Half Awake.

I am a morning person. Especially after my year of World of Warcraft, mentioned in previous blogs. After spending nights playing games until 8 am and sleeping through all daylight, I feel a little queasy if I sleep in past 9 am anymore, though I can sleep until 10:30 on really special occasions. Usually, I'd prefer suffer through being tired than sleep in so late anymore. Anyways, now I make it a point to be up as soon as I wake up the first time since I can no longer stomach waking up so late.

Unfortunately, even though I love the morning and being as the sun rises, my brain seems to function quite differently than the rest of my body. In the mornings, I don't think my brain fully becomes conscious for quite a few hours. I will text a friend, write an email, or even this blog, only to read it at a later date and say, "...What?"

So here I am, drinking my coffee on a partly cloudy day, waiting for the day to really begin. I actually just got off of theknot.com, where I'm following their wedding checklist. I am at 60 days to go! Thinking of my wedding caused me to reminisce about Leah's wedding, which made me realize what a different person I have become. First of all, I can no longer deny that I live in Tallahassee. All college, due to dorm life forcing me to Deland in the summers, I always felt mixed about where I lived. Now, having not lived in Deland for about a year and a half, I clearly live in Tallahassee. Also, I realized I am undeniably an adult. I know that all of my peers and I constantly talk about how we still don't always feel like "grown-ups." I guess, what with there always being someone older out there, we never really will. But here I am, 22 years old with a Bachelors, engaged to a man with a Bachelors and a real job, realizing that I am an old, grown up adult. It happens so slowly that it takes me be surprise. I can't see the day to day changes, but I compare myself to just a few years ago, and I can tell that I've changed, little by little.

And it scares me to know that I'm going to keep changing, keep growing, for as many years as I have left. When I was four, thirty minutes felt like such a long time. When I was a teenager, thirty minutes didn't feel nearly as long. Now, an entire day can pass by and I've barely noticed it. The older I get, the more time is speeding up and taking me along with it, faster and faster. I grow older and older before I've had time to appreciate the changes, until one day I'll wake up after years have passed, with a whole lifetime to look back on. I'm excited for the future, of course, but I'm scared of the time that has to pass to take me there.

This post has taken some interesting turns. I'll stop writing now, since I'm sure I've already thoroughly perplexed a more awake version of myself who will read this later.

Presidents.

This is in no way an offensive post. So I hope. Let me also add, before anyone thinks that I'm a heathen, that I believe completely that Christianity is the way to live my life religiously. Additionally, I have done absolutely no research and this article in no way is referring to anything about my voting. I'm just elaborating on a thought. Now I am going to speak politically.

I've started doing this thing where I work out in the mornings before work. It has the advantage of giving me more time to do nothing in the afternoon, though I go to sleep earlier. During this workout time, I've decided to start watching the news. I'm killing two birds with one stone.. Although the news isn't really improving my brain. Especially the 6:30 news. I'm pretty sure the 7 am news called dibs on the good stories, and we're left with things that are so breaking that they will shock you every time, or things so mundane that you don't know why you're watching the interview. I also read my Discovery news app while eating breakfast, which is much more interesting and much less relevant to anyone's life.

Anyways, today there was an interesting comment. Apparently, there's all these people who want to be president. One of them is Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Then there are some other people: someone who owns a pizza shop and someone who doesn't like Mitt Romney. I only vaguely paid attention. Now, this one guy decided to remind us all that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, which must mean he is part of a cult, and is completely unfit to run our country.

Now, I am not a member of the LDS church. My best friend, Jess, is. I've met plenty of "them Mormons," in my time. And I want to tell all you Romney-haters out there something. If you want to dislike him on some sort of political grounds or something about the way he feels about running the country, I don't care. However, I see no reason to hate the guy for being part of a church. Firstly, it's not a cult. There are some sects that aren't part of the church, but he shouldn't' be affiliated with them. I'd certainly hate it if anyone affiliated me with any Baptist person who ever did something insane for the sake of religion. I think most people get freaked out cause the Mormons believe in things with which they aren't familiar. Well, to a complete outsider, we'd look pretty odd closing our eyes and raising our hands to a piece of cross-shaped wood with a dying man attached. And don't tell me I'm being sacrilegious with that comment. To us, it's sacred. To an outsider, it might be bewildering. So don't give them crap for having different traditions. (Note: I would have a problem with a religion that involved live sacrifice or arson or something. However, that is most definitely not the case here.)

