10 Years

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In mid-to-late August 2007, I was in an interesting place in my life. I was 12-years-old, going on 13 come November, and I was what one could call an emo preteen. I felt that the world was against me and like I didn’t have many friends or anyone to lean on or look to. One of my older brothers, Kaz, was away in Colorado attending the United States Air Force Academy and the other, Toby, was going into his senior year of high school. Knowing that he wouldn’t be around in a year to help me through the difficult time I was going through, he decided to bring me to youth group at a church that was not ours and not even Catholic.

I’d fought going for a few weeks, also believing that God had turned his back on me, but eventually caved. Since it was still summer, the “class” part of youth group hadn’t started yet so the activities for that night were to play soccer in the big field behind the church. This was a great way to ease me in because I didn’t know anyone and would have felt awkward in the class if I had just been thrown in.

I don’t remember much else from that night except that I had fun and I’d met a boy. That boy was Luke.

Fast forward through the next ten years and here we are, celebrating ten years of knowing each other and me putting up with him through all of that time. It is not ten years of friendship and definitely not ten years of being together. We have not even hit one year yet there.

I’m not going to go into the all of the details of those ten years because I think he and I would both agree that there were some times that we’d like to leave in the past. It’s all gotten us to where we are now though- living together in Austin, happy as clams… most of the time.

To go into the details would also be to invade the privacy of someone else and put her on blast, something I do not want to do. The past is the past and I am looking to the future.

What I can say about where we are now is that it is partially thanks to Rooster Teeth and RTX, and we are happy. We’ve both learned from our past experiences and are willing to continue learning. To paraphrase something Luke has expressed to me before, if we’d started this relationship back when we were so young, one of us probably would have messed it up by now and we’d be lacking our best friend, something that we’d already been through a few times and don’t want to do again.

To celebrate the past ten years, on Saturday, the first day we’d been together for dinner since we started working, Luke decided we’d have ribeyes, my favorite steak. Yes, steak is expensive. No, we didn’t buy it just for this. Steak is surprisingly cheap in Austin and as of yesterday, we’d gotten four meals out of the two steaks we made on Saturday night.

To accompany the steak, we also made garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, kale chips, and fried plantains. It was a good dinner and a good night watching Descendants 2 for the second time.

Below is a bit of a photo representation of how far we’ve come. We were babies. Now, we are toddlers.

2008 30-Hour Famine at Our Saviour’s United Methodist Church in Schaumburg

August 2013, we hung out for the last time before I went away to Tampa for school

They have to go together because they are the embodiment of our relationship then and now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most recent photos of us from RTX 2017, cosplaying as Gwen and David from Camp Camp

Shaun T is trying to kill me

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My August ipsy GlamBag came in yesterday and I was going to write about it today, but Shaun T is trying to kill me so I didn’t get around to taking photos of it. Instead I had to tend to my legs.

If you’ve heard of the fitness program “Insanity,” you have heard Shaun T. He is a 6’0″ New Jerseian who is fit and wants you to be fit. He is a dancer, motivational speaker, and fitness coach.

My mom recently sent me a set of DVDs called “Cize” and wanted me to do them in an effort to work out and get into shape. I’ve always been a chubby kid and while that was mostly to do with the fact that I love food, it was also because working out was always so boring to me. Running is not fun. Riding a stationary bike is not fun. Riding a real bike can be fun but I’m also incredibly uncoordinated and have a tendency to hurt myself on them. The way that I do like, and have always liked, being active however, is dancing.

My mom put my in dance classes when I was little and I only stuck with them for a a few years but they were still the most fun I had moving my little butt around. Even now, I find myself dancing when there is no music playing anywhere around me. “Cize,” she said, was made up of dances and would legitimately teach you to dance too, unlike the Just Dance games that teach you some of the craziest movements and call it dancing.

I’d had the DVDs for a while but only recently just started them this past Monday night. This was spurred on by a conversation with my former roommate in Tampa, Yakira.

She and I were discussing the upcoming wedding of another friend, Alexis, and how ill-fitting our bridesmaid dresses were. I disclosed to her that I hadn’t even tried the dress on again since getting it in because I knew I’d gained weight and I was afraid of what it would look like. She encouraged me to do it anyways and my fears were confirmed- the dress zipped but it felt like if I made one wrong move, the seams would bust. This is not something you want for the dress you are going to wear to a wedding where you’ll be dancing.

Yakira had already decided that she was going to start a workout and diet plan and wanted me to join in her journey. I agreed and the following Monday I roped Luke into starting “Cize” with me. I had no idea Shaun T was the instructor and when I first saw him on my TV screen, I knew it was going to be a hard workout.

