Puerto Rico!!!

Okay, okay! I've been terrible about getting things posted in a timely manner. For that I am sorry, but I hope the plethora of pictures make up for the multiple week delay!

A few weeks back, a friend of mine, Mandy, from work and I went to Puerto Rico on a spontaneous decision. It turned out to be a marvelous time to be down there and a wonderful vacation from the chaos of corporate life. I already miss Puerto Rico and would go back in an instant. There are actually a lot of fun things to do while there which sort of surprised me. I incorrectly assumed that all the island would have to offer would be beaches and sun - which it did have and I did enjoy, but it also had a lot more to do and see. Enough so that it probably warrants another long weekend trip back.

The only activity Mandy and I couldn't' get pictures of was the bio-luminescent bay kayak tour we took. It was the great trip in two person kayaks out to a large bay with a high concentration of microorganisms which emit phosphorescence when agitated. Basically we were the fairies from the movie Fantasia, everything we touch would glow temporarily as our oars, boat or hands dipped into the water. It was really magical and beautiful. The kayak ride was also highly entertaining! Mandy and I both rowed in college so we had fun just being back in a boat and the water.

The rest of the trip we captured in pictures - enjoy!!

Mandy in front of our catamaran for our snorkeling tour - this is the Spread Eagle and it was a great time!

Mandy is all set to go snorkeling!! And she is so excited!

The view from our hotel room. Floor to ceiling windows on the beach... we were a bit spoiled...

Typical Puerto Rico water. We snorkeled here and the reefs were pretty nice.

Mandy and I on the Spread Eagle as we move snorkeling sites.

Soaking up some sun!

This was our cultural outing for the trip, a visit to Old San Juan!

Trying to look pretty in the infinity pool at the hotel. It was really quite wonderful.

JUMPING! We did this multiple times until we got a shot we actually liked. Can you see the tan lines/burns we got on our first day out in the sun?

Isn't this the life? Sipping sangria, poolside in Puerto Rico... geeze we are good to ourselves!

So who wants to go back with me?!?! There is still the rain forest and horseback riding to cover, plus a tour of the Bacardi factory, and at least two other bio bays to explore!!

An attempt at mobile uploads

So I just got a blackberry phone with all types of crazy
stuff on it. So far I am liking it, but it is taking some getting use to. I wonder if I will be better about updating this now that I. Can access it from anywhere. We shall see I guess. This was just a test post. A bit hard to do but maybe there is a way to make it simpler. I will have to dig a bit.

Hello NYC!

I've made the transition to the big apple! I'm living in NYC now starting my second year long stint with Unilever. I'm really excited to be having another great adventure in another great mega city. I already miss Chicago, my wonderful friends there, the feelings of familiarity, and the subtle smell of soap that seemed to cover everything I owned... But as with most of my posts, pictures do better than words - Enjoy!!NYC is home now - and home is wherever this little sign hangs :)

Lacy (my new roommate!) and I at our friend's going away party.

View from my bedroom at sunset. We live on the 20th floor (yay us!)

Our 'snug' living space. The apartment is comfortably sized but snug is a good word for it.

The view from my window with more daylight

My bedroom! Mom, see how the bed is made? Aren't you proud!?

Last weekend I went to CT to visit Katie. It is always a wonderful time to be with her but this weekend was extra awesome because we played MUD VOLLEYBALL! Her and some friends from her work signed up for this event along with ~150 other teams. It was crazy how many muddy people there were running around. A total of 24 courts were used, and it was so much fun!!

All the courts, see how much mud?!

Cleaning myself off in the fire hose (note the awesome pink shorts)

The best team ever! (ok maybe not... but we had a blast anyway!)
*note the duct tape on our shoes, if you didn't duck tape them, they would be stuck in the mud forever - possibly*

PEACE NOW!! Not later, NOW!
*all items in this photograph were purchased for the sole purpose of mud volleyball, the only surviving article of clothing were the hot pink shorts - thank goodness!*

My time in Chicago is almost finished. I still have a small list of things I want to do before I leave and I will try my best to do them this weekend before I go. They are:

• Visit the Baha'i Temple in Evansville - there is only one on each continent and I've seen the one in India so I'd like to see the one here
• Take an architecture tour of Chicago. I've heard many very good reviews of the boat tour
• Go swimming in Lake Michigan. Chicago is a bit odd in that right in downtown, you will find a beach to go swimming at, I can't miss that!

I must admit that I did manage to cover a lot of what I wanted to while here and that makes me pretty happy. I don't feel like I missed out on Chicago despite the few weeks/months of being a bit of a hermit.