That aside, what is wrong with the Mormon people, exactly? I've met them. They're awesome! They're one of the most open, welcoming religions I've met. They're kind and friendly and pretty straightforward. If anything, they are more accepting than any other church about the fact that I'm not one of them (Note: I am making no statement about their beliefs or how I feel about the Mormon beliefs. This is because I feel that their beliefs won't hinder them from successfully running a country.) And when it really comes down to it, I think our country could use some of that (among other things.) We need to get out of this idea that Christianity is "the" religion. We all have freedom of religion. We all have the right to choose whatever religion we want. That right gives us the option to be any religion and worship freely, be it Christianity or Islam or Judaism or Atheism. The fact that our country has long had this idea that "Christianity is the only way," is stifling one of the core freedoms that built our country. The fact that someone is using another person's lack of Christianity as a flaw in an attempt to jeopardize his campaign is appalling.

Why is it that the majority always has to hate the minority? We hated the African-Americans. We hated the Native Americans. We hated the Irish Catholics. We hated the Japanese during WWII. We then decided to be more open minded and judge people on their chosen beliefs rather than their genetics. So then it was Islam that we hated. Now, we target LDS. We, the Caucasians, the Protestants, the majority in America, feel the need to hate anyone who is different than us, especially when we feel our majority-ship is being threatened. Have you heard the statistic that white people won't be the majority as of 2020 or some such year? So, what? What difference does that really make?

If you don't want to vote for Mitt Romney because of his political beliefs, that's fine. If you don't want to vote for him because you feel, as a Christian, it's not the right thing to do, I understand that, though I don't agree. If you choose to proclaim to everyone else that he's unfit to be a politician because of his religious beliefs, then I think maybe you need a better campaign argument.

Jess, may you and your fellow LDS people know that you are admired and loved.

Relativity.

So, this morning I was sitting at the table, eating my oatmeal, and reading my Discovery News app on my iPhone. Typical morning. Discovery News is much better than real news, because it's only related to science and technology. Why would I want to know about politics and people when I could read about the dinosaur skeleton found in Washington, the fact that male sea squids are bisexual, or that the relationship between galaxies and black holes is still confusing to scientists? If you don't have this app, I recommend you download it.

So this morning, I see a new story. Apparently, scientists have found that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.

My first question was this: who is paying someone to spend six months blasting subatomic particles in a 70 km tunnel under Europe and measure their speeds to the nanosecond? I guess some rich Europeans. Secondly, how accurate can that machinery be to see that a particle that is so small that we originally didn't believe it even had mass? And then be measured to ridiculous specifications of speed?

Anyways, apparently this messes up Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. Not that it's completely wrong now, just that he said the speed of light in a vacuum was the fasting anything could ever move. And now we have these tricky neutrinos making him wrong. I wish I had taken some science besides Astronomy and Physics and Technology for Future Presidents in college. The first class was wonderful, but not in depth, and the second wasn't really physics. It was more of a seventh grade science class. Now, I am unfortunately a college graduate with no idea of relativity of theories of Einstein, and when I try to read the Wikipedia article it is most unfortunately over my head.

What's going to happen to the science of our time? We always thought of Einstein as a genius, but will future generations think of him as an interesting guy who was wrong? Like Ptolemy? Or just an interesting guy who discovered something useful, with a few kinks, that led us to more important discoveries? More like Galileo or Newton. I'm more familiar with famous mathematicians than scientists. But what will future children be learning? What have I learned about the universe that is false? What exactly is relativity??

It is too early in the morning for me to be pondering all of this. It's making my head spin.

On another note, according to my news app, Neil Armstrong thinks it's disgraceful that we aren't going to the moon or local space anymore. News flash, Armstrong: we went there, didn't find anything helpful or interesting, and are currently just putting billions of taxpayers dollars into an industry that honestly isn't promoting the bettering of humanity. All the space program did, at this point, was give select few individuals the opportunity to hang out in a gravity free environment and chill out on the moon. We weren't learning anything, we weren't accomplishing anything, and we already stuck the US flag on the moon and stole a bunch of rocks. What else do we need? Besides, we're now planning on visiting asteroids and Mars instead. At least that's new and exciting. Another app, however, said that extended time in space causes serious eye troubles.

