a lack of pleasantries

Now that it's been two weeks since I've written a real post, it's really hard to remember what exactly has gone on. The past week is still pretty clear in my mind, but the week before is a bit hazy.

I did get to go to a hockey game with Alyssa the weekend before last. Its always fun to get the chance to go to games, and its especially nice to go with my sister. I still can't put into words the crazy feeling I get when we start to sing "Varsity." In high school, I was never much for school spirit, but there is something about UW-Madison that just inexplicably takes over you. Ohhhh, Bucky.

I also sketched out the next painting for my series that I am going to put on my wall in my bedroom. [The one of Alyssa and I, all in varying scale of magenta, is the first.] Unfortunately, I got so busy with other things this week that I haven't been able to actually start any painting yet.

This week was pretty busy, as I briefly mentioned in the last post. I had to run my team meetings for this month at work. I always make a snack for the meetings, and this time I decided to make puppy chow. I have 24 people on my team right now, and not being a puppy chow connoisseur, I decided to make a quadruple batch and ended up with tons of it. However, my coworkers were pretty pleased with my mishap.

Some of my friends from work also had a gathering this week where we all got together to play video games. Somehow the boys talked me into baking a cake for the occasion, and so I made a cake to look like the 1-up mushroom from Super Mario Bros. [He grants you an extra life, who couldn't want that?!?]

Dark chocolate cake with raspberry filling

At the last minute I decided to request off on Thursday to go snowboarding at Cascade since I haven't gone at all this season. When I woke up on Thursday and it was slightly snowing, I thought that it couldn't have worked out better. OH was I terribly wrong. I ended up leaving Madison much later than intended, and had to go back home after forgetting my boarding jacket. My plan was to go snowboarding Thursday evening, stay at my parents' house, drop my car off to be checked out at the repair shop in Portage on Friday morning, and head back to Madison later Friday evening. My car had been acting up, the heat has been iffy and I had to refill the antifreeze the day before, so I was going to get that checked out.

Within the first 10 minutes of the trip, it was obvious that the heat was not working at all. I could see my breath and was shivering. Luckily, my snowboard bag had a bunch of extra handwarmers in it, so I busted those out and put them in my shoes and my mittens for the drive. Halfway to Portage, my car began to overheat. I got off the interstate immediately and was able to get to a gas station where I refilled it with more antifreeze. I made it safely to Portage, where I dropped my car off and waited for my mom to come and pick me up. Needless to say, I didn't get to go snowboarding. [My mom did however take my to Culvers, where I was more than disappointed to find that they no longer have the pumpkin shakes. Another letdown.]

Friday I discovered, much to my dismay, that the water pump is bad on my car and it is not currently driveable. Even worse, it will cost a nice chunk of change and will not be fixed until sometime next week. Luckily the place I take it to is ridiculously nice and super dependable so they gave me a loaner car until mine is fixed. But, don't stop there! I found out later that the transmission was also leaking fluid. Let's just say I didn't get much good news over the weekend. 

Saturday was filled with lots of plans. I met Steph and Jake and Lisa and her husband for breakfast at Hubbard. Seeing as I hadn't been there in like 2 weeks, it was quite a treat. Afterwards I picked up Alyssa and we went to the east side where we met our family for a birthday lunch with both sets of grandparents and our parents. [Happy birthday Grampa T, Grampa L, and Alyssa!!!] Then immediately after that I had plans with another friend, so I was going pretty much non-stop on Saturday. 

I also bought a gym membership! I've been feeling realllllly lazy, and I was at the point where I knew I needed to do something about it. So I splurged and signed up. The gym is about a 4 minute drive from my apartment, and it is open 24/7. This location has only been open since the end of the summer, and all of the equipment is almost brand new. Each cardio machine has a TV on it that you can plug your headphones into, and all kinds of other fancy media options. Its nice and open, and since I usually go later at night (I usually don't get there before 1130 pm), there are hardly any people there. This works perfectly with my work schedule, since I work late and have a hard time getting up in the morning to go work out. [In fact, I just returned home from working out.] 

I am off to read a bit before bed. Sorry again for the lapse in posting, and THANK YOU for reading!