Pearly Whites

Eli and I have been using crest whitening strips for the past two weeks, and tonight we finish! I don’t even know what the results are yet, you will find out with me!

Here are my teeth:

Day 1

Day 6

Day 14

SO COOL!

(I think the change is even more dramatic in person!)

Eli’s teeth also underwent a similar magical transformation, but he demonstrates more sanity discretion than I do, so he has chosen not to share his tootholution. So I won’t subject his teeth to the same scrutiny. But look closely at these beautiful pictures of us. The second picture was taken post-strips this evening. I’m not telling you to compare his teeth before and after, but if you want to, I can’t stop you.

Go CREST WHITENING STRIPS (now wanna send me a coupon so I can do some maintenance in August?)

p.s. wanna help us get a $100,000 wedding? Vote here.

Will Bake for Votes

First: click here.

What? You need more explanation? You don’t just blindly follow everything I tell you to do? FINE.

Here’s the deal.

Eli and I are getting married in T minus 7 months (if this is news to you, click here). So yesterday I was finally getting around to checking out Crate & Barrel to see if I (uh…we) wanted to register. Turns out, we do. Crate & Barrel is hosting a contest for a couple to win a $100,000 wedding. All we have to do is write a cute entry (check) and tell all our friends to vote for us (in process). If we are one of the top 50 couples vote-wise by the end of next month, we’re in the running to win the wedding, or one of 19 other prizes. So the odds are good, if people vote for us!

Bad news is you can only vote once per email address, and some people have a lot of votes. But I’m not ready to give up on the dream (I’ve already made 4 new email accounts, just to vote for myself.). So I am here to beseech you: help Eli and I be contenders in this contest. Vote for us. Tell your friends to vote for us (here’s the website, if you want: http://www.ultimateweddingcontest.com/entries/23709). Tell your parents, your enemies, your bbff (best blog friend forever!!) to vote for us. Then leave me a comment telling me how you campaigned for us, and I will enter  YOU in a contest to win a delicious baked good.

Seriously. No Joke. I will bake for votes. Pretend we’re back in high school (elementary school?) and it is time for the student election. I will not rig the election, but  I will campaign (what was it I said about getting out of politics? I can’t help myself, I just love me a good contest.)

So, to sum up:

Vote for us to win an incredible wedding (or other great Crate & Barrel prizes)

Campaign for us to win the wedding (via twitter, mass email, blog post, facebook, flyers, word of mouth…I’m not picky)

Leave a comment to let me know that you did something to that effect

I will choose a random comment on 2.14.10 (Seem

s appropriate, no?)

That person will get a baked good of their choosing!!!!!

**** what was that I said about not being a jerk anymore? Maybe I’ll start next week

Thankful Thursday

One of the blogistas that I follow takes time every week to do a Thankful Thursday post. I never acknowledge things I should be thankful for often enough anyway (once a year on Turkey Day?) and this week I have been a little over stressed and under slept, making it worse! As a result, I have not been my usual charming self (I told Eli that driving in Miami is dangerous not because the driving is so terrible that I am worried someone will hit me, but because the driving is so terrible that I am worried road rage will drive me to hurt someone else).

Anyway, today I was being my Grumpy Gretchen self, and then I was reading Shannon’s blog, and she was talking about her own bad week, but that it wasn’t going to stop her from posting about being thankful “Because just like I say time and time again – there is always SOMETHING to be thankful for.” Um so yah, I really have a lot to be thankful for, and I should stop being a jerk-o-rama.

Some things I am thankful for this week, in the particular order that they occurred to me in:

1) Getting great experience at work (way beyond what I thought I would be experiencing in my first year!)

2) Chocolate Cookies and Cream Ice Cream (fat-free!!)

3) Girl Scouts (and their cookies)

4) Modern Family (this week was the best episode ever I think!)

5) My awesome grocery bags

6) BBQ with friends (A Brazilian BBQ house last weekend and an american BBQ planned for this weekend)

7) Good mentorship

8 ) Psych (I was thinking of the T.V. show, but also the profession)

9) Celeb Rehab (ok…I’m thankful for way too much T.V.)

