The Grand Tour

So, I have promised to take pictures of the apartment so that curious minds (mainly my sister) can see the cute little apartment in which I live. I kept forgetting. Sorry. SO, tonight after I quasi-straightened my room, I decided to give a tour of the apartment before I hit the hay. Pictures don't really give you a very good understanding of space and what's next to what, so I made a video. My voice is really annoying when it's recorded. Sorry. Anyway, here's my apartment:

Halloweenie

We dressed up for Halloween, and we worked long and hard on our costumes. I was a peacock, and anyone who is familiar with Super Mario Bro's will know what my roommate and her boyfriend were: Toad and Toadette. I crocheted their hats for them. Their costumes were my absolute favorite ever.

Ok. I admit, I have been known to whine and pout. My family can attest to that. I think everyone enjoys a good pout every now and then, and I don't really think that I do it more often that anyone else. The past couple weeks I have pouted and whined a little about having to go on a business trip for work, and I don't think my pouting was uncalled for. I had to go to Jackson, Mississippi Monday morning through Saturday night, and work 14 hours straight each day at a JR League Christmas shopping show/fair/market/thing. This involved setting up the booth, standing at the register in one place for 12 hours, running to the parking lot and back to unpack merchandise for a demanding 50ft line of customers, and so on. It was gruesome, I knew it would be, and I wasn't entirely thrilled about the state my feet would be in by the end of the week. However, being the relentlessly optimistic person that I am, I knew there would be at least something to gain from my trip. Here's my list of positives from this past week:

1. I have now been to Mississippi and can check it off my list. It wasn't impressive at all, looks exactly like the rest of Alabama and Georgia, but I'm glad to have another state to color in my map of places been.

2. Gasoline in Mississippi is under $2. Don't believe me? I took a picture to prove it. And of course I filled up!

(look real close... can you see? $1.99!)

3. I didn't have to pay one penny the entire week for my meals or my endless supply of Dr Pepper. Thank you, boss.

4. I have a new appreciation for being alive. There was a moment this week where that fact almost was no more, but thankfully I am alive. Here's what happened: I was in a hotel room by myself the first two nights, and I noticed Tuesday night how inefficient the AC unit was. Since it was about 2am and I couldn't sleep due to the stuffiness in the room, I went to turn up the air. As I punched the button for HIGH COOL, all this happened at once: the entire machine lit up with a bright blue electric light, an ear splitting ZAP and POP came from the machine and the outlet, and red hot sparks shot out of the outlet. Can you say scary? I've never in my life been more frightened. I should have been electrocuted (my hand was on the machine) and the room should have caught fire (the upholstered chair and the window curtain were both right up against the outlet). But I survived, and needless to say, they gave me a new room.

(The state of my killer outlet)

5. I now know that I can keep an unnatural cool under threatening circumstances. Sign me up for the emergency row, Delta. You can count on me.

Autumn Leaves!

It's my favorite time of year, and even though my favorite month is now over, I can still enjoy the beautiful fall colors, crunch through the leaves outside, and enjoy wearing my scarves and hats more frequently! Since mom and dad are out in AZ and can't experience the loveliness that is autumn, here's a few pictures.

23+1

So we went to Six Flags for my birthday!  It was really really fun.  Some of the people I like best came and enjoyed the day with me, and then we went back to Marietta to spend the night before hitting the road and getting our bottoms back to Birmingham.  Here's a couple pictures of us at Six Flags.

   

   

Hi! my name is- what? my name is- who? wicky wicky Slim Shady.

Felt like giving my blog a new look in hopes that it'll inspire me to update more... it's late and I really don't want to spend the energy and creative thought on creating myself a zingy new headline imagery thing right now, so that'll have to wait... maybe tomorrow.

So my sister has most lovingly tagged me for this 6-obscure-things-about-myself exercise, and so I guess I'm now obligated to participate.  The only thing is, once I sat down to write my list of quirks I realized something: I'm really not sure there's much weird about me, and thinking up SIX different unusual facts about myself might just be impossible.

Who am I kidding... ok, here goes.  6 Quirks of your Sutton Dearest:

1.  When I was little, one of my favorite things to eat with my dinner was untoasted bread spread thick with butter.  That's not weird at all, except for the fact that I would dip it in ketchup.  Buttered bread aint any good unless you dip it in ketchup.  Delicious.

2.  That last one reminded me of another pertaining to food:  mom fed me so many bananas.  She was convinced that it was the only fruit I would eat (and she was right, I really didn't much like anything else for a long time), so she served it to me with every meal.  At school, I'd open my Rainbow Bright (or was it My Little Pony...?) lunchbox and find half a banana.  EVERY dinner I'd have a little bowl of sliced banana next to my plate, and I couldn't be excused unless the banana was all gone.  This lasted my entire childhood.  Due to my over-intake, I can't stand to eat them now.  Even the smell makes me a little queazy.  My roommate also doesn't like them, and I think that's the best evidence of why we're so well matched to live together. 

