Erin McElvaney

To do the laundry.

But before that I just figured I'd post a little update now that I'm totally locked into my future plans :)

In case you didn't know, or forgot, or care.. Graduation is coming up on May 20th.  Maybe if I'm lucky it will be nice weather the weekend before that and I'll get to go to the beach!  But afterwards, after the dust settles, Matt's coming into town for a few days all the way from san jose to come to my graduation party :).  
Shortly thereafter I'm hoping to get to go to Europe afterall, for two weeks maybe, at least to France and Spain.. 
In early July I'll probably go out to see Matt in San Jose for fourth of July or something, and then in late July, I'll be moving all the way to Raleigh, NC. 

I'm about to sign a lease to live in a girl's house where she rents two of the bedrooms and lives in another.  She has a hot tub, and a real big TV and great furniture and decorations--the place is really nice looking.  She has a dog and two cats, and she's a phd candidate for EE at Duke.  Rent is really great there, so I'm taking advantage of how nice and easy it will be to move just a bedroom's worth of junk at first. 

I begin work August 9th, but I plan on coming home for a few days around my birthday (the 6th) if I can swing it, so plan on going out!

I officially accepted my position with IBM back in December.  I'll be working as a software engineer at their Research Triangle Park location, and I'm pretty much both excited, nervous, and sad.  It'll be fun to be somewhere different and to have a new experience and everything, and the job will hopefully be as great as it seems, and for those of you Marylanders who want to make the trip, it's only a 6 hr drive for a cheap Southwest ticket away!

It's sad to be leaving my hometown, family and friends, but it may only be temporary for a few years, we'll see.  My parents have been really supportive.

In October I'll be back for my sister's wedding.  Crazy.  Guess I should stop eating easter candy now so I can find a dress.  A BRIGHT RED ONE. 

Well that's it. 
If you want to check out some pictures of the house I'll be living in, here's Jamie's website.

peace out for now!

http://mackie.squarespace.com/display/ShowPicture?moduleId=195&pictureId=23518&galleryId=2204Two weekends ago, Blake and I drove up to Carnegie Mellon Univ. in Pittsburgh to visit Yeming and Aaron and Khalid (friends from this summer at IBM) and to party at their Spring Carnival!

It rocked.  Blake used his neato GPS and mp3 car to get us there.  We got to participate in Holi (essentially a big, powdery, paint fight preceded by a delicious catered Indian food lunch); we saw some really awesome booths the organizations (frats/sororities/clubs) built for the carnival, played a good game of scrabble, and went to some crazy frat parties with waterfalls coming out of the ceilings!

This past weekend was Quadmania!  Friday we did a skydiving simulator which was so much fun but took forever to wait in line..  Friday night we went to Vlad and Derek's to Party, Bitches and get our t-shirts :).

Saturday we partied hard from 1pm til past midnight.  We played some volleyball, cooked out on the grill, enjoyed the beautiful day!, we made some Hurricane drinks with the mix we brought back from New Orleans, went to the carnival and got thrown off the bull, and ran off to the NERD concert at night (no cameras allowed).

That's my lazy update.  Pceout.

Well it's 2 am on Monday night, and while I should be getting back into the swing of doing school work, instead I was organizing hundreds of digital photos taken from 3 cameras over the course of our week of spring break in none other than the famous New Orleans!

We had a wonderful time!  Michelle and Tom went down Thursday night, and Tom left Monday, but Kim, Melissa, and myself arrived Saturday afternoon and started the week off with a bang.

We had printed a ton of coupons off the web, for buy one get one free entrees at nice restaurants, discounts on tours and boats, etc., so the first night we were down there we decided to eat at the Mariott Riverview restaurant on the 42nd floor of said hotel.  We split a lobster risotto and a Red Snapper, as well as a $27 bottle of sauvignon blanc.  It was scrumptious!

Later SATURDAY NIGHT I decided to drink a lot, as did my partners in crime.  Bourbon street is the famous street packed with bars for many many blocks, where drinking is legal in the street itself, and many places sell drinks in to-go cups.  We had an awesome time the first night.  You often find people playing jazz for money in the streets.

SUNDAY we rolled out of bed a little late and made it to catch the bus for a swamp tour.  This was probably the most expensive thing we did all week and it was still under $40 for transportation to and from the swamps, and the 2 hour tour of the swamp.  We saw an alligator and a bunch of snakes.    We also saw some of the fishing houses that lined the swamps.  The swamps were actually really beautiful, and our tour guide was really funny.  We ran into a few trees but luckily no one went overboard..

For dinner on Sunday, we ate at another 2 for 1 entree place, at a brewery.  Their dinners were pricey but excellent.  The only problem is, they serve gulf shrimp with the heads on them, and refused to remove them before serving the dinners.  We sucked it up and ordered food with shrimp, removing the heads and later eating them.

