A Broad Abroad: I'm BAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKK!

Hey Virtual World, your favorite GGReyes is back!

Though I am no longer studying in DC nor traveling Egypt and Jordan (check out my adventures in Egypt and Jordan in my archives!!!) yours truly is BACK. I may have to change the title of my blog now, but all in due time my padawans!

"We are so happy but why exactly are you back?" You might be asking yourself.

And I am more than happy to respond!

I am back because frankly, there is nothing better to do at 11:22 pm.

I don't have any idea if anyone else will read this blog anymore because I am not traveling, but you know what? My life is so awesome and interesting that people SHOULD want to read about my daily life. That sounded much more self-serving than intended, but I have to make myself feel better somehow. (warning, I am going to put pictures up randomly! yay!)

Also, I just finished reading a book (Soulless by Gail Carriger) -seriously check out the link!- and you know what? I was inspired to keep writing. In any form. I, in all honestly, love to write, and why not express it in every form available to me (or you?). I write in various journals and I tweet (shameless plug: follow me if you aren't a creeper @GGReyes8) and once upon a time before June started, I blogged. Quite a bit actually! I hung out with my pals from DC: my occasional guest writer hammie aka Amalee, and Bobak and Chris. We reminisced a whole lot about our misadventures and dissected our foibles during that time in our life. Fun times! Amalee brought up my blog, and as I find some parts of the DC experience as rather painful to recall, I took real pleasure in writing about my time there and found pleasure in re-reading some bits. It encouraged me to write again!

So now what? Well...

My hair looks wacky, but oh well, I
couldn't be happier!

Three months ago I graduated! Many a thing has occurred (does that word really have two Rs?...how peculiar!) since then, that has kept me quite the busy bee in my own right. (how do I know I have been busy? Usually busy equals stress and stress equals having my face break out, and my face has not been clear in the acne department for the last few weeks)

So, let me break it down for you!

1)Planning my sister's wedding. Yup, she got married, I was not allowed to say anything else I would have said it the moment she got engaged that fateful day almost a year ago!

2) Sister's wedding. Why GG you are being redundant. I am not. Have you ever helped plan a wedding? Then you don't know what you are talking about and I beg you to not question me. As I have now successfully helped plan a wedding I can tell you they are stressful and expensive. As my family has not recovered from the August wedding yet, I will leave this as number 2!

3) I graduated and have NOT looked for a job. I was interviewed for a job as a paralegal for FB but that did not go through. It would have been an interesting experience, but I would more than love to work with people who devote their life to bringing about better life opportunities for the poor and to bringing about change in our educational system. SOOO anyway the not having a job that will trigger my sense of justice part of reason #3 is enough to make me break out for months.

At the sister's wedding...
Of course it's a pic of me and not my sis...

4) Family issues. In my attempt at discretion I will simply sat that my family (even the extended family) dynamic is interesting. This summer has brought about happiness, sorrow, tears, and hope. I'm growing from the experiences. Yay you now get to share in the new developed Lupe as I process the experiences.

So that's the kind of long and short of it. I moved out of my small cramped tiny room, to my sister's bigger room (she is not living at home so I took the room and guess what? I have a closet and room to walk!!) but moving to my room was the result of moving the entire house around - i.e. I moved the computer to the boys' room, the boys moved upstairs, the stuff in my sister's room was moved to the living room and subsequently dispersed throughout the house. And we aren't even done yet.

OH.

Sisters! And my lovely mother! The one with the
ribbon is the bride :)

I must say that I have gone to the gym. I went to the gym yesterday (gasp!) but that's nothing! In April (I only know this because I found my contract) I signed up for membership at the local gym and I went twice a week for a good two months. Incredible eh? Whooda thought little ol' Lupe would ever go to the gym on a -sparingly- but fairly consistent schedule?? Not me. And right up to before the wedding and until really yesterday, I had not gone to the gym. Laughing hurts me right now because of the crunches I forced myself to do yesterday but in the end its worth it right?

ANYWAY.

That was my summer, that's my life in a nutshell. I am still the quirky Lupe that has stuff happen to her daily and will write about it now on a regular basis. Can't wait. I'm thrilled, aren't you?! (That is genuine excitement, not facetiousness!)

I keep forgetting to mention some really important things. I'm awfully sorry this blog is turning into a mess, but let's face it, have you ever had a conversation with me that didn't look as jumbled as this blog?

Really Lupe, you forgot how to BLOG?!

I'm working on it don't worry, I'm usually not THIS jumbled...

So on to important things I forgot to say:

I have been thrift store shopping of late and have come home so incredibly happy that I actually do the happy dance. See, I got rid of over half my clothes and shoes (big deal for me---even if most of my clothes is handed down from the sisters) in a garage sale we had (proceeds were supposed to go to the wedding but it was such an embarrassingly low amount that we used it to buy food instead - saaaaaad-) and I have, in all seriousness, been wearing the same clothes all summer. Oh, I tried to vary it with the nicer clothes that I kept, but that clothes was on a hangar and I am unbelievably lazy when it comes to clothes that is hung up, in general I do have the patience to pick out clothes from the closet unless its really important, and so I wore khaki shorts that were in rotation with 2 pairs of black gym shorts. My rotation of shirts included a grey hello kitty shirt, or my grey Santa Clara University shirt or American University shirts (I only wore them because I thought I looked cool like Anne Hathaway did in The Devil Wears Prada. Showing off wear you went to school was never so cool. Of course I tried to emulate her coolness.)

