The Adventures of Kinky Reggae: A Vagabond for Beauty

My favorite meal lately is chips and salsa from Chipotle and a bowl of raspberries. If I have enough points left, I love pretzel M&M's for dessert. I think this meal is even better when eaten on my couch, in my Tinkerbell pajamas, watching football. I am really apathetic about the Superbowl this year. Obviously I'm not going to cheer for the Packers, but I associate the Steelers with Ryan. When Ryan and I got in a fight about a year ago, he said he was thinking about showing up on my doorstep with a cherry limeade to make things better. I think this problem between us is bad enough now that that's what he'd need to do to fix it. When I get married, I think I'm going to serenade my husband with "Can't Help Lovin Dat Man" at our reception. Yesterday I bought Sleeping Beauty at Goodwill for a dollar. The tape didn't work. When I went to exchange it, they had no more copies of Sleeping Beauty left, which makes me sad because now I really want

Faye is here for the weekend! Her boyfriend is at a training/conference thing in Tempe, so she decided to come out and hang out with me. Last night we had a delicious dinner at Pita Jungle, and today we had an adventure in the desert. We drove out of Phoenix through Mesa and the Superstition Mountains all the way out to Globe, which is a cute little artsy town. After some shopping and an amazing lunch at Los Robertos, we stopped to hike at Picket Post. I'm not sure what mountains were were in, but they were gorgeous. I do know that we were in the Tonto National Forest, which I think is funny. Because if you look at the pictures, you will see no trees. I'm wondering if maybe Arizonans don't actually know what a forest is? We stopped along the road to take pictures. When we arrived at the trailhead, this mountain looked soooo far away. An hour later, we were more than halfway up it. I kept taking pictures as we got closer. View from the top... (Well, not actually the top. We

Stephanie took this picture of me at Joshua Tree, and I felt it was very art-y. Never been in an art-y picture before. Kind of like it.

I'm never bored at work. This morning, my day started off with teeny tiny Juanito (who never removes his Spongebob backpack and hoop earrings) getting out of his seat, talking, etc. When I asked him to sit down, his response was, "God, you're pissing me off!" I calmly told him to go to another teacher's room. "Oh, and take your work with you," I added. "F-- no!" was his response. I followed him out in the hall and told him to go to the office. "Fine... silly ass bitch." At this, I cracked up. "Really?" I said. "Really???" "You heard me." His arms were spread wide like he was about to fight me. I laughed my butt off for a while after that one. Later I found out that he did the same thing to the science teacher, who had the same reaction I did. Juan was yelling, "F-- you, you little bitch," and Brian laughed and said, "Really? Boy, I have boots taller than you." During fourth period, Esm

I knew this weekend was going to be a disaster. But this seems to be a theme in my life- I see the train wreck coming from a mile away, but I do nothing to stop it. Ryan texted me last Wednesday and said he had a ticket to the Bears game for me if I could get to Chicago. I told him, "Give me 24 hours. I'm a hustler, homey." I managed to find airfare for $240, which is really cheap, so I knew I had to go. Coming up with the money was really fun. I pawned my Wii and my DS, and the guys at the pawn shop were my BFFs by the time I left. I told them what I was trying to raise money for and apologized that I didn't have some truly sad story, like trying to pay medical bills. They said people lie and make up stuff like that all the time, and that my story was better. After calling around to a few pawn shops, I felt like these guys gave me a fair price, and they were really nice. It was definitely an experience. Then I raced to the Buffalo Exchange, this really great used clo

I have this problem where I don't watch sad/upsetting movies. My friends tease me and we joke about it, but it's not because I'm shallow and don't want to watch anything with substance. It's because those movies affect me too much. The images and ideas stick with me for a long time. There's enough sad stuff in the real world; I don't want to see it for entertainment. I do the ostrich thing in real life, too. I bury my head in the sand and try to ignore all the bad stuff going on. It's not that I don't care. The problem is that I care too much. I know there's all this really bad stuff going on in the world, and I feel like there's nothing I can do, so I don't even want to know. My main source of news, until recently, has been Comedy Central. And while I would argue that Jon Stewart is a valid source, it's obviously not enough. I downloaded the Huffington Post app on iTunes a few weeks ago, and I almost wish I hadn't. I feel overwh

