Funny Conversations.

I love it when conversations take a turn from normal, every day "How's your day been?", "What did you have for dinner?", "What TV shows do you watch?" (ok, those are random questions...) type convresations to obscure, "Where did THAT come from?" conversations. I love it when people can let go and be silly. I love to laugh. I love to be silly. I love to talk about ridiculous things. Here's an example of the ridiculousness that can occur when you let yourself go. Tonight I was Google talking with Jessie and here's the conversation that transpired...

Jessie: Do you think when we're old ladies and our husbands are dead you'd want to be roommates?

Me: Yes, for sure. Except I'd have to learn how to live with the bare minimum in the house or you'd have to learn to live with more than one set of measuring spoons. (***Important information to have that make sense: Jessie is the OPPOSITE of a pack rat; she can't really stand anything extra or unnecessary...)

Jessie: I'm ok with more than one set of measuring spoons. Just not more than 10. Because hopefully we'll be baking and then we won't have to wash dishes too often.

Me: I'm fine with that... Ok, then it's official, we'll live together.

Jessie: Or maybe our rich husbands will have left us enough money to hire a hot dishwasher. Plus, I'm older than you so you could probably keep telling me you'll downsize and I'll forget. ...

So great... I love silly conversations.

Extraverts need downtime, too.

I'm a pretty hardcore extravert. I will choose to be with people over being by myself 10 out of 10 times. Sometimes I get anxious, even nauseous, if I'm alone for too long. It's a sickness, really. I love being around people. BUT, I've realized lately that maybe I'm not as much of an extravert as I thought because at the end of the day, I love escaping and doing whatever I want to do... all by myself.

Tonight I found myself craving to be upstairs in my room, alone. Reading, watching a movie, painting my nails, making some kind of craft... whatever I'm in the mood for. I turn on my cheesy white lights (don't judge me, I love them), shut my door, and escape into my room that inspires me and allows me to be whoever I want to be, all by myself. Tonight that consists of watching some cheesy chick flick I've never heard of on Netflix and catching up on some magazine reading (In Style, Real Simple, and maybe some Everyday with Rachael Ray). I'm ecstatic to be doing just that.

I was just thinking about how much I enjoy this time, and thought I'd blog about it. Who would have thought? An extravert who loves, even craves, some alone time....

Green room.

Things at my current job are slow at times... It's really no surprise that they couldn't continue my position because they honestly don't have enough work to keep me busy for my 20 hours a week. Therefore, I've gotten really good at finding projects for myself. I LOVE projects. Especially finished projects... And today I finished a project that I've been working on for the past month.

Our church has a room off the stage where our musicians, actors, and whoever else is involved in the service hang out when they're not onstage. We call it the "green room," just like a lot of people in theater do. (Curious to know the origin of why a green room is called a green room? I was: here's what I found out.) Our green room was lacking a bit... For a room that was meant for the relaxation of artists, it was about as non-artistic as possible. So, I was given a $50 budget (I think I ended up spending about $75... woops), the freedom to decorate as I wished, and help from a couple friends (Rob and Jessie)... and voila! Want to see the before and after? (I love before and afters.)

The Before...

(This green is unfortunate...)

(I know... it's pretty bad.)

The After!

(One side of the room.)

(The other side of the room.)

(My friend Rob had the idea to paint a staff on the wall...

I like how it turned out. Any guesses what song that is?)

(I used my green, twin sheets from college to cover to couches.

It wasn't perfect, but it was better than before...)

(I stole the idea from Design*Sponge to use paint

chips to cover the walls. And yes, I stole them all.)

Coming Soon! The before and after of my office at work that I mentioned forever ago but never showed you the finished product. I've just got to take some solid pictures of it and will post it soon.

TV.

I don't know if you've picked up on this yet... but I get really into things. Hobbies. Games. Music. Movies. TV shows. I guess I kind of live my life (or at least try to) with this philosophy of, "Why not love something? Why not have "love" be my default and get really into the things I enjoy?" Granted, that kind of discredits a lot of my opinions because people probably think, "Oh, that Abby, she'll love anything... Of what significance is her approval?" Which is a valid thought... but I think I'm going to keep on living the way I've been living.

ANYWAY... I love things... and get really into them... If I can possibly get emotionally involved, I do, probably more than I should. One thing I love is TV. (Well, TV shows on the internet at least... I don't love having my life revolve around a television screen so thanks to DVR and Hulu I indulge in this passion of mine after everyone else is asleep.) But guess what... TV is coming back! I mean, it's been around, but we all know that one of the many splendid things about fall is that the TV starts cranking out new shows. And next week is that week... when TV starts again! I'm pumped!

