Oh, hello there.

Hi ya'll. *Sheepish smile* I'm sorry I haven't been around a whole lot. I started this blog because I wanted to share my adventures and misadventures, but I haven't been doing a very good job. I haven't been doing a good job at having adventures either. So here are some things that are going on:

• This week our church is hosting an organization called Family Promise, where we provide dinner and hang out with some local homeless families that shuttle from church to church. Last time we did this it was a lot of fun, since one of the little girls' birthday was that night, so we had a little party with cake and ice cream for her.

• I've been going to the gym fairly consistently! Meg started a Facebook "support" group for the Couch to 5K running program, and so far I'm sticking with it! Woohoo, go me!

• Matt and I have started "Souper Salad Tuesdays." Yum.

• We went to Schlitterbahn last weekend. It was uhmazing. So glad we got to go! I don't think I'd been there since Pam, Anna and I went for our senior (in high school!) trip, where Anna kept pinching dudes' butts.

• We also went to see the Astros' AAA baseball team, the Round Rock Express play the Oklahoma Redhawks (Rangers' AAA team). The Express aren't very good, but the Redhawks are awesome, and it was a fun game.

• I started a blog specifically for wedding planning, since I didn't want to clutter this one up with all that stuff since that's not really what ya'll started reading my blog for. If you're interested in the new one, let me know and I'll send you the link. I'm hoping to apply to blog for Weddingbee in the next month or so! I will defo keep ya'll updated if/when that happens. :)

Ya'll, I don't feel like I do a whole lot these days, but somehow I wind up totally exhausted. I think hoarding my vacation time is probably bad for me, but if I want to take a couple weeks off next year then it's a necessary evil. I'm slightly overwhelmed a lot of the time, but I hide it well by either throwing myself into projects or shutting down completely. I never did learn about balance. :)

So now I'm heading home so I can play with my kitty-boo for a little bit, and then we're going to try this new experiment called HAHA YOU'RE LOCKED IN THE OTHER BEDROOM, where I lock her up at night in a room that is not mine. My parents have always done this with our cats, locking them in the laundry room at night so they know when it's bedtime and they go to sleep and everything is happy. Well, whenever I'm at work, she sleeps. And when I'm not at work, I'm likely sleeping. Elliott takes it upon herself to get attention. By biting me. A lot. While I'm sleeping. I get so frustrated with her for doing this, and I rarely get a good night's sleep because of it, and I think it will be better if I can teach her that night time is sleeping time. I anticipate her howling her head off for a few nights, but through two closed doors, I will gladly take that over nicked arms.

Exhausted.

Work this week has been all-consuming, and I don't think I'm doing a very good job of taking care of myself in the meantime.

The beginning of the week, we were having our sales meetings company-wide, which meant I didn't get much work done outside that. I have several projects to complete by the end of the month, and I'm feeling stressy, but not under enough pressure yet to do my best under-the-wire work.

With our Monday meeting starting in the late afternoon, we got to have a "happy hour" with some yummy wine, and a (free!) dinner afterward. After that, I just wanted to go home and chill, but I let some people guilt me into going out and ended up staying out way later than I wanted to. It was a good time, we chilled out at a bar and had a good time, but by the time I came back and went to sleep, it was later than I wanted or needed.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night not feeling well. Hmmm, I wonder why that is? MAYYYYYBE it's because ... I haven't been getting enough sleep, I haven't been eating healthy (fruit snacks, cereal bars and dessert does not = great energy and confidence), I don't feel like I'm keeping on top of the things I want to do both in work and especially outside of work. I haven't been going to the gym consistently, which isn't good for my stress levels or well-being.

Most of all, I hate to admit that one of my professors may have been right: life is like a never-ending Thursday. I hate that. I would say I'm pretty happy with life, but I wish I had a little more passion for the everyday.

In other news ...
• Elliott was diagnosed with kitty acne (!!), and I think she might be allergic to the shampoo they gave me, because her chin looks wayyyy worse now. I'm trying to give it time to let it heal before I try a new astringent the vet gave me, but she keeps scratching her chin bloody. My poor baby! My cat at my parents' house, Tugger, had acne before, and my mom said she just used CLEARASIL and it healed him up! Haha, if worse comes to worse, I'm totally trying that.
• My sister is coming to see me this weekend! We're going to try on bridesmaids dresses, and I'm taking her out for sushi, since no one else in my family will let her!
• I may have some good church news in the next few weeks ...

