Best Boyfriend Ever

James has taken a job for the rest of the summer in Philadelphia doing construction. When he weighed all the pros/cons, he decided it was better for him to leave town for another month this summer. Unfortunately, that means I have been once again abandoned in State College. All my friends have moved back with their parents or gone on internships, with the exception of very few. This time, James has also taken his car with him, leaving me confined to my bus route. It's not all bad, sometimes my bus stop on campus can be quite beautiful, case in point:
That's the bus stop on Shortlidge Road just south of the theatre I work at. Quite lovely on a sunny afternoon.

James was able to come home to visit me this past weekend, and it was beautiful. He at least feels badly about leaving me, as Philadelphia has it's own tribulations; an unpleasant roommate, long working hours, sleeping on a couch, etc. His puppy, Porter, went to visit him on Friday and made James very happy. Fortunately he still decided to drive down to see me on Saturday.

Like I said, James is feeling badly about leaving me again. He used his paycheck to take me on a sweet little date. We ate dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, which James loves due to the free rolls with cinnamon butter (unlimited, of course). Our waitress was very good and quite attentive. Our drinks were always filled, with one minor exception, rolls were always on our table, our food came to us hot and fresh, and our check and to-go boxes were given to us at the perfect time. We've had trouble with waitresses there before, including once when a girl forgot to take my order and I didn't see her again until she brought James his food. Positive experience this time, though. We talked a lot over dinner, laughed many times, and smiled always.

After dinner, we rented a couple movies. They went altogether unwatched, though, as James fell asleep on my couch not but five minutes into the first one. I had already seen it, and highly recommend the film to pretty much everyone. It's called "The Nines," and is an independent film made in 2007. It's three stories of an out of luck actor, a writer trying to launch a t.v. series, and a video game creator stuck in the forest with his wife and daughter. James ended up taking both movies with him so he can watch them in Philadelphia.

James had to leave rather early in the morning. He had to find a Radioshak that was open, because his dog chewed up his phone charger and ingested the specific adapter needed to plug his phone into it. No other place sells accessories for his obscure brand phone, so he had to rush up to his mom's house before the Radioshak there closed for the day.

It was a nice weekend while he was around. I miss my love, and can't wait for his next paycheck in two weeks so he can come visit me again. Exciting news, the rose plant he gave me has decided to stop trying to die on me and even has a beautiful yellow bud beginning to bloom. There are two other buds just starting, but they haven't opened yet. The herb garden he gave me is also taking off. Some of the herbs are finally big enough to start picking, and I ate like royalty today. Life is good.

Easter

James's sister, Katie, came to visit me for Easter Weekend. It was "Spring Break" at her high school, so she took the long weekend to hang out with James, me, our neighbor-friends, and relax away from her parents. I had to work, unfortunately, but they gave me bunny ears and I was delighted.

I am the sexiest Easter bunny known to man.


I tried to kiss James hello, and his reply was, "I don't want to have a picture of kissing. That's gross." For refusing to kiss me, James had to wear the bunny ears.


"But I do not want to be a bunny," he said.


I think he was a very cute bunny, though. His sister laughed at him, and for her punishment, she had to wear the ear. Not a happy bunny.


"I look gross today. Don't take a picture of me."

It wasn't the most exciting weekend, I am sure. We bowled and went to a movie, and I made lots of food. Katie just liked being out of the house and not having any rules. *There are no rules at my house.*

I'm getting more caught up on the pictures from my camera. I will have them all soon.

All-Nighter Project

These are some old pictures from Fall '08 semester. James had a project he was doing on the production curve versus something or another, and he chose to do his research on all-nighters for the College kid. Of course, he wanted to involve me in this and I got to spend an all-nighter in the computer lab with him. As you can clearly see, I was not happy. James wasn't exactly thrilled either.


We started out strong, actually doing homework and putting together presentations. It all went down from there. James was a-chuggin' those energy drinks to keep focused. I was not.
Right around the time the sleep deprivation kicked in, so did the junk food and the energy drinks. James was quickly tanking. His product-something-curve-versus-whatnot was doing exactly what he expected it to. I have no idea, because this was not my project.Energy drinks make James feel very sick. We know this; we knew this all along.

Sooner or later, he ended up just sleeping in the computer lab while I went on with my homework.
It's just one more typical all-nighter for two crazy college kid. Only, this time was for science, dang-it!

Lonesome

Lonely Factor: 4. I have scrubbed my shower and bathtub until they shine. Working on the bedroom.

Super Cute Date Night

Hello, my name is Natalie and I am a very attractive woman. Being a very attractive woman, I have attracted myself a very attractive man.

His name is James. A lot of times during the academic year, I don't get to see him very much because he is too busy with classes and Navy ROTC and studying and general school related stuffs. Even when I do get to see him, he is usually so tired and stressed and absent-minded that we don't get to spend much time together just being in love, as we should be. Well, James is finished with finals and out of school for the summer. To celebrate this and take a nice relaxing break, he and I gathered all the change in my spare change jar (which mostly belonged to him, anyway) and went on a super cute date together.

We started with bowling, in which he trumped me by at least 20 pins each game. We played four games total, and he hustled me in two of them, waiting until the last two or three frames to bowl straight strikes. What a bum.

