BUT, being the wonderful friends they are, they left me a little prezzie to come home to….

Walking into a dark apartment at 9:30 PM after staying in The Ghost Suite all week and seeing this is absolutely horrifying.

And the absolute best feeling after missing your friends for two weeks.

Knowing that they spent all that time printing (AND going to Kinko’s), annoying PartyDog to come over and do this AND actually doing it blows my mind.

Now, I can honestly say that I thought I would be the first one to Cage one of my friends, but man they got me good.

I am beyond impressed by how thorough they were.

And I’m fairly certain I will be finding little Nic Cage’s hiding all over my apartment for the next few days.

Of course there are some I will never take down, like this one, my absolute favorite:

I mean wouldn’t you rather be in a love picture with Nic Cage than PartyDog?

It’s weird to me that I’ve friends that match my weirdness AND creepiness.  It’s also weird that when I was standing there, admiring their work, I’ve I felt so loved. Thank you Loop Looks, Linds, Katie and Emily for being the best friends a gal could ask for!

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

Tell me a good prank that’s happened between you and your friends!

I’ve never thought I would be someone who would be deathly afraid of ghosts. I mean it’s just a ghost right? HA! Was I wrong.

I had the pleasure of being upgraded with my work love to a suite at the hotel we were staying in during the conference. Now, this wasn’t just any suite, this was a presidential one- 2,000 square feet, two separate bedrooms with two separate spa bathrooms, a full living room, dining room and kitchen, and a patio. When we walked into our room we couldn’t believe our luck. We spent the first ten minutes literally doing this around the entire suite:

The suite was decorated with all sorts of antiques and had a very weird feeling to it. We thought it was cute that there was a plaque on the door naming the room. We even took a picture with it.

Being the idiots we are, we never thought to question just why it was called the ghost suite. Luckily someone thought it was weird and did some googling….

 ”A few months after the Dohertys moved into the apartment (1930), their maid died in the night. A short time later, the Doherty’s daughter, Helen, also died in the suite. The Dohertys moved out, and the apartment remained unoccupied for almost 50 years The apartment was renovated into a hotel suite. But guests and hotel staff began to tell stories of faint voices, cold breezes, doors slamming shut and opening of their own accord, and televisions and lights turning on and off on their own. Guests in adjoining suites would complain of noises coming from the closed and empty Suite 870. Other occupants say furniture would be found out of place, and hotel staff said their housekeeping carts would move on their own.”

OMG. We thought it was pretty cool actually. Until it was time to sleep.

I can honestly say we slept with almost all the lights on in the place. I even went as far as keeping the TV on low the entire time as well (I’m very scared of the dark in general so the idea of being in the dark with a ghost seriously freaked me out).  The first night I awoke at 3:53. I sat up in my bed, turned on the lights and held onto my phone watching the minutes go by thinking, come on 4:01 please come fast. When 4:00 hit, my heart stopped…. Naturally nothing happened.

The entire time we were there I think I got a total of 4 hours of sleep. Any noise freaked me out. On the final night I did hear something really bizarre I cant really explain. It was freaky.

I never really thought I believed in ghosts but i guess I do…

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

Any experiences with ghosts??

With an invitation like that, how could a girl refuse? And since none of my friends were around to run it with me, I forced Max into running it.  After explaining this to Art, I got another beautiful email from him:

Needless to say, I knew I was going to have a blast at this race.  And don’t worry, Max was super unhappy that he would have to pick-up his packet under the name PartyDog.  I love my life.

On Saturday morning, we drove out to the start and only got lost about 40 times.  Entirely my fault of course-but partially Max’s for even attempting to put me in charge of navigating us to get there. If you know me, that’s about the worst idea someone can have.  We started the race a few minutes late but the beauty of Muddy Monk races are that it doesn’t matter when you start, just get your butt on the trail and run. So we did just that.

When we lived back home, Max and I ran a few races together but since moving out to Chicago it has yet to happen.  I almost forgot why I don’t enjoy running races with PartyDog as much as my friends, but it all came back to me the second we got on the trail.