10) Which reminds me, Intervention

11) Ethnic Gourmet frozen entrees (YUM and so easy!)

12) My wedding planner

13) The fact that it is Thursday

14) Crest White Strips

Of course I am also thankful for my Beau, my family, my friends, but I get so caught up in little negative things that I forget to acknowledge the little wonderful things!

In sum, sorry if I have been a jerk this week. I’ll try and do better. What are you thankful for this week?

For the love of grocery bags

Lately, Eli and I have had a series of (in my opinion) hysterical conversations resulting from social encounters. I will relay the encounters and ensuing conversations first, and then proceed to discuss them from my perspective of personal bias.

1) Eli’s car has been having some trouble, so we dropped it off at a mechanic last week. The mechanic is approximately 1.5 miles away and when it was time to pick the car up, we were feeling adventurous and decided to walk (FYI, I was wearing a dress). As we were walking on the sidewalk of a very busy road an oncoming pick-up truck filled with cuban men honked. Eli (utterly perplexed): What? Why did they honk?!

2) We’re at the grocery store and I brought my own bags that can contort into convenient little balls. Like so…

Anyway, while Eli was doing manly things, like paying for our groceries, the (young, male) bagger started chatting me up about how cool these bags were. How he’s never seen anything like it! How do they work? Where did I get them? etc etc…

After we bought the groceries, and were headed to the car Eli says to me, That grocer was SO interested in those grocery bags.

Now let’s open the forum. Am I just a self-centered, vain nincompoop, or were these men hitting on me? It seems pretty indisputable in the first case (I laughed so hard at Eli’s confused expression. Oh to be a man and walk places and not have people honk at you EVER!), but in retrospect, I’m not sooo sure about the groceries. I mean, if you were a bagger, and someone brought awesome reusable bags, you might be excited too. But probably not THAT excited.

It cracks me up (and only slightly offends me) that Eli’s first assumption is never that these men are flirting (if honking can be called flirting. Probably not). In 90% of cases I am the more innocent of the two of us (“What do you mean Brittany Murphy -or ANY other celebrity- died of drugs? I didn’t even know they did drugs!), so it is somewhat satisfying to consider myself the less naive one in this case.

Unless I am just vain and WRONG!

That would be embarrassing.

Especially since I just advertised it on the World Wide Web.

Grocer, if you’re out there, help us decide this matter…

Is it Innocence or Hubris?

Were you flirting with me, or do you just love grocery bags?

In other news, Grad school is kicking my butt this semester and I’m way behind on everything so I must go back to my reading, writing, and statistics-related-’rithmetic.

The price of beauty

The scientists that we are, Eli and I are conducting an experiment.

Last week, we bought crest white strips in order to brighten our collective smile. We have to wear the strips for 30 minutes each day for 14 days. Today is day two, and just 10 minutes in, Eli exclaimed “I can’t take it no more.”

The research question: how long will we last?

I took ‘before’ pictures, but I hypothesize we won’t make it to the ‘after’.

But for now, we’re persevering for the sake of beauty, and distracting ourselves with online shopping and lisping at refs on t.v. There are some CUTE things on Target.com.

Ooh time’s up! I’m outta here

($100 poorer, apparently the title of this post is quite literal)!

my "after" photo?

I’ll follow up with results and a discussion if we get that far…

From the (Outback) Archives

I was feeling uninspired today (although I have a controversial concept in mind, I think I better mull it over before I dive headfirst into a poo-pool of my own design). But since I spent a ton of moneys on getting my old hard drive back (see here), I thought I could reuse some of its spoils.

So, let me present you with: an email I wrote (and many of you probably read, hi Mom!) four years ago when I was studying abroad in Australia!

Yes I know this is a lame excuse for a post, but I will gussy it up with pictures and then it will be grand. Because we all know the equation: Lame Writing + Wonderful Pictures = Publishable Crap in Emily’s Eyes. And maybe it will even be a teensy bit inspirational?!?!

