What happened was, I got promoted at work and then I went to Wittenberg for Homecoming weekend and trudged through the freezing rain just to get to the bar, drank keg beer while surrounded by basketball players fist pumping to Good Charlotte, executed a three-way Mad Dog race, broke glass bottles on the concrete wall of the basement of that one fraternity house, smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in the span of 24 hours, ate half a bag of TGIFriday’s Potato Skin chips at 3:00 in the morning while seriously wondering if it would be my last meal before I froze to death, and passed out in an RV two nights in a row, and when I finally resurfaced to reality several days later I realized that I had forgotten to pay my rent for October and I felt like I had just recovered from the flu and suddenly I had no interest in taking time out of my day to blog anymore.

Part of it was because I was tired, and part of it was because I was busy and preoccupied with work, but the other part was that I was just sort of over how trite this blog has become. In Springfield I spent time with some of my closest friends from Wittenberg, friends who inspire me because they are funny, intelligent, interesting, and crazy, and when I imagined myself mentioning my blog to them, I felt very silly and embarrassed. What would they think if I tried to talk to them about my little corner of the internet where I post crappy recipes and terribly edited pictures I take and links to crafts I’ll never do? I’m not proud enough of this blog to intentionally bring it up to any of my friends out there in the real world, and that has begun to bother me.

Even beyond that, I feel like I had fallen into a routine of spending way too much time staring into the abyss of my laptop screen instead of going out and enjoying the company of my friends and actually, you know, having experiences that might be worth blogging about. And it’s not that I don’t like what this blog has turned into, but I was just starting to feel very confined by the space I’ve created for myself. I started this blog because I wanted a place to write, specifically a place where I could write uninhibited, visceral shit about my life and my experiences without ever worrying about what people would think of it. But then I got caught up with the blogging cliches, and I let myself start to feel guilty if I didn’t post often enough, and ultimately I just feel like I’ve drifted away from what I really wanted to get out of this blog.

The other thing is that  I’m tired of using free WordPress as a host. It is an awesome platform for people who don’t have any interest in monetizing their blogs or posting edgy, racy content. But I’m bothered by the fact that I can’t link to articles on Sexis magazine because the content is deemed pornographic or some shit, and I’m bothered by the fact that I can’t use ads to make a few pennies for myself. I want to be a brand whore! Mainly, I want to actually use my Amazon Associates account, and be able to do giveaways on my blog if a company offers me money or free stuff. I also want to be done with “lynseysmith.wordpress.com” because I don’t like the idea of my full name being so central to the place on the internet where I hope to write more visceral, racy shit in the future.

For now this blog will stay pretty quiet until I can get motivated enough to make the logistic changes that need to happen before I’ll feel comfortable committing to a blog again. I’ve thought about leaving it behind and starting over completely fresh, but moving on has always been very difficult for me, and I’m not ready to forego all the content on this blog quite yet. I’ve been thinking about moving all my existing content to a new host — ideally I would like to copy everything over to Blogger because it’s still free, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that without it being extremely manual and tedious and time consuming. If anyone has any advice, I’d appreciate it.

I hope you’ll still check back here, because I promise that Dressed to Chill will be back sometime in the not-too-far future. And until then, thanks to everyone who has supported me and this blog, with a special thanks to the people over at Get Off My Internets, who have taken a liking to mine and Erin’s mock outfit post and have recently generated a lot of traffic to my blog even though I haven’t added any new content for a month.

I love you, internet. I’ll be back.

Free Karl shirt - from my favorite episode of Workaholics

I’m 24

My dog: the paradox

Musician Portraits Made of Their Own CDs (via Caitlin)

Shirt Happens: Rock Stars Wearing Their Own Merch

“Breakfast Commuters” by Logan Fitzpatrick

Dog portraits

The Breaking Bad Drinking Game (via Nova)

Bright 60′s kitchen cabinets

Holy shit. Want. Need. Nutella-Stuffed Brown Butter Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies (via Oh So Lovely Vintage)

“Wrap Battle” by Gemma Correll

Dub your cassette collection onto an iPhone

The nicest place on the internet for when you’re having a bad day

My friend Lamar showed me this ridiculous video of the best worst movie death scene ever

Gathering of the Juggalos 2012 fan photos because I’m kind of fascinated by all things ICP

I learned a new word from the Coquette

The absurdity of collective animal nouns (via Nova)

Breaking Ned: A Walter White & Ned Flanders Mashup Series

I pretty much always love a Nirvana cover. This one by Best Coast is pretty rad.

