Vow to be a Better Blogger

I'm really going to try!  Promise!

This summer went by so fast, between working and traveling, there wasn't much time for blogging.  I flew 21,197 miles on 37 flights and stopped in 17 airports.  Small recap of the summer:

I tried a crab cake in Baltimore.  Turns out, I'm not a fan.

Loved Denver!  It was so pretty!  We didn't really get to stay for very long, so I definitely need to go back!

Vernal, Utah to visit Melindy, Robert, and my favorite dinosaur in the whole wide world.

Boston!  Can't get enough!  We couldn't get tickets to the Red Sox game, but we were going to watch it from The Bleacher Bar, it's seriously under the stadium, but the other intern Taylor is only 20 and they wouldn't let us in.  Sad day.

San Francisco!  Full of crazy stories, but was seriously the most spontaneous trip ever.  When we left Dallas, we thought we were headed to Chicago.  Huge.Change.In.Plans.

I went to San Diego too, but I forgot to take pictures.

The rest of my life has been really random.

1.  I learned it is definitely not a good idea to skip the coffee in the mornings.

2.  I had a gross little lizard that decided to come into my apartment.  I chased him around for at least an hour.  I didn't want to hurt the poor little guy because, he really was just a baby.  I just wanted to open my door and run him out.  I was trying to scare him out the door by throwing flip-flops at him, but turns out, my aim's better than I thought because I hit him twice and killed him.  Ooops.

3.  I'm such an old lady now...I fall asleep at like 6 o'clock every night.  I just can't help it.  So I've started doing puzzles to keep myself awake.

4.  I want some new Sea-Monkeys.  This time I'm going to take such good care of them!  I will not spill them or assist in their untimely deaths in any way.  And I will buy them diamond surf-boards and everything else they've ever wanted.

5.  I am now certified in CPR, First Aid, and AED.  I'm not going to lie, even doing CPR on those half-bodied, plastic people made me a little light headed.

6.  I had my moments of Southwest Airlines fame.  A few of us were featured on a podcast on SWA's Red Belly Radio to talk about our internship experience.  I hate the sound of my own voice.  We also did a small commercial on SWA's internal TV show, The WNdow Seat, to promote the Independence Day Gate Decorating Contest.

7.  I've been looking for a job and have had little success.  I will for sure be working at Southwest until the end of October, but if I don't get a fulltime position by then, I think I'm coming home.  Who knows what the next two months will bring, maybe it'll be just like The Office and I will be the temp that takes over the company.  Wouldn't that be something.

8.  After Bible study, a big group of us went to Taco Cabana and people were talking about horses and doing horse tricks and other horsey things like that.  So I asked if anyone had ever seen Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken, because seriously,even before she was blind, Senora could do the most amazing horse trick ever, and then when she learned how to do it blind, it was just that much more amazing.  Not a single person in the group of probably 15 people had even heard of it and they all thought I was making it up.  These people need some serious classic movie education time!

9.  I am probably going to start blogging about funny things hear every day.  That't the plan anyways.  I always have lots of plans that never actually turn into anything.  If I would have made my vow to be a better blogger a week ago, I could have already had a funny quote.  I was talking to Dana on the phone as I was trying to get that little lizard out my door and she goes, "Just kill it like you'd kill a cat."  Silence.  Blank stare.  ??.  "Just drop-kick it."  Hahaha.  Turns out, that he was already dead and I just didn't know.  I thought he was faking.

10.  This guy I work with was driving a group of us to lunch one day.  We get in his car, and what does he have sitting on his front seat?  An old Dallas Morning News with a headline that said something like "Local Nightclub Owner Kills Oswald!"  He found it in his grandparent's recycling bin!  How crazy is that?!?!!

HomeFood Sickness

You would have had this post a little sooner, but I realized I posted it on my school blog, instead of the one you all read.  I really hope today wasn't the day my internship lady at ASU decided to check my blog, because I can only imagine she would have been less than amused (especially at the first paragraph).  Whoops!  I'm quickly trying to learn how to un-post a blog!

Original Blog Post:

I’m starting to get “Short-Timer’s Syndrome” as my dad calls it.  I only have 4 weeks left at my internship and then I’m homeward bound for two weeks.  I a little bit want to cut out of my internship a week early so I can have more of a break before I start at Southwest, but I don’t know responsible that would be of me.  

I'm not so much getting homesick- but I am anxious to go for a visit, catch up, do all of those things, but mostly I'm excited to eat!  Usually, deciding what I'm going to eat is a chore for me.  I guess it's not really just a chore- one of my worst fears is being a mom and having to decide what's for dinner EVERY night.  ughh...  Nonetheless, I can stop thinking about Arizona and all of the things I haven’t eaten in 4, soon to be 5, months!   

