Austin

One Year with My Human

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One of the more serious photos Shayla got of us.

Monday, January 8, 2018 was Luke and my first anniversary. It was a roughly 3-day celebration.

Our potato pancakes!

On Sunday, we spent roughly the whole day together after I got home from work at noon. We went to a couple grocery stores then made potato pancakes for dinner because we are #PotatoPancake. The recipe that we followed (mostly) can be found here. We cut it down greatly because we only had two medium-sized potatoes and are only two people. We also added paprika because Luke loves paprika. We also shallow fried them because 2 cups seemed like they would be deep-fried and that just didn’t seem right. They were delicious but could have used a bit more salt than we used.

On Monday we (I) woke up early and hung out in the morning. We exchanged gifts. He had gotten me more because he was short on cash for my birthday and Christmas so he made up for it for our anniversary. I opened an amazon box to find a pasta roller for us to make pasta together, Egghead by Bo Burnham, and Eggsistential Thoughts by Gudetama, The Lazy Egg. I gave him a “date jar” filled with popsicle sticks that had different date ideas written on them. Afterwards, I went online to look up the sushi restaurant we were going to and find out what time they opened. We weren’t just planning to do regular sushi; we were going to do all-you-can-eat sushi. In doing my research about when the restaurant opened, I found that for $23 during lunch hours, you only got one hour of all-you-can-eat-sushi. This hardly seemed like enough of a deal since the sushi was made to order so you had to wait for it to come out to you. We almost gave up on the AYCE deal but found instead that another restaurant, Sushi Bang Bang, does AYCE sushi for $26 at lunch. They opened at 11am and we arrived around noon, after I did my hair and make-up.

Not only could you get sashimi, nigiri, and maki rolls from the sushi bar, we were able to get a number of appetizers from the kitchen as well as tempura and other Japanese entrees. From deliciously fresh salmon sashimi to hot takoyaki and pork katsu, Luke and I ate $100 or more of sushi for about half the price. We went home happy but incredibly stuffed and felt the need to just lay around for a while before either of us had to go to work.

The same faces we make at each other, all day, every day.

On Tuesday, the last day of our 3-day celebration, we met with Shayla Webb at Bull Creek Park to get photos taken for our anniversary. I met Shayla at Ulta but she left since her photography business started taking off in December. Now she’s been taking photos for families, couples, and weddings and doing it very well. We were all ready for it to be a bit awkward because she wasn’t sure how to pose us and we weren’t sure how to pose, but in her telling us what to do and us being our goofy selves, we got some amazing photos out of it. We laughed basically the whole time and Shayla captured every moment and the essence of our relationship very well. It was such a fun experience too because whenever I’d gotten professional photos taken before, they were in a staged studio and this was out at a public park around nature and with a beautiful creek and waterfall. There was also a film crew in the area filming, what Luke thinks, was a commercial. They brought in potted trees.

After we left the photoshoot with Shayla, Luke and I were deciding what to eat when we got home but realized we wanted to go to Costco and get samples and $1.50 hot dogs. We got samples, a hot dog, drink, and chicken bake and also got a few groceries. Doing domestic things with Luke like grocery shopping are some of my favorite things to do with him.

Our first year as a couple absolutely flew by. We went from friends to in a relationship and moved to Austin together in 2017. I’m so excited to see what 2018 is going to bring us.

 

If you’d like to see more of Shayla’s work, check her out at swebbphoto.com!

Luke’s 23rd Birthday

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Life has been weird again and I don’t know how ready I am to talk about it all, so I’m going to talk about last weekend instead.

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Friday, September 22, 2017 was Luke’s 23rd birthday. Thankfully, Ulta did not have me working that night so when I got home from my temp job, I was able to make dinner and a cake for him. You’re probably looking at this cake and wondering what in the heck happened to it. 1) The candles melted more than anticipated because he took longer than expected to blow them out, 2) it’s not a normal cake!