Cormac McCarthy Pictionary

Hits From the Bong: The 30 Most Commercially Successful Pot Songs

@FoodPorn_ my new favorite Twitter account (Thank you, Colin)

Maven of Meth: the real life chemist behind Breaking Bad (via Nova)

Minimalist series of geometric dog prints by Josh Brill

Thanks to Colin (and Trader Joe’s), I’ve gotten really into cookie butter lately. This shit is DELICIOUS.

Child’s Own Studio – custom toys based on children’s drawings

Created Equal photo series (via Caitlin)

1.  My first memory is  from when I was really young and so small that I couldn’t really go up and down the stairs. I have this hazy memory of climbing down our basement stairs backwards – I can remember the yellow overhead light and the way the carpet and wood felt. I’m pretty sure that “Down On Main Street” by Bog Seger was playing on my parents’ old stereo. Weird, right?

2.  My first love was  my neighbor. He was six years older than me and I had a crush on him from kindergarten til about fourth grade. He was my best friend for a couple years despite our age difference. I saw him recently and he has not aged well – he still lives with his parents. Coincidentally, though, Colin is also six years older than me. I have a longstanding thing for older dudes.

3.  My very first favorite color was robin’s egg blue. Like from the giant boxes of Crayola crayons, you know?

4. The first time I really felt like a “grown-up” was when  I bought my own car. I mean, I didn’t buy it up front — I’m still paying for it, and will be for several years, but I paid the down payment all by myself and negotiated the loan. No more rusty Chevy Cavalier for this adult.

5. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is  turn my alarm off and go back to sleep. I have to have at least one extended snooze every morning — Colin gets annoyed with how many alarms I set, but I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember. I usually set three or four alarms and go back to sleep a few times before finally getting out of bed.

6. The first CD (cassette tape, record, etc…) I ever bought was Millennium - Backstreet Boys. I think, anyway. The first CDs I owned were Christmas gifts (Backstreet Boys and *NSync) but I think the first one I bought on my own was the second Backstreet Boys.

7.  My first car was  a green 1997 Chevy Cavalier. My grandma bought it for me before I had my license from someone in our neighborhood, and I had that car for seven years. She was a piece, but she got me through a lot, and to be honest, sometimes I miss her.

This is the Royal Palace in Dam Square, which was one of my favorite parts of the city. It’s a huge tourist area, but I just loved how there were always so many people around. The Palace was built as the town hall in 1655 during the Dutch Golden Age.

I love this picture and the gorgeous, gigantic Christmas tree. Around Christmas time they had a fair in Dam Square, and a weird mini-rave on Sinterklaas Day.  Right behind the tree is the Nieuwe Kerk, a church that was built in the 15th century.

This is my favorite picture that I took in Amsterdam, and probably my favorite picture that I’ve ever taken. I really miss the trams — I wish more American cities had public transportation like that.

This is the National Monument in Dam Square, built in 1956 to commemorate the victims of World War II. It’s really phallic.

The Spui snake! This building was on the way to Spui, which was one of the first areas of the city that I became familiar with. If I wasn’t doing anything I would sometimes ride my bike over to Spui square just to do a loop of the city. One time when I was randomly passing through there was an outdoor market set up with a bunch of cool vendors, which is where I bought my first edition copy of Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.

The Nemo is such a cool looking building. I never got around to going inside, which I regret – it’ll definitely be on my to-do list when I go back to Amsterdam. It’s so iconic as far as the city center of Amsterdam goes. This was the view from the canal boat ride I took.

The other side — even though I never went inside, Allison and Huppe and I did spend an afternoon on the roof one time, and that was cool. They have little fountains to dip your feet in, and it’s a nice place to bask in the sun for a day.

Speaking of basking in the sun, this is Vondelpark. It’s huge, and I think I only went there twice — the time that I took this picture and then when we went to the Filmmuseum.

Westerpark. Sometimes when I was homesick I would ride my bike here to write. It’s near the Jordaan, which was probably my favorite shopping area of the city – so many cool shops, and not TOO touristy. I got my nose pierced at a shop in Jordaan.

This is me in front of Centraal Station. Kim and I were on our way to the tram stop to begin one of our many adventures in the city.

Yeah, yeah. I’m a nerd. Whatever. I love to read, and have ever since I was a little kid. Ever since college, though, it’s been harder for me to read just for pleasure — I think partially because I associate reading with homework (BLECK) and being an English major I was required to read a lot of crap that I didn’t necessarily want to read. I also just don’t have the same attention span that I had when I was younger. I could read for hours and hours at a time, but these days it’s not as easy for me to bury myself in a book like I used to. I don’t know what it is, but it’s just harder for me to focus and get into the story, and after reading for a while I inevitably get sleepy.

