Nov 1, 2011

Grad school kind of sucks but my friends and family are great!

By · Leave a Comment

So just want to say grad school just isn’t doing it for me right now!

I decided to take on the task of taking 3 classes this first semester and I have very quickly realized that it was A LOT to take on considering everything going on at work! Work has been extremely busy lately… rewarding, fun, exciting but freaking busy. I don’t get much breathing time throughout the day but I pretty much thrive on fast-paced envrionments that challenge me to think outside of the box and put me in a healthy but uncomfortable zone every now and then. Work has certainly been doing that.

So combine that with grad school at Ashland University with a finance class, organizational development class, and a management information systems class you have a very busy girl with a lot on her plate! I should probably mention here that Finance is killing me and if it wasn’t for my friend and co-worker Bill that I have class with I would be beating my head against the wall. Instead I just keep chugging on knowing it won’t last forever!

However with everything going on I am still doing my very best to make my relationship with my fiance my priority along with relationships with those friends and family members that are always there for me regardless of what I have going on.

It has been through this experience that I have truly come to appreciate a few people in my life that truly deserve a shout out! What I have come to love more and more about Tim each and every day is how easy things are with him. I love him and he loves me and we don’t have to constantly try to make things work because they just do. Our relationship works because we are constantly supporting each other through all of the tough stuff and even though the poor guy only gets to see me for 2-3 hours a night after class (when I am usually doing HW) he constantly supports me and encourages me to just keep going. He helps me with homework just so we can spend some time together and I can’t thank him enough for all of his love and support! Do you have a relationship that comes so easy you don’t feel like you even have to try?

My parents have also been a huge supporter through all of these decisions and new life experiences I am having. Honestly, I feel like I am depending on them as much now as I did when I was 14, couldn’t drive but had everywhere to be. I call to cry, to laugh, and it has been great creating a friendship with each one of them where we can just talk about life. Their guidance and constant emotional support is priceless. They are constantly telling me how proud they are of me and that really helps when I am feeling overwhelmed and feeling like I made the wrong decision.. they are always there to assure me that I CAN do it!

So I am fortunate enough to have friends that are like family to me! Kara is more like a sister than anything else and has been putting up with me crying and complaining even though it has been her wedding time! Not too often do you come across friends that are willing to put aside the single biggest moment in their life to listen to your problems! Rose lives too far and I wish we could play every day but she is constantly there for me whenever I call and is always telling me how capable and smart I am. She probably doesn’t realize how much she helps me but she does! The best part about Rose is that she doesn’t pressure me to call or suggest that I am not making the time to be her friend- she has always respected the fact that friendship doesn’t have to be a daily task and that true friendship exists in every minute of every day regardless of whether or not you had a conversation about it! Then there is Casey who lives next door, works with me, and is a bestfriend! She gets to juggle my ups and downs on a daily basis and I couldn’t thank her enough even if I somehow found the words to say!

I am just plain out thankful for the people in my life! I am a very lucky girl =)

So, who do you appreciate in your life? Have you told them lately? If not, DO IT NOW!

Filed Under: My family is the best, Random Crap · Tagged: , , , ,
Sep 8, 2011

Weekly Goal 2: Accomplished!

By · Leave a Comment

Wednesday is a happy day. It’s a day when I don’t have grad school, it is a day that tells me I am half way through my work week, and it is a day that took me forever to learn how to spell but I finally did it! YAY for Wednesday.

This morning I woke up at the early 5:30 mark just to see that it was raining outside. I was pretty grateful for the rain because we had been up later than usual and there was a car alarm and some heavy rain that woke me up a few times throughout the night. I was tired and Mother Nature must have known it so she gave me a break at 5:30am. Thank you mam.

So after getting ready for work I made myself a Tim approved breakfast! I cooked up 2 whole eggs and an egg white and threw in some sliced chicken that Tim had made the night before. He grilled a few pieces of chicken thinking it could be a nice snack when one of us got hungry. He put some spicy seasoning on the chicken so it was delicious with my eggs. I put some spinach in the eggs too as a extra special touch so that made me very happy. I scrambled them so that they were portable enough to take to work with me. Works out well to just pop them in the microwave for about a minute when I get here. By the time lunch rolled around I was VERY hungry because I forgot to bring snacks with me today! Luckily I have some dried apricots at my desk (which are not Tim diet approved- no fruit it but I refuse to follow that) so I ate a few of those and then headed to lunch with my new mentor.

Portable breakfast!

If you remember reading before my old mentor, Kristin, was amazing! I assured her that she is not getting rid of me that easily and will still have to have lunch with me sometimes! She was so easy to talk to and so interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed having her in my life so I’m looking forward to continuing on with that relationship. My new mentor, Megan, is great too! Megan and I met in our cafeteria where I had a piece of grilled chicken with buffalo sauce and ate it with a “lettuce bun”, pickles, tomatoes, and onions. When the chef behind the grill handed me my chicken with buffalo sauce on it he said “that’s it, no fries? Nothing to do with that? No cheese?” and I politely said No thanks, this is all I need. His response was simple but very clear “that sucks”. Ha shows what he knows about “lettuce buns” and pickles! Megan and I spent lunch getting to know each other and talking about potential career paths and all of those things you do when you have a mentor lunch! She is a very impressive young professional and I am looking forward to learning more from her over the course of the next year or so.

After lunch I went back to work and got hungry faster than I would have liked. At the risk of giving away my healthy eating habits I decided to have 2 small flavored Tootsie Rolls (don’t worry, I already came clean to Tim) and decided on the cherry and the orange ones. I don’t know what it is about these little guys but I just love them! That sort of made me less hungry and I finally headed home with Casey and Brody around 5.