3.  Regardless the disastrous mess my room frequently may be, I simply can not tolerate the contents of my drawers to be anything less than perfectly folded and stacked, organized by shirt type, etc.  Friends in the past have come over to borrow clothes, see my room turned upside down, and somehow assume I won't mind them leaving my shirts in tangled wads inside the drawers...  This probably is one of the best ways to irritate me.

4.  After reading mom's quirks, I guess I should mention the bug thing: I really don't mind bugs at all, and I find a lot of them fascinating (though I don't really want them extra close to me or crawling on me).  I love butterflies and beetles and praying mantises, and I'm usually the default roach squasher if there's not a boy nearby.  But spiders give me nightmares, and I will have an absolute fit if there is any sort of buzzing bee/jacket/wasp within 10 feet.  There was a yellow jacket in the stairwell outside my front door last week as I arrived home, and I walked around the entire building to the back entrance so I wouldn't have to get near the bee.

5.  Is it arrogant of me to say that I have always been very good at my make-up?  Well, I have.  When I was about 2-3 years old, I would get up in the morning and sit myself at my mom's vanity where I applied my make-up for the day: eyeshadow, blush, and of course mom's red lipstick.  I was very good at it, despite what you may hear from my sister on the matter.  Yes, I did apply the ice blue eye shadow very thickly and coat my entire eye lid, but I know Katie is wrong in her statement that I went all the way to my eyebrows with it.  I have always known, even then, that that was too much.  I also remember sitting in the car before BSF with mom, watching her apply her lipstick, and she always let me have a little dab before we went in.  A lady can't go anywhere without her lips on, you know.  And once, dad caught me putting mom's make-up on one of my larger sized baby dolls (she was blue eyed with long brown hair and I thought she looked just like me).  I had already made her cheeks beautiful and rosy with mom's blush and was in the middle of giving her some lipstick when dad walked in.  I don't remember him scolding me for it, probably because I immediately burst into tears when he caught me... to this day that doll still has a pretty glittery pinkness to her cheeks.

6.  I fall asleep best when there's a movie playing.  It can't be any movie, of course.  I can't watch something I haven't seen or or haven't seen in a long time, because then I'll be too interested in watching to fall asleep.  So my list of favorite 'bedtime stories' are: Peter Pan, Finding Neverland, Little Women, or Harry Potter.  My favorites are the Harry Potter movies, though.  I know them so well that within 10 minutes I'm already dead asleep.  I usually only watch movies 1, 4, and 5 to go to sleep though.  The first one's menu is silent after the movie's over, and 4 and 5 loop, so there's no obnoxious, repetitive noise to wake me up.  The third movie has a horrible audio track to the menu once the movie is over, and it just loops again and again and drives you absolutely insane.  The second movie has a terrible scene with monstrously sized spiders, and I think I've already mentioned how I feel about spiders.

Well, that's six.  I'm glad the list didn't call for more or else I'd  be sitting here forever trying to think.

As for tagging six people to do this next, I can't.  I mean, I would, except everyone I know on this blog thing has already done it... soooo, yeah.

New post coming up, it's just taking a while to compose.  Until then, here's some pretty pictures from my friend Amanda's wedding in late August.  She and I lived together for a solid 3 years, and I love love love her... 

Katfrib complained about my blogstipation, so here's a boring update

Moving is expensive. and money is annoying.

Work is starting to hurt. My feet in particular. Darn jobs.

The apartment is slowly slowly slowly coming together. Once things are actually in place (this weekend, maybe?) I'll post some pictures of the inside.

My next adventure will be learning to play two new instruments: the cello and penny whistle. Watch out, music world.

I don't know what to do for July 4th. I'll probably wind up sleeping in and waisting away in front of the tv. whoopee. I would go off for the weekend.... but I have to work Saturday. bleh.

It's 10:30 and I'm already nodding off to sleep. What has happened to me? I feel so old.

Welcome to the hiz.

So, my new roommate Charlie and I decided on our new place to call home! It's in a neighborhood close to downtown Birmingham called Highlands Park. Here's a few pictures.

Here's a picture of the street the apartment is on: the street is lined with a few old apartment buildings and mostly big old historical homes... such as the house in this next picture which is right next door to us. We're at the top of the hill at the end of this road, so there's no busy thru-traffic. It's so peaceful and quiet!

This will be our neighbors' house, and the two houses facing our apartment across the street are very similar. Our apartment building is just to the right of this house. At the end of the street (pretty much where I stand) an alley goes around the back of this house and leads to a back parking area and our back yard.

