Happy Leap Day!

At least not for another four years...

Here's hoping that this leap year brings amazing things for all of us!

Annnd you know what else will never come again? This post! That's right, for anyone who's keeping score, this exciting entry is number 300 for Glass Half Full. Who knew I'd be able to keep it up so long? Here's to another 300!

That Was Scary.

About 20 minutes ago, I heard some fire engine sirens. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

They (three to be exact) got louder and louder until they finally came to a stop... IN MY PARKING LOT.

My life flashed past my eyes.

Fortunately, those super scary trucks stopped on the other side, in front of a building that wasn't mine, so I didn't go into full on panic mode, like I did here, when my neighbor's alarm went off or here, when I saw a neighbor's house burning a few years ago.

But they did make me thank my lucky stars that I had renters insurance, just in case those trucks had been responding to a building (or apartment) closer to mine.

I'm not sure what actually happened over there, though. There wasn't any smoke and the firefighters that flooded the building didn't come baring hoses. I did see a person taken out on a stretcher, but I don't know what condition he (or she) was in, and they didn't hurry away.

What an exciting afternoon.

Let's never repeat that.

The Horrible Heat Maker Strikes Again

Last night I decided to give my air conditioner (and electric bill) a break, so I turned it off.

Big mistake.

No, despite the sudden heat wave we seem to be suffering from here on my part of the east coast, that 78 degrees is not the outside temperature.

It is, in fact, the temperature of my living room.

The horrible heat maker strucks again.

No. This is Perfect.

I think I'm in love.

Source: neatoshop.com via Melissa on Pinterest

This is the website's description:

"Is your glass half full or half empty? Pessimists and optimists alike agree that this clever glass will surely bring a chuckle to whomever you give it to. Unless they're engineer that is - they don't think that the glass is half full or half empty. Rather, it is twice as big as it needs to be."

I don't know about you, but I think it is absolutely half full... especially if I'm wearing my glasses.

How Perfect Is This?

I was trolling around on pinterest this evening (because that's what I do to avoid going to sleep) and I found this poster. I think it's perfect... it speaks to me. haha

Source: brainpickings.org via Melissa on Pinterest

Jealous.

My mom just sent me this picture of the snow at home...

It's barely raining here.

I'm jealous.

Valentine's Day NPR Style

Last year, NPR put a bunch of silly public radio related Valentine's Day e-cards up on their website. I didn't find them until several days later, but I thought they were so good that I felt the need to save them for this year! 

You can find these (and more of last year's cards) as well as new ones they put out this year (not as good), on the NPR Valentines website. Enjoy!

Hands down, my favorite.

LOVE these guys!

Don't we all?

You'll Always Be In My Heart Grandmommy

Over the weekend I spent some time in PA checking out my cousin Emily's new apartment (so jealous) and in NJ just hanging out with Jenny and her family (aka my second family).

Anyway, Emily is moving right around the corner from where Grandmommy and Grandaddy used to live, so while I was in that neck of the woods, I took the opportunity to take a little trip down memory lane. It was a lot of fun, especially since I got to share it with the other side of my family.

Today would have been Grandmommy's 98th birthday and I'm feeling particularly reminiscent this year after seeing her house again and remembering all the good times we had there.

Happy Birthday Grandmommy! I love and miss you ♥

I ♥ My Family

Snow Day!

It's snowing in Pennsylvania!

Are you jealous?

I would be.

Hooray For Pictures!

If there's one thing I hate, it's a blank wall. I don't know why, but it gives me agida. So, you can only imagine how much I've been wanting to fill the huge void above my bed for the past five months.

Horrible blank space...

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've finally done it. The void has been filled. Check it out.

The first thing I did was lay out all my frames on the floor and arrange them in a fun design. I've been wanting to put a "gallery wall" into the apartment somewhere, and figured that filling this huge expanse of empty wall was the perfect opportunity.

Then, I used a trick I've seen all over the internet recently where you cut pieces of paper to the size of each of your frames, which you then tape to the wall to make sure you actually like what you're doing before hammering in nails (drilling screws in my case) or using up command strips.

It's a good thing I did that because I hated the way all those frames looked up there. It was too cluttered, too big, and just plain overwhelming. I even re-arranged it a few times and took out some of the frames, but I could never quite make it look the way I was envisioning.

That's when I remembered the collage frame I had picked up at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $3 because it was damaged (no glass). So, I scrapped my original idea, mocked-up the new frame, and put a few frames around it.

Much better. Although, still not quite what I was going for.

But I knew I liked the big frame, so I went ahead and hung that, so I could arrange the other ones around it more easily.

I went though several different arrangement options before I finally chose this. It may not be a gallery wall, but I love it anyway.

