19 posts tagged “life”

This is it, kids, we're going to live forever. We're part of the story now.

In twelve hours, I will be staring at a podium. I will stare at that podium for two hours, with only the occasional break to look at my friends and share a knowing smile or a glance that manages to sum up "God, when is this going to be OVER?!" in a split second. I will get up from the chair, I will hear my name, I will walk across a stage, it will all be over.

And when that's done, I'll pose for pictures, I'll give hugs, I'll meet parents. I will do it all as a different person.

I will do it as a college graduate.

I have spent the past two months of my life living like someone I don't even recognize. I spun in and out of bars between 32-hour design benders. I double-fisted PBR and screamed that I was going to live forever, and though the words were a joke, I kind of meant them. I was ten feet tall, I was bullet-proof.

I was scared. I was defeated. I stayed in one chair for 32 hours not because I wanted to work so hard on my thesis, but because I knew I was going to break down as soon as I left the room since I lost the job I really wanted. I hurled my keys across the studio, I cried, I collapsed in a heap in a friend's arms because it was finally too much to take.

I finished my thesis.

I detached from the entire world around me and made new friends. I shot what felt like a hundred games of darts. I forgot how to hustle at pool. I played in a Friday poker game because I thought it was easy money and good practice and then I bought everyone beers with the money they had lost to me.

When I wake up tomorrow, I will look in the mirror for the last time as a college student. When I go to sleep at night, even after a night of dancing and screaming at the top of my lungs, I will be a college graduate. I can't figure out if the phrase I want to use is "I just want it to be over" or "I wish I could do it all again".

I would give anything to re-live the last five years of my life. I would do some of it differently if I was convinced I could come out the same way, but I know I couldn't. I am five years of mistakes in the making, but every single one of them led me to where I get to be tomorrow.

I have been privileged enough to spend these five years in a room with 18 of the most creative, talented people I can ever imagine meeting. It seems only appropriate to end with a toast. So here's to the last five years - to dollar nights, to euchre, to bolt actions and sniper rifles and camping. To riding rockets, flicking caps, Abe Lincoln, to Bone. To 4 a.m. recording sessions, to hard drive crashes, to moving cross-country every three months. It's been a good run - here's to the rest of it.

I don't think I've mentioned this before here, but I don't see myself ever having children. Say what you will, but be warned I've heard it before. Any combination of "you're young", "wait till you're older", and "it's just because you're in college" has probably been launched at me by mothers nationwide.

It's not that I don't want kids because I hate kids. I think kids are really awesome. I'm not very good with them, but that's probably because I didn't have a lot of experience with them when I was growing up. My mom is the baby of the family by a lot of years, and that makes me the baby by a lot of years. (About six and a half, or so, and I only know this because I just called my mother in a state of panic and asked if all my cousins except me were finally in their thirties.) There were no moments of me taking care of the kids, unless you count a very short babysitting stint when I was 13 or so. (12? Who knows.)

So, sure, life plays a part in it. When it comes right down to it, though, I honestly don't have a desire to be a mother. I have friends, and have had friends for years, who knew they didn't want kids RIGHT NOW, but knew it was coming and they were looking forward to it. Even back in high school, there were people with desires to be mothers. They weren't keeping their fingers crossed for it any time soon, but even at sixteen years old they were telling me how great their kids were going to be, the type of mother or father they wanted to become, and so on. My best friend wants children more than anything, and I have always respected that.

This was cemented for me when he and I were in Central Park a few years back (I am getting the strange feeling that I've told this story before, but I'll go on) and a few kids involved him in their game. The game has been lost to time now, though he might remember, but it was a game like all kids make up. Someone's good, someone's bad, we all have to run, and we should probably squeal a lot. He was so into this game, and I just sat there on my slightly detached hillside, and I realized this was the way I wanted to be involved with kids. I felt this feeling that I honestly couldn't understand at that very moment. It was a feeling of love, combined with a vision of what I wanted my future to be. I really, really want to be a cool aunt. I want to visit and bring sweet presents (P.S., Nathan, your kids are going to be raised on Cincinnati chili and chocolate.), I want to be the one that kids run down the front steps to jump up on, I want to swing them around in the driveway and pretend I didn't bring them sweet presents. But these moments, they are special because they are fleeting.

I don't have the desire to be the main influence on a child's life. I don't want it to be me and one child forever and ever. Much to the potential grandparents' dismays, I just don't have a desire for my own kids. But to be honest, I can't wait for it to be about ten years down the line so I can convince kids of how super cool I am.