I'm mostly interested in the articles about space. I definitely don't want to go to space; I'd be too claustrophobic.

Far Too Long.

It's been quite some time since I posted. It's honestly been quite some time since I've had time to do anything. This summer, I'm working two jobs. I get up at 6 and leave around 7. I teach from 8-1, then have a break where I either go to the gym or plan my lessons for the next day. At 2:45 I arrive at my other job, a customer service representative answering phones all day for a company that does photographs of graduations and marathons. At 9, I drive home and arrive at my apartment about 9:20. I have about 40 minutes left to myself before I need to go to sleep in order to be fully rested for the next day. Fridays I only work one job, and I have to work some Saturdays and Sundays. However, July 4th I was lucky enough to not work either job.

I want to talk about my jobs today. I've been working at the customer service job since May. It's an interesting place--there are 60 of us in cubicles in a room. I have no idea who anyone is save the 6 or so people who sit around me. For a month, until the second job started, I worked the morning shift. My three coworkers became some sort of friends to me. Meaning that we all stand up and tell the other three whenever we have an extremely awful or wonderful customer on the phone. I even hung out with one of these people outside of work once. And plan to again, she's awesome! Every morning, before the phones start, I would have her tell me about this guy with whom she's getting closer and developing a relationship. We don't have much time to talk about it during the day. Any conversation is disjointed and broken. As soon as a phone rings, the speaker has to finish the last sentence before the phone reaches the fourth ring and the supervisors ask you why you aren't answering your phone. Anyways, summer school started three weeks ago and I changed to the evening shift. At first, I felt lonely and resentful. I was surrounded by a new group of strangers, two of whom were incredibly good friends outside of work. However, the necessity to be sociable overcame me holding on to some idea that I didn't want to talk to more strangers, and I began standing up to tell them the same ridiculous stories. Thus, I know a total of 6 people: The three people surrounding my cubicle in the morning shift and the three in the evening shift.

At 9 pm, I walk outside to my car. The sun has set, but the sky isn't dark yet. There's still some light to the west. I pull onto the interstate, roll down the windows, and blast music from my iPhone to try not to feel sad about the days that I'm seemingly wasting. Money is a necessity, I tell myself. I need money for grad school. I need money for the wedding. But I still can't shake that feeling that I'm wasting my time. I feel emotionally drained and lonely. The summertime was always a time of fun for me, especially the evenings. As a child, twilight is the time of day that I remember playing outside with Dustin, not noticing the gradual setting of the sun until it was too dark to see ourselves on the trampoline or throwing the football or whatever other activity we had partaken in that day. The past four years, my summers were spent in Deland, and I spent evenings with friends, mainly Jordan (one of my bridesmaids.) Now, I spend evenings answering emails and phones for minimum wage, and drive home looking at a sky that forces me to recall fun, sociable times. I make it home barely in time for sleep, only to wake up the next morning and leave my house at a time after sunrise that reminds me of camps and mission trips and adventures. I keep reminding myself that two jobs are only for six weeks, but I have this gnawing feeling inside of me that life is slowly changing for good, and the times of recreation and socializing and fun are over with forever. With my B.S. Degree, I earned myself a certain amount of adulthood, and with that achievement I must sacrifice other elements of my life.

I think if I didn't have Mike always ready to talk to me, and Leah just 50 yards away, I might go crazy with loneliness. As it is, I'll just cling on to my work ethic to make it through the next 3 weeks and see where I end up then.

Antsy.

The most noticeable change from being a World of Warcraft shut-in who never saw the outside, slept during normal hours, or lived a regular life is a particular antsiness that I now feel on a regular basis.