Top Ten things I’m going to eat when I get to Arizona:

10. Some real Chinese Food.  I don’t know why, but there aren’t hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants in every shopping center in Texas like there are in Arizona.  They have Pei Wei and Panda Express here, but those are like authentic imitations of the real thing. 

9. Golden Spoon.  I actually plan on having this a few times….  Keeping my fingers crossed that New York Cheesecake will be on the menu. Maybe someone can put in a special request for me!

8. Ol’ Joes for Taco Night.  75 cent tacos and karaoke in a small town every Monday night- who could ask for more.

7. Pita Jungle. Hummus and honey glazed chicken lavosh pizza.  Yes, Please!

6. Oregano’s for Pasta, Pizza, and Pazooki! 

5. Ajo Al’s.  My heart really does belong to Al.  He knows just how to make a girl swoon with chicken burritos, quesadillas, chips, salsa…I could go on and on, but I think you get it.  I love Al.

4. Dairy Queen- I hear there are a few in Dallas, but I haven’t seen a single one.  Can you believe that!?!  You can get Blizzard-Like treats with Reese’s in them at Sonic, but it’s just not the same.

3.  Los Taquitos- Traditionally food for Tuesdays, but I will eat street tacos every single day of the week.  We were loyal customers long before they were famous.  Diner? No…. Drive in? No again….. Only leaves one DELICIOUS category!

2. Gram’s chocolate chip pancakes.  It’s a must.  No one can make them like she can.  Secret ingredient: Love!

1.  Sunday lunch with the fam.  I'm trying to work it so I can get two of these in, but there might only be time for one.   Sad day.

Anyways- I'm not sure how I am possibly going to be able to eat all of this in the time of two short weeks.  Guess I'll have to get creative.  Maybe I'll stop eating now in preparation for the AZ Overload!

Hello my super impatient friends!! I know that I haven’t been the best blogger lately, not that any of you have been keeping your feelings a secret!!  But I will tell you why I haven’t been blogging….


1. I have to keep an official intern blog for school, and I really haven’t wanted to do that one. And I feel guilty when I update my fun blog and not my boring one. Solution: Don’t update either one. But as you can see, I have two new entries on my school blog and I have returned to you.

2. Spring Break. Hayden, Dana, and Adriane came for a little visit. So fun. We did all kinds of touristy things around Dallas. (See numbers 3 and 4).

3. Tom-Tom lost me in a trailer park. Not just me, my Arizona visitors too! We wanted to go to the JFK Museum. I looked up the address: 411 Elm Street. Tom-Tom says that address doesn’t exist, but he suggests 499 Elm Street. I say ok Tom-Tom, I can do that…it’s right down the street from where we need to go. Ten minutes go by. I’m driving. Coming to a split in the freeway. Tom-Tom says go left. I tell everyone in my car that I’m pretty sure that I need to go right…because that’s which direction downtown is in…but when it comes to me or Tom-Tom, I always go with Tom-Tom. So I turn left. Like ten more minutes go by and we’re still driving away from downtown Dallas. We all talk about how we’re sure we’re going the wrong way because we thought JFK got shot in a parade and it just wouldn’t have made sense that it was way out in the boonies ! We were only a few minutes away from 499 Elm Street at this point so we decided we should probably find out exactly where Tom-Tom was planning to take us, just in case it was somewhere we needed to go. But it turns out it was a trailer park in Balch Springs. I don’t even know where that is. But the JFK Museum is definitely not there. If you’re starting to think this could have maybe possibly been my fault…well…in the wise words of Dana, “oh, you are dead wrong”. Tom-Tom is supposed to be smarter than me.

4. I added two more states to my list. We took a little road trip to Shreveport and then north to Magnolia, Arkansas and then came home through Texarkana on the way home. It was a loooong day and we probably should have left 2 hours earlier because it was too dark to see most of Arkansas. We did however visit the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland, LA and the site where they were actually gunned down. Gibsland just happens to be the Daffodil Capitol of Louisiana – just so you’ll know if you ever get a Trivial Pursuit question about it.

5. I’ve been putting my education to good use. And I’m not talking about telling my favorite people all of the random this I learn at school like the number of engines on a 747, or how to set a hollow square, or how slaves have to build all of the hotels in Cambodia… If any of my Tourism people are reading this, I really wish I had been to all of the above mentioned places before we had to write all of those assignments for 401. Visitor flow management…check. Return on investment…check, check. How I can help your hole-in-the-wall tourist attraction earn more revenue…check, Check, CHECK.

