ciao my little hot-chicken-eating / cowboy-boot-wearing / y'all-chanting / place i called home.

and that was that. on to the next one!

"sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved.  the real milestones are less prepossessing.  they come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit, and simply never leave.  our lives are measured by these."

- susan b. anthony 

life lately.

{a visit from a high school friend (HI WILLIE!) + me drooling over his finished sketchbook}

{how i feel about the weather in nashville - 80 over the weekend, snowing when i walked out of dinner yesterday. say what?}

{calling all vanderbilt soon-to-be-grads: please get yourself to city house - an unassuming restaurant that sits between construction sites in germantown.  best dinner with the boyfriend yet}

{my sweet pup at home graduating puppy school! dad sends this picture in an email entitled: "Say hi to Dalai"}

{where i'll be next year :)}

decisions, decisions!  finally came to the conclusion that new york city is the city for me, and where i'll be for at least the next 2 years.  let's be real, i knew it all along.  but every so often, when i thought i had made up my mind, doubt started to creep in.  the morning after i thought it was FOR SURE, i get on facebook and the first thing i see on the emory mph epidemiology feed is "top 10 reasons i chose emory over columbia." and then i opened thought catalog, and the first entry i read is "moving to new york: expectations vs. reality." so i closed my laptop, my phone, and my brain, and let my decision marinate for a full 24 hours without distraction. 

but you know what, emory and thought catalog? i like the fact that new york city is huge, and there'll be a bazillion people and other grad students to meet and enjoy and connect with.  we'll share public health knowledge and debate the soda ban while trying every new food truck under the sun. we'll revel together in the fact that the square footage of our 5-person apartment (can you even call it that? maybe a hole in the wall?) amounts to less than that of our bathroom in high school.  we'll - or maybe this is just me - WISH that we had bad vision so that we could buy those horn-rimmed glasses that make you look hip.  we'll have dinner parties together because a potluck of food is a STEAL compared to that sushi take-out down the street.  and we'll wake up every morning to the sounds of the honking cars and tourists on the street and think that this is probably the only time in our lives when it can all really be appreciated.

also, thought catalog posts articles entitled "how to buy a wolf shirt," so credibility points just decreased by 34.  i can't even make this shit up. 

i've slowed down posting on here, partly because i don't feel as if i have much time, and mostly because college life isn't super conducive to this whole thing.  but because i love it so much, i know a better time will come soon. until then, sittin' in starbucks with J happy as a clam :).

"you'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips.  airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else.  you will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing, screaming invitation to believe better things."

- jamie tworkowski

restaurants & cheekwood haunts.

{a couple-filled, roomie-loving night at holland house}

{celebrating an early birthday at cheekwood}

sitting in bed and filled with tamiflu, i've finally succumbed to the sickness that is sweeping the whole freaking globe.  i realized this morning that i'm kind of still in denial - i almost forced myself to get up and go to my ceramics class (which i'm taking pass/fail, mind you), and sent an email to a few people i'm supposed to meet with for the nashville mobile market that "i just have the flu, but it's okay, i'll be there at 4:30!" they promptly sent back "um, you should go to sleep you big freak," in nicer words, of course. overachiever for the win? 

---

speaking of the nashville mobile market (and because the above pictures happened a week ago and i don't have much to say about them except that they were happy nights and happy days), i had THE CRAZIEST experience last week.  like a THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE experience. kind of like when beyonce sings at the president's inauguration, and people accuse her of lip-syncing because they can't deal with the fact that her hair was sewn on by fairies and her voice sounds like an angel. whatever.

the director of the market and i went to visit a community center that currently houses one of our market stops.  mainly because the market sits in front of the community center on a very quiet street, with little foot traffic or visibility, the stop hasn't been seeing much action.  we met up with the president of the street association, a short, little man wearing a floor-length, camel colored trench coat and glasses that i thought at first were transitions, but failed to lighten when we ventured inside.  he was awesome.

we'd been thinking of new ways to enhance this stop for a while, but had failed to think of anything that would help.  that didn't stop this guy.  he passionately spoke about the areas in the community - areas that were full of minority populations that had both limited access and knowledge to the market's services - that would benefit more from our market than the location of the current stop.  he then proceeded to drive us around to gain buy-in from the community; first stopping at the funeral home across from the new lot to ask for parking permission (where i spoke to a man who told me he had seen ELVIS perform down the street when he was 5) and then at the police precinct down the road to ensure our safety during the shift (where he walked us straight into a police gathering of 60 officers who were discussing nashville's recent robberies, plastered on a powerpoint slide for all to see).

although it may not sound too crazy, it was literally an out-of-body experience.  how did this guy have so much power in this community that he could literally walk into a badass, cop-infested meeting and high-five the lieutenant on his way in? and that they all trusted him enough to lead 3 young girls right in after him? that he knew exactly who to talk to in order to get what he needed? and that, most importantly, he was using this insane power for such good? 

he'd been described to us as a "mover and shaker," a "man who gets things done." and seeing him in action further supported my belief in the power of connection - the power of community, of strengthening bonds, of doing good with what you have. 

"it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all."

- laura ingalls wilder 

sooooo nashville.

{jackson's date, as per usual}

{birthdays all around}

{corsair artisan distillery}

{germantown cafe's delicious brunch with J + friends}

i was on my way to an appointment this week when i thought it started snowing.  i immediately rolled down the car window (okay, not immediately, because i was in a prius and i have NO IDEA who designed that car - probably aliens from the year 2053 because the window buttons are impossible to find) and stuck my hand outside, expecting a perfect snowflake to land on my palm.  that was when i realized it was hailing. sooooo nashville.

i was at the corsair distillery with some of J's friends this weekend, and a woman walked into the bar. WITH A BABY. IN A BABY SLING. sooooo nashville.

i decided to go out with J's friends on saturday night to watch his friend's boyfriend casually "play a set." the night ended on the second floor of a random bar on a quiet street in east nashville, watching a super talented artist i've never heard of who i'll probably never hear of again.  it drives me crazy that kesha is blowing up ma phone (phone), and that people with real talent are still playing in aforementioned venues. soooooo nashville.

and oh wait, i lied. that night ended at a lesbian karaoke bar. a lesbian karaoke bar that serves free hotdogs.



..... sooooo nashville.

inspiration brought to you from hillsboro village shop window (shown above):

"in order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different."

- coco chanel