I recently attended the wedding of the first of my 3 college roommates to get married.

For those of you who don’t know, I lived with boys. And one of my long-time girlfriends. She informed me that I need to get on that engagement thing because my other male former-roommate is now engaged. Just us two single ladies left.

Anywho … FLASHBACK to 2005

[clockwise starting on the left: Danielle, me, Joe and Nick]

This was from Nick’s 22nd birthday party — the first party we had in our new apartment as roomies. He and Joe were at the ISU game earlier that day and Nick got SUPER burnt. I’d like to point out that I have pink hair in this photo. And I apologize for the mesh cutoff sleeve shirt I have on — I was in a band at that point and was seriously into finding my own “metal” style. AND I have no clue whot he girl behind Joe is but she seriously looks like Robin Scherbatsky.

…

Moving on

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So this is 2007, the year we all graduated college. This is one of my favorite roomie pix! Thanks, Danielle for digging this up.

[Danielle, me, Nick and Joe]

Yeah. This was at the Bali Satay House, which, sadly, no longer exists. We used to go see our friends’ bands play there. And my boss informs me that they apparently had incredible food.

…

Fast forward 4.5 years: 2011

[photo by McClanahan Studio — from left to right — Joe, me, Nick and Danielle]

This was November and Nick got married. Joe was his best man. Danielle and I were the queens of the dance floor. I’m amazed at how much we’ve changed in four years.

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Today is my first day at ISU. Which means no more commute and oddly enough that I have to get up EARLIER than before to get to work. I was leaving Ames to get to Drake at 8:15ish but I have to be at work by 8 today. Let’s see how I do. Also, I’m biking. This should be interesting.

Oddly enough this post is going to be mostly about my last day at Drake.

Here is my super-empty cube. Bye bye cube!

And Shelly is really sad to see me go. Mostly because this is my list of jobs. I got everything done that I could on all of my jobs, except a lot of them were stuck in limbo (ie. proofing internally or with the client). It’s color coded so she knows where everything is.

Okay, so she might be a little sad that I’m leaving because I won’t be there anymore.

Also, I will miss the “Can’t Touch This Award” — the weekly award given to somebody who kicked ass the previous week. I got it before I left and I passed it on one last time.

Also … I ran out of stuff to do by 10 AM. So I may have played an hour of N64.

After work we met at Star Bar for drinks. I had a Dirty Blue martini (um stuffed blue cheese olives anybody?).

I’m excited to start a new chapter in my life at ISU: Hopefully getting my grad degree (paid for), getting to spend more time with Mark and my Ames friends (LUNCH anybody?), biking or bussing to work and best of all 2 more hours added to my day every day! I will miss most everybody at Drake and I will most definitely miss having design as my major responsibility. But, I need to hone some of my other skills in addition to design if I want to be a well-rounded teacher some day.

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So I promised big news last week and I was so busy I never delivered.

The big news is that I got a new job! I’m leaving Drake and heading to Iowa State University.

[goodbye spike, hello cy*]

Besides the obvious commute change (as in NO MORE COMMUTING) there’s another major change: I will probably not be designing so much.

My new job is Communications Specialist II for Student Recruiting in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. I’ll be doing social media, a bit of writing, a bit of design, student recruitment (so some travel) but mostly I’ll be in charge of the first-year student experience. So I’ll be planning events programming for first-year students to keep them engaged with not only ISU but specifically the college.

So are you freaking out? I’m kind of freaking out. I just realized last week I don’t get to pick paper anymore. Or print vendors.

Calm down. I’m planning to enroll in the College of Design MFA in Graphic Design program while I’m there. It’s not my TOP pick for MFA programs *cough cough* MCAD *cough cough* Yale *cough cough* … but it will be free. And really, I want to teach college students. So what matters is that I HAVE the degree. Not where it’s from. It’s not a BAD program either.  So I’ll be getting my design in as well as honing some other important skills.

*I realize that this is the OLD Cy ISU athletics logo … but I reallllly hate all the new athletics logos. Which is funny because I always bitch about Drake constituents that feel the same way about old marching spike that I do about old cy.

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Want something to do this Saturday? Even better — want to learn something new this Saturday?

Sign up for my class at Reiman Gardens in Ames.  I’m going to be teaching how to create fun and pretty mugs from old unloved ceramics.  Added bonus: I’m curating a playlist for this specific event.  Not only will you learn something new, you’ll get to listen to some new and (hopefully) exciting artists while you do it.