Joshua Tree was otherworldly. That's the best way to describe it. The landscape and vegetation are so unique; I've never seen anything like it. I think the best part of Joshua Tree was the scrambling. There are these huge piles of rocks everywhere, and you can just get out of your car and start climbing on them. (Nina and Stephanie on top of several rock piles.) The girls found a tree to climb, too. We took a nice hike around Hidden Valley. It's almost entirely enclosed by these rock formations. Rustlers used to hide their stolen cattle there. The next stop was Keys Point, from which you could look down on Coachella Valley and see the San Andreas fault. It's that thing that looks like a snake running through the middle of the valley. I just kept thinking, why why why would anyone intentionally live there? You could see several towns in the valley right by the fault. The other thing that was disturbing was the smog, which is obvious in this picture. When you looked t

Nina and Stephanie came to visit this weekend! Quick background- Nina has been one of my best friends since we were 15. I met Rachel (my female soulmate who lives here in Phoenix) through her in high school. Nina and I do not always get along. We're in a good phase right now, I think because we have some space from each other. Also, Nina just seems happier lately. Anyway, I think this girl is the closest thing to a sister I'll experience. Sometimes we love each other, sometimes we hate each other, but like it or not, we're connected and probably will be for the rest of our lives. We've been through some crazy stuff together. And there's an unspoken agreement that no matter how we're feeling about each other at the moment, if something bad happens, we put aside our differences and support each other. Sometimes it's just healthier for both of us to not be around each other. Stephanie and Rachel were friends in high school, and Stephanie and Nina became really

I need two dresses to wear in Vegas. I want to look hot, but not like a whore. Opinions would be appreciated. :) Dress 1 Dress #2 Dress #3 Dress #4 Dress #5 Dress #6

We're about 2 weeks into the New Year. Here's how it's going so far. 1. I lost 3 pounds last week. I'm about 3 pounds away from a pretty big milestone. I'm trying so hard to stick with the Weight Watchers, but Nina and Stephanie will be in town this weekend, which means lots of food and alcohol. Not sure I'll be able to resist. I attempted to work out yesterday. Epic fail. It was my first time in the fitness room at my apartment complex, and I discovered they only had the stupid kind of elliptical I don't like. So I decided to try a treadmill instead. I put it on the interval program, thinking it would be like the elliptical and just raise the incline every so often. I didn't realize that on a treadmill, the interval program speeds you up every so often. So all of a sudden it jumped to almost 10 and I tried to keep up for about 5 seconds, then went flying off. Luckily there was no one around to see this. I think I will stick with yoga at my

For about 35 minutes each day, our school has an intervention period where we are supposed to work with students who need extra help. For the first time this year, it was entirely up to our team how to divide up the students and teaching responsibilities. On other teams, there's one person who figures out where all the students should go. 2 teachers will teach remedial reading, 2 will take remedial math, and one will take enrichment. Typically, teachers on other teams fight for the enrichment spot and will even try to have multiple enrichment classes. It makes sense; not only are these the smart kids, these are the "good" kids. Here's why my team is awesome. Today we met to figure out all this stuff. First of all, it does not fall on one person to do the dividing up of students. Second, everyone wanted to work with the remedial classes. I immediately volunteered to take the lowest readers, because, of course, those are the kids I always wish I had more time wi

A few years ago, I thought I was going to get shanked. Nancy and I were in line for the Peter Pan ride at Disney World, and she was giving me the "I want to stab you in the throat" look. The wait time posted said 90 minutes, but I thought, surely it won't actually take that long. Oh, that line ended up being even more than 90 minutes. And there was a 2-year-old near us who kept grabbing my butt as well as a baby with a dirty diaper in close proximity. Nancy was willing to wait because Peter Pan is one of my favorite movies and rides, but this was pushing her limits. So we started working on lists of New Year's resolutions. I'm surprised by how well I did with my list. I got the job I want, lost weight, dated more, felt more confident, took risks, and figured out some faith issues I'd been having. I even was coming close to meeting some of the financial goals, until I lost my job. It took 2 years to do all those things, so I didn't make any resoluti