Major Life Update!!!

So I apologize I haven’t been as faithful to blogging the past few weeks but there have been a LOT of changes going on. Well first things first, the GRE went well (Yay!) so that’s something I can cross off the summer list. And momma and I successfully moved everything safely back to Florida. Lola is adapting nicely to her new/old home and is behaving very well — which is fabulous for me since my parents were watching her the entire time I was in Gainesville.

My grandbig’s wedding was a phenomenal time and a perfect welcome back to my old college town. I’m not going to lie, I was overwhelmed with emotions when I drove down University and saw all those sights that were at one time familiar but I had to live without for 10 months. The wedding itself was a perfect Gator wedding — the bride was gorgeous of course, the ceremony was held at the Baughman center on campus and was short and sweet, and the reception in the stadium was a huge Chi O reunion, complete with open bar and yummy food. There were lots of girls I hadn’t seen in years, including my great grand big Jenn — you know the fabulous photographer? — and some other Chi Os a few years older than me. Of course K Mam was kind enough to let me stay at her house for those days I was in town so I got to see everything I’ve been missing so much in DC.

But, there’s an even bigger exciting event that happened in the week of my move.

I GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!

Yes people, in the span of eight days I managed to find a job doing exactly what my degree is in. How INSANE is that?!?! I’ll give you the timeline to give you a better idea of why it took me a few days to wrap my head around it…

Tuesday June 23 — the day before my GRE — I randomly messaged my friend Kim to see how her new job was going. Kim and I worked together at the Alligator and we had several classes together senior year. She’s pretty much kick ass. She tells me that the book publishing company she works for had just hired someone that was supposed to begin the day before and never showed up. What the hell? In this economy? Who does that? So she asked for my resume to pass along because the president of the company loves graduates from UF’s Journalism college — he’s apparently hired five people from there over the past few months. So I get a few texts here and there where Kim is chatting me up to the president and saying he sounds interested. On Friday, I get an editing test to complete. I tell them I’m in the process of packing and moving so there could be a delay, but I’ll be in town aka Gainesville Wednesday through Monday of the following week if he wants to meet. Well Tuesday morning Mom and I start our drive down to Florida and we arrive in Gainesville around 2 on Wednesday. A few hours later, I get a call to come in for an interview on Thursday afternoon. I finish the editing test Thursday morning to mail in and after talking with Doug, the president, for a few minutes in the interview he offers me the job!

Which I accepted, DUH!

Can you believe I found a job in Florida in a few days when I couldn’t do the same in three months in DC?!?! The whole time after the job offer I just kept laughing to myself that everything really does happen for a reason. Prior to the interview, I just said over and over, it’s probably going to be nothing, things don’t work out this easily for me. Ummm apparently THEY DO NOW!

So I’m starting work on Monday and I’m crashing with K Mam for a few weeks. And as if the job offer wasn’t perfect enough, another Chi O approached me about moving into a two bedroom in Gainesville and her lease is up at the end of the month. Of course I’m jumping at the chance — the apartments are close to the interstate, which will help on an already long commute to Ocala, they are a great size, good price, and she’s happy to have Lola there too! And even better, my grandbig, her husband and their dog Bailey live in the same complex. We’ll be neighbors and Lola will have a new playmate!

Even though I know the commute from Gainesville to Ocala will be brutal, I’d rather be happy where I live than save money on gas. Plus I’m used to long commutes — in Tampa my drives were always 30 minutes, even just to see friends, and in DC my commute was already 45 minutes. Plus I might be carpooling so that will at least make the drive more interesting! I find it kind of funny how I kept complaining about how much I missed Gainesville and everything in it and now I’m going to be living there again.

Now if that isn’t a case of everything working out for the best, I don’t know what is

A few of my favorite things

So I haven’t been posting much lately because — quite frankly — my life is boring nowadays. But with my move back to Florida fast approaching — two weeks and counting! — I made a list yesterday of all the things I’m most looking forward to about going home. I guess I did this to keep my spirits high and just realize what I have waiting for me just around the corner. Since I’m stopping off in Gainesville first, I started to think about everything there that I was looking forward to. And while this list isn’t comprehensive, it sure got me excited to hit the road with my mom in 13 days…

When I get to Gainesville, the things I’m most looking forward to are:

1. 625

2. Kristin and Mark’s wedding

3. Being near Timmy and the Gators

4. Walking around UF’s campus

5. Swamp’s Front Lawn

6. Leonardo’s pizza and rolls!

7. Happy hour at Dog

8. Seeing the 807 aka Chi Omega

9. And football season — even though it’s 12 weeks away.

But the fun doesn’t stop there! Once I finally get to my final destination in Tampa, there are a lot of things I’m looking forward to as well, such as:

1. The feeling of being HOME and all that entails

2. Being near my friends and family for good

3. Another fabulous Tampa summer!

4. Being able to be poolside every day

5. MacDinton’s happy hour

6. Bonsai for sushi and sake dates

7. Escaping to Vicki and Marla’s apartment

8. Not having to pay for rent or groceries and getting free help watching Lola

9. Shopping at Publix again!

10. Being near the beach

11. Living somewhere familiar and being near so many people I love

12. Easily accessible weekend trips

While this list isn’t particularly glamorous and may seem boring compared to what all is in DC, when I look back at the time I’ve spent in DC, I keep thinking of all the lonely time I spent here. While there is a ton of stuff here that you can’t find anywhere else and there’s never a shortage of things to do, I think most of the fun in doing those things is having someone to join you. And that wasn’t always available to me. And as cliche as it is, I never realized how much I would miss being in Tampa and Gainesville until I had to move away and leave it all. I guess I didn’t know how good I had it until I left it all behind me. So now that my life has been derailed and I’m taking the detour back to Florida, all I can think of is all the fun, friendship and familiarity that awaits me — and I can’t help but smile.

“So how’s the studying going?”

Welcome to my morning routine.

For the past week and a half I’ve been “on vacation” this is how I’ve started my mornings. Lola usually wakes me up between 730 and 830 and I feed her and take her for a nice walk, normally 20 or 30 minutes. Then I come back, fix myself some breakfast, brew some coffee and go over my GRE vocab flashcards. Now this doesn’t sound too eventful, but those flashcards in the picture can take me between 2 and 2 1/2 hours on average to go through. Talk about a productive start to my day! Hopefully all those hours I’ve been logging will pay off in two weeks — judging by the practice GRE I took Sunday, I want to raise my score another 30 — ideally 60 — points but let’s be realistic.

So for anyone curious as to what I’ve been up to lately or how my studying has been going, there’s the answer to both your questions. Only 13 more days until the real summer vacation begins…

G-Day = June 24

And by “G-Day” I mean the day I’m scheduled to take the GRE. Yikes! I’ve known for months I wanted to take it at the end of June before moving so I don’t have to be even more stressed, but now that there’s a concrete date, it seems like it will be here really really soon! Granted my days go by slowly now that I have less to do, but still, that date is less than three weeks away! So far I’ve been studying the vocab on a fairly regular basis (probably running through the practice vocab section every few days and doing flashcards for the top 200 words even more frequently than that) and I’ve done practice verbal and math sections. Oddly enough, I did better on the math — 20 percent better! Yes, I scored about 90 points better on that section than the verbal section, which would be fine except for the fact that all the grad programs I’m interested in care more about verbal! If the practice section is any indication, I’m meeting the minimum requirement for most schools, which is usually 500 on each section, but I want to do above and beyond. Blame it on my overachieving and type A mentality but I want there to be no question about whether I deserve admission into a grad program. And since this is really the only thing I can control, I want to ace that test!!

That being said, off to study more vocab…. assuage, abate, ameliorate… *sigh*

Life is better blonde!

After several months and two hair appointments I have officially returned to my trusty golden locks. Now summer can officially begin! Don’t mind the shades, my flash is BLINDING so I had to protect myself.

Well if nothing else at least I know Lola is a fan…

Unemployment/Vacation, Day Two

So today is the second day of my month-o-unemployment. And if yesterday is any indication I might be alright for the next month. My day started with a long walk with Lola, who still insists on acting like my personal alarm clock… at least she’s letting me sleep past 7 now! After our 45 minute walk, I came home, brewed some coffee, had some breakfast and then left to run errands and study. In the afternoon I laid out for a bit then studied some more. Then after getting my daily 90210 fix (I’ve become hooked now that Soap net is replaying the original series from the beginning) Lola and I went for a run.

Is this riveting information? No. Am I saving the world or working my fingers to the bone? No. But I am actually doing something productive and things that fill my day — other than just watching television and movies for hours on end. I’m not sure how I’ll feel in another week, I could be crawling up the walls to get out of here, but for this week at least I think I’m doing alright.

Today I’m off to get my hair highlighted because my roots are b-a-n-a-n-a-s. Hopefully this new stylist can get rid of the in-betweeny orange I’ve been rocking and make me look a little more summery.

This could be a problem

So one of the bright points of having to leave my job is the fact I get to sleep in. No more waking up when the sun is down! Hooray! Well, as if getting my body on a more normal schedule isn’t enough, I now have to get Lola on my schedule too. This could be a problem seeing as how she has no concept of what day it is or what time it is. For example, this is what has woken me up the past two mornings — before 8 a.m. mind you.