What do you get out of the class besides a new skill?  You get the tools to continue painting up your own ceramics, ideas for how to implement this skill beyond just mugs, and a creative spin to your Saturday morning. Mugs will also be provided.

Not an artist?  No drawing skills?  No problem!  Doodles and text are great accents to unloved dishes.  And I will also be teaching a transfer technique for those of us who are really uncomfortable with drawing anything freehand — even a doodle.

Today is the LAST day to sign up for the class.  Click here to sign up.  There is a discount for Iowa State Students.  If you and a friend sign up, tweet @chimes about it and receive an awesome prize from my Etsy shop.

Here are a few examples of mugs you’ll be able to create after taking this class.

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Okay, so I guess I’m not done.

Just thought I’d pop in and say I’ve logged over 1000 miles this year on Rec Milers since August.

These miles are actual miles run/walked/jogged, 2 miles per 8 glasses of water a day, 1 mile per serving of fruits/veggies a day, a few miles for so many minutes of weight lifting, exercise class, exercise bike or elliptical. But yes, 500 or so of them are running miles.

So I guess that means I get yet another Intramural Champion t-shirt and another Rec Milers club shirt. I’ll have to pay 5 bucks a piece for them, but hey, cheap t-shirts.

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I’ve been out of school and in the “real world” for about 2 years now, but a lot of my friends were/are still around ISU and are still in school.

This last weekend was December graduation at ISU and a few of my friends graduated and are leaving to embark on their first “real world” experience…which is kinda scary.  Makes me feel old.

These guys (Drew and Malachi) were originally Kasey’s friends that he met freshman year living in the dorms…but I met them and Mark and Matt when I was in the band and they kind of grew on me.

I didn’t know Malachi as well because he wasn’t around as much as the other guys, but I got to know Drew pretty well in the last 4 years. The first time I met him was at our performance at Springfest when I was in the band Assault Company (haha one of two performances with them). Him and our other friend Mark were in the audience and Drew kept yelling “SLAYER!”

Every time I hang out with those guys it’s bad news for my alcohol intake. I don’t know what it is, but Drew and Mark have this incredible ability to talk me into drinking things I normally wouldn’t drink (whiskey), playing drinking games or drinking a lot more than I realize (they tend to keep my drink filled).

What I’ll remember most about Drew are four things: his great taste in music (Andrew WK, The Faint, Norma Jean, etc.), his sense of humor, his love for PBR and his ability to get into some pretty interesting situations.

My favorite memory of Drew is from three years ago.  It was the last day of finals week and Kasey and I (who weren’t dating at that point) went over to Drew, Mark, Malachi and Matt’s over in Freddy Court.  I was armed with a bottle of wine  and was a few beers deep already.  Either way, Drew and Kasey had been sporting “chick pants” as a fashion statement in the few months/weeks prior to that. Well, somehow Drew and I decided we were the same size and swapped pants.

Hilarity ensued. We ran into his room and I remember both of us turning around and Drew saying something to the effect of, “Let’s do this. I won’t look if you don’t.”  The lights were off to ensure that nobody would see anybody’s underthings.  Somehow we managed to pull it off. We went out to the living room to show off our swapped pants, which I thought fit pretty well at the time…but photos of the event show otherwise.

The pants didn’t fit either of us. But it was fun thinking they would.

The funny thing is that this favorite memory of Drew lead to an important turn of events in my life.

We decided to swap back pants, so we ran back into Drew’s room and locked the door (or at least shut it. I don’t remember). Anyway, pants swapped–nobody looked. Drew decided to tell me about some cool stuff he did over the summer and show me some of his photo collection on his computer.  Which lead to us in his room in the dark with the door shut (with people knowing we were at least taking our pants off) for like 20 minutes. Then we started talking about how Kasey and I should hook up and how I really was in love with him and that I should go for it.  And OMG, crap!  I realized that people outside Drew’s room (namely Kasey) probably thought we were doing something naughty, and that I should get out of there as soon as possible.

I ran out of his room and at the same time, Kasey opened the door to the guys’ apartment. He’d been outside smoking and got locked out…so he didn’t know I was in Drew’s room that whole time.  Anyway, I ran up to Kasey and put my arms around him and said something to the effect of “thank goodness you made it inside” (like being locked out in the cold was a life or death situation).  And that’s when we had our first kiss.

So thanks, Drew, for getting in my pants.  Hope I’m not the first (or last) girl to say that and mean it. I’m going to miss you!

This was the most flattering of the two pictures we have of this event. You can't really tell, but Drew's pants were hanging down off my butt.

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