I found these growing in my pantry today

Don't get me wrong, I love sweet potatoes, but I don't know if I would try and eat these. But hey, at least they're nice to look at with their purple sprouts.

That feeling when you tie a knot perfectly on the first try...

Nothing beats the feeling of tying it perfectly on the first try. And nothing feels worse then having to keep retrying the knot again and again. A good looking tie makes a good looking man.

Looks like I am fully employed now.

I went and picked up my schedule for next week this evening and I was quite surprised. I have never been scheduled for anywhere near 39 hours in one week. Although this seems daunting at first, I was also surprised to see that I was able to squeeze two days in there that I actually have off. But going beyond that, the days I have off include the day after my graduation party (so I can party to the AM, I guess) and I have the 4th of July off. Someone in the office must be watching out for me, I think.

It's time for me to put on my big boy panties, my big boy bow tie, and take these hours like a man. I have a feeling my next pay check will be quite the memorable one.

Inspiration in strange places

This morning I woke up and decided to go for a morning bike ride. Last summer I used to wake up early every morning and go for a jog (well, it was close to every morning depending on how much I was scheduled for morning shifts at +Arby's ) Either way, I forgot how great it feels to get some fresh air and sunlight early in the morning. It always seems to give me a feeling of worth.

Today, I rode for about 50 minutes and traveled about 11 miles around the outskirts of town. It was strange, but seeing all the people out and about was really inspiring to me. To think that even a small town like Kenton can have such busy people. I saw the construction workers building the new school, the city workers repairing the roads, the farmers tending to things on their farms, stay-at-home moms taking care of their children outside, and even seeing the poor teachers that are still hanging around the school in the summer. It was just interesting to me to think that life doesn't stop going. There is constantly something to do or something that needs to get done. It made me hopefully for my future.

And to think that this all came from me just wanting to ride my bike in the morning.

Someone knows me very well

Getting a graduation gift is great, but sometimes getting a late graduation gift is better then that. Someone knew me very well. The tradition pen for graduation is perfect for me since I love pens. I'm not sure what I will use this for, but damn, it sure does look nice even if it doesn't get used.

The Many Meals in Seattle

My week long vacation to Seattle allowed me to try many fantastic new food experiences. So many of the memories I will have from that trip consist of the awesome places that I got to eat at. For your viewing pleasure, here is some food porn.

After waiting for the clouds to leave...

So we flew out for Seattle today for my Senior/Graduation gift. It's just my mom and I for a whole week in Seattle. We woke up at the butt-crack of dawn so we could catch a 7:55 flight from Columbus to Phoenix, then from Phoenix to Seattle. The whole time I sat in the window seat so I could catch some good views. I would have taken more pictures but I'm pretty superstitious when it comes to flying so I left my phone off the whole time. (Yes, I only take pictures with my phone because it has the highest quality pictures of any of my devices...)

So when I finally did decide to take some pictures during the flight from Phoenix to Seattle, I opened up my window covering and all I could see was clouds, clouds, and more clouds. It took a good 10 minutes of waiting before I could get some decent pictures. But it was well worth the wait. It was the first time I had ever seen the mountains and seen the snow that sits on the top of them forever.

And now I won't be bored on my plane to Seattle...

And that is pretty much all that needs to be said about that. 

PPotD! (6-12-13)

Someone was feeling a little sleepy when I decided to do this. Evidently she doesn't mind my feet too much. I guess they weren't too smelly when I took this.

College Orientation

I recently had my orientation for the +Kent State University the last couple of days. It was quite the experience in many ways. It was the first time I got to drive to Kent, it was the first time I had to stay in a dorm (with no AC...) and it was the first that that I had to decide for myself what was right for me and how I wanted my college experience to be.

My dad and I drove down Sunday night around 6 and arrived around 8:30 or so the night before. We were allowed to stay the night before if we didn't want to wake up at 4am on Monday to get to Kent for all the morning checking in and stuff. So I got to drive the whole way there. My dad was being a backseat driver (even though he was in the passenger seat) the whole time. I don't mind because I'm more comfortable driving myself to Kent now, but it's a little discouraging at first when you are constantly being told how to drive.