Though we were both super worn out by the end of it, Luke and I made it through the half hour dance video and felt better afterwards. The next day, I woke up to my left calf as tight as I had ever felt it. I tried stretching it out but it was still difficult to walk on. I expressed this to Luke and he suggested I focus on my right leg more for the upcoming workout. I did, and then did again the next day because my left calf was still so tight. Once I was done last night however, both of my calves were tight. Today, I’m walking very slowly and probably look funny.

I’m partially concerned that I did something wrong but am currently chalking it up to the fact that I am super out of shape and may have just pushed myself a bit more than my body would have liked.

Tonight, because I am sure I will tear something if I try to do the full workout again, I am going to try the “Eight Count Abs” video instead. If it turns out that that requires too much of my legs, I guess I’ll settle for sit-ups or something. Rest day is Sunday and only Sunday, even if it means some days are a little less intense than others.

I’ll be updating every now and then with how this fitness journey is going. Hopefully it goes well and I will have good things to say every post… it can only go up from death, right?

#PositiveOutcomesOnly

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From 2010 to 2011, a show called Hellcats aired on The CW. It was a show about cheerleaders starring Ashley Tisdale and Aly Michalka. As a Disney fan (they played in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Phil of the Future respectively) and a former cheerleader*, I was interested in the show before it premiered and then fell in love with it.

At this point in time, I don’t remember much more about it except that Aly Michalka’s character didn’t want to be on the squad but ended up joining anyway and Ashley Tisdale’s character didn’t like her at first but they grew to beome friends, typical.

The thing that I took away from the show however, is the phrase “positive outcomes only.” It was Tisdale’s character’s personal mantra and she said it anytime something started to go wrong. She also wrote it on Michalka’s arm at one point with a sharpie. Since she first uttered the phrase on my TV, “positive outcomes only” has stuck with me.

Many people use the phrase “good vibes only” as a positive life motto but it never seemed enough to me. Sending people good vibes may be enough to keep them in a state of calm, but I have never been able to work well when calm. I’ve needed the stress and the pressure to get me through the day to ensure that I end up with a desirable result or, positive outcome. I need to work towards a goal.

This is why, since the first time I heard it, “positive outcomes only” has been my motto. I don’t just want to stay positive all the time- I know I’m not going to be positive all the time because that’s not who I am or how I work. I have bad days. I’ve broken down. I’ve wondered what I’m working towards and why I’m killing myself working towards it. To ask myself to be positive all the time would be setting myself up for failure. What I can ask of myself though, is to take all of that negativity- the tears, the screaming, the frustration, and nights that I’ve wanted to give up on it all- and channel it into something great so that it wasn’t all in vain. Since then, I’ve always kept a goal in mind and tried to work towards it repeating “positive outcomes only” to myself at every step of the way.

Most recently, this has gotten me through graduation from The University of Tampa and I’m not ready for it to stop me there.

 

 

 

*Yes, I was a cheerleader when I was younger. I did it for a year when I was 8 and was not a big fan. I still can’t do a cartwheel.

Post-Grad Life Update #3: I Got a Job (Sort of)

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If you’ve been following this blog since its creation, or me at all, you know that I’ve been on the job hunt since before I left Florida and even since before I graduated from UT. It was nerve-racking. I’d never really saved properly before graduation because I didn’t have to and then I was suddenly living in a new city with a new human without a source of income. We still had to pay bills, buy groceries, fill up our gas tanks to be able to drive to job interviews- but there was no money coming in to match that going out. Everyone kept telling me something would come my way eventually and I just had to be patient but patience is not my strong suit. I’d been applying to jobs non-stop. With no luck on my own for a few months, I turned to a staffing agency at the advice of a former supervisor.

The type of staffing agency I’d worked for before was for event staff. I basically worked as a waitress for hours at a time and I was not a huge fan. Many people were not nice because they saw the waitstaff as “help,” and that was it. This, to my surprise and happiness, was not that type of staffing. They’d take my resume and line me up for interviews that they thought I’d work well in. I had to go in for an initial interview with them so they could feel me out, and then it all went from there. They got me an interview at a company that had a keg in the office and employees walking around in basketball shorts- they seemed fun and like a great fit for me in their culture.

And then I messed up the interview.

I didn’t go in looking like a slob or telling them weird personal stories, I just raved too much about my dreams of working for Rooster Teeth one day and that turned them away from me as a potential full-time and long-term employee.

Lesson learned: people want you to sound like you’re planning to stick around.

