July Highlights:

• I graduated from the best MFA program in the universe.
• My last residency was incredible. I loved meeting the incredible incoming class. I loved spending time with some of my mentors. I loved teaching my seminar and giving my reading. I loved it all.
• I am very happy with my graduation speech. It went so smoothly and I think I did a good job of involving the whole class in my speech. I’ve been toying with posting it here, but I’m not sure if I should.
• Wolverine’s birthday party was a blast. The weather held out all day, which meant no rain until the party was over! Our water slide also worked the entire time. Mr. O put a lot of hard work into patching the holes on the slide, and the kids loved playing on the slide.
• Announcing Spry Literary Journal. (Ha, I didn’t quite announce it yet, but the big announcement should come tomorrow!)
• I’m doing a great job keeping up with my 365 photo project. As of today, I am on day 179.

Stinky July Moments:

• My dad had a heart attack while I was away at school which was very scary. Because of this he and my mother couldn’t come to my graduation. I’m very lucky to have a great boyfriend who videotaped the whole thing so that they could watch me graduate from the comfort of their living room!
• Everything happened at once. Between school, work, the literary journal, another editing project I’m involved in and my personal life… everything happened this month. Oh, well. All good stuff.
• Running into people I’d rather not see.

Other Mentionable Moments:

• My fantastic friend gave birth to a healthy little baby girl. Welcome to the world Isabella.
• Wolverine, my dad, Lauren, Kerri, Linsey and both of my grandparents all celebrated birthdays. Those same grandparents also celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.

I’m looking forward to____ in August:
August should be busy! Mr. O, Wolverine and I will be road-tripping down to DC and then heading to Virginia to visit some great friends and their new baby girl. We are also hoping to go camping this month. We’re going to a carnival and my brother’s annual cookout (which I’ve missed the past two years). August 15th will be the first day my literary journal will be accepting submissions.

Overall Thoughts:
July was incredible. I’m so happy and proud of the fact that I graduated from my MFA program. At the same time though, I will miss it terribly. I’m so grateful that my dad is okay and I hope his healing process is smooth. I’m glad that Wolverine loved his actual birthday and his birthday party. I’m tired, but happy.

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Want to know more about my experiences in 2012? Check out the previous months: January and February and March and April and May and June

March Highlights:

• Vacation! Mr. O, Wolverine and I went to New Hampshire for a long weekend. I love vacations.
• The Emerson’s came up from GA for a week, and Mr. O finally got to meet the Mr. and Mrs. I wish I could have spent some time with Toddler Emerson seeing as how it has been over a year since I’ve seen him, but I can’t complain. It was amazing to see my friends. I love them so much.
• Actually writing new material for my thesis. Not only that, but I’m pretty excited to find new uses for old material which I wasn’t planning on including. Even if the essay doesn’t appear in its original form, paragraphs have been brought to life in new essays.
• My eye doctor is extremely pleased with my healing after the Lasik surgery last month. I’m pretty pleased with it too.
• My friend Doodles (not her real name) had her baby! A healthy little baby girl was born on 3/22/12.
• I’m actually keeping up with my 365 photo project. As of today, I am on day 57.
• I went to the Blog Better Boston Conference at the Google offices and FINALLY met my blogger friend Kate. I also met new friends like Sara and Lindsay and Germana.

Stinky March Moments:

• My boss’s husband passed away…and her dog too. Her husband was young and healthy and loved and he died too quickly. I was incredibly moved by his death, and wish there was something I could do to change the past few months in her life. I can’t. Then her dog died. This sucks.
• A few other acquaintances–family friends–passed away.
• I got a vicious migraine at the beginning of the month. I haven’t had a bad one like that in quite some time, so it was very scary.
• This is my thesis semester. Boo. It is a lot of work. (I’m thinking this might be here every month until I graduate).
• I had to get an old filling fixed. I like my dentist, but I don’t love dental procedures. Actually, I had a whole bunch of doctor appointments. Same goes for them. I like my doctors, but I’d rather spend my time elsewhere.

Other Mentionable Moments:

• March 12 made one year since I was hit by a drunk driver. I’ll be honest. I was happy to make it home unscathed that day. I’m proud to admit no one under the influence has driven into me this year (so far- fingers crossed.
• My god-daughter/niece turned two years old this month.
• My wonderful friends Ashley, Michaela, Jessica, Jim, Gail, Mr. O’s mom and three of our friend’s children also had birthdays. This month was full of birthday parties and baby showers.
• Mr. O did my taxes for me. I mailed them in, and then they mailed me a refund! Woot Woot.
• Wolverine built a pretty fancy Leprechaun trap. We actually thought it worked and we caught a leprechaun, but when we opened up the trap door, we realized the leprechaun was too smart for us. He somehow stole all the gold and escaped! We will get you next year, Lucky!
• I finally got a massage that Mr. O’s family bought me as part of my birthday present (in September). That was nice.

