128 - giving thanks

happy thanksgiving eve-eve! since i won't be in town tomorrow for my second annual "night before thanksgiving/list of things i'm thankful for" blog, i decided to go ahead and start my thankfulness now.

i am thankful for...

...the fact that scalley's dad owns a bar in a small town and comps my drinks when i make the 2.5 hour trek to visit. combine this with the fact that tomorrow's trip to said bar will include a reunion with my previously mentioned bestie, as her brother rocks the dj booth (leading to an inevitable dance party) - yes, there's a reason this is #1 on my list right now.
...mcdonald's hashbrowns and a coke, which is the hangover remedy i will be consuming as i drive 2.5 hours back home on thursday morning.
...finally getting promoted this year, having more responsibility, and earning the trust of my boss and my co-workers over the past 4.5 years. really, just having a job is something to be thankful for.
...my dad's hugs. there is truly no one who hugs better than he does.
...my mom's tough love words of wisdom, even though i don't always like to listen to what she says.
...our first annual friendsgiving yesterday, complete with a thanksgiving feast, a semi-competitive game of football at schiller park, and a screening of 2 friends thanksgiving day episodes.
...the fact that my company has a drugstore and a wellness center located in our corporate headquarters. it makes it much easier to go buy first aid supplies...specifically when a girl has a pulled/strained/potentially torn calf muscle, thanks to the above-mentioned football game. (things i'm not thankful for? the 6'4", 280 lb beast of a man who ran into me and crushed my left leg. ouch.)
...my phenomenal friends who are supportive, caring, honest, and all kinds of amazing. i am truly a lucky girl.
...after 3 winters of searching, i finally found a pair of knee-high flat boots that fit!! this was a serious task that was finally accomplished at the nine west outlet on sunday...and they were only $60. it's okay to be jealous.
...e-mails from mary, random texts from douchie, and phone calls from lexie. (some things never change.)
...dane sanzenbacher, brian rolle, buckeye leaves, yelling O-H (or I-O), scarlet and grey apparel from homage, and especially beat michigan week - my favorite part of november...which happens to coincide with thanksgiving week this year. so on that note, GO BUCKEYES!

happy thanksgiving, loves!

124 - big mistake...huge

dear cal,

next year, please remember to request off work for a half-day (minimum) the day of the first ohio state football game. you have not been productive since 8:00 this morning, when you decided it was worth it to be late to work in order to peruse youtube for the *perfect* ohio state video to post to your facebook profile. and it surely didn't help your productivity level when you booted up your computer and it said it needed 35 minutes to fix an outlook error. the last straw was probably when you went out to lunch and realized that today is an ideal day for college football (warm, sunny, blue skies, and lots of glorious scarlet and gray everywhere!), and then returned to a half-empty parking lot at work, because other people were smarter/more forward-thinking than you.

in the future, when scheduling your vacation days, just remember this feeling you're having right now. how you wish you could be relaxing by the pool prior to suiting up in your jersey for a night spent cheering on brian rolle, dane sanzenbacher, and the rest of your favorite buckeyes. i mean, let's be serious: you will have 26 vacation days to use next year and it's not asking much to ensure that at least half of one of those is allotted to opening day for ohio state football. and if ohio state happens to open on a saturday (like normal!), you will still want to take a half-day on the friday before. trust me, i know you.

love,

cal

the boys are back in town

123 - it's almost here!

i can almost smell it in the air...tomorrow marks the start of college football season in columbus, ohio! the anticipation is building here in our great city, as we wait to see what the year will bring for our beloved buckeyes. despite the fact that we have our season opener on a thursday night (so weird for osu fans), there are some traditions that i can't wait to wrap my scarlet-and-gray-clad arms around:

5. watching games at signature's in gahanna with my fabulous father, where the waitress knows us by name and brings our drinks over immediately after we sit down.

4. skull session at st. john arena - the best pre-game pep rally i've ever been a part of, including the best damn band in the land (TBDBITL) and speeches by coach tressel and an honored senior before they march to the stadium.

3. seeing the band file onto the field before the game.

2. watching the team march up the ramp to the field linked arm-in-arm, swaying, then bursting like an explosion out onto the grass.

