#24- Donate Blood

Recently, our family has had two family friends diagnosed with leukemia. Once again, an event in my life gave me a kick in the butt to cross another item off my list. Donate Blood.

The Blood Mobile happened to be outside of our Church after mass so it was extremely convenient. I signed up and loaded onto the bus...


After answering a million and one questions, they laid me out on the bed and found a vein. They suprisingly took more blood than I thought, more than a pint!

After laying there and giving the blood, I was finished! SO easy and the needle didn't even hurt.. that badly. :)

I was fortunate enough to meet an amazing woman on the bus. She had worked for the Red Cross for 32 years and this was her 72nd time donating blood. She asked me why I was donating and I was shocked by her question. She told me that people always have a reason that they start to give blood. I told her my reason was for my dear friend who was just diagnosed with leukemia. She told me that her reason was because her sorority house mother was going to have heart surgery over 30 years ago and she has been donating ever since.

I found what she told me amazing. It really did take this list and my friend's diagnosis to get me to donate. It is so easy and so beneficial to society that we shouldn't NEED a reason.

So I urge you all to go donate. It takes 10 minutes and literally saves lives.

Thank you all to everyone who donates and those who work for the Red Cross! I plan to be a lifer with this one ;)

Donating Blood Tomorrow!

Things have been crazy back here in Virginia and I apologize for being neglectful. Ever since my mom got sick in the summer all of us have taken on more responsibility at home and I was in charge of Christmas shopping, cooking and wrapping. But now that Christmas has passed it is on to the next task!

I am lucky to have a supportive family that will be going with me to donate blood tomorrow! If anyone would like to join us we will be donating blood at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in the name of Alex Nieves, a family friend who just recently was diagnosed with leukemia.

If anyone can go, please mention that you would like to donate in Alex's name. Giving blood is one of the easiest things to do and means life or death for some people! Though I hate needles, this should be an easy one :)

Exam Week

I am horrible. It is exam week and I am really feeling the 7 classes =( I will hopefully get a ton of items crossed off over Christmas Break! Heading home to Virginia on Monday and then to Atlantic City with some girlfriends for my birthday!

In the meantime, here is the trailer for Black Swan which looks absolutely fabulous.

#6- Bake cookies for my neighbors

When I moved back down to Florida, almost all of my friends had either graduated or were already in leases so I moved in with two random guys. While I have been lucky that they aren't crazy, I wouldn't recommend doing so.

Next door to us, we have another group of three guys who go to Flagler as well. The boys are always floating between the two apartments. The other night I was feeling a bit on the Betty Crocker side and decided to bake these boys some cookies and knock something off the list :)



Also, Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone! I have so much to be thankful for and am so glad I was able to spend this wonderful holiday with my awesome family!

A Good Story

Alright, we have had some debate about whether this would count for #60-Be in a Newspaper.

For those of you who don't know, I am a die-hard Redskins fan, through and through. As many of you probably know, my beloved Redskin's took a horrible, and very national, beating on Monday Night Football from the team I hate most in the league, the Eagles.

Being at school in Florida, I unfortunately am not surrounded by Skins fans like I am back home, so there is a group of us that meet to watch the games, smack talk the other team’s fans and have a few beers.

Monday night's game started off horrible from the first play. Vick, the Eagles Quarterback, through a down-the-field pass for a touchdown. Great. First play.

The first quarter went on and we were down 21-0. Eagle’s fans are the worst fans in the league. They are rude, obnoxious and just awful. There happened to be a few in the bar that were exemplifying some of these qualities. My friend Austin had the great idea to send him a note (see below) and a beer.

Along with this note, we sent an empty glass. Harmless joke, but so hilarious.

I took a picture of the note and posted it on my Twitter. Thanks to my friend Kader, the DC Sports Bog, a sports blog run by the Washington Post, received word of our shenanigans and posted it the following day. The DC Sports Bog

While we had great debate on whether this counted as being in a newspaper, I have come to the conclusion that it does not. Technology is amazing and we rely for most of our news from the internet, but I want something in print. Something I know cannot be deleted once distributed. So I will continue to try for #60!

Another interesting thing is how crazy that I am here in Florida and something that was done here would be published in DC.. the next day. Technology is pretty damn good.

#43- Take a Photography Class

I signed up for my last semester at Flagler last week. Bitter sweet but just one semester is between me and graduation! There is only two more classes I have to take for my Business major so I get to take tons of fun electives to take up my time.

I signed up for some political science courses, Intro to US Law, Local and State Government and US Politics. But I remembered one item on my list, Take a Photography Class. I went to the registrar to see if I could sign up. They told me I wasn't allowed in the class because I wasn't an Art minor.

There had to be a loop hole. I talked to the teacher and he waived me! YES! Photography I here I come! Once I start the class next semester I will post my pictures!

SO excited!

#73- Phonebank for a candidate in Florida

The past year of my life has been consumed with politics, no complaints because I love it, so it is not a shock that I had to put something dealing with politics on my list!

I have never really participated in politics outside of Virginia, so I thought it would be cool to check out the Florida political scene! I went down to the St. John's Republican Committee (which is nothing like the FCRC, nothing on us) and signed up for their mailing list and to start phone banking.

It was weird to be on the volunteer side rather than the operative side, but it was kind of nice not stressing about numbers and who was there or not.

Due to schoool work, I had to bring home m phone list and call from my cell phone. Overall, I have got to say that people were much nicer on the phones here! Maybe because it's an older crowd but everyone seemed to be quite pleasant... even if it was on Election Day.

Another one off the list!