I’m looking forward to____ in April:

• Mr. O, Wolverine and I are going to the Museum of Science in Boston. I’ve wanted to go for a very long time now. It even found its way onto my current 101 in 1001 goals list.
• Another one of my pregnant friends is due to deliver in April… on my brother’s birthday actually. There are a lot of birthdays coming in April.
• I will be reviewing my first book for TLC book tours. Look for it at the end of the month.
• Finishing my thesis. Or at least being SOOOOO CLOSE to being finished. It needs to get approved during the month of May, so I pretty much need to be 100% done editing my creative writing and my critical introduction before I turn it in for approval. I can do this (fingers crossed).

Overall Thoughts:

Like February, March was just an okay month. I felt pretty overwhelmed all month, but I survived. I am so thankful that winter is over. I love Spring and I look forward to the days getting longer and the temperature getting warmer. I’m actually so done with this month. It’s not like I hated February and March, I just didn’t enjoy them. I loved cuddling on the couch with Mr. O, building the leprechaun trap with Wolverine, going to the hospital to meet and hold (I love holding newborns!) Doodle’s new baby and the Blog Better Boston Conference. It’s not like there weren’t good moments. I’m just glad the month is finished. I’m ready for April.

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Want to know more about my year? Check out the previous months: January and February

So… today is the day.

I’ve been thinking all week about what I would write in this post. My thoughts have been very preoccupied.

I got my first pair of glasses–ones I desperately wanted–  in seventh grade. They were gold frames. The eye pieces were lined in a teal green, and the end pieces were pink (I’ll take a photo and post on here, because I think I still have them). I thought I was special because I needed glasses. This was about 15 years ago.

I’ve spend the last 15 years of my life alternating between contacts and glasses. I’ve had frames of all different shapes and sizes. I like glasses sometimes, especially fun ones like the Drew Carey frames, etc.

I like them as an accessory. I don’t like them as a necessity.

I don’t like having to wake up and put them on before I can see the time on my clock which is just a few feet away from me in the morning. I don’t like laying down and tryign to watch the television, but needing to adjust my glasses every time I move. I don’t like the fact that I absolutely 100% rely on glasses to drive. I don’t like not being able to see in the shower or while I’m swimming. I especially don’t like the fact that I can’t wear sunglasses when I have my glasses on.

I did well with contacts for a while. I just hate having to take them out and put them in every single day. Plus, even with them, there are still times I can’t see, like I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I can’t wear them to bed, and therefore I can’t see when I first wake up. I can’t wear them in the shower. I can’t wear them when I swim. I seem to lose contacts quite frequently. Sometimes I lose them when putting them in or taking them out. Sometimes I simply can’t find the case.

It’s been 15 years since I first got- and desperately wanted- glasses. 15 years and who knows how much money spent toward my vision. 15 years being completely reliant on something to help me do the most basic things in my life.

Today that will (hopefully) all change. Today I am getting LASIK eye surgery. Today I will hopefully be able to see on my own.

I’m very positive about this, but I’m also very anxious. What if something goes wrong? What if something goes horribly, horribly wrong? How will I write in my blog? How will I write for school? How will I work? How will I drive? How will I live my life? Is today the last day I’ll ever see Mr. O and Wolverine’s faces? Will I never see my friends and family again?

In 2008, I went to Dialogue in the Dark in Atlanta, GA. It was one of the most incredible experiences in my life. I was blinded and led through an obstacle-like course of similar life experiences so that I could see what it was like to be blind. It was amazing. I can’t articulate my experience, but it was truly incredible, and I know that no matter what, if anything happened to me, I would be absolutely fine.

It’s just…well….

I’m just scared.

COLLEEN!

I used Math Goodie’s Custom Random Number Generator to pick a winner. We only had 13 entries (whomp, whomp, whomp: why don’t people like free things anymore?), so it gave everyone a GREAT chance to win.

Here is my fancy little sheet as to how I numbered each entry:

Here is the website before I clicked enter (I photographed everything with my iPhone):

Here is the number generated (#6):

And here is Colleen’s tweet which made her a winner:

Yahoo. I sent you an email Colleen with all the information. Thanks for entering everyone. I’m going to try to make sure I have one giveaway a month (if possible) on the blog. Make sure to add me to your readers and keep an eye on the site for January’s giveaway!

