Oh boy

Tuesdays are busy busy busy! I worked at both of my jobs today, had class, and had two meetings to go too. All back to back. I feel like I'm finally part of the college life. A lot of my peers have constantly had crazy schedules like this, but my time at college has been fairly laid back so far. One semester I didn't have Friday classes. Another semester, I was done with class by 12 in the morning. And another semester, none of my classes started until 12. Crazy, I know.

It's good that I'm finally being tested though. This will show how well I can handle the pressure of a high-stress job. So far, so good. But we'll see.

Almost half way through the week now. We can do it!

Cookie Monster

When I was at home over break, I had this intense desire to bake... all of the time. I baked holiday cookies, breads, regular cookies, pies, brownies, cakes. Basically anything you can think of.

But my favorite things were the healthy things that I made. I follow a few food blogs and they provide so much inspiration for how to eat what you want, but make it healthier.

One of my favorite/easy recipes were these Flourless Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies by Tina, from Carrots N Cake. Only 6 ingredients and super easy to make. They are also great because they make a dozen, which is the perfect size for a batch.

I know it's a little late to finally do a review of these, but I thought that I should start sharing which recipes I try from online and which ones work out for me! I don't have pictures of them, but Tina posted pictures on her blog. And next time I make them, I will definitely take pictures.

Anyways, final review= awesome cookies! I'm not a fan of oatmeal cookies- mainly because I hate raisins, which always seem to be in oatmeal cookies. But these were so yummy! I made them twice within a few days! This recipe is a keeper :)

Monday Motivation

A beautiful day calls for some time outdoors

This morning I went to Trinity Park to a) take pictures for an article and b) exercise. I planned to just walk leisurely and take some pictures, but instead I ended up running a lot at the beginning while stopping to take pictures every once in a while. 


And then since the weather was just SO BEAUTIFUL, I went to the Botanical Gardens to walk around and do homework. Needless to say, I will be going there much more often now! It's free to get in, the gardens are huge, and it's relaxing to sit in the grass and read. I want to take a picnic and go there for a long afternoon next time. Or go and run. Either way, it will be perfect. 

View of downtown.

Railroad track- the train was running a lot today!

Dirt path that I like to run on. 

More dirt path with the train in the background. 

It was a wonderful day to spend outside. The weather was cold, but not unbearable. It was perfect for running in leggings and jacket. And I wore my new running shoes (finally!), so that made a great run even better. Hope everyone has a happy Monday tomorrow!

And here's the grand reveal

I'm not the greatest photographer, but I took some cool pictures tonight! I went to Rosa's Cafe with some people from APO tonight. If you've never been, you should go! The restaurant is beautiful and so colorful. And the food is amazing, but priced well.

My camera has a food setting... food blogging, anyone?

Sweet tea- yes, I live in Texas. 

Goodbye sopapillas!

Such ornate chairs!

This last one is blurry, but it shows how colorful and bright Rosa's Cafe is!

Wait for it... wait for it...

I finally got my own camera! It's a Nikon Coolpix S4100 and I'm so excited- it's red :)


So now I can take my own pictures, for reporting and for my blog! Woo too.


I haven't had a working camera in about 3 years. I broke my last camera by over charging it 2 weeks after I got it... but I never got a new one. And before that, my camera lasted me for years! Until it finally cracked because it was just cheap Kodak plastic. 


I will take good care of this one though- especially since I paid for it with my own money. Perks of having two jobs... unfortunate part of being a college student and quickly having to spend my money on big purchases. 


I'm going to take pictures when I go out tonight, so I'll either post them tonight or in the morning. It depends on what time I get back at and if I can figure out how to load them quickly. Happy Saturday night!

Be thankful.

Never forget to be thankful for the simple things in your life. For me, it's running. Simply going outside, enjoying the weather, and getting a workout is something that I can't live without. Yesterday, I would have done anything to have 30 minutes to run.
But I'm also thankful for a million other things, which is true for everyone! Just think about it. And remembering all of those things is a wonderful way to brighten your day.

It's been a while.

I know it's been quite a few days since I've blogged, but this has been one of the craziest weeks of my life. I have never been this busy, stressed out, or unhappy before in my life. Normally it's one feeling of those feelings or another, but not all at once.

It's been terrible! I hate feeling this way! No matter how busy I am, I'm not one to get extremely stressed out. But I called both of my parents crying yesterday because I was so stressed. They were worried.

Last night, things changed. I ended up going to my night class, which I was convinced that I was going to drop. I hated it last week and didn't want to waste my time going to a 3 hour long class on Thursday nights. But I decided to go one last time, just in case it changed magically into a great class. I did not have high expectations.