That’s why having the hour lunch has been great. Especially since I graduated, I’ve really missed reading and have wanted to reclaim it as a habit and a hobby. I certainly haven’t slowed down on buying books, but I have piles of them that I haven’t even opened since I impulsively snatched them off the shelves at Half Priced Books. My hour lunch is the perfect time for me to read — there are (usually) no distractions and I don’t have the option to lay down the book to “rest my eyes” and end up napping for two hours instead.

Plus, I’ve been reading some pretty good books lately, and having the time to dig into them during my lunch break at work has made me want to spend more time reading at home, too. I usually read a little bit before bed, and I’ve been trying to pick up a book sometimes when I’m hanging around the apartment instead of instinctively going straight for my laptop every time I have an idle moment. It’s been nice.

A few books I’ve enjoyed lately:

Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore

This was my second book of Christopher Moore’s, Lamb being the first. I think I liked this one better than Lamb because it was a little more accessible for me. Lamb‘s a great book, but I definitely didn’t “get” it as much as a lot of people would because I wasn’t raised in a religious environment and, in all honesty, don’t know that much about biblical stories. Practical Demonkeeping was a fun novel though, and I felt like Christopher Moore’s talent as a writer came through more than in Lamb. The humor felt less corny to me, and it made me want to read more of his books to see where else his dark sense of humor can go.

Bad Desire by Gary Devon

This is Gary Devon’s second novel, and while I liked his first novel, Lost, I thought Bad Desire was much, much better. It’s about the mayor of a small town who falls in love with a 17 year old girl and the obstacles he has to overcome to pursue the relationship. Obviously, it’s pretty fucking creepy, but it was really well-written and honestly, I couldn’t put it down. Gary Devon lived in Indiana, and I found out about him because I went to college with his son, who was a close friend of mine who often bragged about how his dad knew Kurt Vonnegut because he did some Indiana writer’s workshop with him or something. I’m glad I finally read this book because it was one of the best that I’ve read this year, and I’ll definitely be buying his third novel, Wedding Night, from Amazon sometime in the future.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This year I started exchanging letters with my eighth grade English teacher, who also lives two doors down from my mom. She’s a hip, hip lady, and it’s been fun having her as a pen pal, especially when she sends me books. She asks genuine questions about books I like, and I got her into Cormac McCarthy because I recommended The Road to her. In return, she recommended The Handmaid’s Tale to me and sent me a used copy of it that she had laying around, along with a copy of Feed by M.T. Anderson. I didn’t love this book, but it was definitely a good read. It reminded me of something I would have read for school — it’s about a future dystopian society, so it has that Brave New World vibe, except in this future, if you’re married to a powerful man and you can’t have children, your household is assigned a Handmaid, a woman who is used to breed with your husband to produce a child for your family. Fucking crazy, and in many ways, very topical for the conversations going on lately about reproductive rights.

What have you been reading lately? I love suggestions.

the deets:
jeans – dELIA*s
shirt – Magic Bus Indianapolis
shoes – Journey’s
bag – Target
pizza necklace – Etsy (Valentine’s Day gift from Colin!)
sunglasses – street vendor in Boston, MA
ring – my grandmother’s

Head over to Erin’s blog to see her outfit deets!

My favorite picture is the one with the Hoosiers fishing in the background. And of course we had to take some jumping photos and make an animated gif, because that’s what bloggers do.

Great literary drinkers shot glass set

TY: a window into my childhood. So great. I had a pretty ridiculous collection of Beanie Babies…I really wish I could have done a tribute to them like this before they all got donated.

8 Fairy Tales and Their Not-So-Happy Endings

A Brief Photo Survey of Abandoned Video Stores

Do nothing for 2 minutes – thinking about setting this as my homepage…it’d be a good habit to meditate for 2 minutes every day (via The Color Issue)

Library sex, college virgins, and dicks like Tinkerbell - gotta love Rabbit

Nail Art, the Last Bastion of Female-Centric Beauty - I don’t give a shit about nail art, but this is kind of interesting.

This rare interview with Coke Talk - did you know she’s my hero?

Lady Corgi watercolor by Brianna Ashby

Books give you a better perspective on life (thanks Colin)

The Sandlot: Where Are They Now

I really like these absurdly 90s leggings at Modcloth

Calligraphuck (via The Coquette)

Thoughts I Had While Washing the Dishes made me laugh.

