Wordpress tells me this is my 100th post <insert golf claps here.>  Here’s to hoping the next 100 are a bit more, uhh relevant than the last ones.  I’ve had a hankering for a grilled cheese for a while, but today when I pulled out our Cuisinart Panini Press, it fell through the bottom of the box and pieces of metal went flying and I decided to not take my chances on all the exposed wires in the back.  RIP, magic appliance that can make sandwiches AND pancakes.  I made one on our George Foreman instead, but went all FANCY with turkey and tomatoes and my favorite German mustard.  The mustard that is dwindling in supply because apparently someone in my family likes it as much as I do.  Fun fact: I didn’t even used to like mustard, now it’s one of my top three condiments.  Because you needed to know that.  Tomorrow is a BIG DAY in the life of Brittney: after work (which comes after waking up before dawn but before driving two hours to Iowa City) I’m meeting the parents. NPH’s parents are rolling into town to, I’m not sure what, take him out on the town for a belated birthday meal or something.  For some reason, I have extreme fear (mostly irrational, he informs me) about this meeting.  Parents generally don’t like me, especially not when I’m nervous and extra awkward and get up to pee no less than four times during a meal, making them also think I have a debilitating cocaine addiction.  What are we supposed to talk about?  What should I order?  Will his mother bore her eyes into my soul and know that occasionally I get handsy with her son?!  I will obviously let you know how this riveting mealtime exchange goes, but this camp is preparing for the worst.

Hello, world– it is I, the girl who apparently has nothing interesting to say upon her return to the States.  My internship is going fabulously,  but per the social media clause in my employee handbook I can’t divulge where it is or give lot of  details about what I do there. I’m extra loving that it’s paid, a perk that couples nicely with the fact I’m not paying rent to live at home (a fact of which my father keeps reminding me.)  I promise myself, my parents, my car, and my dear readers that I will NOT be going to Iowa City every weekend or chance I get a day off… though that’s exactly what I did after work on Saturday.  All of 713 except for NPH had gone home for the weekend, giving us the perfect opportunity to geek out and be Brittney and Neil circa fall ‘09– aka eat brats, drink beer, and watch The Departed.  We’re either the coolest or lamest couple you know, I’ll let you decide and keep the answer to yourself.  Upon returning to work on Monday I felt awful. Like I wanted to hurl all day kind of awful.  And later that night, while driving home, that’s exactly what I did.  I’ve now reached a blogging crossroads in which I could either summarize the last 24 hours as “I’m sick” OR I could go into extreme detail about the puking carnage that occurred IN MY CAR while I was at a stoplight and NO, I did not have the foresight to roll down the window or open the door. Yeah, pretty gruesome.  Anyway, apparently when you’re sick and have just dispelled the contents of your stomach onto the pile of work polos sitting in your passenger seat, you revert to early childhood and start crying and call your mom.  God bless this woman, she met me outside when I pulled up and CLEANED UP THE PUKE IN MY CAR while I just stood outside of it, crying, “It’s so GROSS!!!”  She sent me inside to peel off my clothing (which she also washed, in retrospect I owe her at least a nice card or hanging basket) and then set a trash can and a glass of 7-Up next to my dying form in my bed where I’ve been ever since.  So, while I give this woman a lot of shit in life, a giant THANK YOU goes out to T-Bone for going above and beyond her Mom duties yesterday.  While I still don’t feel 100%, the whole upchucking thing appears to have gone away after a much more spectacular encore performance around 10:30 last night.  (In case you were wondering, the ol’ boyfriend was ill last week and I completely and resolutely blame every single part of my illness on him.)

On CNN, there is currently an article about a man stabbing 29 pigs during a drunken black out.

No one asks me about Germany anymore.

Today and tomorrow are my weekend since I’m working on Friday night and Saturday.  Our family four-pack hit up the movie theater before noon so Papa K and I could see Iron Man 2 while T-Bone and the brother went to some Robin Hood snooze-fest.  Two buckets of kettle corn and over two hours of the ridiculous hotness that is Robert Downey, Jr. make for a pretty great afternoon.  The movie was actually much better than I was anticipating– better than the first, far better than most sequels.  I was also insanely jealous of the Louboutin’s both Gwenyth and Scarlett were sporting in even their most harrowing of action scenes. Our movie got out before the Men in Tights one, so Dad and I headed over to Panera to stock up on carbs for God knows what reason.  The bakery section, once enough to bring me to my knees and possibly tears, was quite frankly pathetic.  Four months in Europe has made me quite the elitest bitch when it comes to pastries.  We ended up with a baguette and loaf of sourdough (and maybe some other things, but that’s neither here nor there) for sandwiches and what not later.  To be fair, Germany is lacking in the bagels department while America seems to have it’s bases well covered with them.