I am also not envious of parents in any way, because to be honest, kids today scare me. Hell, if I was being honest, I'd admit that my generation was probably kind of scary. High schools are filled with little 14-year-old adults that are sure their parents are stupid. I don't think I realized my mom was smarter than me until I was 18 or so. I read stories like this about 1 in 4 teenagers having an STD, and it freaks me out. I am only 22 (pushing 23), so let's not forget that I only graduated high school five years ago. It was not like that when I was in high school. I seriously, honestly did not know anyone with an STD. I'm not even saying that for my mother's benefit because I know she's reading this. Sure, I knew people who were having sex (sorry, mom), but STD's? We had a few girls in our graduating class who were pregnant and had children very shortly after or right before graduation. I went to a "smart" high school, but it was still in a very urban neighborhood, so it's silly to pretend that we were "better" than anyone. Hell, we were probably worse in a lot of ways.

I've been reading a lot of feminist blogs, and a lot of mothers' blogs, because I'm doing research for this capstone where I talk to parents about educating their little girls. I am never once envious of their situation. I can't imagine what I would say to a little girl who was thirteen years old and crying because she slept with some boy who broke her heart. It breaks my cold little heart to read stories like that. I have a friend of a friend who works at Planned Parenthood. For confidentiality's sake, I will not be sharing any specific stories, but the ones about the really young girls just hurt. A girl here in Cincinnati just had a child at ten years old (it was all over the news here if you want to look it up) and cried because she couldn't keep it.

TEN YEAR OLDS CANNOT BE MOTHERS. I do not care how you want to spin it, they just can't. As far as I'm concerned, honestly, ten year olds should be clinging to their childhood and screaming to not let it go, not looking toward being adults. I have friends whose mothers were very young when they had them, and those friends are turning out to be brilliant, amazing adults. So I'm not judging in any way, but I am scared.

In researching for my capstone, I've come across some things that make me so angry that I have to turn off the computer and go for a walk to clear my head and then come back to view it objectively. T-Shirts that say "I left my brain in my locker", "Excellent growth potential" and "Who needs brains when you have these", all directed at teenagers. Panties from Wal-Mart found in the junior's section that say "Who needs credit cards". They are enough to turn my stomach and make me cry.

I graduate in just over three months, and I really feel like I need this upcoming break. My capstone is inside my head, and I just need a couple of days to not think about it. This is the last week of classes. My preliminary capstone findings are due by Monday at 1:00, and I have one final presentation on Wednesday. Then it's a week and a half where I don't have to do anything except go to the gym and lay around the house. I'll come back to my final quarter as a 23-year-old designer, I'll get my project done, my whole family will come to see me walk across a stage, and it'll be July before you know it. I'd expect "Where did five years go" posts sometime in the future.

Also, as a complete sidenote, I finished my portfolio and it's all ready to go. You can check it out at http://www.jenrizzo.com.

Here's my confession for the day: I kind of hate healthy people.

It's not that I have anything against them as people. I'm sure they're all very nice. I can admit that a lot of it is jealousy. Them with their stupid gym bags and their 5 a.m. yoga classes and their healthy snacks in their desks in case they have a "craving". Jerks.

If I haven't made it clear over the past couple of years in this blog, I'm not exactly an example of good health. If there's food to be had, make mine "comfort". If there's alcohol to be had, make mine wheat-y and calorie-filled. If there's salad, make mine caesar, and could you add some extra cheese to it? You see, I come from a family of barbecuers who might as well be carnivores. Our staple vegetable is a casserole with rice and cheese and butter... and broccoli. (Also: spinach dip.)

But lately, I have been moaning a lot about the fact that I am unhealthy. I work in a seven story building, where I am on the fourth floor, my boss is on the fifth, and the place I take my timesheets is on the third. Print timesheet, run upstairs, get timesheet approved, run back downstairs, print submitted timesheet, run upstairs, get boss to sign timesheet, run down two flights of stairs, drop timesheet off, run back upstairs. This little routine ends with me at my desk, where I sit next to healthy people, and I try to not seem like I am so out of breath I'd like to borrow some of theirs.

So, I sucked it up. Started eating less, joined a gym, became friends with an elliptical trainer, started drinking 8+ glasses of water every day. Over the course of three weeks, I lost 7.5 pounds.