That is all I saw the entire race- Max’s back.  You see, Max thinks that running with someone means running IN FRONT of someone- the entire time.  Most of the race I spent looking for race photographers and yelling at Max to actually run with me for 2 seconds.  To which his reply would be I AM. And my reply to that being NO YOU’RE NOT.  Lovebirds we truly are.

After being pissed at Max for about a mile, I spotted the race photographers. Game on. Until I saw that the photographers were none other then my friendies Sarah and Meghan! I can’t even being to describe how excited I was to see them on the course AND the that they were the ones taking pictures!  After a lot of high-pitched screaming from the three  of us, I went back to yelling at Max.  Don’t worry though, they caught my excitement of seeing them on camera:

The course was interesting. It was very traily if that makes sense (it doesn’t) ?  It was way different than any other Muddy Monk race I’ve ever run. We went out and back, under trees, through some kind of secret garden and through  so much mud. The part I loved best was that the out and back was out and back to Meghan and Sarah! Naturally more screaming happened and more pictures. I love how unimpressed Max is by my antics in all these pictures. I mean the second I spotted my friends, I got super excited:

And continued to scream and wave my 60 feet arms in the air:

Max clearly did not listen when I told him at the start of the race that our main concern was taking great race pictures.

I mean the guy doesn’t even remotely act like he’s with me. Which is fine, who needs him anyway?

The last .5 mile or so, we were straight up wandering through the woods. It was SO much fun and we were walking so I even had a chance to stop and snap a picture even though Max was STILL trying to run as far away from me as he possibly could. I spy with my little eye PartyDog in the woods…

After taking this picture I face planted.  Not only did I face plant, but I somehow managed to slide about a foot in the mud.  Being the wonderful boyfriend he is, PartyDog didn’t even notice because he was so far ahead of me. Naturally I stayed on the ground for a minute and laughed hysterically until I realized people were standing behind me waiting to pass so I got up and resumed to yelling at Max to wait up for me.

We finally finished, very muddy.

And somehow still together.

Man, I love Muddy Monk races.  Thanks to Art and the volunteers for a SUPER FUN morning! OH! I almost forgot to mention I got my first ever race medal!!

Seems fitting my first race medal would be from a Muddy Monk race.

Oh and one more thing:

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

• bathroom stall with mean stuff about a girl (That’s nice.)
  
• he learns a lot with television (Who does?)
• how do you tell someone their pants are see through (You just do…)
• lenny kravitz smile (Ha! This made me laugh.)
• zach galifianakis other days i am a strong two (I honestly have NO idea about this one.)

As always I have a weird gif for you:

Also if you have yet to see THIS please visit it- SO funny.

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

Weekend plans??

I’m running Muddy Monk’s I Heart Momma 5K with PartyDog! You know I’m siked for that!

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

We went to RPM and stuffed our faces.

We also of course ate some Rick Bayless, and by some, I mean a lot.

We did a little shopping and took pictures.  In case you couldn’t tell, Alex is about 2 feet tall and I’m approximately 8 feet tall so trying on 8 inch heels was fun for us. Even with ridiculous heels on, the girl couldn’t match my gigantic self.

We did manage to take a few nice pictures while we were walking along Navy Pier.

My mother loves when we take pictures like these.

And by love, I mean hate which is partially the reason why we only take horrible pictures.

We love my mother, so so much and because we do, we did make an effort to take one nice picture for her.

Literally just that one.

It’s comforting to have a friend that you’ve been friends with for pretty much your entire life because you find that some things just never change despite how old you get.  Ten years later, I’m still wearing chucks on a daily basis and Alex is still wearing cutie patootie girlie shoes.

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

Tell me something about you that hasn’t changed as you’ve grown older!

