Barny had never been to American before, so to introduce him to it - we did loads of fun stuff!

People keep asking me what sorts of things we did - so I’m just going to give a day by day list.

Friday Sept 18 - picked him up at the airport, and we stopped at Trader Joe’s where we bought nine bottles of wine.  Eek!

Then, we drove back to Leominster and picked up a burrito from Tory’s.  Went home, ate, and went to bed around 9ish.  It was 2am his time - and I’d been going to bed early since I’ve been waking up early for work.

Saturday was going to be a rest day, but Barny was anxious to get out and about.  We went to Concord, MA for a picnic lunch, and then went to the deCordova sculpture park in Lexington.

Then we went to Jenny’s house in New Hampshire for a cookout and camp fire!  It was a lot of fun - and we sat outside staying warm by the fire.  Barny and I kept switching places so our sides would take turns being warm.

Sunday we left for Lake Winnipesaukee where our friend Bennie has a home in Wolfeboro.

We got there about 4pm, because Barny and I have a history of getting late starts.   We immediately went for a walk with Bennie downtown and to see the lake.  And we got ice cream!

Bennie and I were dressed in a matching nautical theme.

Back at the house, Bennie made us dinner while Barny and I watched How I Met Your Mother (Robin and Barney!!)

Monday morning, Barny woke up super early and wanted to walk downtown to get coffee.  I was exhausted (lazy), and decided to stay in bed and sleep more. This would mark the first and only time Barny was out of bed before me.  Later, after having delicious bagels for breakfast, we packed up lunch and headed down to the beach.  It was gorgeous out, and even warm enough to go in the water.

Monday night we went out for a very nice Mexican dinner, and then went home and watched Lars and the Real Girl.

Tuesday morning we lounged around, did laundry, and headed back home after lunch. Tuesday was the Fitchburg primary election, so I had to go home and vote.  Then, at 7:30, I had seminar at the college.  My dad took Barny out to the Boulder for a beer.  There, they watched the election results live, where I got 7th place out of 11.  At 10, I met them at Destare where Barny met Niles!

Wednesday morning Barny and I went to the Moran Square Diner for breakfast.  It was delicious.  Then we headed into Boston for a day of exploring.  Trevor emailed me a list of things to do while there.  While in Downtown Crossing, we ran into Nora Brown and she brought us to an amazing restaurant.  I got a piece of pizza the size of bigger than my head for only $2.86.

Barny’s was a bit smaller than mine, but he finished what I couldn’t eat of mine.

We did a bit of shopping, wandering around, and tried (and failed) to do the Freedom Trail (Barny and I are awful organized tourists.  But we have fun.).

The State House.  The tiny bit of the Freedom Trail we managed.

In Boston Garden.

We went to the MIT museum where we saw some WILD stuff!  Barny took some amazing photographs.

For dinner, Barny and I went to Elephant & Castle, a British pub chain.  It was absolutely amazing.  The food was fabulous (especially the sweet potato fries and dipping sauce), and the service was great.  Plus, I had bought a gift certificate for $25 on Restaurant.com for $1!!!!  I recommend buying a certificate of your own (they’re always on sale - right now they’re 80% off!), and going if you’re in the area.  It’s right in Downtown Crossing.

At Downtown Crossing, I tried on a pair of four inch heels at Marshalls.  I made Barny take a picture of us standing together.  I’m amazed at how much taller he is than me even with these heels on (he’s 6′2″, I’m 5′5″).  They were so tall, I couldn’t properly walk in them.

Wednesday night was Sean Daley’s Open Mic Night at Hooligans.  Barny went on at midnight, and it was awesome.  Niles was there with his friend Diane, and Bria came, too.

Thursday we slept in late (having gone to bed at 2am).  Then we went to the Salvation Army where Barny stocked up on awesome thrift store finds.  I also got a cute denim Gap skirt to wear in the winter with boots and leggings.  Then I cut Barny’s hair (cause that’s one of my hobbies).