***

G’day mates!

Let’s start with a few amusing statistics: In the past three weeks I have gone sailing twice. In that time I have been on 5 boats. Three of them have broken. I think I mentioned before that the mast of the last boat fell. Well Saturday I was sailing on a completely different boat and the mast fell down again!!! this time it was one of the side stays that broke. holy moly!  (The other boat I was on was the rescue boat, we were just driving around to see how other people were doing, and it completely stopped. there wasn’t anything wrong with the fuel or anything… it just stopped working. we were about to start paddling in when another boat came along and helped us figure it out). Anyway- this is a very very bad track record. I haven’t personally done anything to make the boats break, but I might be bad luck. Well at this point I probably just straight up am bad luck. So far I haven’t been kicked off the club but the possibility is growing.

Sailing

So the big news here is that there was a huge cyclone off the northern coast of Queensland last Monday. One of my good friends, Gurteaj, lives on a banana farm there and apparently his farm was completely destroyed. He didn’t seem too upset about it, his motto is “it’s happened before and it will happen again.” but I am upset that there will be no more bananas for a while. Oh well I guess I’ll just eat pineapple and apples. Speaking of apples, apparently Tasmania is the isle of apples. And being that it is autumn here (I know, that is confusing… but what can you do. It is also tomorrow here. So good news, the world doesn’t end tonight) apples are in season. So for mid-semester break (that happens around Easter) I am planning on going to Tasmania and renting a car and driving around to see the beautiful mountains and natural parks, and in addition: there are apple orchards. I like apples. Maybe they’ll be the same as American apple orchards, but perhaps not, so I’ll do a study on the differences. I’ll get you a report when I’m done.

Tasmania

Right now I am in the dining hall with three of my friends. We are supposed to be studying but they are just showing videos of random Michael Jackson clips. I am obviously not studying either, but I am trying to be productive in this email. Anyway here is a quote from tom “I was watching a bollywood film last night, and I swear that my grandfather was in it… and the funny thing is, it’s my estranged grandfather… so it could be.”  You might not care that much about this, but I hope it accurately portrays the fact that very little of productivity is being accomplished right now.

Let’s see, it has been a while since I have written so I must have something of use to offer you. Well the most interesting thing I have done is that I cut off my hair. Most of it anyway. Why? do you ask… well some of you might remember that I have been meaning to do it for a long time. I always talked about cutting off my hair, but was too chicken to do it. I got to Australia and decided I needed to redefine myself. Do all the things I used to be too scared of. So yeah, I realized when I was getting my hair cut that I was living a metaphor: shedding my old identity for a new one. I think that is the only time I have ever done that. But yes I just went up to the hairdresser and asked her to cut all my hair off, and she said “don’t worry, it’s going to be great.” And I didn’t expect it to go well but actually she was true to her word… or you can just judge for yourself. I have attached a picture…

What am I doing you might ask. Well in that photo I am at the man-made beach in Brisbane. And my friends Kyle and Gurteaj (left to right) have buried me in the sand. But I think the photo shows my hair nicely, so there you go.

Other interesting news is that I tried out for a play at International House. It is called Lovepuke. And it is this Australian play that “takes a piss out of love.” I am pretty excited about it. When I tried out for the play, I had to do a monologue that I memorized and I just remembered how much I missed acting. I wish I hadn’t been so afraid of trying out before, because I really enjoy it.

That is really the thing that I have learned most since being here, that anything worth doing is a little scary. So I just do the things that scare me: joining the sailing club, going to a cocktail party last weekend when I didn’t know anyone (I ended up meeting the runner up from “top Australian model” so that was cool), trying out for a play, cutting off all my hair, going to Tasmania by myself and just driving around. (Don’t worry, I’ll be safe).  So right. the play. It goes on for a couple days in May. And apparently it is a competition?? I wasn’t aware of that when I tried out, but I guess we compete with the other on campus colleges. I think it should be great fun.

