Me, A-Z!!!!!!

I found this cute little A - Z quiz on Katie's Pencil Box, a blog that I just discovered today and am officially obsessed with.  I would highly encourage you all to check it out, because she has some beautiful pictures and fun posts.  As I'm trying to blog more frequently, as a nice little outlet for myself, as well as to make this more of a lifestyle blog than a personal update blog, I decided to incorporate the quiz into today's post.  Anyway, here are my quiz answers!

A. Age: 23
B. Bed size: Full!  I have finally graduated from, as Lauren calls it, the Twin Bed of my Youth!  I hardly know what to do with all of this extra space!
C. Chore that you hate: Is it weird to say that I don't hate doing chores?
D. Dogs: Unfortunately, I am allergic, but love dogs, as long as they don't jump on me or get in my way when I'm trying to walk
E. Essential start to your day: A nice, long 5 a.m. run
F. Favorite color: Any shade of purple or seafoam green
G. Gold or Silver: Gold all the way (white gold for the engagement ring that I will hopefully someday have).  However, my most prized possession is a silver charm bracelet.
H. Height: 6’0″
I. Instruments you play: I took piano lessons for years as a child, but have always played best by ear
J. Job title: Marketing and Events Coordinator, Georgetown Full-Time MBA Admissions Office
K. Kids: Not yet, but I can’t wait to be a mom (hopefully of four!) someday.
L. Live: The fabulous Washington, DC
M. Mother’s name: Nancy
N. Nicknames: My dad calls me Sweet Pea and Boo Boo, my mom calls me Lass, and my grandpa calls me PC (for pin cushion; I had such severe jaundice when I was born that I was carted back and forth to the hospital for lots of tests, hence the pins- or more aptly, needles)
O. Overnight hospital stays: None.
P. Pet peeves: Bad grammar, people who do not clean up after themselves, Metro delays, people who make no effort to do their jobs well (ahem, Comcast, health insurance, leasing office, I'm talking to you), closed-minded people (particularly common in DC, especially as it relates to politics)
Q. Quote from a movie: "I love that after I spend day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." ~When Harry Met Sally
R. Right or left handed: Lefty (WOO! Unique 10%)
S. Siblings: 1 younger brother (although I always tell people that I have 3 brothers and a sister, because I consider Jack, Caki and Patrick to be my siblings as well)
U. Underwear: I have recently been finding really cute lacy pairs from Anthropologie and VS
V. Vegetable you hate: Mushrooms (technically a fungus, though)
W. What makes you run late: I don't run late.  EVER (unless the Metro is experiencing delays, which it often is).  Although my boyfriend might tell you that, on our first date, I was two or three minutes late because my bus was running behind.  Needless to say,  I arrived very dissheveled, red-faced from a power walk and extremely apologetic.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: Sinus (I got sinus infections a fair amount as a teenager), ankle (once when I broke it as a child and once this summer when I sprained it)
Y. Yummy food that you make: Anything baked (cookies are my specialty, but I've also made Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes, fruit crumbles, pies, cakes from scrats, etc.)
Z. Zoo animal: Pandas.  So freaking cute, not to mention playful

Happy Hump Day!!!
Kristen

Perfect for Fall

I am currently lusting after these Tory Burch boots, which I will not be buying anytime soon.  Also, for whatever reason, a camel cowl neck sweater with lots of chunky gold jewelry sounds divine right now.  I started using Polyvore to piece together outfits, which is a lot of fun!  Hopefully my boards will start looking more sophisticated as I get the hang of it! 

Perfect for Fall by kristenbautz featuring long sleeve sweaters

Wait, you thought this would be easy?!?!?

I am in the midst of a particularly nasty Comcast issue that has dragged on for weeks and weeks, and yesterday, after my mom and I drove 45 minutes (in DC rush hour traffic-apparently the worst in the US, by the way, with 3 days spent in traffic annually) each way to get to the Comcast service center very far out in Montgomery County, I got to thinking about all of the things they don't tell you about adulthood.

