Back from the dead!?

OK, so I've been absolutely terrible at updating this and such, sorry to the few people who actually read it (I have no idea how many there are anyway). So the whole comparison project is done and I'm apparently not interesting enough to write about my life in general (Most of my waking time is spent at school and practicing) but I have a goal for this summer that I thought it would be super fun to write about and maybe get some feedback on.... I plan to visit EVERY non-chain (meaning not starbucks) coffee shop in Fort Collins. Here's the list I have compiled with the help of google maps

Coffee/Tea shops in Fort Collins

• Everyday Joe's Coffee House
• Starry Night Espresso Cafe
• Bean Cycle
• Catalyst Coffee LLC
• Mugs Coffee Lounge
• Alley Cat Cafe
• Cups Coffee
• Genoa Coffee & Wine
• Dazbog Coffee Store
• Deja Vu Coffeehouse
• Wild Boar Coffee
• Lyric Cinema Cafe
• Bean Trees Drive Thru Coffee Cafe
• Cuppy's Coffee and Smoothies
• Colorado Coffee Exchange
• Human Bean
• The Haunted Game Cafe
• La Dolce Vita Gelato Caffe
• f/stop cafe
• beatnik coffee
• Wired Bean Coffee House
• Coffee Craze
• Specht Point Cafe
• The Western Coffee Bar
• Cafe Richesse
• Monza Cafe
• Espresso Di Cincotta
• Cafe Vino
• Cafe Ardour
• Happy Lucky's Tea House
• Half Moon Bay Coffee
• Moxie Java
  

That 32, many more than I thought! I have had several thoughts about the best way to go about doing this, one idea was to ask for the same drink at every place - but I don't want to limit myself to drinking only one type of drink for the whole summer. So then I was thinking about e-mailing each store (that I could find an e-mail address for) and asking what their "signature drink" is, but that would be a lot of work and I'm not even guaranteed an answer. In talking with my parents and Andrew I have decided that I will ask the bartender to make me their favorite drink. As Andrew pointed out, it's a lot more random. I will also get a wider variety of drinks and will probably try a lot of things I wouldn't try otherwise. I plan on reviewing every place - hopefully with a picture or two - for the summer, maybe with other random interjections. So let's do some math here, 32 shops and I have about 14 weeks if I start when I get out of school (minus my week trip to Appleton) that would be 2.29 coffee shops per week. If I start now then I have around 20 weeks (not counting the week in Appleton) which is 1.6 shops a week. I like that number better. If you have a favorite drink at a certain place I will consider ordering that instead. If you can think of a place I did not include I'd love to hear it! If you are going to visit me this summer (or live here) and want to join me on all or some of these adventures let me know!! I'd love the company! I am excited for all this coffee business! and some tea too :)

Happy New Year!

Alright, so I'm technically 8 days late. whatever. get over it.

I've never really come to terms with new years being a big thing anyway. Right now my life is still run on a school calendar so my new years happen in September usually and I find the one in January to be quite awkward actually. I mean, yeah, I stay up till midnight and say rabbit rabbit rabbit (just like the first of EVERY month, when I remember) and happy new year. I attempt to come up with some resolutions and think about the past year but it feels weird. Especially this year because I'm between two different schools and I think I've done too much thinking and had too many different experiences to have remained the same person. In fact, I'm positive I'm not the same person as I was last year, or even as I was in August (when I started at CSU).

As long as I'm being all reflective, and a little hippocritical, let's look at my year in review:

• Word of the year: Epiphany. why is this my word? because I've had a lot of them and I just learned how it was spelled and I think it's wonderful.
• Name of the year: Ingrid. This is what I named my bass trombone and it is also:
• Favorite Music/Artist of the year: Ingrid Michaelson. I love her, this has already been mentioned.
• Best book I read last year: I haven't really read much, regrettibly, but I think I'd have to say The World is Flat By Thomas Friedman. I actually read this for one of my classes and as I have said a few times in the past few months "This damn book is ruining my life" as I realized just how right Mr. Friedman is/was.
• Band Piece of the year: Armenian Dances. Just is, played it twice and LOVE IT!
• Favorite thing I baked: My birthday cake: Chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache.
• Drink of the year: Tea. if I had to pick one flavor, it would be vanilla strawberry rose, which I just learned has been discontinued and I wanted to cry.
• Website of the year: Google. Duh.
• Webcomic of the year: Questionable Content. If you're gonna read it you should really start from the beginning
• Biggest FAIL of the year: this blog, also mentioned before
• Punctuation of the year: ...yeah...
• Addiction of the year: Texting. OMG, texting.
• Phrase of the year: points for trying. I think...there might be another one....not sure.

So...resolutions...I make them but I'm still not sure how I feel about them...I think in part because I resolve to do things all year round, it's not a special thing for me. Just because the calendar year changes doesn't mean I need to pick RIGHT NOW to start new and over and make huge amazing changes in my life. I do that whenever I feel like I need to. This year kind of happened to fall near new years....points for me?

Anyway...welcome to my new year, glad you're a part of it :)

~Renee

Friends

I was re-surprised to find what a large impact one or two or three people can have on my life, mood and general thought processes. I didn't realize just how much not having a constant availability of friends to hang-out with was effecting me. I realized that there was a lack of that and that I was not quite as entirely happy but until I woke up euphorically happy this morning I didn't realize the full extent of impact that my friends and people connections have on my life.