Now Lola doesn’t usually bark or whine or anything in the morning. Instead she prefers to walk around my bed and find things to play with and all her morning playtime tends to wake me up. Even my dog is passive aggressive! It’s her subtle way to say, “Hey, lazy ass, I’m hungry and hyper get your ass out of bed!” Hopefully she’ll catch on sooner rather than later, otherwise it’s going to be a looooong month :/

Leaving my mark

So before I headed home from my last day of work, I decided to leave my empty cube with a little mark to show I was there. So with the thumbtacks that held up all my photos on my corkboard, I left this:

In case you can’t tell, it’s a UF in thumbtacks. What else would you expect from me? My cube had tons of Florida stuff when I was there, I figure it might as well have some when I’m gone

The end of an era… sorta

So today marks my final day of work. Really. Freaking. Weird. It kind of feels like the last day of school, only I don’t have any summer plans, I won’t be mooching off my parents (well for the next month at least) and I won’t have tons of friends readily available to meet up with (again for the next month at least). But on the positive side, I won’t have to wake up before 5 a.m., I won’t have to commute 45 minutes every day, I won’t have to deal with the other ridiculous things that go on in my department, which is generally attributed to the lack of professionalism some of my coworkers exhibit.

But I will also be lacking a paycheck, minus my severance pay. And I’m going to have a LOT more free time. Even more than when I was sitting B-O-R-E-D at my desk for hours and hours and hours on end. I’m trying to devise a schedule that I can stick to, which mostly entails studying for the GRE, laying out, running, taking Lola to the park, etc.

So the real question is, how will I feel this afternoon after all my stuff is finally packed up? And how will I feel next week when I realize that it’s finally over? Am I going to freak out? Will I feel that familiar nagging sense of failure because I’m unemployed? Will I have a huge meltdown? Or will I wake up Monday at whatever time I choose and realize that things will be okay and everything will work out for the best.

I’m hoping for the best option, but the last few months have put me on an insane emotional roller coaster so my best guess is as good as anyone else’s. I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see how things turn out…

Yo, Sailors! You’re great Americans!

That was one of the many catch phrases from my whirlwind two days in NYC. Although we only spent two nights in the city, it could have been about four days judging by how much we did and what all we saw. Since there’s so much to discuss, I guess I’ll start from the beginning.

Friday night we got into the city about 830 and went right to our hotel. We were in the middle of Manhatten at the Hilton on 6th Ave., just a few blocks from Central Park, Times Square and of course one block over from 5th Avenue shopping! Amanda, Meredith and myself got ready at the hotel, grabbed some pizza near Times Square and ventured out for the night. We hit up three bars that night all in various parts of town and managed to dance with a few sailors our first night. And by dancing, I mean we stole their hats — or ‘covers’ as they are correctly called — and danced around with them for a bit. Then at the end of the night, we proceeded to stumble upon the best drunk food ever right outside our hotel. We’re still not even sure what it was — something along the lines of chicken or lamb with rice and veggies — but it was AMAZING. Definitely hit the spot.

Saturday morning we woke up at 9 — quite an accomplishment considering we went to bed at 4 — and headed over to Greenwich for our first bit of exploring. We went to Magnolia bakery and got some cupcakes then went to Carrie’s stoop from Sex and the City. How fabulous!

 

After we did a little shopping, we decided to have a picnic in Central Park. How perfect! We went back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and then ventured to a nearby store to get our supplies — wine, fruit, cheese and sandwiches. Yum!

 

After that we ventured over to 5th Avenue for even more shopping. Loves it! Then we all headed back to the hotel and got ready to go out. We started our night with a picture in Times Square and then headed to a rooftop bar near Broadway for some cosmos and martinis. How fabulous!

Then we went to a bar in the W hotel for more martinis and met up with some sailors, who we love to refer to as great Americans. There Amanda and I decided to steal some more covers since we were the only non-enlisted girls in the bunch (the other four are navy nurses). I don’t know who enjoyed it more, the sailors or us, but either way it was fun to take pictures and pretend to be officers.

 

After all our fun in Times Square we went to a bar in the Meat Packing District. But before we did, we stumbled upon a piece of paper some guy left behind, presumably for a girl. Some guy named Jerry left his number and the hotel he was staying at — and apparently the girl wasn’t impressed because she left it on the table. Obviously we stole his info and proceeded to call Jerry all night in Jersey accents and fake personas to try and meet up with him. Oh Jerry, you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into did you? That night Jerry got calls from Sarah, Sharon, Candy and Dina — who’s divorce is final and her sister in law is watching the kids tonight so she was hoping to meet up with Jerry for drinks. So pretty much for the entire rest of the trip, our Jersey personas took over and now we all talk in Jersey accents around each other. No big deal.

Sunday we woke up and went to brunch, then out shopping in Soho. After walking around all day and the previous day before we were all exhausted and were happy to sit down and have a nice italian dinner before our bus ride back to DC. While we were only there two nights, I don’t think my body could have handled another night unless we had gone to bed instead of staying out until 4 again. All in all it was an awesome trip and I had such a ridiculously good time. I’m glad we didn’t do too many of the touristy things but instead did things our group of girls would have enjoyed doing anywhere — shopping, dining and heading out for drinks. It was an amazing weekend and I wouldn’t have changed a thing!