Clue - The Rose is 30 Edition

It's official, I am now 30. I can no longer be trusted, but it's cool. I feel pretty good about it. I mentioned in my last post that my awesome friends made me a Clue game. I believe you can follow the link below to see some pictures of the awesomeness:

Rose Clue

I usually use my birthday to make "new year's resolutions" because it feels like a new year of my life starts on my birthday. Plus, my birthday is the best holiday ever. Anyway, I decided to take a picture a day for the year...yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. Here's the last two days photos:

This is me at 30

This is 30 + 1

Arizona is Awesome

I come to you from the great and sunny state of ARIZONA. GO ME! It's actually slightly cloudy here today and there's the promise of rain...but really? I don't think it's going to happen. I think that we are safe. And even if it does rain, it won't snow, so AWESOME. I'm so happy!

My flight here went pretty smoothly. I was only delayed 1 hour and 20 minutes, which is the best I've ever been since moving to the midwest. My brother's plane came in a wee bit early the next day which was super awesome because the weather was horrible for both of us and they were predicting we wouldn't get anywhere.

Since arriving I've had some nice quality family time and some nice quality friend time. It's been awesome (guess my new favorite word). Last night my friends threw me a birthday party. Actually it was a funeral. They had eulogies and they made a Rose Clue board game. They transformed the Clue board and all the cards and everything into things dealing with me. They made little wooden figures that depicted each of us and they had a list of things that I fear will kill me as the murder weapons (mouth herpes, germs, stress, smoking, dirty needles, and clowns). Then each room was a location like friends' houses, Iowa, Penn State, etc. It looked amazing. I honestly thought that they had somehow sent away to the company to make a personalized Clue board, but they did it all themselves. So we played. In case you were keeping score at home, it was Jesse with Germs in Germany. I always knew he'd be my downfall.

Needless to say, it was an awesome night. Halfway through we turned the poster around and celebrated Adam's birthday (which is today). We're all turning 30. So crazy.

Other than that I bought a bunch of clothes, a new computer and I got my hair cut and slightly colored today. So that's the news from my world. My husband is at home plotting how to mass produce our podcast so that the world can partake. Then he's going skiing.

Until next time, enjoy this video about publishing articles. It's funny. Zach sent it to me.

Peer Review

"Christmas Eve"

Today is "Christmas Eve" because tomorrow is "Christmas" because I leave on Wednesday. So Z and I are celebrating a few days early. We have a tiny tree and some very nice decorations and a few little presents under the tree. Tonight I get to stuff the stockings (literally stockings that I painted our names on) and then tomorrow morning - viola! "Christmas". I'm even going to make a ham steak, green bean casserole and some potatoes. Truly, a magical feast. I also plan to make some food for Zach to eat while I am away. It's not that I don't think he can feed himself, I just worry that he won't.

And now, some ranting.

Today is the shortest day of the year. It's cloudy and gray so I doubt I will notice the utterly consuming darkness scheduled for around 4:39 PM. Just like it was barely perceptible when the sun rose at 7:30AM this morning. But it can only get lighter from here. So Happy Solstice, Everyone!

For those of you who have listened to our podcast, thanks! Hope you enjoyed it. For those of you who felt that 25 minutes was just "too much"...I have some choice words for you, but this being "Christmas Eve", I'll just keep them to myself. Why don't you try listening and if you get bored, turn it off. You can also do other things while listening, Zach and I are not asking that you sit immobile for 25 minutes listening to our voices. Although, you probably won't be disappointed if you do. For those of you who missed it, here's the link:

Christmas Cardcast

In other news, I am super excited about going home for the holidays. My mother informs me that it will be "really cold"....like 58. Wow! 58? Hm...what should I wear? The tank top or the short sleeve shirt? 58. Mom. C'mon.

I have been so excited that I've been packing for days now. I'm trying not to bring that much, but I'm just so excited that I want to pack it all now! I will miss Zach, but I'm super excited to see everyone else. And I know that there will be about 10 minutes when he really misses me before he realizes the joy that comes from me being away. Enjoy your freedom, Zach. Don't do anything that I will hear about later (or stain anything).

I had some other things that I really wanted to rant about, but I can't remember at this juncture, so I'll bid you all ado. Merry "Christmas Eve"!

Merry Christmas!

Hi All,

This year my husband and I decided that instead of sending out Christmas cards (as has been my tradition for many years) we would do a Christmas "Cardcast" - which is a podcast that has a Christmas greeting in it. We got some "borrowed" equipment and went to town, especially Zach who has not been sleeping for the past 3 days so that he could edit it to perfection. Here is the podcast link:

Podcast link



We hope that you enjoy our holiday cheer and greetings! Love you all...and for any random strangers stumbling on to the blog...it's not love for us yet, but maybe we can be there some day.

Best,
Rose & Zach...the Awesomes

The Season of Anger and Sadness (AKA Winter)

As I woke up Zach on Saturday morning with the words, "GET UP, IT'S THE FIRST SNOW OF THE SEASON", he knew his day was not going to go well.

"What season is that?"

"The season of anger and sadness. I believe your people call it 'winter'."