Anyway, the point is, I used the same clothes because I don't like to use the iron and I quite frankly didn't have that much clothes! So thrift shopping yielded such a gold mine! I got dresses, a pair of shorts, shirts (all between $1.99 and $7.99 no higher) and of course books! One of the belts I bought for $2.99 was a Carlos Falchi belt that is apparently quite expensive! Woohoo!

So that's exciting. Bookwise, as of today (about an hour ago) I have read 18 books! Not bad for starting June 13 and the brief hiatus I was forced to take for the wedding...though in the week leading up to it I must add that I was a mite happier and in a better mood because I was reading a book. I must give a shout out to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman for Good Omens. I know they've received an abundance of accolades already and I am a late comer, but...Such a delightfully wicked and funny book! I make references to it at home that no one understands and so now I mostly say them to myself, but I wish I knew more people who read it so that I could talk to them about it! Hahahaha, such a great book! Check it out please and then talk to me! AND this is HUGE accomplishment because I finally read a book from my "Books I want to be Reading" list to your right! Yesssss (read that in Napoleon Dynamite's voice).

Oh and I must say that one of the highlights of my existence happened two days ago. I follow a really cool author on twitter (Brent Weeks! check out his awesome book series here) and he retweeted about another author's e-book at an unbeatable price -the aforementioned book Soulless by Gail Carriger. As the unapologetic book nerd that I am, I checked it out, bought the e-book, started reading, enjoyed it and then looked up the author on twitter after reading her author bio on my favorite website ever BN.com, followed her on Twitter. As I am still learning the ropes to Twitter, I decided to do something daring and thank Mr.Weeks for the book suggestion, and guess what? Gail Carriger actually responded to me. A PUBLISHED author. I am not proud to say that I honestly felt like a little kid and ran downstairs to gossip with the only other person in the house, my mother. This is like a celebrity acknowledging you, but better since she's an author. And there is nothing better than knowing that Ms.Carriger took the time to respond to me. Despite this celebrity induced syndrome of giddiness, I am reasonable enough to say that I am sooo happy to have found another author whose book series I will undoubtedly enjoy, and I am going to the library tomorrow for the rest of her series.

I also read One Day. It was a much better book than it was a movie, but I'm a big softy for movies like that...so whatever. The book came at an interesting juncture in my life. I realized, much too acutely how painfully close we are to death. Our lives are so very fragile. Note: The Following Aside may not make sense to you but I'm writing it anyway:And if there is one thing I am realizing in books, and really all around me, is that unless death occurs to someone very close to us, we are very apathetic. I mean in books, killing off a character is no big deal sometimes. Perhaps its because I know what it feels like to really mourn that I find it a bit callous now. I'm not making sense, but let's just say that in the books I'm writing, death isn't going to happen at the whim of my fancy. I now contemplate what it means when I read in the news that a deaths occurred at a plant a few days ago, the people are grieving for their loved ones, I can't acknowledge that real pain.

Okay, so I'm probably not going to be able to sleep do my irrational fear that I will unexpectedly die at some point without having accomplished much in the way of social justice...so I will write that one brother is three semesters away from graduating college, another is a 9th grader and the youngest kid is now a fifth grader. wow. my family is growing up.

Also, yesterday I had the pleasure of briefly exchanging words with someone who was definitely eye-candy of the intelligent variety and I am happy to report that my incurably effervescent hopeless romantic tendencies are restored! Phew...!

Obviously my second oldest sister is missing, but as I have no recent family photos (wedding ones haven't come in)
I put this one up to remind you of my loveably silly family!!

Alrighty then. It is an unhealthy 2.5 hours since I started writing this (but that includes putting pictures up, all the links which you better have clicked, the different fonts, ect.) and while I don't mind droning on an on, it makes it unpleasant for you to try and follow my train of thought after so long a time of stream of consciousness writing. But not before...

Trending now with GGReyes:

Music I'm listening to:

Find it on Spotify: The Kooks: Junk of the Heart (click here!)

Book I'm Reading:

War Trash by Ha Jin (check out here- a veritable gem I found at the Thrift store, but haven't finished yet)

Books I can't wait for:

Michelle Sagara's Cast in Ruin book -here look!- it comes out 9/20, so I suggest you hurry up and read the first 6 books and Brandon Sanderson's Alloy of Law (read an excerpt here) and it doesn't come out until November 8 - such an unfortunate circumstance since the Mistborn novels are honestly one of the best book series I have had the pleasure to read.

Online store you should check out:

HoneyHavana - vintage store! follow on Twitter @honeyhavana and like the store on Facebook HERE! store up and running soon :) I am in no way shamelessly plugging my sister's new entrepreneurial endeavor...okay fine, yes I am.

Thank you for reading!

Peace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~