1. SCRIPT OHIO. it wasn't voted the best tradition in college sports for nothin', ya know.

runners up that didn't quite make the list: coach tressel's sweater-vests; all the football-related things i love (sacks, interception and fumble returns, QBs scrambling for a first down, and 40 yard touchdown passes); not having to make a wardrobe decision on a saturday afternoon for the next 3 months...because the only thing acceptable to wear is a jersey. that might actually be my favorite part!

and now for some of my favorite ohio state-related pictures from the past few years...

pre-game tailgate on the theta nu porch

(please excuse the color of my hair - for some reason this italian-german girl thought she could be a blonde. untrue...and now corrected. go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief.)

O-H-I-O'ing in the man cave basement at the old apartment i shared with holly and shawn

unhappy about a shot we received at scalley's dad's bar, post-game

you never know who you'll run into outside ohio stadium - this time it was a sorority sister!

they even have ohio state bars (and jim tressel look-alikes) in chicago.

oh, and how did i forget one of my favorite traditions?

ohio state games are great opportunities to make friends with cute boys.

100 - celebratory post

happy 100th blog post to me and IYBTYB!

in honor of this accomplishment, i've decided that today's blog should be kind of a big deal. i'm going to start by listing 5 things you should have already learned about me by this point in our relationship, and then i'll go into a quick list of 5 things you may not already know about me, which will bring us to a whopping 10 facts about me. why 10, you ask? because 10x10 = 100 (for those of you who failed 2nd grade math), i like round numbers, and it just seems appropriate. plus, i can't think of 100 things you should know/don't know about me by now, so this is what you're stuck with. enjoy.

five things you should know by now...and if you don't, you're either new to the blog, or you reallllly haven't been paying attention:

1. i am obsessed with quotes.

2. i love lyrics...especially these from blink-182 - my favorite band when i was in high school! (i'm even over-looking the punctuation mistakes in this picture, because i love it so much.)

3. i positively adore ohio state football and basketball, and it's because of this that i feel blessed to have been born in cbus. and fyi: that photo is of 4 US soldiers doing the o-h-i-o sign in iraq (source here). which reminds me - i also love and respect each member of our armed forces. (consider that fact number 3.5)

4. mistakes in grammar and punctuation REALLY bother me...though probably not as much as they bother the "grandpa" this sign mentions.

5. cran+vodka is my favorite alcoholic drink, followed closely by almost any white wine and long island iced teas. if you see me at a bar and buy me any of these three things, i'll be your friend for life. (unless you're a creepy boy.)

and now here are 5 things you may not know about me yet...which i'm sharing so you'll know there's more to me than mini-vacas/vodka/quotes/lyrics, and to make you want to keep reading for the next 100 blogs:

1. i think that if you remember to take pleasure in small things every day, you will enjoy life a whole lot more.

2. some people watch good morning america, the today show, or even possibly the local news while they're getting ready in the morning. not me. i watch the episode of chelsea lately that i tivo'd the night before. don't judge.

3. i could eat pizza every day of the week. (HF could swear on a bible that this is true.) my favorite is pepperoni with extra cheese and light sauce, in case you were curious. and yes, i do have the taste buds of a three year old. (consider that fact number 3.5 on this list.)

4. sometimes when i get the urge to bake for an event, i go a teensy bit overboard. (this is a picture of all the baked goods i took to jo's birthday celebration in the hocking hills last fall.)

5. i worked at an auntie anne's hot pretzel shop at the mall for 4 years through high school. i realized i needed to quit when a friend said, "every time i see an auntie anne's, i think of you!" really? not quite what i'm going for here. however, i did make great friends there and we called ourselves the "aa crew" - which sounded a lot cooler than saying we worked at auntie anne's.

thanks for reading, loves!

76 - i think he has failed at life (but buckeyes win again!)

first of all...

ohio state 30, illinois 0

second straight shutout - great game, and a nice way to open the big 10 season!

and since i'm blogging on a weekend (what is the world coming to?!), i hope you realize that means i need to share something with you readers asap before i forget.

last night, after the ohio state victory, i met up with jo and a couple of male friends down in gview. we were getting ready to head out when one of the boys said, "oh wait, this guy from my gym is meeting us here. he should be here any minute, then we can go to the bar." so, we didn't think anything of it - whatevs, we're friendly, inclusive people. bring on the stranger.

when the gym guy gets to jo's house, he is already drunk. don't ask me how or why he drove, because i can't answer that question. people do dumb things all the time. anyway, a few people went into the kitchen to take shots of tequila (no, i did not partake - unlike aj-dub, i do not drink straight tequila voluntarily), so i followed them in and we had this conversation. it centered around the gym guy's (let's call him GG) lanyard.

us: oh, is that lanyard from your college?

