“When they fight, they fight,
and when they go home
at night they say,
‘I love you baby.’”
NAVY ERP Implementation
- standardizes how the navy manages people, programs, money, equipment, supplies
- inventory reduction
- realtime visibility of assets, resources, and inventory
- improved financial controls
- 66,000 users worldwide
- manages approx. $62 billion
- enabled the retirement of 27 legacy systems to date
- 69 more legacy systems are scheduled to be retired by 2016
I’ve been listening to a lof of Tha Grimm Teachaz stuff from the early 90s recently. It’s pretty good stuff. Here’s one of my favorites…
— Mark Twain (via dawnmichelleee)
(Source: of-the-universe, via futurelonelycatlady)
Love this song. Metronomy was recommended to me by my friend Javi, who lives all the away across the Atlantic in Spain. I met him when he was studying architecture with one of my best friends in Chicago. While he was here he got to do some pretty cool stuff (including going to SXSW with me!) so when I went to Madrid to visit this past Summer, Javi welcomed me with open arms. Hopefully I’ll get to see Javi and the rest of his pals again soon!
One of my favorite songs of all time. I need to post on here more. How do I do that thing where people can ask me random questions? Savannah is queen of Tumblr… she should tell me.
Since I’ve moved to Tulsa, I’ve been slowly reclaiming all of my possessions from my parents’ houses. I just brought back one of my prized possessions, one that I was too afraid to bring with me to college because I didn’t want to risk it getting stolen — my huge collection of CDs from high school. It has been occupying the passenger seat in my car for the past few weeks and it’s been such a refreshing blast of nostalgia relistening to different CDs that have been stowed away in it for years. Here’s a song from Mali Music, a 2002 collaborative album that Damon Albarn (Gorillaz) produced with musicians from Mali.
The End of my Europe Trip
WARNING :: Another Extremely Long Post :: WARNING
So let’s pick up where I left off, shall we?
The next morning, I woke up at 9 and went on a free walking tour of Barcelona. It was really entertaining, I was with a bunch of people about the same age as me, and we saw some interesting and quirky things (the plaza picasso had his first intimate encounter at, the church FCB prays at before their games, some cool cathedrals, plaza trippy, etc…) After the tour, I went with three Argentinians that I had met (Gabi, Sonya, Caro) to go see the Sagrada Familia and some of Gaudi’s other stuff. That was really fun. I had also signed up for a cooking class that evening, so by then I had to make my way to the class. We learned how to make Paella, and also made our own sangria and tapas! It was delicious. I went on a bar crawl that night with Gabi, Sonya, Caro, and some kids from my hostel. It was a lot of fun!
The next day I took it easy. I mainly wanted to visit the Mirot Foundation, which was REALLY sweet! It had some great artwork. One of my favorite pieces was a fountain that used mercury in it instead of water. I also went to this great indie comic shop that day which was really close to my hostel. I talked with the person working there for a while and bought quite a bit of stuff! I also got Javi a poster from a great German illustrator to thank him for being so hospitable. That evening, I went to the magic fountain with a big group of people (mostly Aussies) from my hostel to see the light show at the fountain. It was pretty incredible! Then, we went back towards the hostel, grabbed a bite to eat, and hit the sack.
The next day, I left for Valencia. When I got there, I was welcomed by Sam Davis, Alex Schneider, Jessica Wills, and Dane Riggs! The first night, we got some groceries and went to a party at Matt Pinnock’s apartment. At the party, we met a big group of Sam’s friends from the Erasmus (EuRopean community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) program. We hung out at Matt’s for a while, went to botillon at the beach, then to an open air club, Las Animas, on the rooftop of a building right next to the beach. The weather was perfect and we got cards from Erasmus to get in for free. We stayed there from about 3-6:30am and danced to the great DJ music. When we left, we ran over to the beach (which was all of 200 yards away), jumped into the Mediterranean Sea, and floated there for a while and watched the sunrise! It was one of the coolest experiences of my life! When we got back to Sam’s apartment, we made breakfast burritos and ate them on the roof. I really enjoy Valencia.
