Looking Back: 2013

It's been some year, right? Right. I can't believe it's over already though. Overall it's been a great year. It had it's good moments, and it's bad moments, and a lot of in-between moments. I graduated, I interviewed, I traveled, and more. In some ways I'm glad it's over and in some ways I'm not ready for 2014. A year ago I rang in the new year with good friends in Connecticut. This year I really don't even feel like ringing in the new year. Guess I'm getting old.

Jar full of great moments of 2013. Time to crack this open and share some of the highlights.

Looking Back: 2013

• Presented at a conference! I enjoyed the experience and met some cool people! Learned a lot from that conference too. 
• Graduated with my master's! My family came down to celebrate my birthday and my graduation. It was great to show them Pensacola and to introduce them to crawfish at the Pensacola Crawfish Festival!
• Ran my first 5k. The Pensacola Sunset Run, 40:37.
• Got to travel to Vermont for a campus interview at a very unique college. Enjoyed the experience and the change in scenery.
• Interviewed at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Enjoyed traveling to Hawaii, enjoyed meeting great people at UH Manoa, and got to spend a day visiting Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona memorial. Amazing experience.
• Interviewed at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (the very same week I interviewed in Hawaii). Incredible place and some awesome people too. I also got to reconnect with a FIT friend and have some wonderful boring adventures in Fairbanks.
• Went back to work at Panera and enjoyed it quite a bit. 
• Got to experience a wonderful wedding in St. Augustine Beach. Very happy for my friends and I was glad I got to share the day with them.
• Got a job with Housing and Residence Life at UWF. It was a journey going through my job search process. I wanted to get out of Florida, but in the end I'm happy to have stayed in Pensacola.
• Got to reconnect with a sister who was visiting Pensacola for work.
• Had a great FIT alumna moment when I met with the director of the new extended studies site. Enjoyed making a new connection.
• Adopted my adorable cat Bailey (who I think is plotting to take over the world).
• Started playing in a kickball league. Met some great people and had a blast! Can't wait for the next season.
• Ran my 2nd 5k. I was sick but still ran it in 38:04, a new PR for me.
• Learned how to curl with a couple of awesome FIT friends. Great times with great friends.
• Took some chances that didn't really work out, but the things I've learned made it worth it. 
• Started to bake a lot more and try some new baking adventures, and overall increased my love for baking.
• Met a lot of great people this year. Said goodbye to some friends. Made some new friends.

Cut 13 inches off my hair last December, and it's getting close to it's original length.

Looking Forward: 2014

I'm not one to make resolutions. I think last year I gave up on giving up things. Maybe? I don't know. I never was one to make realistic resolutions that I could stick to.  Well it's about to be a new year, so a new beginning, perhaps? Here's what I'm hoping to do this year.

• Spend less, save more. (Though now a lot of my spending goes to loans, so that may be tough...)
• Eat healthier. I'm toying with the idea of going vegan, but easing into it. So I'm cutting back the dairy. I want at least 3 dinners a week to be vegan.
• Cook more and bake more (but make it healthy)
• No more soda. I haven't been drinking much of it anyway, so it's time for it to go.
• More working out. More running, but also mixing up my workouts. Pilates, maybe some yoga, considering swimming. Just wanting to be more active and reach some fitness goals.
• More time for me. Sounds selfish, but I just want to focus on doing some things that I've been wanting to do for a while. This includes vacation and traveling. I'm hoping this year to make it to one of these places: Washington state, Salt Lake City, or Maine. 
• Unclutter (declutter? unclutter?) my life. 
• Blog more. [laughter]. See what I mean about unrealistic? Thought I'd throw that one in for kicks.

Some positive energy for the new year.

My Life Month as a Vegan Day 11

Looked great. Tasted afwul.

Okay so tonight I had the biggest vegan fail ever. Seriously, I made three different meals for dinner because the first two went almost directly into the trash. So I started off with some apple cider tofu. I found the recipe from VeganDad and it looked so delicious that I thought I'd give it a try. Fail. I used less apple cider vinegar than the recipe called for and all you could taste was vinegar. So after a bite of that I threw it out (there was no salvaging any of it) and moved on to the next try. I had some tofu noodles and I made a "cream" sauce. Cooked up the noodles, poured some sauce over them, and topped it with some vegan-friendly meatless meatballs. I learned that tofu noodles are rather disgusting. The sauce and the meatballs were great, but they were ruined by the noodles. So after that I was tired of cooking. Heated up some leftover chickpea cakes and a few more meatballs and that was my dinner.



Last night I had a successful dinner attempt with only one try. I made some stir fry with bean sprouts, baby corn, mushrooms, water chestnuts, tempeh, and served it over rice. It was rather delicious, something that was super easy to make, and another one of those foods that you can just use whatever veggies you have.

Delicious tempeh stir fry which I served over rice (and have several servings of leftovers).

So one day last week I had the realization that since it is now October it is Mallomars season. If you're not aware, Mallomars are a delicious treat from Nabisco that is basically a smores cookie. It's a graham cracker-like cookie topped with marshmallow and covered in a chocolate coating. They are delicious. Over 70% of them are sold in the NY Metropolitan area though, so they are hard to come across down south. They are also only made from October to May since they melt so easily in the summer months. I got a packed from Mama Ceal this week and of course it had a box of Mallomars in it because she always sends me some when it's Mallomars season. Well, at least they don't go bad so they will be an amazing treat after my Vegan Pledge is over.

Sad that I can't eat Mallomars. They will make for a great post-vegan celebration.

Last night (or this morning rather) I had the sudden urge to bake cupcakes. It was 2am. I almost did, but then my rational thoughts took over and I knew that as soon as I would put them in the oven I would have the sudden urge to sleep. So I passed on that, but I plan on making some more chocolate cupcakes this weekend and possibly some cocount cupcakes as well.

Haven't had any other exciting vegan cooking extravaganzas. I'm hoping for some deliciously successful cooking adventures this weekend. And maybe a meal out at Sluggo's.


Here's the trailer to Food, Inc. It's a great documentary that has encouraged me to be a conscious consumer. I'm not trying to turn everyone (or anyone) vegetarian or vegan, but you should know where your food comes from and how it gets to you. I think I may see a documentary day coming up soon. This weekend perhaps?

Missing days, doodles, and music.

So I apparently forgot that yesterday existed. haha. I had work all day then had to finish up a paper before class. After class I was so tired all I did was eat dinner and go to sleep. This blog didn't even cross my mind. So I'm just going to post two talks today to make up for it. Since this challenge is coming to an end pretty soon I'm starting to think about the next challenge. I'm not quite sure what it's going to be but I'm thinking about something that won't take up as much time. Between the end of the semester projects and assignments I have, as well as having work now (~35 hours per week). So I'm trying to think of something that can take up only a few minutes each day, and perhaps something that I can blog about from my phone. I almost might take a few days off in between challenges. We'll see how it goes.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Days 24 & 25

I'll let you just figure these out on your own. The first is by Sunni Brown about doodling and how it can help us. I was thinking about this last night in class when I was doodling while we had a guest speaker. I was fully paying attention, but it didn't look that way to others.





Now this next one is a bit different. It's not quite a talk. Apparently when you're on the TED website and click the link to see talks that are labeled as 'beautiful' the results will mostly be musical performances. Not your typical TED talk, and not really a talk. But still worth watching. So here's a video of Imogen Heap performing "Wait It Out". Hope you enjoy.