When I’m not at work, I feel quite lazy.  And lonely, but that’s because any friends of decent importance are two hours away in various directions.  My ass needs to get back into motion (really, any sort of physical motion at all) because I will soon grow bed sores and become one with my mattress.  I went to the library and checked out a book (a fiction one!  That I’ve been reading for pleasure) and alternate my time with that, the Internet, and sweet sweet slumber.  My ice cream consumption has also skyrocketed exponentially, perhaps directly correlated with the outside temperature, though probably more to do with the awesome new flavors at the Korner Kone just down the road.  In retrospect, this post has basically reported to the world all of the heinous overeating I did today.

If I could scream and cry as loud as the infant I currently feel like, I would.  My sinuses are full of God-knows-what and under horrible pressure, causing the teeth on the right side of my mouth to HURT like nothing’s hurt before.  I imagine this is what growing teeth as a baby felt like– I’m in so much pain. Now that the unnecessary medical updates are out of the way…

I LOVE MY NEW JOB/INTERNSHIP.  ’Tis only my second day, but this stuff is the big leagues, baby.  It’s a little bit of everything– event planning, marketing, public relations. Apparently I became an adult at some point and have full-on events, responsibilities, projects, and deadlines without someone holding my hand the entire time.  Yesterday (after an annoyingly long commute in which I decided the only thing I hate more than traffic lights is morning radio shows) I rolled up and was not nervous.  You know I’d tell you if I was, but the feeling simply wasn’t there.  I kept waiting to get all anxiety-ridden and piss myself halfway through meeting the staff, but it never happened.  I suppose I’ll thank the whole Germany experience for this new addition of personal confidence.  Living at home is… getting better.  Someone wasn’t being very optimistic about it in the beginning, but it’s not too bad of a gig.  Knowing he’s only two hours down the road, I miss NPH possibly more than I did when we were separated by an ocean, but let’s not get into that crying jag via Skype on the public blog, mmmkay?

Yes, I realize this post was a mundane update on my less-than-blogworthy life, es tut mir leid (how many languages can YOU say “I’m sorry” in?)  Get excited for a MOVIE REVIEW tomorrow (Robert Downey, Jr. and kettle corn?  Um, yes please) and Vegas preparations because there are officially only two weeks until my 21st birthday and 16 days until my favorite, favorite, favorite (American) city.  And more importantly, In-n-Out Burger.

I’ve returned home from Iowa City one night earlier than scheduled, due to an oncoming wretched cold/ my cousin’s graduation party tomorrow.  While I of course enjoyed myself, it was an interesting glimpse into some growing pains I’m sure to encounter over the next three months.  Wednesday was my first day of, “What a lovely American visit this has been, get me back to Germany now.” Once I start my internship (MONDAY!!) my mood is sure to improve because quite frankly, I’m bored outta my gourd.  NPH’s birthday party was a rousing success– I introduced a few of the well-dressed attendees to German beer, and the cake and cupcakes were merely a memory shortly after the last bars of “Happy Birthday” were flatly sung.

Yeah, it was Funfetti. Feel free to hire me for your next party

The two-hour drive between Iowa City and home is sure to be the bane of my summer 2010 existence.  Come to think of it, so will the drive to and from my place of employment– completely on the other side of Des Moines, a journey that will often be made with the other 9-5ers trucking into the city from the suburbs.  (Ok, I’m KINDA really looking forward to being one of these under-caffeinated, overly aggressive commuters, but I feel it will quickly get old.)  Maybe I’ll become an avid player of morning radio show contests.  I’m also entertaining romantic daydreams of wearing professional office attire, then fielding many text requests from various family and friends to meet them for post-work dinner or drinks.  This glamorous dream-life I’ve created for myself is helpful during instances like today’s commencement exercises at Iowa.  The campus was overrun with seniors in their caps and gowns, parents looking horribly out of place and furtively glancing about like, “I’m in Iowa City, I could get puked on at any moment.”  Most of my friends have made several comments about how that’s going to be us in a year: Ohmygod we were just freshman yesterday/ I’m not ready/ let’s all drop out, grow beards, and start an alternative community in one of the lesser-populated Western states.  Surprisingly, I have not yet joined them in their panic, and am instead quite excited to become gainfully employed immediately post-college (because don’t you know, journalism majors are in such hot demand right now …) and start my shockingly cosmopolitan life in an equally cosmopolitan metropolis somewhere.  Oh, Sex and the City, you are so setting me up for quite the slap in the face later from the real world.