GG: uh, yeah.

us: sweet, where is that school located?

GG: um, it's in pennsylvania. i only went there for a year, then i fucked up my life, so i dropped out and had to start working.

us: oh, really?

GG: yeah. see, my mom's psycho. like, she's schizophrenic. my dad's disabled, so you know, he wasn't really around. and my brother's kind of like denzel washington's character from...what is that movie?

us: john q? man on fire? remember the titans? american gangster?

GG: yeah! american gangster! like, he's a dealer and goes to all the convenience stores around our town and sells drugs and stuff. so he taught me all that stuff and that's what i did.

us: uh...you're a drug dealer?

GG: no no no! not anymore! i was back home.

us: ohhh...(we were not reassured here, fyi)

GG (talking to our mutual friend): yeah, i'm not sure if i told you this, man...but i used to be a drug addict.

our mutual friend: uh, no, i don't think you did.

GG: yeah, i did everything...meth, coke, heroin, shrooms. i did acid, like, 4 times in one day.

us: (stare silently)

GG: but i'm clean now! i haven't done a drug or had a drink since august! well, before tonight, but i'm just drinking.

us: okay...

GG: yeah, i realized i needed to do something with my life, so i quit all that and got a real job and moved out here.

our mutual friend: wait, you were married??

us: no, he said his LIFE, not his WIFE.

GG: oh hell no, i was never married. that shit's crazy.

dear GG:

OKAY, so you are a college dropout with a meth/coke/heroin addiction and a schizo mom, disabled dad, and drug lord brother...and you think being married is CRAZY? please reevaluate.

but hey, thanks for not killing us or sticking us with random needles,

cal

(p.s. happy 27th to my favorite tennessean, RT! let's all hope that he wins lots of money in vegas this weekend, so he can buy a plane and visit ohio more frequently.)

67 - i know, i know

i should probably apologize for my lack of blogging over the past week or so, but guess what? i'm not gonna. the fact is, my last blog (yahoooo!) got such great responses from everyone that honestly, i didn't know how to top it. that could have been my last blog post ever, and hell, at least i would've gone out on top of my game.

okay, and i was also on vacation through last wednesday and was super-slammed at work on thursday and friday, which is the real reason i didn't/couldn't blog. plus, i haven't felt incredibly inspired...however, i didn't want ya'll to think i'd forgotten you, so i'm back. the downside? well, i've been in meetings all day (don't worry, i've been thinking about this blog at least 80% of the time) and i'm not done with them yet, so this will probably be short and not that interesting.

i'm not sure you've all figured this out yet, but i am basically obsessed with sports - especially baseball, college football and basketball, and occasionally pro football. when i woke up last saturday morning, my first thought was something along these lines: "ohmygod, the first ohio state game of the year is in ONE week, i need a new jersey, what am i doing for the game, we better not lose to mother-freaking navy!!" yes, a clear run-on sentence, so now you can see how my mind functions in the morning.

needless to say, i am bouncing off the walls with excitement. saying that i can't wait for football season is like saying that one of those honduran babies on TV needs a sandwich - a colossal understatement. being born and raised in columbus (especially by two parents who were born and raised in columbus) essentially ensures that a love of college football is engrained in you from birth. i get chills when i hear the ohio state fight song, and "carmen ohio" (especially this version, performed by cie grant after ohio state won the national championship in 2002) kind of brings tears to my eyes, even though i never went to ohio state for college. i love watching our team run onto the field, led by our little coach in his sweatervest.

i love watching the games at a little sports bar with my dad, cheering and subsequently yelling at the TV, and telling michigan jokes for an entire week in late november. i also love watching college football from schools across the country, because it's just so damn much fun. it's like a drug and i am addicted. send me to rehab.