My Weekend in Numbers

Number of loads of laundry I did: 7

Number of Cranberrita's I drank: 5

...they're teeny tiny cans ok?

Number of glasses of wine I drank: 5

Number of times I left my house on Sunday: 1

...and it was for toilet paper. You can't really put that errand off, if you know what I mean.

Number of times I cooked: 1

...and that's once more than I did all last week.

I took a stab at Erin's chili recipe, and while I'm pretty sure it didn't turn out as awesome as hers would've, it totally did the job. Nate even had seconds. And I had leftovers for lunch on Sunday. And Monday. So now that I think about it, it was probably more of a success than I originally thought.

Number of photos I took of said cooking preparation: 1

See above.

#bloggerfail

Amount of dollars I saved on my cable bill by visiting the Cox store and layin' down the law: $60

Number of Bravo shows I watched On Demand: 6

Number of bags of microwave popcorn I ate: 3

...ahem, two of which were in one sitting

Number of times I saw Catching Fire: 0

...time got away from me. Because you can clearly tell by all of the above, that I was super busy. 

Or just super lame and didn't make time for Catching Fire. Probably the latter.

#bloggerfail

Number of PAC 12 South Championships won: 1

Source

It was a good weekend to be a Sun Devil.

 Source

Next week we play our in-state rivals in the Territorial Cup for both bragging rights, and home-field advantage for the PAC12 Championship game.

Go Sundevils!!

Dallas Part II

I almost didn't recognize blogger when I sat down to start writing this post...you know, since it's been so freakin' long since I've done so.

...But oh boy did I just finish the most fantastic weekend ever! My sister got married, I had family in town, it was just the best.

BUT I still have other fun things to finish telling you about too, like my Dallas trip that happened earlier this month.

Remember when I started telling you about it here?

Let's finish shall we?!

After we spent an afternoon peeking through the windows of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum - you know, cause the government shut down and wouldn't let us in - we put on our best "Texas" outfit and headed out to a local honkey-tonk for some dancing, drinking, and best of all, my bff Kristy! 

I've known Kristy since the 7th grade. We went to school together until she and her family moved to Texas in the 8th grade but we've kept in touch ever since.

She was in my wedding, I was in hers, and fortunately she still has family out here in AZ, so whenever she comes to visit her family I get to see her too! It's a win-win, really.

So I made sure to let her know we'd be coming to Dallas and we needed to meet-up!

So that's what we did.

She took us all to Cowboys Red River where she tried to teach me to two-step, we had fireball whiskey for the first time (deeeelish), and it was Charlene's fake birthday.

Charlene's fake birthday was a spontaneous occurrence. She didn't plan it, neither did the rest of us, but it got her free drinks for the night so I think it was a good decision in the long run. 

It was a fantastic night, with terrible pictures. 

Cause the iPhone takes terrible pictures at night. You just can't get around it.

But you also just can't get around the fact that it was a fantastic night either.

Saturday was (insert trumpet noises here) game day!!! 

Charlene came up with the hashtag #friendshipdivided and I was kind of upset that I couldn't use it because I couldn't freakin' post anything on social media all night because I have Sprint and you can't get reception in Cowboys stadium

...or anywhere else for that matter.

But either way, it was indeed a friendship divided for the day.

Anywhere we went people would be like, "Whoa wait a minute. What's going on here?!"

You can tell them a few things:

"We make it work."

"We're frenemies."

"What do you mean??" 

All of which, were employed at least once throughout the day.

ASU lost, which is a total bummer, but the fact that we got to meet Luis Gonzalez made up for everything. Remember when we met Luis Gonzalez??

Gonzo made up for ASU's loss and the Bush Library being closed all in a matter of 

30 seconds.

Gonzo's pretty magical.

Then again, the entire day was pretty magical.

Sunday we went to church in the morning, and explored Downtown Dallas for the rest of the day.

 We ate lunch from food trucks at Klyde Warren Park, a beautiful public space on top of an overpass, and explored the Perot Museum of Science and History, where we saw the animal version of Body Worlds. 

If you don't know what that is, Google that shiz. 

They wouldn't let me take pictures inside.

Also, we learned the only difference between and goat and a sheep is the direction in which their tails wag. Goats go horizontal and sheep wag vertically.

You're a little bit smarter now thanks to that fun factoid.