The thing is, I'm still sort of doing what I want to do. I'm still going to the bar, I'm still eating the occasional greasy snack. But people, I am not kidding you with this - yesterday at the diner in our neighborhood, I saw the girl across from me get cheese fries, and they DID NOT LOOK APPETIZING. Does this mean I'm becoming one of you people? I woke up at 10 to go to the gym before my husband woke up, and then agreed to help a friend move out of her second and third story apartment without a second thought. I went to the gym four days in a row and then felt guilty when I had class the next day and couldn't make it. Are we KIDDING?!

While 7.5 pounds is not a ton for a person my size, the way I feel is a little ridiculous. I'm making healthy choices because they're actually the ones that appeal to me rather than feeling like they're what I "should" do. I'm motivated not by the number I see on the scale, but by the fact that I don't get winded halfway through my little timesheet dance. (Though I'm not going to lie, the number on the scale helps.) Yesterday helping Amy move, I didn't think about how I was out of breath, but instead focused on breathing the right way. Today, my legs hurt "the right way" - my thighs are sore, but my knees are perfect.

So, what's up, health world? I'm interested in making your acquaintance. And maybe for you, I'll even try to order light beer next time.

It's been awhile since I've written about anything, and my only excuse is that I'm busy. And, of course, who isn't? Here are the best excuses I have to offer, though, and I can only hope everyone will let me slide for a little while.

Capstone. For those of you unfamiliar with UC or the capstone process, a capstone is similar to a senior thesis. Ours can be completed in small groups (2-3 people) or individually. I'm not much of a team player sometimes, and I'm confident I can't stand working with one person for six months straight, so I'll be doing mine on my own.

Capstone is funny. For four years, our schedule is dictated for us. We have classes all the time, we have daily homework assignments that result in very large, very difficult projects, we have little time to ourselves. Then your senior year hits. We have one fifteen minute meeting once a week with the head of our department to discuss our progress. The other 167.75 hours per week are up to us. (Not entirely true - we have one multi-disciplinary studio on Monday and Wednesday, and we have a discussion class on Friday mornings. As far as our biggest project of our educational careers go, though, that's it.)

It requires a lot of self-motivation. I'm doing the best I can, and I think I'm pretty far ahead of most of the people in my class so far. Still, I feel like I'm doing nothing for the class. "Researching" and "gaining knowledge" are big things, but they're things I honestly do every day. I don't feel like I'm working when I'm googling, or reading books. It's just what I like to do. So while I'm sure I'm doing lots of things, it feels like I'm completely unproductive. I hope I get over this soon.

Work. I kept my job at FRCH, for a lot of reasons. Number one, the digital department is no longer teaching Cinema 4D, and FRCH really needs someone to step in on day one and know how to do everything they do. This isn't conducive to hiring another co-op. They need me, even with my limited availability, and I need them, because they pay my credit card bill. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a full-time position in my future with them, but we'll see what everyone's needs are at that time.

Work was a little frustrating for awhile, because I was just showing up and checking my email and didn't have any actual work to do. This week was nice - there were some design changes made to our plan for Hampton, so I was able to help out on some of the visualization for that. Now I'm back with nothing to do, hoping that a project will come up and they'll need me to step in and do some things. My boss has been nice enough to pass off some of the 3D work that comes our way to me so that he can work on some different things, and I'm hoping that system continues. I know there's enough work for everyone, we're just trying to find a healthy balance.

Teaching. I've been a teaching assistant for the freshman digital classes for the past three years now. This is my fourth and final year to be a TA for them. This usually means that I show up on Monday evenings and watch the big lecture that their professor gives them, and on Fridays they hang out in smaller groups with a bunch of us. They work on their projects and we're around to give them help if they have any questions.

The system is a little different this year. Instead of having 25 people in a room with three random TA's, there are 25 people in a room, and 8 of them are assigned to one of the three TA's. We're able to develop more of a one-on-one relationship with them as a result. I'm not sure how I feel about the system just yet. My first afternoon with them was last Friday, so I don't have a lot of experience with it. We'll see how it all works out. They're also much quieter than any classes I've had in the past, which makes me a little uneasy. It was a slightly boring three hours.

I've also been offered the opportunity to lecture to the whole group, and I'm really excited about it. I think it'll just be for a few minutes per lecture when they're learning 3D, but it's a really fabulous opportunity. I won't know more about it for a few weeks, but I'm looking forward to it.

