This past week I was in Boston for a family vacation with my mom, brother, and the boyfriend. We drove all 22 hours to get there and 22 hours back. In fact this past Thursday we drove 17.5 hours in one day which I don’t recommend. This trip to Boston is special to me because out of all the places I have visited, Boston is the one city I would love to move to. I’m going to share some pictures of my adventure along with why I adored Boston.

Sunday, May 13th

Technically we arrived in Boston on Saturday night at around 8:00 PM. After drinking a pint at a restaurant downtown, we decided to walk around downtown Boston near the Boston Commons. Boston Commons is Boston’s version of Central Park in NYC. Right on Boylston Street is this Edgar Allen Poe statue. There’s his raven and on the back of the raven is a heart from the “Tell-Tale Heart” short story. I’m a huge fan of Gothic literature so I did indeed take a selfie with Edgar Allen Poe.

On Sunday, May 13th, me and my family did some more exploring. After walking through the Boston Commons in daylight, we walked to Beacon Hill. This neighborhood is so serene and architecturally stunning. Every building has a New England feel to it. My dream house would probably be somewhere in this neighborhood.

After exploring Beacon Hill, we headed over to Quincy Market. Quincy Market is an indoor Farmer’s market with a variety of different restaurants. All the food smelled so good.

My coworker recommended to me that we explore the North End of Boston. Paul Revere’s house and statue are located here. The North End of Boston is also well known as being the Italian district with many different Italian restaurants to choose from. I was surprised walking around this area how many restaurants there were! We passed at least ten different restaurants before settling on the one we picked. There was a balcony with some flowers to provide a nice ambiance. I ordered butternut squash ravioli and it was delicious. Sunday was also Mother’s Day so the boyfriend snapped a picture of me and my mom enjoying our wine. Like mother like daughter, right?  

This is the Boston skyline from Boston Commons. As you can see, we lucked out with how gorgeous the weather was. It was sunny which is something I longed for after surviving yet another Minnesota winter.

Monday, May 14th

The bookworm in me was thrilled to see that there was an outdoor bookshop in downtown Boston. Brattle Books is one of America’s oldest bookstores in the country <  I didn’t know this while we were there. If I’m ever near Boston again, I will stop here for more books.

Boston is a city known for all of the US history. We stopped by the Boston Tea Party Museum (which I didn’t pay to tour) along with the U.S.S Constitution. This naval ship shown in the picture below is the oldest ship still in the water. The boyfriend was really excited to see this in person. However, the museum was actually closed on Monday which stinks, so we could only see this from the outside.

The view from the Boston Harbor is breathtaking. You can see the whole city in its entirety and look at how blue the water looks. This picture is probably my favorite picture I took on this trip because it demonstrates how beautiful Boston is.

Typical couple picture in front of the Boston skyline because why not?

Me and my mom are on the same page with our love of Boston. As you can see she’s wearing a Patriots long-sleeve shirt.

Tuesday, May 15th

At my mom’s request, we walked from our hotel all the way to Fenway Park. If there’s any sport that I truly love to watch, it’s baseball. When I think of an ideal summer day it would include watching the Minnesota Twins at Target field with a beer in my hand and socializing with friends. Fenway Park is a really nice baseball stadium and I like how many restaurants surround this field. Unfortunately, we were unable to see a baseball game, but that’s on my bucket list for my next trip to this city.

Our final activity was to see the Skywalk Observatory. It’s located near this upscale hotel and you have to pay $20 to go up there, but it’s worth it. You get an incredible view of the entire city. It’s also not too packed up there so you have room to walk around and take plenty of pictures. This was another tourist activity I recommend doing while visiting Boston.

Overall, Boston is my favorite trip I have taken so far. Another thing I learned from this trip is that this was a long drive. 22 hours is a long drive one way. I’m not sure if I would want to do another road trip that long of a distance again. I found myself growing impatient and slightly uncomfortable from sitting in the car for many hours. I’m proud to say that I drove all the way out there. It’s a cool achievement.

Do you live in Boston? I would love to know what other cool things I missed out on. Leave a comment below!

