Life in the Fast Layne

So now that I'm back in Ann Arbor I feel like I have to write an end of summer post. But instead of giving you a play by play of what I did, I thought some babysitting tales would be more interesting. As many of you know, I didn't get a job this summer. Instead I babysat whenever I was home. The thing with babysitting is that you never know what's going to happen. For instance: You could show up to find this in the driveway This is a Ford F650 that used to belong to a Raven's player! Or this in the sink Frozen mice thawing to be fed to the snake, not what you want to see at 7 am. Or this on the counter Awkward... Or frankly, you could show up to an empty house (you wouldn't believe how many times this has happened to me) And then there's the critters: Sometimes they're normal Dex is a cutie And sometimes they're not Spike the bearded dragon. I'll stick with mammals. And sometimes you step on a giant gross b...

If you haven't noticed, I haven't done many fashion posts lately. It's mostly because I've been traveling and spending my money on food and bus tickets. So, I asked my friend Jackie to write a guest fashion post, so here you go! Hi!   I am Jackie!   You may have seen me pop up here and there .   I don’t’ know about you, but I have certainly caught the Olympic fever and I was devastated to see the Games come to an end on Sunday.   Luckily my good friend Layne came to my rescue and offered to let me guest post!   Naturally I chose to combine my longtime love, fashion, and my obsession of the moment, the Olympics.   While it is more than acceptable for Ryan Lochte and Gabby Douglas to go shirtless and pant less, us regular folks should still opt to stay (relatively) covered.   In addition to the lessons of courage and hard work, these world-class athletes have also taught us a few fashion tricks! Inspired by: equestrians! They in...

Hello everyone! Today is an exciting blog post because I'm writing it from a coffee shop in Mexico! I am on vacation in Cozumel and we took a ferry to Playa Del Carmen for the day. The rest of my group is at a touristy animal thing but I opted to spend the day exploring instead. We got here around 11 this morning and I walked around the shops. Most of the shops are very expensive (Rolex, Cartier, etc.) so I just walked around and enjoyed the air conditioning. After shopping for a while I decided to lay on the beach for a while. It was beautiful but so hot that I only lasted about a half an hour before I went to lunch at Señor Frogs. Chicken fajitas, guacamole and beer (I'm legal here!). Doesn't get much better than that! After lunch I got a pedicure and decided to find a chocolate cafe called Ah Cacao. On my map it looked pretty close but it was not. I finally got there and enjoyed an iced coffee and some dark chocolate. Actually it does get better: chocol...

I feel like I've been doing a lot of life summaries these days so I decided to mix it up. Here's some things that I'm really into right now: 1. Good news! I just changed the address of Life in the Fast Layne to mylifeinthefastlayne.blogspot.com. It's the same blog just with a new address that makes a bit more sense. 2. Chicklit, in particular Nicolas Sparks. I know I'm supposed to be in college reading profound novels yada yada but I just like cheesy romance novels. Sorry Jane Eyre, I just like Nicholas Sparks 3. Powdered peanut butter. So as you may already know, I put peanut butter in my green monster smoothie every morning. It's delicious but peanut butter has almost 100 calories per tablespoon! So, when my friend KC told me about powdered peanut butter I decided to give it a try. I put it in my smoothie this morning and it tasted exactly the same! That means I can cut around 80 calories every day. If you do that math that's 8 pounds in a year...

Hello my friends! I haven't blogged in ages. I was just really busy on the ship and at the beach but now I'm finally home. So here's what I've been up to: About 2 weeks ago the ship went underway for a while. I was a bit worried that I would get seasick but I was fine. Underway was pretty neat because we were able to stay late in medical and learn to draw blood and give IVs. Drawing blood for the first time! What happens when you mess up while giving an IV. There were also a lot of great photo opportunities: Refueling Debbie during a mass casualty drill. Sunset in the middle of the ocean. Back in port we kept exploring the ship and the base and we even got to visit Portsmouth Naval Hospital: Me and Katarina at the Gavin DeGraw concert for OpSail. Mock Laparoscopic surgery at the hospital. At the end it was really sad to leave everyone but hopefully we'll see each other in the fleet some day. Thanks Medical! ...

So as most of you probably know, this Wednesday through Friday I spent on a ship. It has been a really cool experience so far. I am one of the only ROTC kids so I have been meeting lots of Naval Academy mids. I have been paired with someone who works with air traffic control but since I'm a nursing student she lets me go down to the medical bay to shadow there. Katarina and Me on the flight deck. A bunch of us in the well deck of the ship. Then, once the weekend came a bunch of us decided to take a trip to Virginia Beach. We're staying in a hotel right on the beach! Some of the boys digging a giant hole. Ready to go out to dinner! What are you up to this weekend? Have you ever been to VA beach?

So I totally should be finishing packing instead of blogging but Memorial Day weekend was really blog worthy. I spent the weekend at one of my favorite places on Earth: Deep Creek Lake. This summer will be my 19th summer at the lake and I think I love it more and more each time. I drove up on Friday and my trip was really easy. My grandmother was already there and my aunt, uncle and cousins arrived about 2 hours later. I did a short hill workout and then it was time for dinner. Mountains in the background on the drive up. After dinner we had a nice bonfire and then I went to bed. It's like a blanket. Saturday was time to try out our new boat. Our old boat was over 30 years old and it just died 2 years ago. This boat is only 7 years old so it was quite an upgrade. So we packed up and headed down to the boat. And here's where things get interesting. We were out for no more than 2 minutes when crash, we ran into the back of another boat! My uncle has been driving b...