Archive for the 'friends' Category

This is the last day of our acquaintance, 25

Published
by
ashley
on January 6, 2009
in family, friends, i am ridiculous, life, marques, television, waylon and work
. 4 Comments

It’s 12:17 a.m., which means that today is officially the last day I can call myself 25 years old.

And in 24 hours, I’ll be 26.

26 is nothing.

My boyfriend is just two years from 30.  He’s the one who should be concerned.

I always tell myself every year that this is going to be the year when I grow up, when I stop playing so many video games and start contributing to a 401k.  Last year, I resolved to learn to like wine and to start appreciating mushrooms.  Still hasn’t kicked in.  Though I did try.  I still have hope for the wine, but definitely not the mushrooms.  Blech.

I’m also constantly concerned that this is going to be the year where I develop a severe food allergy, like to peanuts or to shellfish and I will have to be one of those people who carries an epi-pen around with them.  I am deathly afraid of developing a food allergy only because I am quite irresponsible and I realize that I will not be the kind of person who asks a restaurant to tell me the type of oil my food was prepared in (especially considering that we eat at a lot of ethnic restaurants where English is not the first language).

You hear stories all the time about some unsuspecting girl who dips a spoon into peanut butter, ready to savor the peanut butter goodness and when she brings the spoon to her mouth, her throat closes up and she dies.  And always, the friends and family attend the funeral and everybody commiserates - “She always enjoyed those peanut butter cookies from Subway” or “She loved dipping a spoonful of peanut butter into a bag of chocolate chips” and nobody knows how this allergy formed so quickly.

One of my resolutions for 2009 is not to cut my hair.  I can handle that, I think, because I want to make sure that my hair is long enough to curl or put up or whatever Lorrie wants us to do for her wedding in June.  But secretly, it is also because I am literally dying to have hair like this girl:

(sidenote:  Someone please hack into our Netflix queue and stop us from receiving British sci-fi shows)

By the end of 2009, by the beginning of my 27th year, hopefully my hair will be similar to that hair.  Fingers crossed.

I realize that none of us knows how many years we have in our lifetimes.  I am grateful that I’ve made it to 25 years and 364 days old.  I hope that when I’m 26, lots of things will happen.  I hope I become a better baker, and I hope my hair naturally grows into Gwen Cooper’s hair.  I hope that Marques and I will stay together for another year (really, no other man would put with my constant making-up-songs and burned rice and crinkle nose, not to mention my frequent pop-culture references) and I hope that we are both healthy and happy.  I hope that I do eventually get a new pair of Chuck Taylors as I am tired of walking around with wet socks in the rain.  I hope that I go on vacation this year to a warm and sunny beach with lots of mini-golf and spicy shrimp (though I do not hope I develop the aforementioned shellfish allergy).

On my last day of being 25, I will go into work, and we will publish a newspaper.  I will eat leftover rice for lunch with an orange and maybe some yogurt.  I will buy myself a green tea lemonade or maybe a salted caramel hot chocolate if it snows.  I will come home late to hugs and kisses from my boyfriend, and I will make us a big pot of turkey chili to ward off the cold.  I will maybe hit the treadmill, though it is doubtful because we’re receiving season 4 of Battlestar Galactica tomorrow (one thing that happened while I was 25 - my nerd quotient tripled.  I am the biggest geek in the world) and I’m sure that we’ll want to spend at least 2 hours watching it, curled up with Waylon.  And at midnight, I’ll be 26 (though not officially, that happens at 4:13 in the morning) and when I wake up, it’s more of the same.

I love my birthday.  I love my family.  I love my boyfriend.  I love my cat.  I love my coworkers.  I love my job.  I love my friends.  What it all boils down is that I am thankful that the year of me being 25 has passed and I still love all of these things.

(Now it’s 12:42 a.m. and I am that much closer to not being 25 anymore!

A list of things that happened to me while I was gone

Published
by
ashley
on December 2, 2008
in baking, family, friends and i am ridiculous
. 3 Comments

1. I fully expected to gain a bit of weight by going home, considering the fact that I ate gravy a lot and my left arm’s weight of mashed potatoes.  Also, for dessert, I baked a Paula Deen gooey pumpkin cake that called for not one, but two sticks of butter.  And I ate like three pieces of that.

