I Found a Wallet

My wallet is bulging, and it’s not because it is full of money -- it’s full of treasures. In order to answer a money question for my mom I had to dive into the depths of my wallet, and along the way I found trove a lot of fun stuff. I think I have a habit of putting a few too many things in there… Annie and Sam (and my mom and sister and a ton of other people) can vouch for the fact that probably one out of every four times I get something out of my wallet I end up dropping all of my receipts on the floor in front of the cash register. People in line just love me. You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but all of my prizes do provide great entertainment when I’m bored! I may not always have a book on hand, but I do have my wallet full of memories.

Here are the highlights of the excursion. (Sorry the pictures are awful. I blame the night.)

The random collection. I feel like if you went through my whole wallet you could learn a ton about what I like and where I’ve been. And I’m discovering they’re mostly food places.

And movies. Plus some other entertainment!

Even some of the receipts were fun. Oh hey look, more food.

My favorite is this one from Good Stuff because you can see everything on it until the Milky Way shake, at which point the actual Milky Way shake covers up the rest.

P.S. Here’s a wallet song to accompany this post. Thanks for putting up with my crazy ramblings. I swear my wallet is cooler in person.

September Issue

I know it's over halfway through the month, but I just realized I never shared the last of my stories that got published in Where Washington for my internship. So here they are. There's one of a behind the scene tour of America's Most Wanted in the Crime and Punishment Museum, and one on farmers' markets in the district.

In case you're super interested (i.e. you're my mom), you can see the full PDFs of the magazine at wheretraveler.com/washington-dc

Georgetown in Provo

Apparently I wasn’t the only one having D.C. withdrawals, because a group of us got together and ordered a dozen cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcake and had them shipped here overnight… Don’t judge. Shipping isn’t that bad when you divide it by 12. And it was totally worth it.

Evidence:

Delicious Friday.

Daydream Travels

Today was a beautiful fall day in Provo, but as I was stuck in forever-long classes I found myself wishing I was somewhere else. That it was still this summer when I was in these cities.

Here are the top 5 places I would like to be back at now:

#1 Washington, D.C.

#2 New York City (fab photo stolen from Peter Carroll)

#3 Philadelphia (let’s admit it, this sandwich alone would be reason enough to go back and stay)

#4 Baltimore

#5 Ocean City, Md. (who doesn’t want to be at the beach?)

And of course, I always would love love love to go back here:

It’s crazy to think that exactly two years ago last Monday I arrived at 27 Palace Court. If anyone happens to invent a way to teleport before me, pretty please let me know?

Retro Tunes

I’ve been saving up rewards from my credit card for months, and it finally paid off. Yesterday my awesome new record player arrived in the mail.

My desire to own a record player began in earnest sophomore year when my then roommate Christy Witt entered my life. See below. She’s the gorgeous one on the far right.

She’s a sound recording technology major, and she had a beautiful record record player that sat on our kitchen table with endless stacks of records. I know I can play music on my computer or iPod, but this was different. It was a conversation piece, it was interactive, it was classic. And I wanted one of my own.

It’s a bigger purchase then I can usually justify, but with all of the gift cards I got from my credit card company it wasn’t bad at all. It’s at this point that I’m really wishing I bought more of those records I walked past all of the time in London, though. They were all over the place -- at markets and in music stores of all sizes. But I was paranoid they would break in my suitcase, and at the time the only thing I had to play them on was my parent’s old record player at home in Portland. So I just bought one for my dad for Christmas and left the rest sitting on the shelf. I guess I’ll just have to go back… somehow I am very ok with that idea. I’m always looking for excuses.

Right now I only have three records though, and they have absolutely nothing in common with each other: The Shins, Rick Springfield, and the Dark Knight Soundtrack. I’m sure I need to go to the store. One album I really want is this old Air Supply record below because we had some quality times with it in my old apartment. Let me know if you see it anywhere!

Here’s a glimpse of some of the excitement of opening my package up while I was “doing my homework,” because I know you are all just absolutely riveted by this blog post.

Just so you know, listening to the Dark Knight soundtrack while doing family finance homework makes it way more intense.

A couple more pictures because I’m a nerd and I can.

I can already tell we have some good times ahead of us.

Transportation Curse

My car is sick and needs to go to the car doctor, which is closed on Labor Day, and my bike has a flat tire. I think the world is telling me I need to stay put and actually do my homework for once.

I’m convinced it’s actually an apartment curse, because my roommate’s car died died for real the night before mine came down with the flu, and her bike needs air too. So beware.

Withdrawal

I may have become a little too addicted to cupcakes and frozen custard and sugary goodness in D.C. and now I’m having major cravings. I don’t think it was really my fault, with Georgetown Cupcake and Baked & Wired and Dickey’s a two second walk away. They even had cupcake trucks go around like ice cream trucks to the parks. Let’s just say I’m suffering the consequences now…

I mean, could you resist this?

Especially when you walked by this every day like four times because the shop was the next door over from your office?