The big move will happen over the course of several days. First is the packing up of everything here in Chicago. This is happening this Friday. Then there is the actual moving of myself from Chicago, this will happen the following Wednesday. Lastly there is the unloading of all my stuff in NYC, scheduled for the Monday after next. So I'll be in transit for about 10 days. My car is getting picked up on Wednesday as well and being sent back to CO to hang with my mom and brother.

I'm anxious - oddly anxious for all of this. I was sitting at work this week and I felt like my body was shaking. It wasn't, my hands were steady as usual but I had the sensations of shaking. I can only assume it was adrenaline or something as I get myself a bit worked up over this change. I love change, but it still is scary and stressful. For the last two nights I've not been sleeping well either. I'm sleeping (not total insomnia or anything) but I just feel restless. I think being in limbo for so long is what is the most uncomfortable part of this situation.

Anyway - here are a few photos from the Pride Parade here in Chicago - I really didn't take many but it was a lot of fun and I was so happy to take part!

Mark, Me, Ayo - rockin' the Pride Parade!

American Flag - freakin' huge American Flag

Rainbow Flags - PRIDE!!!

Laughter! xkcd.com is hilarious :)

Here are a few of my favs, but the entire site is pretty funny www.xkcd.com

I laughed for quite a while at this one

My 100th Post!!

Wow, 100 posts... 100 stories about my life, updates on activities, travels, friends, pictures of my world. I feel as though I should commemorate this moment some how. I need to make this post extra special or super funny or downright simple.... I think I'll go with a bit cliche, and give you 100 things about me, maybe you know, maybe you don't, but 100 truths about Allison. Scary.

1. I'm exactly 6 feet tall.
2. I have true blue eyes, meaning I have zero pigment in my iris
3. Colorado will probably always feel like home
4. My brother has always been one of my favorite people
5. I've eaten cactus
6. I regret not taking Spanish in college
7. I have a "don't kiss down" policy
8. Living internationally is a life goal of mine
9. Speaking a second language fluently is another life goal
10. Meyers - Briggs labels me an ENFJ personality
11. I currently make soap - in volumes that will blow your mind
12. I'm an imperfect vegetarian
13. Both the ocean and the mountains remind me of childhood
14. My favorite color is blue
15. Sushi is one of my favorite foods
16. My biggest fear is not finding the person I want to spend the rest of my life with
17. A bigger fear is finding that person and not fighting to keep them in my life
18. I own a guitar
19. I lived in Mumbai, India for 6 months
20. I'm an Alpha Xi Delta
21. I can touch my nose with my tongue
22. I love being barefoot
23. A pet peeve of mine are when people use "funner" and "funnest" as if they are words - they aren't.
24. I've seen a taping of Oprah. Kate Winslet was the guest.
25. Grammar and I never get along
26. I always wanted a fun nickname but never got one
27. I used to volunteer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in their Space Odyssey exhibit.
28. I miss the late nights studying with my fellow ChemEs at Purdue
29. I do not eat blue M&Ms if I can help it
30. NPR has become my primary news source
31. I've not eaten a hotdog since I was about 5
32. I imagine all always be a big city girl
33. I dream of owning a vacation home in the tropics
34. If I could backpack the globe for the rest of my life, I would.
35. I find Dane Cook hilarious
36. My parents are divorced
37. I love to cuddle and adore being the little spoon
38. I lived for a summer with my grandparents on Long Island
39. I lost my backpack at the Trevi Fountain in Rome
40. The Clarks are my favorite band
41. I do not know how to cook, yet I manage to feed myself
42. I had a guinea pig as a pet growing up
43. My inseam is 35-36" and pants are hard to find in this length
44. I never thought I'd work in a factory, yet I do.
45. Anything with chocolate in it is okay by me
46. I consider myself intelligent yet feel it hinders my happiness at times
47. I know all 50 states in alphabetical order
48. I have a strategically placed tattoo
49. I never want to grow up, I acknowledge that growing old is mandatory, unfortunately
50. My lucky number is 23
51. Quintessence and Elysium are two of my favorite words
52. I've been in love
53. As with most females, I love romantic comedies
54. Black licorice and cinnamon are the best flavors of Jelly Beans
55. Dark chocolate > milk chocolate > white chocolate, I don't even eat white chocolate, it is just gross I think
56. I wish I stuck with a sport or instrument growing up
57. Brushing my teeth makes me strangely happy
58. I live in Chicago for the moment but will be moving to the east coast soon
59. Solving challenging problems in college was such a thrill
60. I was an resident assistant my senior year of college - I would do it again
61. I wish I had a cool hobby that could fill my evenings and weekends
62. I do not own a television
63. I don't understand men (or boys...)
64. I like some country music and I don't mind admitting it
65. I consider myself a 21st century woman
66. I find body language fascinating
67. I tend to cry when I laugh
68. I blush very easily
69. My shoe size is 10
70. I had a leather jacket custom made in Fez, Morocco
71. It is never too cold for ice cream
72. I have four cousins - in total
73. I was a Model UN junkie in high school and I still love international relations
74. I knew Obama was going to be president in 2004
75. I support gay marriage
76. I was never baptized
77. I got a ticket for running a stop sign - I still disagree with the officer on this
78. I can speak Pig Latin but I don't understand it very well
79. I want to have a destination wedding
80. I own more pairs of underwear than socks
81. My contact prescription is -7.0 in both eyes
82. Ganesh is my favorite Hindu god
83. I own two travel backpacks I love them both
84. The Peace Corps still seems like a realistic lifetime employer at times
85. Holi is by far my favorite holiday and I wish a thousand times over I was back in IIT to celebrate it
86. I drive a Suzuki Vitera
87. I used to row and think it is an amazing sport
88. E.T. scared the bajeezus out of me when I was little
89. I've never done drugs, I guess I avoided the 'experimental' stage in life
90. I don't think I am beautiful yet I do believe I have some attractive features
91. I get motion sick sometimes
92. I never met my paternal grandfather
93. I locked myself in the bathroom when I was little threatening not to come out until I had a puppy. I never got a puppy.
94. I am incredibly risk adverse
95. My first kiss was at 15
    