Days Until 2012: via

Week #4 was my favorite week of cooking, and it was also Mr. O’s favorite meal. I made “Shrimp Paesano” by following the recipe from this wonderful site. There isn’t too much that I altered with the recipe. To start, I used dried parsley because I forgot to pick up fresh parsley from the store. In my opinion this made absolutely no difference. I also did NOT need 2 full cups of flour. I threw quite a bit of flour out at the end. I also have a tendency to add things to recipes, so I added onions and some orange sweet peppers. Which I thought added a lot to the recipe.

So the first step is to let the shrimp soak in the half & half for 30 minutes. Mr. O was so kind to get this started for me before I got there, so I only had to wait maybe ten minutes before I started cooking. I took this time to prepare the rest of the stuff that I needed.

After that I moved on to steps #3 &4 and I personally found that I “dusted” the shrimp with a medium amount of flour. To me, dusting means like minimally powder something, but I lightly covered the whole shrimp. Hey, it worked for me. The ones that were less covered than the others lost a lot of the coating, and honestly didn’t taste that good.

So I somehow forgot to take pictures while making the sauce. There isn’t much to comment that you won’t learn on the recipe. The only note that I have is that I found myself putting more and more half & half in the sauce to thicken it up and make it more creamy. It was too buttery. When I make this recipe again, I will probably use less butter next time around, and make more sauce.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter my very first giveaway on Reinventing Erin for a $25 gift card to Overnight Prints!. You do not want to miss it. Click here to find out all the ways you can enter. TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO ENTER!!!!!

Days until 2012:

Today is a big day on my blog! It is my very first giveaway! How excited are you? I’m pretty darn excited.

 I’ve been searching for cheap business cards for quite some time now. A year or two ago I purchased lovely cards for a networking event I was attending. They were beautifully designed but had minimal information, because I wanted them to still be applicable for all areas of my life. I’ve done a lot of event planning and floral design; I’m also a freelance writer, so instead of purchasing two sets, I figured I would just get one all-encompassing unspecific card. This plan worked for the most part. However, I got a lot of “Do you have a webpage with any of your designs?” or “where are you located?” (Note: I am still not “located” anywhere, but if someone wants to pay the rent for me to have a cute little boutique-like office, I am GAME). Plus, now that I am writing more often, I tend to hand my card out more often. So recently I’ve decided to purchase two sets of cards. I’m sure they will still be slightly nondescript, but they will hopefully seem more professional.

Here is my problem: I’m poor. I’m trying to buy a house, and I’ve recently found out how much my monthly repayment will be on my student loans (BARF!). Buying two sets of fantastically designed business cards really isn’t in the budget. I have champagne taste on a beer budget.

Cue the most awesome website ever! Overnight Prints! They have cheap business cards that are über professional and gorgeously designed. Cheap business cards! What could be better? (Hint: Not very much) Oh, and they are having a deal right now where you can buy 500 business cards for $15.45. I challenge you to find 500 business cards for that price that are printed on quality stock. Oh, and you can choose to gloss one or both sides for FREE! (Free is one of my favorite words.) There are so many great things about this company. It is called Overnight Prints because you can literally design something (by 8pm) and get it in the mail the VERY next day if you need to. Oh, and they have mini-business cards too, which are the type I have (and am running out of) right now. I get SO MANY COMPLIMENTS on these cards. They stand out so much more because people expect all business cards to look the same, and mine don’t. Plus, did I mention they are inexpensive?

What does this mean for you? Well, you can win a $25 gift card to use at Overnight Prints! Yes, you’ve read that correctly. Oh, and no, you do not need to purchase cheap business cards with this gift card. You can get whatever you’d like! I think it is the perfect time of the year to have a giveaway, because the winner will have the option of using the card to buy holiday gifts for other people or they can simply spoil themselves! Awesome, isn’t it? I do have ideas though if you’re thinking of using it on gifts. You can make a 2012 calendar or personalized stationary. Are you planning a wedding? You can make magnet save-the-dates to send to your guests. Have a business? There are lots of marketing materials you can customize.

Oh, most important part (duh)! Here is how you can win this great prize:

1) Mandatory: Leave a comment ON THIS POST ONLY telling me what you think you’d buy if you won. This will enter you in the giveaway.
2) For an extra entry, include a link to this post on your blog, then leave another comment ON THIS POST ONLY with the link to your post.
3) For a third entry you can share this link on your Facebook page (you’re going to have to leave another comment ON THIS POST ONLY letting me know you did)
4) And finally, for a fourth chance, tweet about the giveaway. If you tweet, make sure to include my handle (@reinventingerin).

The contest begins immediately, and you have until Thursday evening at 11:59pm EST to enter. So what’s that, like 5 whole days? Anyway, I will pick and announce a winner sometime before 5:00pm on Friday (I’m hoping to do it in the morning though). So you now officially have five days and four possible chances to win, folks. Get moving!