Friday Five {#5}

Friday Five

Five things that mattered to me this week!

{one}

I started my assistantship this week! I've been loving it. After years of working retail, food services, and unpaid internships, I'm finally doing something I enjoy and getting paid for it! I'm only starting a few projects right now, but next week I'll be working with some of the executive members of the Program Committee (PC) and starting to plan Homecoming! (Which my boss wants me to take a lead on supervising - ahhh!) It's all very exciting, and I'm sure you'll all be hearing about it constantly on this little blog of mine.

{two}

And of course, one of my favorite non-working aspects of the new job is I get to dress up! 

Hooray for no more lame uniforms and restrictive dress codes!

I definitely need to go shopping for more work clothes. I only really have 3 or 4 pairs of nice pants that I would wear to my retail job with my uniform, and everything else in my closet is your regular jeans-and-t-shirt situation. Time to update the wardrobe! :D

{three}

This comic had me DYING laughing earlier this week. If you enjoy running and racing, definitely check it out for a good laugh! Here's a little preview:

This is SO me... Oops!

{four}

Speaking of running, it's been a rough week in marathon training land. My left calf muscle has been in a stubborn ball since Monday that is pretty painful to run on, and in my attempt to run a measly 4 miles Wednesday, I was greeted with nausea throughout the entire run. I'm assuming all this is because of my diet (again, for an idea of how I eat, see comic above*) and I'm definitely paying for it. Maybe it's time to change things up?

(P.S. Did I mention I've been vlogging my marathon training? Because I've been vlogging my marathon training.)

{five}

I don't know what it is, but I've been addicted to planner videos on YouTube. Yes, you read that right. There are videos on YouTube about planners. Like the paper ones you keep your calendar in. And there's thousands of these videos too. They're not particularly entertaining, and the majority of people would probably think they're duller than watching the grass grow, but I find them so interesting. The inner organization freak just loves watching how other people organize their lives.

[source]

Yes, this is how I spend my free time. 

Yes, I am fully aware that I need to find a better hobby.

Hope you all have a great weekend! :)

*I'm exaggerating. I do eat pretty healthy (like a regular person healthy, not a health guru healthy!) on a regular basis, but I won't lie and tell you I don't use my running as excuse to gorge myself on junk from time to time!

Homemade 'Naner Bread!

Ever since I was little, I've LOVED my mom's homemade banana bread (or as I like to call it, 'naner bread). Now that I'm living on my own, I've learned to make it myself! It's not the exact recipe that my mom uses, but it still comes out pretty darn good (if I do say so myself), so I decided to share the recipe with you all! :)

A Day at the Beach

Tuesday afternoon, after all of the summertime grown-up responsibilities were taken care of, Brett, Sport, Tywan, and I all piled into Dory and adventured to Hull for a day at the beach! I've been dying for some ocean time this summer, so I was beyond happy. We even invited Brett's older sister Melissa to meet us there, and she gladly took us up on the invitation, bringing along the kids!

Foamy Family Bonding

Saturday I ventured north to Haverhill to meet up with my parents and run the Foam Fest 5K! An entry to this race was a birthday gift from my parents and I was so excited that they were running it with me! If you can't tell, we went with a superhero theme :P I'm going to save a review of the race for my running blog (be sure to go check it out and follow if you haven't already!), but here are some of my favorite pictures to tide you over. ;)

Curly Dreams

I have straight hair. Like, stubbornly straight. I've never been able to successfully curl my hair on my own, and even if it does get a curl to it, it will fall flat again within an hour and a half. I've been jealous of girls with wonderfully big and curly hair (the grass is always greener, eh?), so when somehow my hair becomes miraculously curly (*coughIsleptinfrenchbraidscough*), it's cause for a photo!

This was taken about 10 minutes after I woke up, and within an hour or so this beautiful waviness fells into a frizzy mess. *le sigh* Perhaps I should braid my hair more often!

What kind of hair do you have, and what kind of hair do you lust over?

