Red, Yellow, Orange

My new favorite place at my home home. it gets an amazing amount of sunlight and very little wind so it is the perfect place to read and be warm even during these chillier fall days.

And using that as a segway fall is most def here, not even knocking on my shoulder anymore saying hello I'm coming. Nope it is everywhere around you here in good 'ole nh. Mom and I went hiking yesterday and it was absolutely gorgeous with all the red, yellow, & orange leaves above, below, and floating through the air. Though I do hate to say goodbye to summer the crisp fall days can be enjoyable and the colors of the trees are to die for. Every cloud has a silver lining or something like that right?

Countdown to the start of work begins tomorrow....26 days till adult time, 24 days till hell exam. 19 days till I move in to the new apt though!!! eek, and columbus day wkend should be a blast!

A list of Randomness

I'm back in Chicago and it feels really great!

This weather is awesome. Warm and balmy! I'm very much enjoying the surprise indian summer and hope it lasts for awhile. :) totally not prepared for winter yet. I am enjoying the leaves turning though, sooo pretty driving around the northeast.

I deleted an entry in my phone the other day, felt like it was time. I'm not sure exactly what I'm hoping to come out of it, in fact kind of think it's silly now that I'm a few days into it, but I know I need to do something.

The seventh gabaldon book has finally come out! If you do not know the author Diana Gabaldon than you are missing out. It's this fabulous love story set way back when, all the books are very long but you just can't stop reading them. so excited!

I really need to start working out. Like really really really but I just have no idea where or how to even start. Very frustrating. I keep telling myself once I start working again and all that then I'll join a gym and stuff but I'm not sure I can wait a whole nother month. have to get motivated!

I'm out!

Excessive use of Exclamation Points!

haha so i've been doing a lot of craigs-listing in the past few days b/c I am hitting up chicago the end of this week and will be a mad crazy apt looker gal! I have approximately 4 appointments set up so far and hoping for a few more! So excited! and yet stressed, cause meeting new people is nerve-wracking...i mean what if they don't like you!

but that's not the point. The point is it is interesting to see how people respond to my emails. I have a pretty basic email that I send out now, I've been doing this for a few months now. I know what gets the point across. But when someone likes what I have said I get exclamation points galore! and I mean after the greeting "Hey Hallie!" between points that they are excited about, etc. And it's funny cause i've found myself using it much more frequently as well because you really want to get the correct point across. I mean these are people that you just randomly found online. that elusive, you might be lying bout who you are, is this sketchy, are you sure you're a real person online. So I have been throwing these exclamation points around like it's the end of time and it is cracking me up. But I also feel like I get a decent idea of people through an email, which could be completely wrong. I mean I read into emails from ppl I know like the back of my hand, so why wouldn't I read into these ones by ppl I dont' know? but for some reason I am not, and I like it.

I can not wait to have my apt! hell yea after this wkend I have a very good feeling that I will know where I will be living for the next year or so. Lets all cross our fingers that it's true! thanks in advance.

Dirty Chai!

I have found my new perfect, fabulous, amazing drink. This combination of two wonderful coffee-ish flavors are my two favorite things to get and now a little coffee shop in Hoboken has done the unthinkable. I'll stop raving now and tell you all what a dirty chai is. It is a chai latte with shots of espresso in it! yes ma'am, coffee and chai mixed. Good hot or iced, small or large.

now I'm sure this drink has been out there for awhile, that maybe many others have known what it is for eons now, but for me it is now my go to drink. I am even going to become one of those annoying people in the Starbucks line who takes a full minute to spell out their order. Yep, pretty exciting!

can you tell I have no idea what to post..... happy friday everyone!

Circles of Living

I've been very interested in the past few months how I've been doing so many different things and every time I've been realizing how much I had missed this, or forgotten about this. It's like life just keeps bringing me back to places i've been before and yet I am different and view them all differently. It's all very new and fun, yet familiar and awesome because of that!

for example, I think I may have mentioned this before, but when I went on my roadtrip I had completely forgotten how fun it is to totally accept the dirty, hippy, nomadic life and become one with nature and the environment. To not care what is going on in the stressfull real world, so extremely to a point that I can go out in Las Vegas without showering for a few days and being grimy from the 3 mile hike I took that morning.

another one is how much I love my home in New Hampshire. It was a gorgeous day the other day and I was sitting outside on the newest part of our house, the backyard patio, that gets loads of sun and very little wind. Perfect for a cat-like human who wants to soak up some of the last summer rays. In fact as I type this I am hanging inside chilly because I went to get coffee earlier and tried to sit outside and read and it was too cold :( Back to the point, it was nice to experience again the complete relaxfullness of nh where you can be outside in your home and yet feel very peaceful.

