Zombie Jesus Day

For the second year in a row, I'm away from my family on Easter.  Last year I was in Puerto Rico, and now I'm in Florida. Since I'm not religious, Easter doesn't hold much spiritual weight for me.  Still, it's hard to be away from family on days like this.  I think part of growing up means starting your own traditions, even if they only stick for a year.

My day started watching the Chicago Blackhawks play the Detroit Red Wings in NBC's Game of the Week... ON TV!! For most games I have to listen to the WGN Radio online stream, and it always feels like a treat to watch the few national broadcasts.  My dad got me hooked on the sport before I can even remember. Watching and listening to hockey connects me to home like few things do.  I sat in my living room in my Blackhawks sweater watching Chicago score goal after goal after goal.... repeat that four more times! Final score: 7-1.

Later in the day, a few friends came over for a Rum Ham! I wanted an excuse to make this recipe by my favorite food blogger, Dan over at The Food In My Beard, and Easter seemed like a good enough excuse.  The recipe was inspired by an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia where Frank simultaneously eats and gets drunk via a rum-soaked ham.  We felt it only proper to watch that and a few more episodes while eating our meal.  The Rum Ham was a HUGE hit, and our guests brought some other kick-ass sides.  Needless to say, we were all stuffed!  Not bad for a last-minute get together!  I only wish I had remembered to take a few "before pictures" of our spread.

The after...... RUM HAM!!!

I closed out the evening watching The Walking Dead season finale.  Jesus is kind of the world's most famous Zombie (get it? he rose from the dead!...) so it seemed fitting.  Season three ended much more poignantly than season two.  I really missed watching it with my late-night crew in the conference room in Puerto Rico.  At least my friend, Chris and I were able to chat online while it aired.  It's always fun to banter about the scenes with someone.

It was a great way to end the day, and a great day to end the month.  February and March have been a little emotionally dodgy for me.  This month I especially slacked on my blog.  In April I'd like to do better, and I'm challenging myself to write every day.  And if not on every day, then encompassing every day.  I think April going to be a better month filled with excitement...and not just because of my birthday ;)

Traveling At 30,000 Feet

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your author typing.  Good evening and welcome aboard this google-hosted Blogcraft.  We’d like you to take a moment and familiarize yourself with the following description of a typical day in airline travel.  Thank you for choosing our blog, and we hope you enjoy your read. 

Your journey back to Gainesville begins at Chicago Midway.  Since Midway is a busy airport, we ask that you print all boarding passes before arriving and avoid the check-in line all together.  Proceed to security and remove your shoes, jacket, clear ziplock bag of 4 oz liquids, and laptop computer like a boss.  Step into the full-body scanner, raise your arms, and give your best Clint Eastwood face.  Once you have ensured TSA that you have no firearms, explosives, chemical weapons, or illegal narcotics on your person, gather your belongings and locate your departure terminal.

Waiting areas are available for your convenience until your flight begins to board.  Each waiting area is equipped with “that person” who may or may not be flying for the first time. He or she will be overly concerned with every aspect of air travel including, but not limited to: PA announcements that don’t apply to her, whether her digital iPad tickets will work, why people are already lining up to board, if they and their luggage will all fit on the aircraft, and making generally annoying comments.  For your own sanity, we ask that you avoid this person at all costs.

You may notice an increase in noise level on this aircraft if most of your previous flights have departed during the morning hours. Passengers can be more alert at chatty in the afternoon and early evening.  Our outgoing passengers will use this opportunity to bond with the person next to them for the duration of this flight.  However, we’d like to remind our more introverted passengers who prefer quiet flights that fashioning a noose from oxygen mask straps is strongly discouraged.   Instead, insert your earbuds and commence “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” podcasts when we allow the use of approved electronic devices.

Both of your flights today include complimentary beverage service.  Your choices are listed in the images below.

Also goes well with our damn delicious Biscoff cookies

Upon arrival in Atlanta, take a moment to locate your connecting flight terminal, which is as far from your current terminal as possible.  Stay calm. Your 2.5-hour layover gives you ample time to navigate the airport.  You may also use this time to refill your water bottle, eat the dinner you packed, and draft blog posts on you laptop.

By this time, your flight will be delayed for unknown reasons.  You can now listen to the Blackhawks game on your WGN Radio app.  As a reminder, you’ll need to contact your roommate once you reach your final destination, and apps eat battery power like a fat kid at a buffet.  You may use the one of the power stations located near your terminal to keep your electronics fully charged.

Once we begin boarding the late flight back to Gainesville, passengers will be quieter.  It should make for an easy, quick trip.  Estimated arrival is 11:30 PM local time.  It should give you plenty of time to repack and get a few hours of sleep before catching the field work shuttle at 5:45 in the morning.  We'll begin our decent to the end of this blog post shortly.  Please return your laptop screens to their upright positions and stow yourself securely under the covers.  From all of us here at The Quarter-life Chronicles, thanks for reading, and we hope you have a great day.