It did change though. I had such a great time in class! It was one of the best classes I have been to in a while. I really needed that. It shows that no matter how negative you are about something, it can still turn out well.

I'm hoping that next week won't be this crazy. I need some rest time, some sleep, and a good run. I'm planning on doing that all this weekend.

P.S. If you didn't watch the debate last night, you should have! We watched some of it in class- it was so funny! All of the candidates kept making faces at each other.

Monday Motivation

I actually made this! I took the quote and put in on a background in Power Point. I think it looks really pretty and it's cool that the edges look blurred. Plus, the font looks like writing on a chalk board. 

I usually post quotes or pictures with quotes, but I don't make those. Today I decided to make my own! I might start doing this for all of my Monday Motivation Quotes! 

Happy Monday! :)

We love you Gabby!

My post today will be an article that I wrote this afternoon for Youth Journalism International. This morning, Gabrielle Giffords announced her resignation from Congress. Very sad day for Tucsonans, but it was somewhat expected.

You can see all of that in my article! And check out her video too! It's great to see how much progress she has made.

Take a minute to look at those and just keep Gabrielle Giffords in your thoughts.

Quote

The hardest part of moving forward is not looking back. 

Woo hoo!

I woke up early this morning to some beautiful news. Rick Perry has dropped out of the race for presidency.  I was not a fan of how he handled issues and just how he tried to get publicity. So needless to say, I'm happy to know that the Republican group of candidates is slowly dwindling. Whoever is going to run against Obama needs to be a responsible and reliable candidate. In order for it to be a fair and even race, the strongest Republican must win the primary. And this is important for people to have a good choice. We don't want Americans voting for one person just because they think that candidate is the lesser of two evils. We want Americans to vote for someone who will do what they say they will do and will make some needed changes in this country!

   

Courtesy of  Poligu.com

Anyways, after that I bought my textbooks, went for a run at Trinity Park and went shopping. With a tall skinny mocha from Starbucks. Yum! I needed to return/exchange some clothes, so of course I needed a little caffeine and a walk around Target, since I was in the area. Such a good morning!

Courtesy of Midtown Village Blog

Today has went by fast! Had a long lunch with a close friend, which was so nice. But the cafeteria was extremely full. So many new students are coming to TCU and some of our facilities are just not big enough anymore. I'm thinking that at this rate, TCU will be a lot bigger in 5 years. 

Last piece of news for this post, but this is sad news. X-Games skier Sarah Burke died today. It's scary how many people can die from these sports. She took a fall in practice last week and was in a coma. Today, she passed. But a great thing about this story is that she donated all of her organs. Although bad things happen to many people, it's possible to help so many more people if you are an organ donor! She probably saved quite a few lives. She deserves a big thank you for signing up to be an organ donor and her family deserves thanks for following her wishes. 

Skiff Story

Here is the story that I've been telling y'all about!

Brite Construction

I wrote this story! It's my first (and probably my last) news story for the Skiff. From now on, I will be writing for the109, which is a local news organization. They cover all news in, you guessed it, the 76109 zip code!

Anyways, I'm still proud of this Brite Construction story! It's not my best writing ever, but I loved the reporting part. And I'm so happy that I was able to include a slideshow of pictures- it shows that they are teaching me to be a well-rounded reporter here!

Official Google Blog: Don't censor the web

For my post this morning, I want to post this blog from Google. I think it is one of the simplest ways to explain this whole SOPA dilemma. If you don't know a lot of the facts, then look at this.
I was just hearing about it from friends and basically everyone on Twitter. So as I was doing my research, I came across this. Take a read, let me know what you think! Do you think the government should censor the Internet or do you think Internet should be a free for all? There are most definitely two sides to this, so let me know which side you are on!
And you can also sign the petition if you don't want the Internet censored! And try going to Wikipedia or Google- see what happens.

Official Google Blog: Don't censor the web: You might notice many of your favorite websites look different today. Wikipedia is down. WordPress is dark. We’re censoring our homepage ...

Happy Tuesday!

It's the first day of classes for the spring semester- scary! After this semester is done, I will be half way done with college, which is extremely  frightening. College has just flown by so far and I expect nothing less than that with this semester.
It was a early morning so I could do some more reporting for my first story for the Skiff. That will run tomorrow, so hopefully I can post a link to it on here.

I post a lot of running pictures on here, taken from Born to Run, my absolute favorite page on Facebook. It is so inspiring and a lot of the quotes can apply to more than running. Like this one!