So I get home on Sunday night after hours of being stuck in traffic and weigh myself and lo and behold, I’m up SEVEN POUNDS (no, this is not a shameless plug for the new Will Smith movie).  Seven. Pounds.  I died inside.  Is that even physically possible to gain seven pounds in two days?  I know I ate a lot of Little Debbie snack cakes (my weakness for oatmeal cream pies, it is astounding) but I don’t recall eating seven pounds worth.

Thankfully, the next morning, I weighed myself and my weight was back to normal.  Either I had a baby overnight that I didn’t remember or I was hoarding a lot of water in my system.  Either way, I’m thankful that my weakness for gas station food and drinks did not contribute.

2.  I got to see my friends on Saturday night, which was great fun.  We played Monopoly, which is Lorrie’s favorite game to play.  She is all the time trying to get us to play Monopoly and Taboo.  Marques dominated, which was pure luck.  I was out of the game second.  My Monopoly strategy is to buy up the orange and red corner and build it up, and I have a strong fondness for Reading Railroad because I like to read.  Jasmine likes to buy the ghetto purples and build hotels on them.  Lorrie’s fiancee Josh… I don’t know what his strategy was.  Possibly to just buy everything he can.  At one point, Josh and I were down to $35.  We suck.

3.  Last night, while grocery shopping, I came upon a giant stack of marked-down frozen turkeys.  I looked at the price ($5.50) and the former price ($45).  Good Deal Syndrome immediately kicked in.  I have this problem where I cannot resist buying something if I feel like I’m getting a Good Deal out of it.  Buying a twenty-pound turkey for 1/9th of the price is a Good Deal.  I’ve never cooked a turkey in my life, but by goodness, I have a twenty-pound turkey sitting at the bottom of my refrigerator thawing out right now.  I have plans to cook my very first turkey ever on Saturday.  Marques is apprehensive, but if I screw it up, I mean, I’m only out 5 dollars.  You can’t even go see a movie for 5 bucks anymore, but I can damn well buy a twenty-pound turkey.  Pictures and leftovers forthcoming.

4.  I’ve not yet quite gotten into the Christmas spirit yet, but I did buy my first Christmas presents last night - both for my mom.  My mom has gotten it into her head that she needs, wants, has-to-have an iPod Touch this year, even though we had all agreed this Christmas was going to be a low-key, non-expensive Christmas.  This always happens, too - every year we say, “Oh, don’t buy a lot of presents, let’s save money, blah blah” and then what happens on Christmas morning?  We have so many presents under the tree that it’s obscene.  I’m going to make a lot of my gifts this year, especially for my friends.  And for the record, I did NOT buy my mom the ipod touch she wants so much, which makes me feel a little bit like a very bad daughter.

5.  And I did not participate in this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, although I’m sure you’ve seen them all over the internet (it was a caramel cake with caramelized butter frosting).  I had every intention of participating, but when I got to my grandma’s on Thanksgiving day, I just didn’t have it in me to cook in front of my family.  There are certain things I feel weird about doing in front of my family - most grown-up things like cooking and baking and paying bills and cleaning.  Everytime I do something of that nature, it’s like I get a pat on the head.  Like “Good job, Ashley, look at you all grown up” and it just drives me crazy.  For that reason, when I’m home, I regress to the age of 18 and tend to look surly and play video games for much of the time.

Wish me luck on my turkey-cooking.

Things that I am thankful for, in the spirit of the holiday

Published
by
ashley
on November 25, 2008
in cooking, family, friends, i am ridiculous, life, marques and work
. 4 Comments

1.  I am thankful every single day that I have all of my fingers, all of my toes, both of my arms and both of my legs.  I realize this is a silly thing to be thankful for, but I am lucky to have all of these extremities (especially since I hate wearing gloves).  My grandfather lost two of his toes in an accident when I was very young and I can remember staring at the shiny scar tissue, both awed and repulsed at the same time.  I am also a pretty independent person, so I would be quite unhappy having Marques open my peanut butter jar for the rest of my life.  So yes.  Thankful for fingers and toes and arms and legs.

2.  I am thankful to have a boyfriend who would spend the rest of our lives opening my peanut butter jars should any sort of accident befall me.  He would probably even make me a peanut butter sandwich if I asked him nicely.

3.  I am thankful that I have a body that it is working condition with no diseases or illnesses aside from the occasional common cold and , and that I escaped my college years without any sexually transmitted diseases, stomach pumpings from alcohol, or babies.