When it is still sunny out and I am inside on my computer, I feel guilty and scared, as if I know I should be doing something else. I assume its from a year of repressed guilt when I spent hours of sunlight and perfect time wasted sitting in front of a computer screen in a tiny bedroom with the blinds closed, concealed in a tiny, pixelated world. There were days that I appreciated the beauty of the graphics of different zones, the colors of the ground or the changes in the weather, all inside of an imaginary world that can be reduced to 0s and 1s. All while a real world of weather, seasons, and colors was beckoning me to join it, but I shunned it. Just now, I went outside to put my laundry in the machine, which is in the outdoor closet. It was lovely; summer evenings always remind me of childhood frolicking. I have had a long day at work, and will have a tiring day tomorrow. I know that resting isn't abnormal in these circumstances, but I still can't shake the feeling that I'm wasting myself.

I also can't sleep in past 9:30 anymore. Again, this is leftover guilt from days of going to bed past sunrise and waking up after sunset (usually during the winter months of shortened days.) I don't like staying up past 2, and if I do, I'm still up by 9:30, even if it takes copious amounts of caffeine and headaches to make it until an acceptable bedtime. I never used to like sleeping in past 11; it made me feel like I was wasting the day. The morning is such a beautiful time when the world is new. The sunlight feels fresher and crisper, and everything is wet and green. By evening, the sun feels sweeter and more familiar and the world is golden. Both are wonderful, and I'd prefer appreciate both. Somehow, the calming evening can't be appreciated without the fresh morning. If I'm not, I'd better have a decent excuse for being awake in the middle of the night, like helping my mother on the paper route (which is still another blog to come.) Being awake at 3 in the morning helping Mom throw papers to the rest of the world has a silent depth to it. The whole world is asleep, but we are awake with purpose and meaning, outside in a slow, quiet world. It's relaxing and unsettling all at once.

The only time of day that I don't like is the afternoon. It's too bright and hot. The sun seems frustrated, like a tyrant trying to peer into the lives and souls of all of us. The afternoon is the one time of day that I'm okay with hiding myself away from the glaring view of the overly bright, baked world.

This blog has taken an unexpected turn. My inability to write along a single train of thought is probably why my papers never scored very well in school.

Pets.

When I was little, and I mean back before memories have any substance and most things I recall are from frequent re-tellings rather than the original experience, I wanted a pet. Many kids want a pet. Girls usually want cats and occasionally ponies, and boys want dogs or something like that. Anyways, my family decided that we would get a dog. I was absolutely terrified of any dogs. The sight of one sent me into frequent hysterics. I had also recently been bitten by a cat and wasn't too fond of them either. I was a rather jumpy kid.

My parents decided not to bring me to the dog search until they had narrowed the contestants down to a few finalists. The summer after first grade, when I was six, they brought me to the pound to see this little, white, fluffy thing. I was terrified of him, but figured I might as well live with him as much as any other dog. We were fairly certain we wanted this guy, but on our way out of the pound, Dustin saw a puppy who was black and brown, mostly resembling a beagle, and adorable in every way. Rex became our new family dog.

On the way home, we had him in the back of the van in a pet carrier. Dustin, Trish and I were gathered around the cage peering at him thoughtfully. The dog let out a half-bark half-whimper noise. I jumped backwards and burst into tears, screaming, "He barked at me!" The next few weeks were no different--I commonly had to jump on the nearest table, counter, or other accessible furniture to escape the reach of this tiny, friendly little puppy. Thankfully, Dad finally convinced me that, even if he did bite me for fun, his teeth in no way hurt. And I was never again afraid of Rex.

Rex used to sleep on Dustin's bed every night. As Dustin got older and bigger, he would tell us stories of how Rex would lie spread out from the head to the foot of Dustin's bed, and Dustin would cram himself between Rex and the wall. We also laughed at Rex the time he ran into the sliding glass door after Mom had cleaned it. It was less funny when I repeated the act a few weeks later. Dustin and I, as kids, also tried to teach Rex to sit. He actually did learn to sit, but it's the only trick he ever learned, and only when you hold up a piece of food he wants.

Once he got bitten by a snake, and we thought he wouldn't make it. The vet said that we could pay a couple thousand for an anti-venom or give him some Benedryl and water and hope he lasted the night. We didn't have a few thousand dollars lying around, so we went with the latter and decided to see how he fared. Dad told us the next morning how he had gone to check on Rex in the middle of the night and Rex looked terrible. Dad thought we had lost him for a minute, but he was just sleeping and in pain. To be nice, Dad went to the fridge to bring Rex a piece of bologna. It took a few seconds to open the package, but he took a piece and shut the fridge door--only to see Rex standing there expectantly. Not even snakes could keep that dog from food.