Luke isn’t a huge fan of cake. He likes brownies, cookies, pie, ice cream, and basically any other dessert over cake. Funfetti however, is a cake that he likes and will eat happily. Because of this, the Monday before his birthday, I went to H-E-B after I got out of the office (the only other day Ulta didn’t have me), and stood in the baking aisle much longer than I thought I would, trying to pick out what to buy. The idea I had going in was to buy Funfetti cake mix, a tub of frosting- which I would choose quickly when I got there, and then go back home to relax the rest of the night. Instead, I stood there grabbing different boxes, debating how he would feel about them, and then putting them back.

Green is his favorite color so I thought green cake would be fun. It used only egg whites. I put it back.

He likes brownies better so maybe brownies. You don’t typically frost brownies so that fun gets missed out on. I put it back.

He really likes cookies and they’re easier to eat than cake. He would be upset with me if I made cookies without him. I put it back.

I stood there for a good 15 minutes talking to myself about what birthday treat he would like the best, just to pick out the regular Funfetti cake and white marshmallow fluff Funfetti frosting. The rest of the week I thought about how I would bake the cake. We have a few different Pyrex baking wares thanks to both of our mothers, but none of them are the fun round cake shapes. I could have made a rectangular cake in the 9×13 pan, but that didn’t seem good enough and I could have just made brownies if I was going to use that.

I had the rest of the week to figure it out but eventually ended up settling for the 9×13 and a whole lot of frosting. That is, however, until I saw a video on Facebook.

This video was from Tasty? Tastemade? Delish? One of the food accounts. They put cake batter into a waffle iron. I’d seen this before but never had the inspiration to do it before this. Luke LOVES waffles. So that is what is pictured above, a Funfetti waffle cake with white marshmallow fluff Funfetti frosting and almost totally melted candles. It came out really well and then we had leftover cake waffles for a few days because there was much more batter than just for four waffles.

He was surprised by the idea and was thankful, yet again, that I was the spontaneous (read: actually meticulous planner) and cute one because he just hasn’t learned how to be that yet.

For dinner, before we ate the waffle cake, we had boneless beef ribs that I tried to cook like steak- sear then bake- and came out almost perfectly but that I thought I’d messed up royally, rice, and broccoli.

The next night we went to Red Lobster and I got them to bring Luke a birthday sundae and sing to him. Then after that we walked around a mall before going to the 10pm IMAX screening of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, getting interrupted and evacuated from the theater about 15 minutes before the movie was supposed to start for the fire alarm, and eventually getting home around 1 am. The movie wasn’t super, but it was about as much fun as the first one with a few scenes that I could have very much done without.

The next morning I worked and we hung out around the house. It was a good weekend. I was content.

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

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.

 

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.

Post-Grad Life Update #1

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It is a Tuesday at noon and I am sitting in my new apartment in Austin, TX writing a post on my brand new blog!

Yes, Tuesday at noon at home.

No, this is not ideal.

I’ve been on the job hunt since April and have had no luck so far. Back then, it was a little less pertinent and scary because I hadn’t even graduated college yet and I knew I was going to need time to figure myself out and do all the traveling I had planned i.e. a move to Austin from Tampa. Now though, it’s a bit scary. I haven’t let the panic totally set in yet because I’m hopeful and optimistic. I’m still applying and putting myself out there and I know something is going to happen soon. In the meantime, I’ll be updating this blog with different little things going on in my life and I may start up YouTube videos again because apparently I still think I’m interesting enough for people to watch and/or listen to me. Luke will probably make an appearance here and there, so even if you don’t like me, maybe watch for him?

 

Just kidding, why wouldn’t you like me?

And just because I am a narcissist and I want to show off his photo skills, here’s a photo he took of me at an overlook on Capital of Texas Highway. He’s not as bad at he thinks he is. Also yes, it is the same as my default photo… it’s the most recent good photo of me, alright?