FYI: Don’t Be This Girl!
So I’m getting married next week, and thought the guests might like a heads-up as to what may go down. It’s undoubtedly gonna be a disaster (we’ll just leave the blogging for later. You know, like once I’m dead…), if my previous attendance at such events is any indication… Anywho, to summarize:
Sandy in Full Force 
In honor of all my peeps hunkerin’ down up there on the East Coast this week (I love you bro, go NYC??), I thought I’d recount a bit of Nina’s Adventures in Hurricane Un-preparedness. In which I survive a week without power in the sweltering Houston summer on nothing but wine and the kindness of strangers. With a parenthetical side-note on hurricane preparedness in the Big Sleazy. Omg two posts in one week, whatever shall my followers do! Prepare to shit yourselves, please…
Just a typical road race in the ATX…
So I’m running a 12k in a couple weeks (yes, a 12k, wtf Oz, get your road race distances right!), which got me thinking about the very first race I ever ran. It was an accident, really, I hadn’t run in years and totally got suckered into it and, yes it’s true, I ran it dead drunk. But I finished! And then there was cake 
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Ooooo, Caaaaaanadaaaaa…
Once upon a time, a lowly graduate student (yes, me) got lucky. Her illustrious dissertation advisor (so ruggedly handsome and casually profane, he is) actually ponied up like, a dollar for her to attend an international paleontological conference (yes, like Ross on Friends, fuck that goddam show)! And so she packed her bags, prepared her presentation, grabbed her passport, and boarded her jetplane. And our fearless heroine flew and flew, crossing borders and time zones, to head once more into the grand unknown. And at what fabulous sunny locale did she alight? That’s right! Fucking Canadia. Ah well, at least it was free…
The Snake That Didn’t Get Away. Thanks, buddy!
I should preface this edition of my blog with the following truth: I don’t think I’ve ever obeyed the above rule. I generally base this decision of mine on two theories: Read the rest of this entry
My brother. In Honduras. In the tree-house we called a hostel. Being… My brother.
Special guest edition!
No, I have definitely not run out of disaster tales, however, we will today be taking a break from my own travel wreckage to discuss… My brother’s. Those of you who’ve met the J-balls already know the following fact: my brother is a disaster. Yes, I realize it’s like, super ironic that I’m saying that, given the content of my blog, but like, seriously. A. Fucking. Disaster. Here are some examples of how disastrous my brother is, just generally speaking. Really, I hardly even know what I’m about to say, I’m just culling at random from surficial memories: Read the rest of this entry
My seat on the rail, behind Old Frenchy. And yes, that woman did sleep the entire way there.
I love boat travel, I do. I prefer ferrys usually, but a river trip will suffice. This does not mean that I likewise enjoy having approximately 34 Laotians sitting in my lap, with baggage, for 8 hours straight. Yet such was my predicament a couple months ago, with the additional benefit of a seat concocted from an unecessarily narrow wooden railing. Welcome to Laos… Read the rest of this entry
the spicy little buggers in the wild
It’s a hot summer’s night, somewhere outside Monterrey, Mexico, and I’ve somehow misadvisedly entered myself into a chili-eating contest. Specifically, a Chili Pequin eating contest. Not like, a habañero, or a jalapeño, or anything you know, bland, no, that would not do. Instead I’ve managed to stuff like 47 of the hottest little buggers ever down my throat, and am now being egged on by a pit-crew of geologists (yes, yes, I am indeed debauching myself on a work trip. AGAIN), to which I say “Bring it! I will destroy your chili-eating record!” I know I’ve said this before, but this can’t end well… Read the rest of this entry
Me in my Sand Man Suit. Which I love. And actually successfully bargained for! To local price!
It’s either a sign that your trip is going amazingly or that you’re about to be hauled off to die in a foreign prison, when you turn to your friend about two days into the voyage and say:
“Omg. We just snorted unidentified brown powder up our noses. That we got from a strange man we met on a train. In his house, where we’ve come for lunch, in Morocco. Wtf??”
And she answers: “Yup.”
These people are not covered in blood, they are covered in sangria...
It’s 4 am and I’m a mess. I’m attempting to sleep on the lawn outside the bus station in Pamplona, Spain, along with two thousand of my closest friends, but it’s not working very well cause it’s so fucking cold I’m considering mugging a neighboring stranger for his hoodie. I’m here for the Running of the Bulls, kinda by accident, and I’ve managed to get myself ridonculously intoxicated, appareled entirely in white (with a red sash!), and covered in the fuck knows what. Whatever it is, it’s also red. And dirty. I am so red and dirty I doubt my friends, none of whom I have seen for many many hours, would even recognize me. I swear I came here with people (love you Mo! Love you Rhyne!), including my bro (love you J-balls!), and made more friends today (love you, drunk Venezuelan 19th b-day girl who humped me in a bar!), but that ship has sailed. And then… Read the rest of this entry