So you want to go on a road trip? I prefer driving versus flying unless, of course, I’m traveling to another continent. In less than two weeks, my family & the boyfriend are driving all the way to Boston and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I find with driving you can experience so much more of what the U.S. has to offer versus flying past all of the cute small towns or lush forests along the way. I wanted to give a couple road trip tips I learned to help create a smooth driving experience with friends or family.

Dress Comfortably for the Drive

I never drive in jeans because I want to be comfy if I have to be in the car for 10+ hours. I personally love driving in activewear because it’s soft and doesn’t cling to you in hot weather. Activewear is the way to go for driving long distances. Also wearing sneakers versus flip-flops is a must! It’s unsafe to drive in flip-flops because it doubles the amount of time to move your foot from the accelerator to the brake. Please wear sneakers 🙂

Pack Sunglasses or a Hat to Protect your Eyes

^^^ This will make your road trip pictures look better if you’re not squinting against the sun.

Plan out your trip, but leave room for spontaneity

Figure out museums, parks, and other attractions you must visit, but leave some room on the road trip for stops along the way. When I was driving through Illinois to get to Kentucky, we found the city with the largest Superman statue + museum. There was a sign alerting us to it so we pulled off and took many photos outside the museum and with the statue. It makes the road trip more memorable if there are stops that you weren’t originally planning for.

Have an emergency fund.

Include at least $400 for an extra hotel room, car repairs, or medical emergencies. In June 2015, me and my friend drove to a music festival in Michigan. When we were pulling into the campgrounds, my car shut off and wouldn’t turn on. We were able to gather at least ten people to push my car off to the side so I could call for a tow. This event unfortunately put a damper on our vacation because we weren’t sure how to get home and we didn’t have the $$$ for major car repairs. Thankfully it all worked out, but it could have been much worse.

Set a budget!!

How much will you spend in a day? How much are you planning for the trip? This is crucial to ensure that traveling doesn’t break the bank. Also when you think of purchasing a souvenir, actually ask yourself “Do I really need this?” Sometimes if we truly evaluate our purchases before impulsively pulling out our credit card, we can make the right decision and not regret it later.

I hope these tips are helpful, but ultimately you will come up with your own road trip tips when you experience the pleasure of driving from point A to point B. Also if you’re from the East Coast please give me recommendations of things to see. I have never been out to this part of the U.S. so I need all the help I can get.

I haven’t been writing regular posts because I have been feeling… uninspired. I haven’t been on any great trips or read any super amazing books so it had been days since I felt energized enough to write a post. One great thing happened to me this week I wanted to share and it has to do with my personal training experience at the gym I exercise at. After doing an In-Body machine *which calculates your muscle & body fat* I gained a pound of muscle. How cool is that!? All the hard work I put into my sessions has literally left me feeling stronger.

I talked about why I decided to hire a personal trainer in that blog post so I won’t go through that here. For me, my goal is to put on more muscle mass because muscle is so important since it can deteriorate as we age if we don’t use it. I would like to decrease my body fat, but I’m not necessarily ready to be super strict with myself. For example, if I go out to a happy hour with friends, I will have one drink but try not to exceed two. My body fat went up .2 which I’m not too concerned with. I carry about 53 lbs. of body fat which you might think is a lot, but not really. I love my curves! I don’t want to be skinny because I like having some body fat on my frame. I would like to see this number decrease, but it’s not my main concern.

I can tell I’m getting stronger based on how I complete the workouts. Before this, I couldn’t do a push-up on my toes. Now, I can do multiple push-ups in a row on my toes and go farther down into the push-up. I have upped my weight in dumbbells doing 20 lbs. for a shoulder press. Also my stamina! I feel I have more energy to go along with my day which means I’m decreasing the amount of coffee I drink and increasing my water intake.

Overall if you have been exercising and haven’t been seeing results, hire a coach or personal trainer. Getting toned is tough to do on your own, so allow someone to help assist you in getting the results you need.

We talk about physical and mental health quite frequently in society, but what about financial health? Financial health describes what your financial state is. This includes emergency savings, and retirement along with how much disposable income you have. Disposable income is important because to fuel the economy we need to purchase stuff. I wanted to share a couple things I’m doing to help me out financially.