I was devastated. Though it was only a part-time position, and not anywhere near my field, it was something and the company looked like fun. I spent about an hour just sitting on the couch thinking about my life when I got a phone call from a 512 number I didn’t know. It was from a company that’d I’d applied for, then heard nothing back from before they closed the posting. I figured they’d picked someone and I was not that someone. To my surprise, they were very impressed with me and wanted me to maybe come in for an interview after a bit more deliberation. They said they’d call me within the week to set up an interview, so I waited. I stopped rapidly applying for things but kept my eye out for anything that seemed more up my alley. The weekend came and passed as did Monday then when Tuesday came, I got a call, but from the staffing agency.

There was a temp position available that day through the rest of the week and into the next with the potential to become a permanent hire. I took it without a thought and figured that if the other company really wanted me, they’d have to act quickly, or hope that where I was going to work for the time being was a horrible place. It’s not, and I’m still here. The other place never called me back. I’m not mad.

This office is amazing and while I still don’t know if it’s going to turn into a full-time, permanent job, I’m happy for the time I’ve gotten to work here. I’ve met great people and learned a bit more about what being an adult is like, not to mention, today was my first payday and I finally have something going into my bank account.

It’s not an ideal position or pay, but I don’t seem to have the experience I thought I did coming out of college, so I’m really focusing on the culture of the company and I love it. They have multiple departments and offices too (I could potentially travel to Sydney?!?) so it seems like there is room for growth.

I’m pretty h*ckin’ optimistic right now.

 

No Time Like the Present

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It has been a little while since my last post and there is good reason for that… which will not be disclosed at least for another week… for reasons…

In the meantime, I got an email from ipsy that my new GlamBag items have been picked so I thought it’d be a great time to share the reviews on my last one.

If you recall, I received a liquid lipstick, lip balm, gel-kohl hybrid eyeliner, eyeshadow, and face masks. Below are photos of me wearing all of the products, though not all at once- the masks were after washing my face.

In this photo, I am wearing the eyeliner on the left, eyeshadow on the right, and lip balm and liquid lipstick on, you guessed it, my lips. Luke said I looked funny only having done the eyeliner on one side, but I wanted to make sure the products were shown separately.

In applying all of these products, they were nice. I don’t like trying to do a cateye with kohl or gel liners because I never think it comes out very good, but that’s probably just user error. SPOILER ALERT: I’m not good at make-up. I left them all on for a few hours, just trying to see how they lasted and the eyeshadow was the only thing that held up. After about three hours, the eyeliner had smudged to my bottom lid and the lipstick, which is supposed to be 24-hour, had run outside my lips. I was disappointed. What the lipstick did not do however, was get on any glasses or utensils I put in my mouth while eating dinner. This was pretty impressive. Verdict: the eyeliner and eyeshadow worked as expected, the lipstick would probably work best with a liner applied first.

Onto the masks. I’ve only heard good things about Tony Moly masks so I was excited to see that I had received some for July. As you can see, Luke put one on as well. I’m not the type to have a hard and fast skincare regimen that I perform every night and every morning. I wash my face when I need to wash my face and I put moisturizer on where I am dry. Luke does even less than that. That said, these masks are usually pretty fun and he and I could use a spa day.

As with all face masks of this sort, they are cold and goopy when you pull them out of the package. Luke was not a fan of this but put it on anyways because he’s a trooper. They also feel like you shouldn’t touch any sort of fabric with them, something that was hard for me since the hood of my robe likes to bunch up around my neck. While we waited for them to do their thing for half an hour, we watched another episode of Doctor Who. Once the time was up, we peeled them off and rubbed the remaining goop into our faces. Mine felt tighter and looked a little brighter immediately but Luke didn’t see much of a difference.

The next morning however, he told me that his skin looked too “pretty” and that he wasn’t a fan of what the mask had done to his face… just being a silly boy. I liked my face.

Currently, I am using the lip balm as often as I need to and while I like the smell of it, I don’t really know if it’s helping my lips or hurting them. It’s been a long debated myth/truth that lip balms actually dry out your lips more and there are definitely some that I believe do- the cheap kind you get for free with a company’s logo on them. I would expect more out of a product I receive from ipsy however. As I said in my all-beauty blog before, the best way to keep your lips from being chapped is to stay hydrated. For now, I will attribute my dry lips to my lack of hydration until further proof arises on this balm.

Doctor What?

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Recently, Luke and I have been watching Doctor Who again. I don’t say “again” as if we’d stopped watching it all together, I say “again” as in we’ve never watched the show together so let’s start over from the beginning. We’re currently in the middle of “New Who” Series 3, or The Tenth Doctor’s second season. This means we just recently finished Series 2.