4.  I am thankful that I have a good job that I enjoy, with a really awesome boss and amazing, hilarious coworkers who like to talk about food as much as I do, and will eat all of my baked goods, even the ones I burn.  I know that there are a lot of people who have jobs that they don’t enjoy, so I feel doubly-thankful that I have never once dreaded going to work while I’ve worked here.  Except on days when it was 95 degrees outside, but that wasn’t really because of work, that was just because I didn’t want to be a sweatmonster while walking to the metro.

5.  I am thankful for Chuck Taylors.  I have been wearing them for quite a long time and this extended period of time has worn any natural foot arch down to nothing.  My feet are essentially duck feet without webbed toes.  So I am thankful for Chuck Taylors for continuing to support my flat feet… which they caused.

6.  I am thankful for kittens and puppies and sneezing panda cubs for being so adorable and providing me many hours of entertainment while at work.  Also LOLcats.

7.  I am thankful for my best friends, who still talk to me after all of these years.  They are all beautiful and fun and so funny and easy to talk to and there are no other people in this world I would rather drink a pitcher of margaritas with.

8.  I am thankful for food, in that I enjoy making it and eating it.  I love cooking and baking things - just last night, I made a giant pot of chili and a giant pan of coconut macaroons for my Mom as a Thanksgiving surprise (I was originally going to make them for Christmas, but I got too excited and made them last night).  I love trying new restaurants and new foods and I love McDonald’s ice cream cones (guilty pleasure).  I am very glad that we do not live in an age of Soylent Green and foods in pill form, even though that would be kind of cool and very sci-fi.

9.  I am thankful for David Bowie.  David Bowie is what I listen to when I feel like dancing.

10.  And of course, I am thankful for my family, who I get to see this weekend.  I have a small family, but it’s fun and not stuffy and not the kind of family that pressures you to go to Yale and not the kind of family that puts out wine and cheese for the holidays.  My family is the kind of family that you play Mario Kart on the wii and argue over board games.  I am really glad that I have the type of family I do, despite all frustrations (my grandma asks 56 questions to everyone, my mom texts me constantly and sends me picture messages of her cats).

So with those ten things, I am out.  I am leaving to go home tomorrow morning, spending 6 hours on the road.  I will spend my time seeing old j-school friends, my best friends, eating Thanksgiving dinner, baking cakes, watching movies with my mom, shopping and being pretty happy.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

My apartment is great and awful

Published
by
ashley
on November 10, 2008
in apartment, friends and top five
. 0 Comments

Top five things that annoyed me about my apartment this weekend:

1.  I hate when the weather outside is a brisk 58 degrees and then I walk into my 70 degree apartment and my glasses fog up and I immediately get hot and annoyed at the temperature, so I turn the thermostat down or off to compensate for temperature differences and then thirty minutes later, I am shivering.

2.  I had to wait for the dishwasher to finish its hour-long rinse cycle (okay, it’s not really an hour long, but it felt like it) before I could take a shower because I was concerned my apartment would run out of water.  I don’t know if that would happen, but it’s a concern of mine that I will be in the shower washing my hair and then the water runs out and I have shampoo-head.

3.  Although I generally don’t really mind my 30 minute commute into downtown, this weekend we contemplated going somewhere, but the thought of having to sit on the metro for 30 minutes was like torture in my head.  During weekdays, I like my commute because it gives me a chance to actually physically wake up.  I am not what you call a morning person - I don’t even have to be at work until like noon (journalism clearly still the best career path for me) and I still struggle with that.  I usually wake up at the last possible minute, then rush into the shower, throw some clothes on, eat a bowl of cereal while checking the weather online, put my shoes on, grab my bag and start walking to the metro.  Thirty minutes from bed to door, less if I skip some things like eating or socks.  Then once I get to the metro and get on the train, I can pop my earphones in, read the paper, take a nap and get myself ready for the day.  But on the weekends when everything is in slow-motion, I can’t bear to think about spending 30 minutes+ on the train.  No thank you.  I will just stay here and do some laundry.

4.  This morning I woke up very groggy and grumpy.  I looked around our bedroom and immediately decided it was un-feng-shui-ish so I hopped online to look up basic principles of feng shui.  Our bedroom fails in every inch of the word of failing.  I promptly sketched out a plan in my head for furniture placement but was quickly foiled by the lack of cable outlets.  Unless I want to watch television while lying on my side, or unless I want to spend the next 8 months tripping over a stray cable cord running the length of our room, our bedroom has to continue… failing.

