Viral video: Walk Across America

The best part is his back pocket:
Walk across America.
Run with the bulls.
Go to the moon.

It makes me think: What's on the list in my back pocket? And what have I already crossed off?

D.C. Bucket List

For Richard's final days in D.C. he had a little bit of unfinished business:

1. Jazz in the Garden- we brought along Richard's friends to meet up with Chapel Hill buds Cat & Kevin in the National Gallery's garden. It's FOFP on mega steroids in the city.
1b. Late night dinner at Capitol City Brewing- after Richard's Ice, but before mine... And a nice walk through the city to help work off the pounds of grub we put to the face.

2. Throwback to 5th grade birthday- IBM's summer picnic was complete with horseshoes, paintball, cotton candy, snow cones, brews, moon bounce, and sack races... and obviously another impressive showing of my partially committed vegetarianism with even more BBQ.
3. Monuments at night: Lincoln, Vietnam, WWII, Korea, Washington

4. Movie day- for those who have ever tried to get me to sit still for an extended period of time, you'll know how difficult it is. My tendencies for wiggling, wallowing, and general short attention span mean that I generally don't watch movies. But a pint of B&J's Half Baked can hold me for a little while... however, Valentine's Day is the worst. movie. ever.
5. Authentic Italian at Tutto Bene
6. Kayak the Potomac

Done, done, done, done, done, and done.

Townie Love

Townie Crew: my posse of friends in Chapel Hill-- we even have a listserv (courtesy of UNC) so that we can have a witty banter throughout the workweek until we can make it to the freedom of Friday. Surprisingly, I wasn't friends with any of these wonderful people in undergrad. A travesty! Above: ChapelHillisStillFun Townie Crew- Seth, Shea, me, Meg, Mark
Townie girls night- West End followed by Crook's Corner for an impressive display of partially committed vegetarianism in the form of NC Eastern style BBQ.

I became the second half of Meg & Bex on June 20, 2008 and we just celebrated our 2nd friendiversary that marked the momentous day of our friendship. It was an inevitable meeting of two fabulous Carolina girls and once we hung out for about 10 minutes, we both were baffled that we had missed out on years of ridiculosity.
Above: Last year's friendiversary celebration and the famous "eek face"
Below: Our buddy Alex made a bet with GKbTE! founders that he would carry his championship medal with him everywhere and must present it to us when we saw him again. Obvi, we lost. This was the catalyst to our belated friendiversary celebration.

"Goodnight Mrs. Calabash-- wherever you are!"

4th of July weekend was perfect timing to skip town and add a little color to my translucent grad student complexion. Our place in Calabash was perfect location, just a 2 minute ride across the historic bridge to Sunset Beach, NC.

Perfect 85 degree weather with sunny skies meant ideal boogie boarding, kite flying, and lazy-book-reading-on-the-sand weather.
Current read: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Believe it or not, Richard had never flown a kite... so I let him fly his first kite with Buzz Lightyear.

With some help from townie recommendations, we gorged on some delicious local seafood: Crabby Oddwaters, Dockside, and the Calabash Seafood Hut (the local favorite).

Jordan is one of my closest and dearest friends from college (an original member of the Fan Club) and just moved down to the beach this summer. He's a legit local now and joined us for some grub and an afternoon on the beach.
A weekend in review:
Hours driven round trip: 7
Pounds of shrimp eaten all by myself: 4
1/2 gallons of ice cream eaten (with help): 2
Number of sunscreen bottles taken: 5
Number of sunburns gotten regardless of sunscreen application: 2
People that watched Richard and I shag to beach music: 2, 315
Thousands of dollars Calabash, NC spent on their amazing fireworks display: $20,000
Now that the burn has faded to "tan" it's time to get back to school and make one last push for the summer semester and move toward my final days of books.

Song of the week

From the wonderful influence of one of my favorite hipster townies, I have been loving Florence + the Machine and got clued into this video. It is thousands of photos of London by a Cornell student put to "You've Got the Love". Love it.

Bull Durham

The Durham Bulls are the Triangle area's premier minor league baseball team and were recently the first minor league baseball team to be broadcast on television in HD (a factoid from my NC knowledge guru Jordan). As a team that is over 100 years old, the Durham Bulls became the first International League Team to win the Triple-A National Championship. In reality, I have no idea what that means... I just go for the corn dogs and snow cones.
After a rough summer in school, the DUSON peds girls went out for a night in the Tobacco District and wound up in the outfield of the Durham Bulls Stadium. A new restaurant has opened just under the light-up bull called Tobacco Road. I have yet to go but it seems like a great place to escape the heat and still watch the game (if that's what you do at baseball games).

Tickets are super cheap (around $9) and you can get group seating, birthday parties, or lawn seats. Get tickets here.