Rex was diagnosed with bone cancer earlier today, and my parents made the choice to put him down. He was in pain, and there was nothing that could be done to help him. He was 15 years old. It's going to be strange; we moved into that house 17 years ago, and got Rex two years after that. The majority of the time I spent there, Rex was there. He was the first pet I ever had, and certainly the only one that I've ever loved so much.

I'm going to miss him.

Adult.

Yesterday, I looked in the mirror and noticed I was an adult.

I was a kid and a teenager for a good 18-20 years of my life. I've just turned 22. In the past few years, I still frequently refer to myself as a "girl" or some other term that implies that I'm an adolescent of some sorts. But yesterday, I looked in a mirror and saw a full-grown adult looking back. I'm no longer that awkward, teenage girl trying to figure herself out, wondering how my features will change as I grow. I am done and grown.

I sometimes wish I could meet myself as a child just to let myself see what I'll look like. When I was a child, I remember after seeing pictures of my parents as kids, I wondered what I'd look like when I grew up. I wonder if I'd be happy or sad with the results.

I need to sleep more on this vacation. Things aren't making sense properly. I'm in Virginia with Mike for spring break. Maybe I'm noticing my adulthood because I'm meeting his childhood friends for the first time, and I'm not meeting them as a student or a kid. We are all adults with jobs (or a math teaching internship for me) and I'm not viewed as a child by them. Strange.

A Gaping Hole.

Recently, I have been referring to the upcoming months as "The gaping hole that is my future."

I do not like being uncertain of my future. From kindergarten to my senior year of high school, my plans were decided. In middle school, I said that I would be a math teacher, and I am now seven weeks away from receiving my bachelor's in mathematics education. My senior year of high school, I decided very early that I was attending FSU. I applied, was accepted, and never once considered attending, or even applying to, another college. Any time there was uncertainty in my future, I immediately filled it: I've worked at the same summer job for four years, attended college regularly, and made decisions early enough to plan accordingly.

Now, however, I'm about to graduate, and I'm not sure what will happen. I don't know if I can find a job. I don't know if I'll have to attend grad school. I don't know if Leon County will hire me, or what I can do if no teachers are being hired here, and I can't even plan ahead at this time. My future is a gaping hole of uncertainty, and I do not know what's going to happen or what I'm going to do. And that thought terrifies me.

I wonder, sometimes, where the time has gone. Time is a constantly perplexing thing; we are constantly changing, growing, moving, proceeding, spinning day by day, month by month, year by year. But the speed never makes sense to me. I feel like this semester is the longest of my life; I wait anxiously for graduation, but it feels like the end is no closer to arriving than it was a year ago. Every day passes so slowly that the weekend takes a small eternity to arrive. And at the same time, I wonder what happened to my teenage years. Where did the past four years go? I remember high school, and college, and I'm certain they happened, but I'm not sure how it flew by so quickly; just the other day I was moving into a dormitory, away from home for the first time, and here I am, about to graduate. I feel like every day is dragging by, holding me back from the future, while the months are flying by me before I have a chance to realize that they have passed me by, forever.

And suddenly, here I am, 22 years old, caught up in the ever-spinning wheel of time, moving through life at some indiscernible speed. I am aware, for today, of the paradoxical speed that my life is taking, but who knows about tomorrow, or the day after, or any other day. All I know is that, in a few years, this gaping hole of uncertainty will be a blur in my memory; this will be just a small transitional phase from one stage of my life to something bigger and better.

Horoscopes.

I have never been one to believe in horoscopes, although I find them interesting. The day to day predictions are most intriguing to me. "Jupiter has taken a turn for the worse, causing Neptune to get angry. Friends in your life will try to steal your money, but be careful. Your lucky number is 3052, and on a scale of 1 to 10, your day will be a 2.4."

