knock knock. who's there? orange. orange who? orange you happy to see me?

north end boston pumpkins.

surprise fall flowers from a friend.

i know i'm a bit late -- the last three weeks have been a blur, with crazy work deadlines, a happy sad weekend trip to boston, a little bad news, minimal sleepage (all of which was made slightly better when i came home one evening to a surprise bouquet of flowers waiting for me...thank you, sir) -- but happy october!

boston commons with kelly.

for an afternoon

we visited the swans and ducks in boston commons,

fed them dark chocolate

(because we didn't have any bread),

and recounted one of our favorite children's books,

make way for ducklings.

it's a story about a little duck family

searching for a home

and finally settling in the boston commons pond.

we're no longer six and two years old,

and we're both out trying to find our own homes in the world,

but for those precious hours in the sunlight,

sitting under a willow tree,

we were the same little girls we used to be.

i love you, kelly.

you know this.

this is why we're friends.

me: "explain my crazy to me."
so he did.
and somehow all the insane thoughts flying around my head

calmed down

made sense

and didn't seem so crazy after all.

a weekend roadtrip with Chad.

Charlottesville, VA

:: Crosby, Stills, & Nash concert with Brandon & Jaclyn ::

Definitely the youngest ones at the concert, besides the grandchildren dragged along by their CSN grandparent fans. Met Brandon, Chad's bff since they were babies, and his lovely wife Jaclyn.

:: Toured the University of Virginia campus ::

LOVED this. Pretty sure Thomas Jefferson designed it with my tastes in mind--he even planted cute Southern boys around. Grad school, maybe?

:: Michie Tavern General Store ::

I died over the quaint goods and homemade pumpkin butter, but wasn't so interested in the history of the place--still not really sure why it's significant, but Chad can tell you.

:: Colonial dress up ::

Found a jackpot of Colonial hats and costumes at Michie Tavern--obviously had to stop our tour to try on every single hat, I giddily, Chad begrudgingly.

:: Saturday afternoon bar visit ::

Clearly Chad's reprisal for the earlier forced dress up. Pretty sure we spent about 10 hours or so in a freezing sports bar to watch BYU lose a football game.

:: Monticello ::

The house was meh--there, I said it--but the views and grounds were beautiful...and I would now like to be buried in the Jefferson family cemetery.

:: Appomattox Courthouse ::

Where Lee surrendered to Grant. Where I almost surrendered to the heat.

:: Wandering around the central VA countryside ::

Highlight of the trip was taking the long, scenic way home, enjoying the scenery, music, and company. Significant resources were contributed to looking for a quaint, small town restaurant for dinner, but apparently Southern restaurants observe the Sabbath. We settled instead for fine dining at Country Cookin' Restaurant, where the Vegetable of the Day was mac'n'cheese, unironically.

Special thanks to Chad, who planned the trip and somehow allowed me to play Only the Young on repeat a zillion times without throttling me.

things i learned over the weekend, ed. 2.

:: you will fall asleep if you watch general conference in bed ::

Though you will have every intention to watch all four sessions of General Conference (the semi-annual internationally televised broadcast from the leadership of your church), you will also be sleep-deprived from a week of late night Keeping Up With the Kardashians marathons. Unable to resist the lure of spending four daytime hours on a Saturday and a Sunday in bed, you will prop yourself up in bed, armed with Junior Mints and Peanut M&Ms, ready to watch Conference. ...You will instantly fall asleep at the beginning of every single session. But but! You may be sleepy, but you are also brilliant! Having anticipated the inevitable, you will have set your DVR to record a few of the sessions, and you can read/watch/listen to the others here. You will spend the next several days catching up on what you missed (because you really love the consistently uplifting, inspiring messages shared at General Conference), and you will reach the end of the week just as edified as everyone else, but with more sleep under your belt.

things i learned over the weekend, ed. 1.

:: you can injure yourself by standing too hard ::

Apparently, if you walk a mile to a party in five inch high heel boots, then stand around for five hours at a backyard fall soiree, you will strain a tendon in your right ankle. As you are probably twenty two and stupid, not only will you neglect to ice and elevate your ankle that night, but you will also wear the same boots to dinner the next day. You will then notice that the pain is getting worse, and you will begin to develop a limp. As you hobble around for the next three days, the pain will steadily increase, and your mom (who is a nurse) will suggest that you acquire crutches. (You will absolutely not acquire crutches. Too dorky, and require arm muscles that you do not possess.) You will become slightly concerned that you may have permanently damaged yourself, but you won't really know how to fix the situation, as hopping around on one foot was only awesome when you were three (okay, twelve), but you'll definitely blog about it. The overall experience will confirm what you suspected all along: Mormon parties can be hazardous--attend at your own risk.