Thursday night, we went to another open mic night, this time at the Rabbit Hole.  My friend Bria organizes one there, and Barny played again.  This time, I got the whole set recorded on video, and Bria recorded the sound on her laptop.  When I get those up and running, I’ll post them. Mom and dad even showed up since they missed Barny at Hooligans (bottom left of photo).

Immediately after the open mic, we drove to Danvers, MA to visit Maria.  We stayed up until 2am (again) and played Wii tennis, where everyone avoided me, and made fun of the way I swung the remote (as if I was an insane person swatting away a bee).  I picked Barny up to show off my super-human strength.  He thought it was crazy, but I showed him by doing squats with him on my back.

We also cooked s’mores, which Barny had never had. They were delicious, and cooked properly over an open flame.

We drank wine, too.

And played with Maria’s cat, Betty.

Barny and I stayed over Maria and Kevin’s, and continued to have adventures.

To be continued. . .

I’ve been updating my Facebook page a lot, because it’s a lot faster than blogging.  I can do it from my phone, and it’s just a lot easier.  I’m at www.facebook.com/robinstreb if you’re interested.

I’ve also tried putting all of my pictures on Picasa.  And this is ALL of them.  I have Picasa synced with my image folders, so you even get to see the crappy ones that I wouldn’t normally publish.  There also might be some duplicates if I cropped the photo and then saved it in the same location.  Sorry - but this is SO much easier than blogging every single picture.

http://picasaweb.google.com/RStreb

I think I’m going to Bath today.

We’re leaving for Belgium tomorrow.  It’s almost midnight, and I haven’t blogged in a bit.  But I will be back to blogging after we return some time on Monday.

Today I went to Bournemouth by myself, and went to the beach!  It was great.  If I had known the beach was that awesome, I wouldn’t have waited so long to go!

Yesterday Megan and I walked to Harry Potter (2+ miles) in the rain, and got soaked.  We had to sit in wet clothes for the entire movie.  It was absolutely awful.  Oh, and we DID have an umbrella.

Pictures will be uploaded when we get back!  I’ve been taking loads.

Saturday we had lunch at an outdoor cafe.

Mac, Lisa, and Mils went off to see a Tall Ship in the ocean (where Mac got an awesome eye patch), and Megan and I went to see an art exhibit.

At the Southampton library was “The Truth About Faeries: From Midsummers Night’s Dream to Lord of the Rings.”   There was a wide range of faeries: beautiful ones, scary ones, ones that looked like humans, ones that looked like gremlins,

In the evening, we all went to the park and played Frisbee.  On the way to the Common, I picked some apples from an apple tree.  Megan nor Mac would try it, because they said it was “too early for apple season.”

Lisa and MIls.  Lisa taught me a hilarious game where you take a song title or the title of a movie and replace one word with a certain other word.  What’s the word?  I can’t write it here…. but’s its a HILARIOUS game.

Megan and I both wore black tank tops and skirts!  We were fashion twins!

My face says “Really?  You’re taking a picture?” (L to R - Robin, Mac, Mac’s cousin Aaron, and Barny)

Saturday night we returned home for dinner, and made butterflies for the ceiling.

Sunday morning Megan and I went to a fabulous farmers market in Winchester.  It was amazingly large.

England has some really fat pigeons (they’re obese!), so we decided to buy one to eat for dinner.  We figured the fat would make it very tasty.  Plus, they’re oven ready.            Just kidding!!!

Coming back from the market, I saw several buildings that looked very British.

After the market, we went to Mac’s parents’ house in the New Forest. We went on a two hour hike through the woods with his entire family, including Mac’s 4 year old nephew!

Wild cows!!!  I had no idea how LARGE cows were.  They must stand 5 feet tall, if not more.

Megan walking with her niece and nephew.

Megan, Katie (Megan’s 8 year old niece), Donna (Katie’s mom), David (Mac’s dad), and Cain (Megan’s 4 year old nephew).

Mac, Simon (Mac’s brother, and Cain’s dad), Russel (Mac’s brother - in the hat), and Cain.

Look at this cute British house!