C'mon, Get Happy!

I've seen quite a bit of buzz around the internet for The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  Samantha owns it, so I decided to give it a read.  Rubin spends a year finding ways to maximize happiness in her everyday life.  She isolates twelve topics, one for each month, and sets related "resolutions" for each topic.  The book is part memoir of her year and part repository for all of her research of what other people have thought and written about happiness.

You can also check out the accompanying Happiness Project blog

I don't know if I'll ever launch my own Happiness Project, but it definitely made me mindful of the things that make me happy.  Of all the parts of this book that I related to my own life, four take-away messages stood out most:

• Growth and progress are important for happiness: I have noticed that the things I enjoy the most are ones where I can measure my improvement or that give me a sense of accomplishment.

• Make time for the things that make me happy: So often we get wrapped up with work and other errands that we think we don't have time for hobbies.  But one hour is only 4% of the day.  With that perspective, setting aside even a little time to read a book, paint, or bake cupcakes doesn't seem like a difficult commitment.

• I can't do everything, but I can always do something: I have a multitude of interests, and sometimes I feel overwhelmed that I can't pursue them all.  I wish I was a better piano player, a better skier, had my SCUBA certification, could bake killer fruit pies, and knew how to drive a rally racecar.  Some of these are more feasible than others.  Spending time testing out new recipes will still make me happy, even if I never learn to drift a Subaru.  However...

• "When the student is ready, the teacher appears": If I really cannot get rally racing out of my head, I'm sure at some point I will stumble across a racing school or meet someone who is into stunt driving.  It's happened recently with biking.  I started riding my bike more and ended up meeting other women who are into mountain biking.  Just one example of many that illustrates how keeping an open mind about an interest has helped me see the opportunities that are around me.

Although I didn't always agree with or relate to the author, I enjoyed this book and got a lot out of it.  I would recommend it to anyone who is content with their life but feel as if something is missing.  And you should absolutely read this book if you find yourself sitting home on friday nights lamenting how bored you are.  You clearly could be doing more with your life.

Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos Are Here!

I don't eat fast food often. But when I do, it's usually at Taco Bell. A little over a year or so ago. Taco Bell released the Doritos Locos taco in nacho cheese flavor. As anyone with a discerning palate can tell you, Cool Ranch is really the superior Doritos flavor. So I decided to patiently wait until taco bell came to its senses before trying a Doritos loco taco. I knew it would only be a matter of time.

Last summer my trusted food blog reported the Cool Ranch DLT popping up in test markets across the country. Then, just after new year, Taco Bell finally announced a nationwide release date. My countdown had started.

Today, my wait ended, and I triumphantly purchased my first Doritos Locos taco.  It was as delicious as anything from Taco Bell could be.  Adequately seasoned meat that is probably 30% TVP, shredded processed cheese, and almost crisp iceberg lettuce adorned a crunchy shell subtly enhanced with Cool Ranch flavor.  It was everything I expected a Doritos-wrapped Taco Bell taco would be and nothing more.  I was delighted.

This photo is titled: "Simple Pleasures"

It's all about the red and green flavor flecks.  

Now that I have fulfilled my Cool Ranch flavor loyalty, I might even try the Nacho Cheese tacos.  However, I think the Cool Ranch DLT has found a place among my standard menu lineup.  The next time you need a drive-thru fix, do yourself a favor and give one of these bad boys a whirl.

Kara's Super Spontaneous Visit

In a delightfully unexpected turn of events, my friend Kara came to visit last week!  She had originally planned on coming in early April.  But this week lined up with her work better.  Sunday she messaged Sam and told her she would be flying in... Monday night! What?!  The three of us went to college together and it was fun little reunion.

I hadn't seen Kara in probably about three years.  Since my schedule is so flexible right now, I was able to rearrange my week and spend a lot of time with her.  Kara has clear goals when she travels: to get "the history, the culture, and the nature." And I think we did a pretty good job of finding all those things.  After working Tuesday morning, I met her at the Florida Natural History Museum on campus.  We finished exploring, then walked across to the Art Museum.  Both museums are fantastic, and they're free!!  We grabbed lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon geocaching while waiting for Samantha to finish work.  It's been a while since I've been 'caching.  Searching is so much more enjoyable when I go with someone else.  And we got into some pretty interesting places...

...like this truck!

"Where is it?!" (we eventually found it :D ) 

On Wednesday, Sam was able to take a half day off work, and the three of us took a trip to St. Augustine, the U.S.'s oldest city.  After a delicious lunch at the Floridian, we spent the afternoon wandering around some shops and eventually made it to Castillo de San Marcos.  This oldest stone fort was originally built during Spanish occupation of Florida. It was traded back and forth of British rule. Then the United States gained control when Spain sold Florida to the U.S.  Historic sites like this are always fun to explore, but Kara added a new level of excitement shouting, "The British are coming!!" from the top of the walls.