The day was fabulous and my feet really hurt by the end of it all. And when your feet hurt you always know it means you did a good job of vacationing. 

Monday morning before we left for the airport, Erin and I went to Dealy Plaza and The 6th Floor Museum, where President Kennedy was assassinated.

They wouldn't let me take pictures inside either, so this is the only one I have for the day.

Learning about Kennedy, his Presidency, his assassination, and the aftermath was fascinating, and kind of eerie all at the same time.

When you go up to the 6th floor of the building, where the shooter shot Kennedy from, you look down onto the street and there's an X on the street marking the spot where Kennedy was killed.

It's pretty eerie. 

After the museum we had to head to the airport, return the rental, and wait for our flights home...womp womp.

A few rounds of MASH later and we were back in Phoenix before we knew it.

Good news, I get to live at Hogwarts with Luis Gonzalez as my husband.

Bad news, I have 12 kids.

So even though we didn't get to see what we went to Dallas for, the Bush Library and Museum, the trip was far from ruined and we had a ton-o-fun. 

And that's a lot of fun in case you don't know how much a ton of fun weighs. 

And plus, it just gives us another excuse to go to Dallas so we can 

actually go inside and see the Library next time. 

Dallas 2014!

A Less Than Thrilling Weekend

Do you want to know how fantastic my weekend was?

I never put any make-up on. Not even once.

I took a nap on both Saturday and Sunday.

I ate Chinese food.

I drank wine.

I paid bills.

I watched football.

I watched baseball.

Aaaaaand that about sums it up.

Naturally, based on all the above-mentioned, I have no fancy pictures to show for it.

You're probably like, why is this girl even posting about her weekend if it was boring and doesn't even include pictures?

I really don't have a good answer for that.

Oh, actually, I got to hang out with my niece this weekend too. And I do have a picture of that.

No matter how the rest of this post goes down, it's all OK now cause we have a picture of Miley.

She's just the cutest.

I also really wanted to tell you all about the cuh-ray-zee ASU vs. Wisconsin football game that went down on Saturday, but truth be told, I really have no idea what happened. It doesn't seem like the media does either, with headlines containing words like, "bizarre final play," "controversial ending," "strange finish," etc. etc. ASU won and that's all that matters. Everything else is something like, 18 seconds left, QB did nor did not take a knee, whistle may or may not have been blown, all while the clock ran out and we won by 2.

Google the rest, it's fine.

And that's all I got for today.

Go easy on me Monday, would ya?

H54F

Linking up with Lauren today for my fav weekly blog partaaaay and my five favs from this week!

1.) Out of town guests 

My sister's wedding shower was last weekend (read about the scandal here), so a few of my family from out of town flew in for the weekend. We all had so much fun and I can't wait to see everyone again in October!

2.) Halloween DIY

Had a little DIY sesh for new holiday decorations.

Diggin' my tulle wreath.

You can try and tell me it's too early to put up Halloween decorations, but I've figured out a way to justify it to myself, so I'm totally OK with it.

3.) Harry Potter spin-off(ish)

Word on the street is JK Rowling is writing a movie script that's sorta kinda a spin-off of the Harry Potter series (aka the best book series ever written in the history of man and wizarding kind). I don't even care that Harry and company won't be in it - I just heard the words "JK Rowling" and "wizarding world" in the same sentence and I've been fan-girling out ever since.

4.) The pumpkin train

I jumped on it this week.

And I'm loooooving it.

5.) ASU vs. Wisconsin this weekend

Ooooh boy I'm excited for Saturday night.

It's gonna be a blackout at Sun Devil Stadium, and the game has been all over everything this week here in AZ...and it pumps me up.

Go Devils!

Happy Friday folks!

H54F

Oh boy it's finally Friday.

I've been daydreaming about Friday since Tuesday...when I got back from vacation.

Cause we all know sometimes we need a vacation from vacation.

Hashtag firstworldproblems.

And since I've been making an effort to catch things up on this blog (check out parts  one and two here and here) this week's H54F might include a few things from last week.

Hashtag sorrynotsorry

1.) Dbacks game with Julie

I went to the Dbacks game last week with my friend Julie from grad school, which made it my second baseball game in four days.

And I'm not even made about it.

2.) Tyler Skaggs

So Tyler Skaggs is a starting pitcher for the Diamondbacks...

...and I just so happen to post the above picture of Julie and I at the game on Instagram...