Last night I had three friends over for dinner and tea and then homework and more tea. I was so extremely pleased when I went to sleep simply because I had been surrounded with friends for most of the day. I woke up with the knowledge that I would have people to see at school today and friends. It was great, and I am still extremely happy - such to the extent that I have not been in a really long time.

This is, of course, not to say that I didn't have any friends earlier but now I have friends that I see every day that I also hang-out with on occasion (hopefully with increasing frequency). I have very much enjoyed seeing my friends from high school, both that I have stayed in contact with and those I haven't whom I see randomly on campus, I would not have been able to make it into week 4 without them. Nor would I have been able to make it without random calls/txts/wall posts/etc. from my friends who are elsewhere (namely Lawrence).

After going through these few weeks and now being re-aquainted with having "hang-out friends" I appreciate my friends (all of you/them) even more, in whatever capicity they fill for me - whether it be random hellos (friendly acquaintences), coffee dates, phone calls, letters, facebook comments/posts, posts on this, drinking tea with me, doing homework with me, playing in an ensemble with me and making faces during rehearsal, giving me much needed hugs (random or asked for), or just plain old chillin'.

Summary (as I am "learning" in CO150): I LOVE MY FRIENDS!!!!!

I miss you all, even if I see you daily, I miss you :P

Oh, and thank you for being my friend, my life would be less full and wonderful without you.

Weather

Sorry it's been a while....I'm not gonna keep myself to a schedule with this :)

You know how the mystical "they" always says that you shouldn't talk about the weather and that it's a cop-out for not having anything to say? well I think that's stupid, I really like talking about the weather, especially when it's abnormally cold for the current month and it's rainy ad wonderful. I don't think people, as a whole, really appreciate weather as much. Mostly people complain that it's too hot, too cold, too rainy, to snowy, too early for it to be snowy/rainy, too windy, too unpredictable, etc. I love it for that very reason, it's one of the few things that has not been taken over by technology or other human invention. I mean, yes, global warming has had an effect on the weather but the weather has been doing crazy things even before the humans created their crazy machines that put accelerators into the air and cause changes to happen faster.

I rode my bike to school today for the first time this week because it has been rather chilly (like 50 degrees-ish) and threatening rain. It just rained, but it's ok because I'm not riding my bike home. I am just really enjoying that the weather has been pleasantly cold - it's been allowing me to drink a LOT more tea and wear clothes that I haven't worn in a really long time - like hooded sweatshirts :) and ugly suit coats that I bought for a costume party, and cloaks...we're not quite cold enough for the ponchos but it's getting there. It's snowed a little bit in Colorado already and I think that's wonderful, not too early or anything silly like that.

I'm still not wearing shoes and people keep noticing and asking me, in flabergasted voices, if I am cold. I respond with a pelasent "Surprisingly no!" What I don't mention is that I survived two years of Wisconsin winters - without a real winter coat - and that I'm a Colorado native who LOVES COLD!!!!!

Needless to say, I'm excited for the weather change, I tend to throughly enjoy whatever season it happens to be at the moment and I really like the seasons of change, eventhough I'm likely to get stuck somewhere unprepared.

A semi-random suggestion of music to listen to if you are bored: Ingrid Michaelson, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Guster, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Streetlight Manifesto

More on music later

Not so random question: What is your favorite season (if any) and why?

Google and A short and silly post

Reasons why Google is awesome:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-million-students-going-back-to.html

Also, I love gmail. End my endorsement of Google.

Random silly post:

I really enjoyed the date today 09/09/09 and I was thinking to myself, "Hey, this is pretty cool, and it will only happen for 12 years every thousand...er...hundred rather....still..." and then I realized that this is the NINTH month that this has happened for and I know I was aware of the other ones but I was surprised when I realized that this has been happening once a year for nine years...and that there are only three more to happen....and then I was thinking about how the first one happened during my first year of junior high school and I was blown away by thinking about how fast time flies.

The end.

P.S. I found a tea I don't like today and it was sad...then I ate a cookie.

What do you think of the new alignment?

Coffee Shops

I LOVE coffee shops. I love how each and everyone has a different personality and demographic of people. If I had enough money and time I would basically live in coffee shops. But then I would not have a home and I would not be able to have a day like yesterday where I stayed in my pajamas all day. I think there is something wonderful with the coffee shop mentality too. You get to go and kind of escape from everything for a while. If you go to the same one enough then people begin to know who you are and what you want - it's like having new friends! (sometimes actually new friends) I have two favorite coffee shops in Fort Collins: Mugs and Starry Night. Each serve different purposes and I go to them for different reasons and I love them both. I have recently been introduced to the Bean Cycle and Wild Boar - both are also quite wonderful.

Maybe it's just that I love people watching and feeling like I'm part of a "special" community but I love coffee shops because they allow me to do both of those things - and have coffee or tea, sometimes cake or other delicious food items and free Internet :)

In other news, I had an amazing almost 2 hour lesson today, after I missed my lesson this morning...thanks to those who missed their lessons and let me have their times - whether or not this was on purpose remains to be seen.

In the middle of my lesson(ish) it started raining and has yet to really stop...I love Colorado weather, it is fantastic how it can be warm and pleasant but also rainy....at the moment I am enjoying watching people simply not care and continue about their business (or run through it in an attempt to get less wet) from the front window seat at Mugs where I enjoyed a bagel pizza and a latte (free because I bought enough this summer), using their wireless Internet and feeling just simply awesome.

I hope you are having an amazingly wonderful day!!! :D (I certainly am!)