Vantage point atop the fort

We wandered around after the fort closed, eventually finding ourselves on the beach listening to the breaking waves of the Atlantic Ocean.  I miss being so close to a large body of water and was just a little sad when we started our drive back to Gainesville.

Thursday, Kara and I set out on a day hike in Ocala National Forest.  The ranger station recommended The Yearling Trail.  This six mile loop winds though the land where the Long family build their homesteads in the mid 1850's.  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings also spent some time here, and her visits inspired her book The Yearling.  The movie adaptation was later filmed on site.  Neither Kara nor I have read the book or watched the movie, but after hiking the trail, we both intend to do so.  Historic spots mark the trail including the family cemetery.  This is the first time that I've seen coins on top of gravestones.  I looked it up, and it seems to carry the same superstition as tossing coins into a fountain.  Who knew?

Coins on top of the Long family gravestones

Halfway through the trail, we found the perfect lunch spot in a dry fen.  We sat under a beautiful sunny sky, enjoying our lunch and a couple beers.  Kara liked the spot so much that she left her phone there so we would have to hike back! 

The view from our lunch spot

We drove back to Gainesville in time to grab Sam and head to dinner at Satchels, an eclectic pizza place.  Unfortunately, Kara had to leave early Friday morning.  All three of us wished she could have stayed longer, especially so Sam could have spent more time with us.  I'm so glad that she could visit at all though.  Kara has such a light-hearted, fun-loving nature.  I think her visit came at the perfect time.  We had a fantastic week, and I was able to forget a lot of the things that have been stressful and just be silly for a while.  We're both stumbling through different life decisions, but I think she has a really good mantra: do what you love, and things will fall into place.  I'm thankful to have a friend that can remind me of that, and I hope that I get to see her again soon.

Its Something Unpredictable...

Today marks the 10th anniversary of one of the worst days of my life.  March 1, 2003, I found out that my cousin, Pat, the first best friend I ever had, committed suicide.  It seems like a long time ago, but only if you measure it in terms of years.  That day and the few days after are still unmistakably vivid.  So vivid that sometimes after reflecting on them, I'm shocked to look in the mirror and find that I'm not fifteen anymore.  Surely something that I still remember so strongly couldn't have happened ten years ago.

That event has always been the one that drew the line in the sand.  My life changed.  I started to grow up, become more sensitive, recognize what was really happening in the world around me.  Looking back at those ten years, I see everything in my life that stems from that day.  But its a little blurred now. Sometimes its hard to tease apart what resulted from trauma and how my fifteen-year-old self would have changed anyway.

One thing that I do know these last ten year have taught me is the difference between celebrating life and memorializing tragedy.  Pat died on February 28, which is also my dad's birthday.  For the first few years after, I felt an inner emotional struggle when we celebrated.  It was hard to be happy when I wanted to hide in my room and cry.  I didn't realize that I was slowing changing until last year.  I remembered my dad's birthday, but didn't remember what else that day stood for until late that night.  I was upset with myself. I thought it meant that I was forgetting Pat all together.  But what I was subconsciously learning was that I don't need a day to mark when I should feel sad.  I can pick a day to be sad whenever I want.  I only have a finite number of birthdays left to celebrate with my dad.

Some people say that time heals all.  But I don't know if I agree.  Maybe accepting and coping with reality have gotten easier, but the wound is still there and it still hurts.  At Pat's funeral, his sister read the lyrics to "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" by Green Day.  The minute my dad started the car to go home, that song game on the radio from the first notes.  To this day, I can't hear it without feeling tense and filled with anxiety, and if I leave it on for too long, I almost always break down.

I think I've finally forgiven Pat and grown passed my anger. But it doesn't lessen the sadness that I feel sometimes. I'll always wonder how things would have been different, who he would have grown up to be.  He was wickedly smart and insightful, and I have no doubt that he deprived the world something amazing.  That's the hardest part, all the questions that I'll never have answers to.  Sometimes the only thing I can do is keep breathing.

I wasn't sure if I should publish this post.  I almost didn't.  I felt vulnerable thinking about clicking "Publish".  This is one of the most personal stories that I have to share. But I decided it was important.   I think most people have experienced tragedy, and its healthy to reevaluate how we deal with our grief.  While this experience isn't something that I regularly broadcast about myself, it isn't something that I can pretend didn't happen either.  It isn't how I define myself, although I think for a while I tried to.

And for the love of god... If you're even thinking about hurting yourself, please find help.  Even message me if you want to.  I'll listen to anything you have to say.  The world needs you more than you know.