96. I am an organ donor
97. I prefer Coke to Pepsi, yet diet Pepsi over diet Coke
98. I always thought collecting Monopoly boards would be fun but don't really know what one would do with dozens of the same game
    
99. I cannot spell worth a damn - spell check saves my reputation daily
100. I'm faking it until I make it.

Feel free to comment liberally - I love comments almost as much as I love mail!!

Las Vegas!!

I spent a nice long weekend in Las Vegas with some college friends this past weekend. It was a wonderful escape from the cold and life in Chicago (although I was hoping for 95 and sunny and I got 50 and slightly overcast - it wasn't freezing!!) As with most of my posts, I'll let my photos do the talking and hopefully I'll have more to add as we swap pictures from the trip.

Quick background:
8 people

• Allison (that's me)
• Katie (that's the same Katie who went to Honduras and Morocco with me and is the definition of fun)
• Dan Fix (He was a Purdue Cheerleader and supremely fun)
• Molly Fu (Friend through Katie who is also supremely fun)
• Mel Kemerling (Friend through Katie and yup - also supremely fun)
• Matt and Jesii Fox (Friends of Katie, newly weds - live in Houston, Matt works for NASA... and of course, supremely fun)
• Mike (Friend of Mel's who enjoys gambling and the only non-Purdue Grad, so we'll go with moderate amounts of fun)

Oh yea... we are all engineers... yes eight engineers descended upon Vegas for a weekend of sin and the occasional nerd/geek/dork comment that makes life worth living!!!
On to the pictures!!!

Katie and I all dolled up for the Cirque de Soleil show !!

She really needs to learn to cover up...
*Katie and Jesii = country estates*
*Mel and Molly = stunning city lofts*
*Allison = double wide trailer*
*sigh*

The worlds only curved escalators are in The Forum Mall in Ceasar's Palace. Needless to say, us engineers were thoroughly entertained :)

See how entertained, we are still riding!

Oh yes, still on the curved escalator

You guessed it! Curved escalator again!

You can't visit Venice without trying some gelato!! The Venetian had a bountiful selection for our choosing pleasure.

Ah! The beautiful city scape in recreated Venice in the middle of the Vegas strip.

Katie and Jesii are practicing for their audition with the Blue Man group... the Man part may pose a problem during their interview...

I just want to play the drums and Dan has a weird thing with blue bald men...

Kisses for Humpty! It seemed like a good idea at the time.

And as the saying goes "What happens in Vegas, STAYS in Vegas." You all can deduce the rest :-)

*oh yea - I lost $15 to the gambling gods.... Thank goodness others took home over $100, wouldn't want Vegas wiping us all out!!

The Geography of Bliss

I finished the book. Yes it took me a month, and no that has nothing to do with my intelligence. Here are some excerpts that I supremely liked:

"That old saw about the glass being half full or half empty is dead wrong. What really matters is whether water is flowing into or out of the glass."

"Some places are like family. They annoy us to no end, especially during the holidays, but we keep coming back for more because we know, deep in our hearts, that our destinies are intertwined. For me that place is India. I hate it. I love it. Not alternately but simultaneously."