When I got home there was a PRESENT waiting! Well I bought it for myself but NEW SHOES!

Ooooo a box for me?! yes please!

Thank you DSW for making my day a little brighter with 2 new pairs of sandals!!

When Tim got home, him and I ran errands because I needed new notebooks for school! I seriously felt like a kid again shopping for school supplies except it was freaking hard trying to find college ruled notebooks. I thought as a kid you wrote in wide ruled.. what the heck? Why do they even make wide ruled if no one buys them?

Does anyone use wide ruled paper? Please tell me so I am not angry at stores for carrying HUNDREDS of them!

We also ran to Sam’s Club because I needed fruit. Tim did the last grocery-shopping trip alone and since he is not allowed to eat fruit he got none. I don’t care about that rule, I love fruit and I am going to eat it. So I got blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and Clementine’s. Then I headed home to RUN!

Goal #2 this week accomplished! If you remember I wanted to do 2 long runs and 2 short runs this week to prepare for Susan G. Komen this weekend. I only ran for about 2 miles and honestly, I think 2 miles are harder than 4 miles! After 2 maybe even 2.5 you start to just let go and enjoy the run so when you only run 2 I feel like I spend those 2 miles waiting to get to that point. It just felt really great for 2 miles to be a short run ya know? I remember 2 months ago when I couldn’t even run 2 miles straight so I am feeling really good about this entire journey I am taking.

I did have to run this alone. Poor Tim has a hurt ankle (we have no idea why!) and wasn’t feeling up for a run. It is a good thing I have been running at night because I think it is too dark in the mornings to run by myself now and poor Tim is on the injured list now.

While I was running Tim made dinner! He made some turkey sausage on the grill and put a side of edamame and broccoli. LOTS OF VEGGIES to go on top as well! I LOVE turkey sausage and chicken sausage and it is one of Tim’s favorite things to make so it works out really well. I even topped mine with some guacamole to make it extra special! I feel very blessed to have such a great man in my life to support me while I run and study!

Oh and I did my first homework assignment for my MIS class. So weird to be doing homework again… stay tuned to see if I go crazy.

Filed Under: Good Eats and Treats, Primary Menu · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 8, 2011

Grad School and My Favorite Meatloaves

By · Leave a Comment

Where do the days go? Gosh it feels like the days get ahead of me and then I realize I am behind days in my posts/wonderful updates on my life. Let’s see if I can get you all up to speed on life!

First, welcome to little to no carbs week. Tim has decided to go on this slow-carb diet. I hate using the word diet because my mom always told me that diets don’t work- that is why they have the word die in them. Lifestyle changes work and that is what you have to commit to if you want to really make a difference. Tim apparently doesn’t listen very well because he is going on a diet. It is this diet where you cut out bad carbs, dairy, and of course sweets for like 6 weeks. You do have a cheat day in there- once a week actually- but the hope is that after 6 weeks you are so impressed by how you look and so used to eating good for you foods that you won’t want to eat the nasty stuff… we’ll see about that. I was pretty into trying to Paleo meny plan (notice I say menu plan not diet because I would incorporate something like this into my life as a permanent feature not just for a few weeks) but I think it would be easier for Tim and I to eat similarly throughout the next few weeks. It will just make dinners and grocery shopping much easier!

So Tuesday was day one of no carbs and no run either! Since I told myself 2 long runs and 2 short runs this week I made the decision to take Tuesday off. Tuesday was my first day of grad school and I did not want to be tired since class goes until 9 so I said no morning run and then no evening run because class goes until 9! So Tuesday was my day off. I can’t, for the life of me, remember what I ate for breakfast but I know I ate lunch at my desk after my allergy shot that day. Now if I could only remember what I actually ate. Clearly these 2 meals were not very impressive because I just can’t remember what they were! I also know that I read for my finance class while I are who you would think I could remember but nope I can’t. Now I remember what I had for dinner because Tim made it tasty!

Tasty dinner!

After class I came home to the sweet smell of my most favorite turkey taco meatloaves, black beans (an essential part to this diet of his), and green beans. I just love those turkey taco meatloaves so much I think I could eat them every day! They really aren’t too bad for you either and we load them with veggies! What I love about Tim and I and our taste buds is that we both really like things spicy so it makes it easy to cook dinner. I never used to be a spicy girl growing up but Tim slowly broke me in and now I love spicy everything. So as usual this meal was sooo good. I resisted seconds but it was a close one!

Oh and he is so good to me, he even had a glass of Menage a Trois Wine red wine waiting for me when I walked in the door! Just want I needed after a 3 hour finance class!

I suppose I should take a minute here to talk about grad school since I anticipate it being a pretty big part of my life. This is my first semester thoughAshlandUniversityand I am taking 3 classes and somehow going to manage working full time. So I have class every other Monday, every Tuesday, and an online class. Org design, Finance, and MIS… sounds fun doesn’t it? So far I am feeling overwhelmed and nervous about getting everything done but I’m hoping a positive attitude and a will to win can get me through it. I’m not so sure this 3 class thing will continue every semester though… seems like I will never have a life! Combine those school classes with my Thursday night workout class and that gives me Wednesday evening with nothing planned. Oh wait correction… that gives me Wednesday evenings for lots of homework! Luckily all of my classes have people I know from work in them! So it is always nice to have a friendly face to sit by and someone to ask questions to! So between this Finance course and the Accounting course I have to take I am sweating it out a bit but I’m thinking Tim should be able to offer up some help in the accounting class don’t you think? Hopefully he won’t charge me to hire him on as my tutor.

Nothing too exciting on Tuesday but I supposed starting grad school is something to write about!

Filed Under: Primary Menu · Tagged: , , , , , ,