We laughed. It was just flurries actually and while I was not ready for it (given that it was in the 60s last week), I decided that this year I was going to accept the winter. That feeling of acceptance lasted exactly 2 days. It snowed for real yesterday and then for real, real today. And apparently tonight it's blizzard conditions (for those of you lucky enough not to know what that means, it's basically blowing snow). Someone in one of my classes said, "60 mph winds after midnight"...damn it.

My crazy husband is riding his bike to and from work. I'm happy because I hate him on the roads in the car, but also scared because now he's on a bike. They may or may not cancel classes tomorrow. That's the only good thing about snow. I'm not likely to go in because I only have meetings anyway. I'll make an excuse, like, "I'm not coming because there's 6 inches of snow and a blizzard going on."

Today I did a little exercise with my walk at home DVD. I can't tell you how bad I felt for the downstairs neighbors. Sorry, no, there was not a herd of stampeding buffalo in my apartment, I was walking away the pounds. But I did feel good about actually getting some exercise. I really can't wait to get to the warm weather of Phoenix so that I can walk outside. Now that I am off the "not eating, throwing up and smoking diet" (patent pending), I find that I am gaining a little weight because I'm not exercising. Good news, not nauseous all day (no, still not a baby, stress).

Alright, well, I think I had more things to say, but I'm going to spread them out over the next few days. I've only done 25 posts this entire year...where has the year gone? That's crazy! Anyway, I'm boring, so I have to save some of this comic gold for future posts.

Keep us in your prayers.

Introducing the Newest Member of Our Family

No, we didn't have a baby. Sorry Mom, sorry Ann, not baby time. But we do welcome with open arms the newest edition to our family:


This is Z VonDrewski. He's my iPod touch (32 gb). Supposedly, I can connect to the internet and stuff and use him as a little computer...but I have yet to be successful. I have been successful at downloading a bunch of new "apps" (that's applications for those of you not in the know) and putting a ton of music on it. And I bought myself a movie for the plane. So I'm totally set. It's awesome. I can't stop touching it. Not inappropriately, but all the time.

Zach got an iPod Nano for his birthday on November 17th. His iPod came with the name Ted Brown. That's what's engraved on the iPod, so that's what we call him. ManiLove (the iPod shuffle that I was sporting before now) is in the drawer in my desk. I feel like a heel for leaving him, but I can't help it. My love of the touch is legendary (don't read that in a gross way, perv).

Oh, as to why Z VonDrewski came into my life - I'm turning 30 soon. Well....January 10th, but it's never too early for presents and I decided that I needed to get myself a really big birthday gift, so I bought the iPod for myself. Happy Birthday to me! I hope that you all don't feel the need to top me, but you can definitely still get me something great for my birthday....like iTunes gift cards. Or a case for Z VonDrewski....I'm just throwing things out there...it's never ever too early to start planning for my birthday.

I also recently purchased 3 pairs of "adult" shoes (again, not dirty, just grown-up) for a sick amount of money. My husband who is generally very understanding about money was in a bit of sticker shock for a moment when I told him how much. It really didn't help that the bank called him later that day and asked if our credit card had been stolen because there was "unusually large amounts of activity" on our account. It's like, "thanks for checking guys, but why did you have to go and rat me out like that?"

Ok, well, I'm going to go back to touching my iPod and battling the on-going headache that I have. I think it's allergies. Or a brain tumor. Hard to say. Also possible snow flurries tomorrow- guess who is not amused.

Back and on the Attack

I lied. I'm not on the attack. I do hope that I'm back though. It's been a looooooooong time. I've been busy. I'm in my last year of graduate school...hopefully. My semester has been filled with being a TA (speaking of which, I have 120 essays to grade by the end of the weekend), collecting dissertation data, failing to collect dissertation data, getting upset by said data, starting to try to maybe write some dissertation stuff...yeah, not so much, and hunting for jobs. So I've been super busy. And I've been a bit overwhelmed. But now I am getting back on top of the heap. I'm conquering the world, baby! And I made Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Here's the annual Thanksgiving photo essay by Zach, who stated, "You are very photogenic today." Thanks for the support, babe.

Thanksgiving decorations that we have out. Some probably offensive figurines.

Holiday turkey decoration...which we've had up for about a month now.

This is our "dining room" table. Oh yeah, we are super high class. Did you eat Thanksgiving dinner on tv trays on a futon in front of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation? No? Jealous?

Cooking the annual Thanksgiving tofurkey. It's almost as good as it sounds.


This is the tofurkey with some carrots, yams and cranberries for "sauce". We had a relatively cruelty-free Thanksgiving...I was only a little bit mean to Zach.


The sides. This year I did not go too crazy. Au Gratin potatoes (from scratch - I assume that scratch means "from the boxed mix". Green bean casserole!! YES! And some chicken gravy...yeah, I know that's wrong on tofurkey, but I wanted it. Not pictured: Cran-apple delight. A delicious dessert made with cranberries, apples and a crumble crust. Very good. I made it for Zach's work people too and one of them wants the recipe. I told him no, it's an old family secret.



The last three our pictures of your favorite couple. Notice that I look pretty much identical in all of them, but the man changes more than a mother of a new born...ok, well, that wasn't the best, but it's been a long time, so I'm a little rusty.

Hopefully this represents a comeback. I should go because I still have 120 essays to grade and plans to go to Grandma's tomorrow. I'm not sure that I'll finish, but you know what? It will get done when it needs to be done. That's my new mantra.

Happy Holidays!