OK, time for some more updates to my 101 in 1001.  Considering I only have 43 days left, it’s pretty clear that I’m not going to completely finish this list.  However, I’m still working away at it, and I’ve already got some great ideas for my next list.  One of the things I will be doing is try to carry over uncompleted goals from the current list to the new one, so I’m not letting myself off the hook, LOL!

#33 is host a formal dinner party.  I don’t know if you’d consider the dinner party that AJ and I had as formal, but it involved lots of awesome homecooked food, people we hadn’t seen in a while, and showing off all of AJ’s brand new dishes.  There was a theme, the house was spotless . . . in my mind the goal was a grown-up dinner party, and that’s what we had.

I had wanted to get Mama’s beads inventoried and make the inventory something she can easily work with daily (#61).  I got the system in place, but her interests have shifted somewhat, so this isn’t 100% complete.  I did my piece of it, even if she didn’t follow-through with actually utilizing the inventory system I set up.  Same goes for #72 - getting all of Mama’s email switched from Yahoo to her ISP account.  I got a great deal of it switched, but there are still a few things that she is choosing to keep on Yahoo.  I can’t force her to change that, but I did help her get set up better.

#70 - search for organic and free trade coffee and tea that I like, and make the switch.  I’m not going to do this with coffee right now because I get a free pound of coffee every week from Starbucks since I work there, and I’m not a particularly big fan of the fair trade or organic coffees that we have.  I can’t pass up the free coffee (I’m a poor grad student).  On the teas - I’m not really seeing a classification for fair trade tea, so perhaps that is yet to come.  However, i have found some awesome organic teas, and I have made the switch there.  Check!

The iTunes is sooo much happier now that #73 (reformat artists’ names on my iPod so that each one isn’t listed more than once) is finished.  However, I can tell that this might be something that I may have to constantly monitor and maintain.

When we went to Napa, we drank so many different wines.  I can’t really get a solid definition on what a “vintage wine” is, because they all have vintages, but we did some really cool barrell tasting, and I’m sure that somewhere in there I completed #90.

Only . . . 40 to go!  Sigh.

OK, I finally have a chance to post about our trip!

First, AJ, Bo, and I met up in San Francisco.  It was a little weird that Bo and I were on vacation together without my parents.  I guess we’re really grown up now, huh?  LOL!

The first full day was our big sightseeing day.  We took a sightseeing tour bus that drove us all around town and showed us everything.  It took us to the top of a hill where we could see the whole city - it’s so big and hilly!

And then the bus took us to Golden Gate Bridge:

Then we traveled to Muir Woods, which was a beautiful state park.  The redwoods were so gorgeous!  So, of course, AJ had to act goofy in the middle of them

Then, that night, we went to see Al Capone’s old haunt - Alcatraz:

The next few days we spent exploring the city, including visiting the original Ghirardelli store.

We also spent an afternoon at Haight Ashbury, which is a place I’ve been wanting to visit for YEARS!  We also smoked a little hookah in a hookah bar at Haight Ashbury, which just seemed too appropriate.  This is a horrible angle for me, but look, I was there!

Then we met up with my parents and we all headed to Napa Valley!  We had the best time.  We probably went to 15-20 wineries.

AJ and I slowly collected a case’s worth of wine to bring home with us . . . until we went to the last winery.  We had tours at several of the wineries, and tastings at almost everyone, but the last winery we went to was a little different.  At Del Dotto, we did a barrel tasting - we tasted the wine straight from the barrels that were in the caves!  It was so cool!

This was some of the best wine that we have ever tasted, and since the vineyard is a smaller vineyard that only sells wine from the winery (not in stores or resteraunts), we bought another half case of wine there, LOL!  We’re going to let the wine age, so AJ and I used a Christmas gift certificate I had saved to by this AWESOME wine fridge.

So, I guess can check off #37 on my 101 in 1001 - I’ve been to California!  For all the pictures, see my Flickr.

Then, Mama, Daddy, and Bo all went home and AJ and I went to New York for a couple of days.  We saw August: Osage County (which was soooooo amazing) and American Ballet Theatre’s production of Sleeping Beauty (which meant a lot to me - Disney’s movie has been my favorite movie since I was 2, and I’ve always wanted to see the ballet).  We also got to spend some time with my best friend Stephanie.  She lives in NYC now, and she’s never had a chance to meet AJ.

So, we’re back now, and completely exhausted, but we had a truly great vacation!  I think I’ve decided to give wine tasting/journaling another shot now that I’ve been to Napa and have a bit more knowledge about the whole thing.

Oh, and while I’m posting, we can also scratch #69 off of my 101 in 1001 list - over the past year I’ve really switched a lot of my grocery purchasing to organic food, and I try to consciously pick the organic options, even if they do cost a little more!