Breakfast Pizza and Polish Horseshoes

If you have no idea what those words mean, then you probably haven't spent much time here:

Ossipee Lake in Ossipee, NH!

Brett invited me to spend the weekend with him and his family at their camp in Ossipee for the 4th of July. Ossipee is spoken about so highly in his family so I was excited to take the trip with him. We spent a lot of time at Long Sands (this giant sand bar that can only be reached by boat) swimming, drinking, playing, and relaxing, and when we got back to camp at night we made s'mores and I taught everyone to play my favorite card game, Egyptian War! I had such an awesome time with everyone, and I hope that Brett and I can sneak in one more weekend up there before the school year eats up all our free time again!

July Book Club Selection: Girlchild

I know, I know. I'm about 10 days late with this post, and admittedly I'm already about half way through this book (it's great, by the way), but I thought I'd share with you the book that I've selected for the book club this month anyways, and maybe you can read along with me for the rest of the month.

This month, I've picked Girlchild, a novel that's been sitting on my iBooks app on my phone since the beginning of the year (you know, an emergency book if I'm ever bored out in the world somewhere) and had yet to be read. The book description is as follows...

"Rory Hendrix, the least likely of Girl Scouts, hasn’t got a troop or a badge to call her own. But she still borrows the Handbook from the elementary school library to pore over its advice, looking for tips to get off the Calle—the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.

Rory’s been told she is one of the “third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom,” and she’s determined to break the cycle. As Rory struggles with her mother’s habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good, she finds refuge in books and language. From diary entries, social workers' reports, story problems, arrest records, family lore, and her grandmother’s letters, Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild crafts a devastating collage that shows us Rory's world while she searches for the way out of it."


Like I said, I'm already well into this book and I'm really enjoying it. It's incredibly sad, but it's one of those stories that's so tragic that you've just got to keep reading. I'll save the rest for my review, but so far, it's a book that I'd highly recommend you read! This is definitely a good month to join the book club!

Click "read more" for my review of last month's book, A Dog's Purpose!

July Goals

I've finally returned from my vacation and gotten back into normal life with normal working internet! HOORAY! Here are my goals for the month of July...

I feel like this is a good balance between relaxing summer goals and productive professional and personal goals. Definitely feeling confident about this month!

Last month I only set two goals for myself - to read 2 books and to complete every obstacle at the Superhero Scramble. I completed my reading goal with A Dog's Purpose (review coming tomorrow!) and Whiskey Sour (the first book in an awesome murder mystery series - can't wait to read the others!). I didn't complete every obstacle at the Superhero Scramble, but I can definitely say that I at least attempted all of them and gave them my best shot (more detail here) which I'm proud of. I'd say that my June Goals were a success!

I'm happy to be back blogging again. Things got hectic there for a bit, but a good hectic. I have so much more to blog about, so keep your eyes open for more posts coming this week! :)

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

It's American Independence Day, one of my favorite holidays of the year! The kind of holiday to be proud of who you are, where you came from, and to kick back with friends, family, and some sunshine. Brett, Danielle, and I are venturing up to NH to spend the weekend with their family, and I'm so stoked to get a little nature break! What are you guys doing to celebrate?

P.S. I have wi-fi back, so be looking for a few big updates when I return! :)

Wi-Fi-less!

One of the disadvantages to living in on-campus housing is that you don't have much control over what happens to your apartment, since you're not the one paying for it. Obviously, the pros outweigh the cons (again, you don't have to pay for it!), but if something stops working, you're basically S.O.L. until it's fixed. For example, the hot water was out over the weekend and couldn't get fixed until the facilities department got back on Monday. 

Now, the college is switching over the Wi-Fi network, and I'm without the Internet for a few days. Hence, no July Goals or Book Club updates. But no worries! I'll get those posts up as soon as I get a connection on my laptop. (I'm currently phone-blogging... #firstworldproblems)

Hope y'all are having a great week, and I'll be sure to update soon! I have lots to write about :)