5.  There are two aspects to our apartment that are, quite frankly, ginormous.  We have a ginormous pantry and we have a ginormous bathroom.  However, we do not have a linen closet.  When I have a monster laundry marathon day and do all the laundry I can find, when I try to put towels up on the rickety ladder shelf we bought from Ikea specifically for towels and other beauty products I don’t use (see number 3 and my streamlined thirty-minute mornings), they don’t fit.  We also have another rickety shelf in our tiny washer/dryer room that holds our sheets and blankets that is also quite full.  I don’t understand why the designers of this apartment could not have made the pantry smaller and added a linen closet, or why instead of the monstrous open area in the middle of the bathroom, they couldn’t have added some sort of storage system.  But it is annoying.

I realize that complaining about these things (dishwasher!  giant bathroom!  pantry!  laundry area!) makes me sound like a horrible person.  Here are the top five things I like about my apartment:

1.  The dishwasher is clearly necessary.  Marques and I spent a year and a half in an apartment without a dishwasher.  We never fought as much or as hard as when we fought over who had to do the dishes.  He usually lost.  I am also thankful for the counter space I have, which is good when I enter baking mode and feel the need to ice 48 sugar cookies.

2.  The washer and dryer are also important - if there is not a washer and dryer in close proximity, we have a tendency to let the clothes pile up into Laundry Mountain, and then we get so overwhelmed by Laundry Mountain that we start febrezing everything and create piles of clothing based on dirtiness.  We don’t do that anymore.

3.  I am within walking distance of a Target and Old Navy.  I’m very close driving-wise to a Trader Joe’s.  Twenty minutes to Wegman’s and Ikea.  I don’t understand how we can be in a recession when it seems like I do is spend money at these fine establishments.  If you look at my bank statement, it pretty much goes like this:

TARGET - 11/06
TRADER JOES - 11/06
WEGMANS - 11/07
TARGET - 11/08
IKEA - 11/08
TRADER JOES - 11/09
TARGET - 11/09
OLD NAVY - 11/09

Throw in rent, student loans, exorbitant cable bill and you’ve got my spending down pat.  Also yes, I really do go to Target that much.  Don’t judge me.

4.  My bathtub is awesome.  It is rotund and giant.  I will miss this bathtub when we move out of this place.  This bathtub is the kind of bathtub that little girls can swim in and pretend they are mermaids.

5.  Lots of cabinet space - there’s a whole set of cabinets I haven’t even USED yet.

So there.  Pros and cons of my apartment, based solely on this weekend.

Also, happy birthday, Ruth Ann!  I’m going to mentally dedicate my morning commute playlist to you tomorrow and jam it full of Iron Maiden, Queen, and Slayer.  Nothing says getting ready for work like some metal.  I miss your face.

Bacon-palooza is not approved by your doctor

Published
by
ashley
on October 30, 2008
in baking, friends, life and work
. 2 Comments

I will say this now - I am not that big of a fan of bacon. I don’t like eating it by itself (I don’t like breakfast meats in general) but I love it on pizza and hamburgers.

And, I suppose, now brownies.

This madness started two weeks ago when I posted the link to bacon cinnamon rolls. I was telling my co-worker Scott about them and he got overly excited. He does that and it’s cute. It was a late evening, we were the only ones left in our department. When it’s just us, there’s lots of food talk.

Scott’s reaction to the bacon cinnamon rolls pretty much went like this:

Oh. My. Gosh.

(revered silence as he stares at the picture in awe)

This. Sounds. So. Good.

So we started perusing the Bacon Today website, just checking it out. And I found their post about bacon brownies.

Holy. Crap.

A plan was immediately formed. I would make the bacon brownies and Scott would make the bacon cinnamon rolls. Team Bacon is go!

I did not make homemade brownies. I was tired, I had already made pizza, and my entire apartment smelled like bacon. My best baking sheet had a half-inch thick layer of bacon grease on it. So I pulled a mix out of the pantry. Mixed it right up, poured it in a pan, and crumbled some cooked bacon on top of it.  It looked like this:

Ignore that tiny little unstirred chunk of brownie powder.  Also, this looks kind of disgusting.