Creating a Travel Savings Account

My financial adviser suggested doing this to help pay for travel without digging into my “emergency savings.” Plus if I know my money is directly going to fund my next trip, it gets me more excited to stay in if I know I could fly somewhere new in the next couple of months. I’m using Ally and I opened a high-yielding savings account to help accrue more interest. I’m looking forward to seeing this account grow and which trips I can personally fund out of this account.

Make all minimum payments on credit card debt

Before, I was throwing as much money as I possibly could pay my credit card debt which led to me draining my checking account too easily. Instead, I will be putting 15-20 dollars from each paycheck to my credit card. I narrowed down my credit card debt to around $100 which means I’m so close to paying it off.

Put anywhere between 10 – 20% in the emergency savings

I tried putting 20% of my paychecks in savings and find that’s not working with all of my bills I have to pay + having some discretionary funds to buy comics/books, go shopping, or go out to eat. I’m playing around with how much to put in my savings so that I still have some leftover fun money as well.

Create a Budget

I used Microsoft Excel to lay out all my bills for each month. This keeps me organized and helped me cut some expenses I didn’t need. For example, I dropped off some of the virtual coaching I had been doing so this left me with an extra $80 a month. I also forgot about some of the extra random bills like car tabs once a year and my Xbox Live yearly subscription. This budget has helped me immensely into becoming organized with my paychecks.

I’m always looking for ways to save money and be financially smarter. So leave a comment below if you have any other tips/tricks with money.

Happy Easter! Easter has never been a big holiday in my family, so me and the boyfriend decided to drive to Milwaukee to spend this holiday with his family. It’s nice to get out of my regular routine every now and then. Spring is right around the corner hopefully, though when I look outside I still see brown grass with dirty snow piles everywhere. Let’s recap the month of March:

Increase my Roth IRA deposit from $50 to $100 FAIL *ish* 

Last month I made an appointment to meet with a financial adviser from Thrivent about my finances and spending. I learned a lot about how to save for my future. Instead of bumping my Roth IRA, I’m more focused on having more money in my emergency savings. My adviser calculated I was $1000 short of what I should have in that account… yikes. I chose to keep my Roth IRA at $50 a month until I reach my savings goal. If you have never made an appointment to meet with a financial adviser, I highly recommend it.

Move at least $100 from each paycheck to Savings PASS 

I also moved my federal refund from my taxes into my savings as well. Saving money has never been difficult for me.

Watch Season #2 of Jessica Jones PASS 

I even wrote my review under my Bizarre Brunette Binges section, check it out if you haven’t already: Jessica Jones Review

Catch up on my Comics Pile PASS 

I finished Moonstruck Issues #3 – #5. I still have Saga and Paper Girls to read, but I did read a lot more comics this month.

Finish Lego Marvel Superheroes 100% PASS 

I unlocked all the achievements besides the 100% achievement. I know what you’re thinking, technically I didn’t meet my goal, right? I realize there are many video games out there for me to play, there’s not enough time to 100% every single game. I collected all the achievements I wanted to, but now I’m playing Uncharted Drake’s Fortune. 

My goals for the month of April:

Plan out my Boston Trip with family.

In May, me and my family are driving out to Boston! I’m pumped about it because I love road trips and I haven’t been to the East Coast before. We haven’t really planned a whole lot of it yet.

Create a Travel Savings account

This has been on my mind for a while, but I want to create a new savings account specifically for travel. I don’t want to dip into my emergency savings to pay for something extra. I’m thinking of going to Ally because they have higher-yielding savings accounts versus other typical banks.

Finish Uncharted Drake’s Fortune & Start Uncharted #2 Among Thieves

A couple months ago I bought the three games remastered on one disc. When I bought my PS4 back in November, I knew I wanted to play The Last of Us & Uncharted because they were huge titles on the play station.

Visit One Brewery I Have Never Been To Before

I don’t drink often, but if I do it’s usually a beer at a brewery. Breweries are chill places to have a pint and a genuine conversation with friends. Minneapolis / St. Paul has way too many breweries to count, but I want to visit one I haven’t been to before.

I’m still best friends with the first girl I met while I was in college. She was on my floor Freshman year while I lived in the dorms and we would watch movies together and play board games. Finally, we found a free weekend where she could drive to the Cities so we could hang out. I wanted to talk about all the fun things we were able to do.