After bowling, we headed to the local YMCA for their Friday Night rock climbing.
I had a lot of fun, because I grew up in the cliff filled canyons of southern Utah. I used to go rock climbing every weekend almost with Shantel, Oliver, Brad, and Dayve. James was a little hesitant to climb with me because he has never gone and wasn't sure he'd have any fun at all. The instructor started him out on the easy wall, and we worked our way up. I even tried one of the slanty walls that juts out backwards. I did not make it very far on account of these week girly arms.

The highlight of my night was the corner challenge. The corner where the two walls meet is fairly easy to climb, so the challenge is to go up it without putting one's hands on the grips at all. You are meant to palm your hands right against the wall and press into one foot while moving the other. The first time I tried, when I went climbing my my friend Jacob, I took a half hour to get from bottom to top and had to stop twice because I got too tired. This time, it only took me ten minutes, but I was just as tired at the end.

After our adventure in climbing, where James had way more fun than he thought he would, we went to the dollar movies and spent too much on consessions.

I was very delighted to have my boyfriend all to myself for one night, and we had a terrific time. But my heart still belongs to Shantel, apparently...

2% Club

My mom just sent me this survey, where the last thing you are supposed to think of is a red hammer. Apparently 98% of people think of a red hammer at the end of this survey, but 2% of people think of different things. My mom and I are part of the 2% Club. She thought of an orange wrench, because she had been plumbing all day. I thought of a yellow wrench because I had been working in the theatre all day. I know you want to hear about it, so on we go.

It was a pretty easy day at the Eisenhower Auditorium. Or rather, it would have been easy if we had done things correctly. I have reached a point in my working where the big bosses are trusting me with more and more tasks. I know my way around, which keys unlock which locks, where all the lights hang, and how to reach the charts. Unfortunately, that means I am being trusted with unsupervised tasks.

I was put in charge of cabling the second electric, which basically means I had to go along and plug the lights in. Having never been in charge before, I went along and did the job I always do, not realizing there were two other jobs that need to be done at the same time. Along comes Gary, just as mad as can be that all the lights are plugged in, but nothing is labeled. To be fair, I had begun labeling the wires, but the job was taking longer because I hadn't labeled as I went. After he broke all the connection, he made us start the wiring all over again and label as we went. There's twenty minutes wasted right there. Unfortunately, Gary hadn't paid attention to the configuration of things, and we ended up with an extra plug on one end and no plug on the other end. He remedied this by bringing in a whole separate cable for the lonely unplugged light.

Margo has never been in charge of stacking the x-ray lights on their cart, but she was put in charge of it this time. Is Gary just getting lazy? She and I watched Susan stack the other cart, and we followed whatever they were doing. Unfortunately, one of the lights near the bottom was so slightly off-center that by the time we reached the top of the stack (about 5 lights up), the lights were toppling at a rapid rate. Susan didn't want to unstack everything and start over, so we put the safety cable on and let them be. Big mistake for putting them back up the next day. Susan took off the safety cable, and just about crushed herself underneath a stack of lights. We had to unstack the whole thing right there while she held them up instead of doing things the easy way.

After last week's fiasco of taking the chairs off and lining them up in the wrong order, a 45-minute fiasco, I'm surprised Susan and Gary trust us with anything. They never learn.

Bo Burnam in Concert

Not sure if you've heard, but there is a young comedian by the name of Bo Burnam who is taking the internet by force. While he is most famous for the song "Helen Keller is my perfect woman," I prefer "New Math." I find him quite hilarious, but some may find his humor crude or irreverent, so exercise caution if you feel the need to look him up.

I was lucky I even discovered this free concert. It was featured in Penn State's student newspaper on page 6 in a brief notice of the day's events. How could this possibly be? A great comedian like Bo Burnam on page 6? The article said he'd be on for about an hour from 9:30 to 10:30-ish, admission was free, and the SPA was expecting around 500 students to attend.

Immediately, I called James and Jacob to tell them we would be going to that concert. Of course, the boys made me late so we had to stand in the very back. More than 500 people showed up, so not enough seats were available and a lot of people were standing in the back.

I laughed so hard. He is even more funny in person. The highlight of the show was a man walking in fifteen minutes late and taking a seat in the third row. Bo stopped what he was playing to ask "Where were you?" "Uh...across campus," said the man. Bo replied, "That's really vague. Where were you?" "In the Willard Building," said the man. Bo replied, "Across campus? That's, like, across the street." (Willard is practically across the street.) "So what were you doing in the Willard Building?" "Rehearsing," said the man. Bo replied, "Rehearsing what?" "Improv," said the man. "Rehearsing improv? Dude, you don't rehearse improve. That's the point." I had a good laugh throughout, but especially at this point. Bo continued on his rant about this man showing up late because he was across the street rehearsing improv.

My second favorite part was when he looked over his should, gasped, jumped, and pointed to his shadow. "I thought it was a black man." Looking around, we realized there were not actually any black people in the audience, which he pointed out later in one of his songs. "Now just the black people sing it..." There were five second of laughter, followed by, "Guess I'm not popular with the minorities."



After the show, in which Bo Burnam played all our favorite songs, he did a little meet and greet with the audience. I got to meet him long enough for my five second photo shoot and a few sentences about his comfort level with being touched by strangers. He's fine with it, but his girlfirend might mind. Bo is much taller in person. He doesn't look so tall on the internet, but he's a good six and a half feet tall. You can tell by how far he had to bend over just to get in the same picture with me.

It was a good night and I had a great time.