Hey DJ

I've been out of blank CD's for a while now, so all the songs I've been purchasing on itunes have been sitting on my computer as opposed to on a cd playing in my car stereo-which, if we're being honest here, is the best place to play music. So I finally purchased some blank CD's not too long ago, burned my new music onto them and switched out all 6...count 'em 6, CD's in my disc changer. That's 6 CD's worth of new music playing in my car. 

I'm in love.

So after listening to them for a while now I wanted to hand out some awards to my new CD's. You know how magazine's do like "Reader's Choice" awards and stuff for beauty products and what-have-you? Well, consider this the Rissa Music Awards. Very exciting isn't it?!

Song most likely to make you dance even when you're in a bad mood and don't feel like it

This one is a tie (I know, my first award and it's a tie, kinda lame)

OneRepublic: "Good Life"

Mat Kearny: "Count on me"

Just tonight I was pretty cranky leaving work and I really wasn't in a mood to bop around and sing to the music, but when these came on...there's really just no stopping it

Best song to snap you out of a self-pity party

Matt Maher: "Rise Up"

Seriously, You'll snap out of it real quick. If you need encouragement, listen ups buttercups!

Best Song to feed your super fierce girl power alter-ego attitude

Pistol Annies: "Hell on Heels"

One word: RAWR!!

Song most worth blowing out your speakers for

The City Harmonic: "Manifesto"

Directions:

1.) Turn up volume

2.) Turn up volume louder

3.) Stick hands out window up to the sky

4.) Sing it out to Jesus!

Most Played

NEEDTOBREATHE: "The Reckoning"

I was waiting and waiting for this album to come out. Then I saw them live when they opened up for T-Swift and it just reconfirmed my love affair for this group. My favorite song (so far) on the album is "Slumber"...kind of a weird video, but nonetheless, an awesome song!

Best Chill out Song for the drive home

Colbie Caillat: "Make it Rain"

I'm totally lovin' this song; it reminds me of her first album, acoustic, mellow'ed out, and adorable lyrics

So there you have it.

Heaven in your ears.

 Talk radio is taking a back seat to my cool new home-made CD's lately (shocker, I know). But anything that puts me in a good mood is certainly welcomed!

Mess of Thought

I was thinking I wanted to blog today but I couldn't really think of anything to blog about. ...but I really wanted to blog. 

...so you can see why this was giving me a complex.

So I decided to blog anyway and just figured I would write down random things and you, the home reader, may just have to deal with the lack of organizational thought and its written reflection. 

In honor of my first day off with no internship, no work, no school, and no homework, I wanted to repost this thing I found on pinterest...which is pretty much what my day looks like:

Except disregard the "winning" because I hate when people quote Charlie Sheen, and my theory is anyone who quotes Charlie Sheen is NOT "winning."

Gunther keeps staring at me and whining, and I can't figure out why because he was already fed this morning, he has water in the water dish, the doggy door is open so he can come and go as he pleases, so I just don't know what he wants. ...which is just further confirmation that I do not want a baby right now because Gunther's furry face and soft whining is much more tolerable than a wailing baby with so many more variables as to what might be making it cry.

Things I'm diggin' right now

-T-Swift's new video. 
Definitely tugs on the heart strings a bit cause I totally know what this feels like

Ours - Taylor Swift - Taylor Swift Videos

- Phoenix Suns new logo/ad campaign

Pretty BA and gets me totally pumped up for the new (albeit short) season. Steve Nash is still here and Grant Hill resigned for another year.
Yusssssss

-This new dessert I concocted

+ 

 = Dee-freakin'-lish


So last night Nate and I were going over how each of our days went, and then right before we fell asleep he goes,
"Oh yeah, and I killed a fly with my knife...I sliced it right out of the air."


Sooooo...yeah.

Merry Christmas

From the Townsend's

Christmas Productivity

So today my mom and I baked Christmas goodies.

Lots of them.

And it was awesome.

My mom has always done a lot of baking around the holidays and as my sister and I have gotten older we  started to make it an annual thing where we all get together, have the Christmas music on and bake all day. There's a few recipes that we always make each year, cause they're SO delish it just wouldn't be Christmas without them, and then some years we pick out new recipes to try too! While the actual baking is not something I typically enjoy, we always manage to have fun doing it. Like for example, a year or two ago, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" came on the radio while we were baking, and my mom and I pretty much dissolved into a two-woman song and dance show.

...We'll be here all season.

So you know, things get pretty cuh-rayzee 'round these parts.

