living at the coffee shop

My first official week of unemployment has been nothing at all like you would expect! In all fairness, I did schedule my final day for last Friday specifically because I wanted to have this week free for finishing up school, but holy crapshnozzle did I not expect to be this busy! I have worked all day, every day, and several nights until well after 1 a.m. Oh except for Wedding Wednesday, when I had a disastrous 3-hour hair/makeup trial and then spent the next 2 hours ripping our "suit guy" a  new one when I found out that our groomsmen received purple-striped suits with bright-purple-backed vests...i.e. not the ones we ordered. I guess we should've known when one of the groomsmen told Brian that he thought the suits were "pimp." Next time, we'll pay more attention to diction...

Thank Jehovah my major capstone class ends tomorrow, but right now that gives me next-to-no-comfort! I've dedicated the whole week to editing and revising our class' business plan (fortunately, there were some other people on board helping with this) and am burning copies of it for our client as we speak. I still can't rest until 1) It's successfully printed and bound, 2) Our final group meeting is over, and 3) We deliver our final presentation tomorrow. Gross. I still have a paper, presentation, and final exam due for my other class on Tuesday, but I'm allowing myself tomorrow afternoon for a much-needed break! Then back to crunching on Sun-Tues, then........drumroll......FINITO!

Operation Eve, OUT

While you're not going to believe me when I tell you this...I don't even like apples. 

It's true, I really don't. Or rather, didn't, before I started this. They always made my stomach feel weird (fiber?), like I was still really hungry even though I knew I wasn't. Then I went 

on a practice wedding diet* and realized that apples were easy to pack and would contribute little-to-nothing to my caloric intake...so I started buying them. Then I had the thing with the beer, and 17 apples later, here we are. 

They are growing on me.

I decided to scrap the final blind test of my top favorites, because I know that I'll continue rotating the top choices in my lunches anyway, just for variety. Who was the grand hoo-ha of apples, you ask?? Let's see:

Thanks for enduring this long ride! I promise, no more taste tests for a while / ever. Now I can go back to posting about fun things like wedding budgets and school assignments. Can you even contain your excitement?!?!

*I have since quite said diet, as evidenced by today's consumption of breakfast tacos, pizza, 6 shortbread cookies, and ice cream-in-an-hour. Someone get a tractor to haul me out of here.

Apple 17: Honeycrisp

Well....we're here. 17 apples and 17 blogs later, Operation Eve is O-V-E-R, count it! Angels sang as I pulled the last apple, the Honeycrisp, out of the fridge. I felt a cool breeze on my face and a weight lifted off my shoulders as I began to process what life would be like without a bushel of apples on my brain every...bless-ed...day. 

Let's do it. 

Taste: Sweet with a melon-flavored aftertaste. As you might know by now, sweet is not exactly my cup 'o tea.

Texture: Perhaps now is a good time to mention that I've kept this in the fridge for 18 days. Anymore questions? 

Attractiveness: Great size, great speckling, great little beaut we got ourselves here.

Price: $2.49/lb. Yowzers. 

Rating: For this price, I was expecting John Mayer to pop out of the apple. But he didn't, and so my disappointment will guide this ruling...5 seeds!

Apple 16: Sonya

I'm not in favor of using people names for other items (dogs, cats, apples) but I've seen the Sonya a few times in stores now, so I had to let go of my prejudice and give her a go.

Taste: Unremarkable. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. It's just...I kind of forgot I was eating for a second. But if you must know, Sonya's a sweetie. 

Texture: No surprises. 

Price: $.98 / lb.

Attractiveness: Pretty as a peach...apple...dammit!

Rating: I was so bleh about this one, I'd say 5 seeds is fair. If you like mild, sweet apples, you might go higher. But not me. No sirree. 

Apple 15: Jazz

Sorry for the baby pic, but you still can see what a gem the Jazz was!

Taste: In the words of Will Ferrell as James Lipton, "You are a de-light." Seriously, this thing is gooooood for tart lovers. 

Texture: Could've been a little firmer, but I'll blame that on it being out of season...and then I'll assume it is out of season.

Price: $1.99/lb.

Attractiveness: On www.hotornot.com, it'd probably get like a 6.

Rating: The Jazz is coming out of nowhere to get 8 seeds! 

Apple 14: Lady Alice

I met a little piece of heaven, and her name was Alice.

Taste: Upon my first bite, I literally exclaimed "mmmm!" out loud (which I'm sure raised some eyebrows from my bosses). The LA, if you will, has an extremely unique taste - it almost doesn't taste like an apple at all. In fact, I think it tastes like a papaya with a hint of orange. An orangaya.

Texture: Extra juicy and smooth.

Price: $2.49 / lb.! Short of a grapple, this is the most expensive apple I've seen. 

Attractiveness: Edible sunset. Go ahead, try to not like that. 

Rating: So I guess by my glowing review, you'd expect the LA to pull some big numbers here, but I believe she's just too darn sweet for regular snackage. I would reserve this for a delicious dessert, or maybe even stew it and serve it with ice cream! But I'd never pay $2.49 on a regular basis, which means the LA gets 6.5 seeds. 

