Sunday, February 20, 2011

Well Hello! Its been a while..

Life is good! I haven't posted in a while so I figured an update is in order.

I have been living in Dallas for 9 months now, working for an amazing company. I live just south of Love Field Airport and I enjoy the neighborhood. I need to invest some time in exploring and getting to know Dallas better. Its rare that I spend much time on my days off here, because I have been fortunate enough to travel almost every weekend. I have plenty of destinations planned for this upcoming year, Including but not limited to:
-Austin (of course, my favorite city! And home to my handsome boyfriend)
-Padre Island
-Lake Tahoe
-Lake Havasu
-Florida (cities TBD)
-Philadelphia
-Albuquerque
-Las Cruces, NM
-New Orleans (Mardi Gras here I come!)
-Nashville
&
-Las Vegas

Well, thats all that I can think of for now, but Im sure I will update the list. I also have plans to go to AUSTRALIA (!!!!) Early 2012 to visit the Gorgeous Miss Nicole Vargas!
Im so so so excited. Hopefully later in 2012 a trip to Germany will also be on the agenda. I have an made an awesome friend at work, (Shout out to Danielle Barnes!) and we have become traveling companions. She is from Philadelphia and moved to Dallas around the same time I did. I cant wait to venture the international waters with her!

I have also been baking quite a storm this winter. I hope to post all my pictures soon, as well as posting blogs about future baking projects.

To follow up the baking I have done all winter, I am starting the P90X workout program with Danielle this week. I am slightly intimidated, very excited, and super motivated. I intend to give it my all and persevere to the end.

This upcoming weekend I will be visiting my hometown to meet the newest addition to my family, Lacie! My sister Amanda is currently at the hospital while I type this, awaiting the arrival of the new little one. Danielle is coming with, so I will be introducing her to the Sandia Mountains and Dions Pizza (with green chile of course)!

I hope to blog more regularly about my adventures, that is all I have for tonight. Stay tuned for more!

P.S. I have been quite successful with Meatless Mondays!!! There are very few weeks that I will eat meat on Monday and if I do, Its likely that every other meal that day is meatless. Woo hoo :) I actually find myself eating meatless on other days of the week as well, unintentionally. I suppose that is the idea behind meatless mondays.


Sunday, May 23, 2010

Meatless Mondays...

I have a confession.
Since I decided to commit to Meatless Mondays, I have not had a single Meatless Monday. I have reasons, but nonetheless it has been harder than I had originally thought it would be.
The first Monday of this new effort, I was moving all my stuff into storage and the group of people that I recruited to help me move and I collectively decided to stop at Subway for lunch. I didnt realize that it was supposed to be a Meatless Monday until after I had already paid for my delicious Italian BMT sandwhich.
Last Monday was the first day of my new job. I was determined to make it a Meatless Monday. For lunch, our supervisors took all of us newbies out to lunch. The restuarant was a Tex-Mex place ( I love New Mexican food and Tex-Mex falls short, and I quickly learned that the farther north you travel in Texas the worse it is. I actually miss the Tex-Mex of Austin!) So after looking at the "quick lunch" menu I decide to try the "Cheese and Onion enchiladas with a red chile sauce". Sounds tasty! When I get my lunch I find, much to my disappointment, that the red chile sauce has meat in it. Texas, chili sauce. Not even spicy. My fellow New Mexicans, can you feel my pain??? Being that it was my first day at my new job and I was sitting with 8 other people at the table, I didnt want to send my food back and make a fuss about it because Im not even a vegetarian, I just want to be meatless on mondays. I just ate the food for lunch and then helped myself to a veggie burger with mushrooms, onions, and green chile for dinner.
Now tomorrow will be the start of my second week of work at my new job. My training group has to attend a flight class and we were informed that lunch will be provided. My guess is that this lunch will not be vegetarian. After discussion and suggestions from my bro-in-law and sister (who happen to be my encouraging roomies) I have decided to try Meatless Wednesdays for a few weeks. Hopefully by Wednesday I will have my act together and will be able to plan accordingly to eat vegetarian all day, and it will be a group effort with Mike and Nikki, my sis and bro-in-law.

WISH ME LUCK!