If you know me and my relationship with the show at all, you know that Ten and Rose are my favorite and while I have accepted Eleven and River, they are not the pairing that is near and dear to my heart. And if you know the show at all, then you know what happens at the end of Series 2 and can probably guess where I am going with this.

I. Was. Bawling.

I don’t know why I put myself through watching that ending again. I really don’t. It wasn’t even when they’re both on the different sides of the walls that got me, it was when they’re on the beach. When Rose says “I love you” and The Doctor doesn’t get to say it back I thought my heart was going to fall out. That episode premiered in 2006. I first watched it in (probably) 2010. It is 2017. I feel like Snape, #Always (#ImActuallyNotAFanOfThatAndDontThinkItsAsRomanticAsItsSupposedToBe).

And I know that it’s sort of a happy ending for the two of them at the end of Series 4, but it’s really not. Once again, The Doctor is left alone while his companions are left happily galavanting about with their other mortal counterparts. It’s not fair to him but that is the life he chose, sort of.

After all of my crying and Luke stopping to play Pokemon Stadium so that I could get a break, we talked about the show and how we wish they’d show the Time War. I stated that the only storyline in Doctor Who that could even be more heartbreaking than Doomsday would be watching him have to leave his family and blow up Gallifrey and, though I just asked myself why I wanted to put myself through Doomsday again, I would totally watch him blow his family up.

To the new execs, because Moffat is no longer head writer: do this. People would watch it. We get it, he’s all broken up about it and it’s tragic, but give it to us instead of just making John Hurt yet another Doctor in the timeline, making it more regenerations than he’s supposed to have, and for the love of God, don’t credit Billie Piper as Rose when she’s the BadWolf, not Rose.

Looking forward on another note, while I am sad that Peter Capaldi is leaving, I am so excited to have a female Doctor coming in. I think it is going to be a wonderfully refreshing change. That’s really all I can say about that matter right now because I don’t know enough about Jodie Whittaker, but I am optimistic. Hopefully she does well and we can get more strong and awesome ladies on the show again instead of mysteries that need to be solved. I’m looking at you, Moffat…

Homemade Sweet & Sour Chicken

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Everyone loves Chinese take-out. I am no exception to this, but I don’t have the money for Chinese take-out right now. Thankfully, most recipes are rather easy, especially fried rice. All you have to do is throw some leftover rice in a pan with some oil, add whatever frozen veggies you like, soy sauce, and an egg and you’re done! If you wanna get even fancier, you can also add meat. In the past, we’ve added meats like char-siu pork and different Chinese sausages. Tonight we were going to add chicken since Luke had started defrosting chicken thighs, but I wanted to mix it up a little so I looked up a recipe for sweet and sour chicken. We also had a pineapple, so that aided in the idea.

This was the first recipe that came up on Google when I searched “sweet and sour chicken”: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sweet-and-sour-chicken-recipe-1957986.

I can post it this time because this time, I basically followed it. The things we changed were that we had no bell peppers, we used chicken thighs instead of breasts, we used fresh pineapple, and because it was fresh pineapple, we had no pineapple juice so we subbed in limeade that we had in the fridge. We also floured the chicken before frying it because it added a bit more depth to the dish.

It came out spectacularly. The only thing that we probably could have improved upon was that I think I didn’t cook the cornstarch long enough because I left the heat up too high so it reduced too quickly. However, the pineapple was super warm and tender, the sauce was sweet and sour, and the chicken was crispy and delicious. It all went really well with the rice too, which had corn and green beans in it.

The best part of it all, we have leftovers. I love leftovers. Who has Chinese take-out and doesn’t have leftovers?

The Best Time of the Month

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For the past 17 months, around the middle of the month an email has come to my inbox and within about a week from that day this package has come to my mailbox. This is the packaging that ipsy sends their GlamBags in. It’s super pink, super shiny, and super squishy. They bring a smile to my face.

This month’s theme is Over Easy and features Gudetama who is an adorable little lazy egg character that I connect to so hard. The bag has an image of him on it and it is shimmery. In the bag, I got a COUGAR Beauty Cosmetics 24-Hour Liquid Lipstick in Mulberry, Ciate London Wonderwand Gel-Kohl Hybrid Liner in Black, OFRA Cosmetics Gold Rush Eyeshadow, Hempz Ultra Moisturizing Herbal Lip Balm, and two TONYMOLY I’m Real Sheet Masks in Green Tea and Lotus. Along with all of those fabulous products, I had also redeemed points for a Her Minerals Professional Blending Sponge.

I don’t know how much I’m going to use the eyeshadow or eyeliner, but I will return with updates and reviews as I try them. Even if I don’t continue using the products after I initially try them, I always try them at least once to review them. That’s how you get points!