Overall, I have been content with my general easing in to adulthood (not that I proclaim to be there just yet), but there are certain hassles that I was certainly not anticipating. I would be interetsed to hear some other frustrations (as well as victories!) that you have experienced, should you be of the same age bracket as myself. Health insurance. A necessary evil, in my opinion, one of those things that is really useful to have should you get sick, but, let's face it, a pain in the ass otherwise. Some things I love about insurance: only having to pay a $15 copay for a doctor's visit; getting most procedures (including a recent X-ray that ruled out broken bones when I broke my ankle over the summer. Due to a hospital mixup, I received a $282 bill and nearly had a heart attack, but after a quick call to the hospital, got everything sorted out and learned that insurance will pay in full...phew!) covered, if not entirely then at a very high percentage; getting prescriptions for a very reasonable amount of money. Just the simple fact of being insured makes me feel a whole lot better about life, because, if something were to happen, I would be covered. Of course, there are some things that I hate about health insurance. In between graduating college and finding a full-time job, I was on a COBRA plan under my parents' old insurance. During that time, I had regular (and rather pricey) appointments for which I had to file a claim for partial reimbursement. I filed the claim in October, and let's just say that it took me until this past April to see that money, after many phone calls and an incredible amount of confusion over which service (Aetna or Cigna) covered the visits. Claims are not fun, I'll just put it that way. That gave me more than my fair share of headaches, so I was more than happy to close the book on that nightmare.

Another source of frustration has been the leasing office for my new apartment. It took me about a month-and-a-half to get my lease, and that was only after sending the leasing agent, who I had not actually spoken to because she does not return phone calls and is apparently never in the office, an angry email in which I chastised her for handling this unprofessionally, that I got a lease (it was in my inbox not 20 minutes later). I still have an issue that I have been following up with her on, but I'm hoping to get that resolved soon, and, compared to not having a lease to sign, it is a less pressing issue.

The Comcast fiasco has been going on for five or six weeks, and essentially involves problems with equipment that is unaccounted for (mostly because the technician was so moronic that he could not recognize Comcast equipment and because they are charging us- or, more specifically, me- for equipment that I do not believe I was ever in possession of. Needless to say, it has been a frustrating back-and-forth that has involved me calling them nearly every morning before work and wanting to bash my head into a wall because I cannot get a consistent answer from these people. I cannot wait to put this behind me and go back to being my usual cheerful self!!!

Believe it or not, there ARE some positives to being a semi-adult. Financial independence is a huge one for me, particularly considering that, throughout college, I was financially dependent on my parents. Being able to make my own money is such a fulfilling feeling (although, when you consider that much of it goes to taxes and the Metro, you can't help but cringe a little bit). Having free time on the weekends to do whatever I want, as opposed to studying, is wonderful, and is also a major reason why I am postponing going to grad school for at least a couple of years. I like having free time to spend with my friends, family and boyfriend and not feel guilty for having spent that time with them rather than doing homework. And honestly, I try to tell myself, after all of these phone calls and emails with Comcast, my insurance company and the leasing office, that this is just an indoctrination into the world of adults, and that I'm learning life skills in the process.

Grammar Police

Given the omnipresence of social media (blogs, Facebook and the like) in my life, I have begun to take note of some common grammatical errors. Now, I certainly don't proclaim to know all that there is to know about grammar, but there are certain things that get under my skin. For many of these errors, I think, 'Shouldn't you have learned this in middle school?!?'

But I digress. I thought I would give a little list of some common errors that I have seen, and also share an interesting site called Grammar Girl, a blog about grammar that I think I, and the rest of America, could learn a good deal from.