Graduating. I'll be graduating in a little less than five months. It turns out that's a pretty big deal. My friend Ian and I will be the digital representatives coordinating our final show (DAAPWorks). We applied for graduation this week. My mother is throwing the graduation party to end all graduation parties. Me? I'm just trying to keep it all together. It's a lot to handle.

And quite frankly, I'd be handling everything a little better if my bedroom wasn't 62 degrees. I do not handle the cold very well. Even the cat is curled up under a blanket, glaring at me like this is my fault. We have four total rooms in this house - bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom. The living room, where the only thermostat in the house is, is currently 70 degrees. The bedroom, a mere 15 feet away with the door completely open, is 62. I don't think I get to win at air circulation.

So, stay warm, everyone. I miss you all dearly. I think I'll be taking an unofficial break from the online world for awhile, because I just don't have the time to fit anything else in to my life. You can always catch updates from me at twitter in the meantime.

I spend a lot of time in bed. These are the hours before I go to sleep, those precious hours I keep my eyes closed but have no intention of sleeping at that very moment. They are the moments I cherish when my life is much busier, because they don't happen as frequently. When you have a job like mine that often gets to actually end at 5:30, these moments are much easier to come by.

These are the hours where I plan my life. I think about where I've been and where I'm going. I think about what I want to do to my house. I think about what I'm going to write next. The 2007 wrap-up post got lost somewhere between my pillow and my desk, which are separated in real life by less than seven feet. I'm not sure where it went exactly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I didn't do one because I'm so busy looking at the future and don't want to dwell on the past, even though it was a pretty great year for me. (It was not such a great year for many of my friends, and that may be another part of why I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it.)

Of course, I don't do resolutions. There will be no new year's anything like that for me, because I have never successfully completed one. (Also, the first person to tell me that maybe 2008 is a good year to start completing resolutions is probably going to get killed.) I just don't believe in them. I believe in them exactly as much as I believe my husband when he tells me he's going to go back to the gym. You haven't been to a gym since I moved to New York in March of 2006, despite the fact that there is one literally inside your office. Don't talk to me about it. Just go to the gym. Don't tell me that 2008 is the year you're going to write a novel. It's not the year that you're finally going to lose weight. Just stop.

Unless, of course, these things actually work as motivators for you. I can't do time-based motivation. I think the very idea of it is what makes me fail. I find that I do things much faster if I just think I'll do them "someday". We were going to repaint the bathroom and hang a new mirror "someday". Had I said "by the end of 2007", it wouldn't have happened. But lo and behold, our bathroom was repainted and I had the mirror up at 4:30 on Monday afternoon. Mission accomplished.

Still, we talk about these things because it is new year's day and there is nothing else to talk about. You can talk about how much wine you polished off the night before, but then your headache will feel worse. You can talk about how you have to go back to work tomorrow after a ten day break, but then you will want to quit your job, no matter how much fun it is. So, you talk about 2008.

For us, new year's day was a day where we overused the phrase "2008 is the year of...", followed by something that it was obviously not going to be the year of. (2008 is apparently the year to end your sentences with prepositions.) At about 1:15 in the morning, clutching my glass of Asti, I proclaimed that this was the year I graduate. I'm relatively certain I shared this information with a few people's voicemail boxes as well. At 11:30 in the morning, I declared 2008 to be the year of the nap. At about 11:35, I tried to convince my friend Jen that it was the year of getting a second cat, but no one else in the room seemed to agree with me. 

Then, of course, we got on tangents about "things". You have inevitably heard people talk about these "things". When you have enough years behind you that you can fondly recount a lot of them (I really don't), you can have them. 2006 was the year I got married. That was my thing. 2007 was the year of the house. 2005... well, 2005 was the year I didn't have a thing.

I use the word "thing" because it is what we were stuck on three days ago. My friend Jen proclaims that she doesn't have a "thing". (She did not take well to me further insisting that her "thing" could be getting a second cat.) And John doesn't either. My "thing" will be graduating, but then that's it. I've already done married, house and car. I am running out of firsts, and firsts are the things you celebrate when you view those years in review. I don't think I'll have a "thing" in 2009, but I am not yet prepared to talk about that because that is after I graduate, in the land that doesn't make any sense.

