The Day I Became Afraid of Spiders

This is not particularly a happy memory but one that I will always remember!

I was in the clarinet section of the Marshall University Marching Thunder 2000-2002! Sometimes we would have our sectional rehearsals in the stairwell of the Cam Hendersen Center. Creepy crawly critters live in stairwells and one of the girls named Genna who was in my section got "bit" by a spider there. This is when it alllll started.


The next day after the incident, we were on the practice field and Genna could hardly walk on her leg where the spider bit her and was starting to not feel good. Me and another clarinet took her to the ER to have them check her out. We had to describe the way the spider looked to the doctor. I'm sure he gave her something to put on it or something to take, but don't really remember that part. All I know is that she came back the next week and said she had to go to the doctor again and that doctor told her the spider laid eggs in her leg! This is only what she told me but ever since then I have been super scared of spiders! I don't even know if it is possible, but I don't really care cause I wanna stay as far away from them as possible! I am actually writing this post because tonight one was on my arm and I threw a fit by flinging it off of me and running away!

Hot Dog!

Man, I love me some hotdogs! My personal favorite is a hot dog with mustard and slaw! Yummy! For all of you non-Huntingtonians out there, Huntington is a hot dog mecca! There are so many original places you can get them, here are a few:

1. Sam's Hotdog Stand
2. Stewart's Hotdogs
3. Frostop Drive-In
4. Midway Drive-In
5. Bowincal
6. Hillbilly Hotdogs

This weekend I am having two of my DH friends coming to stay with me and we are going to the Hot Dog Festival in Huntington! Phil and I have been going for the last couple years and we love it... so before graduation I dropped some subtle (or not so subtle) hints for my friends to visit me so they can go to this!

I'm super excited to see my friends! I'd been used to seeing them every single day in every single class we had + when we'd hang out outside of school too. So I had been going through a withdrawal from them! They requested that I take them to two places while in Huntington:

1. Frostop for their delicious rootbeer
2. Jolly Pirate for a delightful donut treat

I will try and take some pics to post for y'all next week! Have a good day!

• Do you have any other suggestions to where I should take my friends while they are visiting?
• What do you like on your hotdog?
• Do you have a favorite hotdog place?

I ♥ Fairies!

Last week I discovered another blog on my quest to find the perfect new background! You must go see Karen at *The Graphics Fairy*! She offers tons of free vintage graphics that are to die for! She also has free backgrounds, as you can tell by new one! I picked my background all around what I was going to do with my new header that I made using one of her graphics. Do you think my "Mariah Smile" header turned out okay?

Here are 4 of my favorite graphics I found:

Aren't they lovely? I spent FOREVER on her site looking through so many! And if you can't find something, Karen has a Request Day every Thursday where you can comment on that day's post and she will try to find an image for you! Make sure you try out her search option first! I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!

The Day We Didn't Attend Jeff's Crawdad Boil

This installment of "The Day..." is a continuation of "The Day Jeffs Got Married".


The day we didn't attend Jeff's crawdad boil was also the day we unfortunately had to be out of our hotel room early and also the day we were driving to San Antonio for a couple days. This did not go well with the day after Jeffs got married as well as the day Sars and I were the most hungover we had ever been in our lives.

I think Sars was a little worse off than me so she lay in the back seat of the unmoving PT Cruiser while I sat up front wondering how we were ever going to get out of hotel parking lot without the world spinning and chunks flying. Fortunately, Ad was not bad off and was able to take the wheel. We got out of the parking lot slowly and did a lot of just driving around. The crawdad boil was something we could only dream of in the past 9 years in getting a reunion with the Burch family, but now because we wouldn't be good company, did not make it to the event. We did make it to the Sonic though, and somehow randomly found the house Jeff and his family lived in when they first moved to Houston but had never showed us how to get there. It was a weird thing.

After the crawdad boil was over, and Jeffs, Jenn, and their friends were ready to caravan, we left for San Antonio. I thought this was a little strange cause it was like we were on their honeymoon with them, but not really since they went on it a couple weeks later. The night we got there we went down to the River Walk to eat dinner, then we stayed the night with a friend of Adam's, and the next day went to the Alamo and shopped around the River Walk and went shopping for some cowboy boots.




We went back to Houston that evening. We ate at a fantastic sushi place, cause sushi is our thing, and stayed at Jeff and Jenn's house so we could get up and leave early the next morning.
The whole trip was so much fun minus the hangover part, but I would do it all again in an instant!

My Littlest Cousin Turns 1-2-3!

Sunday was my little cousin Asyra's third birthday! She is the first baby in my "close by" family to be born and I never knew how much I would love her. I always wanted to be an aunt, but since I'm the only child, she is as close as I will get to having a neice by blood. Phil's nephews already know me as Aunt Mariah and that makes me happy :-) My cousin, Zach, was always my "little" cousin cause he was a couple years younger than me, but now he has a Asyra and she is the littlest to me now! Well anyway, Friday evening we celebrated her birthday with pizza, lots of presents, and a Dora cake!

