Best Work Day Ever!

Today could quite possibly be my favorite day of work so far! We had an office potluck and then chinese gift exchange. All of the older people are back in the office so we had a total of 30 people which I love because the office is always busy and there is never a dull moment.

The potluck was AMAZING! It reminded me a little bit of first grade when all the mom's have a christmas party for the kids, except if was in my office and we are old enough to cook for ourselves. Today I ate as much as I did during Thanksgiving and it was glorious.

Then, the best part of the afternoon was the chinese gift exchange. The limit was $20, so some people bought nice gifts and some people bought some really random gifts. Since I work with all sales people, everyone had a comment about every gift and when people didn't love what they got, they tried to sell other people on why they should steal it from them. It got a little intense.

Originally this was the gift I picked:

I figured that nobody would steal this from me but I was pleasantly surprised when the 25th person to pick did! I was SO excited to get rid of the robot and ended up with 4 dvds...best gift by far!

Here are some of my favorite gifts from today:

a leopard comforter

Rock Em Sock Em

$20 worth of toilet paper

To end out the day we all went around to everybody's cubes and played with the games we got...and I was rock em sock em champ when i played :) I love my job!

I usually never do these things...

My cable isn't working and I got tagged three times so I figured I would answer the questions. I can only answer with one word so here ya go!

1. Where is your cell phone? charging
2. Your significant other? tbd
3. Your hair? short
4. Your mother? sweet
5. Your father? fun
6. Your favorite thing? people
7. Your dream last night? none
8. Your favorite drink? coke
9. Your dream/goal? happiness
10. The room you're in? bedroom
11. Your fear? alone
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? dallas
13. Where were you last night? conference
14. What you're not? confrontational
15. Muffins/donuts? muffin
16. One of your wish list items? gps
17. Where you grew up? texas!
18. The last thing you did? eat
19. What are you wearing? slippers
20. Your TV? office
21. Your pet? maggie
22. Your computer? lifeline
23. Your life? fabulous
24. Your mood? exhausted
25. Missing someone? definitely
26. Favorite pastime? talking
27. Something you're not wearing? coat
28. Favorite Store? banana
29. Your summer? beach
30. Your favorite color? pink
31. When is the last time you laughed? tonight
32. Last time you cried? can't remember
33. Who will re-post this? alice
34. Four places I go over and over? work, church, home, mcalisters.
35.Four people who e-mail me? boss, mom, ash, potterybarn
36. Four of my favorite foods? cheesecake, manicotti, dark chocolate, sandwiches
37. Four places I would like to be right now? texas, australia, london, boston
38. Four people I tag? ash, al, besco, jpatt

Slacker

So I realize that I haven't posted on my blog in quite some time so I wanted to give a quick update.

Here are some things that have happended since the last post:
-Ash got married!
-Al came to visit Jax
-I went home to Texas
-I went to Seattle, WA
-I got hugged by a creepy eye doctor

I promise I will post more about the above events very soon but I thought I was well overdue for a blog post.

Hope everyone is having a fabulous day!

Highlights

I decided that I would share the highlights of this past week and a half.

1. Banana republic had a huge sale last Wednesday. Almost everything in the store was 30% off and if you brought in an old sweater for their sweater drive you got an additional 30% off. I got a really cute black sweater and a pair of brown pants for such a deal!

2. The zoo had a spooktacular event this weekend that we went. I really love zoos and was excited to get to see the Jacksonville one. It was PACKED with tons of kids in costumes, but I was loving every minute of it.

3. Cole Haan had a grand opening party last Thursday that half of my office went to. It was such a production...they had paparazzi people, hors d'oeuvres, and my manager won a free $500 purse...the whole store was so excited for her!

4. Chipotle is opening on Friday and last night was free burrito day so we all went to have free dinner!

5. Finally Al comes on Friday and I cannot wait!

Runway!

I am sad to say that one of my favorite shows is over and never coming back to bravo...however I did hear rumors that project runway is moving to lifetime so hopefully it will be back next season. As I promised, here are my thoughts on the season.

Kenley:

I used to like her at the beginning of the season, but then she turned extremely rude. Her collection reminded me a lot of the 80s, however I did really love her wedding dress and the other outfit below. Overall the collection was my least favorite, but the two outfits below were my favorite individual outfits of the season.

Korto:

I originally wanted Leanne to win but towards then end I really wanted Korto to win b/c I feel that she would benefit most from the win. I loved her collection...especially all of the colors that she included. My favorite dress was definitely the finale dress (the green one below)...I just thought it was so creative!

