Happy Halloween!

1. // May you have a best friend suitemate who bakes Halloween cupcakes and remembers to bring you some. {Thanks, Kylie!}

2.// May you have a best friend's mother who sends you a care package full of Halloween treats, and not tricks. {Thanks, Mrs. M!}

3. // Wait, how did that splendid J.Crew vest get in there? {Thanks, big sister.}

4. // Lily and James Potter, thank you for your sacrifices on this day. {Thank you, JKR.}

5. // Have a spooky and safe night out, my little witches. I'll be seeing you all at Chipotle. In spirit. {Thank you, burrito gods.}

8

Someday I Will

Someday I will stop blogging in lecture, and start listening to my professor. 

But someday is not today, because here I am! Linking up with Tay Tay!

Someday I won't be so cliche as to put a reflective word on a picture of a sunset.

--

Someday I will ... have a bigger conflict in my life than having to determine whether I actually want Emma Swan with Captain Hook or with Neal/Baelfire in Once Upon A Time.

Someday I will ... stop wondering why I don't have a thigh gap and just accept that it really is because I eat four desserts a day.

Someday I will ... learn to get my ducks in a row.

Someday I will ... find out exactly what I want in a career, instead of throwing three sentence long descriptions around. Or maybe someday I will create that perfect dream job for myself.

Someday I will ... learn how to cook without burning water in the process.

Someday I will ... be able to walk by Starbucks and not buy a second cup of coffee.

Someday I will ... step foot onto all seven continents, see many countries, experience countless cultures, and document everything along the way!

Someday I will ... have a puppy and finally know what it feels like to have a canine soul mate.

Someday I will ... fall in love - madly, passionately, genuinely. And I won't ever let him go.

Someday I will ... learn how to use my fancy pants camera properly, instead of twiddling around with the buttons until the picture magically looks nice and telling everyone I'm a master with the manual settings.

Someday I will ... own a pair of ridiculously unnecessary and expensive shoes, and I won't feel guilty for buying them at all. (x43.)

Someday I will ... have 100% faith in myself and know positively, without a doubt that I can do anything, be anyone, live however I want to and not give a damn what anyone else thinks or expects.

Someday, someday.

8

CREAM: Obviously For Research Purposes Only

I'm going to preface this post by telling you that the only workout I completed in the past few weeks was last night when I was laughing so hard at Best of Vine videos with my roommate that my abs burned real bad. Essentially, I haven't been nearly active enough in recent days to deserve a treat of the caliber I'm about to show you...

But I don't regret it, not for a second.

Ever heard of LA's Diddy Riese? CREAM is the exact same thing. Mostly. Both are located smack dab in a cozy college town, and the process is as easy as 1) picking two cookies and an ice cream, 2) handing over your payment (50cent discount if you use cash!), and 3) thanking the sweet Lord above before mentally preparing yourself for your life to be changed.

The consensus? The roommate and I both agreed that CREAM was just as good as, if not even better, than the Dids. Personally, my combination of a snickerdoodle and butter sugar cookie sandwich with coffee ice cream absolutely rocked my world - the cookies were still warm and soft and gooey, and nothing was too sweet which is a huge dealbreaker for me. At $2.50, it's more expensive than the original DR, but if you think about it - it's definitely a good option for a sweet study break and one that's much cheaper than Coldstone, Starbucks, or any other go-to!

{It wasn't even a study break. It was a break from an extended study break...}

{It was for research purposes. For the blog. Obviously.}

{I was not compensated in any shape or form for going to CREAM and raving about it, except maybe in 400 extra calories and my circulation getting cut off by my jeans.}

---

11

Darling, Let's Go Adventuring

"So. I kind of don't know where we're going. I dropped a Pin somewhere along the Pacific Coast, and we're just going to go with it." 

- and so, began a great Saturday adventure. By "great," I'm referring to getting lost more than once, taking the windiest {weather-windy and curvy-windy} path and seeing the most gorgeous mansions, driving into freezing fog, and then not being able to even see the coast because of said dumb fog, and instead taking a risky U-turn to hang out at a random pumpkin patch on the side of the highway instead. It also kind of, sort of resembled something out of a horror movie, but #wecan'tstop #wewon'tstop.

{The players on this jaunt: me (no. really?), Cassandra (of course), KB, and Bert!}

Yes, you saw right. We stopped halfway to Half Moon Bay to grab emergency flannel sheets from the trunk because the temperature dropped more than twenty degrees, and it got a bit too chilly. No, the thought of putting the top back on the convertible didn't occur to us. Nope, we kept the top down, snuggled into sheets, turned the heat up, and then raised our arms up to giggle at the wind tunnel effect that the temperature difference made. Energy efficient? Absolutely not. A memorable experience to be had? Undoubtedly.

{If you think we belong in a music video, you are thinking right, my friend. I would not be opposed. Not at all.}

17

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

My guilty conscience has gone and turned into a self-righteous, snotty little wench.

All I did was tell a couple of tiny white lies embellish a fact or two,

and now it's gone all ape-shiza crazy on me; it's not letting me live peacefully

until I participate in some major confessional time. So here I am. Hi.

Last week, I had to fill out a Roommate Preference Form for my time at Oxford.