If Diet Pepsi and brownies for breakfast is wrong, I don’t want to be right… especially these homemade brownies with walnuts that NPH’s mom sent for his birthday on Monday.  His blessed 21st will be properly celebrated on Friday evening following the culmination of finals week.  The Facebook event calls for classy dress, and most of the house is headed to Goodwill this week to find the perfect fancy attire– English gentlemen’s outfits, suits, fedoras, two-tone shoes, etc.  I am way too excited to be on official birthday cake duty.

So far, being back in America has been… uneventful.  This past weekend was a blur of jet lag, unpacking, and odd amounts of cake (Mother’s Day and Kayla’s graduation party <– because my best friend is officially a college graduate weird.)  One of my 713ers commented that Germany had been kind to my girlish figure, but I can assure him that one week in Iowa City can pretty much undo whatever four months of heavy beer drinking and daily pastry eating magically didn’t.  My less than 72 hours in this wonderful land of the Hawkeyes could so far be summed up as The Care and Feeding of NPH (who, for those of you who live under a rock/ DIDN’T subscribe to my study abroad blog, somehow became Boyfriend instead of just Bestie during my time away.)  Not that the kid isn’t fully functioning on his own, but he has four finals this week and works two jobs, not to mention what do I really have else to do but make sure he’s getting three square meals a day?  Playing House is actually insanely boring, and I can only make so many pepperoni and cheese omelettes before I want to take the pan and beat him over the head with it.   Luckily I have a Mesa date with Natalie for lunch today (if the weather wanted to stop being so PMS-y by then, that’d be much appreciated) and other girl friends to keep me sane when I just can’t take anymore gratuitous junk-grabbing/ unnecessary outbursts in the throes of video game playing passion/ Sun Chip inhaling.

Speaking of, Sun Chips were on sale.  What is your favorite flavor?  Choose wisely.  There is a divide in the house (Original is not even a contender in this race– it’s between Cheddar and Peppercorn Ranch.  Does anyone even buy French Onion?  I suppose you can vote for Garden Salsa if those are your true feelings, but I’d appreciate your help in deciding the Cheddar/ Peppercorn Ranch final round.)

My 21st birthday is three weeks from yesterday.

As my time in Europe winds down and I prepare to say good-bye to my primary blogging focus for the past four months, I figured I’d restart things here with a bang in the form of a semi-major life announcement.  (For a second there I was going to make this next sentence have something to do with pregnancy, but then realized absolutely no one in my life would find that funny.)  About a month ago, a friend and I registered to run a half marathon in October!  Perhaps some of you just fell off your chairs in disbelief, others laughed out loud, and yet the majority of you who are Facebook friends with Emilee and I knew this was coming (and have been entertained by our “I’ll start my training to become a distance runner just as soon as I polish off this last case of beer” wall posts.)

In gym class, I DREADED running the timed half mile because what I was lacked in self-esteem, I made up for in body fat.  We always had to run in soccer, and around junior year my friend Savannah and I got the brilliant idea to join the cross-country team.  She made it through the season, I only went to the first informational meeting.  In sophomore year of college, I’d get into running for a week or two, but hangovers always trumped any fleeting motivation to jack up the ol’ heart rate.  So what makes you think you can run a half-marathon then, kid? Simply put, I really do like running.  Like, love running.  I’ve made it enough of a habit in the past weeks that it’s something I automatically fit into my day.  I’ve actually called it a night early a few times, knowing that I wanted to get up before class and run.  Mentally, it puts me in a very healthy place, not to mention there’s near-instant gratification from week to week in terms of noticeable improvement (distance, speed, etc.)  I’d thought about running a race for a while, NEVER a marathon, but kept going back to 13.1 miles as a challenging but do-able distance.  Impulsive ol’ me didn’t sign up automatically, but actually put some thought into this decision and read up on training plans before submitting my official registration (and checked to make sure the Hawkeyes are playing an away game that weekend.)

So, in addition to whatever riveting fodder I post in the coming months, get ready for some pre-race thoughts (that, let’s just be honest, might be better categorized as outright bitching.)  I’ve already had two dreams about it, and welcome any and all persons to get motivated, by what you might now feel is my complete loss of sanity, to sign up with me!