Asyra's new love is bathing suits! She was allowed to wear what she wanted to her day care for her birthday and she wanted to wear a bikini! Then for her birthday party she wore this cute ballerina bathing suit. She got the princess shoes for her birthday and looks so grown up!

Here I was trying to get a good pic of her with her cake, but instead got a sneaky one of her with icing on her face after taking a bite out of the side of the it!

This is a pic of me and Pablo the Chihuahua with the same facial expressions.

And finally, a gratuitous pic of me and Phil after the party!

Gum - Good For Your Teeth!

My personal favorite gum is Wrigley's Orbit. My favorite flavors of this gum are the Sweet Mint, Cinnamint, and Berry Red. One reason I like them is because the flavor lasts for a long time. You are supposed to chew your gum after a meal for 20 minutes to stimulate saliva production (neutralizes the pH in your mouth) and to reduce plaque build-up, therefore reducing the risk of tooth decay! There is a trick to this though: the gum you chew must be sugarfree gum! Another reason I like Orbit is that *some* of the flavors have Xylitol as an ingredient. Xylitol is a sugar substitute. The bacteria in your mouth that make cavities think that it really is sugar so they eat it but can't digest the xylitol and end up dying. I *think* the Orbit Gum that contains Xylitol are the packages that are American Dental Association (ADA) Accepted. I know for sure that my picks of Sweet Mint (even though the picture above doesn't show it) and Cinnamint have the ADA Seal and include Xylitol as an ingredient, but I'm not sure about the Berry Red. All Orbit Gum is sugarfree though.


So when you are at the grocery store check-out, make sure you see three things on your gum's packaging to make sure it is good for your teeth:

1. ADA Accepted
2. Sugarfree
3. Check the ingredients for Xylitol

Also, Xylitol can be life-threatening to animals who consume it, so keep it out of your furry friend's reach! Call your vet right away if your pet ingests it!

The Day Jeffs Got Married

Jeffs is one of my best friends I've known forever. So when I found out Jeffs was getting married, I was super excited! Not only meant that he was happy and found the love of his life, but it also meant a spring break trip to Houston with my most favorite people ever: Jeffs, Sars, and Ad! The spring break of 2009 started off with me flying out of the Pittsburgh airport. I was super excited to get this party started! When I got there Sars was waiting for me, then Ad was picking us up in our super not cool PT Cruiser rental. From there we rushed to the rehearsal dinner. We got to see Jeff's family who we hadn't seen in about 9 years since they moved from Huntington!



The next day was the wedding. We woke up and ate some Texas-shaped waffles... this was the whole reason why I booked this particular hotel, and that it was close to where the reception was held. It was a sad day cause our little boy was growing up, but a happy one as well. Ad got to be one of the groomsmen/number brother while Sars and I were wet and cold. haha! It wasn't supposed to be cold in Houston!




After the wedding was the open bar... errrrr I mean reception! There was food, dancing, and lots of picture taking with our mouths open (it's our version of the jazz hands some of my bloggy friends have adopted)! Plus, as a wedding gift to Jeffs, we got a replacement Jolly Pirate donut from a place down there as we were driving to the reception.





The after party was at our hotel, which also turned out to be where the bride's (Jenn) family was staying and some of Jeff and Jenn's friends from school (WVU) were too. There was food, games, more picture taking and drinking, where Sars, with all my better judgement and knowledge out the window, talked me into taking shots of Scotch.

The next day will forever be known as "The Day we didn't attend Jeff's crawdad boil" and will be continued in the next Friday installment of "The Day...".

Officially RDH

Just wanted to make a real quick post to say...

I GOT MY DENTAL HYGIENE LICENSE IN THE MAIL TODAY!!!

Now if the oppurtunity arises, I can work and make me some money!

That is all.

I Scream! You Scream!

Ice cream is by far my favorite dessert! I found this little gem on Yahoo! News (pretty much my only source of new) titled "5 bizarre ice cream flavors that sound crazy delicious". The 5 ice cream flavors include:

1. Bacon Ice Cream
2. Brown Bread
3. Rosewater
4. Black Truffle
5. Strawberry Basil

I don't know about you, but give me mint chocolate chip any day and I'm a happy girl! The craziest I've gotten with an ice cream flavor is the occasional Ben & Jerry's or Haagen Dazs. I would be willing to try these flavors out though cause I am an ice cream lover!

Do you like ice cream?

Would you like or try any of these flavors?

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

My TV Update

So I thought I'd fill you all in on some of the shows I've been watching on TV:

First off is True Blood - LOVE this show! I don't even care that it is not going exactly by the books, even though it is catching itself up a little this season. I still love Eric Northman, but I am really excited to see what they do with Alcide too.

Next up is So You Think You Can Dance - I've been a fan of this show since it's beginning and I like it much more than American Idol. This season has thrown me off a little cause the contestants haven't been dancing with eachother, but with past contestant all-stars of the show. Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE watching All-Star Neil dance, but I like the dynamic of seeing the actual contestants dance together. This last episode they halfway did like that and I did like it a lot better.