6. I’ve been thawing out. It snowed again. March 20 and it snowed. Want to know what I did on March 19? Laid out by the pool because it was nice and warm. Also on March 20, my heater decided not to work. Definitely not a problem on March 19, but on March 20, yes BIG problem.  Skeeter was kind of hopeful that I would freeze so she could keep me forever...Ted Williams style.  Just for future reference, I'm ok with this.  I mean he played for the Red Sox and I love all that is Boston! I was going to take a picture of the snow to post, but turns out, it looks just like it did before. 

7. My sea-monkeys have been multiplying like crazy and I have been counting the babies. We did a little research and found out that sea-monkeys can be sexual or asexual, so I guess that explains how I had one sea-monkey and now I have 13 big ones and about 5000 babies. This weekend when it was snowing and my heater wasn’t working, I was sure my sea-monkeys were going to freeze to death so I put a towel around their little tank. That was so pet-friendly of me I can still hardly believe it. They’re just so ugly and tiny that I can’t help but feel sorry for them.

8. I’ve been going to bed early (on AZ time anyway). I survived Day-Light Savings Day. I was actually really worried about that one, but I wasn’t late for a thing….maybe I should say “later than usual” for a thing.

9. I’ve been really busy at work and I don’t have time to think up great things to blog about. If you’re at all interested you can go to my other blog boydinternshipdallas.blogspot.com. It’s written for my school people so you definitely won’t have the time of your life reading it.

10. I get really angry at my internet because it’s really slow so it takes like 3 days to upload pictures. Which is exactly why this post is a words-only edition. I try every day of my life to steal my neighbor’s WiFi, but they all have passwords that I can’t guess.

Snow Days!

On Thursday, Dallas got about a foot of snow- breaking their all time record for the most snowfall in a 24 hour period. The weather totally knows I'm here.  The previous record was like 7 inches or something back in the 1960s. All of this to say…I learned how to drive in the snow on the way to work that morning, got to go home at 1 and had Friday off! Hello 3, almost 4, day weekend!

1.  I went for a little snowy adventure - so here are some pictures of everything within 50 feet of my apartment, covered in snow.

2. I learned that people who grow up in places where the weather does more than just be extremely hot don’t let the cold, rain, snow, or anything else get in the way of their getting dressed up ever so cutely. They just wear trendy sweaters and shawls, tights, and boots that I know for a fact cost more than my rent.

3. On rainy days it is 100% allowed to wear Wellingtons to work. Good thing I bought some in Arizona when I had absolutely no use for them. I’ve already worn them twice here.

4. I worked a wedding last weekend at The Mansion on Turtle Creek. So so SOOoO pretty! A bunch of pew-markers got left in my car so I have flowers all over my apartment!

5. The mother of the bride brought us sugar cookies from this cute little bakery.  It's so bad that I don't have someone to share them with!  I've already had WAY too many.

6. I finished a painting. This was trial number 2…the first one was super-duper ugly.

7. I did my “mending”. My grandmother would be so proud of me…for actually doing it, and also for using that word. Mending. I like it.

8. Fixed, altered, accessorized, whatever you’d like to call it- a pair of boots I bought a year ago and haven’t worn because they looked weird. Well not.any.more!

9. Took pictures of my Sea-Monkeys because I know you all are DyiNG to know what they look like. The one in the picture is the fatty cannibal, and he still looks small.

10.  Went dancing and to the Aquarium with new friends!  So fun!

to my.friends who are getting.married...

I’ve been holding out on you. I check a whole list of wedding blogs every day. There are a lot of gorgeous weddings, some great vendors, and a bunch of DIY ideas.


1. Style Me Pretty

2. Style Swoon

3. 100 Layer Cake

4. Wiley Valentine Paper

5. Oh So Beautiful Paper

6. Pretty Pretty Paper

7. Elegance and Simplicity

8. Ruffled

9. The Royal Scoop

10. Quail Bridal

These sites range from vintage weddings, stuff that’s different and trendy, to paper goods, and bridal fashion.

Where have all the Sea-Monkeys gone?

I have been a pet owner for less than a month.  I've never really had my own pets before, mostly because I don't like things that lick, get fur everywhere, and smell bad.  And because pets are all high-maintenance and stuff.  Not for me. 

After my Sea-Monkeys hatched, I went from owning zero pets to owning 75.  Or at least I thought there were 75.  They were so tiny and swimming around really fast, so it was hard to get an accurate count. 

Every day I look at my Sea-Monkeys, just to see how they're doing and every day, the number of little fish has gotten easier and easier to count because there are less and less of the little guys swimming around!!!! 

I'm down to TWO little fishys!  One of them is really big....like the size of 4 normal Sea-Monkeys and the other one is itty-bitty....like maybe it's a baby.

Where did the rest of them go?  I have no idea.  They're not floating at the top of their little plastic aquarium. 