On Saturday, we all wandered around town for a bit.  Mac went on a Tall Ship (like the ones that were just in Boston!)  Megan and I went to a Fairy exhibit at the city art center. (Yes mom, we did get you something!)  Then, Megan and I went and bought granola and yogurt, and sat in the park for a bit getting some sun.  Mac and his two friends, Mils and Lisa met up with us, and then we were joined by Barny, Aaron, and Oli, and went to the Southampton Common.  It is this HUGE park in the middle of the city, and it’s probably several acres large.  We played frisbee, the ukulele, and the boys drank beer.  Frisbee was really fun, and Mac invented some new words.  When you’re very good at Frisbee, you have “Frizz.”  Such as, “Oh man, I lost my frizz!”

After the common, we went back to Megan and Mac’s flat and made dinner.  While I was on my computer, Bennie and Laura (our friends from Boston) video chatted me, and I called over Megan and Mac to say hello.  Mac then realized he had a web cam on his computer, so Megan and I could video chat when I’m back in America.  We tried setting it up, but when we spoke, there was crazy feedback going through the two computers.  Mac loved it, and played with it for a very long time.  Every time someone spoke, it was picked up by one of the microphones, and carried through the speakers into the other microphone, and it just kept going.  There were several times when the sound waves seemed to have gotten lost, and something would come back 10 seconds later.  “I said that ages ago!”  It was very weird.

We also cut out a bunch of butterfly pictures and hung them to their ceiling.  We had an assembly line going.  I would cut out a butterfly, Megan would give it the finishing touches (she had scissors, I had a kitchen knife), Mils would bend it and attach blue putty and a string, and Mac would hang it to the ceiling.  They currently have about 25 butterflies hanging from their ceiling, and it looks very cool, especially when the wind touches them.

Sunday Megan and I went to the Winchester Farmers Market. It was HUGE. There were some vendors who were selling very specific things: garlic, apple juice, bread, meat…. there must have been 50 different vendors. It was amazing. Then, we all went to Mac’s parents house in the New Forest, where I saw a boat load of New Forest ponies, AND wild cows. It was very weird.

I took a lot of pictures of everything, but it’s a lot faster to upload these videos. I’ll do pictures later.

Things in England are going very well. I’ve been doing a lot of cycling and walking, which is great.  So far Megan and I have only gone running once, but here’s hoping for tomorrow morning!  We’ve been very busy, so I haven’t had time to write in my blog every day.  Plus, it seems like we’ve been staying up very late to do things (I think I was up until 1ish or 2ish three nights in a row!).

One night (I have no idea which night…. Friday, I think) we went out for Sushi at Zen.  It was fantastic.  Megan and Mac thought I was silly for taking pictures.

Saturday Megan and I went to an Indian Mela Festival downtown.  We both had delicious food, but mine was WAY too spicy.  I can see through time.  We also went to a mini health fair where we had our BMI, Blood Glucose, and Blood pressure taken (mine were all excellent - Megan is close to death).

After the fair, we had to run over to meet some of Megan’s work friends.  They had free tickets to the Southampton Saints football (soccer) game versus the Amsterdam Ajax.  It was the first time Megan had ever been - and talking with her friends, she seems to be the first to go!  Oddly enough, back home I have a scarf for the Ajax that my friends Sean and Anniek from Amsterdam gave me.  Good thing I didn’t have it with me.

I really like how the seats spell out “Saints.”

Megan, her co-worker Hannah, and Hannah’s husband, Dave.

At the game, they had security AND police officers protecting the fans of the other team.

Megan and I were both very surprised that fans weren’t allowed to drink on the field.  They had to drink their alcohol in the inside, where they bought it.  This is very weird for us, because at baseball games, they even SELL beer on the field.  There also were no vendors shouting “Hotdogs here!  Get your hotdogs!” or anything like that.

Sunday, Megan and I volunteered at the Big Lunch.  “Basically, it’s a party in your street, in everyone’s street. On 19th July we’re asking the people of Britain to stop what they’re doing and sit down to lunch together. Why? Well for lots of reasons really but mainly to put a smile back on Britain’s face.”  It was quite fun, and Megan and I met these two wonderful Muslim women.  Megan might tutor one of their four children, and we went to the other woman’s house for tea!  We were all talking about marriage, and sex, and she told us a lot about Muslim culture and religion that we didn’t know.  She was a Muslim woman, but was aware that in these days, her sons probably wouldn’t be able to wait until they were married to have sex.  She was very realistic.  It was a fantastic time, and we stayed and chatted at her house for two hours!