This is our building! Our apartment is the top left one. The porch is under extensive repairs at the moment: they'll be replacing all the wooden framing and the torn (and non-existent) screens. You can't really tell from the pictures, but the yards are very pretty, green, and well-kept. We get to walk under a gorgeous dogwood on our way to the front door!

Here's the front door that faces the street. Through this door is a stairwell that leads to our apartment's front entrance.

Here's the gate from the back parking lot into the backyard. Up those stairs is our private second entrance.


We're REALLY excited about this place and can't wait to move in. And the bonus: Keith and Elaine's place is 6 blocks away and about a 10 minute walk! Hopefully in the next couple weeks when they're done with the repairs we can get inside to take some pictures of the interior! So stay tuned for that.

Gradjidated

Update for those who care:

My thesis project presentation went great! We were supposed to arrive Thursday afternoon to begin our formal presentations in front of a panel of architects and interior designers from the Birmingham area. Needless to say I was about to pee my pants, and so were many of the other girls. Obviously God knew that it would be an embarrassing (and messy) event if we were to soil ourselves in front of Alabama's top designers. The solution: tornadoes. By 3pm you couldn't see 20 yards in front of you, and the news was forecasting a tornado making it's path directly down Lakeshore Drive and through Samford's campus. Our department head got phone calls from more than half of our panel judges saying they wouldn't be coming, and she was frantically calling anyone she could think that had the guts to drive to school in such weather. What originally was a formal presentation became incredibly casual. We all hung our projects on the walls throughout the studio and people just moseyed through like it was an art gallery. I presented my project individually to about 4 designers, 1 teacher, and 3 friends who had graduated last year. It was great. Everyone loved my project, and I got some great compliments from some intimidatingly talented designers. Monday morning I turned in the last of my drawings and technical documents for my project, and now I'm done! hooray!

This is really weird. It feels kinda like summer break... but it's not. I have to get a job. Crap. I don't know if I want to graduate anymore...

There's a nocturnal mockingbird outside my apartment. I think he waits to mock the rest of the bird world until the late night when the others are asleep. It's safer that way. Less likelyhood of being beat up by the bigger birds.

I'm graduating. Crazy, right? I'll be done (God willing) in less than 2 weeks, and I'm about to pull my hair out. I have so much to do on this project!! I can't wait until I don't have to ever think about homework again. It's going to be great. great great great. Can't wait. I'm going to sleep SO much. Like a bear.

Mom had me put together a graduation announcement postcard thing to send out to everyone and their cousin. I realized in the middle of it all that I have no good portrait pictures of myself that are at all recent or decent. So. I had myself a mini photoshoot. It was a fun break from drawing 3D models on the computer.

I leave you with a picture of me and Jessica in 60 years, doing what we do best: being our wild and crazy selves.

Jump, Little Children

I will forever be in debt to Christopher Adkins for introducing me to JLC's music.  This band has been a lasting foundation for my ever-growing taste in music.  I can never listen to their albums too much, and I unashamedly admit to playing their tracks over and over for the past six years.  You can introduce me to as many artists as you want, but nothing can replace the love I have for Jump, Little Children.  Here's my absolute favorite recording of one of my favorite songs.  Listen to it, really listen to it.  Close your eyes, lay back, and just soak it in.  I'm going to get back to my homework now...

Jump, Little Children- B13

Big news today: Google has succeeded in providing the world yet another way to deceive. Now we can back date out emails so that they arrive in the recipient's inbox in the "correct" chronological order. Not only that, but we have the option of marking it as "read" so that Rita (or Bob, or whoever) thinks that she must have just forgotten that she received your email and read it LAST WEEK. Talk about making a person go mad. Of course we only get a maximum of 10 a year, just to keep us from abusing the new feature. psh.

I didn't update on the rest of my Phoenix trip. So, here we go. If you're interested in the trip's happenings, read on. If not, you're welcome to just look at the pictures and skip down past this paragraph... It was really great. Momma and I did a lot of exploring... and shopping. We went to Superstition Mountain, a beautiful park with this amazing jagged mountain, tons of cacti, and beautiful wildflowers. On the way there we came across an adorable wedding chapel called the Elvis Presley Memorial Wedding Chapel, and on the road back to Phoenix we passed an incredible sign for a nonexistent restaurant. That sign must have been at least 50 years old.

Monday night (St. Patty's Day) I neglected my Irish duty to visit with some friends that were driving through town. My friends Preston and Taylor (who is dating my friend Jeanette) play with a Birmingham band, Wild Sweet Orange, and the guys just happened to be stopping in Phoenix. It was fun visiting with the guys and I'm really glad that I went to see them, especially since there was a miniscule turn out (the venue had no booze, which doesn't allow for very festive St. Patty's celebration). Wednesday night I visited with another friend from Samford, my dear Xue. She lives in Tempe with her little sister now, and Birmingham misses her. We had dinner at the restaurant where she works, went to another show for a band that I had met in Birmingham a couple weeks prior (These United States), and wound up enjoying the night discussing music, travels, books, and rug contents with some really cool fellas.