...and when I checked my Insta the next morning...

Tyler Skaggs totally "liked my photo"

Whaaaaat??

I won't lie, I was kind of freaking out a little bit.

Julie and I were blowin' up our Gchat at work the next day, Googling the crap out of him.

The dude just turned 22.

Whaaat?? 

That's OK though, the cougar look could look good on me.

He's also 6 foot 5.

Whaaat?

I told Julie since I already have a husband, she and Tyler should totally get married, since they both like baseball and they're both really tall.

We're gonna work on making that happen.

3.) Gift card to Francesca's

I entered my very first giveaway ever over at Kasey's blog a couple weeks ago, and I totally won!

And it totally arrived in the mail last week!

I love Francesca's, and you should love it too, so if you haven't shopped there yet..do it now.

And if you haven't checked out Kasey's blog...do it now.

You'll love that too.

4.) Diploma finally arrived!

Now when I say I have my Master's degree, I actually have my Master's degree.

It's crazy to think you pay all that money...scratch that...you get into all that debt and all it boils down to is a piece of paper.

A really expensive piece of paper.

I don't care though.

I feel smart.

5.) Redondo Beach 

My cousin tied the knot in Redondo Beach last weekend and it was a freakin' blast.

The wedding was amazing, and we made a mini-vacation out of the trip!

Can't wait to get it all up on the blog...so stay tuned for that.

Happy Friday everyone!

The Day I Got My Master's Degree

As you may know (cause trust me, I wasn't quiet about it) I finally graduated with my Master's degree a couple weeks ago.

Woop woop!

And boy does it feel good!

Remember when I was just starting and I was all nervous about not being smart enough...along with a bunch of other crap? Cause trust me, I worry about a lot of crap.

You can read about that HERE.

Good news - I was smart enough (just barely), I made friends, and I never showed up to the 

wrong classroom.

Woop woop!

I keep trying to tell Nate he has to refer to me, from here on out, as "Master Rissa."

So far he's not buying it.

Graduation was everything I thought it was going to be, in all its anticipated glory.

I wore a cap and gown that had wings, and tails, and capes, and made me look pregnant, walked across the stage with all eyes on me as the screen read "Carissa Ruth Townsend," I shook hands with a bunch of people on stage I've never seen before, and received a fake diploma that when opened reads "Your real one will be in the mail in 8-10 weeks"...or something like that.

And I loved every minute of it.

My friend Julie and I were blowin' up our Google chats errry day during work with a countdown leading up until the big day. 

We counted everything down.

Number of classes left, number of papers left, days til' grades are posted, and of course, days til graduation.

We even made bets on what the speakers might say in their speeches.

She went with, "never stop learning," and totally nailed it.

I was happy to have my family there on the big day...with the exception of my sister's fiance.

He missed the ceremony and I told him it made me cry.

Don't tell him I made that up though.

Daddy and me

Me and mom

The hubs

When we were taking pictures my dad goes, "Get in there Nate, you're the one who's gonna be paying for this, you need a picture!"

True story...my dad's just glad it's not his wallet this time!

Nate has been never keen on student loans though.

He told me one night, "I don't get why this is so expensive. Can't you go to like, a community college or something??"

I hate to break it to you Nate, but you can't get a Master's degree at a community college.

Good idea though. 

My family, the King's!

My sister

The BFF Charlene

        

Hubs and Mama Townsend

My posse for the day...minus Charlene who was taking the picture =)

LOVE them all!! 

After graduation we all went out to lunch at Macayo's Mexican Restaurant.

Cause it seems like that's what you do when important things happen, considering we went there after my Bachelor's graduation, and for Nate and I's rehearsal dinner too.

What can I say, they make a mean mango margarita.

And after lunch for the rest of the day, I celebrated my graduation...by taking a nap.

Cause I feel like I deserve a nap after finishing grad school.

Uncle Si had it right:

So now that school is over a few things have changed:

My house is way messier because I can't use house-cleaning as a homework procrastination tactic...and who really wants to clean their house unless it's to put off doing homework?

Also, I've come to the realization that I now have to do all the things I said I never had time to do during grad school.

Like cook, and work out, and stuff.

Ugh.

I won't lie though, some of my coworkers and the new interns were talking about all their summer classes that started today and how much work they have ahead of them this summer, and in my head I was kinda like, "Neener neener neener!"

Ahh, it feels good to be done!