That night, we went to Hamptons where Megan’s friends were putting on Log Jam, which is a music and artistic improv night.  They bring all the instruments, markers, crayons, and paper, and everyone else can play music, and make art!  It was very fun, and a lot of her friends were there.

Barny drew this of Tom (he was wearing face paint), Megan (who looks Asian), and me.

Mac showed up a bit later wearing the Brew Fest shirt that I brought him.

Megan made this drawing for me.  It’s true!!!

On yesterday’s flight from NYC to London, the plane was only about 70% full.  The staff said that it was just an off day, but it made it awesome for most of us traveler’s, because we got to stretch out, and even lie down!  I was able to sprawl out on three seats, and actually fell asleep.  It was fantastic.

I took an earlier bus from London to Southampton, so Megan and Mac came to get me a bit earlier than midnight.  I met a nice chap on the coach, and he let me use his mobile.  He was very nice, and when the call didn’t go through, he said “Send her a text!”   He was saying he couldn’t wait to get home and have his last cup of tea, and I giggled, and said, “That is SO British!”  And he said, “It is, isn’t it?”  It was great.

After we got home, I unpacked my one mini suitcase that had loads of food in it.  I gave Megan all of her things that she had asked for, and gave Mac the Brew Fest t-shirt I got for him!  After unloading everything for Megan, I had an empty suitcase!  Then, we set up my bed, and rearranged the furniture a bit.  Megan and Mac’s flat is a disaster!  It is mostly Megan’s fault because she has a load of crap everywhere, and Mac keeps trying to get rid of a bunch of things.  I told Megan that I would help her clean up a bit, and she said “We can do a Clean Sweep!”  Clean Sweep is a TLC show where you take out EVERYTHING from the rooms that are cluttered, and put it on the lawn.  Then, you make three piles:  Keep, Toss, and Give Away.  You’re not allowed to have a ‘maybe’ pile - and usually the people only end up with 50% of their things!  Then, they have a huge yard sale, so they can pass on their crap to others.  I don’t think we’ll empty her house, but she has a lot of organizing to do.

My internal clock woke me up this morning at 7am, even though Boston time it was only 2am!  Megan and Mac are both at work, so they’ve left me here with my computer, a map, house keys, keys to Megan’s bike, and well wishes.  I’m still kinda tired, but after I wake up a bit, I’m going to grab the map, her bike, and my messenger bag and hit the streets!  Megan suggested that I ride over to the common to practice riding, and I said “yeah, cause I really need to practice riding a bike.”  And she agreed.  Then, I had to say “Megan.  I don’t need to practice riding a bike!”  She asked when the last time I rode was, and I told her that when Mike was here for the Longsjo, we were all riding our bikes around.  Sure, I wasn’t riding IN the Longsjo, but I don’t think I need practice riding a bike.  Megan said that I was free to “give it a go”, and just remember to ride on the left side of the road.  That won’t be too hard, because I’m used to running on the left side.

I’ll be sure to take photographs!

I’m in New York waiting for my flight. I couldn’t find any Pepsi Max so I’m sad. But I’m sure they will have an abundance of Diet Coke.
I hope they feed us breakfast, cause I’m getting hungry. I had a Greek yogurt at 4:15am, but had to force it down. I knew it was best to eat something.

This morning mom and dad asked if I was sure I wanted to bring my laptop. Uhhh…..yes! They were worried I wouldn’t want to carry it around (it’s a 17″ monitor, quite heavy - for viewing movies!!). But if I only have to carry it for one hour two times this trip, it’d be silly to not have it for a whole month.