"Where did the feeling come from? I can't identify any one moment nor any particular position I twisted my body into. It just snuck up on me. Maybe this is how enlightenment happens. Not with a thunderclap or a bolt of lightning but as a steady drip, drip, drip until one day you realize your bucket is full."

"Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. neither is gratitude."

Nice read... Thanks Dad!!!

Happiness: A Definition?

I received potentially one of the most thoughtful gifts I can recall for Christmas this year. My dad bought me a book The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. Eric is/was a foreign correspondent for NPR (a recent obsession of mine), an avid traveler, and a seeker of happiness. Clearly we have something in common. I've started reading the book which is a combination of stream of conscientiousness and planned narration. He visits different places in a search for the location of happiness, as in a country where everyone is happy, a city, a place, an actual location for happiness. It is so far an interesting summary of the few countries I have read through. All the while the prose is guided toward happiness, not adventure, not culture, not history like many other summaries of places but toward an intangible feeling - it's a very unique perspective for describing a place.

In my travels, I have not been actively trying to pulse the populations for their levels of happiness; however, I feel as though I tend to pick up on a general vibe. Much like Eric, I've found some places seem innately happier than others for reasons that I never really spent the time to analyze.

In my readings - which have only been about 140 pages of the book I've spent significantly more time thinking about happiness and asking myself the question "am I happy?" This leads to a perhaps even more perplexing question of "What is happy?" Or "How would I know?" The simple answer is "Yes." The more complicated answer is "I'm striving towards happiness and making progress."

I've started to create a mental list of things that I consider required for someone to be happy, tying it to a place like Eric is trying to do... well I'll need more time to delve into that. For now, here is my list - ever growing, ever shrinking, ever changing... always true:

1) Someone to bear witness to life. This means someone to share your life with and someone to share their life with you. Not necessarily a significant other/lover/wife/husband/etc. but someone constant to witness life as it happens to each other. This I think must be part of why breaking up hurts so much. You are loosing someone who you enjoyed witnessing and enjoyed letting them witness you.

2) Meaningful work. One of the best ways to bring me down, make me sad or temporarily depressed me is to give me the sense that I am not important. Even if I am only an assistant to the assistant, my job has meaning. I think everyone needs to feel as though what they do is somehow indispensable, important, required. It somehow feeds a sense of purpose and that I truly believe correlates directly to being happy

3) Curiosity. Many people's livelihoods are built on assisting people to push through comfort zones and to take a small level of risk. This, I would argue, is a result of people being unhappy in the current comfort zone they live in and a desire to change something, an unexplainable need to do something different, see something different(ly), simply be around something new. Curiosity, for me, pushes me out of my comfort circle as often as I can allow it. The idea of doing the same thing every day, seeing the same people, driving the same route, without a future change to look forward to would drive me mad. Ask my mom, I'm always ready for the next adventure, my wings always seem ready to spread out wide and help me soar to something else - even if it is only temporary.

4) A sense of familiarity. Almost counter-intuitive following the strong desire I have to see/try/do new and different things, but a sense of familiarity is indispensable. When I arrived back from my trip this past summer there was a huge wash of comfort, of relief, of dare I say happiness when I alighted the plane at LAX airport. I was so happy to be back around things I knew and a culture which I understood, and food I recognized, and a language I didn't have to mime through. This sense of familiarity might blur the thin yet important line between happiness and contentment and I'm not convinced it belongs on this list. Yet as I think about what makes me happy, moments in my life that I was sublimely 'happy' I recall returning to the familiar as a common thread in those moments.

Clearly this is a not an all encompassing list (at 4 items) but it is a start.

To finish out this post I'm going to quote The Geography of Bliss in the first discussions of what happiness is:

"My favorite definition of happiness sprang from the mind of an unhappy man named Noah Webster. When he penned the first American dictionary, in 1825, he defined happiness as "the agreeable sensations which spring from the enjoyment of good." That says it all. It has "agreeable sensations," the notion that happiness is a feeling. The hedonists would get off on that. It has "enjoyment," which signifies that happiness is more than pure animal pleasure. And enjoyment of what? Of the "good," a word that, I think, Webster should have capitalized. The Good. We want to feel good but for the right reasons. Aristotle would have approved of that. "Happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul," he said. A virtuous life, in other words, is a happy life."

Perhaps now I can appreciate why so much mind power, energy, time, and study has gone into understanding happiness and how to achieve it... seems like there is much more involved than simply eating chocolate and laughing with friends, although I'm sure Eric would not discount those as important facets of being happy.

As always, I'm interested in everyone else's thoughts - please comment liberally!