Much Love,
Katie

Friday, May 7, 2010

April Fools Day

I love making jokes and laughing with people. I also love practical jokes. This April Fools Day I was at a loss for a prank to pull because usually, I play jokes on my family and we are all in different cities this year. So I decided that my coworkers were going to be my victims. The targets were my 2 fellow servers. The plan was to go into work and tell them that I was offered a new job, working as a wine rep for a distributing company in Austin. I was going to tell them that this job paid me extremely well, with great hours and benefits, and I would be leaving our restaurant asap. I talked to a few other coworkers and told them my plan so that they would be in on the joke as well to make my story believable. I intended to go along with this joke for the whole night at work and then before leaving that night, tell them APRIL FOOLS! I was very excited about this plan.

While driving into work that day, I received a phone call. After listening to the voicemail, I was shocked to hear that Southwest Airlines was calling me about an application that I had submitted back in January. They told me that they would love to fly me to Dallas for an interview that week. Wow! Whos the April Fools joke on now? I was so taken back and surprised (You could almost say that I had forgotten about applying for the job, because it had been months already). I immediately decided that I could not go through with this April Fools joke, because it is actually becoming real. I had a prospective new [awesome] job. I went into work and told the coworkers that were helping me with the April Fools joke that I was not going to go through with it because I ACTUALLY had a job interview in Dallas. Nobody believed me! They all just assumed that I was trying to play a joke on them as well.

After returning the phone call, I decided to take a night to think about the position before agreeing to the interview. Taking this job would mean moving to Dallas from Austin, and giving up the awesome loft apartment that I had spent months searching for. I also would have to leave Hyatt, where I have been happily employed for 6 years. After just a few hours I knew that I wanted to go to this interview, and I WANTED this job. Later that next week I flew to Dallas in the morning, and had a great interview. I flew back to Austin that night, unsure of what my fate would be.

April Fools Day was on a Thursday. That Saturday I was supposed to sign a lease on my new (wonderful!) dream apartment. I was able to postpone the signing of the lease until after my job interview. When the interview was over and I was confident that I did well, I made a tough decision to give up the apartment I was supposed to move into, taking the risk of losing this place without actually knowing if I had the job or not. I packed my stuff up and put it in a storage unit. I have been staying with friends in their guest bedrooms for the last month. All while keeping this job a secret from my friends at work.

Fast forward to April 29th, 2010. My beautiful sister is in labor with the first baby among the 4 of us girls. Shes been in the hospital for a few days, waiting for baby Obie to arrive. His due date was April 25th, so he was already fashionably late. While at work, I receive a text message around 3:30 pm telling me that she finally had the baby. Just one hour later, Southwest Airlines called me to give me an official job offer! What an amazing day :)

I will move to Dallas in one week, and start a new job, New life. I will have a hard time leaving my new found friends in Austin, but I promise to visit often!! I had one of the best years of my life living in Austin, Texas.


I am very grateful for this new opportunity, and would like to say Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of me, It is much appreciated!!!!

With Love,
Katie :)

P.S.
I absolutely cannot wait to meet my handsome nephew!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Traveling

I LOVE to travel. I dream of visiting many places all over the world. I have compiled a rough draft list of places I would like to go see here in the USA in the next few years (No particular order). I am open to suggestions!







  • Beaver Creek, Colorado




  • Salt Lake City, Utah




  • Orlando, Florida





  • Padre Island




  • Boston, Massachusetts





  • Niagra Falls





  • Napa Valley, California







  • Denver, Colorado







  • New York City, New York






  • Kitty Hawk








  • Lake Havasu, Arizona





Monday, April 12, 2010

Meatless Mondays!

Living in Austin has definitely taught me to be more aware of my carbon footprint and appreciating the Earth. Call it the hippie, Prius loving, recycle encouraging Austin influence if you will. I actually have a project in the works that I am very proud of, bringing a recycling bin to the shopping center I work part time in. Every week many cardboard boxes are thrown into the trash. I contacted someone from the City of Austin and am collaborating with them to provide a bin that will be accessible to all the businesses in this area. I was surprised to find out that it is actually a difficult process. I assumed that if a bin was requested, it would be provided. Not quite so easy. I will keep you updated on the progress :)

Another step that I am committing myself to is Meatless Mondays. My goal is to be healthier, and to do my part to improve our planet.

"Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel." -http://www.meatlessmonday.com/why-meatless/

This is quite a commitment for me, considering how much I LOVE a nice juicy steak. This will encourage me to eat more fruits and vegetables and I look forward to finding and trying new recipes. I feel that going meatless one day out of the week will be much easier than most would expect. Some days I find that I haven't eaten any meat at all without realizing it.

I hope that my friends and family will consider giving this a try, I encourage you to test it out at least one Monday.

With Love,
Katie :)