Although I said that every semester has gone by super quickly, at times it can seem like my days just drag by and blend together. Especially when I get to mid-term time or a week with a lot of work. But I just need to take it one day and one step at a time to make it through.

What do y'all do to make it through those tough days?

Driving slow on Sunday Morning

Sunday. This is one of the last two days before classes start. And tomorrow I am volunteering for over 6 hours, so today is my last relaxing day!


I slept in until 9 today, which is actually late for me, considering I woke up at 8 or earlier every day of break. I don't enjoy sleeping in because I feel like I am missing out/not getting anything done. 


But since I stayed up until well after midnight, I decided to get as close to 8 hours of sleep as possible. That's reasonable, right?


Last night, I went to Sundance Square with my friend. We went to this awesome Mexican restaurant, Cabo Grande. We both got tacos- fish for her and pork for me. They were oh so good! And the salsa at this place was to die for!


Such a good dinner. I was glad to have a girl's night out, after being alone basically all week. And not having much friend time when I was at home. 


Afterwards, we walked around Sundance Square and spent a good hour in Barnes and Noble. It is two stories and they were having a HUGE sale, so of course we had to look around at everything. We both got a book for 50% off!


Then we wanted some dessert. Neither of us eat dessert very much anymore, both as trying to be healthy and dessert not being that appealing at the school cafeteria. But we saw this shop called the Cupcakery and wanted to go! 

When we went in, they were out of almost all of their cupcakes! The worker told us to come back in 15 minutes, so we went out and walked around some more. While we were walking around, we ran into this awesome place called Oliver's Fine Foods. It's a high end, healthy grocery store mixed with a restaurant. 


They had a case full of yummy looking desserts and we couldn't resist. 



I picked out a peanut butter brownie, which looked like a giant Reese's Peanut Butter Cup! So delicious! And my friend had the carrot cake, with a cream  cheese frosting. 


Our desserts were so good that we weren't even sad about missing out on the cute cupcake shop. And we definitely want to go back to Oliver's to eat a whole meal some time!


This morning, I slept in, woke up, read more of my book and ate breakfast with a cup of tea. 


I went for a 30 minute run and now I'm just chilling out until church later. Fun weekend and I can't wait until all of my friends get back so I can continue having fun weekends!

Job!

I got a job today! I went for an official interview, even though I have talked to the manager before and she offered me the job!

So I will be working at Kay's Hallmark. After working at two corporate Hallmarks, it will be nice to work at an independently owned one. There is so much cool stuff there!

I start work next Tuesday and I'm super excited!

Running Nerd For Life

Yes, I think I will always be a running nerd. Running has just been a HUGE part of my life for as long as I can remember. My dad ran marathons, my brother was a state champion in high school, and my sister and I ran in high school too. We also did 5ks a lot, just for fun.

So this morning, in honor of the Houston Marathon Trials (and just because I wanted to run), I woke up and went to Trinity Park to run. There were so many people there and it made me happy!

There was a race going on too and I kept passing all of the racers. I guess I was running a lot faster than I realized.

But anyways, when I got back, I checked the Houston 2012 results!

They were crazy! The two people predicted to win both came in second! Desiree Davila and Ryan Hall. Both Americans that were going to win. But Desiree lost by 17 seconds and Ryan Hall lost by 22 seconds. So close!



But congratulations to the winners, Meb Keflezighi and Shalane Flanagan! It's odd because they were both minutes slower than Davila and Hall in their qualifying times. But that just shows that anything can happen in running! Someone might have a bad day or someone may have just prepared a little bit more. You never know.

Anyways, here is the list of who is going to London 2012!

Men: Meb, Halland Abdi Abdirahman
Women: Shalana, Desi, and Kara Goucher
Alternate: Dathan Ritzenhein and Amy Hastings

Rock Climbing!

Tonight, my friend and I went to the Rec Center for a late workout. Yes, we know it's a Friday night and we could be out doing a million other things. But a workout sounded nice.



So we planned on just weight lifting, but instead we climbed the rock wall! It was such a good way to work my arms!

My arms are really sore now. And that's after only climbing one full wall and 3/4th's of another wall.

I got nervous for some reason though. I knew nothing bad would happen and that they were holding me. But it still scared me to climb to the top of the wall.

Hopefully next time I will feel more comfortable!

Determination

Today I was at Reporting Bootcamp from 8:45 to 4. I know that's shorter than a normal work day for most people, but it felt so long to me! 


First, I had to listen to people talk for about 2.5 hours. Just sit there and listen. And interject sometimes. 


