: "So what did you think?" My response...

"It was OK."

The truth of the matter is that I walked into "Les Miserables" wanting to love it. I was going to this movie with friends that were seeing it for the second time...and you know that a movie must be good if there are people willing to pay $12 for it more than once. But as I sat through the 3-hour long mega musical, while I did find myself enjoying it, I wasn't blown away by it like the rest of the world was.

And then something interesting happened. For the next three days, I found myself thinking about this movie all the time. The themes within it, the characters, plot twists, theatrics - I kept going back and thinking over the meaning of everything and wanting to pick it apart and analyze it like one of the many books I mentally devoured in my days as an English major. Every time a movie keeps me thinking that much I realize that it's had an impact on me, and I suddenly realized that I did, in fact, want to see "Les Mis" again.

 As I've thought it over more, I think I've come to realize that the main reason I only thought the movie was OK was because I wasn't prepared for the theatricality of it. It's something unlike anything I had seen before, and sometimes when you come across something different you're not sure what to make of it right away...but how sometimes it does eventually grow on you. So here are my thoughts on the movie, both those points that I may not have appreciated as much right off the bat, as well as the more important points that have stuck with me since: 

The Sticky Spots (aka my slightly more childish side trying to handle an intense movie)

  • Your typical musical has a dozen or so main songs and the rest of the story is normal conversation. This movie/play is just about all singing, including the parts when people are just having a conversation. As much as I love music, I found myself breathing a mental sigh of relief each time there was a snippet of normal speech.
  • It was a little too long. While the movie did keep my attention throughout its entirety, three hours in one sitting is just too long for me - I get far too fidgety and movie theater seats aren't that comfortable. Two and a half hours, fine. Three - I've hit my breaking point. Why do you think I had to watch the "Lord of the Rings" movies in two sittings each?
  • Multiple people singing at once. As beautiful as their voices were musically, these scenes made my band geek side and my English major side clash. Music - very pretty! Words - I can't tell what they're saying! What's going on in the story???
  • It really irked me that the story was based in France and all the characters had British accents. While I probably enjoyed listening to the British accents more than I would have French ones, it lost an authenticity brownie point in my book. 
  • The cheesy Shakespearean-esque love story between Cosette and Marius. It had its plus points, mostly because I'm a sucker for cheesy love stories, but for the most part this one just annoyed me. Amanda Seyfried just annoys me in general, though, so that could be why.
The Awesome Parts (aka where my nerdy/artsy/literary side comes out and I see the beauty in the movie)
  • The quality of the movie as a whole really was incredible. The theatrics were flawless and the music was amazing. I'm still blown away by the fact that everyone sang their parts live during filming and the songs weren't prerecorded. I now know why it's been nominated for so many awards. 
  • LOVED the character evolution. I could write an entire blog post just on this, but for now I'll keep it simple. Jean Valjean and Javert (the two main characters) were especially intriguing, but all the supporting characters were really interesting to follow as well. 
  • The overall story line. Let's face it, it's a great story. It keeps you hooked the whole time and the plot is very well-developed.
  • The religious themes. This in particular is the reason I kept thinking about this movie. Jean Valjean is Christian love personified, and I have to admit that his role was truly inspiring. My roommate, however (one of my friends who has now seen it twice), also pointed out the fascinating contrast between Jean and Javert - how the two practice the same religion but do so in such different ways. While she pointed it out to me (and while I'm slightly disappointed I didn't think about it more myself to begin with), I've taken it and run with it. Maybe another post on this sometime as well. 
  • The influence of love. The story circulates around misery and a country in shambles, but the acts of love and the impacts that they have on the main characters are absolutely remarkable. This aspect of the movie is also something else I can add to my list of things currently influencing me to love more in my own life. 
As I finish up this post, I'm realizing that the more I write about the awesome parts, the more I want to see this movie again. Who knows, maybe some day I will be one of those people that falls in love with it. 

End note: for those of you that have neither seen the play or read the book (like me), or are hesitant to see the movie, I still recommend that you go. Just be prepared for a very different movie experience than one you might normally have.