I'm not trying to bash on anyone's serious beliefs, but horoscopes just weren't ever something I could really buy into. I remember in middle school I had a friend that seriously believed in the power of horoscopes, and one morning hers said she would hear unexpected good news. She assumed it meant her crush would confess his undying love and they would live together in middle school bliss. I promptly forgot about this horoscope and later that day dropped a note into her locker (which was quite common,) except I left it unnamed, planning on her being like, "Oh, is this from Andy or Cate?" Wrong. She had that horoscope on her mind, and upon realizing the note was from me, she was rather upset. I felt terrible for the remainder of that day, having hurt my best friend by forgetting about her horoscope and, in her mind, making a mockery of it.

Anyways, back to horoscopes. My birthday is March 2nd, so most of my life I've been a Pisces (I'm not sure if I've recently switched to Aries or something.) A quick Google search revealed these personality traits:

Imaginative and sensitive
Compassionate and kind
Selfless and unworldly
Intuitive and sympathetic
On the dark side....Escapist and idealistic
Secretive and vague
Weak-willed and easily led

Wow! Look at all of those things that describe me perfectly! It's almost like looking at a biography! The problem with these words is that, upon seeing them, it's easy to be like, "Oh, I can see how I am that!" However, when I was 8, I found a serious flaw in this logic. My sister, four years older than me, has a very different personality. Where I am an introvert, she's an extrovert. Where I worry, she has confidence. My brother is also completely different. He's funny and outgoing, but very practical and logical. Trisha's birthday is February 27th, and Dustin's is March 1st. We all have the same horoscope. So, those words apparently describe all of our personalities perfectly! Even 8 year old me knew that something wasn't right with that.

However, like fortune cookies, I will still always enjoy reading my daily horoscope and thinking about any slight chance of coincidental "truth" in it.

Fallen by Lauren Kate.

And the sequel, Torment.

As many of you know, my family is really into the show Jeopardy. We watch it together whenever we can. We play even if not all the family members are present, which means that when Dad is working late, I actually have a chance to win. (He's so fast at answering! It's infuriating!)

Anyways, you may have seen in the news that, at the beginning of this week, Watson played Jeopardy. Watson is a computer. Watson is also a total cheater and a jerk, but that's not the point. If you haven't seen the two shows with Watson, I recommend you watch them immediately. You will laugh, you will cry, etc. Well, after the Watson series was Teen Jeopardy. This is also fun to watch because teenagers have easier questions than adult Jeopardy. So I decided to watch Teen Jeopardy. And one category, Teen Novels, had a question about some book by Lauren Kate, saying in it the girl is in love with this being, and the answer was, "What is an angel?"

So, based on that clue I decided to give the book a try. I love reading, have my whole life, and specifically have a soft spot for children and teenager literature. Anne of Green Gables, Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and Harry Potter are just a few of the series that I love. Some are classics, some are new. Many of the recent teen novels are terrible (take Twilight, for example,) while others are incredible, such as Harry Potter or Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Extras. I knew going into the read that there was a good chance this book would be terrible; however, I decided to torrent the book online and go for it.

So, I read the first book, Fallen. And then I read the sequel, Torment. And this is my review.

From a storyline point of view, everything except the actual plot aside, the story was lacking.
From a writing point of view, the story was poorly written, and descriptive in all of the wrong ways. Stories shouldn't have to tell you exactly what everything looks like in two sentences; appearances should be revealed carefully within the events.
From a religious point of view, the story is atrocious and butchers everything ever.

Honestly, the first book made me think of Twilight: an unimportant girl who gets caught up in some crazy supernatural love triangle, unable to make up her mind between two guys and being completely oblivious to everything. I also felt like the author took many of the elements of the first book and created meanings for them in the second book that didn't follow, as a way of trying to create a more lasting storyline. The book is also in no way timeless: it is very much set in 2009, with the characters dressing like punk goth kids in 2009. The author also attempts to create intrigue and mystery by announcing unexplained events early in the story, like that the main character, Luce, is sentenced to some sort of prison and we don't know why. However, it's done gracelessly, leaving the reader knowing exactly what the author is trying to do. The love story is supposed to be one of the greatest in time, but there is nothing about either of the love interests that seems lovable. Both are completely unbelievable at every point of the book.