I baked them for 30 minutes then took them out to cool.  The bacon pieces had kind of sunk down into the brownies, but you could still see them.  I was hoping the time in the oven would cook the bacon pieces into crunchiness, but unfortunately, they were still kind of chewy.  Here’s what they looked like after baking:

I thought they were okay.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would’ve used more bacon.  The bacon definitely added a nice salty, smoky taste, but it was odd to eat a brownie and hit…. meat.

Scott really enjoyed the bacon brownies - he ate most of them.  Everyone liked trying them, though, and a lot of people who thought they would be grossed out actually liked them.  So bacon brownies = semi-hit.

This week, Scott made the bacon cinnamon rolls.  He just took a can of refrigerated cinnamon roll dough and rolled some turkey bacon up in it, then baked them.  Scott is clearly more health-conscious than I am because I used thick-cut fatty fatty bacon.  The bacon cinnamon rolls were good, too, even though Scott slightly burned them.  I’m the queen of burning things, so I had no problem there.  The turkey bacon had a lot more bite-give too - if he had used actual pork bacon, I think they would have been really chewy.

I couldn’t take a very good photo of the rolls, but here’s a photo I took on my camera phone:

So bacon-palooza is finished for now.  We might try to make bacon cupcakes, perhaps, but I think we need to give our arteries a good rest first.

Maybe I should just drink more

Published
by
ashley
on October 30, 2008
in apartment, books, friends, i am ridiculous, marques and no thanks
. 1 Comment

There are, naturally, certain times each month where I become unbearably cranky and downright difficult to deal with.

I do realize that I whine a lot in general, even when I’m not the mayor of Crankytown, but those are usually things like having to walk home from the metro or we’re out of butter pecan ice cream.

Today was a cranky day.

It started in the morning, where I had a difficult time waking up.  Marques woke me up at 5:45 a.m. while banging around in the shower.  I then fell back asleep until he woke me up at 10:10 a.m. where I growled at him, saying things like, “If you don’t leave me alone, I will eat you.”  Finally, I woke up at 10:45 (YIKES) and I rushed to get in the shower, go to work, etc.

Walking to the metro sucked.  It was cold and windy and my head hurt.  When I got to the metro, the train was too hot and I had to take my jacket off.  Then a guy who smelled like cinnamon rolls got on and sat in front of me.  Normally I would want to lick the back of that guy’s head, but cranky me kept thinking, “Did this guy bathe in cinnamon roll cologne?  Perfume that smells like baked goods should be outlawed.”

Work was fine - work is always fun for me, actually.  Though I opened my egg sandwich to find moist sticky bread (gross).  Amanda brought us cupcakes from Hello Cupcake which gave me a brief five minute vacation from Crankytown.  Though eventually I started complaining how their cupcakes are too rich.  Seriously.  If you were around me today and managed to not punch me in the face, I commend you.

(sidenote:  It’s strange that I thought their cupcakes were too rich as I am never the girl who thinks things are too rich.  If someone is all like, “Oh, woe is me, this macaroni and cheese is too rich for me to finish!” then I’m always like CHOMP CHOMP YUM.  I have no “rich” tastebuds.  But maybe I am growing some.)

On the way home, no problems.  I’m re-reading the classic graphic novel Watchmen, but was actually slightly embarrassed to pull it out in front of all these middle-aged women and men who are reading Jim Webb autobiographies and Nicholas Sparks novels.  Then I got cranky because I was afraid I would be embarrassed and inside, I’m thinking things like WHO ARE YOU, MAN, TO JUDGE MY READING MATERIAL?  Oh, “The Kite Runner”?  Yeah, welcome to 2006.  Way to be a late reader.  (I say this while reading comic books from the mid-80s)

I decide to walk home and realize that my legspan sucks.  I’m comparing my tiny bird-like steps with those of the people walking next to me.  It takes these normal people 1 and a half steps to clear a sidewalk square.  It took me 3.  I’m a pretty tall girl, 5′8″ish, and I wear a size 10-11 in shoes.  Yet I’m walking like I was forced to undergo foot binding as a young girl.  Then I became self-conscious about my tiny steps and tried to make efforts to make my steps bigger, which made me look very odd, I’m sure, to the cars driving past me.  I probably looked like a fat drunk toy soldier on weekend leave.