The Serious Eats Guide to Sandwiches

Elizabeth’s free Roseanne printable

Raw peach pie sounds delicious

Hipster Wizard of Oz

Advice on writing from The Coquette

Librarian tattoos

This Salvador Dali watch

I think I might have posted these before, but I really want these inanimate character stickers

10 Really Bad Movies That Define “Bad Movies” Troll 2 didn’t make the cut?! I probably need to watch all of these though.

And, because I can’t resist, also this mental_floss article about The Remarkable Success of the Worst Movie Ever

Removie posters: film posters reimagined with one letter missing

Pop culture Virgin Mary statues - these are great

This mermaid pocket knife (via Hannah)

Can’t wait to make this pumpkin spice breakfast shake

This interview with Sarah Wu, author of Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project

Cats That Look Like Hitler - the internet never lets me down.

Chucks & Bucks: An Oral History of the Coolest Shoes on Earth

Artwork by Erin Flynn

I saw this recipe on the Whole Foods website and decided to try it because it sounded super easy and delicious.

For this snack you will need:

• 2 bananas, sliced and frozen
• 1 cup soy milk
• 2 tablespoons almond butter

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s a good way to salvage bananas that are getting dangerously close to their expiration date.

I like my bananas pretty ripe, but these are getting a little too spotty even for me. So if your bananas have over-ripened before you got around to eating them, grab two and slice them up and throw them in the freezer so you’ll have Banana Nice Cream supplies for a rainy day.

I slice mine in pretty small chunks and throw them in a tupperware. The only downside to this recipe is that it requires foresight, because it doesn’t work unless the bananas are frozen. So you have to plan ahead, or you can buy banana chunks from the frozen food section at the grocery store.

Once you’ve procured the frozen bananas, the rest is easy–just throw everything in the blender and mix until smooth. Serves two.

This is a delicious, creamy, guilt-free treat. It’s not fat or sugar free by any means, but it’s way healthier than a cup of ice cream or a milkshake, and it tastes just as good. You can obviously use regular milk if you’re not into soy, and I have also used peanut butter, but I prefer it with almond butter.

A delicious, guilt-free treat for the end of summer.

The Indiana State Fair is pretty much exactly the same as the Ohio State Fair, so of course I had to go. Who doesn’t love fried food, carnival rides, barnyard animals, and people watching?

Our first stop was the apple cider slush/corn on the cob booth. A weird combination, but both were delicious.

Colin made a bee-line for the deep fried oreos. You might remember when I fell in love with these last summer at the Granville Street Fair, and they were just as epic this time around, except I did miss the buffet of sauces and sugar toppings.

I wanted to buy all of these homemade butters. Colin got some of the pumpkin butter, but we were disappointed to find out it didn’t really taste that pumpkin-y.

I really wanted to ride one of these tractor trolley things, but by the time we were leaving they all shut down because it had started to storm.

I didn’t mean to cut off Gretchen’s head, I was just excited about the pineapple whip. Holy shit – SO delicious and refreshing. I think I could eat one of these every day and not get tired of them.

We went in to the donkey barn and at first I thought they were ridiculously cute, and then I started to feel sorry for them because they all seemed extremely morose and depressed, but then I got kind of pissed when one of them hee-hawed at me when I was trying to make cutesy “hello little animal” noises at it. OKAY, EEYORE. Grumpy much? Forget you guys, you smell anyway.

When we stumbled across a grilled cheese food truck, of course we had to try it. The Big Cheeze hails from Bloomington, Indiana, which is a damn shame because they are freaking awesome and would be about the clutchest thing EVER when I’m wasted. Their slogan: “It ain’t easy bein cheesy!” Love it.

I got the “Mac Daddy” which is a grilled cheese with mac and cheese in the middle. I wouldn’t say it was “the best sandwich in the world,” but it was definitely tasty. Bonus: the guy serving the grilled cheeses was hot. Big Cheeze State Fair worker: if you’re reading this, I think I’ve found your soul mate….her name is Gretchen.

Okay. Deep fried treats. I get that. But deep fried butter?! Since when is butter a treat? And how exactly do they even do that? And WHO IS EATING THIS SHIT? I mean seriously. I know that a deep fried Snickers bar is pretty extreme, but deep fried butter is taking it TOO FAR.

I was disappointed that I didn’t get to ride any carnival rides, but I still enjoyed our trip to the fair. A Midway wristband is definitely on my summer to-do list for next year.