Note to Self

Must remember:
Spending a fortune on the wedding will not make the marriage any better. It won't make us happier in the long run, it won't provide a better future, and it won't make us love each other any more.
The only thing that matters about this day is that we walk away married. The food, the flowers, all that is just details in the big scheme of things. Your wedding is no more or less because of the details.

Today was a rough day in this department. But I am staying positive, trying not to let myself stress out, and bringing myself back to this.

In good news, we booked a venue yesterday! My mom was in town for the weekend, and we got quite a lot of stuff done! Also, I ordered some SHOES! I will put pics up when I get them in, because they look a little different online than they will when I get them.

I'm sorry if I talk too much about wedding stuff.

Also, today I saw The Bounty Hunter, and I thought it was cute and funny. I heart Jennifer Aniston.

Some steps in the right direction

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions. By calling your goals resolutions, you're practically dooming them to fail. We always talked in marketing classes about needs. You don't NEED a new Mercedes - you don't even need a car - you need a way to get from A to B. You don't need a steak dinner - you need something to satisfy your hunger.

Here are my needs:
• Friends
• A way to de-stress
• Something to do

Here are ways I am/will be meeting my needs:
• Today I signed up to be a member of the gym that's across the street from my apartment. As I don't work out much, being a member of a gym doesn't serve much purposed except ... they offer classes. I am much more likely to go if I have a class I am going to every week. (Plus, they have a hip hop class, which was a big draw.) They offer pilates, which will help me relax. It will give me something to do. It will give me a new outlet for meeting people. BAM - three in one. I have a meeting with a personal trainer this week to figure out what I need to be doing as far as working out on my own, plus to figure out how machines work because I avoided using them for most of college just because I didn't know how to use them properly/to my advantage, plus I didn't want to look stupid for not being strong enough to use the machines at their lowest weight. Sorry for the run-on sentence, but it's late so I'm not going back to fix it.

Other goings-on:
• Had a wonderful Christmas break. Took some time off work, and got to spend a lot of time with my family, a few days with Matt's family, some fun road tripping and finished an audiobook. Very relaxing and lazy, but now I'm ready to get back into a routine.
• Got an iPhone for Christmas, which I am now addicted to. It does EVERYTHING, including auto-correct spelling and punctuation! That was one thing that always bothered me about my old phone, the difficulty in punctuating things properly. LOVE.
• I love the show "How I Met Your Mother," as you may know. My mom and I went shopping one day when I was home, and I am THRILLED to announce that I am now the owner of a dress that Lily wore one episode. This brings my total of Lily-clothes to two. I just spent like 20 minutes looking for a picture of it, but can't find one. Sad.
• It's way past my bed time, so peace out yo.

Sandwiches! Sandwiches!

Matt and I went to a new sandwich shop, Sub Culture. I think it's a super awesome name for a sandwich shop. However, on the way back home Matt mispronounced it "Cub Soldier" so now that's what I'm calling it. :) I'm such a nice person.

This week has gone by really fast. I've been staying pretty busy at work, but I like being busy. I've gotten to do a bunch of sweet designs for drive-through windows for some potential clients.

Book club has been growing pretty rapidly, so they decided to start doing "dinner club" as well, so now smaller groups go out for food once a week. This week we went to Wings N More, and it was uh-MAZING.

I'm working on finishing a book I've been reading the entire summer. I'm supposed to start the next book for book club, but I am frustrated that I'm not finished with this other one I've been working on for so long.

My aunt is coming over now, so I'll post more later.

My Family Portrait (or "A picture's worth 1000 words ... but will 1000 words paint you a good enough picture?")

I went home to visit my family this weekend, and it was very much needed. I hadn't been home since probably June, and they've only come to visit me once since then. My sister and I went to lunch and went shopping, because she loves spending money and I love learning how to be fashionable and then refusing the advice because it's too expensive to be fabulous. I did take a little bit of what she told me, though, and walked away with a cute purse and a few rings. I also got to cook fajitas with my dad and hang out with my mom and aunt.

My sister recently moved back home, and with her came her annoying kitten, Audrey. Now, my parents have had our cat, Tugger, for 13 years, and he is very set in his ways. He likes to lay around on my dad's chair, "make muffins" on my mom's lap, and growl at everyone. Audrey likes chasing Tugger's tail, rolling on her back in front of him, and hissing at everyone that isn't my sister. Tugger hates Audrey, but Audrey LOVES Tugger. I spent the whole weekend trying to make Tugger feel loved, because now that there's a New Cat on the Block, everyone seems to have forgotten about him, and he very much resents that, even though he doesn't like anyone as a general rule.