Since I’ll have my laptop and iPhone, it’ll be like I’m at home! When talking about what I’m going to do for a whole month, I told mom, “as long as I have my computer and a book, I’ll be doing the same thing there as I would be here.” Except we do have some fun things planned. Megan sent me an email this morning asked if I’d want to go to a Football game! Which is really soccer. That’d definitely be a good British experience. I replied “yeah, that’d be fun. Make sure my bed is ready for me to crawl into!”

I leave for England bright and early tomorrow morning.  I have to be at the airport for 5am, because my flight leaves at 6am.  Somehow my 9am flight got moved to 6am, and instead of London, I’m now heading to NYC.  But that’s ok, cause I only have to be one hour early for a domestic flight, rather than two hours early for an international flight.

I’m debating whether or not to go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter tonight.  The pros:  I will get to hang out with Jessica, and get to dress up, PLUS see Harry Potter.  The cons:  I won’t get any sleep, and will have to try to get crappy sleep on the plane.  I will miss inflight movies because I will be trying to sleep.

I’m leaning towards not going - because getting 6 hours of good sleep is better than 6 hours of really crappy sleep in the middle of the day.  Plus, I can still dress up for the 7th movie.

This is not the first time I’ve been to England (many people have asked that) - I believe this is the third time.  I went and stayed at Megan’s old house, where she had many roommates, and then I was there last summer when she got married.  So I believe this is the third time.

I should be packing and getting ready - but I’m just spending time on the internet.  Now I’m going to make lunch and eat outside while reading.  I am 90% done packing, so that’s a good start.

This is my song for 2008 - It’s called A Drop Filled With Memories (how appropriate!) and it’s from the movie Paprika.  Feel free to listen to it while you read my long post.  (Megan, don’t listen, it’s that song you don’t like).

2008 was a crazy, crazy year.  Absolutely insane.  Let’s review all I’ve been through.

I rang in New Year’s 2008 at Destare.  I came back from medical leave early so I could work. It was a lot of fun, but I teared up at midnight cause Steve was home alone, and I couldn’t spend it with him.  He spent the night playing World of Warcraft.

January 2nd - I had surgery on December 17th, and went to get my results from the endocrinologist and found out that the tumor on my thyroid was cancerous.  Not only was it cancer, but it was follicular cancer, rather than the more common papillary thyroid cancer.  Follicular is a more extreme of cancer, and tends to spread throughout the body while papillary always stays in the neck.  The reason they couldn’t be 100% sure about the cancer from the needle biopsy was because it was follicular, and that one they can’t tell just from a biopsy.  I needed to have another surgery, and I was only two weeks post-op from the first. Seriously, I find out I have cancer on the second day of the year?  That’s not a good start.

March 3rd - Surgery number 2.  I wasn’t really worried about this one (cause I had already done it once), but this surgery was scheduled in the middle of school.  I had to miss only one class, I think because I was still in the hospital when class met (Surgery was always on Monday, and I stayed over night until Tuesday).  For this surgery, I got out, and they put me in the recovery room, but my room upstairs wasn’t ready, so I had to stay in the recovery room all afternoon.  I got out of the OR at 11, and didn’t go up to my room until 5.  I was on morphine which was awesome, but they wouldn’t give me any water, only ice chips.  People in recovery kept getting X-Rayed, so they kept throwing a lead vest on top of me.  I think it happened about 6 times.  If I didn’t have cancer before, I most definitely had it after that. My parents kept coming in and out of the room, but for privacy reasons, they couldn’t stay.  My mom brought me my book and I was reading.  I was most definitely ready to have my own room.  I finally got upstairs and I had my own private room!  I was also really alert and able to hang out with my parents cause I was doped up.  In the middle of the night when the morphine was worn off was when the pain finally hit. I was awake on and off all night, and Steve spent the night on the floor to keep me company.  He kept having to help me move or adjust, or go to the bathroom (I had an IV in, and had to work around that to go to the bathroom).  Notice the awesome pen marks on my ear and neck in the bottom picture.  That is to say “CUT HERE”  and “THIS SIDE.”

Sometime in March - I was really really stressed out and sad.  I broke up with Steve because I felt like I couldn’t deal with anything anymore.