Friday:

I took my friend to Black Panther at the movie theater by my house. It was her first time seeing it while I had seen it a week prior with the boyfriend. She hasn’t been impressed by Marvel movies lately, but she thoroughly enjoyed this one. My favorite character is Shuri because she’s the head of the science department and uses technology to attempt to take down Kilmonger. Besides seeing Black Panther, I took her to a really good pizza place called Pizza Luce. She ended up ordering Mac & Cheese, but I indulged in many slices of pizza with no shame.

Saturday:

Unfortunately, my job requires me to work most Saturdays from 7 AM – 1 PM. I actually don’t mind it all that much because I’m constantly busy so the shift goes by fast. However, it sucks when I have actual plans on Saturday. My boyfriend entertained my friend until I drove home. We got lunch and I showed her one of my favorite comic shops in the cities Source Comics & Games. I’m pretty sure I wrote a blog post about this shop, but I’m too lazy to search for the link to the post.

Besides comic book shopping, we attended this event at Tin Whiskers Brewing Company in St. Paul, MN. They were hosting a comic book night with local artists tabling and displaying their work. I was walking around with my 10 oz. IPA sipping on a beer and browsing through art. I ended up buying a really cool piece by Chance Wyatt with the Flash running on a lake with his reflection showing the Reverse Flash. We were going to go to a Harry Potter-themed acoustic show, but the place where it was held was lighting an incense my friend was allergic to. By this time we drove back to my house and watched a movie and I passed out because I was exhausted from being up so early.

Sunday:

I had always wanted to try a Waffle Bar in the Twin Cities area because we wanted breakfast, but my friend doesn’t eat eggs. The Coffee & Waffle Bar was pretty good, I ended up ordering a strawberry cheesecake waffle with a cup of black coffee. I could honestly eat breakfast food all day because breakfast is my favorite meal. I also thought that if Leslie Knope ever visited Minneapolis, she would want to eat here.

I’m always happy showing my friends around Minneapolis / St. Paul. I love where I live and even though winter really sucks, I like this area. Next weekend we are hosting another friend as well, so I have to think of other things to do. It’s fun being a tourist in your own city! 🙂

Unlike February, I won’t be traveling at all for the month of March. I need that downtime because traveling whether it’s flying somewhere or driving is expensive. March and April will be money-saving months to prepare for a road trip to Boston with my family in May. Since I’m sticking in my area throughout the next two months, I will be having some friends come to stay with us from my college town. It will be nice to see them since it’s been a couple months since we had good quality time together. Let’s recap the month of February.

Set a budget for Planet Comicon SUCCESS 🙂

I was most worried about this goal because I can easily spend more than what I had previously said I would. I spent $40 less than I had originally anticipated! It helped that I spent most of my Saturday waiting in line for photos and autographs so that meant I didn’t end up wandering around browsing other artists or it would have been game over.

Work at Steamship at least once per month. FAIL 

Normally I end up working one shift a month, but nobody posted wanting a shift taken so I didn’t end up working. It works out for the best because I am working 40+ hours a week at my full-time job and maybe I do want my free time to be able to re-watch season #1 of Jessica Jones.

Play D&D at least once this month. FAIL

My biggest problem with being able to play DnD is finding a group that’s local. I’m a part of one Facebook page, but they usually meet at a game store thirty minutes away and that’s hard to get to on a day of the week. I do want to play DnD more often, but I haven’t found the right group yet.

Read one book & one comic book this month. Success / Fail. 

I did read more comics than books which is my usual. I can read comics a lot faster than books. I read books on my lunch break, but I usually don’t get a full chapter in. Currently, I’m reading Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed. It’s the story adaptation of the movie. When I finish it, I will post a review because Rogue One is my all-time favorite Star Wars movie.

Now onto the goals for the spring month of March:

Increase my Roth IRA deposit from $50 to $100

If you haven’t opened up your own retirement fund, you definitely should. I don’t rely on my employer to save for retirement and I like that I control how much I can put in. Now that I have been working for several months, it’s time to get serious about saving for retirement. I need to contact my Thrivent agent to tell them to bump up my Roth.

Move at least $100 from each paycheck to Savings

I usually always do this with every paycheck. In addition to this, any leftover amount of my previous paycheck also gets moved to savings.