On a completely unrelated note, Luke and I went to Target today on a mission. In the time that he was “living with me” in Tampa, every time we went to Target, we looked at a cookie jar. It was a grey cookie jar shaped as a little hippo. It was $20 and every single time I basically begged Luke to let me buy it but since we were in Tampa and knew we’d be moving to Austin, he always said no because it was another thing we’d have to move. Well, today, I would like to introduce you to Puds, the newest addition to our little family.

Yes, having a cookie jar means we will be baking cookies. Yes, I will post photos of him filled with cookies. For now, here he is in all of his cute glory. I love him.

Post-Grad Life Update #2

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I am still on a job hunt and it still sucks. What sucks more is what happened a couple days ago. Before heading out to the grocery store with Luke, my phone lit up with emails (as it does multiple times a day), but there was one that was different. Amid the sea of promotional store coupons and emails from Indeed.com telling me that new jobs had been posted, there was one from a real person reaching out to me. I said I would check it out fully later and we went to the store.

Later finally came and I pulled my laptop out to read the email. A recruiter reached out to me after I updated my resume and location on Indeed.com because they had job openings they thought I would fit. I checked out both of the descriptions and they didn’t really sound like something I wanted because they were in sales and making cold calls, but they reached out to me and I need a job so I clicked the button that said I was interested.

Fast-forward a couple of days and I’m watching Luke play some video game when I get a phone call from a 512 area-code. I pick up the phone and it’s the recruiter that sent me the email. I quickly got up and walked into the other room (our bedroom, we don’t have a big place) and she tells me about the job and asks if I’m interested. I tell her I am and she says that she will forward my resume to her hiring managers and I will hear back before the end of the next day.

The next day comes and I don’t think much of it but I am online again looking at new job postings when an email comes in. It’s from the recruiter. She says they’ve decided to pursue different candidates.

I wasn’t very excited about this job to begin with but the fact that they reached out to me and then decided that they didn’t want me seems like they could have saved all of us some time and energy and not reached out in the first place. They got my hopes up for something I didn’t even want and then crushed them and I wasn’t in a very good mood the rest of the day.

 

Today, however, is Sunday. I have put in a multitude of new applications today as well as sending an email out to a company that may not even have any openings in the hopes that my forwardness will make myself stand out and they’ll hire me anyways. Tomorrow, we will see how all of this pans out. Maybe I’ll just go to the pool to take a break from it for an hour or two. Or maybe it will storm again and keep me confined to the indoors. Only time will tell.

I Burn Things

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Last night was yet another night that Luke and I sat around thinking “what can we eat for dinner?” The answer, as it turned out, was not a lot. We had a plantain sitting around because we decided, the last time we went grocery shopping, that we wanted to try to fry plantains, as well as frozen pork chops and raw carrots. Those all turned into our dinner.

When we cook together, I am usually on anything-but-meat duty because I am just not a fan of cooking meat. It feels weird to the touch, I don’t ever know when it’s done, and I was a vegetarian for a few years some time ago, so it still gets to me sometimes. This meant it was my job to fry the plantains. I mostly used a recipe for this as I had never fried plantains before and the recipe basically said to slice and deep fry it. Easy enough, but I did not want to use the oil to deep fry them because I felt it would be a waste and we’re still trying to diet (even though we had Culver’s for dinner tonight). Pan frying them mostly worked, but, as you can probably guess from the title of this blog post and the photo accompanying it, they got a little burnt. The pork chops and carrots came out alright though the pork was overcooked and we both agreed that next time, a little brown sugar on the carrots and plantains would probably do them some good.

Usually this is where my escapades stop. We eat, sit around for a bit, and then will eat dessert later- ice cream or some fruit depending on how we’re feeling. I started eating peanut butter on saltines (do I still sound like a broke college student?) when I suddenly wanted to make rice pudding. I’d never made rice pudding before but I knew it took milk and rice, two things we had. Luke told me to go for it so I looked up recipes and I found an easy one that didn’t take too much work, put the stuff in the pot and let it cook. Lazy foodie for the win! I also decided to make a bit of a peach compote to go with it since we had some peaches in the fridge that were getting a bit soft. The whole dessert turned out really well and we ate the leftovers for a snack this afternoon. The process of getting to the wonderfully delicious pudding you see on the left however, was more of a mess than I wanted. The milk boiled over and since we have a glass flat-top stove, it ended up burning onto it and the kitchen smelled like burnt marshmallows for about ten minutes. It still isn’t totally clean and I still hate myself.

Neither of us were happy but the pudding helped.