The shows I'm most excited about are:

1. Chuck (Premieres September 20)

2. Modern Family (Premieres September 22)

3. Glee (Premieres September 21)

4. Top Chef: Just Desserts (Premiered September 15)

Here's to getting too emotionally involved in silly TV shows. Happy fall premieres to you!

Employment.

(I just typed up a whole long story about my life over the last 9 months, then I deleted it, because you don't care. So here's the abbreviated version.) In December, I graduated from MU. In February, I was offered a part time, temporary job at my church that has gradually extended and will continue through January (I took it hoping it turn into my permanent, full time dream job.) That didn't happened and a month ago my boss told me the church was hurting financially and they probably wouldn't be able to extend my job any longer and would maybe even have to let me go early.

(I just typed up another long story, but then realized you still don't need all the details.) I was offered a job by a friend to be an administrative assistant for hospice. I had the random connection to another job by a random friend of my mom's and started pursuing that, too. I felt like the hospice job wasn't right, so I decided to turn it down... this morning (who turns down a job in this economic time, I know.) But... this afternoon I was offered the other job! A job that is using me degree! A job that pays decently and has good benefits! A job for a good company! Can you believe it?

October 18th I will officially be an employee of JP Morgan as a "bilingual retirement education specialist" (basically, I'm answering people's questions about their 401 ks...) I love employment!

Angry Birds.

If you have an iPod Touch, an iPhone, or an iPad and haven't already invested in the game Angry Birds... I think you should. It's probably the best 99 cents I've ever spent...

I don't know why I love this game so much. It's completely mindless, and probably for children, but for some reason I can't get enough. I'm not going to lie... I am all the way through the game except for the Golden Eggs levels which I'm still not sure what is so special and different about those...

Anyway, I know this is completely dumb, but Angry Birds is fun. If you like mindless games that are addicting, this is for you. Speaking of mindless games that are addicting... Have you ever played Copter? One of my friends showed me this game freshman year of college and I'm pretty sure my vision is a little bit worse now because of the number of hours I spent staring at the computer screen without blinking while playing this game. Go here if you're ready for that kind of quality entertainment.

Angry Birds. Copter. Do it. They're fun.

Pretzels.

So, I'm kind of a loser and love to read baking blogs... Lately, a couple different bloggers have mentioned soft pretzels: Joy the Baker made a whole video about how to make them and Annie's Eats had a picture tutorial on how to make them. I love salty things (I actually prefer salty over sweet which is weird because I love to bake which almost always involves the sweet side of life..) so they have been on my mind since reading about them. The only problem is that both of the recipes from these bloggers that I really respect involved all these crazy steps... Ok, when I say "all these crazy steps" I actually just mean one, it made you boil the dough, and I just didn't like that...

That brings us to today. Once a month I'm in charge of bringing snacks for the arts team at my church and this week is my week. I normally try to bring something sweet and something salty for a little variety, you know. I already knew what my sweet thing was going to be: Peanut Butter Truffle Brownies... a Betty Crocker brownie mix disguised as something spectacular (and it is, indeed, spectacular.) I thought it'd be fun to make some pretzels as my salty thing but wasn't in the mood to do the craziness that Joy and Annie suggested. THEN, I remembered when I was in middle school, we made some pretzels in Home Ec. I thought, "Hm, if 6th grade me could do it, then 23-year-old me should be able to do it EASILY." So, my mom, being the amazing woman that she is, still had the recipe (it was actually from when my little brother Cory took Home Ec, but apparently they taught the same recipes year after year.) I made the pretzels, no boiling required, and they are DELICIOUS!

So, if you're in the mood for pretzels, then below is the recipe. Don't judge the simple jargon, it was written for a 6th grader to understand. :) (Except I'm pretty sure "baste" was a vocabulary word because that was probably way over my little, 6th grade head.)

6th Grade Home Ec Soft Pretzels

3 c. flour

1 tbsp. yeast

3/4 tsp. salt

1/4 c. sugar

1 1/4 c. hot tap water

1 tbsp. oil

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Mix dry ingredients.

3. Add oil and water.

4. Sprinkle flour on surface and hands.

5. Turn-fold-press (aka knead) dough for 4 minutes.

6. Cut dough into desired number of pieces. (I made 16)

7. Roll dough into cylindrical pieces 10-15 inches long.

8. Twist them into pretzels.

9. Bake from 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned. (15 minutes was a little long, I'd start with 10 if you're going to make smaller pretzels like I did.)

10. Baste with melted butter and add kosher salt or cinnamon sugar.