Long story short, I am on a mission to room with my best friend Lauren, because

it'll make it all the easier to transform a drab little dorm room into a magnificent,

pink-and-purple land of paradise with some Harry Potter posters thrown in for good measure.

You just can't do that with a stranger, can you?

There's only one tiny little problem.

She and I have completely different lifestyles -

she's normal and healthy and clean and I'm ... I'm almost there. Almost.

So in order to cheat the system help the computers make the right algorithmic decision,

this is what I submitted, verbatim.

I'm not extremely neat, but like to keep things at least tidy and organized. I'm not a really late sleeper or an early bird, but I don't mind living with either one! I do like to go out and party on weekends, but am pretty much a homebody during the week.

At Stanford, I have a really close and strong relationship with my roommate, so I'd love to have something similar at Oxford. I'd love to have someone who would be willing to go to London for a weekend, or who'd go to afternoon tea or any kind of fun adventure. Of course, I don't expect us to be attached at the hip and am really looking forward to making new friends in Stanford House and with native Oxford students, but it'd be really nice to have a roommate who I can go home to after a long day and get to chat with and be comfortable with!

I've taken the liberty of italicizing and turning red {out of shame} all of the false statements.

Let me backtrack and edit some of the things I said.

I'm not extremely neat at all, but like to keep things at least tidy and organized.

I'm not a really late sleeper or an early bird, but I don't mind living with either one!

FALSE.

Sleep time - average, ~2am.

Wakey wakey time - average, ~7:45am.

Be on my schedule, roommate, or crumble.

I do like to go out and party on weekends.

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

SUNDAYS

...but am pretty much a homebody during the week.

ALL OTHER DAYS

And then, there's this whole business:

At Stanford, I have a really close and strong relationship with my roommate, so I'd love to have something similar at Oxford. I'd love to have someone who would be willing to go to London for a weekend, or who'd go to afternoon tea or any kind of fun adventure. Of course, I don't expect us to be attached at the hip and am really looking forward to making new friends in Stanford House and with native Oxford students, but it'd be really nice to have a roommate who I can go home to after a long day and get to chat with and be comfortable with!

I don't know anything other than having a best friend as a roommate, or a roommate as a best friend. I can probably survive without that being the case, but after knowing how wonderful it is to be attached at the hip - I just can't not live with a roommate who I can go home to every day and get to chat with and be so comfortable with that pants are optional, and conversations border on poop talk. I need to live with someone who's spontaneous like me and who would want very badly to just up and visit London for a weekend, and who'd go to tea or ALL adventures offered. I basically very under-exaggerated this paragraph; what I meant was: a best friend roommate is IMPERATIVE.

Get to work, algorithms. 

Good luck on dealing with me for three months, LoLo.

28

BRB Crying

Full disclosure: I had a post ready for today.

But this happened:

 

 photos via

 

...and so now, I'm obviously speechless.



6

Whoopsie Daisy

So... Let's just say I may have possibly lied in this post. My sister might be broke as a direct result of my having a severe lack of warm clothing. Whoops. But the good news is that I now have a semi-decent chance of not turning into ice in about three months. So that's good.

BUT. Before we get to all that jazz, I want to bombard you with pictures of my weekend. I really enjoy Monday mornings when I tighten up my bootstraps {fall out of bed} and get to business with this part, because it makes me feel like I was actually socially productive over two days, whereas on MTWThF, I'm usually ... not.

Post-tailgate trek to the football game! Because a fall weekend is not a real fall weekend without some quality tackles and catches, amirite?

Saturday was our Homecoming game against UCLA, and we.wrecked.that. Or whatever. We half wrecked it. Second-half wrecked it, that is. Cassandra also managed to wrestle an errant football away from some rowdy boys who had caught it from some practice kicks after halftime. We weren't sure if we had to return it, and honestly didn't really want to, so we tucked it into my bag and booked it out of there ...

We hopped onto the Caltrain, walked probably 3 miles more than necessary thanks to Siri and her smug ways, and arrived at Tony's Pizza {again} in San Francisco's North Beach area. If we didn't already feel like we deserved sinful amounts of pizza after that hour's train ride, we definitely felt like we deserved it after our calves started burning like John Mayer's slow dancing in the room.

Although we sat outside and it was pretty chilly and passengers in creepy tour buses slowed down to blow kisses at us, there was a nice little heater above us, some exceptional grub in front of us, and the loveliest of people around us. That's all I can ask for, really.

Afterwards, the girls headed back to Stanford and I scampered off to my sister's apartment. Side note: best cab driver EVER. He's apparently both a salsa dancer and the second place horse endurance racer in the state of California, so that was a chill ride to say the least.

But I basically bummed at my sister's place for the night - stole her food and drinks, watched The Heat {hilarious!}, took over her couch, and then the next day I stole away many hours of her day by...

Checking out the cutest little coffee shop for a yummy macchiato.

Following her around an adorable farmer's market.

Taste-testing {from top to bottom: beignets (please someone help me; these induce tears of joy), crackers w/ pimento cheese spread, pork hash w/ poached eggs, and oyster po-boys w/ hush puppies} from The Boxing Room, a delightfully scrumptious Creole restaurant we went to for brunch. Amazing.

Then, it was time to hit the stores running.

This might've happened. {Look at that Rainbows tan. #CanICallMyselfACalifornianNow}

... and that's all I have to say about that.

Happy Monday, dearies!

18