Otherwise things are just going going going. The weather is soooo beautiful, the people are nice, and my classes aren’t that hard. I can’t really think of much else to ask for. So why can’t all the people that I love just move here and then we can live here forever?

Mull it over, and let me know. For now I have to go and get my ‘washing’ as they call it out of the machine.

***

Needless to say, I eventually moved back home. But I miss Australia every day!! I was so smart back then. Maybe I need to take my own advice and just do something that scares me, i.e. write a controversial blog post. We’ll see.

For now, I need to get me some eats! Have a great evening.

Cheers,

Emily

Blast from the Past

Earlier this month I tried to do a Decade in Review post with pictures from…well the past ten years, obviously. But this post suffered because I only had a small fraction of pictures from that time. You see, 2 years ago my hard drive died and I lost all the pictures and documents from the previous five years (yes, the moral of the story is: Back Up Your Data. Right now. I’ll wait…). Five years is a significant percentage of a decade. And when I was working on the Decade post, I got really sad about all the incredible photos I had lost (I fancy myself quite the photographer).  As a result, I decided to send my old broken hard drive to one of these expensive companies that takes it to some ‘clean room’ (ahhh so that’s why my hard drive died. My mother was right when she said cleanliness is next to happy-keep-your-pictures-and-your-sanity-ness), opens it up and waves a magic wand and fixes it.

Point is, I shelled out big bucks and I got my pictures back.

And I will not let it be in vain. Like it or not, I am going to foist 5 years worth of photography on you…

Allow me to present some oldies but goodies:

High School Graduation

Fun Freshman Year

Art Prom

Me, At my best

Mardi Gras, 2005

Good old roommates

Halloween Party

Face paint, 30,000 miles above sea level

Australian Outback

Playing with wildlife

Good Friends

Biarritz, France

Family bike trip

Losing my old pictures and recovering them has taught me several things:

1) I must back up my data

2) My photography skills are not nearly as incredible as I remembered

3) I had wonderful friends in college (at Wash U. and in Australia). I need to keep in better touch

4) I need to take more pictures

5) I need to do more interesting things to take pictures of

So on that note, I am off to live my life (i.e. do some reading for school. Not really photogenic, but maybe I’ll ham it up).

Thanks for letting me take a walk down memory lane.

Hope you’re all well!

Love,

Emily

Heavenly Vacation

Heyllo

By now, most people have headed back to work, hopefully bright-eyed, bushy tailed and full of new year conviction. I, on the other hand, am a lazy laggard and have spent the past week skiing with Eli’s family at Heavenly Valley resort, in Lake Tahoe.

Let your hate rain down.

While the Bilek boys have all been skiing since before they could walk, I have never really skied. I know my parents occasionally took my sisters and I to a man-made slope (i.e. landfill) in southern Michigan, but for the life of me, I can’t remember actually skiing (though I vividly remember renting boots, riding tow-ropes and drinking hot chocolate in a crowded lodge). This either means I sustained a ski related brain injury at a young age, or that landfill skiing is so uneventful that the tow-roping was the most memorable bit.

Bilek skiing does not suffer from these drawbacks. Instead of tow-ropes, the Heavenly kiddie slopes have mini-conveyer belts!! But also, the mountains are huge, gorgeous, and steep. So long as I wear my helmet, I doubt I’ll likely forget the skiing here. (It also helps that the Bileks, in addition to being incredibly talented skiers, are also incredibly patient and gifted teachers. Skiing is much more enjoyable when you don’t suck… or at least suck less.)

Here are some photos of our trip (to make you jealous). If you don’t like skiing, or if you are afraid of heights, then feel content that you are sitting at a desk and not on top of the sky (yes, I am evil).

Aside from skiing, I beat everyone, (numerous times) playing Settlers of Catan. The boys and Jeni have gotten significantly better at Pool (I opt out), we’ve eaten and drunk ourselves into early heart failure and generally just had a wonderful time.

Tomorrow we head home, and it looks like Miami is experiencing temperatures on par with Tahoe, but without the snow and mountains, so you needn’t envy me long.

Have a lovely weekend.