1. My favorite place i’ve ever traveled to is New Orleans. Hands down. I love the atmosphere there…the live music, the architecture. Love it, love it.

2. Italy is somewhere I’d love to go someday. The biggest chunk of any one country that my family comes from is Italy, so it seems appropriate that I would want to travel there. Among many other places, but I’m pretty much up for going anywhere!

3. I pass the time on a plane (or bus, or car ride or train) by listening to music and thinking.

4. My three must-haves when I travel are good music , comfortable clothes, and good music.

5. My favorite travel companion is…well to be honest, I need a new favorite travel companion. I do, however, enjoy traveling on my own as well.

6. The craziest thing that ever happened to me while traveling is 1) Leaving the gas cap at a gas station and driving back 30 miles in the middle of nowhere to get it (Wyoming? Wisconsin? I don’t remember) 2) getting lost on a dark, unmarked, bumpy narrow road in Colorado 3) setting off a library alarm at Northwestern University 4) being attacked by cacti in Arizona 5) getting lost in Oregon and crossing the border into Washington 6) In Mexico, having a random guy appear with keys that unlocked our vehicle after we’d locked them in it (yeah I know). 7) Getting chased down by a musician in New Orleans because I taped 30 seconds of his singing and didn’t tip him. Ha. Okay…that’s it for now, I feel another blog post spin-off coming out of this…

7. The most exotic food I’ve ever tried while traveling is uh…to be honest, I usually ever don’t try exotic things. I can’t think of one thing I’ve ever tried that was actually exotic. Maybe I need to be more adventerous.

I finished the BFF book. If you haven’t seen part 1 of this post, check back to posts from a couple of weeks ago and it will give you some background. Basically, the book is written in first person by a girl living in Chicago who is married, but still wishes to have a best girl friend. Her childhood best friends live out of state and it just isn’t the same. So she decides to go on 52 “girl dates” in one year…one per week. Some of her dates are great, others just don’t click, but one thing is for sure…all of them are very different. Not one of them fulfills everything she originally wanted in a best friend, but each of them has something different to offer.

In the end, the author (Rachel) realizes she has been looking for a friend that will be the same as her childhood best friends…but that it will be impossible to find. Why? Because they have been with her since the beginning. They’ve been through things with her that no new friend has. They grew up in different stages of life. And so, you can’t have a best friend in the same way you’ve had a best friend before…life is always evolving. She decides that the new friends she has made in that one year of “girl dating” may not have known her in the past, but that in a few years, they will be those people that were around for this present time.

I’m not sure I’m articulating this very well, so you might want to just go read the book. I did relate to it in a lot of areas. Although I would never take all the measures Rachel did to meet friends (online clubs, rent-a-friend, etc), I knew what she was talking about when she said she had tons of close friends that were long distance, but none local. That’s how it was for me when I moved to Chicago. I met people there of course, but was disappointed that none of them could come close to my already best friends. As time goes on, I realize this was sort of false. Those friends won’t ever be the same as my college friends, because we never experienced college together. But they will be my Chicago friends, and no one can replace them in the way. Different friends can fulfill your life in different ways.

Even now I am forming new friend relationships, and they won’t ever be my old college friends either. But that doesn’t make them any less…they are important people in my life, in a different way. They aren’t as easy to find. You don’t walk up to someone like you did when you were 4 and say, “Hey, wanna be friends?” You don’t live down the hall from them in the dorm or sit next to them in class. Sometimes, you have to make an effort, and in Rachel’s case, initiate…”dates.”

As for a critique of the book, I enjoyed it a lot. It was very insightful and there were tons of times I thought, “Wow! I didn’t know anyone else had these thoughts!” She did research and there were some really interesting parts. However, it wasn’t a novel that had a very big climax in the middle or close to the end. I probably would have been happy only hearing about 10 of her “dates” instead of all 52. In that way it dragged on a little, but still wasn’t boring. The author was funny and real. And I admire her for her honesty and for putting herself out there.

So there you have it, and that’s all for today.

Sunday night (well, technically Monday morning) I got back from a short trip to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. My friends Erin and Craig moved there about a year and a half ago and it was the first time I’d seen them since then. Even though it was cold (lowest it got was -9 degrees), snowy, and well…cold, it was such a good time with good friends. They just bought a house that I got to see (even though it’s not ready to move into quite yet), and it was cool getting to share a little of that experience with them. Other than that, I’m not going to do a play by play, but I will leave you with a little picture story. Enjoy

We made a route in the neighborhood, and it was decided that I would run two loops and she would run four. Except for some reason, I was just feeling extra good and ran all ten of ‘em. Not sure if I totally messed myself up by doing that (I certainly won’t be increasing my mileage from THAT next weekend), but I did it. And it actually felt pretty good.

After our run it was time for lunch, so we headed down the street to a new place called Chapter 1 (saw a couple of my neighbors there, too!). I have wanted to try it for a while and today was the perfect time. There was hardly anyone there and the waitress was glad to tell us all about the new winter menu. I got a mimosa and quickly chose the salmon BLT (if there’s salmon on the menu, it’s always an easy choice for me). Ashley ordered…some turkey thing. I wasn’t really paying attention to her’s, I was too hungry and excited about mine. It didn’t disappoint.

I have nothing but good things to say about my first experience at Chapter 1. Highly recommended, if I’m even anyone who has the authority to say (I’m not, just my taste buds and me!). They have a Sunday brunch that’s been rated pretty high also…so get on over!

1. The last thing I ate was Kashi Crunch cereal. One of my favorites!

2. The last song I listened to was Samba Salad by Bigi Kaiman (while dancing with a toddler)…otherwise, this would not be a song I would listen to on my own, promise.

3. Using the letters in my name I can spell {Melissa} same, seal, slime, slim, mail, male, miss, elm, eal, sea, ale, slam, mass, sass, less, sale, am, aim, meal , seam, mess, lame

4. If I had to dress in one color for the rest of my life I would pick black. I think we all knew this about me already. I like wearing black because it’s slimming and it matches everything!

5. If you were to look in my bag right now you’d find my wallet, chapstick, phone, nail file, lotion, camera, more chapstick, loose change, sunscreen, and migraine pills.

6. When I finish filling in the blanks I’m going to read a book and wait for O to wake up from his nap. Then we’ll eat lunch and go for a walk.

7. My all time favorite song to dance to is not just one song. That’s a tough one. I can, however, tell you that Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson appear regularly in my current “upbeat cleaning the apartment” playlist! (I always get a little dancing in when I’m cleaning).