My friend absolutely loves cherries. I hate cherry everything because my mom gave me too much – well probably not too much, but it was awful tasting cherry cough syrup when I was younger. So cherry chip cake, desserts with cherries in them, pies with cherries, drinks with cherries. I did not take any of them. My friend, especially loves maraschino cherries. So, when she was younger, this was her experience with maraschino cherries.  Which was this: Her parents had a party at her house. Well, you know when she was younger and there was maraschino cherries at the bottom of an adult punch bowl. You can guess what happened. At a very young age she ate all of those maraschino cherries. And someone realized what she had done when she started bumping into the walls. 

I went to Horrocks, which is like a chain in Michigan, that has a bunch of like, hmm it seems fresher, I don't know, they have a lot of produce, they have a lot of stuff, they have a lot of products that are kind of, not what you would get, and like, Meijer. So, I – I’m going shopping and I just feel like everybody is strangely rude, like what is actually happening? Like -- like it's one thing for one person to be a little rude, but it was just like everybody was rude and it was like, everybody lacks spatial awareness collectively and it was really pissing me off and the point where it was like so prolonged and like, I don't -- the guy felt seen and therefore it was more annoying is that I am going by the mushrooms, I look around at the mushrooms that I want to purchase. I see the mushroom I want to purchase. So now I am now leaning towards the bags, but there's a guy in the way between me and the plastic bags, and so I kind of wait and try to get out of his way so that I can like, “uh, uh, uh,” you know? Because he wants to go where I am, I want to go where he's going. So finally, we do this little shuffle dance thing and he, now is like looking at the mushrooms and now I have the plastic bag and now he -- now I need to be where he's at and he needs to now -- he wants a plastic bag now, even though, like he just was where the plastic bags were. Okay? So then were now doing this weird shuffle thing and I'm like, waiting for him, and he's like staring at the mushrooms and he's like, “Excuse me.” You know? And then so then I like move again and then he wants to now be where I am by the mushroom, but I like, am -- I'm about to scoop my mushrooms but because this man is just now really like annoyed with me. So now I am just on standby. Watching him, now that he has his bag, scoop the exact mushroom that I was gonna get, you know? And so now I'm standing there, waiting for him, watching him do this. And I'm like,…

One of my co-workers she got engaged over the weekend, and it was like, I think it was kinda cute she like could see it coming. Like I think she like, she was like sitting in the work room on like Thursday and there's something and she's like, “Both my boy –” both my boyfriend and my best friend have been talking about doing like this and this thing together like a lot, and I'm starting to like -- I'm starting to think I might be getting -- like my boyfriend talking about her boyfriend was going to propose. And I think, I honestly think that is the best proposal. It's like, it should be like a Christmas present, you know. It's like you should have some inkling. Because I feel like just springing it, stringing on someone that they'd like, it should be like a surprise, like, you should try to make it as a surprise, I'm not im okay. Like I said, there's like a lot of people like, depending on how you how your relationship is like, it's okay, I think it's okay if you don't make it a surprise. But like I think it should be like, a Christmas present. Like you like it can be a like, you make it a surprise and it's fun to try to make it a surprise. But you should ultimately, like it should be something that the person knows, the person receiving the proposal, like is kind of aware of and should at least like, they should know about it I think, like have an inkling.

Yeah, I think one of the most annoying things about the trip, though is that -- so Sunday morning, I said like, “Hey, on Sunday morning, I want to go to mass”, but I didn't want to go alone because, the university is paying for us to have phone plans, but when the phone plan renewed, everyone's got screwed up so they'd like no longer could -- actually use their phone plan, so that was really sucky, right? And because I didn't have a phone plan I was completely dependent on like, I need to stay with [friend] because [friend] is the only one with the working phone. Like if I get lost I can't do anything I can't access my Google Maps and also to get into our Airbnb you had to make a phone call, which I could not do without a working phone plan. I mean, my phone worked on the Wi-Fi but you had to be like in in the building for the Wi-Fi to work. So, I got up at 8:30 and I like had to make the decision, do I wake up [friend]? Because [friend] was very much not  – she was not awake. She had been up late the night before like all of us and unlike me, she was actually sleeping. I had naturally woken up at 6:20 in the morning because of nightmares and, I couldn't really sleep at all after that so I just sat up and I talked to my friend. But I ended up getting to go to mass at the Duomo which was really cool. Going to mass at the Duomo is weird. Because like at a lot of churches, like the ones in Spain -- they like closed the church down for mass, right? So like the tourists can't come in, but in the Duomo in Italy they don't, like they have tours going on at the same time as mass. So it was really weird, like I felt like I was in this little fish bowl being watched as I was one of the mass parishioners. But like, hey, it worked, I got to do what I wanted to do and everyone else got to hang around the city center. The only somewhat unfortunate thing is, is that we had like, decided on this place as our meeting location, and when I get out there,…

I love running down by the beach, I live really close to Lake Michigan. And earlier this week I went and ran some stairs. Did some plyometrics, the usual and I brought a book with me too ‘cus I figured I don't know, maybe when I'm done I can just get some reading done. A little windy, a little breezy, a little cool, so I actually finished my workout and just read in my car for a while, while I watched some storm clouds move over the lake and it's been so mild lately and it was in the middle of the afternoon. I was like, you know what? I'm here for it, I want to see like a light rainstorm come over -- come over the Great Lake. And it’ll be peaceful, had my windows down. And it was peaceful, until it wasn't. Hail began to fall, which fine we get hail from time to time. But then I realized the hail was bigger than typical and I started to panic a little bit. It's gonna sound dramatic but it sounded like the hail was shattering my windows as it was falling and to be sure, it wasn't, but it just sounded like it. Every single piece that fell felt like it was denting or damaging my car and it happened so fast that I didn't panic, but I had to move quickly. I quickly turned my car on and I had to get out so fast I didn't even put my seat belt on and I never drive without a seat belt. I sped out of the beach parking lot, sped up out of the beach road, apologies, but I was probably doing 60 plus on a road that's like 30 miles per hour because it felt like the hail was ripping my car to shreds, every piece that fell did not splat, it crashed against my car. I sped up about a mile and a half until I found a highway overpass and I hid underneath the overpass with probably seven other cars as the hailstorm worked its way through. I was trying to think of the perfect size after the storm subsided, of the pieces of hail and it's such like a ‘tweener. Not as big as a meatball but just a little bit smaller than a meatball, which is pretty substantial for Michigan. I think…