Watch Season #2 of Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones is my favorite “superhero” from The Defenders. I admire everything she has gone through and she is such a complex character. I hope to see more appearances with Luke Cage and see more of a budding romance again in season #2. I also want to learn more about her past and what happened to her that gave her these incredible powers. Also to see Patsy Walker kick ass too. All the women in this show are really interesting characters.

Catch up on my Comics Pile

I am reading through a new comic I bought called Manhunter from DC Comics, but I have a pile of comics to read including Paper Girls Volume #3, Saga Volume #2, and Moonstruck issues #3-#5. I need to sit down on a Sunday with some coffee and take a couple hours to read my comics.

Unlock all the Achievements in LEGO Marvel Superheroes

This game has been my guilty pleasure. I have been trying to 100% the game to unlock all the extra achievements. It’s taken me a while because I’m not able to play video games all that often anymore. I find this game a nice & fun distraction from the stress of my ordinary life.

That’s all I got! This month there are a lot more financial goals than last month, but they’re still important which is why I included them. I’m looking forward to the Spring weather Minneapolis hopefully has to offer.

After writing my Planet Comicon blog post, I wanted to write a brief summary of the Air B&B we stayed at. Prior to my Kansas City trip, I had never used Air B&B before. My friend used it once while she was in Paris and had a great experience with it. She booked our Air B&B for our trip which was rather cheap. Thursday night at 11:30 PM we drove up to our lodging, and we were honestly disappointed.

The Air B&B was in the middle of a construction/train station area. We were seven minutes outside the city, although we still felt unsafe. Me and my friend debated for a good fifteen minutes on whether or not to get a hotel instead because that’s the vibe we were getting from this place.

After parking, we walked inside the building. The hallway was extremely long and our room was at the end of it. There was plenty of lighting in the hallway which helped tried to make it feel more “homey”. Me and my friend still felt the inside was creepy and the creaking of the floor didn’t help either. Thankfully I was sharing this room with my friend, but if I was alone I would be scared.

As we walked into our room, it did remind me of the pictures we saw online. The room had an urban feel to it and the bathroom doors were coated in a picture of downtown Kansas City which I thought was kinda cool. The floors, however, were extremely dirty. I had socks on and when I took my socks off, they were black. I’m not expecting five-star service, but I had hoped the place would have been cleaned before we got there.

Our Air B&B offered free WiFi, but it was really slow WiFi. I guess if you are going to pay to have WiFi for your guests, I would assume it would have been somewhat decent.

I will say I am glad we stayed here because it was close to Kansas City so the Uber rides we took were incredibly cheap. I wish we would have done more research when booking the Air B&B because I wouldn’t have stayed there if I had known previously the area where it was located.

Overall, I wouldn’t mind using Air B&B again or I would use a hotel. I want to emphasize how important it is to do your research on where you stay. Type in the address and look at pictures of the outside. Read the detailed reviews especially the negative ones to know what you’re getting into when you pay for the place. My friend did end up leaving a negative review of the place which I completely agreed with. I would love to hear about your experiences with Air B&B in the comments section. Maybe you have had a more positive experience than I had.

I’m officially back from my blogging hiatus due to my trip to Planet Comicon & lots of work. I have never been to a “bigger” comic convention; most of my cons have been local and no more than 6,000 people attend. Planet Comicon has about 15,000-16,000 on average. Once I got back from Planet Comicon, I had to spend time processing this weekend because guess what? Not only did I meet Jason Momoa, but I also met Matthew Lewis aka. Neville Longbottom. I’m still in shock this happened. I was telling a coworker about meeting Matthew Lewis and I was still red in the face and laughing nervously. Anyway, this post is to gush to you all about how awesome my weekend was and how I’m already planning my next “bigger” convention.

Arriving in Kansas City, me and my friend picked up our passes on Friday for Saturday. I’m glad we did because the line on Saturday to pick up tickets was really long. Immediately entering the convention hall on Saturday I was in awe over all the people. Walking around was difficult as there were huge groups of people walking at different speeds. There were so many creators tabling, artists sketching, and multiple props to take pictures with. It was slightly intimidating.

