Things I'm excited about today...

In no particular order:

1. Finally, it's starting to feel like fall here in Nashville. Today is the first day in about 2 weeks where it hasn't been around 85 degrees, muggy, and raining. Bring on the 60 and 70 degree weather- I'm ready to bust out my sweaters!


2. My girlfriends just got back from a weeklong trip to Ireland (and I'm jealous I wasn't able to join them!) They visited several of the same spots that Will and I went to on our trip, so I'm reliving our vacation through their stories and pictures. What a beautiful country- I can't wait to go back!


3. I can't believe my brother gets married in less than 2 weeks! I am sooo excited to get to Houston and see my family. I have gone far too long without a visit, and I am ready to party with them! I am not excited about the amount of stuff I need to get done in the next 9 days before I leave. So much to do, so little time to do it...


4. I am also extremely excited to see Ale, Francisco, Ale's Mom, and to finally meet my little Chilean niece Isadora. She is cute as a button in the pictures I've seen of her and I can't wait to hold her and squeeze her chubby little cheeks! Look at how precious she is!


5. The Titans, not great so far. Da Bears, doing well. Football season, always awesome.


6. Spray tanning. Look like a golden goddess, but without the nasty side effect of skin cancer. OK, not gonna lie, I've never done it, so I don't think excited is the right word to use here. Apprehensive is better. Has anyone done this before? I have some leftover tan lines that won't exactly match my strapless bridesmaid dress, and I think spray tanning would be the quickest, most effective way to deal with the problem. But with my luck, I'll end up looking like Ross in that episode of Friends. No good. If anyone has any advice/words of wisdom about this area I'd love to hear from you!

Blogger's block

I haven't been in the mood to blog lately. Have any other fellow bloggers shared that sentiment? It's not that we haven't been up to fun and exciting things. As a matter of fact, we've been doing lots of fun and exciting things, here in Nashville and out of town. I just haven't had the urge to sit down and write about them.

And today, I fear, isn't the day to write about them, either. I had every intention of filling in my eager followers with grand stories of, among other things, all things sports-related. Stories like going hiking in one of Tennesse's many state parks, returning to the city where my love of stadium nachos began and taking in a Cardinals game in St. Louis, cheering on the Predators at their first pre-season game of the hockey season, catching the Bears games at our new neighborhood watering hole (and where other Bears fans seem to congregate as well, making the atmosphere that much more fun to watch the game), and attending the first (official) home game of the Titans season.

I was also going to tell the blogging world about Mom, Molly, and Ella's trip to "Nashvittal" to go dress shopping for Molly's wedding, and about Ella's first honky tonking experience.

I was going to share the stresses of getting ready for Andy's wedding, which is just 19 short days from now. And let you know that Molly and Kelsey moved their wedding date up to January 2nd. Apparently the Wingard kids like to fire out weddings in rapid succession.

I planned on letting you know that zumba is still my exercise drug of choice, even if I have somewhat failed to attend classes as often the past couple weeks. (All the above-mentioned sporting events seem to fall on zumba days. Replacing exercise with stadium nachos and beer is a good trade-off, no?)

On the home-front, I was going to share with everyone the fact that that stupid smoke detector is STILL beeping!!! And that I'm starting to feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway. (You know how he turned that volleyball into a person and talked to it, and then freaked out when he thought he lost it? The smoke detector and I have a similar relationship. It chirps and chirps and chirps at me all day long and drives me crazy. But sometimes, when I haven't heard it chirp for awhile, I start to freak out that maybe it officially died on me. Inevitably, the chirping returns. Anndddd, we are back to square one.)

I would probably also let everyone know that we are hunting for the perfect entertainment center to house the 56 inch television (that we don't have) so we can watch endless amounts of movies (since we don't have cable.)

Yup, I was going to tell great stories about all those things, but I'm just not in the mood. Maybe sometime later this week.

Home sweet home

Sometimes it can take awhile before your place of residence feels like home.

I had my "Eureka! I'm home!" moment around 1:00 AM this morning. I frequently get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, and have to turn on the bathroom light to avoid stubbing my toe, taking out the shower curtain, failing to put the lid up before going (OK, eww- for the record, I've never failed to put the lid up before going...at least when sober...), etc...

Last night, however, I stumbled out of bed in the darkness to use the restroom, and successfully found the toilet paper without needing to turn the light on!

Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night without needing a light= home. It's the little things that make my day.

Guilt.

Will complained to me the other day that I don't use my nice, shiny, beautiful KitchenAid mixer nearly enough. Translation: "Make me cookies, woman."

The problem? I'm attempting to count calories and eat healthier. Quite frankly, the temptation of having baked goods in the house is far too great for my mediocre will power to handle. I've avoided baking cookies for that very reason. But today, the guilt of being a bad house-girlfriend caught up to me, because Will is right. I really don't use my mixer as frequently as I promised I would when I squeeled with excitement as I opened said-mixer on my birthday a few months ago.

The solution? I made Will a batch of chocolate chip cookies this evening...with oatmeal.

Oatmeal equals healthy. Good compromise, no?

In no particular order...

• So our beeping smoke detector? 2 weeks later...and it's still beeping. I've learned to tune it out.



• Hello, my name is Meaghan, and I'm addicted to zumba. Zumba is like a latin music dance party/aerobic workout and it has you sweating and gyrating in no time flat. It's also like a drug. You become addicted and HAVE to zumba. All the time. I go to 3 different YMCA's in the course of a week, just to zumba. Zumba reminds me of my younger years, when I was shaking my thang in the clubs of Madrid. Sigh. To be young again...



• Speaking of young, Will and I went on an "urban" hike yesterday. We were big into urban hiking when we lived in Denver. On the weekends we would just wander around the city, exploring different parks and neighborhoods. Yesterday we had every intention to spend the day sunning on the boat, but the weather chose to not cooperate with us- 70 and overcast, while not great boating weather, is perfect for urban hiking. We walked from our place to Centennial Park, then meandered through Vanderbilt's campus before heading back downtown. It was move-in weekend on Vandy's campus. Is it just me or have college freshman grown younger? I remember moving into my dorm at SLU freshman year. I felt all grown up. The "students" I saw moving in yesterday resembled 8th graders to me.



• And while I'm on this soapbox- we saw moving vans being unloaded yesterday at the dorms. Moving vans!! What?! And no, these students were not moving into apartments- they were moving into on-campus housing, which, I'm willing to bet- comes furnished. I'm usually not into the whole "When I was your age" argument, BUT...When I was your age and moved into my dorm, I packed darn near everything I owned into several boxes that fit in the back of my mom's car. Ugh. I'll stop now because I'm at risk of sounding like a bitter old lady who is jealous of all those freshman who are at the beginning of what will turn out to be some of the greatest years of their lives. Moving on...



• Want to play a fun drinking game? Will and I invented one on Saturday night. When watching Pineapple Express, take one drink for every person who takes a hit of a doobie for each scene. If you've seen that movie before, you'll understand why Will and I nearly cleaned our fridge of beer over the course of a 2 hour long movie. And PS- James Franco makes a hilarious burn-out. Hard to believe it's the same guy from the Spiderman movies.



• I've been too busy chasing zumba classes around the city to have done much else the past couple weeks. But I did want to share a fun video that I found on YouTube. The stuff you can find on that site! In honor of the Vandy kids returning to school:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngKKnmDFbug

Life in a loft...perplexing issue #1

We wondered this when we moved in...and now we are experiencing it firsthand.

How does one go about changing the batteries in a smoke detector that has been beeping (annoyingly, I might add) since Saturday morning?

In a home with typical 8 or 10 foot ceilings, a step ladder would do the trick. In a home with 18 foot ceilings, however, this issue becomes a bit more complicated.

To be continued...

Dear Coffee,

You are delicious. I am enjoying my 2nd cup of the day. I usually keep the coffee maker in hiding in a cabinet so as to not clutter the countertops, but I busted it out on Sunday morning...and it's not going back to the cabinet anytime soon. There's nothing like a cup of coffee to make your morning a little bit nicer.


We bought a table last night! Technically it's a poker table for our game room, but it is going to serve as our dining room table for awhile. We could have bought the dining room table that we have had our eyes on, but the poker table was a steal of a deal, so we couldn't refuse. Will is picking it up today, so we should have fun assembling it this evening. I'm so looking forward to eating our meals on a table (not the ottoman that we are currently eating all our meals on!)


Now it's back to saving again until we can afford to buy our next piece of furniture. We're pretty excited about this bed from Z Gallerie- maybe in a few months we'll be ready to actually buy it!