Leanne:

Throughout the season I thought that Leanna was the most consistent and I liked her designs the most. I thought her collection was very unique and really liked the wave inspiration. I only wished that she would have used a tiny bit more color but I am really glad that she won! I loved her wedding dress and really loved that it had pockets!

I loved this season (just like I loved all the other project runway seasons) and cannot wait for the next one...assuming that it does move to lifetime. And if you want, let me know your thoughts on the collections too!

I love today!

Today at work was so much fun! First, we had two people come to our office from Canada. They are really fun and it is nice to have new people in the office, especially since most of the old people are out in different territories. And because they started in the US today, they gave us all an hour to hang out with the Canadians and eat a big breakfast (however I was a little disappointed b/c usually when we get breakfast they give us panera but today we just got aramark...def not nearly as good)

Also at work all of our managers were gone so we spent a good majority of the day roaming from cube to cube just chatting...I love to be non productive some days!

Finally, tonight is PROJECT RUNWAY FINALE! I am extremely excited about this! Look forward to a post with my opinion on the collections :).

The fam came to visit!

This past weekend my family (minus mikey) came to visit. It was soo good to see them. I hadn't seen them in in over 3 months which is the longest we have ever been apart. We did a lot of stuff in 3 days but I loved every minute of it.

Here are some of the highlights:
-Al and I went Parasailing! For me this was a pretty big deal but I was so glad I did it. We did it on the Atlantic Ocean, so there were a lot of waves. On ride out there it was so bumpy that there was a time when I thought that it was possible the I could have fallen out of the boat (that part of the trip was not quite as fun). But once we got out deep enough to go into the air I loved it! (i also got a new camera so i will post pics soon)
-We went to my 2 favorite italian restaurants and some other great seafood restaurants, which as most of you know makes me very excited b/c I love food!
-Dad and Al played on the beach while me and mom went into the cute shops. I love beach shops...they have such cute stuff!
-We went to St. Augustine (which I have been there once before when Ash came and it was pretty sketchy) but this time we found the nice area and went to aeven more cute shops. This weekend was filled with a lot of shopping.

It was great weekend! I love hanging out with the fam!

Art Walk

Tonight me and some of the girls from work went to an art walk. We just found out about it, but apparently Jacksonville has it every month. There was a ton of people at the art walk...i loved it! Jacksonville just moved up a notch in my mind after tonight. There were so many cool buildings filled with a bunch of art and it was just so much fun to walk around and see everything.

There also were some cute little stands with jewelry at them and I got some really cute earrings for only $7 (my earring collection is growing very slowly but surely). To end the night we went to a place voted "best burritos in Jacksonville". They were pretty good but Qdoba is def still my fave.

In honor of the art walk I have included some of my favorite paintings:

On another note...my fam comes tomorrow! I am SO excited to see them!

Office!

I have been waiting all summer for the office to come back, so this past Thursday was the highlight of my week! It was just as good as I had hoped for. However, I was a little shocked the Jim proposed to Pam already. I def thought that we would have to wait until the end of the season for that to happen.
In light of the show starting I will share some of my own "office" moment. Too bad I don't have a Dwight in my office, but every once in a while random things will happen. For example:

-Sometimes I will be sitting in my cube and randomly someone will decide to throw over a foam football. Then for the next 5 minutes we see who else we can scare by tossing the football into their cube.

-Last week, I was talking to a doctor when all of the sudden bubbles filled my cube. Someone had brought in bubble and went around blowing them in our cubes to brighten every one's day. It def worked, but got me a little distracted since I focused on popping the bubbles rather than the convo with the doc.

-My fave moment by far in my office was this:
In our office to get to the bathroom you half to walk past a row of cube with IT people in it (or at least I think they do IT, not really sure). So there are a few cubes who have this giant piece of foam board covering the entrance to their cube. I thought that someone had but the foam board there b/c there was no one in the cubes, but the other day when I walked past, all of the sudden the foam board shifted and out came a person. I then figured out that they had created "doors" for their cubes. I am not quite sure why I found this SO funny, but it took everything in my to hold in my laughter when that man popped out.

So there you have it. I love my office and the Scranton office too!

The Greatest Place on Earth!

This past weekend I went to visit Al in Orlando and we got to Disney World! Many of you know I have a slight obsession with this place, so needless to say I had a fabulous time!

I got to hang out with Al, which was wonderful ,and got meet all of her friends. It was fun to finally get to meet all of the people she had been telling me about.

We got to go to both the Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Hollywood studios just opened up a new ride, Toy Story Mania, which I was obsessed with. Toy Story is my fave disney movie and this ride was pretty amazing so it was a great combo.
Also, it was the only ride we had to wait for. I have never walked straight onto so many rides in my life...i loved it!