The second book went downhill. It's first flaw is that it is based on Fallen, which already was a storyline on the brink of crumbling. However, it seemed like it wanted to be esque; where the first book made the fallen angels seem like a few people here and there, the second revealed a whole community of Nephilim, part angel people. Luce gets sent to a boarding school of Nephilim where she realizes she is famous, though she never knew it, and wants to be treated normally. How original. She also gets caught up in an entirely new love triangle! Oh joy! The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader asking, "....What?"

The third sequel of the four part series comes out in June. I'll let you know how it is.

Food.

It has been a long time since I have posted a blog. In that time, I have written many blog outlines, none of which have made it to an actual blog yet. In case you weren't familiar, often times I will think of blogs throughout the day, write down the general idea, or the whole blog if given time, and type it up when I find the time. One of the problems now is that I seem to have so little time, what with starting my internship at a high school, trying to spend my remaining time with Mike, and trying to find time to spend with my friends.

Of the many random thoughts that cross my mind throughout a typical day, I often find myself thinking about food. Many of you know I am counting my calories. Not so much in a weight loss sense, since I have already dropped some pounds and continue to work out consistently, but more to keep myself in check from eating too many, and because it helps me to eat healthy overall. When Mike also decided to count calories with me, I had to invent many tasty, low calorie meals that someone so choosy as Mike would appreciate. Here are some of the kitchen adventures we have had:

Hamburgers. My parents bought me a tiny propane grill. As such, Mike and I went through an awesome grilling phase, which will return when the weather stops being deathly cold every day. (Seriously? The high is 38 in Florida? It's like I'm living in Canada.) With said hamburgers, I either ate Kraft Mac and cheese, made with skim milk and much less butter, or Mike ate said Mac and cheese and I invented a green bean sautee, from fresh green beans. Mmmm!

Yellow Rice and Chicken. I invented this in an attempt to recreate Pollo Tropical, one of my favorite fast food restaurants. It offers such healthy food! A classic stir fry of yellow rice, chicken, onions and peppers has become even MORE Cuban with the addition of black beans! So healthy and tasty. Even better when I made this meal at home and Dustin complimented it with fried green plantains, which taste like hash browns, only better.

Fake Asian. This is more like a category than a meal, but it's necessary because Mike and I seem to make lots of fake Asian. When I realized the ABSURDLY high levels of calories in Panda Express (a two-entree plate is easily 2100 calories, more than I can eat in an entire day,) I decided to invent my favorite Panda meal at home: Sweet and Sour chicken. I bought sweet and sour sauce, then used soy sauce, various other fruits and veggies, and a cheat recipe for sticky white rice. While I loved it, Mike only really liked it. So I bought Beijing sauce, his favorite. That meal tasted great! Then, in an attempt to be crazy outgoing, we made Crispy Orange Beef. I learned how to zest an orange, how to peel and grate fresh ginger, how to buy rice vinegar, and how to create an amazing Fake Asian dish! Mike learned how to bread and fry meat to make it crispy, something that all Southern girls learn around age 8. I attempted to make this meal a second time, doubling the recipe so we could take leftovers to work, but it was an utter failure in my mind.

Pasta. Again,vaguely broad categories. Mike has a homemade spaghetti sauce recipe. We recently decided to use ground chicken instead of ground beef, and decided it was a much healthier, yummy spaghetti experience. We also used rotini when we were out of spaghetti. However, we much more recently made said sauce into a lasagna. It. Was. Awesome. I had to call my mom, because, as many times as I have watched her and helped her make lasagna, I for some reason never remember the recipe. However, it turned out quite delightful, and left some tasty leftovers for us to eat for lunch and dinner the next few days, as well as a fun dining experience with our friends, the Wises.

This was my tale of homemade foods of the year. I just realized my last blog was also about breakfast; I am honestly hungry alot. I eat breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, another snack, dinner, and a snack. I stay in a decent calorie count, but I eat all the time.

Coming soon: New restaurants I have tried in Tallahassee and New Restaurants I Still Need to Try, Pool and Darts (with Leah), Dustin Sends Me Crazy texts, Black Holes, the Pledge of Allegiance, Mike got Robbed, Liturgical Church Services, and Interning at a High School: Why Did the World do this?