Hey guys.

We're coming back.

Get excited.

And stay tuned (oh, the mystery however will you handle it).

Our sincerest apologies,
Ashley and Stephanie

Ashley goes America all over everyone's ass

Hey guys! That title has nothing to do with the blog post — I just couldn't think of anything and I've been watching a lot of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia SO DEAL WITH IT. Also, I expect that you will all forget about the fact that I haven’t written a blog in two months and just keep reading as if nothing had ever happened. Why haven’t I written in so long you ask? Well for starters if I had been writing a blog would I have had time to do stuff like THIS:

I didn’t think so. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s move on to what’s been going on up in my life. And since we all know how action packed and sex-fueled my day-to-day is, let’s simply break the major events down into a list:

-       My first year at the University of Glasgow ended

-       I saw the Avengers …

I can't be the only person who saw the resemblance ...

-       I got a part-time job at a café by my house and it sucks ass

-       And uh, it’s not like a big deal or anything but I have 400 Facebook friends now

-       I’ve read a lot of books that include The Rings of Saturn (amazingly amazing) and The Road (which you should not read if you have hope … about anything)

-       I’ve written a few more short stories, one of which was read out in front of a live audience by a friend of a friend. It was strange but good. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever stared at the ground so hard in my life.

-       Other stuff

Also, I finished up that ancestry project I mentioned a while back and found out some pretty interesting stuff. Now prepare yourselves for this because you might need an extra pair of socks after the two that you are wearing suddenly blow off. Turns out that every person, from every possible branch of my family tree, has been horrendously poor. Like we’re talking farmers, coal-miners, and farming coal-miners poor. And I know you’re probs like, “But Ashley, you are so extravagant and good-smelling and you wear such clothes that make lesser peoples think you a God. How could this possibly be?”  Truth is my minions friends, beneath this exterior of grace and perfect bone structure lies a girl who, as a rapidly-growing gangly pubescent who couldn’t afford to buy clothes, had to wear the same pair of overalls for so long that I’m not even going to try and describe to you the severity of the camel toe situation. My crotch barely made it out alive let’s just put it that way. 

And with that, my first year as a Master of Fine Arts student has ended. It’s been a really great/interesting nine months. I realy thinq Ive grohn alot as a wryter. I’ve been to places I never thought I’d have the money or opportunity to go to. And even though (to be honest) these last couple months have been a little emotionally rough for me, this place just seems like home now and I’m happy that I get to spend another year here. And now that I have no more looming assignments, I promise to blog more because let’s be honest, I missed you guys a lot. BUT ENOUGH OF THIS SERIOUS STUFF. HEREARESOMEPICS:

This one day it got "hot" in Glasgow

Glasgow's Botanical Gardens

Oliver and his flat

Second hand book store <3

HOME

 But I get so crampy when I try to learnnnn

Banksy and I 

Yo Ho

The Gines

Shisha and tea, tea and shisha

Gina's 23rd

The absent-minded professor 

:-})

Edinburgh Zoo

PANDA WATCH

"The Ways of the Panda: How we can use their mating habits as a guide to affect change in our own" ... By Gina Malara and Ashley Welling

Edinburgh

FOUND IT

Pollok House

Best author's photo of all time?

While my surroundings may appear to be calm and docile, mere moments after this was taken the clouds above unleashed a torrent of hail/rain/wind that would have made Thor cry as if a child of the female persuasion.

Helen and a Pollok cat

Leaving Pollok

Until next time my friends,

Ashley

Spring break and chirping birds.

Hello our dear readers.  Yes, I've missed you.  Yes, I am drowning in guilt because of my lack of consistent blogging these days.  No, I didn't buy you guys chocolate roses to say sorry.

In any case, this blog has been neglected, largely due to my increased lack of free time.  I hope you guys had a good time reading through Ashley's last blog and lengthy assortment of pictures.  While I haven't been anywhere as monumentally exciting as London, I have been at work far too early in the morning, I've fallen down a muddy hill in a white dress, I've attempted to climb a fence and completely failed, I've barely beaten Allie at "see who can swing higher", I've dreamt of playing Oregon Trail II, I began the epic re-watching of Scrubs, I've Googled pictures of Northern California because the whole homesick desperation bit has finally sunken in, my roommate has made me into a meme (picture below), I've learned that a large coffee at McDonald's could last for decades and never be empty, I've fulfilled my dreams of playing Oregon Trail II when I was recently back home for spring break, and I was in the Minneapolis airport at 5 am which was, in itself, a strange experience.  It's been PRETTY exciting.