AND Mia Michaels as a judge is killing me! I think she is a brilliant choreographer, but she says some pretty mean things that just should be left unsaid. AND Alex is gone now. He was my favorite so I hope he will come back next season. I like most of the other contestants too so I guess I'm going to pick another favorite. Oh and Cat Deely has to be the best reality tv host! She's up there with Chris Harrison from The Bachelorette and Anderson Cooper when he hosted The Mole.

On to The Bachelorette - My friend Amanda at It's Blogworthy does a hilarious recap of the show each week so go check that out! Ali, Ali, Ali... where to begin? Well, I think she is down to the top 4 guys and I'm pretty sure they are the best she could have chosen. Chris is probably my favorite, but I do like Frank too. I'm so glad she kicked Ty out finally. Now Kirk is funny, but don't think he's a good match for her. I like Roberto, but I think she is just lusting over his good looks.

I am also sad for Jillian and Ed. I liked them both so much. Not sad for Vienna and Jake. I saw that one coming. Also, don't know how the new show "Bachelor Pad" is going to turn out... we'll just have to wait and see!

Top Chef on Bravo - I actually haven't been watching this show all the time, but I have been saving them to my beloved TiVo. I actually save everything to the TiVo then watch it a little bit later so I can just skip over all the commercials. Anyway, the chefs are in DC this season and I don't really have a favorite yet. That is all!

Stay posted for more!

The Day Adam Came To Town

This post starts the beginning of my "The Day..." series. I will go back to memories I have and cherish, then share them with you! I hope you will enjoy!

So my BFF Adam was in town a couple weeks ago. I had this fabulous idea that we should take the rest of my pictures on my *disposable* camera that we had bought almost 3 years ago. I also thought it would be great to finally send our friends Jeffs this box of stuff, that was meant to be sent 2 years ago for Christmas, to him along with some other wacky items.

The box included, but was not limited to:

• Christmas presents from me and Ad from 2 years ago that we couldn't remember what they were cause they were wrapped.
  
• A huge pink birthday ribbon that said "Aged to Perfection!".
  
• A for sale flyer of a home in Huntington, hinting he should move "home".
  
• A TidBits. A little local paper we took from the Cam's Ham.
  
• A box of Cracker Jacks.

Adam and I went to develop the film at the Walgreens because apparently Walmart does not offer the 1hr photo anymore. But in the hour we waited, Adam and I went to the Jolly Pirate. While I was eating my donut, Adam played a scratch-off lotto ticket and won $200! Then he had to leave to make the trek back home, but I went and picked up the pictures. I was quite disappointed in how they turned out, but I'll leave you with a few gems.

Ritter Park in the Fall

Phil and I a couple years back, waiting to go to the Fright Farm.

Rory helping me make my huge stocking for the balcony Christmas decorating contest, while in Morgantown.

Adam with a Cam's Ham delicious ham sandwich and onion rings! YUM!

What has become of my old middle school (Cammack).

Third Time's a Charm!

I've been bad! It's been over a month since I last posted and I am lucky you all haven't left me yet! For that I'm grateful.

I'm going to try and give you a summary of what has happened since I last posted, but I'm sure I'll leave things out and will make more posts on them when I remember.

• After I came home from the beach, it was crazy trying to find a board patient (again)! My friend who I though could do it, couldn't because of work. So, when my parents returned from the beach they helped me sooo much by making calls to friends and even going around town searching. My own dentist even let me use his dental office to screen patients I did find. Luckily I found a patient only 2 days before I had to leave to take my board! Not only did I have to find a patient for the 3rd time, but I also had to travel and take them to South Carolina where the exam was held. I don't know how I could repay my parents, dentist, and board patient for all the help they gave me!
  
• I passed! The third time definately is a charm! I was slightly embarrassed by the whole board fiasco and definately felt like I let my parents, Phil, and myself down by having to take it so many times. I'm just glad it is over and I can move on with my life!
  
• Relaxation - needed this after all the stress!
  
• I now needed to apply for my license since I passed the board. This required getting a physical, 2 letters of recommendation from (preferably) dentists from WV, get a wallet-sized picture of myself, fill out a form, get it notarized, plus write them a $60 check... like they need anymore of my money!
  
• I updated my resume, printed it up, and mailed them out!
  
• Fourth of July Weekend: this weekend was much needed cause I actually finally felt like myself again. After all the stress of boards and being back home again, it was nice to hang out with Phil's family and my own with no stress involved!

Now the waiting begins...

I did get a call this morning from a dentist I sent my resume to for a temporary job today cause her hygienist was out sick. Unfortunately, I couldn't do it since my license has not been sent back to me in the mail. This was promising though, but no $$$ yet!

You can also look over to the books I've read this year (on your left) to see that it has been updated! My friend Jennifer over at Crazy Shenanigans has peaked my interest with the books by Sherryl Woods! I'm into the Chesapeake Shores Novels right now. Check'em out!

Oh and here is the only picture I took while I was in SC for my boards! I took it for Phil, but I'm afraid I gave him a not-so-good idea for his own car...

Thanks for stickin' in there with me for this long process, and for this disjointed post! I will try very hard to update more than I have been!