The land that doesn't make any sense comes to me in 161 days. (I used a countdown calculator; I don't seriously have the free time to count the days myself.) In that time period, there's a lot to accomplish. At least I know where I'll be on June 14th, 2008. I just have to figure out how to get there first.

Happy 2008, everyone. If you're the resolution type, I hope you haven't broken them yet. If you're not the resolution type, I hope you're not wasting your time figuring out a "thing". Whatever your preferences, here's to a new year.

In 22-year-old news, I really can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life in a few months. It's November now, which means I am seven months away from graduating from college. My trip back to Kansas City this weekend opened my eyes a little. We're all getting older, but what's really important is that we're all working toward doing what we want to do. I know we're all concerned with it - Lars knows this isn't exactly what he wants to do and is thinking about moving back to the city sometime in the near future, Sean really wants to go back to school, Nathan wishes he could get enough consistent work so that he didn't have to keep defaulting to his restaurant job.

Me? I just wish I knew what life was going to hold for me. A part of me really hopes my current job will want to take me on full-time after school. Another part of me just wants to freelance and see if I can make it. But there's a comfort in having a salary, and that's something I think I might need right after school. I go back and forth every single day about it. I'd love to take the summer off next year. Not "off", per se, but I don't think I'm going to look for a job. I can freelance. I can make some phone calls and try to start things up for myself. More importantly, I can do it from anywhere, and what I really want to do is travel. I want to go back to Kansas City for more than two days in a row. I want to go back to New York for a little while and visit everyone I've been missing so horribly while I build up some contacts. I want to go to Dallas and spend some time with Lars. It would be nice to actually take that honeymoon we've been putting off for a year and a half. And, if everyone remembers correctly, I have demanded we go to Maine. The lobster I had last weekend at the Waterfront reinforced that idea.

Who knows if any of these things will happen, but I really hope I can at least do some of it.

My need to travel was definitely influenced by the weekend with some of my closest friends. We might all go to Dallas for Lars' birthday in February. Nathan wants me to come see his show in KC at the end of April. I have to go to Tampa in June for Matt's wedding and the next weekend I'll be in KC for a graduation party. (Oh, God, my graduation party.) Travel, travel, travel.

People like me can make enough money that they can afford to travel all the time, right? I could get consistent freelance jobs and not have to be chained to a desk with a week of vacation every year?

The truth is that things are going pretty well, job-wise. I'm doing a little bit of writing, I'm getting a few freelance jobs, my full-time job is frustrating but I'm doing work that I'm really proud of. I'm coming in super early all the time, but hey - I'm hourly. Hourly employees don't get to gripe about working too many hours, because overtime is the best thing ever. All in all, things are okay. I just need to remember that when I'm at my desk at five a.m. tomorrow.

"We're going to Maine."
"I don't know anything about Maine."
"Me neither."

This is the announcement I made to my husband today, about thirty seconds after I decided we needed to go to Maine. We, of course, will not be going to Maine anytime soon (you can reference the fact that I was supposed to be flying back to Cincinnati from JFK today, but I canceled my plane tickets because I seem to have run out of money). This is yet another thing on the ever-growing list of things I think I should be doing.

The list isn't limited to vacations, though there are a lot of them on there. Maine is the newest addition, but it's in good company with Tuscany, Paris, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco (again), Chicago (again), and a growing list of places I try to convince him we could make a day trip to from the Cincinnati metro area. (And for the record, that list of cities is just the sampling from this week.)

We will build a second story on the house that involves a master suite with a bathroom (!) and walk-in closet (!!) and sitting room or office that opens out onto the second story deck. (We have owned the house less than a month and haven't even made our first payment on it yet.) We will buy a BMW if we continue living in a city that requires us to have a car. We will move to different cities because we don't really know how to get attached to one place for too long. We will own a loft, we will plant gardens, we will get involved with our community.

The point is that these are all "we" goals. It doesn't have much to do with the fact that we're married, either, as if that's something that just forces you to change who you are as a person. I say all the time that John and I are contentedly independent people, and that's true. When I go to a new restaurant with friends, I enjoy it, but leave even more excited because it's a new place I get to share with him. I didn't get married out of some "need" to be married, some ticking clock (got married at 21, kids, I couldn't even find the clock yet). We chose to marry one another because we're the people we want to share everything with. What could be more important than that?