Sunday night, I took it easy but Kim partied it up dancing with a lot of old men, and rocking out on stage.  I eventually joined her.  A lot of bars had really good live bands, and it was really fun barhopping down there, since no bars have any cover. 

On MONDAY, Kim, Melissa and I took a trolley in the wee hours of the morning to the Garden District, replete with fancy homes and mansions, and beautiful landscaped gardens.  There we took a cheap $5 tour of one of the oldest cemetaries in the country, Lafayette Cemetary 1.  In New Orleans, they had/have to bury the dead in tombs above ground, since the land is actually below sea level.  Otherwise bodies start floating back up to the top..  The tour was really interesting and we learned a lot of history in the meantime.

After the tour we ate lunch at a tourist spot called the 'Trolley Stop'.  We came to love this place because it was the only "cheap" food we could find, and it was really good!

After the cemetary tour, we met up with Derek, Vlad, and Spray, who were already drinking, and we went to the famous Cafe Du Monde for coffee and beignets, which are like a doughnut covered in powdered sugar.  Spray ate a lot of that sugar..

Monday night, we went out again, and had some more good times :).

<Intermission...>

TUESDAY, we went to Riverwalk, which is an area by the Mississippi river, and took a Cajun Cooking class.  We learned how to make Shrimp pies (MMM), Creole Chicken, a salad dressing, and bananas foster.  The chef was awesome and we got to eat everything he showed us how to make!

For dinner on Tuesday, we went to a small local bar on some sidestreet that had a sign that said "EAT HERE."  We did.  It was good.  At the bar, the whole ceiling was covered in grafitti-ed dollar bills.  We added one for UMBC.  Be sure to visit it on the ceiling if you ever go down!

Tuesday night we partied with boas and beads, but unfortunately mine died my coat and shirt black, so I gave it away to the boys.  We danced a lot at a couple of bars, and they kept yelling "UMBC" into the microphones for us because we would cheer.  :)

WEDNESDAY morning, we slept in a bit, and then we had to change rooms due to a perpetually broken toilet.  Then our shower didn't work, so by the time we finally got out, we'd missed much of the day.  We chilled on Wednesday and went to a Jazz bar on bourbon street, and listened to some live jazz band that was really good.  We tried to make it to a ghost tour but were late, so instead we got some ice cream, played tetris and ate tomatoes in the room.  We needed down time :).

On THURSDAY, we took a free ferry across the Mississippi to Algiers point, where we took a tour of 'Mardi Gras World.'  This was a series of warehouses where they store the floats and repair and build them for not only Mardi Gras but also other large parades around the country.  It was pretty fun, but unfortunately I did not feel well that day, and the smell of warehouses did not help!

Thursday night, the boys brought DANCE DIVA out with us to Bourbon Street.  Dance Diva was apparently a drunken QVC purchase made by Spray one night a while back.  It's like a karaoke/boombox with a disco ball, two mics, dual tape decks, echo, and it's purple.  It drew a lot of attention, and everyone seemed to want to sing into it.  We also had the authentic Hurricane drink at Pat O Briens.  It was pretty strong but really good!

<Intermission...>

Keeping up?  Good.  Not much left to go..

FRIDAY, we took a 2 hour riverboat/steamboat cruise abord the NATCHEZ down the Mississippi.  The cruise included a voice tour and live jazz inside.  We preferred the sun to the not-as-good jazz band in the dining area.  It was quite relaxing for our last full day.  The best part was the pipe organ guy who played some awesome songs for at least a half hour while we boarded.

Later that night, we made it to our Ghost and Vampire tour.  New Orleans is one of the most 'haunted' places in the country.  Our tour guide was really good, and she took us around the old French quarter, telling us scary stories of hauntings, during which she indulged us in a lot of history of the area.  I reallly enjoyed the tour; it was a lot of fun, and a little creepy.  Our hotel was so nasty and old, it might as well have been haunted.  Come to find out it was only built in the 1920's.  Oh, well.  We saw the oldest bar in america--it used to be a blacksmith's shop, and it's age shows!

SATURDAY, we ate at the Trolley stop again, did some souveneir shopping, and caught the city bus back to the airport around 4.  We came home and went to a party :)  Then it was finally time for bed.

Now it's 3 am on a Monday night and I really have to get some sleep.

Thanks to my friends who accompanied me on such an awesome senior spring break!  We learned a lot and partied a lot and had an awesome time!!

I hope everyone else enjoyed their spring breaks as well :)
Peace Out!

It appears to have been the first spring time thunderstorm!

What better way to say 'I love you' than with a Necco candy conversation heart?  And what better way to start a conversation with the two simple words....

what the hell?!

I'm eating literacy propaganda!

mmmm!