The ‘noog at night.

yes. yes yes yes! (Taken with instagram)

151 Miles

What started off with a “Hey, have you eaten yet?” turned into lunch at Olive Garden with Tyler Rand and taking the long way home. By the long way home, I mean 151 miles across Tennessee and Georgia backroads. To be completely truthful, after driving around for an hour, and after hearing me complain about not having my camera with me, we stopped by my house to pick up said abandoned camera, and continued on our merry way. The weather was absolute perfection. The windows were down. The music was loud. We were louder.

At one point, we ended up in Cohutta, Georgia, where we stopped to walk around the railroad tracks, question whether it was okay to find so many rusty nails removed from the railroad tracks, and explore abandoned buildings.

In other, slightly unrelated news, nikipenola.com is now mine. Currently, it links to this tumblr. But it will eventually be a full portfolio site - once I reorganize everything. Super excite!

Slowing Down.

It has been a roller coaster of a trip, these last few weeks.
In a nutshell, this is what went down (in no particular order):

Last minute trip to NYC/New Jersey: Mario Kart 3DS party. Hitting the road at 11pm. Getting pulled over near Cleveland. Not getting a ticket. Exploring NYC. Laduree macarons. Magnolia Bakery. Platters. Shake Shack. Doughnut Plant. The place we call Pride Rock. Ashlee waking up Raygene with song. Piling in the car at 3am to come home.

Graduation: Friends visiting - Andy, Arvin, Mehl, Daphne, Jun. Friends and family being together. So much food. Late nights, no sleep, hanging out. More blanket forts and illegal sleep overs. Obligatory Yellow Deli trips. Taking the long way home (and ending up in “Alabama”), windows down, music blasting. Jam sessions. Atlanta trip. Coming home from Atlanta to say goodbye to Sharien and Ryan.

The goodbyes were the worst. Laughing through the tears. Remember the good times. Making plans for the future. Tuesday night was particularly difficult for me. Even though the knowledge that we all wouldn’t be but a phone call/ text message/ Skype date away, it sucks knowing people aren’t living down the street. I woke up the next morning and there was a chill in the air. It rained. The weather mirrored my emotions: the cold was my heart of ice reaching out to find the friends I miss.

Now that things seem to be slowing down, I’ll be catching up on sleep, 3 weeks of photos, and summer cleaning (because spring cleaning never happened for me).