Here are my "favorite" (I can't really say that they are my favorites, because they make me cringe whenever I see or hear them, but you get my point):
1) Your/you're: Okay, people, I can guarantee that we ALL learned this in elementary school. The eternal question of whether to contract or not contract...It annoys me to no end when I see "I hope your having a good day" (which I do, with alarming frequency, on Facebook in particular). Okay, "your" is a possessive pronoun or adjective, depending on how it is being used. "You're," obviously the more appropriate choice in this situation, is a contraction of "you are". Done.
2) There/they're/their: Sort of along the same lines as the previous entry. "There" is an adverb (a.k.a. modifies a verb), "they're" is a contraction for "they are" and "their" is a possessive pronoun. To say, "Their going to the beach today" is incorrect.
3) Using apostrophes to make words plural makes me want to cry. When I read, "two medium pizza's" on a menu, I tense up a little bit. Adding an apostrophe makes a word POSSESSIVE, NOT PLURAL(also, if a word ends in a -z, which my last name happens to, or an -s you add -es to make it plural).
4) The dreaded double conditional: This probably bothers me mostly because of how hard the tenses were drilled into my mind in my Spanish and French classes. Certain tenses may be paired together, and others may not. Something that I have recently noticed people saying is, "If I would have known______, I would have done ______". This is called using a double conditional. If the speaker used the past perfect tense in the first verb clause, the sentence would be correct, and would read something like, "If I HAD known ______, I would have done ______".
5) A funny/sad? anecdote: I received an email from a teaching agency that read, "We want to insure that you have all of the information you need...," or something to that effect. Ensure, people, ENSURE. INSURE is for insurance. And this was from a teaching agency...sheesh!

How about all of you? Are there grammatical errors that make your blood boil? Or am I just neurotic? (I acknowledge that the latter is quite probable.)

Fall: Here to Stay???

(Kate, I promise I'm not copying your posts!) It seems as though fall is upon us in the District (although, who knows, I may be eating my words in a few days if we have a sudden return to the heat), and I have been giddy ever since we emerged from a weeklong monsoon that gave way to cooler temperatures.

Being the New Englander that I am, the end of summer, which tends to be depression-inducing for those who fear the coming of snow and frigid winter temperatures, means, for me, an enthusiastic jump into fall. Depending on the year in DC, there may or may not be a true fall (there may just be a jump from the oppressive heat and humidity to the frigidity of winter, after a brief few-week period that could possibly resemble fall), so I couldn't be happier that this year seems to be a year when we will have a well-defined fall.

Some of my fondest childhood memories took place at the many local pumpkin patches/apple orchards in Western MA/CT. My dad, my kindred spirit in his love of fall, would pile us into the car and take us to an orchard, where we would amuse ourselves picking our own apples. One particular orchard also had a little refreshment stand with apple cider, old-fashioned sodas and cider donuts (as well as hay rides, which, I think, we took advantage of once). When we got home, my dad would either be hard at work on a pie or some delicious homemade applesauce whose sweet, cinnamon smell wafted from the kitchen throughout the house. So, for me, a crisp fall day will always be associated with memories like those.

Even though I am certainly far-removed from the stunning foliage and truly crisp fall mornings that I was spoiled with during my New England childhood, I am really excited to take advantage of the DC area's fall offerings. For example, Eastern Market, a favorite haunt of mine, is always so much more fun to walk around in the fall (despite the fact that it is open year-round). Dan and I just booked an October weekend trip to an adorable little B&B in the Shenandoahs, where we'll have easy access to great hiking (most notably Old Rag, which we've been wanting to hike for a while), as well as vineyards and quaint little country towns. I think I'll also get a Shenandoah hike in when I see my mom's side of the family over Columbus Day weekend for Grampsy's 80th birthday (yikes!), which should be fun, since there are some pretty intense hikers in my family. Dan and I also want to find an apple orchard somewhere in the DC area so we can pick our own apples (I think it also sweetened the pot that I promised I would make an apple pie, his favorite, with whatever apples we end up picking).

Do any of you have any fun fall memories (or, for you Washingtonians, any suggestions for fun fall-like things to do in the District and its environs)?

Happy Fall!

Here's a picture from a hike I took in VA last fall. So excited for more of this!

My First Half-Marathon!!!

This year, I made a New Year's resolution that I fully intended to keep. I was going to run a half-marathon if it was the last thing I did. I began amping up my runs in January/February, hoping to be able to run a race in May. Unfortunately, due to some nagging joint injuries, I was unable to do that, but pushed through the summer to reach probably the best level of cardiovascular fitness that I've ever been in. I know, I don't mean to toot my own horn and make it seem like I did an ultra-marathon or an Iron Man, but for me, the girl who could not even run a mile as a child due to exercise-induced asthma, and the girl who has struggled with some pretty nasty injuries, this was a pretty huge accomplishment (especially given the fact that I have actively HATED running for most of my life!!!).

