Leaving Home. AGAIN.

So, at the end of summer I was kind of excited about moving back home again. Hey, free rent, food, and laundry!?!? What's not to like. Then, came the most dreaded and kind of exciting part of it all: finding a job.

Now, when I first moved back home, I was really optimistic about the job market back home since I lived in a big town and would have full access to a car and reliable public transportation system again. Soon, the weeks started to go by and I was having no luck finding a job, I should be more specific - I was having no luck getting called back. I wasn't looking for a job in my field (psychology) specifically I was just looking for A JOB. The main thing on the back of my mind being the fact that my school loan was going to go into collection in March of next year, and I wanted to have some money put away so any saved funds could offset that new monthly payment I would have for about a year or so. Again, no luck. I even interviewed with Disneyland and they didn't want me. HOW IN THE WORLD ARE YOU OVERQUALIFIED TO WORK AT DISNEYLAND?!?!


Anyways, fast forward a couple of weeks and my boyfriend and I concoct a plan: if nothing has happened by the end of October, I'd come up, spend a month in Sacramento (where he lives) and look for a job; if nothing happened by the end of November, I'd come back home again and well, we'd be back at square one. So, after he came for visits in October for my half-marathon (DID I MENTION THAT I RAN A HALF-MARTHON!?!? more on that later) things got sped up for the 2nd week of October since that when places were hiring in Sac for the holidays and what not.

So, after asking/telling my parents about my plan, which they were surprisingly very supportive of, I packed my bags (all two of them) and came to Sac. Low and behold, not 5 days later, I had a job. Kinda miss home, but I'm happy with the way things are going. REALLY miss cooking and BAKING a lot though).

The Last Month...

...has been a crazy hectic month indeed. SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED AND CHANGED IN MY LIFE!!!  For now, I'm happy with the way things are going and things/life are definitely starting to look up (not that they were looking down to begin with).

Hopefully, in the next few days, I'll be able to catch up with entries in what has happened in between my last post up until now.

Stay tuned!!!

And then I Missed Him.

I've been in a long-distance relationship for over three years. Now, those three plus years haven't been the easiest at times (not because we constantly fight or anything), the distance sometimes does get hard. If you've ever been told that long-distance is easy - well, they kinda lied. It can be easy but every now and then the distance will creep on it. I think the most we've seen each other was Summer of 2010 because I lived at his house with his parents part-time since I hardly had anything to do in RoPo (besides a 3-wk summer class in July) so whenever I got cabin fever I'd sneak away with him to Sacramento so I wouldn't be in the sometimes hell-hole of Rohnert Park. But back to the long distance...

What definitely helps us out is that we talk on the phone every night as well as the occasional skype chat when we're both available. But, as of late, I've been missing him. I miss the cuddling, the hanging-out, as well as the extracurricular activities in the bedroom (ha!).

Anyways, it's been a month since the boyfriend and I have seen each other (the longest we've gone without seeing each other was three weeks, and that was pretty bad) and, all things considered, we've handled the increase of a 2hr. gap to 8hr. gap pretty well. In two weeks, he shall be down here visiting and cheering me on in while I "run" my half-marathon.

Point of the story: I'M EXCITED TO SEE HIM FOR 3 DAYS!! (Until I don't see him for another month that is...)

The boyfriend and I at his brother's wedding. (Yes, I was a bridesmaid)

Tangled ♥

I'm just in that lovey-dovey mood right now (since missing your boyfriend who lives 7 hours away tends to do that) but I love this movie. It's so cute!

Also, this song is just great:

Baking Out Of Boredom, Part II

I made Raspberry Lemon(ade) Bars just for shits and giggles the other day. I normally am not a fan of lemon bars or anything too lemon-y (i.e. - Lemon Meringue Pie) so I'm surprised I enjoyed these - it's definitely cheating on my part since all I've really done is disguise the bars.

Didn't get a picture these this time around, but you can bet you're ass off that I'm already plotting a strawberry lemon(ade) bar adventure in the near future.

Baking Out of Boredom.

There comes a time in every girl's life (or I should hope) when she wants to bake - for no reason. That tends to happen to me quite often. I love to cook. By cooking I mean to include anything and everything that encompasses cooking - taking several ingredients and making something out of them.

Since being home there has been little for me to do besides going out and working on my fitness. I no longer have school or a job (womp, womp) to keep me busy so I try to busy myself with catching up with friends or just trying to stay active around the house. Well, that all has gotten old pretty quick and I finally reverted to what I tend to do when I get bored: I bake. I used to do this a lot during college to the benefit of my roommate and boyfriend - who have crazy sweet tooths - so it all worked out for everyone. Such was the case Friday night when I baked a cake. I made a lemon cake with a vanilla bean buttercream and it wasn't too bad. As usual, I try it right after it's done and then I leave it to be at the mercy of everyone else who comes across it to finish it off (as usual, the cake is consumed by someone or more than one someone).

