I miss my sundays...

Working full time while going to school full time is really beginning to get to me. I miss having time to myself. Normally I would spend my sundays watching football with my boyfriend, cooking or baking, or reading a great book. Instead I'm rushing to get homework done before I go to work at 4pm. I worked for 13 hours yesterday, I'll be working 8 hours tonight, and 8 hours tomorrow night as well as being in class for 5 hours tomorrow morning. Why am I working myself to death? Because I want to have enough extra money to begin saving for our dream wedding. I need to find a different job though (right now I'm a server at a sports bar). The problem is right now I'm make on average $14+ hr and its hard to find something that pays that well and is also flexible with my hours. The work is killing me though... I come home from work and can barely move. There are some morning that I can't even stand up after working a double the night before. Does anyone know of any other types of work that pay well and are performed at night?

Sunny Day in Paradise

I thank God that I had enough foresight to realize that I would need one day off a week. Right now I'm working 30+ hrs and taking 17 credit hrs. So when I set up my schedule I set it up so that I would have Fridays off. No work, no school, just me... and the BF but thats ok I like having him around. :) So today I'm enjoying a nice relaxing day. I got up and had muffins and fruit for breakfast (granted breakfast came at 1pm when I actually felt like getting up), tweaked the blogs html a little bit, and soon the BF and I are going to go hiking for a bit on his family farm so we can practice photography somemore and hopefully spot out the perfect place for our wedding. Should be a nice day.

The Big Fat Rock

Well the BF was gone for about 2 hours today and when he came back he had an announcement. Only 6 months left until the ring is paid off (thats if he pays according to schedule... knowing him it may be sooner). He finally picked out the diamond. He won't give me many details... which Im happy about because I adore a suprise. The only hint he dropped was the word flawless... hehe. I can't wait!

And the countdown is on...

For not being officially engaged it's funny how we already have a set date (Oct. 23rd 2010), a possible location (his family farm... the fall colors are exquisite out there!), and a savings plan in place. The funny thing is we didn't have any of this in place 2 days ago. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you decide you're ready. I have to admit that I've become a bit obsessed in the past couple of days. I've already bought 2 bridal magazines and spent countless hours on TheKnot.com (highly recommend it if you haven't checked it out already).

Pre-Engagement Wedding Obsession?

I know when I say this I'm going to sound like a bono-fide nut job but I am already becoming obsessed with a wedding that isn't going to happen for 2 more years. Whats wrong with me? Whats worse is we aren't even technically engaged yet. He has the ring (on layaway at Shane Co.) and according to "the plan" he will give it to me in 10 months. So why do I already find myself thumbing through bridal magazines, occasionally checking out DavidsBridal.com, and reading articles on The Knot? Is it normal to be so excited this early on? Did anyone else go through this?

Randomness to Get a Makeover

I'm looking at my blog and you know what I see? Something that isn't unique and doesn't yet describe me. Its dark and boring. So I'm going to spend the next week trying to take some pics and create some graphics for the blog. Hopefully when it's all said and done it will look sharp (perhaps sharper than it really is... but thats beside the point). So wish me luck on my little photoadventure...

Darkness Chronicals Come to an End

Well, my first attempt at blogging seems to be a pretty big failure. See, I was planning on journaling about my everyday life without electricity. Unfortunately life intervened and I ended up working more than I had originally intended to this week. Not to mention it's difficult to find ways to get on the internet to blog when you have no electricity. So here's the subcompact version. We went 6 days without electricity! It sucked. You don't think about how many things run on electricity until you can't use them. Because we live in an apartment everything runs on electricity. We couldn't make dinner, take showers (we had to drive 20 mins to my boyfriends parents house to take showers that week), or wash laundry. I spent the whole week wearing a baseball cap because I had no way to straighten my hair. One good thing came from this experience though. You don't realize how much time you really have on your hands until you have nothing to waste it. Instead of spending our nights watching re-runs, surfing the internet, or playing video games we spent quality time together talking by candlelight. Although I don't wish to repeat the experience of living without electricity for a week I am happy that it brought us even closer together (a feat that still amazes me considering how close we already are).