Home.  Marques is sleeping.  This immediately annoys me for no good reason.  I turn on Unsolved Mysteries, eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes.  There is an odd mildewy smell in the kitchen, possibly from the washer/dryer.  Get annoyed.  Attempt to throw empty box of Frosted Flakes away, but trash can is full.  Is Marques’s job.  Get annoyed.  Get annoyed at having to scrub cast-iron skillet so hard although it’s my fault for letting it sit unwashed for three days.  Get annoyed at emptying dishwasher.  Get annoyed that the first thing Marques does when he wakes up is turn on the television to Sportscenter.  Try to make Marques eat goat cheese on a Triscuit.  Get annoyed that he doesn’t like it.  Spend 30 minutes cooking dinner while Marques watches the World Series.  Get annoyed that he didn’t offer to help do anything even though he doesn’t know how to cook.  Marques didn’t offer to get me another bowl of pasta or another glass of water.  Get annoyed.  Log onto internet, read e-mail, have 3 of the same e-mails from random liberal organization.  Get annoyed.  Buy bridesmaid dress for Lorrie’s wedding, get annoyed that my coupon code didn’t work and had to buy 2 more things (jeans and a bathing suit in a size too small in one of those “Oh, by the time bathing suit season rolls around I’ll be able to fit in it” attempts) to get it over the deemed amount.  Finished “Julie and Julia”, get slightly annoyed and jealous that I don’t get to have a job where I work in my pajamas.  Marques goes to bed early.  Get annoyed.  And bored.

It would be in your best interest to stay away from me.  I either need to be punched in the face by Don Draper or I need to start drinking three glasses of wine with dinner.

Full size candy bars = wealth and beauty

Published
by
ashley
on October 22, 2008
in family, friends, i am ridiculous and marques
. 4 Comments

Do you remember when you were a kid, how awesome trick-or-treating was?  Walking around the streets of your neighborhood and knocking on people’s doors for candy, watching as your pumpkin bucket filled up?  I’m pretty sure my Halloween candy stash contributed to my childhood obesity in a tiny way.

My favorite house was always the house who gave out full-size candy bars.  It never failed.  Every year, full-size candy bar.  I always thought those people were rich in my head even though they lived in a little Sears Craftsman bungalow.  For some reason, full-size candy bar equaled wealth.

My second favorite house was the one that always gave out little styrofoam cups of hot chocolate.  Some years, the fickle weather patterns of central West Virginia would make Halloween super cold, to the point where I would have to wear tights under whatever costume I was wearing (though I never participated in Slutoween).  I remember one particularly cold Halloween where I cried for hours because my mom made me wear my coat over my costume.

Costumes ranged.  I can’t remember a lot of them, but I remember one year I dressed up as an Indian princess.  I think I was Raggedy Ann once.  And a Hershey kiss.  And Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  My costumes were very unoriginal.

When we got home from trick-or-treating, my favorite thing to do was to dump all of my candy on the floor and immediately start sorting it out into piles.  Piles of Tootsie Rolls, fun-size candy bars, Smarties, Double Bubble and caramel creams.  Then I would give half to my mom - she is a big fan of any kind of caramel candy, so she would always get the little square Kraft Caramels or the Sugar Daddies.  Then I would count how many I had of each particular candy and keep inventory so I knew when I was running low on any particular kind.  I was very meticulous about my operation.

We lived on a dead-end road, so we never got any trick-or-treaters in my later years.  After I turned 11, my mom wouldn’t let me go out for trick-or-treating, and on Halloween night, she would turn off all the lights and we’d watch a movie.  One time we got two brave kids who knocked on our door and we had to give them candy from my Halloween treat bag from school that day.  I think we gave them like one Hershey kiss and a roll of Smarties.  After that point, nobody ever stopped at our house again.  Also I think the neighborhood kids probably think my mom is a witch, since she’s a woman of a certain age who lives alone with her cats.  Also she wears a lot of black.

This year, I want to dress up, but I have nowhere to go.  My costume idea is pretty awesome, though - I want to go as the Utz girl and I want Marques to go as Natty Boh:

Pros to going as the Utz girl:

1.  Not a hard costume.  All I need is a red bow, lots of blush, a red shirt and a bag of chips.

2.  Holy crap, I get to walk around all night with my hand in a bag of chips.

(Ashley fact-of-the-day:  Did you know that Halloween 2007 was the day of my interview for my current job?  I didn’t even realize it was Halloween until I got off the metro and ran into a girl dressed in a skintight black leotard with cat ears on.)