I hadn't gotten a chance, due to terrible weather on recent weekends and my reluctance to run outside by myself at 5 a.m. on weekdays, to do a run outside longer than 10/10.5 miles, so I have to admit that I was slightly nervous going into today's race. I was lucky, though, to get the reassurance and encouragement of a few friends, one a very close friend who ran a marathon a few years ago, the other one of Dan's friends who competes in triathlons (not to mention a father who has run marathons), so that I was feeling, bright and early this morning, like everything was going to be okay.

I cannot even put into words how much I have loved having my parents back in the DC area, and I have so cherished the amount of time that we have been able to spend together since they moved back. But I truly, truly appreciated their endless kindness and selflessness this weekend when they fed me lots of pre-race pasta (and blackberry crumble...YUM! That one was definitely my dad's doing), let me stay at their house, woke up at 5 to drive me (and my friend Andrew, who was also running) and were the first, and by far the most supportive, faces that I saw at the finish line. They are incredible, and I am forever indebted to them, certainly not just for this.

So, as for the race itself, I located a 2:00:00 pace group, because that was the finish time I was shooting for. However, my plans were foiled when I quickly lost the pacer, so, following several friends' pieces of wisdom, I went at my own pace, listening to my body and not making it about the time. I don't run with a watch, and I certainly was not going to on race day just to be like all of the other runners with over-the-top superwatches. This was all about having fun! I had been worried about the fact that we could not use iPods (or anything with headphones), but, strangely, I didn't struggle when I was alone with my thoughts for that long. Dan had suggested, at our (rather, my) carbalicious breakfast yesterday, that I pick a really good song and just keep repeating it in my head. That song ended up being "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele, which, I realized afterward, was the song that my mom woke up to this morning (I heard her alarm when I walked by her room), and is just a great pump-up song for me.

I was blown away by how supportive everyone was, fellow runners, neighborhood residents and race volunteers alike. There was one particularly steep hill just before the 11-mile marker, and the one thing that got me up that hill without stopping was that I heard a bunch of women screaming words of encouragement. That kind of energy just pushes you to keep going, especially since that was the time when I was surpassing my longest run and was most certainly fading. I would definitely say that the adrenaline was there in full force for the first 3-4 miles and then again for the last 2. I had not mentally ruled out stopping a couple of times to walk throughout the race, but once I was actually running, I just kept pushing that distance at which I would let myself stop, and before I knew it, the race was over!!!!! I do have to stop when I run in the morning on the treadmill, so, for me, it was a huge accomplishment not to have to stop at all.

The last two miles are probably what I remember most vividly, that 11-mile group of neighborhood cheerleaders, and then the 12-mile marker, when I definitely said, "YESSSSSSSSSS" out loud. About a quarter-mile before the finish, there was a Girl Scout troop handing out American flags to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and, even though I was not personally affected by 9/11 because I did not lose anyone I knew, it was very poignant for me to cross the finish line with that flag in hand. I give thanks every day for the fact that I live in this country, despite its many defects, and I think the support that I felt today while I was running is a wonderful microcosmic example of the generosity of the American spirit. Crossing the finish line, that bright, shiny beacon with photographers, banners, race officials and tables piled high with cups of water awaiting just beyond it, was such an indescribably wonderful feeling, and I know that I had the broadest of smiles on my face when I crossed.

I accomplished my goal of finishing at or just under 2 hours! My official time was 2:04, but they tell you to subtract time because it is a wave start. Since my group began running 4-5 minutes after the official start, I was somewhere around the 1:59 or 2:00 mark, so I couldn't be happier with how the race turned out! I have to give a huge shout-out to all of my friends and family members who were so supportive of this dream of mine, and that positive energy was definitely one of the things that got me through this race with such flying colors. I hope this is one of many long-distance runs for me (I would love to do more half-marathons, and a marathon is definitely something that I'm eyeing sometime in the future), and this was definitely the perfect experience for my first half.