Finally, Saturday was Disney's 60th anniversary of having fireworks, so there was a huge fireworks show. I was very impressed with the amount of fireworks they shot off. At one point the sky got so smokey that it was hard to see the fireworks.

This weekend was great! I wish every weekend could be just like it. Hope you all have a fabulous week :)

update

so i know i have been slacking on the blog so here is a quick update of my life...

- basically my days consist of chatting with doctors all day. i have a lot of accounts in arkansas and i LOVE talking to them. most of the doctors there are old men who love to chat about life, their practice, retirement, and really anything else they can think of...i really enjoy them :)
-i found a good "young professional" bible study that i have been going to. it has been great to meet some new people through that.
-i finally went to the movies on sunday. i had not been since i first moved here and most of you know that i usually do not go that long in between movies. we saw the women which was really cute, and kind of different b/c there is not one boy in the entire movie.
-i got a call this weekend from this sweet old lady who hung out with me and my fam in the airport when i moved to jacksonville. she was calling to make sure my fam was okay and didn't get destroyed by ike (which btw they are good, we just had some trees fall down in the back yard and no power for a while). i just thought that was so nice that she called! and she is going to cook me dinner when her kitchen remodel is refinished...which is perfect for me b/c i love old people!
-finally this weekend i am going to DISNEY WORLD to see al! i am SOO excited!

that is about all for me. hope all is well with everyone!

I Love Labor Day!

Happy Memorial Day!

I am loving having a 3 day weekend. Ash came to visit me which was wonderful! We did a lot of shopping, watched a ton of movies and just lounged around. It was great to see her! As I was dropping her off at the airport I realized the next time I see her she will be getting married...crazy!

Random event of the weekend...we went to this city about 30 mins away called St. Augustine which I had heard that it had a bunch of cute shops in it. Once we got there we quickly went to the wrong area first and ended up in a bunch of random pirate shops complete with a man holding a snake walking down the street (pretty sketch). We then found a "map and guide" with cartoon drawing of it that lead us to the outlets and it was all uphill from there. Overall I had a fabulous weekend with the bff!

It is here!

Today after work I walked to my mailbox and was pleased to find a brown package coming with a Baylor return address on it and it was....MY SING DVD! I went straight to my couch and watched almost the entire thing. I love sing and will prob watch the video many more times :) That just made my night!

Oh Monday...

I must admit that Monday is prob my least fave day of the week. But today, I get to fly to Colorado so it makes it much better. We are having a national sales mtg so I am going to get to meet all of the reps from around the country. It should be fun!

On another note, I survived Fay. My apt did get a little bit of water damage...my walls have water stains on them but they are fixing it this week so that should be good. We went shopping this weekend and a lot of the stores had leaks too. The good news was that we got out of work early on Tues and all had one big game day, i loved it!

Finally...Ash comes of Friday and possibly Alli too! I am SOO excited!

Well I am off to the airport...

Fay Fay Go Away

So I am currently in the middle of tropical storm Fay. It is raining like crazy here and the sky looks like night time all throughout the day. My desk is by a window so my cube was very dark today. Tomorrow is the day it is supposed to get the worse for Jacksonville, so hopefully everything will be good and we can still have power. But, if the power goes out I am prepared.

Here is how I have prepared for Fay:

-Bought water and snapple

-bought self open spaghettios that am prepared to eat cold if i have to :)

-figured out who has which board games in my apt complex and set a meeting place to have game day!

I am hoping work will be canceled tomorrow...I mean if the city is canceling school surely we should get a day off too!

A Wonderful Weekend

So this weekend was Celina and Tommy's wedding. I cannot believe they are finally married! I feel like we were just helping Tommy plan the engagement and now the wedding is over...crazy!

I LOVED getting to see all the roomies and the tri. I have missed everyone so much, and the timing could not have been better...I needed a trip back to Texas.

Here are some highlights of the weekend:
-Singing in the car to hello goodbye ALL weekend (ps i am now obsessed with that song)
-Being back at Baylor...I miss that place
-Dancing to Hey Jude
-Seeing Tommy and Celina for the first time as The Byrds!

I could not have asked for a better weekend!

My Summer Obsession

As many of you know I have been obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance for the past few summers, including this one. So...this post will be on my thoughts of the season :)

First, I was a little disappointed with the winner. I did really like Joshua, but I LOVED Twitch and also really liked Katie to I was hoping one of them would be chosen before Joshua.