Then I had to work on writing my story. That means I had to write and research and write and research, and do all of that some more. But it also means that I got to do some more interviewing today!


I interviewed the president of the Brite Divinity School. He is one of the nicest men ever and everyone in his office is so sweet. I interviewed him for about 20 minutes, but it was so relaxed. He even showed me around the building a little bit and gave me a bunch of papers that I can use for my story. 


And the recruitment officer at Brite sent me a bunch of photos for a slideshow that is going along with my story!


I absolutely LOVE reporting. But sitting down to write my story was not as enjoyable. I've always liked writing, but today I didn't. I was unfocused and just wanted to go take more pictures or talk to people. 


So I don't think my story is that wonderful. But we'll see when I get it back from the copy editors!


I did get an exciting offer today though! Instead of working for the Skiff, I will be working for the109! I will get to cover local politics, which is really exciting! I can't wait. 


Anyways, back to the picture. Determination. I need some of it. I worked all day, but I just needed determination to do that. Unfortunately, I did not have determination to run today. But a day off won't hurt me, right?

Why Why Why Why Why?

Why is it that the one thing I don't want to think about is the only thing I can think about? 


You know that feeling when you have a million other things to do, but one thing keeps creeping back into your mind. Creep, creep, creeping. 


Well I want it to stop. I've had an amazing day and I want to enjoy it! And keep enjoying it and being productive until I go to bed. 


Recap: Today I had my first interview for the school newspaper, the Skiff. The first person I asked to interview was super rude and shut me down. But that's ok. The next person I asked was the sweetest lady ever and I think she enjoyed the interview!


I realized that I love the reporting aspect of journalism. Getting paid to talk to people and find out information? Sign me up! I don't get paid right now, but in the future I might. 


One of my professors said that you either love the reporting aspect or the writing aspect. I like writing, but I wish I could just report and someone else could write. Because after I report, I just want to do more reporting! I don't want to sit down by myself and write. I want to talk to more people. Or take more pictures!


I guess I'm just a people person. Most of the time anyways. 

PAIN

People think I'm crazy to put myself through such
torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. Dostoyevsky had it right: "Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness." Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is a magic in misery. Just ask any runner.
-Dean Karnazes

Please don't hate me

I am a terrible blogger. I don't know why I always go through these weird phases! At times, I absolutely love blogging! And then at other times I think, what's the point? I don't have followers, I doubt anyone religiously reads my blog. So taking a few days off won't hurt, right?

I follow a few blogs and I love reading their updates every day, but I don't think I have quite a following like that. Blogging is basically their job! But my job is being a student and doing a million other things, along with being involved in social media.

Social media is great and I don't know what I would do without it! I am constantly on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and my school email. I also constantly check my RSS feed. But when it comes to my own blog, I'm pretty bad. Especially when I am at home.

But I want to get back into it. Who cares if I don't have followers? Maybe one day I will! And they can look back to see how nerdy and lame my blog was when I first start. Plus, how can I be a journalist without being completely into social media. I can't. So I'll try this again.

For any of you out there reading my blog, I'll try to be better! If I'm just saying this to nobody... well that's just a bit unfortunate.

Reading

Gosh. I realized that I am going back to Texas in less than a week. I go back on Monday. Crazy!

And when I think back on what I have done this break, all I can recall is working, running, and lots of reading. I've spent time with my friends a couple of times, but mainly I don't see any of my old friends from high school. So my break has been full of quality time at home with my family and my books.

I think I'm going to try to make a list of all the books I've read this break and I'll post it later. But most recently, I just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. I read the first one over the summer and loved it! But I didn't have time to read the other ones. I finally remembered about a week ago and ended up finishing the books within a few days!

 


I can barely put down these books when I am reading them! They are so good that I just want to know



what happens! If you haven't read them, I would most definitely recommend them.








I love to read and it's sad that I don't normally have time during the school year. I will read a book all the



way through so that I can know how it ends. And that's bad because I ignore everything else that I need to




do. Hopefully I can change that this semester. 










Anyways, I have to go to work soon, so I'll post later. Hope y'all are having a great day! :) 

Happy New Year!

Resolutions:
1. Clean up my diet. I just want to eat healthier.
2. Find the joy in exercising again. I hate exercising because I think I have too. I like when I want to work out.
3. Enjoy being young and single. This should be the time of my life! I want to be happy with who I am and where I am in life.

I think these are achievable goals! And I fully intend to split them into smaller goals to make them easier to follow.

Hope y'all thought of some good resolutions and had a wonderful New Year's Eve!