right hear, i'm near, PINK TEAR

i'm terrible at writing here and keeping a history file of the goings-on in my life. let's see the past month has been pretty freaking awesome. it seems like each day is better than next and i keep saying to myself...is this REALLY my life? bear with me as i recount the past month or so, it could take awhile.

it's the simple things that make me happiest really. i have been so blessed to have been with many friends in the past month some old, some new. 

at the beginning of april, allie and i traveled on megabus from ann arbor to chicago for the music, magic, make peace tour. we were super excited about the double decker bus:

                                             

truck stops are always a highlight on any road trip. i always attempt to find the most random object possible and purchase it. i present to you the brightest object ever made and purchased for $5:                     

                                                    

                                             

allie and i make great travel partners. our agenda is always the same; ready for anything. when we saw the bus pull into the parking lot she said "is that a..." and i finished the sentence "...A DOUBLE DECKER BUS?!" we proceeded to pump our fists victoriously into the air and go "WOO WOO WOO!" we busted ass to get up top and at the very front. it was well worth the view pulling into chi: 

let's see...allie and alyse graduated from the university of michigan april 26th. 10,000 graduates receiving bachelors, masters and doctorates. there was a crowd of about 40,000 proud moms, dads, grammies & gramps, aunties and uncles, brothers, sisters, lovers & friends. we had a late night before the ceremony, so i was struggling to stay awake. bob woodward gave a moving commencement address. he gave a message of working for happiness, not dollars. wise man. 

that evening, my dear friend micaela flew into town from denver and we went out to the brown jug to continue the graduation celebration with allie, alyse, & friends. we got about two hours of sleep then started our journey to the land above. 

katie, allie, mic and i left ann arbor at about 7:30am. after a lovely little stop, search, & interrogation at the border...we were on our way to toronto for another music, magic, makepeace tour stop. 

about 9am we broke out our smuggled contraband (all the way from denver! thanks j.) after 35 minutes it felt like seven hours had gone by, i looked at the clock and couldn't believe it had only been 35 minutes. by 9:45am it felt like it was 5pm. needless to say, the four hours to toronto was a haze. 

we arrived in toronto around 12:30 and made a pit stop, then headed to the venue. i think we smoked eight different times before the show began. (thanks tina & dave) it was a good day/night. i FINALLY met leon! i just want to put him in my pocket and carry him everywhere with me. he can be friends with todd carey's mom. 

i met whitney and her mom. i'm excited to spend more time with them in july. we passed time in line by pinning our love for bushwalla to our crotches, enjoying the fellowship of friends old and new, & taking bowl breaks in the car:

                  

i felt that the tour had really grown since we saw them in chicago. i'm listening to the makepeace brothers set while i'm typing this. i am so fortunate that there are people who tape these shows and share them with others. my short-term memory isn't that great at remembering details so it's nice to be able to go back and say "ahh...that was lovely." 

after the toronto show i was so pumped to drive to montreal! i slammed a can of soda and was hyped to make the most of the drive. 

i made it one hour before i was nodding off and had to pull over.  this is an example of what coke in a can will do to you. don't drink soda kids, it's garbage. i pulled into a hampton inn parking lot and we slept in katie's luxury suv that we were blessed to be traveling in. we eventually made the group decision to get a hotel room at about 4am. this was the best decision we made the entire trip. we all got to rest our bones, sinuses, stomachs, charge our phones & take showers. that shower may or may not have saved all of us. 

traveling from city to city can be very exhausting. we had the time of our lives, but who knew sitting in a moving vehicle could wear you out so much? we only did it for three days. big high fives to those who do it for weeks at a time. 

after a pit stop at tim horton's to refuel, we were on our way to montreal for the one of the last dates of the mmp tour. i think i drove the whole way there, five hours. we found the venue, went and bought our tickets at the door (a first!). we found our hostel to drop our packs and change. we rushed back to metropolis to get there just in time for doors. once inside we had an hour or longer wait until the show started so we sat and rested. 

the show was my favorite of the three i saw on this tour. the energy was addicting. i pray that i will be blessed to work with artists of this caliber throughout my career. 

after the show we had a beer at the bar next door. we said goodbye to leon and melissa and headed back to our hostel. i think i fell asleep as i was climbing into my bunk. our hostel was in an old home. i did some research before we went and found it was everything to be expected. if you ever need a hostel in montreal, quebec: http://www.montrealbackpackers.com/

after waking up, we packed our bags, checked out of the hostel and we in search of a crepe breakfast.