After checking in and getting our rooms on Sunday night, I went to my dorm and my dad went to his for the night. I was unpacking everything and realized I didn't not bring any pajamas or clothes to sleep in. That's a totally bummer because I had to sleep in my T-shirt and my ever-so-thick Khaki shorts for the night. That didn't mix well when you are already in a room that feels like a sauna. Lucky for me, I DID remember to bring a large fan, so I prompt that bad boy up in one of my windows and had it blowing about 40mph all night. I actually think I woke up in the middle of the night because it was too cold.

The next morning was my first experience with a college bathroom. The showers were well kept but extremely small. I felt like Buddy the Elf trying to take a shower. After cleaning up I had to pack everything up and get a new room for the night. This is because I only got to stay in that first room by myself for one night since we came down the night before. Now they were setting me up with a roommate to give me the college experience. When I got to my new room I met my roommate. He was a kid named Daniel from some town in Ohio I had never heard of, but that's okay because he had never heard of Kenton, so I guess we were even. He didn't talk much and didn't really seem interested in getting to know me, so I just unpacked my stuff and got ready for the next part of the morning.


At this point, we had to head to the Ballroom and sit through what felt like 5 hours of talking.. and talking.. and talking. The majority of the presentations were just people talking and weren't really hands on experiences. That was a bit of a bummer, but at least they provided useful information and I was able to  find things out that I didn't know before. After all the talking, they broke the students up by their major and took them to different parts of the campus. Since I was with The College of Business, I went to the business build with about 10 other students where we had a presentation over how highly ranked their college of business is in the comparison to the world. (Let me tell, it's ranked up there pretty high!)

At the end of the day we were given time to just hangout before we went to bed for the night. I found myself reliving my elementary school days by joining a bunch of other students in a giant game of Four Square. Keep in mind that I hadn't played since like, 3rd grade so I was A LITTLE rusty, to say the least. These people I was playing against were playing for real, and I got schooled pretty badly. I'm pretty sure I broke a sweat.

I headed back to my room for the night and didn't make much conversation with the roommate again because he seemed a bit focused on his MacBook and iPhone. I didn't mind but I was worried that this is how it might be when I actually get a real roommate. Hopefully I'll be able to make a better connection when I actually get mine, though.

The next day was all about scheduling classes and how to manage our schedule. This was the part that I was most confused about but at the same time I was most excited for. I met with an EXTREMELY helpful advisor named Amy. She left me with no questions except "When can you help me schedule my classes again?" (Unfortunately, she isn't my advisor for the rest of my Kent years, but she was for that day and I think she will get me off to a wonderful first semester.) She explained to me that I am able to take a test for my math class so that I can test into a class that is a little bit higher level and be able to earn another credit hour my first semester, she also explained that because of my ACT scores that I tested out of my first college English class and that if I take a test over the Summer, I can instantly get all 3 credit hours for it without taking a class my first semester. These were all awesome options that I probably wouldn't have known about if I didn't have such a helpful advisor. After getting my schedule all set in stone and printed out I was pleased to see that my first class of the week starts on Monday at 9am and my last class is over by 4pm on Thursday. That means I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to do what I want. I'm not used to that much free time in a row. It's going to be a new thing for me!

After the scheduling my Dad and I were free to go. (Yeah, my Dad was still there the whole time, the parents just weren't with us most of the time because they had their own speeches to sit though. Probably dealing with how the school plans to take their money or something.) We visited the downtown area of Kent for a little bit then I drove us home for the extra driving experience.

3 of the 6 free T-shirts I scored

Overall, the experience was great. I scored a massive amount of free stuff, I got a lot of good information, and I got to see who some of my new peers were going to be. I can safely say that I'm ready for the College Experience in the sense that I am not blind to what is going to be there. Now it's just a matter of if I can handle it or not...