Also, I think America did a pretty bad job on voting multiple times:

ex: Kherrington voted off before Comfort ?!?! (what were people thinking)

ex 2: Will voted off before Mark...again I don't know what happened here

Here were my favorite dances of the season:

1. Bleeding Love- Chelsea and Mark

2. Mercy- Twitch and Katie

3. The group hip hop dance by Shane Sparks

4. I really liked the dance last night when past sytycd dancers all danced together!

Finally, a note about the choreographers:

-I LOVED Tabitha and Napoleon and all of their dances. I was really glad they came to the show

-I really miss Wade and Shane Sparks. They were my 2 faves and neither of them were big this season

-The girl with the mohawk was creepy...although I did really like her most recent dance.

So those are my thoughts until next year....I am already getting excited for season 5!

Life in a hotel

Sunday night I checked into the hilton literally 5 mins from my house and I get to stay here for the next two weeks (crazy...but i am racking up the hotel points). We are going through training primary sales school which basically I learn even more about the eye, our products, and how to talk to doctors.

Here I some things I have loved so far:
-I got to put in a ton of contacts today which was cool (actually someone else put them in for me b/c I could not do it myself)
-we get to eat amazing meals every night that we don't have to pay for ourselves
-doctors have come to chat with us and have helped me learn a ton of cool stuff (i have kinda become obsessed with the eye which is really nerdy, i know)
-there is a really interesting boy in my class that never allows for a dull moment...ask me in person and i have numerous stories already

That is about all work wise but I wanted to thank everyone for all your sweet birthday messages! You guys are great and made my day amazing!

The Big Apple

I got to take my first business trip this week! I flew into New York on Monday and out of Thursday. Each of the new people in my office have a peer coach and so we got to go with them to the doctor's that were in their territory. My peer coach had part of the Bronx in his territory, which is where I got to go for 3 days. I will say that my peer coach and I did stick out in this area (people asked us if we were tourists) but I did love getting to go talk to eye doctors. We even had a business dinner at Dave and Busters which was so much fun (and I beat my manager in a racing game which I was secretly excited about). Overall the trip was great until my flights home...

My flight schedule was as follows:

Scheduled to leave from White Plains (a 2 gate airport) to go to D.C. then back to Florida...canceled

Now booked to go to Charlotte then Florida...canceled

Then booked to go to Philadelphia then Florida...you guessed it, canceled (at this point I had been in the airport for 8 hrs)

11:00 go hotel b.c no more planes and wake up at 4:40 to get on 6:00am flight to d.c. then home

5:00am get to airport to find out that they lost my reservation and that I can't get on another flight until 6:30pm

Then drive to La Guardia ($120 cab ride) and finally get on a flight to D.C. then home.

I did finally make it back and meet some fun airport friends, but it took a while...

Making the move

I am now officially all moved into my new house! It took a while to get here, but after and emergency plane landing I finally made it (I did get to learn the proper bracing procedure which is just what everyone wants to learn on their flight :) I got everything moved in with the exception of my armouir (which wouldn't fit through the door) but other than that everything went smoothly.

So far I love Florida. I have been to the beach 3 times in the past week. I still feel like I am on vacation b/c I am not used to having the luxury of a beach 15 minutes away! Everyone here is really nice and I have already make work friends (as many of you know my main concern was make a friend and so I was pleasantly surprised when I got 10 work friends who all hang out together).

Work has been busy so far, but I like it! It is nice to get back into a routine...even though my routine here includes a much earlier wake up time and bed time. Our first day they gave us 5 binders FULL of information that we must know about the eye. I have been studying at the office every day from 8-5 ever since. One more week of studying and then next week I have a test which I must make a 90 on so it looks like I will be studying a lot this week. Here is a sample of the fun stuff I get to memorize:

Well that is all I got for now. I know that I have been slacking on the blogging but as soon as my test is over I will get better at it.

I think I am going to like it here :)

wedding weekend

and so the weddings begin...

this weekend was jam packed with wedding events for jpatt and i loved every minute of it! it was so great to hang out with all of my baylor friends and just chat about what we have all been up to...even though many of those convos revolved around all of our new blogs :) now only 1 more month until celina's wedding!

on another note, today i had to say some goodbyes to some of my closest friends which is never fun. i said bye to my some of my old roommates this morning and bye to ash this afternoon and it made florida seem even more real to me. i am excited to start my new job and meet new people but also very nervous all at the same time. only 4 more days in texas.

Bachelorette Party

On Saturday we had Ash's Bachelorette party...some of you are prob wondering why we had it so early, but this was the only time that would work with all of the bridesmaids so I was glad that everyone got to come.