we found a great place and had the breakfast of a lifetime. micaela and allie had coffee, i had some herbal tea

(pronounced HERB-al) and katie had hot chocolate:

for breakfast allie, mic and i had the alpha male of breakfast sandwiches. it would dominate against any other breakfast

sandwich if it were in a competition. i can't say anymore, for fear of hopping on a flight to montreal right now.

here it is in all it's glory:

we also had crepes:

to be continued...

in the morning, we checked out of our hostel and 

how can i get raul midon & al gore in the same room?

ted! you keep entertaining me before bed.

still obsessed. happy earth day. 

al gore is the only 'famous' person i desire to meet

I cannot get enough of TED TALKS. Here's my most recent favorite:

my future is what i create in my own mind

I have been saying this to myself daily for almost a year and it became very clear to me while I was in California that affirmations DO indeed become a part of who I am.

Wikipedia says that an affirmation (from Latin affirmare, to assert) is the declaration that something is true or a positive value judgement.

My biggest and longest-lasting dream in my life has been to go to California. My dream was just to VISIT California. Living there would be icing on the cupcake.

And now I realize that before I knew what an affirmation was, I was willing things to happen in my life. Growing up in Indiana, I would always say to myself and others "I will go to California someday. I'm going to live there." I would have very vivid daydreams of what California was like and when I visited for the first time in February this year, it was strange to realize I was fairly accurate in my visions. It's nice to know that bits of the five year old me have made it to the realm of twenty-two year old me.

I admit that I have a very over-active imagination. I'd almost be embarrassed to let others know the thoughts that go through my head on a daily basis. I'd also venture to say that I owe a lot of my dedicated imagination to books. From the time that I was three, I was reading chapter books. My favorites in kindergarten were the "Boxcar Kids" series & "The Babysitters Club". I read every single one of the books in the series' so often, I had them memorized for quite some time. My imagination took me to the point where I would BECOME a character in the book, experiencing the emotions and trials the character was going through. This continued to plague me as I read books as a teenager and continues now, an adult.

Every time I think my life stinks, all I have to do is say to myself: "you're Frank McCourt in the streets of Limerick" and I snap back to reality, realizing that my life is perfect. I should be grateful that I'm not poor Frankie McCourt with holes in his shoes and nothing but a piece of fried bread for supper.

I think it's very easy for us all to get caught up in the negative situations of our lives and the lives of those around us. Last summer I had a revolution in my own life where I chose to not live negatively anymore. More specifically, I was letting the lives of my family bring me down and it was destroying me as a person. I finally realized that I cannot change anyone, but what I can choose to be is a light of hope in their dark, negative lives. Hopefully some of the shine will rub off on them.

I choose to be happy & healthy. I choose to be positive at all times. A list of affirmations was given to me last summer and the last on the list that I affirm daily to myself is: "My future is what I create in my own mind." I got the affirmation tattooed on my body because I am at a new beginning. I feel like I've found the secret to a happy and fulfilling life and I'm only 22. Live to be happy in the moment. Life is a series of moments and each one has the potential be as joyful and loving as I imagine it to be. 

Others have insinuated that perhaps this phrase won't make any sense later on in my life. My response is that I never want to stop dreaming. I never want to stop having hope for a fulfilling life, even at fifty I want to still be reciting daily "my future is what I create in my own mind."

the arbor of ann and other assorted tales...

i live in ann arbor, michigan. i moved here nine days ago. i moved here ten days after i came back from my pilgrimage to california. i went for eight days with my kindred spirit, allie. we visited san francisco, los angeles, and san diego.

after such a wonderful trip and determining that i had finally had enough of downtown, indianapolis; the question of why was answered with why not? and here i am, in ann arbor.

i've started becoming acquainted with my SIX female roommates. it's a new expierence for sure. i've never lived or been friends with sorority girls or jewish girls. not that it's a HUGE difference from my previous friends, like i said...just new expierences.

i'm having a blast meeting allie's coworkers, her sorority sisters and randoms at the bars. we went dancing one night last week and i was drenched in sweat by the time we left the club. yesterday, we went to conor o'neil's irish pub to celebrate the holiday. it was a good time.

but it's only been nine days, so nothing too crazy. i'm making chili for dinner and allie's going to come over and i'm going to highlight her hair.

i'm going to attempt to capture my california trip with words sometime this week. in the past month i've felt a multitude of emotions and learning to navigate them is such a wonderful learning expierence.

stay tuned.