I was planning on hanging all the frames with command strips, but I read the box and it specifically says not to do that, due to the possibility of the strips loosing their stickyness, falling on your head while you're sleeping, and killing you. So, I opted for screws. Hopefully I'll have some help with the spackeling come move-out time... oh, mom?

The collage is absolutely my favorite part because it's got most of my favorite kitties. The other nice thing is that since these frames are all hung with screws, it will be easy to switch out the pictures if I get bored or new ones I like better come along.

clockwise from top: Sam, Frisk, Snickers, Skits

Becoming an American

This weekend something awesome happened... PEOPLE CAME TO VISIT ME!

That's right folks, I had my first official prolonged, non-family member visit. KT and Jason, two of my friends from college, braved the terrible Friday afternoon east coast traffic to make their way down to my side of the potomac!

When they got here, we headed down to Old Town for a stroll down the waterfront, dinner, and some of the best ice cream I've ever had (chocolate orange... yum!).

I also told them about the amazing water goblet playing guy that is usually by the Torpedo Factory on the weekends.

Side note: check out this video of him playing What Child is This?

Anyway. Saturday was the most important. Saturday was the day Jason became a true American. Having never been to America's capitol before, he was pretty jazzed to check out all the sights.

The first stop: the Pentagon Memorial. On our way over (we had to walk to the memorial from the Pentagon bus station), we were questioned by a guard who wanted to know if we had security passes. Apparently we took the wrong path and ended up in a secure location by accident. Whoops. Crisis averted, we made it to the memorial itself.

We were slightly confused about the way it was laid out, the benches are arranged by the birth year of each victim, and some face one south while others face north. We also couldn't quite figure out why there were several benches representing children who were younger than 10-years-old. Our guess was that they had gone to work with a parent that morning. I've since done some more research on the memorial and I discovered that the benches represent everyone that died in the Pentagon as well as each passenger on the plane, which explains the 3-year-old kid. The direction the bench faces is determined by whether that individual was in the Pentagon (facing the south) or on the plane (north).

Next stop: The Mall! While there we acted like tourists, took tons of pictures, and I bought a free map to help prevent homeless hypothermia for $0.50. Yes I know I was probably scammed... but the other day I bought three books at goodwill and was only charged $1.30 when I should have been charged at least $6, so I guess we're even now.

Our LONGEST stop: The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History... we spent about four hours there.

Our biggest FAIL: Our attempt to see the movie Hugo in 3-D. It's supposed to be AMAZING, so we decided to carve two hours out of our sightseeing schedule to see it at a movie theater in Chinatown. Added bonus, at around 4:00 (the movie was at 4:20) it started raining and by that point our legs were very tired from walking around all day. So we trekked the eight blocks to Chinatown (in the cold rain) and made it to the movie theater at 4:17. Unfortunately. The movie was sold out. Bummer. So we walked back to the Mall and went to the Air and Space Museum for 30 min instead.

The birthday dinner: Our other friend Jenny's birthday also happened to be on Saturday and she happened to be in town visiting her bf, so we all met up in Chinatown for dinner. We had Mongolian BBQ. It was delish.

A final act of culture: While we were eating the rain stopped, so since it was still earlyish and Jason really wanted to, we trekked back to the Mall and walked up to see the rest of the major sites, including the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, Korean War Memorial (a first for me), and the Lincoln Monument.

Then we walked to Foggy Bottom metro, got a free shuttle ride back to the Pentagon (thank you weekend track work) and finally got a bus home about 30 min later.

It was an awesome day. And, Jason officially became an American.

Houston, We Have A... Weather Station!

Where did winter go? Apparently it didn't go anywhere, since good ol' Punxsutawney Phil (and the newly crowned Potomac Phil... weird) predicted six more weeks of winter. But it was in the high 60's yesterday and felt downright balmy.

Know where else it's been feeling downright balmy? My living room. Thank you radiator.

This is a super old picture.
I've since shortened the middle curtain because I was afraid that
the crazy heat that the radiator was emitting would hurt it.

I'm not exactly sure what it is that causes my radiator (and sole source of heat in the living/dining/kitchen areas) to turn on, but when it does, get ready to die of heat, because it gets super hot and my living room becomes a sauna.

It's horrible.

It was almost the subject of a fantastic post I was going to write called, "Welcome to my Sauna," but I felt weird writing about how hot it was when I couldn't actually tell you, so, I finally invested in a thermometer. Now I'll know the outside temperature (convienent for dressing appropriately in the morning... yes Grammy and Leslie, you can say I told you so) and the inside temperature, so I can justify running my air conditioner at full blast in January.

I never really wanted a thermometer because I couldn't quite figure out how I would do the outside temp part, since that usually requires you to put a little probe thinger somewhere. But this one is neat because the probe is attached to a super skinny cord that I was able to shove out my window. Very convenient!

I'm pretty excited about this.