Somewhere in London

I did wake early this morning to watch the Royal Wedding. I am a sucker for all things London (can not wait for the 2012 games!). In my defense I woke up at 5:15 and went back to bed after they gave Kate her wedding ring. Really William, no wedding ring? I don't care if 2 billion people saw you get married, that is just strange. When I woke back up I watched some more coverage, and I thought this moment was really cute. William and Kate drove their own wedding car around the circle outside of Buckingham Palace. The car was decorated with balloons and a Just Wed license plate. Got to love young people in love. Cheers you two!

Thyroid Situation

Monday morning I went to Georgetown Hospital to get my thyroid and one of my parathyroids removed. I was a little freaked out to have surgery, but thankfully I didn't remember a thing that happend. I spent Monday night at the hospital (and my poor mom, so sweet!) and have been parked on my parents couch ever since. I had a rough couple of days, but am feeling much better. One of my biggest complaints today is just being stir crazy (this also could have something to do with living back at my parents house). I go back to work on Monday, and get the surgery tape removed on Wednesday, so hopefully it will be smooth sailing from there.

St. Louis - Just Kidding

Leading up to Paige's Bachlorette weekend in St. Louis I knew that there was rain in the forecast. I didn't however, think it would have any affect on me actually getting to St. Louis to celebrate the weekend with her. Before I even arrived at the airport on Friday I received a call from Delta saying my flight had been delayed. So when I arrived at the airport they switched me around to fly through Detroit and I would only make it in to St. Louis one hour later than usual. I sat down at a BWI bar and had a Blue Moon or two, fully expecting to relax and spend the weekend with my girlfriends.

After an hour or so layover in Detroit I boarded my next plane. However, 20 minutes into boarding we received a notice that a tornado had hit the St. Louis airport and they needed to asses the damage before we could take off. But seeing as how my week was going, it was not good news. Our flight was cancelled and I got put up at an ultra classy Detroit Best Western. How classy?? They had a tanning bed in the hotel lobby.

Saturday morning I was flown to Atlanta still in attempts to get to St. Louis. Right before we took off from Detroit Paige called to say the airport was closed till Wednesday ... Awesome. I landed in Atlanta and my flight was indeed cancelled, and I booked a flight back to Baltimore. Two days - three flights - no St. Louis :( Hopefully this means smooth sailing for PP's wedding!

I would like to thank my friend L.B. for coming to my rescue when I arrived back home. I had a good cry and she served me some wine. The perfect recipe after a craptastic weekend.

This is a picture of a mug I found in Atlanta - it really captured my mood.

A New Here

I am sitting on the floor of my apartment way past my bed time. Why? It is officially the last night in my wonderful studio in the sky. It has been one heck of a stressful week. I'm coupling the move with having to get to the airport tomorrow night for my friend P's bachelorette party, and getting ready for my surgery on Monday.

When I got the notice for how much it would be to renew my apartment (an amount that could fund a small African country for a year) I knew I had to make some tough decisions. I have lived in Arlington for almost 5 years and I love it ... LOVE IT! It has been a truly amazing experience. However, my desire to start the next stage of my life as soon as possible, whenever that may come, and to raise some money for that next stage in my life, over rode my love for Arlington and I decided to move back with my parents for a couple months. Its definitely not where I expected to see my self at 27, but I know it will be worth it.

So starting tomorrow there will be a new Here, and the usually theres spaced in between. Hopefully before I know it I will find a new, new here. Keep you posted!

Resevoir and 35th?

I am having a really bad day, but for some reason when I passed this obscenely over sized chair it cheered me up a little.

True Story

Austin tomorrow.

Birthday Beer

Gaaaah!! I'm 27! I wonder when I am going to actually start feeling my age. Most days i feel like I'm 15, I certainly don't feel like I'm 3 years to 30.

Anyways, to mark to occasion I met my friend Maile after work at Brasserie Beck. BB has been on my D.C. Wish List forever. At my old office all the broker always raved about the great beer selection and excellent fries they served there (yum and yum), but the budget of a commercial real estate agent and a marketing assistant is quite different so I never tried it. So when Living Social advertised a $60 for $30 coupon I knew I had to do it.

Maile and I dined on the fries (soo yummy) and Antigoon beer (very good) and got caught up. Her boyfriend is almost as obsessed with baseball as Zach, so we understand what each other has to go through once April starts. Our beers were a bit stronger than the traditional Bud Light, so I was feeling amazing on the way home. 27? Wooo!

If you love Belgian/Czech beer and have some extra money to spend I definitely recommend Brasserie Beck.

Mall Tweens

My current metro stop is adjacent to the Pentagon City Mall. It is highly convenient, sometimes dangerous, and something I am definitely going to miss when I move back to MoCo. The mall also happens to be swarming with Tweens year round. Large tour groups visiting D.C. like to drop the tweens off in droves, so they can wander the mall for hours in their matching neon I <3 DC shirts (I guess visiting museums is just out of the question).