protected pies for the pie eating contest

julia, me, grant, and ally

state of the cha cha.

to elaborate on the previous post, i am now:

:: highly educated ::

...or so they say. in may, i graduated from columbia university, where i spent four years researching the optimal ratio of sleep to caffeine. concurrently, i earned an enormously practical degree in art history--i now know how the muslim principle of tawhid relates to decorative islamic mosaic, why you can flip a urinal on its side and call it art, and that classic greek columns are either male or female, among other useful tidbits. i also devoted some time to attending themed frat parties, stalking fellow columbia student and ridiculously good looking celeb james franco in the library, and gallivanting around manhattan--but only after i had finished studying, mom and dad!

in all seriousness, though--i'm tremendously grateful for my college experience. i had the opportunity to attend a world class institution, learn from professors who literally wrote the books on their subjects, and be surrounded by brilliant, diverse, and enchanting individuals. everyone "finds" themselves in college--i did, but only after first losing myself a little too. manhattan has a way of making one feel simultaneously isolated and smothered, and i found that i had to fight (sometimes even against myself) to find peace and just be me. the beauty of the struggle, though, was that after working so hard to pull myself out of the little ditches i sometimes dug myself into, i came out of it all happier than ever before, knowing what i believed, what i wanted, and what i didn't want. that's learning, folks!

:: a bureaucrat ::

i now work for a living, which is simultaneously exhilarating, terrifying, humbling, and gratifying. something tells me that it's sort of inappropriate to discuss work on a personal blog, so i won't say much about it, other than that i do development and fundraising for an amazing museum that rhymes with shmishmonian.

:: new DC resident ::

okay, saying i live in DC is sort of like when people say they live in LA, but they actually live in the valley...which infuriates me, so i'll be more precise: i live in arlington, va, but my commute into the city is exactly seven minutes...so it almost counts. in spite of what my earlier post might have suggested, DC is a really lovely, beautiful city, and i've enjoyed getting to know the area.

arlington amuses me...coming from LA and NYC, i feel like i now live in the sticks, but people have informed me that this is a pretty standard suburb. i remain unconvinced. i live across the street from a neighborhood park, everyone i know lives within a mile radius of me, and the most happening part of town is a one block-long stretch of restaurants. cute.

:: single, kind of bilingual, and not-so-ready to mingle ::

i know you all loved him. i did too. but we needed to move on, possibly for forever, but definitely for now. five years was a long time, especially for someone as young as i was, and i'll carry those years with me always.

since then, i've gone on some dates, spent time with some guys...but i think i need to master the art of being on my own for the first time before entertaining the thought of anything...anyone...significant. but who knows? i always need someone to play 3D monopoly with... :)

___

i've now lived here almost three months,

and i've had a pretty fabulous time so far.

stay tuned for more of my life and times!

greetings, earthlings.

Let me just get this out there—this is not a blog about dance. I am not, nor will I ever be, interested in the cha-cha-cha, though if you happen to be, go here. I am, however, immensely interested in me—as most twenty-somethings are (interested in themselves, that is, not me).

When I was a kid, I went almost exclusively by “Cha Cha”—so much so that, when Grandma Katie would ask me my name, my two year old self would respond, “Cha Cha Diguez!” As most nicknames do, “Cha Cha” ultimately faded into relative obscurity, I assume around the time I began kindergarten (something tells me Mrs. Plowman wouldn’t have let the whole “Cha Cha Diguez” misnomer fly). Luckily, Grandma Katie, ever the classic, has not only miraculously preserved her jet-black hair, but has also kept the “Cha Cha” nickname alive and well.

To those of you who have known me since the Cha Cha days—the fam (hi Mom!), the nannies (look how I’ve grown! Or not, if you were my nanny post-4th grade…), and the oldies-but-goodies best friends (scarred witnesses of the disastrous glasses/braces/bushy hair combo)—this is for you.

To more recently acquired friends, acquaintances, and random strangers—it’s for you too, though I doubt you have built up the years of tolerance to me that the above have...

The past few months have been exciting and jarring—I graduated from school and began my first job, leaving behind the relatively carefree lifestyle of a student and reluctantly adopting the early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule of a worker bee. I moved from beautiful, frenzied, alive Manhattan to the sleepy, not-so-exciting D.C. suburbs. And I’m attempting to move on from the boy I loved since I was seventeen to other pastures...not greener, perhaps just a different shade.

So since I can’t seem to muster up the self-discipline to keep up my journal, this feeble, embarrassing, probably TMI effort at documenting these changes will have to suffice. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to comment!


Welcome to my life.