Snowpocalypse 2014

Last week on Friday it sleeted. In Florida. Granted, this is lower Alabama, but it typically doesn't sleet here. I joked about wanting a snow day. I didn't intend for it to happen. Especially not three. I definitely did not want it to happen while I was on duty. So let's talk about Snowpocalypse 2014.

University announced on Monday that the campus would be closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Well great. Sleet, freezing rain, and snow were all in the forecast along with icy roads that the state is not prepared for. Naturally, being from the North, I was not worried about these conditions. Tuesday I venture out for dinner (Mellow Mushroom... delish) and then to a movie. Well the theater was closed. Fail. Thanks Pensacola. At least MM was open. In the end it all worked out for the best.

Wednesday gets here, and I get myself out of bed to watch Good Morning America. Well apparently this crazy weather is big enough news that the local news stays on and they don't play GMA. Instead I'm subjected to pictures of ice and icy roads and listening to people who have never witnessed such a phenomenon. Highly disappointed. So I looked outside, found that it was super pretty, and decided to go on an adventure. Campus looked awesome. I walked around for two and a half hours. Then I ventured out to Panera for lunch. Roads were slippery, but it was nothing new to me (I was more worried about other drivers).

As I'm walking out of Panera, I hear the infamous (and cringe-worthy) duty phone ringtone. Burst pipe and a ceiling issue. Been there done that. No heat. Well damn. Let's open shelter. A whole lot of other issues and a night full of rounds (still ongoing). Well it's been fun. I got nearly every major issue all in one day. Record. And learned some awesome code speak... 'Tony has the torch'.... still don't know what that means.

Needless to say, it's been one interesting day. Another snow day tomorrow (which is really today now). These are things I didn't expect to happen in FLORIDA. I realized I love weather like this so I definitely need to move north (where they're better prepared for this weather. Well, just prepared in general). I also never thought I would need a jacket or gloves in Florida. So I have neither and mostly I wish I had gloves. Thankful I have a hat, and glad I look cute in it. I also enjoyed my photo adventure today and realized I've missed taking pictures. So I leave you with this photo evidence of snowpocalypse 2014:

If you're wondering about the DG Photography... it's a long story dating back to high school.

Stay warm, Florida. By which I mean, get warm because I'd like to sleep instead of dealing with issues.

The Packing Chronicles, Part 3, Final Installment

Read: The Packing Chronicles, Part 1
          The Packing Chronicles, Part 2

The Packing Chronicles, Part 3

The Final Installment

Packed, Moved, and Adjusting

It's been a couple of weeks. I'm not only all packed, but all moved. Where to, you ask? Well, not Hawaii, that's for sure. I finally heard from them (via snail mail) and they selected another candidate. It sucks, yes, but I'm over it, honestly. So I've moved in with friends just outside of Pensacola. I'm staying there until August, and after that it's all up in the air. In the meantime I'm working at Panera Bread and also at UWF (Housing gave me a job until I find something else). So if August rolls around and I'm still without a job (by which I mean still with only my two current jobs and no other offer) then I guess I'm sticking around Pensacola, but just not sure where.

Packing went well. I have more stuff than I thought and have realized that not everything will fit in my car at once. Not sure how I will move when the time comes. Things to be determined when I know where I am moving to.

The Two Job Lifestyle

It's not pretty and it's not glamorous. That is for sure. It's not like I haven't done this before. I enjoy it overall. Two days a week I work only at UWF from 8-5. Normal. The other three days I usually start my work day at Panera at 5 AM and work until 1. I then work at UWF from 2-5:30. Since I moved I now have a longer commute (seriously it went from 3 minutes to almost 30 depending on the time of day) I wake up at 3:45 AM when I need to be at Panera at 5 AM. The days that I don't have to be up so early? I wake up generally before 5 AM without an alarm.

I love working at Panera Bread. #PaneraLife

Independence Day Baking Adventures

I had zero plans for the Fourth of July. Shocked? I'm not. So what did I do? Baked. Shocked? I'm not. I woke up at 4am without an alarm. Great time to bake. By 10am I had baked and decorated a cake, baked cake pops, started dipping the cake pops, and even took a nap.

So I baked a firecracker cake. Yum!

And some cake pops that I arranged like the flag.

And some red, white, and blue cookie bark.