I made a list of things that COULD have happened to my Sea-Monkeys....

1.  The really big one is a cannibal fatty and ate all of his little fishy friends.
2.  I fed them too much.  I gave them one small scoop of whatever it is that they eat every other day just like the instructions said.  Sometimes they still had food but I gave them more anyways because I decided they wouldn't eat the old, soggy fish food anyways.
3.  I didn't feed them enough.  It said to wait 5 days before you feed them for the first time.  I thought that was a long time, especially for babies, to go without eating and I almost decided to feed them anyways....But I didn't. 
4.  The water wasn't pure when I hatched their eggs and I accidently poisoned them.
5.  They could have gotten too cold.  It has been extra cold here!
6.  They didn't get enough natural sunlight....the sun hasn't been out in like a week and a half.  Who are we kidding, I haven't been getting enough natural sunlight. 
7.  Maybe there were only 2 from the very beginning.  I was sure there were 75, but they were swimming so quickly....
8.  The instructions said to oxygenate their water frequently because they need to breathe.  I didn't know how one would go about doing that, so I skipped that part....so maybe they suffocated. 
9.  Maybe they died of boredom because I hadn't gotten around to buying them their shiny diamond surf boards.
10. They just disappeared.  Into thin air...or water. 

I just remembered that those shiny diamond surf boards were supposed to keep my Sea-Monkeys from becoming "over-weight"....maybe I should still get them because I think I own one tiny-over-weight fish thing.

It's like a Mystery Game- Who is Jessica??

After my last post, someone named Jessica commented on my blog and said, "About time you fell in love with coffee.  Now you can drink it with your dad and I :)."  First of all, I was a little disturbed that my dad has coffee with people, but most importantly, I didn't know who Jessica was.

I tried everything I could think of to find the identity of this mystery commenter:

1.   Tried clicking on the underlined name "Jessica" to see her profile.
2.   Her profile is not public and I'm not priviledged enough to see that information.
3.   Searched my Facebook friends for someone named Jessica.
4.   Found 2 friends, but neither of them know my dad.
5.   Asked my dad if he ever has coffee with someone named Jessica.
6.   He said NO. 
7.   Decided that it must have been some random, confused person who left me a little message.
8.   Laughed a lot. 
9.   Still kind of driving me crazy because I have no idea who Jessica is. 
10. After a LOT of thought, someone else figured it out for me....And I felt like a BiG idiot!

Do you know who Jessica is?

♥

Dallas: Week Numero Uno

I started my internship at Todd Event Design last week and have been in Dallas for exactly 12 days. I'll sum up all of the happenings for you in a countdown list.


10-(plus about 5 or 6) Cups of coffee. I am now the proud owner of a coffee pot and have discovered that I should have started drinking coffee in the mornings like 5 years ago. It's the most delicious part of my day.


9-Possible tickets from using the Tollway incorrectly. I bought a Toll Tag, but have no idea how to tell if it's actually working or not.


8-Trips to the Post Office. No one would ever guess that so many trips are required to send out "Save the Dates" for a wedding. Not every post office will provide the required services of such special mail or has enough of the exact stamp needed for the envelopes. Square envelopes require 64 cent stamps, custom stamps can be ordered online at www.zazzle.com, and wedding invitations must be hand cancelled at the post office, just in case you're ever wondering.

7-Times I've just stared at my new pets in amazement. Erin bought me sea-monkeys, which are tiny, fish-like creatures of some sort. They come in a little packet, you add some water, and they've finally hatched!! I would post a picture of them, but they're too tiny and you wouldn't be able to see their adorable gross-ness. I'm going to buy them toys that look like diamonds because apparently they will ride them like surfboards and toss them like beach balls. Must see.

6-Very crafty things I plan to make in my spare time. I have 2 very cute ideas for paintings to hang in my apartment, I'm trying to come up with one more, a necklace, and a few other random, but very cute things!

5-Number of potential friends, including fellow interns, other people who work at Todd's, and a few people I met at church.

4-Pairs of shoes that have decided to hate my feet! I've never had any problems with them before, but then again I've probably never worn them for 10 hours a day while performing all sorts of intern-like tasks.

3-Extra months I'll be in Dallas. I applied for a summer internship with Southwest Airlines months ago, had an interview 2 days after I got here, and found out on Friday that I got the job! I'll be working in their Culture and Activities division, so I'll still be doing event planning!

2-Full seasons of Gilmore Girls that I've watched. With no cable, there's only so much to do at night.

1-Tornado warning. I googled "What to do in a tornado" and it told me I should seek shelter in my basement, but since I live on the 3rd floor, hiding in my bathtub is the second suggestion. Good to know for future reference.

There it is. I'll keep you updated in as many lists of 10 as I can think of!