Thank you again for all of the support, now and always, and God Bless America, today and every day!
Kristen

Here's a picture of Andrew and I after the finish! I was so glad to have a friend running the race, even though he certainly ran much faster than I did!

An Ode to Wacky DC Weather

Apparently, something happened in DC last week which caused not one but TWO natural disasters to pass through the city.

The first was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake last Tuesday. I was covering for our Front Desk Coordinator's lunch and, suddenly, the glass windows and walls ahead of me began undulating violently. I froze for a moment, and I think I mouthed to the student who happened to be standing next to the desk, "Oh my God, what's going on?" before coming to my senses and realizing that this was an earthquake. The MSB's response was, in a word, terrible. There seemed to be no emergency plan in place, and the fact that upper level administrators (as well as my superiors in my own office) were panicking and yelling only made me freak out more. It was a bit of a surreal experience, and, after about 20 minutes, we were told to gather our things quickly and go home (the excuse was that the structural integrity of the building had been called into question. Really, MSB? Really? You should have thought about that when the building was being constructed while I was an undergrad.

I think that the most interesting part of the day for me was to hear the wide range of reactions, which really did run the gamut from, "Oh, that's an earthquake. Okay" (my father) to "GET YOUR THINGS AND LEAVEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!" (an upper-level MSB administrator, who will remain nameless). The only thought that crossed my mind was that this was, in fact, an earthquake, while others, who had perhaps been in either DC or New York on 9/11, immediately thought that it was a bomb. We really are the post-9/11 generation, where we will always question whether a tremor or a strange noise is a naturally occurring phenomena or a terrorist attack.

Anyway, moving on, we (like much of the Eastern Seaboard) were hit over the weekend by Hurricane Irene, which was (I believe) only a Category 1 storm by the time it reached us, but wreaked havoc nonetheless. I believe that BGE reported about 160,000outages (at least that's what the TV at the gym told me this morning), and many unfortunate people are still without power. Luckily, for me, I moved in to my new apartment that same weekend (yay!), so the constant rain and wind initially provided me with justification for being a hermit for the weekend. But then, my type-A personality kicked in and I thought I might die of boredom. It reached 10:30 on Saturday night, and I was faced with a dilemma: I could either watch more mind-numbing TV on my computer, or I could put myself out of misery and go to sleep. Needless to say, I chose the latter.

I was kind of okay with old Irene...until I wasn't anymore. Dan, who had been on vacation with his family in Florida for the week, was visiting a friend in New Jersey for the weekend. Anticipating that the weather would be deteriorating, he tried to book a 2:40 train on Saturday, only to find that it was canceled. The next available train was on Monday morning at 5:15, which, when he called on Sunday afternoon to book it, he was ASSURED by Amtrak, would leave on-time. When he called back at around 10 that night to get his passenger number, he was told that the train had been canceled since Saturday, and the Amtrak rep had no idea why the other rep had told him that the train was going out. Understandably, he was livid. Wanting to make it back to DC sometime in his lifetime, he went to Newark and rented a car, arriving back in DC at around 3. The real kicker, though, comes when I tell you that he was phoneless. His phone had started freaking out (the screen went white, and then purple, and many shades in between) on Saturday, and by Sunday, all it was good for was dialing any number he had memorized (which was, essentially, his home number). So he got to the airport to drop off the car, and then had to look for a cab at 3:00 on a Monday morning (fact: this does not exist, at least not in DC), so, as he tells it, he was wandering the airport aimlessly, looking for anyone with a phone so that he could call a cab (because a VA cab company was not the one number he had memorized...shucks). Eventually, he made it home at around 4,and somehow survived the work day.

Moral of the story? Yes, I may have been bored out of my mind and, aside from two trips to the gym and numerous hours of unpacking, had nothing to do, my weekend paled in comparison to the suckiness that was Dan's. I'll take solace in that. Poor thing :(

(In related news, Saturday is our 6-month anniversary!!!! And, fun fact, both of our dads were also born on that day and happen to share the same first name...weird, right?!)

Because it's me (and we all know how much I love pictures), here is the now infamous tongue-in-cheek picture of DC earthquake "damage".