As a complete side note, the mushy factor of this post is brought to you because I just finished reading the entire archives of Deb's old blog. Four years of bad dating followed by meeting the perfect man and marrying him. I'm a little smitten with their story myself. It took five days to get through it and it's finally over. I feel like I just read a really fantastic book. It was a good break from the real-life books I was reading. It also gave me something to do to kill time, because I am super bored with all this new-found free time on my hands.

Oh, and if anyone needs a freelance for anything, feel free to hit me up. I need JOBS.  

I logged in to post this entry, something I rarely have to do because I remain logged in at all times, and thought I was seeing things because my name was on the front page. I'm not quite sure how that happens, but thanks to whoever made it happen for me - and welcome, all new readers that I didn't have before today!

I make it sound a little more classy there, but rest assured that's not quite how it played out for me. As I told my mom when I called her to tell her to check out Vox today, 'I was logging in and then I'm like, "Fuck! That's my name!"'

Jen Rizzo, keeping it classy since '85.

The real reason I tuned in today is to mention, for about the eightieth time, that I am more domestic than my iner child is comfortable with. On Saturday morning, we woke up and went to Lowe's. To buy DIRT. Dirt, something that I'm fairly sure we already own. We loaded the trunk of my Honda Accord, drove to the supermarket to buy flank steak, and came home. We had not been in the house more than about two minutes when my husband flashed me a smile that was once reserved for my calves and pizza and said "You want to work in the garden?"

GARDEN.

A later phone call to my mother involved me sputtering "Garden! I am not this person! I am kitten heels and overpriced cocktails and fun and things that don't make me dirty!"

Now, let's be fair, only two of those things are really true. I'm more "ballet flats and Belgian beer" than I am "kitten heels and overpriced cocktails", most of the time. Though I am not a girl that likes to get dirty. I eat only boneless wings because I can use a fork, I don't eat sloppy joes because I will inevitably have to change shirts, and I do. not. garden.

But this weekend, by God, I gardened. Got in there with my hands, pulled weeds, learned about roots, poured potting soil.  I'd say something inspirational about connecting with nature, but all I got was dirty. It's a slippery slope, though, because I spent an hour of my morning researching the types of vegetables that will grow best in my "zone". Kitten heels, I tell you.

I spent most of my weekend (when I wasn't gardening or grilling, of course) thinking about what I want to do with my life. I won't pretend this isn't mildly spawned by the fact that I got a really unacceptable grade in a class for the first time in my college career, but still. I flip back and forth constantly, trying to figure out what to do. I just posted about how I'm a designer because I have to be, because I can't turn it off, and that's true. But there's a lot of gray area there, you see. There are also a lot of other things that interest me, things I could be good at, things that warrant consideration. I half-assedly applied for a part-time writing job yesterday, one I am heavily unqualified for, just because I wanted someone to read things I had written and tell me how I can be better. I think a lot about blogs - how I will never really have a popular one because you've really got to get a "topic". My darling friend Michelle has a successful wine blog that recently won her an iPhone. She's a gifted writer and wine isn't her only thing, but her wine blog is fantastically successful and useful.

As for me, I'm too random. I'm all over the place and I just want to write. I can't imagine having something happen to me and not be able to write about it because the content doesn't fit. There's always the option, of course, of having a personal blog and something more focused, but I fear I wouldn't post often enough in the focused one to make it count. I am a bad blogger, people. I've got time to figure it out.

I have mentioned it before, of course, but I'm facing three weeks with nothing to do. On day one, I avoided a freelance project, went for the shortest run ever before I got too hot and talked to my old landlord about his retirement. Let's see if the next few weeks can be a little more successful.

In my inbox right now, there is a draft email to myself. The subject is "Things to Write About", and the list in the body of the message just keeps getting longer and longer. The truth is that I have gone to so many places lately that are really worth writing about, but I'm too busy doing all of them to write about them. So I vow to myself to write about them soon, but there are a lot of obstacles coming up in the next week for me to prevent me from doing that. It's my last full-time week at my job, and many of my good friends are flying back into town so we can start our school quarter up again on the 18th. There are evenings out with friends, a baseball game and celebratory happy hour on my last day of work, a day of fun with my husband to celebrate his 26th birthday, and many other things that I'm sure will be presenting themselves to me over the next few days.

Yesterday was our first anniversary, and can I just say that I'm exhausted? While I'm all for going out and seeing the world, I'm also for relaxing after our terribly busy work week. Torn between sitting on the couch and playing video games or going out and running all over town, we shockingly chose the latter. The day started off with lunch at Melt.