Saturday mom, dad, and I jumped in the car and drove to the Grand Canyon. We passed through Sedona (a place with some of the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen) and Bedrock. We were a little unsure about the purpose of Bedrock and their means of staying in business, but it definitely was the highlight of the trip north... at least in my opinion.

Sunday morning we woke up at 5am to make it to the Easter sunrise service on the Canyon's south rim. It was absolutely breathtaking and incredibly cold. Dad took a walk (about 100 yards) later that afternoon down the trail into the Canyon so he could say he hiked in the canyon. Silly daddy.

After that we got back in the car and drove all the way back to Phoenix (about 4.5 hours), stopping in Flagstaff for lunch and a quick photo op on Route66. Monday morning mom and I did some last minute shopping before dropping me off at the airport. I'm so glad I got the chance to go visit. Phoenix is definitely an amazing city and I'm now even more excited about mom and dad's future there.

This past week has been very uneventful. I won't sit here and complain because yall definitely don't want to read that, so I'll just summarize the few things happening lately. I'm working nonstop on my thesis, trying to catch up to my calendar. Currently I'm about 4 days behind my schedule, which is a great improvement (last week I was more than a week behind). I haven't had much social interaction due to my constant schoolwork, but I did cook dinner with my girlfriends last night. I found a chicken corn chowder in my new Phoenix recipe book and it was DELISH. Thanks, momma.

Ten semesters of college makes one very tired. I sure do enjoy interior design, but after all this work I definitely wouldn't mind being a flight attendant. I know mom and dad don't like hearing talk like that (they are very generous to fund my education), and I'm not entirely serious, but you can't avoid being burnt out on the thing that's burning you out. And interior design is definitely burning me out right now. There are very few other times when I've had such an itch to escape and do something completely different and adventurous...

Doin' the Desert with the Debs

Mom and I went to the Desert Botanical Gardens today. It was gorgeous. Here's a few pictures.

It's off to Arizona!

It's finally my spring break and I'm thrilled to say that I am sitting here on my momma's new couch in Phoenix! I had quite a morning en route. On my flight from Birmingham I sat in the back of the plane surrounded by about 15 guys on a Russian tennis team... none of them spoke a lick of English, and of course I couldn't understand one word they said. It's incredible how self conscious you get when you can't understand anything that's said by the people around you.

Anyway, I had a hour+ stop in Dallas and nearly didn't make my second flight. Those silly airport people changed the gate for my flight at some point during that hour and didn't bother to announce it over the speaker... I thought it was getting rather suspicious when it was 15 minute to my takeoff and the plane wasn't even at the gate yet. Sigh. So I get to the correct gate after booking it halfway down the terminal, and the guy at the desk asks if I can sit in an emergency row instead of my assigned seat. I take the new seat and board the plane, approach my new seat, and find a man sitting there. He says to me, "You're 21B? Wouldn't you rather take 1st class?" Uh, heck yeah. He and his wife had been given seats apart from eachother and there had been a big musical chairs game so that they could sit together.... and lucky me wound up with his wife's original seat, in first class, at the window. It was awesome. I slept most of the way, so I didn't get the pleasure of food or complimentary booze, but I did get an incredibly comfy seat and a great view. I saw my first mountains from my first class window...

It's amazing how flat the land is out here. It's like the whole place has been steamrolled. And then there's these mountains unlike anything at home. There'll be miles and miles of flat plains with a random giant mountain in the middle. Phoenix has several mountains surrounding, and I'm excited to go exploring with mom tomorrow. Maybe we'll get the chance to see the botanical gardens.

It's storming here in Birmingham, and it should get worse before the morning. When it storms at night like this, Elaine gets nervous being in her loft bed. Maybe she's scared the roof will rip off and she'll get swept away... I sure hope that doesn't actually happen...

I don't think the whole moving ordeal will fully hit me until I return to Marietta and find my family isn't there. I'm so excited for mom, dad, Katie, and Tom and the adventures that they're about to experience in Phoenix and Dallas. I can't wait to see what God has in store for my family, and I trust that He will do amazing things in their lives. Still, it is difficult letting go of the familiar.

I went through the pictures on one of dad's computers a couple weeks before we started the packing process, making sure there weren't any pictures I wanted to get copies of before the computer got hauled off. I love this picture. I think maybe dad used it for Katie and Tom's wedding slideshow. Katie looks absolutely adorable, and I love how Jessye is hugging me tight and holding my hands. I, on the other hand, look rather like a potato.