I bought The Office season 5 last week, watched it all in a matter of days, and then left it with my sister, and now I want it back. I am also wondering why How I Met Your Mother is not out on DVD yet, but I have plenty of other things to watch in the meantime. TV this season is pretty much legendary so far.

I guess it's time for me to go to bed now, so I can function at work tomorrow.

"Apple Orchard Banana Cat Dance 8-6-6-3!"

Finally, I have a project. For the past week or so, I've had all my paper, stickers and ribbons spools spread across my living room rug in an attempt to get caught up on the 11 months of scrapbooking I've neglected. I'm having so much fun. :) I know no one else cares about this project, but I am looking forward to the day when my future children are in high school and I can make them look

Not much has been going on here. I'm sorry I don't have anything new to report about living here. I learned some new streets the other day. That's not interesting.

I'll have something interesting to post next time.

This killin' time is killin' me.

I've always been a pretty driven individual. Never one to sit still for long, I like to be busy and be working toward something. I spent a lot of time in high school and college planning for the future. But, now that the future is here, I'm having a bit of a hard time dealing with it.

I've completed all my big goals. I don't have anything to work towards right now, so I am having a difficult time deriving pleasure from the everyday stuff because I don't have a reason to do anything.

For all of you who are not in college anymore (or who are but have dreams beyond college), what are your goals?

You're just jealous that OU wins football games.

I've been lounging around tonight, just reading and chillaxing, when I decided to go to the post office. I wrote a letter to my roommate, who is in China doing mission work until December, several days ago and had yet to post it. It's really hot outside, even though it's dark, so I rolled my windows down so I could wiggle my fingers in the wind. I didn't have my music on loud, and I was minding my own business, but as I pull away from the post office, a black windows-down-music-blaring SUV honks at me and yells "HATER!" I assume this was in reference to my OU decal, which I REFUSE to remove, because OU is awesome and I am PROUD to have gone there even though I'm stuck living in Aggieland now.

Other goings on: I'm officially getting sick of watching Friends, mainly because Matt has been watching episodes back to back for basically the entire summer. So the other night, I BEGGED to go out somewhere and DO something fun, so Matt took me to this family entertainment center that had glow-in-the-dark mini golf ... and it was cowboy-themed! It was arranged in themed rooms, so there were the cowboys on the range, cowboys in a saloon, sheriffs holding cowboys in jail ... it was very cute, and I actually held my own pretty well. They also had a semi-decent arcade, and I challenge all of you to ski-ball if you ever come into town.

The next night I guess Matt was still tired of Friends so we went to go see The Ugly Truth. It was really good! Lots of man candy and a funny storyline, and both of us really liked it. It definitely had awkward stupid-guy moments, but overall made up for it with Heigl hilarity. She really is quite awesome in this movie.

My family is coming into town tomorrow, so I'm cleaning during the commercial breaks of Chelsea Lately. So I will try to focus my attention elsewhere. Hope all of ya'll have a wonderful weekend!

I can't remember the Mary Poppins cleaning-up song. Otherwise I'd put the lyrics here.

I know no one really cares about this, but I find it very ironic that when you pay money to buy the kind of sunscreen that's supposed to NOT clog your pores, you break out more than you would if you had just bought regular ol' Coppertone. We went to Inks Lake this past weekend, which was way fun, but my skin is now freaking out.

Been trying out lots of local restaurants, mainly in the two-block radius around where I work, which happens to be about 20 minutes from where I live. A girl I work with and I go to lunch about once a week, and I love that there are no chains within walking distance (except Subway). We went to a cute little Italian place, Square One Bistro last week, which was YUM (I am having a minor love affair with all things Italian), and today we went to get Mexican at Papa Perez. I am rather picky about my Mexican food, and have yet to find anything that can beat out El Fenix, but they had very good tacos. Tomorrow is my birthday, and we are going to go out and get drinks after I help Matt move. Unfortunately she's moving to Pennsylvania in a couple of weeks, which is awesome for her, but I am sad she'll be leaving.

I've been trying to clean my apartment, which has become a lot more work since Roachgate, because I had to rewash almost every dish in my kitchen (I didn't bother with stuff in the top shelves of my cabinet. I might end up going back and doing that later out of paranoia, but I am assuming bug spray around the floor won't mess up stuff that high up?). Also, wood floors are a lot more difficult to clean than I thought they would be. They make it look so easy in the commercials when dust is the only things your Swiffer needs to pick up.