Oh, Melt. Have you been there yet? If you like anything about Northside, then you'll love everything about Melt. Delicious, freshly made food that doesn't have a lick of grease to be found in it, presented beautifully but without pretension, for a price you can afford. They're right next door to Northside Tavern, they have cupcakes that are to die for, and if you opt for takeout instead, you can walk across the street to Shake It, the city's best record store, and do some browsing while you wait. I don't know why you're all not there right now, to be honest. John had never been there, so we decided that the time was right to go. He got the nachos and I opted for the significantly more girly brie plate. Wedges of brie laying with grapes, apples, walnuts, and a delicious salad topped with maple balsamic dressing. I'd eat it again right now.

After Melt was a trip to Shake-It, where we spent a little more than we probably should have on magazines and toys. Then we headed out to the butterfly show, because when a good friend gives you free tickets to something you wanted to go to anyway, it's a sign that you have to go. The butterfly show is always fun, but we were a little disappointed this year by the number of butterflies they had. I don't know if it's really lower than there have been in the past or if they were all just hiding in the trees, but we weren't terribly impressed. It's still fun, and the conservatory is always beautiful, so I'm glad we went. Every time we go, I think that I should really come back with my camera, and then I never do.

We left the conservatory and went to Homearama. Locals, have you been to this? I had heard of it, but never visited. There's an event in Kansas City called Parade of Homes, where the whole city turns into a big open house, and you can go around and visit the new homes being constructed. I asked John a few weeks ago if there was an equivalent to that here in town, and Homearama was the closest thing he could come up with. It isn't quite the same thing, though, because these homes are in the 2+ million dollar range, which is a ridiculous sum of money in this area, and they're around 6,000-9,000 square feet. It's a chance to see how the "other half" lives, as a local publication put it. There's a new subdivision created every year, and local home builders pull out all the stops to create one home in this gated community that I'll never be able to get to unless I'm allowed to buy tickets like I was yesterday.

The homes are spectacular, but I have to admit I wasn't as impressed as I thought I was going to be. I know that there are trends in new homes, even the high end ones, but after the third house, I felt like I knew exactly what the next one was going to look like. If you've seen one 9,000 square foot house with a basement theater, full-scale bar, pool table and gym, you've seen them all, right? I'm also pretty judgmental as a designer, and most of the homes didn't look like they could be lived in. I know that when you've got that much space to work with, you're obviously going to gravitate toward certain spaces of the home, but I didn't see living rooms that I could live in. I want somewhere that facilitates laying on the couch and watching the news when I get home from work. Perhaps I'm a circumstance of my own income and when you get to buying 2.5 million dollar homes, you no longer flop on a couch after a hard day at work, but I imagine people with that much money still want to have their friends over and hang out and enjoy it.

It's a fun event, but it's strenuous. It's a ton of walking, and lots of stairs, and it was hot. Even well air-conditioned homes get up to about 80 degrees inside when you have thousands of people constantly coming in and out. We had a great time, though, and saw some things that were definitely unique. Working at an interior design firm, you get to see lots of great stuff, but it's all retail for me. It's nice to get a sense of where home design is going.

After that we had dinner at the restaurant we went to the night we got engaged, because we're sometimes sickeningly cute and like to do that sort of thing. Then we came home and lounged around, reading the magazines we had collected over the day and making our predictions about what year two is going to hold. Year two is going to be busy, without a doubt. We've got my senior year to deal with - job prospects, senior capstone projects, graduation. UC's graduation was yesterday. Since they're all gone, I'm officially the next class of UC graduates. Bring it on, I say. Here's to a full, lovely second year of marriage.

Sometimes, I think those of us that are well-educated about certain topics ignore the idea of personal taste. I use "well-educated" instead of "snob" for a very specific reason. I know a lot about beer. I know more than the majority of my age group about wine. I know more than almost anyone I know about food. (Almost - I have been blessed with knowing some unbelievably talented cooks in my short lifetime, so I have to be careful with my words here.) But I'm not a beer snob. I prefer good beer - my list of favorites includes things that many people, especially in my neck of the woods, have never heard of. But I still love going to the cheap happy hour next to my office and getting a $2 Bud Light after work on Fridays. Last night we ran out of beer at a cookout I was attending, and though the "good" beer store was just a mile down the road, I still opted for the convenience store where I could buy a 12 pack of Miller Lite. No, the only thing I'll confess to being a snob about with certain beers is the cans vs. bottles debate. I could make an entire entry on that point alone, but that's not what we're here for.