May - Radioactive Girl!  I had to go on a crazy low iodine diet for three weeks, and then go into Boston and get a mini dose of radiation, and then two days later, a major dose of radiation!  It was mixed with strawberry Kool-Aid. Yum.  Any of you ever been tested with a Geiger counter before?

Senator Kennedy was at Mass General the same day that I had my radiation.  I had two appointments scheduled.  I got my whole body scan (me lying down) at 12, and then didn’t go get my radiation until 2pm.  Between those times, we came downstairs to the lobby of the Wang building at MGH (that’s where all my appointments were).  Senator Kennedy was being released just as we were in the lobby.  We got to see him walk out of the hospital, and everyone in the lobby stood and clapped for him.  Here’s my dad live on CNN that day, his twin brother happened to be watching it live on CNN in Ohio, and hit record on his Tivo.  Then, he called my dad, and said:

“Uh, are you at some hospital in Boston?”
“yeah, Robin has her radiation today.”
“Are you wearing jeans and a blue shirt?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“You were just live on CNN!!!”

My dad was also on the cover of the NY Times the next day.

The reason I was having such a hard time with the diet was because I was just picking at food and not eating real meals.  I finally was able to change that after a few days, but here is what I would have for lunch:

After receiving the radiation at the hospital, I had to then come immediately home and be isolated from my family for three whole days.  It was crazy!  I was having trouble sleeping because I was off my medicine, so I had to hang a blanket over my window so it would get completely dark in my room.  I also had my laptop, my pile of books, and my remotes!  Bill let me borrow 30 Rock, which was awesome because I had never seen it before.  This was the first day I was allowed to be off my diet, so I’m enjoying my first bowl of cereal in 3 weeks.  I was so excited about it, I had to take a picture (on timer mode, cause I had to be alone).

July 2 - Turned 24.  Pretty uneventful.  But I went out with friends! (Jeanne, Bill, and Paul)

July 6th - I went to the Boulder with Amy cause her friend Kyle was playing in the band.  It was the last night of the Longsjo, and I met Emiliano! (he’s the one in the yellow and green all the way to the left)

I was sitting on the curb with Amy (the band was playing in the blocked off street), and these guys come walking up to the bar.  One of the Lonsjo volunteers says “Oh, these are guys who raced today!  They’re on one of the best teams”.  I looked up, and I noticed one of the guys had bright yellow socks with weird red suns on them.  I recognized the socks as the state flag of New Mexico, because I used to live there.  I jumped up from my seat, and ran up to him and the convo went like this:

“I’m sorry… are your socks the state flag of New Mexico?”
“Yeah, that’s where our racing team is from!”
“I used to live there!”

“what part?”
“Santa Fe”
“That’s where I’m from!”
“No way!”
“Ok, I’m going to go grab a beer, and I’ll catch up with you later.”

So then I went to sit down, and the older gentlemen who were sitting near us said to me, “Wow, you don’t waste any time, huh?”  He found me later, and we hung out all night, and I just knew that he was this cool guy that I HAD to get a picture taken with, so I ran to my car and grabbed my camera to get some pictures before I left.  He had busted up his hand pretty badly in the race earlier in the day (notice the awesome wrap job).  Emiliano and I have become great friends, and he does my blog for me.  He doesn’t write it, but he does everything else.  Check out his awesome web design site, Pushing Buttons.  Go to him for all your web design needs!

July 25th - X-Files: I Want To Believe came out.  I had waited 6 years for this movie, and Bill and I went down to a midnight showing in Marlborough (a 45 minute drive). I brought my action figures with me.  I was so excited, that we kept having to re-take this picture because my smile was so big I looked like an idiot.

July 27th - Dad and I get caught in the rain while running.  We knew there was a huge storm coming, but I wanted to go for a run anyway.  We were almost done when it started down pouring.  I had my mom take the picture, because I think it shows our dedication.

July 28th - Megan and Mac came home to prepare for their wedding!  They didn’t do so much preparing, as much as they did lollygagging around and picking berries with me.  I love picking berries.

August 3rd -  Megan gets married! Mac and his parents fly in from England, and we have a great time!

At the wedding (and during the receptions) Sally and I went a little crazy, and took hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pictures of us goofing around.