Need to do some more stuff before it gets too late and I get lazy. I really need to go grocery shopping, but I think that might have to wait until another day.

Big Girls Cry a Lot ... When They Have No Money

Pictures posted on Facebook! Booyah. My apartment is clean. I love it.

I have yet to have a noise problem since I've moved into my new apartment. I'm very thankful for this, especially after spending close to a year listening to Next-Door-Neighbor-to-the-Left (in Oklahoma) blast "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "Gives You Hell" 24 hours a day. Tonight though, I seriously thought someone had finally moved into the apartment next door to mine, because I can hear someone coughing rather loudly. I hope he is okay (it sounds like a guy). I met my downstairs neighbor the other day, and he is a sweet older man. But I don't think the floors are that thin either.

Today has been an all-time low since I moved. I have just kind of skated through the last few months, hoping that any financial woes would work themselves out, because they always have before. But with new internship, I decided to re-budget. And oh gosh, I am going to be flat broke in a couple months. This is scary, even though I've been on the verge of flat-broke for four years, and have yet to miss a meal or turn in rent late. I'm having a much more difficult go of finding a full-time job than I expected. It's not reassuring when people tell me I picked the wrong town to move to. I get reminded of that a lot. Today it was while at the dentist.

Anyway, things have been crazy. I've yet to spend a weekend in C-Stat yet. This past weekend, Matt and I went up to Dallas to visit family - parts of both of ours, actually. I got to visit my family, and on Friday night we went to a Rangers game with his sister and her boyfriend. Then, because Matt won a radio contest and got tickets to Saturday night's Ranger game too, we went to that one as well. Ballpark hot dogs are delicious, but all food there is ridiculously overpriced. Both games had really cool fireworks displays too. I've been asking for years why there are not fireworks in different shapes, but they actually had some smiley-face fireworks and star-shaped fireworks too. Also, I got a back to my cell phone. It's silver and doesn't match the pink of the rest of the phone, but at least the battery's not hanging out the back now.

Last night, we went to some friends' for chicken wings and Mario Kart. That was pretty awesome. I rock at the Wii, and managed to come in at respectable places (not behind all the computer characters!). Thanks for the practice, Julie! This week I'm hosting a dinner party/get together with some of Matt's Percussion Studio friends. I'm making beer brats in my Crock Pot, and the rest is potluck. I'm excited about it. I haven't had anyone besides my sister over to see my place yet.

But luckily, FINALLY, I'll actually get to hang around this weekend. I am ready to RELAX.

Unlimited Nights and Weekends

Believe it or not, I'm FINALLY cleaning so I can take pictures of my apartment! It's been a month since I've moved here, and it's about time I took those ... . But it's taking a little longer to clean than I'd like, especially because the study isn't organized entirely. I will have pictures soon, I promise!

Tonight has been pretty basic. Worked a half day so I could look for jobs in the afternoon, but unfortunately didn't get very much accomplished ... some of the places I was looking are no longer in those locations and/or are not the same company I thought they would be. But, will persevere. In the meantime, at least I'm going broke more slowly than I would if I didn't have anything going on. Then tonight I made barbecue chicken in the Crock Pot, which was pretty good. I wish I'd had better veggies to go with it, but I didn't do a very good job of grocery shopping last night (I had one of those hand baskets, and by the time I put milk and juice in it [and pinched the crap out of my arm with the basket handles], I tried to get out of HEB as soon as possible).

My adventure for the week was last night, when I started cleaning. I was about to take out the garbage, and I grabbed my phone off the kitchen table to put in my pocket. It didn't actually get to my pocket ... I dropped it, and it broke into a few pieces, and then all the pieces bounced under the oven. I spent a few minutes freaking out, thinking about all the people I could call to get help ... except that my phone was under the oven! So I rummaged around the closet and discovered that I have a broom (!) and attached packing tape to the end and managed to get the main part of the phone out. I couldn't find the back piece, because I do not have a flashlight and there is a lot of crap under the oven (pills? a golf ball?!), so I have been walking around like a loser with half a phone. I would just go get another, but I don't want to pay for a new phone when my contract expires in a few months, but luckily my entire family at one point had the same phone I do, and my dad keeps all the pieces, so I can get a new back to my phone no problem, as soon as I can get home next.

Watching So You Think You Can Dance, and I want to keep cleaning/organizing during the commercial breaks, so TTFN.