And now I am entering the final phase of spring semester.  Pittsburgh went into extreme spring overhaul mode and it's now disgustingly gorgeous outside.  There were actually birds chirping after the sun went down last night.  It was AWESOME, and later annoying because chirping birds are only cute for the first half hour and they were chirping away like three hours past sunset.  It's like it was April or some shit.

So, spring break.  I arrived in California at 10pm last Saturday, but not before our plane felt like it was going to crash when it was going over Colorado or Arizona or Russia or wherever the hell we were.  I, for the first time in the history of ever, silently squealed when our pilot announced our descent into Sacramento.  Oh the places I'll drive to over spring break, I thought.  I had planned out an excursion to Oregon, San Francisco, and everywhere in between.  I never did end up going to either but I did make it to the in betweens and that was quite enough to satiate my driving thirst.  It was mildly warm for the first couple days and so I went wild with my spring/summer checklist (wear dress, drive with windows down, turn up music, feel free, laugh at people in the southern hemisphere, take pictures with a respectable amount of lens flare).  As much as I adore winter, I have missed summer a great deal.  We had maybe two months of actual warmth last year in Northern California so I think that might be why I am so desperate for warmer weather.

So I completed my checklist and half before the last half of spring break.  I deemed Wednesday as my "stay in pajamas and watch bad TV" day, Thursday as my "drive around nearby towns and take like 400 pictures lul sorry camera" day, Friday as my "hang out with Dad and drive up to Tahoe and take another 400 pictures really though I'm sorry camera okay" day, and the remainder of the weekend as my "hang out with Bub and eat all the things" day.  Somewhere in between those days was half a century's worth of Oregon Trail and Mario Kart playing, but that's just a given.

So I will end this with a couple pictures.  And by a couple pictures I mean just shy of 400.  Sorry.

Aforementioned meme.  And this actually happened.

 

I really want to know what park fees are.

 Because it reminded me of Parks and Recreation okay.

 Myself.

 "That's where they kept the bodies"

 Pretty green things and fences.

 You can't see it, but it said "Furniture and Useful Stuff".  My kind of store.

I am occasionally good at photography and get awesome shots.
 

 The love of my life.

 The love of Ashley's life.

 We spent that night on Chat Roulette.  It was also hat night.  I had a plastic fireman's helmet

 No explanation necessary.

The father and I in Tahoe.

 One out of a million different gorgeous mountains in Tahoe.

Aforementioned mountain.

 The view from our restaurant, which was technically in Nevada.

Apparently an alcoholic hermit used to live on this island and that was somehow awesome so they made a sign about it.

Until next month.
Just kidding I won't wait so long next time.  PROMISE.

P.S. We were awarded a Kreativ Blogger Award by one of our lovely readers, Rusty, so thank you! I'm not sure if we're supposed to also award someone so, uh, leave a comment.

P.P.S. I am intelligent and missed one of the rules of winning the award.  We are supposed to list ten facts about ourselves so I'll accept that challenge and share 10 things about Ashley and I.

1. We used to have "leg wars" which entailed laying on opposite ends of the couch and sort-of-kicking each other with our legs.
2. To keep cool from the scorching Sacramento sun, we would swim around our above ground pool and invent things.
3. Our inventions usually had something to do with toilets (one of them being Toilet Genie 3000)
4. When we were close enough in age to be at the same school, we would hang out on this one tree by the field and it was awesome.
5. One time she made me eat soap.  She thinks I'm making that up.  I'm not.  It was horrible.
6. Ashley has magical hands and gives really great massages.  But she never gives me one because she's horrible.
7. Before the hatred set in, I used to let her lay on my lap during road trips and stroke her hair.  It actually fills me with rage just thinking about it.
8. When she left for college (undergrad, that is) I was secretly sad about it and would call her for hours at a time.
9. We did Bloody Mary once when we were little and it scared me for years.
10. Ashley is majoring in creative writing and I in photography and neither of us really know what we're doing but, hell, we're doing it and it's made us pretty happy so far.  And bless our parents, they're happy we're happy, despite the fact we're not engineering majors.