The first place me and my friend stopped at was the celebrity booth to find Jason Momoa. His line was packed with cosplayers, families, and other con-goers. Me and my friend exchanged nervous glances about whether or not we would actually get the autograph we paid for because that’s how long the line was. While walking around the celebrity booth, we noticed Matthew Lewis doing signings. We both spontaneously decided to wait in his line for an autograph.

To purchase Matthew Lewis’s autograph, we waited for 2 1/2 hours. We were getting antsy because we weren’t moving and I was slightly dehydrated from all the standing. Finally, his line started to move and I was suddenly standing a couple feet from him. I started blushing due to being nervous. Anyway, he said my name and asked me how I was and I told him to draw me a Deathly Hallows symbol on my picture of Neville. After receiving my autograph, my hands were shaking and my heart was practically about to explode from my chest. I’m so happy we waited in line for him.

After Matthew Lewis, we took a break by getting some lunch and walking around the floor. There’s so much shopping you could do! I wish I had purchased a day pass on Sunday so I could have looked at all the comics, books, and art creators were selling. Once we got back to the convention, we waited in line for a photo with Matthew Lewis.

Originally, I didn’t want to buy a celebrity photo because I was afraid of the photo looking awkward. I was surprised by the fact that the photo looks really professional. The photo line moved pretty quickly and we were done within 15 minutes. Plus Matthew Lewis put his arms around us and made it look pretty casual. AHHH Matthew Lewis put his arm around me, I won’t forget that. ❤

Me and my friend were about to give up on Jason Momoa’s autograph (even though we paid for it, but the line was ridiculously long) when we noticed the line was considerably shorter. We walked up to a lady with a volunteer shirt on who told us to move in the line. We were given mean glances by those waiting in line for an autograph who didn’t pre-purchase it like we did. I wasn’t as nervous with Jason Momoa as I was with Matthew Lewis. I wanted to briefly describe what I said to Jason Momoa while he signed my Aquaman print:

Me: *nervously giggling* I’m so excited about the solo Aquaman movie.

Jason: *pauses* “Hellll yeahhhh. Here take a girl scout cookie.” (He did have thin mints at his table for fans).

Jason gave me his seal of approval for the Aquaman movie with two words. I’m pumped to see it in theaters.

After Jason Momoa, me and my friend were exhausted, so we called an Uber and changed out of our Hogwarts Student cosplays, and had a beer with food. Overall it was one of the best conventions I attended. Usually, I attend smaller conventions, but this one was a nice change of pace. I’m not sure how I would feel attending NYCC or San Diego because I was overwhelmed by the hordes of people all around me. In general, I’m open to attending larger conventions because Planet Comicon was great. Plus I can now say I met Aquaman and Neville Longbottom in real life.

I don’t usually talk about fitness on this blog, but I did graduate from Winona State University with a B.S. in Exercise Science. I’m also certified as a Personal Trainer by the ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine). In January, I was contacted by a personal trainer at the gym I work out at because I had won three free personal training sessions. These sessions kicked my butt. Today I used the last session of my three free sessions, and I decided to hire a virtual coach and unlimited access to group personal training. I wanted to talk about why this was a great decision for me.

This personal trainer taught me how much I wasn’t challenging myself. The workouts he had me do made my body feel more fatigued than I had ever felt on my own. After the workout, I would come home genuinely shaky because my muscles had been pushed to a new level. I realized with my own training, I was stalling out. I did movements I was familiar with, which led to my body getting used to my routine. Workouts are meant to challenge the body; that’s how our body adapts and gets stronger.

My biggest challenge with getting to the gym is accountability. Two days a week, I work twelve-hour shifts. I get home from work, cook dinner, and I’m physically exhausted. I sit on the couch and end up falling asleep early. Instead, I would rather be held accountable to go to the gym and get a workout in. Hiring a trainer allows me to have accountability, meaning I’m more likely to go to my gym.

Finally, hiring a trainer helps me be organized in the gym. Some days I walk into the gym and ask myself, “What am I going to do today?” With my trainer, she will write workouts for me, and when I walk into the gym, I will know what I will be doing for about forty five minutes. This helps me be more organized and concise during my exercise.

I am more motivated than I have ever been before. I have been rejuvenated, and I’m ready to go kick some serious ass in the gym.