And now I'm visiting a friend in Hoboken and I've been wandering around, he just got a new apt so I've been checking out the surrounding area, and I have forgotten what's it like to be living in a fun cool city. one of my favorite things to do while I was in Chicago was to just go grab a coffee and sit outside and people watch. Or just walk around the city. I love the interactions you can have with anybody and everybody. So diverse and different.

All in all this is a long-winded way of saying that I am very excited to get back to Chicago, to have a place of my own again. I do believe that my life is going to be very hard to choose where the heck I settle down. Nomadic hippy, country-bumpkin, city-gal....who knows!!? Guess that's the fun

Aruba Pics!

Here are some of my favorite shots from the week. Jewlz and I are pretty much the only subjects :) In no particular order....

We tried out scuba diving! Jewlz is holding my hand cause she's nervous!!!! just kidding, she was a champ. I believe we spent maybe 30 minutes in the resort pool learning how to lose the stuff. We were so stellar he brought us right out after that and let us spend some extra time actually diving!

We played bingo one night. There was really not much night life around our B&B and the whole resort/casino thing is not our scene...so bingo it was! We were so bad, the old ladies sitting next to us were directing us what to do. LOL

Hint: If your plan is to hit up the beach for an awesome sunset and drinks...make sure you bring the bottle opener. Haha supposedly she knew a way to force the cork out, we obviously didn't have enough strength to do that.
This was pretty much our daily setup. A little shade, some towels, and a book. Jewlz had a book on tape the loser (I was just jealous) so she didn't even have to do the annoying lying positions that reading requires. I kept thinking up random things to say so that she would have to stop listening and talk to me. jk

We rented a car one day and had it for 24 hours. We got so tired out the first day (yes after three days of pure beaching it touring the island and snorkeling was exhausting!) that we decided to hit the hay early and check out a sunrise. It was gorgeous!

Ahhhh Aruba! If you ever need a place to stay check out Buffam's Tropical Haven! I swear, they are the sweetest people, make the best breakfast's, and their place is so cute it's over the top awesome.

Snorkeling, Scubaing, & Sunrises

Over the past week jewlz and I have done lots and lots of beaching interspersed with everything in the title. Tuesday we did a resort scuba class where they taught us the basics and then we got to go on a 45 minute dive. I have scuba'd once before like 7 years ago, interestingly enough in Bon Aire which is very close to here, and absolutely loved it. Jewlz had never gone and so we def had to check it out. We dove in a rather commercial place, only up to 25ft and though I had a lot of fun and def don't regret it my memories of my Bon Aire dive are of much more color and fish everywhere! This was pieces of a ship that had been used for target practice so it didn't really look like a ship and it had started having coral grow on it and stuff and there were plenty of fish but it didn't have the vibrant color that stands out in my head from my first dive. But I do know that we dove on a legit coral reef so that's a major difference. All in all we decided we would love to do it again but certification is required so that we can do the interesting reef dives. Unfortunatly that is EXPENSIVE!

Then yesterday we rented a car and drove all around the island checking it out. We made a stop at one of the best snorkeling spots on the island and pittered around there for awhile. To get to the really good coral we had to swim out about 15 minutes and then it was low tide so we were floating over coral that was as close as a foot below us. You basically tried to just swim with your hands so that you didnt' touch anything! I was sucking in my tummy at points I was so close! It was AWESOME! saw so many cool fishes and the sea was a little rough so got a workout in as well. One of our host's friends brought us out and showed us around, they live right there, and she does it every day. I am supremely jealous, pretty fish, colors, water, and a workout. Perfection in my eyes.

After that we checked out the national park here and pretty much just wore ourselves out, so much so that by 9pm we were like man I really want to go check out downtown and have a night out but there is just no way I will make it. So we decided to hit the hay early and go see a sunrise this morning! so here it is now 7:30am and I have been up already for 2 hours...but the sunrise was absolutely gorgeous. We went to the tip of the island, by this old lighthouse where you could see the entire island laid out before you.

Now we will most def head to the beach at some point and spend our day reading, napping, and floating. Then maybe tonight we'll try that night out again...