So I was reminded by Karen’s post that I haven’t updated my 101 in 1001 in a while. Honestly, it’s because working 2 jobs and being in grad school is VERY time consuming, so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on it. I’m also a little sad, because there are several things on my list that I don’t think I’ll be able to do by September. I console myself with the fact that I made this in college with no idea of where I would be in two years, so I had no way of knowing that I would only see my parents for a weekend here or there every four months or so (so how can I possibly #8 “go to concerts with Daddy?”) or that once I left Wake I would lose a lot of my ties to the school (I need the library to #25 “make the Parables DVDs,” but I have to have a current student with me to do that, and most of the people I know have graduated).

All things to keep in mind when I make my new 101 in September (yes, even if I don’t finish this one, I still intend to make a new one, and you may see me revamp some of the current items for the next time). Just because I don’t get finished by the deadline doesn’t mean that a lot of these things aren’t still important to me. And honestly, many of these goals were stretch goals to begin with (see me rationalizing?).

Anyways, back the (very) few that I have completed now!

#34 (Get a pet)- I have two of the most adorable little kittens ever sitting on my bed snuggling with each other. This one is done

(Photo take 5 minutes ago.)

#62 (Switch all lightbulbs to CFLs)- I actually did this when I moved into my new apartment in July
#66 (No more plastic grocery bags - only canvas) - I started doing this last year and actually made a habit of it around New Year’s. Every once and a while I forget to bring my bags in, but not usually.
#91 (Organize recipes) - My recipes are very much more organized now, though I can tell this will be an ongoing effort for me . . .
#95 (Attend 5 year high school reunion) - I wanted to go to my 5 year high school reunion, but I couldn’t go back to FL because of school and work. This made me sad, cause I haven’t even spoken with a lot of my high school friends in YEARS. So . . . I guess I’ll try for the 10 year?

So now I’m more than halfway finished - woo hoo!!! I’ll be honest, I’ve done a lot more than I thought I would! Here’s hoping that I can achieve the rest!

Well, I guess that I definitely needed a blogging break! I am so sorry it’s been forever since I posted - a few of you have been wondering where I am, but I really haven’t gone anywhere, I’ve just been busy!

Not too long after I stopped posting I started to hang out with a co-worker of mine a lot, and now we’re dating :-). His name is AJ, and he’s a really awesome guy. VERY different from anyone I’ve ever been interested in in the past, but it works somehow. We’ve been actually dating for about a week shy of 2 months now.

On top of that, I’ve also been hanging out with other new friends from work. It think I just needed a break from online life to adjust to my new life that is emerging here. Life in Winston-Salem is very different when you’re not encased in the little Wake Forest bubble, so I’m kind of discovering the city for the first time.

I did hear back from Florida State University about grad school - it was very frustrating because they said they’d get back to me in a week and a half to two weeks, and it actually took about SEVEN weeks, so by the time I got that email I almost didn’t care about what the answer was, I just wanted an answer at all! Which, unfortunately, was no. So that’s another thing I’ve been doing the past month or so . . . reevaluating where I want to go and what I want to do. At the moment I am intending to spend another year here in North Carolina. They got back to me so late about the theatre management program that it was too late for me to apply for any other graduate programs, so this coming year I will be taking another year off. But honestly, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing. I think a little more time to think things through would be good.

As far as jobs go, I LOVE working for Starbucks. It really is the awesome company to work for that everyone says it is. I thought that it had to be hype, but it’s not. I love this job - just had my 4 month anniversary with the company! And things have been going VERY WELL with working for E. Webscapes . . . I’ve just passed my 3 months with them! E. Webscapes is full of such awesome designers and staff members, they’ve really made me feel right at home!

I’ve traveled a little bit since I last posted - I went home at the beginning of April to join the Episcopal Church (#5 on my 101), and then I took AJ home with me in May to go to the TPC golf tournament. And this past weekend I went to Georgia to visit my mother’s mom (who is REALLY not doing well, so prayers that she finds comfort would be appreciated).

Also, I turned 23 this past Thursday (June 7), so I’m getting old, LOL!

A few little administrative things - I never marked of #46 on my 101, but I completed subscribing to and reading a newspaper, I closed down my Doodlebug website, so #74 is no longer an issue, and I forced AJ to sit down with me and watch all six episodes of Star Wars in a row, starting with Episode I. If you’re into Star Wars and haven’t done this, I HIGHLY recommend it. It’s a full day’s commitment, but my view of all the movies has changed, and I like the prequels more now. I think watching them like this allows you to see them the way that Lucas intended them to fit together. So yeah, nerdy moment over, #81 is completed.

What all have I missed with all of you? Hopefully I will be back to posting regularly now. I didn’t mean to leave everyone hanging high and dry! I’ve missed blogging!!! Please comment and let me know how all of you have been doing!