This year, however, we managed to stay on task. In fact, throughout our baking diligence we began to notice a pattern developing in each recipe we began. We pretty much needed only two ingredients:

1.) Chocolate

and

2.) Peanut butter

...which is totally fine by me cause I could get by on just chocolate and peanut butter. But if you're an outsider looking in you may be disappointed in the lack of variety...which is also fine by me cause I told my mom we're not sharing all the double and triple batches of chocolate we baked, so you wouldn't be getting any anyways.

...how's that for holiday spirit eh?

You should see what the inside of the fridge looks like

And that about sums it up.

Later on my parents put up their Christmas tree so my sister and I (and our men) helped decorate it...which has also become somewhat of an annual thing, since their tree is still decorated with ornaments my sister and I made in like, 1st grade.

Exhibit A.

Boom.

Santa baby...

Lovin' all the Christmas festivities!

Flavor of the Week

It's that time of year again. With winter and the cold upon us, I don't know about you but for me that usually means dry hands. Which is why my flavor of the week is:

Hemp Hand Protector

From the Body Shop

Flavor of the "WEEK" may be a bit misleading on this one, cause I've used this stuff for years and I absolutely swear by it. My hands get really dry working in the pharmacy and washing them all the time, so in the winter the cold weather makes it even worse (i.e. dry, cracked, bleeding hands...ouchie). Nate uses it too! His hands get 10x worse than mine and this is the only thing that actually heals the severe dry skin.

I put it on every night at bedtime, cause it's REALLY thick and leaves your hands pretty greasy for a little bit. So I put it on right before I go to bed and let it soak in without having to worry about using my hands for anything. I'll warn you ahead of time...it doesn't smell pretty. It doesn't stink, or smell bad by any means, but it's not meant to smell fancy-like flowers or fresh linens, or fairy lily's or anything awesomely fragrant like that. But it certainly gets the job done, and when my hands are cracked and painful, that's all I care about! Which is why it is my Flavor of the Week!

Done and Done

Research Design: check

Finals: check

Another semester of grad school in the bag: check

Internship: check

PHEW! I was afraid for a minute I wasn't going to make it out of that semester alive!

It was certainly a busy one to say the least, between work, school, and internship; but it was good-since I have such a hard time being productive with lots of time to spare, when I don't have time to procrastinate things get done!...go figure eh?

I had the opportunity this semester to intern at Congressman David Schweikert's office, of Arizona's 5th Congressional District. ...and it was pretty cool!

The Congressman is awesome, the staff is awesome...the only bummer was I didn't get to meet his dog Charlie, who gets to go to DC from time to time, makes frequent appearances on his Facebook, and is almost as popular as the Congressman!...it's too bad, really, cause Maycee and Gunny could've totally been friends with Charlie, and then they could hang out and play tug-of-war and do all kinds of dog things together.

I was pretty pumped to get a picture with the Congressman on my last day...not gonna lie, I felt pretty cool.

Anyway...for some weird (and kind of stupid) reason ASU decided to schedule the start of classes on January 5th, which means I only have 27 days until next semester starts. Which means I only have 27 days to:

-Celebrate Christmas

-Enjoy days off

-Sleep in on said days off

-NOT do homework

-Read material that does not consist of text books, scholarly journals, or peer reviewed articles

-Catch up on this season of Glee

-Scrapbook

-Blog

-Sleep in...wait did I say that one already?

Ready, set, GO!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

I had a little bit of an out-of-body-experience today.

I was productive.

I cleaned my house.

All day.

I kept telling Nate tonight over and over, "I looooove the feeling of a clean house."

I really should do it more often.

I cleaned every room in the house, both bathrooms, vacuumed, dusted, did laundry, dishes, changed every Scentsy warmer so the house smells DELISH, emptied trash cans, changed sheets, and so on and so forth. You name it, I did it. I even Swiffer Wet-jetted the tile floors...I know right? I did have motivation for my cleaning quest today though, cause let's be honest, I wouldn't just do this for no good reason! 

The time has come to decorate for Christmas! And you can't put up Christmas decorations with a dirty house right? So I wanted to clean it up from top to bottom so I could put up decorations and then relax and enjoy my home instead of looking at everything that needs to be cleaned or put away!

Let the decorating begin!

Can you guess which one is Nathan's? 

 Hey guess what?!

Even Nate is getting in the Christmas spirit...tonight he was singing his own rendition of "Gunther Got Ran Over by a Reindeer."

Yeah...we're working on that.

21 days 'til Christmas!