First we all went to get manicures and pedicures at this cute little nail salon but Ash's house downtown. After that we all headed over to Maggiano's for dinner. We had a TON of food, all of which was delicious. Finally, we ended the night by all going to Ash's sister's house to eat dessert, play games, and open gifts. It was really fun to just sit around and talk about random things and great to see Begin and Liz who I haven't seen in a while. This was my first bachelorette party to go to/co host so I didn't really know what to expect, but I think everything went over well. Now I am looking forward to the next bachelorette party for J Patt on Thursday...I cannot wait to see the tri!

The Windy City

This past week my fam and I went on vacation to Chicago! We did a ton of stuff and had a great time. I really love this city. This is my third time to visit the windy city and I have decided that if I ever have to live in the north, I think i would pick to live in Chicago.

Here are a few highlights of the trip:

• Jersey Boys- We went to see this musical and I LOVED it! The man who played Frankie Valli had the best voice that I have ever heard. The theatre was packed with old people who were loving every minute of it as well...it was great!
• Cubs Game- On Friday, we went to the cubs game at Wrigley Field and let me tell you this was quite an experience. They were playing the White Sox (which apparently is a big deal since they both are from Chicago) and I have never seen such an intense rivalry between fans. The fans at this game were the best fans I have ever seen. Everyone was going crazy the whole game and at the end of the game it looked like a fountain was going off in the outfield from all of the beer that was being thrown everywhere.
• Food- Chicago has some of the best food I have ever had. I have never eaten so much pizza in my life as I have in the past week, but I couldn't help myself because it was just soo good (and you all will be proud to know that i didn't even need tums).
• Magnificent Mile- This is a strip in downtown Chicago that has the most shops I have ever seen in such a small area. There were street performers, tons of tourist, and it was really fun to experience all the shops!

Overall it was a great trip. I loved getting to spend a bunch of time with the fam before I have to move.

50th

This weekend my fam and I went to San Antonio to celebrate my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. It was very eventful to say the least. My mom and aunt (and recently me) have been doing so much in preparation for this big event that it was exciting for it to finally come.

Let me start by saying that I have never seen so many old people who were hardcore dancers in my life. It was intense (and quite entertaining to watch)! They busted out the waltz many time, and I actually knew what was going on thanks to social dance :) I especially loved this one old man who never left the dance floor, even during the "kids dance" which was for anyone under 30. Overall my grandparents felt very loved by all their friends and family and we all had a great time too. I really love old people which I guess is a good thing since I am moving to Florida!

Decorating!

Since I have a lot of free time on my hands and a bunch of gift cards from graduation, I have become obsessed with decorating. My most recent purchase is a wall clock from z gallery which I am very excited about! I have almost nothing to hang on my walls so this should be a great start. I have found so many good deals and so far I feel that I have purchased quite a few things for not that much. The sales have been good to me!

At my house at home we get a ton of catalogs (I signed up to receive a ton of them b/c I think they are fun to look at) and have found a way to make a bunch of the stuff for much cheaper. I am not very crafty, but I am going to give this a shot and let y'all know how this works out. I will post pics as soon as I get in my new apt (and as soon as I figure out how to post pics). Hopefully I can make things work!

Wii Fit

Let me just start by saying that this game has consumed my life for the majority of the time that I have been home. We bought it as a present for my dad for his birthday but the kids have seemed to get much more use out of it than him.

I didn't think that it would be much of a workout, but let me tell you it definitely is. Yes, there are some games that don't take too much effort (my personal fave being table tilt) but most of the activities are pretty legit. I love my virtual personal trainer who cheers me on, the challenge of beating Michael's scores, and running in place through the virtual wii land. Wow...my life is pretty exciting.

A New Chapter

So now that I have graduated and am starting a new chapter in my life, I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog to keep up with everyone. Graduation was two weeks ago, and half of me still don't feel as if I haven't fully realized that I am not going back to Baylor. In the back of my mind I still feel like I am on a break and that everything is going to return to normal in a few weeks. Of course I know that will not happen, but I wish it would. I loved my time at Baylor. I met most of my best friends there, I experienced so many new things, I grew tremendously as a person, and I truly enjoyed every minute of my last four years.

The other half of me is getting ready for Florida. I officially signed my lease today which is both exciting and a little scary. I will be living by myself which will be new for me. I am getting excited about all the new things that I will be able to experience in my new state, but hoping that I can find people with the same values as me. At Baylor this was not an issue at all, but I feel that I am not going to be as fortunate to be surrounded by such a strong Christian atmosphere in the real world. This is something I am praying about and know that God will provide me with a good community...hopefully he works fast once I get there :)

Real world here I come!