August 13 - 26 - I fly out to New Mexico and hang out with Emiliano for two weeks.  We went hiking, hung out in Santa Fe, cooked a lot, took artsy photographs, watched a LOT of Weeds, and I got Strep throat, and had to go to the ER.  It was an all around great trip.  I got a little really homesick for Megan, and felt bad that she was in the US, but I wasn’t with her.  I think I got a little cranky and sad because of that, but Emiliano put up with me!  To apologize, I will include this picture (on the left), because it is his favorite, and it makes me look like an idiot.  He kept scratching this one spot on my back (scratching it in just one place, so the spot would get raw), and it was driving me insane.  I was still getting over being sick (I spent about 2 full days in bed), and I was very irritable.  This is him driving me insane on purpose so he could take a funny picture.  He looks very pleased with himself.  But seriously, Emiliano, tell them how sick I was!!!  I was incredibly sick.  His step mom was giving me Vicodin to make me feel better.  It rocked.

Emiliano was also kind enough to go on a horribly long car ride with me to Roswell, NM, home of the infamous 1946 UFO crash!  Everything was UFO themed, it was awesome.  We even went to the International UFO Museum and Research Center.  Pretty interesting stuff, definitely worth the 3 hour long ride.  This was also my very first blog post!!!  (I had backdated other cancer related stuff - but the Roswell post was the first, cause that’s when Emiliano set up my blog!)

August 27th - I flew back from New Mexico on the 26th, and the very next day, we flew out to England for Megan’s wedding party over there.  It wasn’t too bad, cause all my luggage was already packed!  I just had to grab fancy stuff for her party.  We had a lot of fun, but we weren’t there for long enough!

September- I got a pedometer, and went a little crazy.  Such as the time when I jogged in place for 2.5 miles to get to 10,000 steps.  I still wear it religiously every day, but I’m only at 4388 now (at 8:45pm), and there’s no way I’m jogging in place for 2.5 miles tonight.

October 1 - 31 - Buy Nothing Month!  It was awesome, and I’m going to do it again this month. (I bought a new laptop September 28th, only days before BNM started)

October 4th - I ran my first 5k!  (I haven’t seen that recycling shirt in a few months.  Uh oh.  That’s why I have to clean my room!!!)

October - I started picking up trash around Fitchburg.  I did this many more times, but I had to stop cause it’s too cold out and there’s snow everywhere.  Niles and I will commence in the spring.  I will try to get more people involved, and to expand the area where we work.  I think we should have T-Shirts made.  Here’s me and Niles celebrating our trash accomplishments:

November - Started to get fed up with Destare.  Started back at Macy*s for the holidays.  Thanksgiving with family friends.  I met with the Brew Year’s Eve crew twice a week to plan BYE.  We decided on our production company name, Beers For Good, and started our own website.  From August through November, I get sick for one week every single month.  It started with Strep in Santa Fe, and continued.  I am immuno-compromised.

December -  More planning of BYE.

Quit Destare.

Huge ice storm hit North Central Mass, and we lost power and heat for 11 days.

I got a 4.0 in my class this semester, leaving me with a cumulative GPA of 3.93.  I have only one class left.  w00t!  (this portion added for Megan).

Megan came home for Christmas.  We got walloped with two ice storms - 18 inches total in 72 hours.  She loved it.

Dec. 31st - Brew Year’s Eve!  It went great, and we had tons of fun.

That’s it.  2008 in a nutshell.

I clearly lost steam after October.  I figured that because I started blogging in September, I only needed to update peeps on the things that happened before then.  Plus, that’s when all the important stuff happened.  But if you want to learn more, read my friggen blog.

I am done.  This post took me 3 hours to write!  It was all the pictures that were slowing me down… but I think they’re great!

I realize this wasn’t a review.  It was a synopsis.  Here’s my review of 2008:  it sucked. Too many bad things happened.  Sure, there were good parts, but there were also not good parts, and I think the effect the bad parts had on me out weighs the good parts.  Disagree?  Too bad.

Questions?  Comments?  Leave ‘em.