Hopefully your Independence Day was not as wet as mine. It's been raining nearly nonstop (though it stopped in time for fireworks to happen). I went out for a drive and saw lots of fireworks everywhere. And hit the beach. The Gulf is quite rough thanks to the storms. The drive was a wonderfully boring adventure.

My First Instagram Video:

My Vegan Vacation

Note: For those of you who have said that you haven't been able to comment, I think I fixed that issue.

My Vegan Vacation: 4 Days in Melbourne, Florida

So I chose October as my month to go vegan because it didn't involve major food holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's...) so I shouldn't run into many speed bumps. Well, I hadn't thought about the fact that I was taking a long weekend to go down to Melbourne to visit my undergrad for my sorority's alumni weekend. I had a fantastic weekend and was so happy to see so many of my Alpha Phi sisters. Love them.

Sunrise over I-10.

Food was complicated over the weekend. Thursday I drove down and brought food with me for the road trip (7.5 hour drive) so that was fine. Left super early in the morning, but I love driving before the sun is up.


Thursday night I went out for Mexican with a friend and easily found a vegan option, and the waiter assured me it was dairy-free. Friday breakfast consisted of a bagel and some coffee with a friend at Panera, of course. Breakfast was a little late so I didn't eat lunch. Dinner was the challenge. Alpha Phi was hosting the 3rd Annual Red Dress Gala, a formal dinner fundraiser to raise money for the Alpha Phi Foudation in support of heart health. My sister, Norah, who is wonderful and was in charge of the event worked so hard to get a meal I could eat. The hotel that the event was being held at clearly did not understand what it means to be vegan. My salad consisted of watered down lettuce with two slices of tomato. I say watered down because I thought at first that they had drizzled it with oil for dressing, but no they just soaked the lettuce in water. No dressing. I squeezed lemon juice onto it to add some flavor and ate the tomatoes last so that I got the most flavor at the end. I was a little worried about what would come next. The entree they served was a plate of vegetables. Just vegetables. They were delicious, and I was grateful to have them but there was nothing else. No rice. No beans. Nothing but veggies. I'm clearly a rabbit. My friend next to me has a bunch of allergies so she also got a special meal. They served her after me and she got a plate of veggies and rice. I looked at her plate and said "Why can't I get rice?"

Norah and I. She's awesome.

My plate of veggies. Delicious. Not fulfilling.

 Saturday was a lot better for food. Lunch consisted of a BBQ at the APhi house. BBQ doesn't typically scream vegan, but my Little was awesome and made me a vegan dish. She made this pan-asian noodle dish which was delicious. There was also fruit, and a salsa dip that I could eat. That worked out well. For dinner I had a fantastic veggie wrap at bar and restaurant we were at for dinner. Thanks to the website barnivore.com I can easily look up alcohols that are vegan friendly so that is always helpful. Sunday was the drive back and I didn't really eat much other than chips.

I didn't have a chance to go food shopping since I got back until tonight. So Sunday night and yesterday consisted of leftovers. Tonight though I made a vegan version of Rocco Dispirito's Sweet and Spicy Linguine alla Vodka (which has no vodka in it...). The recipe calls for yogurt and I didn't have soy yogurt, nor was I able to go downtown to Ever'man's to get some, so I experimented and mixed a little bit of vegan cream cheese with some soy milk. It seemed to make the right consistency so I gave it a try. It was delicious. And I tweeted about it and Rocco retweeted it which kind of made my night because I'm in love with him. Maybe tomorrow I'll post my modified version of the recipe. It really was good and it's pretty low in calories. Rocco has really great low-cal recipes with his Now Eat This Diet.

 

 

The sauce came out great with my yogurt substitution experiment.

Finished product.

Put it in some tuperware and brought it to my office for dinner.

That's all for now. I had a fantastic trip and made the best of it as a vegan. I didn't starve so I'd say it's a success. Look for some more posts soon.

Me and some wonderful ladies at Red Dress Gala.

Loved this in the Florida Tech alumni magazine.

Sleep & Dreams.

Okay. First off, I updated the last two posts so the videos are now embedded. If you didn't watch them I encourage you to do so. Especially the one from two days ago about how to spot a liar. It's really good.