PPotD! (6-9-13)

I missed out on posting a picture of any pets yesterday because I was a little busy, so I will make up for it by posting two pictures of peanut today. 

I hardly play video games anymore but...

I am kinda excited to see that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is coming out on the 9th! Animal Crossing on the GameCube was one of the most amazing games I had ever played. I would come straight home from school and strap myself in and play all day. Living in that little world was something different and crazy and even though there was no great purpose or story line, I was hooked.

So as I see that an Animal Crossing title is coming out for the 3DS I am almost tempted to go buy it and get back into the groove. However, I'm sure that won't happen because I'm still trying to balance my time and not stress myself out. Hopefully I will hear some good news about the game and when I do get some free time, I will look into getting it.



Also, this picture is very much related...

PPotD (6-7-13)

Today, Pepper was being especially cute and rolling around in her favorite blankets so I felt this picture was worthy of being the PPotD. Any objections will be ignore.

First day of manager training

This week I am scheduled 30 hours and I am scheduled for 6 days. Of those 6 days, 3 of them are training shifts to start training me to become a Shift Manager! So today was was a nice 11:30 to 4 shift and I was able to start doing manager stuff toward the end of my shift.

My Bossman, Andy, let me count the drawers for the drive-thru and front register after our lunch hours so we could replace them with drawers that have less cash in them. Now, the night before my manager for the evening let me learn how to do that with one of her drawers and I seemed to do just fine, however today when I went to do it I felt a strange pressure and completely DERPED everything up. The goal is to make your draw end up having only $100 in it and taking all the excess bills (large bills, like $50s, $20s, $10) and putting them in a deposit bag to be taken to the bank. You would think this would be a really easy concept for someone like me who just loves to handle money and actually enjoy crunching number but somehow I manged to mess this whole process up twice. And when I finally did get the drawer to $100, I only had about four $5 bills left for the next shift that uses that drawer and the rest was all change and $1 bills. Only have that many bills and nothing bigger isn't to helpful when you start a shift and need to make change... (SORRY TO WHOMEVER HAS TO RUN OFF THAT DRAWER, NEXT TIME I WILL ACTUALLY DO IT IN THE CORRECT WAY. ) But after about 2 hours of frustration and complete self loathing for the time being, I finally got the correct amount for both drawers and finished up the paperwork that goes along with it, I felt like I had learned something, and that was the way NOT to count drawers.

I came home after work and explained to my mom, who is a manager at a credit union, what all I was doing and how I was doing it wrong and she started going off about how I could make it so much easier for myself. And after having an 'Ah ha!' moment I can safely say that the next time I go to count my drawers and do my deposits it won't take me 2 hours...

Pet Pic of the Day! (PPotD)

I feel as though I owe it to all my pets for helping me deal my day-to-day stress. (When I have stress, that is.) Whenever I wig out, they are always there to brighten my day and will never judge me, give me a hard time, or ignore me. The least I can do is dedicate a daily to them. 

The wait was well worth it

My birthday was May 24th and today is June 5th. Why is that important? It's not, really. Unless I saw that this when I finally got my birthday gifts from my wonderful girlfriend. We were all just a little busy the week of my birthday, so it's completely understandable that we all lost track of time that week. But the good news is that when she finally did get her gifts to me, she passed with flying colors.

On the very left there, I got a new Flex Watch. Mine was the grey variety, so I can wear it with pretty much everything. I plan to use it during work since it's a little more function then a leather watch would be in the fast food industry. Plus, if I want to change colors or that band gets a bit dirty, I am able to order more of them and just pop the time piece into the new band. It's a very practical and useful watch.

In the middle there, we have my all time favorite cologne. (and I think it's Katie's, too, so that might be why she got me more of it) It's Nautica and this is going to be my second bottle of the stuff. I had another bottle from about 2 or 3 years ago but I used to use to much of it back then and I ran out quickly. I'm smarter with how I use my cologne now that I'm a mature, functioning, member of society. (no laughing, please.)