The next day, we had a big Mexican style dinner (Fajitas) at Sam’s apartment. Sam and Silvia (one of Sam’s two roommates) did most of the cooking and it was tasty! Some of Sam’s friends (Ben, Rose, Rafa, Vanesa) came over for dinner as well. We also hung out at this nice park by Sam’s place during the day and played cards and took some much-needed siestas. Later that night, we went to La Rumbo, which was alright but not as fun as Las Animas. We met some of Silvia’s friends there (Sonya, Natalia) who were really entertaining! Afterwards, we took some fun photobooth pictures and Alex and I decided to once again end the night at the beach. The song of the night was Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.” It was mostly Alex singing it lol. One of the tough things we had to deal with was that Sam lost her keys the first night we were there, then Silvia got her purse stolen the third night, so it was tough coordinating how to get into the apartment with their third roommate, Paki.
The next day Alex, Jessica, and Dane returned to Madrid. Sam, Silvia, Matt and I met up with Rebeka Morales (who was one of my Camp Crimson campers) and went to a really nice pool at the hotel that her parents were staying at on the beach. Let me also remind you that for the first couple of days that I was in Valencia my skin was peeling really bad! REALLY bad! (I got such a bad sunburn in Cassis while kayaking for four hours straight). Sam and I helped each other out; I helped her with her economics homework and in exchange she would peel my skin for me lol. (Not really, but this was one of many peeling skin related jokes that we made). After the pool, Silvia left to meet up with some of her friends and Rebeka went to take a shower. After a quick dinner across the street, Matt, Sam, and I met up with Rebeka’s family again to go race go-karts. The go-karts went about 40mph and the staff was pretty laid back as far as rules went. I raced with Rebeka, her dad Padro, Matt, her brother, and two of his friends. It was intense! There were a few big pile ups on some of the harder turns where everyone got crunched pretty hard lol. That night, the same group all met up at 100 Montaditos by Sam’s apartment and had… Montaditos. It was a fun and relaxing night.
The next day, Sam and I walked around city center for a bit, got my ticket to Madrid, ate some TASTY Paella, went on a walk to see some neat street art, saw some more sights, and went to the beach for a little bit. Then we grabbed some groceries, made dinner, showered, and met up with a big group of the Erasmus kids at a bar close to Sam’s apartment for a going away party. There were probably about 15 people in our group and the owner of the bar, Mario, was really great friends with the Erasmus kids. We did the fire-thumb trick again that night and Kristin (an Erasmus student from Germany) was brave enough to try it! We had fun there until close, then made our way to a club called Studio. It was mediocre, so we did what we always do at the end of the night and went to the beach to go swimming! It was a great night!
The next day, I went to the Arts and Sciences center, which had amazing architecture! Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead and I hadn’t switched it out with the backup one, so no pictures from there. I walked back to Sam’s, rucked up my stuff, and took a taxi to the train station. I got to the station with four minutes remaining before the train’s departure, so I had to run to catch it! I made it with two minutes to spare — lucky me! When I arrived in Madrid, I went to Javi’s and settled in. Javi has been working long hours lately at the architecture firm he works for, so he didn’t get back until I had already gone out to meet Alex and Dane. Neither of them had a phone, so we had to plan it earlier that day via Facebook for them to meet me at the Plaza de Castilla metro exit at 11:30pm. They showed up at 12:40am lol. They had just missed a train departing from Alcala, which delayed them quite a bit. Anyways, my patience paid off and sure enough, as late as they were, Alex and Dane showed up. We took the metro to Sol and walked around for a bit. Then we asked some kids about the same age as us if there was anything going on that night (it was a Tuesday). They suggested that we go to a bar called Star Studio that is frequented by Erasmus kids. We had a great time with the Erasmus kids in Valencia, so we decided to go. It was a fun place and we stayed there for a while. When we left, we went to a dance club down the street called Palace, which was pretty fun, but it was late and we were pretty tired, so we didn’t stay there for long. I had a great time with Alex and Dane on my last day in Europe!
The next day, I got to the airport at 11am to make sure to be there in time for my 1pm flight to DFW. My flight ended up being delayed until 2:20pm, but once I got on the plane I was lucky, because I was on an aisle and had an empty seat next to me. It was nice to be able to stretch out without worrying about upsetting someone next to me! I landed in Dallas around 6:30pm and couldn’t have been happier! I love traveling and it was an amazing trip, but there truly is no place like home!