So I am trying to navigate my way to the escalator and I see a group of tween girls congregated directly in front of it having a conversation. Tired, ready to get home, I semi body checked two of them to pass through. I'm not going to lie ... it felt good. The 11 year old boys giggling in Victoria Secret almost got it too, but they were smart enough to stay out of my way.

Rangers Game

Yesterday my family and I went to go see the Rangers play the Orioles at Camden Yards. This made me happy for several reasons: A. my family used to go to at least one game a summer growing up to celebrate Bobby's birthday. These days to get my parents, especially my Dad, anywhere outside the Montgomery County limits is a big deal. B. With Zach and his MLB live package all the way in Texas, it is going to be few and far between that I get to catch some Rangers games. So you can't beat seeing them play live. and C. Victoria Secret came out with a cute v-neck Rangers tee, and it was the perfect venue to show it off!!

The morning kicked off with mimosas with my friend Belmonte who lives in Baltimore. We were partly celebrating my birthday, partly using up the random liquor left in my apartment, and partly celebrating I safely passed the housing projects with out incident walking to her apt!

It was way to cold for my liking, but the Rangers won! They have lost the past two times my parents have come out to the game, so it was nice to turn that trend around. My mom, of course, was the loudest in the closest 3 sections, and managed to chat up everyone in a 10 seat vicinity of her. Just another family outing in the O'Brien household.

Happy Early Birthday to Me!

So this is the forecast for Austin this weekend. Yay :)

Full Credit for Being Alive

So my dear friend Erin sent a couple of us a link to a blog ranting about J-Crew's latest fashion trend, droopy pants. The author was sarcastic, judgemental, and down right hilarious. I just spent way too much time reading further into her blog and I highly recommend it. Read up - you can thank me (or Erin) later.

Baseball's Back!

I just got back from my first Nats game of the season. My friend Sam and her boyfriend live right by the stadium and invited me to come along. Although it was a bit cold for baseball (its just weird to wear a jacket to baseball games), we had a great time.

One of my favorite moments happened right before the game started. The pregame program was going on and the Nationals mascot, Screech, walked on to the field. Suddenly we heard this high pitched, urgent scream, "SCREECH." I swung around and there was the cutest little girl behind me carrying a Screech stuffed animal. Her mom was a little embarrassed and explained the girl was obsessed with the bird mascot, but when she got close to him she actually freaks out. The girl was adorable!

The Nationals lost ... per usual. The hot dog and beer tasted amazing ... per usual. And Teddy lost again ... per usual. Love it!

Breaking Down

We are getting a new CEO at work next month, and we have no place to put him. We currently have an extra office full of storage though, so the project du-jour has been rearranging all our extra storage and making that office hospitable. Tuesday morning I was working on condensing a file cabinet when I zigged when I should have zagged and tweaked my back. Yes 26 years old and walking around like I'm 80 because I threw out my back ... awesome. A couple years ago it was discovered that my left leg is about a quarter inch short than my right, so this happens time to time.

The next day I took my hobbled self over to the doctor to follow up on this fun little hyperparathyroidism issue that has recently come up. My doctor set a surgery date for me to get a couple of my parathyroids and my thyroid out. I'll keep you updated on that. Hopefully good things will come from that.

Austin

After 6 ridiculously long weeks Zach and I had another weekend together in Austin. I flew down Friday night which also happened to be our 2 year anniversary, so it was perfect. Friday night we exchanged some presents (bf did well!!) and woke up early Saturday to explore downtown. This was my third time to Austin, but the first time was with a bunch of visitors, and the second time it rained the entire weekend, so I was excited to see what the city was all about.

Through downtown Austin runs Town Lake, and along the lake are these great hike and bike trails. We took Riley and started walking to downtown. The trails were packed with people and the city buildings along the lake was an amazing backdrop. Who knew my former not-so-active self would highly value outdoorsy running trails in a pace to live? But Austin can definitely check that off its list. After our little hike we rented a canoe and took it down the lake to see the sites by water. Oh and did I mention it was in the high 80s? Perfection.





That night as we were walking around trying to find a place to eat, we passed this restaurant with an outdoor courtyard where a band was playing. It was a little pricey, so we decided to keep on looking, but after checking some places with really long waits we headed back. I am so glad we did. It was probably still in the low 80s, and we got a table right by the stage. The band was two guitarists and they were singing Party in the USA when we walked it. Love it!! Our only regret was that we didn't get there sooner. Great weather, good steaks, live music, and perfect company ... it was a wonderful night.





Sunday I got a tour of Zach's stadium and got to check out his work. And after a little Texas bbq he dropped me off at the airport. It was a short weekend, but it was a perfect one. Now we just have to wait until the next one.