And last but not least, we have the Red Velvet cupcakes. This is pretty much Katie's secret weapon against me. (or anyone) These cupcakes are so delicious and she usually only makes them once a year during Valentines day. This year might have been an exception since she was late getting me a birthday gift, so she knew she had to make up for it somehow. And boy, she sure did. Honestly, these cupcakes might be the reason we're still together. (probably like, 80% of why we're still together, give or take)

Needless to say, the wait was well worth it!

I'm always watching her...

I don't trust people enough to leave my brand new bike defenseless out in the wild. I went on a short ride around town yesterday because I was bored and hungry so I rode up to Subway and I chained her up as you can see in the picture. However, I still don't exactly trust the wonderful people of Kenton, Ohio completely so as soon as I ordered my food and paid I went and sniped a seat so that I could watch my girl like a hawk to make sure nothing happened. To be fair, there were quite a few suspicious looking people that passed by, so my actions COULD have had some effect. Luckily though, no one tried to steal her. Good luck to them if they tried to though, since I have a pretty heavy duty lock on at all times!

(I swear I'm not paranoid or obsessed...)

The look I get when taking a picture of Peanut...

Avoiding watery Iced Coffee

I had a discussion with +Graham Reese  the other about how to create iced coffee because it's summer now and sometimes drinking hot coffee in the morning just isn't too enjoyable. So, I told him my idea about using coffee ice cubes to pop into your coffee. When the "coffee cubes" melt you're not left with a diluted coffee, but instead you just have a cooler coffee. This is great because although coffee is already somewhat hard to drink because it's so bitter, I'd still rather drink bitter coffee then watery bitter coffee.

 I started by buying an ice tray (because the one in my fridge isn't removable and I feel like if I added coffee to it my parents wouldn't be too happy) last night at around 10pm, y'know, the best time to buy stuff for making coffee. I bought a tray that you could pop out the cubes from behind because it had a rubber bottom. This helped when removing the cubes and kept them from flying everywhere.

 Then I brewed up some coffee. I used the same kind that I normally drink so there wouldn't be a difference in taste. I, myself, am a Dunkin Donuts coffee fan, so I use that every morning. Way better, and possible cheaper, then Starbucks if you ask me. So I brewed up a cup (not knowing how much I would actually need.) and started to add it to my ice tray.

 This was the only tricky part. Katie kept telling me it would be easier if I used a cup that had a spout so I could pour easier but I was being stubborn and just poured straight from the cup. Needless to say it spilled down my cup and got all over the counter, but lucky for me I was able to keep enough coffee in the tray to fill up all the ice cube spots.

 Once my tray was full, I went out to my garage to find a spot in our freeze to freeze these bad boys. Sadly, I forgot to even check if there was room to put a full ice tray in the freezer. So, I had to move around some Betty Crocker and Marie Calenders boxes to find room the cubes. Once I found a spot, I let them sit over night so I could use them in my coffee this morning.

 So today I brewed up my mug of Dunkin and grabbed the tray of Dunkin' Cubes to add to my brew. It's important to be careful when popping out the cubes to add to the coffee because I managed to send a few flying across the kitchen because I was trying to force them out of the tray too hard.

Most of the cubes will melt, so you won't really have ice cubes in your coffee unless you add like, the whole tray. But I want to save some cubes for tomorrow so I only used about half of the cubes in my coffee. I was left with a cold coffee that didn't taste like water. So I can say that my plan actually worked, even though I didn't think it was best plan.

When I say I'm mowing my Grandmas lawn...

I don't think people thoroughly understand what that includes for me...

More pictures of the dogs

I honestly having nothing interesting going on lately and I haven't seen anything interesting happening around. So all I have are these two cute dogs to take pictures of and share with the word. So enjoy these pictures I took while they were outside for a potty break.

So I wake up to this...

I look right down the hall and I find this just starting at me. Perfectly awake, just chillin on her back for no reason. No big deal.