Here's a view of the completed cake:

And then here's a view of the cake after being cut (for those of you who like viewing cakes from the inside):

P.S.- If anyone is interested in the recipe I shall post a link that will help you replicate this in the near future. If it's not here when you are in want of it, please feel free to post a comment and complain.

Settling In.

After a week home I finally finished unpacking and organizing my room back home. Most of the first few days here were spent emptying out all the trash that had been accumulated in my room - not to mention making several trips to the local goodwill. A lot of the time I spent wondering why in the world I had stored the things I had personally saved before going off to college; I'm sure it seemed like my 18-year-old self would need them in the future, but my 22-year-old self has no use for it - in other words there was a lot of trash up in this bitch.

The only drawback of my room thus far is the bed situation. I had to sell my bed from college (a full-sized one) before I moved back due to of lack of space in my dad's truck (my sister was ever so kind of bring her bed the weekend my stuff was supposed to go home when her's for whatever reason didn't go home when it was her turn to send things home two weeks before) so I'm currently sleeping on a futon; not as comfortable as an actual bed but it'll do until I get a real one sometime soon I hope.

The upside to the room is that there's a sweet 32" TV in my room (my room was the guest room while I was away so of course it has entertainment. There's a also a VCR (for my Disney/VHS') and a DVD player in here so I'm pretty much set. I have a Wii which streams Netflix (courtesy of my sister) so this bitch is poppin'! All that's missing is the blue-ray player to use the TV to it's full capabilities (even though the Wii/Netflix combo streams in high-def) but I have one waiting for me in my boyfriends possession!

On an even much more happier tune, I love the way I have set up my room; it makes it look much bigger than it actually is! I've gotten several compliments on it already. There's just a few things that still need to get put away (everything had been put away but I forgot about the things I'd left in my car); let's be honest here, a lot of these things are gonna get shoved under the futon since that's the best place for storage.

Lastly, I have to finish decorating the place. The walls are bare and a shade of orange (my favorite color!) so they need to be decorated. I went to Target today and bought some picture frames on sale - because they weren't cheap enough already - so I just need to put pictures in them and put them up on these walls and make it even more homier. Then I will show the world what it looks like - maybe even my negative 5 readers on here as well.

Finally, remember how I said I was throwing all kinds of crap away wondering why in the world I'd reasoned with myself to keep it? Well, there was one thing I did find that there was no questioning as to why I'd saved it. And here's a picture to illustrate my point:

*NOTE: It looked WAY better a few days ago when it was fresh.

One Last Date.

I finally arrived home last Monday but before I made the long drive home, I went to Sacramento to spend one last night and day with the manfriend before I don't see him for who knows how long. He's originally from the Sac area (didn't go to my school whatsoever, we met through a mutual friend of his brother and myself) and I'm from Southern California in Long Beach which gives us about a 7 to 8 hour distance - depending on traffic. Anyways...

After work last Saturday (and after going home and quickly packing my car up) I drove to his place and he took me out to a really nice dinner. My boyfriend already knows this, but it doesn't take much to make me happy; he knows that I don't care for gifts or fancy stuff but a good meal definitely makes me happy. Back to the dinner. He took me to this super nice seafood restaurant that's been voted onto the "Best of..." list for three years in a row now at #1. All in all, the food there was BOMB! Our bill was high and right what we expected it to be, but not because individual plates were pricey, it all just added up. It was definitely nice to have a low-key dinner at a quiet restaurant (we were most definitely the youngest people there) and to just chat and sip on some delicious wine.

The rest of my stay consisted of looking at wedding pictures (did I mention that I was in a wedding? More on that later) and hanging out and just laying-low since I didn't want to be running around doing all kinds of stuff if I'm not about to see him in a while. The departure wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be but his mom packed me a bag full of snacks for the drive home and boy, did those ever come in handy. My how I love that woman to bits.

Summer Housekeepin'

This summer I was lucky enough to revisit the job I had two summers ago. And by the title of this post, it's not too hard to figure what that job was. Yes, housekeeping.

Basically, over the summer my school rents out the dorms in the same form like a hotel. Many church retreats, interest groups and sports camps utilize our school's facilities and stay in the apartment-dorms that we have at Sonoma State. I feel that I should also throw in that my (now former) school apparently has the #1 rated college dorms in the country - weirdly, something to be proud of since the dorms are pretty legit. So where do I fit into this equation...? Basically, myself and the rest of the student housekeepers come in and clean the rooms so you wouldn't know anyone was there before you and make beds (which included any and all bed issues) and well as changing towels and making sure toiletries and any other basics were stocked in the rooms.