The Blackout Chronicals - Day 1

Day 1 - September 14th - 301,000 people without power
Today was a rude awakening. I laid down to take a nap before work at noon. When I woke up at 1pm we had no power. No big deal. I opened the windows and sat on our covered balcony with my boyfriend to watch the wind wreak havoc among the trees. It was pretty blustery but I didn't think much of it. By 4 pm the power still hadn't come back on, so I left home and headed to work. Since I only live 2 blocks away from the restaurant that I work at I assumed that they wouldn't have power either. So I brought my homework in anticipation of long lazy hours with nothing to do. I could not have been more mistaken. We were the ONLY restaurant in a 5 mi radius with electricity. Now, I don't live in a small town. I live in the heart of a thriving metropolis so everyone from the Jtown, Hikes Point, and Fern Creek areas were coming to our store. It felt as if the finger of God had descended upon us and was trying to systematically squish us. Imagine a restaurant packed not only with patron but with people standing around because they have no where to go. There was a three hour wait for a table, an hour wait for food, and three nearly suicidal servers trying to keep up with the madness. 8 hours later we had to start kicking people out because they still had no where to go. I went home to a dark apartment with a skull splitting headache, took a few Tylenol PMs, and crashed till the next morning.

The Blackout Chronicles

Forward: As I sit here and write by the warm glow of candlelight an almost nostalgic feeling washes over me. I feel as if I have been swept back to the 1800's when women were helpless, men were gentlemen, and gas was unheard of (let alone $5 a gallon). I am lucky enough to live in one of the many mid western towns to be stuck by the remnants of a hurricane blown inland.It feels as if God pointed at us, said "Things seem to be going too well for you so I'll send you a random hurricane." and the laughed manically. Ok, maybe not... but it kinda feels that way when you've gone for days without electricity. I've decided to try to turn this lemon into lemonade so to speak and use this as an opportunity to spend some time journaling. Enjoy...

The Typical (or not-so-typical) Introduction

I'm sitting up tonight attempting yet again to write a literacy memoir for Eng 102. Obviously I'm not getting much accomplished at the moment. Instead I believe I will further procrastinate my paper and instead write my first blog entry. Wahoo! Yea for self-exploration!

I suppose it's only polite to introduce myself a bit (though you may know more about me than you ever wanted to by the end of this blog). I'm a 23 year old (girl? woman? what's the cut-off?)who spends the majority of her time at work or in class. I'm currently taking 17 credit hours and working 30 hours a week as a server while I work on my bachelors in education. Workaholic? Probably so... but I prefer it that way. Your probably wondering why I've decided to start blogging when I barely have time to take a shower everyday. Well, it's a release. It the one thing in my life that I'm doing only for me. It's a chance to consider my own thoughts and curiosities without having to squeeze them in between organizing homework, test schedules, rehearsals (technical theater), and work schedules. I suppose it could be worse. At least I'm not trying to raise a family on top of all of this (my boyfriend is enough for me at the moment).

When I have some free time I juggle a few different hobbies. As I mentioned before I spend a lot of time working with the universities theater department. I love it! I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. In fact I love it so much that I'm planning on teaching high school English and Theater classes. Going along with the English half of that I love to read. I have very varied literacy tastes including the classics (Pride and Prejudice), the childish (Harry Potter), the fantastic (Lord of the Rings), and the controversial (The Da Vinci Code... and Harry Potter) I also have a passion for photography, photo manipulation, and web design. All of which will be incorporated into my blog when I have the opportunity. I also enjoy interior and architectural design. If it weren't for the fact that teaching is a calling for me I would have become an architect. Instead I'll become a weekend warrior so to speak, buy an old Craftsman bungalow and completely renovate it. I can't wait! First I need to graduate though. :(

I'm sure there are more things I could tell you about myself. Like the fact that I prefer cats to dogs, I hate cold weather, I wish I lived on the coast instead of in the Midwest, and hate to get my face wet... but there isn't enough time for me to get through all of that. So I guess you will have to get small doses of me at a time. Hope you enjoyed this bit of info. Night!