So I'm still quite tired. I didn't get too much sleep last night. I woke up really early, but I felt super refreshed. By the time I had to go to work, though, I was tired already. I had another early day at work, and was supposed to get off at one. Today I only stayed for an extra hour and a half. Not so bad. It's looking like I'll end up with some overtime for this week so I'm totally cool with that. I'm really enjoying work which makes it easy when I have to stay later than I'm scheduled.

Last night, in the few hours of sleep that I did get, I had a crazy dream, but it was really vivid and when I woke up I remembered every detail. It's a long story, but I got attacked by a gang of guys on motorcycles when I was driving and they caused me to crash. Then they all just drove away except for one, who, after emptying out my wallet, pulled me out of my car. Before he did he said I had the option of staying there and dying or going with him and living. So I chose living (my car was on fire...). So he took me and we drove off to get his car (maybe his, maybe stolen). Then he turned out to be the nicest kidnapper ever. We went and walked around the mall. I was scared for my life but he was being nice. Then we slept in the car over night, and the next day he asked if I wanted to go get food so I said sure. He asked me where I wanted to go and I said Panera. I was hoping that while at Panera I could get someone to call the cops since I work there and know everyone. We went to Panera, and while the kidnapper got in line I hung back a little and ran into my general manager, who started to get angry with me for not showing up to work that morning. Then I told him to call the cops because I'd been kidnapped. He thought I was joking at first, but then I told him that I was serious and he said he would go call them. So I got into line with the kidnapper and we ordered, and he was still super nice, but I was still rather scared. While we were eating the cops showed up and arrested him, and he seemed kind of upset that I would do that to him. It was weird too because I kind of felt bad for having him arrested since he was so nice to me. So then I was just super upset because it finally hit me what had happened to me. The cops had a lot of questions for me which upset me even more. My manager stayed with me the whole time and was super supportive. When the cops wanted me to come to the police station and answer some more questions as well as get the stuff the kidnapper took from me, my manager drove me there. Weird dream.

Sorry for the long story but I really felt the need to share that. So anyway, for today's talk I was looking for something about dreams but couldn't find anything. So I did find a talk by Jessa Gamble about our natural sleep cycle (which clearly mine is all sorts of messed up). It's short,  but interesting. Hope you enjoy it.

Day 27. (Almost done)




Okay. Good night.

Big Brother is Watching...

Today was a little less crazy. Thankfully. We're getting the hang of things at Panera so it went pretty well today. We did time trials and it turned out pretty well. I still don't think opening will be all that smooth but we'll see how it goes.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Day 23

This is an interesting talk I found today. It's a talk by Hasan Elahi all about how the FBI thought he may have been a terrorist. He talks about the questions they asked him, and what he did to show them that he's not a terrorist. He went to extremes to keep track of everything he's done to show the FBI that he has nothing to hide. It's kind of funny how detailed he was. And then he ties in social media. These days I think everything ties in to social media. haha enjoy.

Neverending crazy.

Ohmygoodnessthishasbeenacrazyweek. Got that? Yeah, so if you didn't notice, I've been having a bit of a crazy week. Sadly, my life won't stop being crazy anytime soon. The beginning of this week was a bit crazy because I had this massive paper due Wednesday at five and I was really struggling to get it to the point that I'd be satisfied with. I think it ended up being a really good paper, but it definitely took a lot of time. Plus it was a pretty intense topic and needed to be extremely detailed so it took a toll on my brain. On top of that, I started my new job yesterday. I'm working at Panera Bread. It's a new Panera Bread that is opening next week so it's been crazy training and stuff. Next week will definitely continue to be crazy because it will be the opening. It will be busier than a Panera normally would, it will be mostly new people working who aren't 100% sure of what they're doing, and there's going to be far more employees working at once than it would normally have. So that craziness will continue next week. Not to mention that I still have classes and assignments too. Fun fun. I'm also likely to be opening some days which means I'll start work at 5am.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks.
Day 20.

So, in honor of my overloaded brain this week, I found this TED talk by Iain McGilchrist about the brain. He explains the division of the brain. It's pretty interesting, and it's an animated drawing tyoe video which is cool. It's a Best of the Web talk, so it's embedded from youtube. Enjoy.




Oh, and for a Snowtober update, my parents are still without power, as is about 42% of my hometown. Should have full restoration by the end of the weekend. Insane. Unacceptable, CT, unacceptable.