What was really my favorite part of it - because let's be honest here the job sucks but the pay kept me coming back - was the group of people I got to work with. The way the job worked was that they put you in groups of about 6-8 people and that'd be your team and as a unit we'd go into the several rooms we were assigned for the day and get the job done. From basically the first week we clicked and it was just hilarity all around. We somehow ended up being the hardest workers even though it seemed like we were fucking around most of the time, but it all just seemed to work. My coworkers, all SEVEN of them, helped me have one of the BEST summers of my college life and made my last few months at college (and away from home) memorable in so many ways. I feel like all I did this summer at work was make beds and watch YouTube videos, some which became part of our everyday talk at work. One thing is for sure, I miss them greatly since I pretty much got used to seeing them on a daily basis. Visits to them are DEFINITELY  in store.

There are many pictures I can share on here that demonstrate exactly how disgusting the job was at times, but  for now, I'm just going to post my favorite picture that we took on the job (minus 3 of my co-workers)

Moving On

In the past few months there have been several things going on in my life. The first of them was that I moved out of my house mainly because all of my roommates and myself had graduated so we needed to skeedaddle it out of there (not to mention that we were having problems with our live-in manager. Out of this move came me losing my roommate of 4-years Morgan. Morgan and I had been living together since our freshman year when we were paired as suite mates; we always like to say that our of the four of us who started out living together that first year, the two of us stuck it through and found true love. In case curiosity got the best of you, I as well as she are still friends with our other two roommates that year.

Morgan & Myself. How I miss that girl.

2nd change came when I moved it with what was supposed to be two friends but in actuality turned out to be one friend - the other one has been home the entire time and has probably been here time totaling just over a day; which in my mind was pretty silly since I thought I'd be living with two people instead of just one. Oh, well, it's all worked out for the best I'm sure. I'm moving home at the end of the summer (which is now a week away for me) but for now I'm staying put in town because I had to take two GE classes I wasn't able to take before graduation. Now once this class and job are done at the end of the week I'm off back home to Long Beach.

I'm definitely excited but at the same time I'm not. I'm not 100% thrilled about moving back home to the parental home but free rent, free food and free laundry (which is kinda-sorta free as it is at the moment). Mostly, I think it's that I'm not ready to let go of my life here in RoPo yet. Yeah, it's a small town in where mostly everything is closed by 9, but it definitely has its charm. I love the LBC and miss it a lot, but this place has become home in the short four years I've been here. And just this past summer, I've met some awesome people. It  amazes me how much I'm gonna miss this crap-hole of a town.

Graduation 2011

Can you tell that it was a rainy event?

Just because I love this picture of me and my boyfriend at my graduation I thought I should share it with you guys. Not only that, but I just though I should briefly talk about what a wonderful day it was and obviously, what an accomplishment it is for me and my family.

First things first, it was a nice morning in Spring. Considering how much it'd been raining in Sonoma County the past few months it was definitely nice (there's a joke I've heard in town that says we skipped Spring completely and just went straight into summer, which I somewhat have to agree with). Anyhow, my family was in town and so was my boyfriend (who's brother was also graduating - along with his fiancee!) so it was definitely to be a nice family-filled weekend. Now, my roommate's ceremony was in the morning and it was nice and sunny, so we were expecting some good sun for my ceremony, right!?! WRONG!

Just as I left my house with my boyfriend it starts to sprinkle; it's only sprinkling and I could still see clear patches of sky so I wasn't too worried. But when we finally arrived on campus it was pretty much raining so I wasn't too happy from then. The ceremony started just about on time, and I was expecting them to shorten it, but I was glad that they didn't. Though it rained the entire three hours, I'm glad the school didn't rob us of having a full ceremony (as I'd heard they'd done years before when it so happened to rain). Afterwards, the rain stopped and the sun came out and many of us were left to wonder, "Where was this 3 hours ago!?" But hey, at least it was all nice and clear for pictures right?

Like I said before, my sister and I are the first in our family to graduate from college - within a two week span -  so out parents were quite happy with the joyous occasion. Not to mention, my parents and my boyfriend's parents were finally able to meet each other; after 3 years of dating we figured it was about time that the meet & greet finally happened.

Such a great and happy day!

Get Ready

...for the onslaught of posts to follow.

I'd been meaning to come back and blog actively, but life has been getting in the way. Not to worry, I'll have you caught up to what's been going on in the beginning of my post-undergraduate life hopefully by tomorrow night. It's going to be lots of fun.

What is the purpose of this blog you may ask? Well, mainly, it's just a place for me to keep track of my oh, so exciting life's happenings. I'm taking a year off between undergrad and grad school so I figure I might as well do something that will be meaningful for me.

Once again, stay tuned...

That First New Blog Post...

...is always awkward, isn't it?

Stay tuned for my next non-awkward post.

Glad that awkwardness is over and done with.