Now when I say we spent some much needed time together that pretty much includes stuffing out faces with lots of Rick Bayless food and taking an obnoxious amount of pictures around the city.  Which turned into an all day affair of finding various places to take peekaboo pictures in downtown Chicago. It all started with this picture:

Alex being the good friend she is thought I was hilarious and egged me on. but I am hilarious so it’s ok.

So this turned into our entire afternoon:

I wish I could say I’m joking but I’m not.

I’m fairly certain my mouth touched a few things while I was peekabooing.

It was gross, but clearly worth it.

We quickly found out that Chicago is full of perfect peekaboo spots.

Which is great because it never got old.

It’s nice to have a friend that matches my weirdness level.

And encourages me to be an even bigger idiot than I already am.

That’s what friends are for right?

It’s probably better she lives in Ohio and I live in Chicago.

It would just be too much weirdness in one place and God only knows how much weirder we could possibly become should we see each other regularly again.

I miss her already!

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

What’s the last weird thing you did with one of your friends?!

• crying so much (I got a number of searches for this one.)
• “baby bump” -middleton (I honestly have no idea how this person ended up on my blog, I’ve never talked about either.)
• jealousy off ha (Huh?)
• i hate marathon training (I don’t blame you.)
• me at the gym funny pictures (Why would I have funny pictures of YOU at the gym?)
• paparazzi ceasar salad dressing (???)

Lord, the people who end up on my blog are freaks. Makes sense though, especially after I share these gifswith you:

I can’t show you just one…

There are so many of these I want to share with you, but I’ll just do one more…

Do your eyes hurt?

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

Weekend plans?!

And of course gives me the opportunity to focus on taking fantastic race photos.  Weirdly enough, I’ve gotten a request or two to do a HOW-TO on taking race pictures…so bear with me as we look at entirely too many pictures of me.

I can honestly say I scope out the race photographers (and other random picture takers along the course) and start posing THE SECOND I see them.  It’s a lengthy process but it works every time.  Let me know you-the 5K I ran this weekend shows it step by step.

Step 1: Find the photographer immediately. I mean, this is your top priority during the race…

Step 2: Start smiling/posing the second you spot the camera because you never know which picture will turn out the best:

Step 3: Once you get close enough to the camera, pic a pose, and go all out. Remember you’re in this for yourself, not your friends so if you ruin their race pictures it’s just part of the process….(and if you have ridiculously long limbs like I do, it will most likely happen).

Step 4: You might get caught in a picture even after you take a winning photo, so just KEEP smiling until you completely pass the camera:

I consider myself somewhat of a pro when it comes to taking great race pics by now. I’ve had some pretty great ones, this being my favorite:

In my opinion, it’s good to have a signature pose or two as it makes it easier to spot yourself when you’re browsing through 100′s or race pictures.

But it never hurts to have a back-up pose because you’ve got to keep your pictures looking fresh:

It also never hurts to have a race pic partner in crime.

And by that I mean someone who also takes race pictures as seriously as you do. Competition is good.

But if all else fails and you still find yourself unable to take a great race picture, always go for looking as ridiculous as possible:

Oh and don’t forget the photographers at the end of the actual race. They love when random runners come up and demand their picture be taken. Trust me.

And there you have it!

Do you feel as nauseous as I do from looking at so many pictures of me?

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

I seriously cannot stop laughing at this dog.  The caption for the photo when I found it was “My dog is not very good at hide and seek.”

I’m throwing this picture in just to make you feel weird:

This kid who wrapped himself in a rug at a restaurant and he got stuck.  And that his parents didn’t help him out.

Need some inspiration?

Another kid being a brat at a restaurant:

This in general:

Who didn’t want to dress like this when they were little?

I love that this made it into a newspaper:

This kid who apparently chased people around like this in Europe while studying abroad:

And I’ve been meaning to post this gif since I found it about a month ago… I don’t even like cats and this cracks me up every single time I watch it:

Wait, I need to show you some Nic Cage obvi:

Why hasn’t BuzzFeed offered me a job yet?

That’s all the nonsense I have for now!

Your turn!