Personal taste, as far as I'm concerned, is everything. I love steak. Love it. I like my steak medium rare, a fact that makes my mother wonder where she went wrong with me. Every chef in the entire world will tell you that anything over medium is a tragedy - and most chefs believe medium rare is actually the cutoff point. My mother likes her steak burnt. And I can go on and on about how terrible that is for the steak - how you shouldn't buy a $30 steak if you just want all the taste cooked out of it - but the fact is that she loves it, and having a "perfectly cooked" steak from the world's best chef probably wouldn't change her mind about that, so who's to tell her how she should order it? My grandmother, for the last few years she was alive, drank white zinfandel Franzia out of a box. But more than a box - the button was too hard for her arthritis-ridden hands to push most of the time, so we'd pour it into old 7-up and water bottles that she had recycled from when we brought soda over, and she'd leave it sitting in her fridge, drinking a little bit every day. Franzia, out of a box, then transferred to old soda bottles? Winemakers across the country probably died a little, but she loved it, and that's all that matters.

I think everyone has odd things about them like this, and I love that. Mine tend to be nostalgic - I relate food to the people I ate that food with, and the same goes for wine and beer. I had my first Hoegaarden sitting at Boxers restaurant in the west village with Kat, Zach, Nathan & Matt. My first Paulaner, the beer responsible for beginning my obsession with all wheat beers, was introduced to me by a professor before we all went on spring break. I make the world's best frozen margarita you'll ever have, and every time I make them for someone new, I tell them about how the recipe came from my good friend Grace, who taught me how to make them about a year and a half ago, much to the delight of everyone who hung out at my apartment last summer. (The legacy of margaritas with Grace and I goes so far that she and our good friend Jen bought us a margarita set, a new blender, and a bottle of tequila for a wedding gift. We're actually going to spend time with them today, where we will be having margaritas out on the deck.)

Imagine my delight this week when I saw Food & Wine on the magazine rack at the checkout counter of my favorite grocery store, and I saw a headline about America's Great Value Winery. I love anything that focuses on wine I can afford, so I immediately grabbed it and flipped to the article. Much to my surprise, it was Chateau Ste. Michelle! They're most well-known for their Riesling, which can be found for under $10 at many of the local grocery stores around here. I constantly buy their Riesling, even though it's not the best I've ever tried, and it's due to the nostalgia factor. I bought my first bottle at Joe Allen, my favorite restaurant in New York. Nathan introduced me to it when I was 16, and someday I'll write a whole entry about that alone. The night before Nathan left to move back to Kansas City, we had an overly emotional dinner there, and Jessica & I split a bottle. When my mother came to visit me and I took her to Joe Allen, I bought a bottle of it for the two of us. When I went to Palomino on a weekend vacation back to Cincinnati, I had a glass. There is always at least one bottle sitting around, because it's my go-to $9 bottle. I've had better, but it means something to me, and that's important.

Life has been good otherwise - John bought a Nintendo Wii on Monday, and that's been taking up quite a bit of our time. You think I can lose 10 pounds just by playing the Wii? We'll find out. I spent all day Friday with a co-worker and ex-professor, who took me to a great little restaurant in Covington, followed by drinks on the patio at Northside Tavern. Good friends came to hang out that night, and we decided to grab cupcakes next door at Melt. Have you been to Melt yet? You should be embarassed if you haven't gone - and while you're there, try the lemon cupcakes. Yesterday we stayed true to our decision to go to Findlay Market more often, purchasing steaks for our dinner with Grace & Jen tonight. I also bought fresh feta for the spanakopita I'm making tonight, and can I mention that it was only $3.79 a pound? In other cheese finds, we found my favorite NY State extra-sharp cheddar that I used to order from Fresh Direct, and found that the same cheese shop carries Dubliner, my new favorite cheese. We got incredible deals as per usual, and even ran into a friend as we were leaving the parking lot. The evening provided a good cookout at Amy's, complete with soccer (I played!) and frisbee (I sucked!), and I provided potato salad. Amy made a delicious cake that I'll be investigating soon. Tonight we've got margaritas and steaks with the ladies, and tomorrow will be Taste of Cincinnati. Overall, just a fabulous weekend with good friends and good food.

Here's to Memorial Day! Hope everyone's weekend is going splendidly!