Apple 13: Pacific Rose

Nice name! But don't judge a book by it's cover...

Taste: A-ha! A Red Delicious in disguise! She tried to throw me off with her sweet flavor but I know an aftertaste when I .... taste ... one.

Texture: Inside is just fine, a little mealy, but the outside is like chewing cud. 

Price: $1.99 / lb. 

Attractiveness: To its credit, it's totally rose-colored. 0 points in the creativity department on naming this one.

Rating: 4 seeds, and that's being generous, especially considering the price. 

exorcist head

Holy crapshnozzle, life just turned into a giant tornado full of:

1) My last full-time day of work tomorrow! A.K.A., Friday Fun Day as demanded by my bosses. This is scheduled to consist of lunch, a movie, and most likely a nerf basketball tournament in my office. Seriously, I will never have a better job. I'll continue coming in one afternoon a week until we leave for the honeymoon, just to keep the administrative boat afloat, but this is the time now for moving all my personal files and taking my box 'o crap home. Oh how they will miss my crap!

2) The last major edit of our capstone class' business plan, which has robbed me of sleep, vomit, tears, and some blood from a major imaginary catfight that I had with one girl in my class, known to most of you as That Stupid Whore (I won). There's always one, right?! Anyway, I'm in charge of editing this 25-page clusterf$&k of a plan, and now we're in the final streeeeeeeetch.

3) A terribly timed block sale (which I scheduled - thank you, me!). The weather says it's now supposed to rain. The house is a wreck. Both of us need sleep and have to take turns with the heating pad for our backs every night. But hey, PURGING IS FUN! It'll all be great by Saturday afternoon when I'm rolling around in a big pile of cash-ola. Or when I'm paying off the credit card. Pot-ay-to po-tah-to.

4) The beginning of the wedding countdown! 1 month from today, people! As I told Amy earlier, this is unfortunately when Super Organized Planner (me) becomes Exorcist Girl With Spinning Head (me). All of our vendors are suddenly super concerned with getting answers, confirmations, payments! I'm trying to stave them off for two weeks until I have all sorts of free time...yes...free time...soon. 

Until then...send some big gasps of air my way!

Apple 12: Granny Smith

I've got good news people - with just 6 apples left, I will kill someone if this isn't the end believe this may be the last week of Operation Eve! 

To celebrate the beginning of the end....behold, the Granny Smith!

Taste: Unexpectedly delicious. I remember these being super tart, like pursed-lips-tequila-shot-lime-juice-in-your-eye-face tart. But lo! Granny's dialed it back a bit.

Texture: Softer than I'd like. Perhaps this is because it's been sitting on my counter for 10 days?

Price: Bargain basement $.98/lb.

Attractiveness: Golden Delicious doppelgänger. These two should make babies and start a master race.  

Rating: The apple was good; it can have 7 seeds. Now onto the more important question: Who IS Granny Smith? Was she a cute little grandma that made quilts and cookies or was she six feet of terror like my "granny"? Was her favorite color green? Did she even like apples? I NEED ANSWERS! 

bachelorette partyyyyy

I don't even know where to begin with trying to describe how awesome this past weekend was for me! I had an insanely stressful week at school and was working right up until go-time on Friday. Jenilee kicked off the weekend by dropping off 2 old-school CD mixes (in a hand-painted case) for me and Megan's drive to the Houston airport - how sweet and creative is she?!

Without going through a full play-by-play, I'd like to highlight a few, er, highlights of the weekend!

• Arriving to a decorated hotel & adjoining rooms 
  
• Having all of my very best girls in the same place, getting to know each other and/or reconnecting!
• Conducting the very taste test that got me going on Operation Eve: Bud Light v. Miller Light! Surprisingly, we had 3 people stay true to Miller and 4 conversions to Bud - myself included.
  
  
• Delicious sushi dinner at Rock N Sake - I loved this place!!!
  
• A chic wine tasting at W.I.N.O. (Wine Institute of New Orleans)
  
  

  
  
• French Quarter Festival - perfect weather, jazz bands, matching sunglasses, Abita, cajun chicken zasso, Jackson Square, SNOBALLS
  
  
• Hilarious games in the hotel room (and some hazing that probably contributed to my state of being on Sunday) that led to laughing-until-crying and some beer spewage
  
• The Assistant
• Acme Oyster House, home of the best catfish I've ever had (and gravy fries...and a monster truck perfect for posing...and the girl who threw up on herself at the table...)
  
• Everything about Bourbon - the 5 million bachelors/bachelorettes who all want to be best friends, Pat O's, beads + balconies, impromptu street dance parties
• Cats Meow - this place was the bomb diggity squared. I couldn't have picked a better place for me!!! Does anyone have the address of our stripper friend? I need to thank her for the abundance of new dance moves that I got from her, including but not limited to "Grind this pole, hard"; "Shakeitshakeitshakeit"; "Unzip fly, then get on stage"; "Doggie style is appropriate in this setting" and my personal favorite, "Deranged squirrel face".