Nail Polish

I'm going to go a little girly on you here for a minute. Every month I get a Birchbox in the mail with fun deluxe samples of products (hair, makeup, nails, perfume, skincare...). It is like Christmas every month when I get the box (thanks Shannon for the great recommendation!) all for $10 per month. It actually saves me money because I don't wander through Sephora and end up spending way too much money.
This month's box included a nail polish from Zoya that is phenomenal. It is the first nailpolish I've had that doesn't get rubbed off by my rock climbing shoes or really anything else. There's no chipping or anything. They have eliminated all sorts of chemicals that people are allergic to which is also a bonus. I was just on their website to consider ordering a few other colors since I haven't had new nailpolish in years when I found this deal for Earth Day. Basically for $4 per bottle you can have all the nailpolish you want and then you can send them your old nasty crusty ones and have them safely dispose of them.
So if you're needing some new nail polish I've gotta recommend this stuff. That's it. I'm done being girly. I'm going to go amputate a leg or something to balance out my hormones now.

March Madness

This year I decided to become more involved with march madness. Previously my only real involvement was my senior year in high school where lots of students wore the same t-shirt for a month straight. While I don't think I did anything crazy this year I did watch more basketball than normal. The men's tournament was fun since Butler did so well, at least until the championship game. Either way they were fun to follow. My real attention was on the women's tournament as my parents are season ticket holders to ND women's basketball. Mom, Kerwyn and I drove to Dayton, OH for the sweet sixteen and elite eight games. They were a blast to watch as ND played great basketball.

One of the items on mom's bucket list is to attend a final four basketball tournament so we already had tickets to the women's final four in Indy before we knew ND would be in it. It only got better as ND beat U Conn in the final four, a team that receives a vast majority of the attention in women's basketball. That was a fun night! The championship game was not quite as good. ND lost in a close game to a team I truly believe they were better than.

Throughout the tournament I realized that its not as fun to cheer your team on when you have fans of the other team nearby. Fans are crazy and obnoxious and some have voices that make you believe they are using a megaphone as the gentleman behind us had. For this reason I think my basketball cheering in the future will likely be from home unless I can get assured tickets within my teams section.

Regardless, it was a fun time with my mom and she can cross it off her bucket list. Thanks for letting me share the experience with you mom!

Spring Fun

Sorry for the lack of regular posting during my epic year of fun (aka research year). Since my last post lots of fun times have been had (and lots of fairly mundane hours writing abstracts and manuscripts). The highlights that I can recall at the moment include buying a new car, lots and lots of rock wall climbing including a double date with 2 very good friends of ours, March Madness (which I'll post more about later), reading several good books, and trying to grow a yard.

Last year we had a major drought and heat spell that killed many previously nice yards. I am still recovering from our weekend of digging up large dead portions of our yard and planting new seed. Our friends Brad and Ashley rented a slot seeder and we joined the fun in trying to improve both of our yards.