Working

I have successfully landed a job. And after my first day, I love it!

I have been hired on at Panera Bread to eventually be an early morning bakery opener. I had my first day of training and work yesterday and had a very wonderful experience. The menu and choices at Panera are a little extensive, so it will take some time learning everything.

However, the other employees and managers are such nice people and all have super senses of humor. I really think I will enjoy my new job and am looking forward to that fact.

Working will start to fill up my days and keep me on the move. I am looking forward to that as well. In the meantime as I get settled into a new routine, I am still learning new things about San Antonio and Texas and trying to make the most of my time here.

A Wonderful Roommate

Who gets as lucky as me to live with an amazing and wonderful and sweet person, TWICE? After sharing a small bedroom in Salzburg, Austria for three and a half months, Brooke and I became pretty comfortable with each other. Now in San Antonio, we are back to being roomies and I am loving every minute!

I get to be her 'wife' while she is off student teaching by cleaning the apartment, baking cookies, and having supper ready at night. I know it won't always be this fun and exciting when I eventually get a job, but when Brooke comes home every day, my day gets increasingly better!

It is so nice to share a place with someone that you can always have a good time with. No matter what challenges come my way this fall, I know I'll always have someone there to help me through it all!

A Tad Lonely

With my roomie off student teaching and me jobless, being in a big city with nothing to do can make a person get a little bored and feel rather lonely.

I have applied to a couple deli or coffee shop establishments and am now playing the waiting game. I don't want to go find another job before these places get back to me, but then again I would like something to fill my time as I do wait to hear something!

I tried to give plasma. Haven't been successful in that area yet either. I stopped by the other day and they told me to come back today. Guess what? They inform me again that they are full at the moment and can either wait around for 2 hours or make an appointment and come back on Saturday. I hope Saturday works out!

Other than job hunting and plasma seeking, I have been practicing playing the guitar and am really getting excited about becoming better. Brooke already knows how to play and is a great teacher!

I am sure things will pick up in pace here soon and I will be trying to keep up. For now I am trying to occupy myself and enjoy the down time. I try not to text too many random messages to people in order to conquer the alone time, but I figure soon I won't have time to talk to anyone so I better take the chance now!

I hope everyone else is well and keeping up in life! If anyone needs a reprieve from their home world, come make a trip down to San Antonio. I am sure I can find things to entertain you as well as myself!

San Antonio

I have lived in so many different places, seen so many different things and met so many different people. Living here in San Antonio is proving to be another new and different experience.

As initiation into becoming a resident of San Antonio, my wonderful and amazing roomie, Brooke and our new buddy, Matt, took me out to the Riverwalk first thing Friday evening when I arrived. Everyone had said it was fantastic and very beautiful. They didn't lie. It is a very neat narrow river running through San Antonio that is lined with a beautiful walk and multiple restaurants.

We ate at a great mexican restaurant, walked around by the river, and even headed over to see The Alamo. It was a relaxing, yet fun night.

Again on Saturday, Brooke and I jumped right into life here as we headed out of town to go tubing down the Guadalupe River. It was Matt, five other student teaching girls and Brooke and I. All we did was float down the river, chat about life, and enjoy the sun. We were able to make the 'horseshoe' float twice.

To round out the day, we all stopped at Whataburger, a classic Texas burger joint. The burger was quite tasty, but I completely forgot about the warnings of Texans and them liking lots of mustard. Whoever informed me about mustard in Texas was not kidding. The entire top bun of my sandwich was covered in yellow mustard. I like most all foods, but mustard is not a condiment of choice. It was even more strange to me that there was no ketchup already on the burger. I was able to wipe off some of the mustard and add my own ketchup, but will remember next time to say "No mustard, please!"

After a fun afternoon and evening out, Brooke and I laid low for the rest of the night. We did some house shopping and got some groceries in order to make our apartment more of a home. It is slowly coming together.

So, the first two days of San Antonio have definitely been fun and I am looking forward to the many other adventures that I will embark on!

A Long Road Trip

It’s 7:45 am, Wednesday, the 18^th of August, 2010, and I am heading out of the driveway on a solo, three day road trip to the southern part of Texas.

Only forty-five minutes away, I meet up with a good friend for breakfast. After getting our fill at Perkins and catching up some more, I head out again. Next stop, Manhattan, KS.

It truly surprises me how much you can get done in a short period of time when you know your time in precious. I got into Manhattan just before 7:00 pm and it felt like a rat race getting around to see everyone before the night ended. I was able to see most everyone I wanted to catch up with and ended the night at my dear friend, Kristy’s.

Thursday began again with a breakfast date with my “Kansas Family.” It was eggs and muffins before I visited the great Meat Lab and Weber Hall on campus. John and the other peeps of the Meat Lab were busy slaughtering lambs. I was a little jealous that I wouldn’t be helping again this year. But, it was soon back on the road.

Lunchtime found me at the cutest small town café in Durham, KS. Friend, Katelin, and I enjoyed a tasty meal and chatting. Extremely full from a Monterey (essentially a flat taco) and peanut butter pie, I was back driving, heading to I-35 South.

It wasn’t too much longer before I reached my destination of the evening, Nocona, TX. My newly wedded friends from Montana just moved down to Texas in June and it was a perfect place to stop for the evening. We caught up, had some supper, and called it a night. I was super exhausted from driving.

Friday. Woke up and headed out with Chrisley to check out the ranch she and her husband were living at. It was so neat to see cutting horses being worked with and trained. Horses truly are extraordinary animals and so very smart.

By 10:00 am I was finally on the last leg of my trip. It was a pretty quick drive of 6 hours, but the traffic in Texas is incredible. There may be a lot of room for the cars, but there are still so many people that the lanes of the highways fill up fast no matter what time of day it is.

Finally, around 4:00 pm I arrived at Brooke's and my apartment! It was so amazing to be greeted by Brooke and see her again! I was so happy to have made it here safely and to be done driving for a while!

I have so much more to share and will hopefully relay everything to everyone in the next week! I am happy to have made it here to Texas and am sure learning lots!

Just Being Me

As a college grad, most people would expect me to go out and find a job related to the field of study in which I have a degree in. Have I ever followed the ways of normalcy? No. Not really.

A year ago in October, I was visiting my roommate from Austria in Illinois and she informs me that she was going to do her student teaching in San Antonio. So, instinctively, I say that I might just go down with her and hang out there for awhile.

Well, ten months later, guess where I am? San Antonio, TX.

Why State Fair?

I was not going to work again at the WI State Fair this year. I was going to go out and do new and wonderful things. I was going to grab life with both hands and let it take me for a ride. Needless to say, I was back at Gate 5 on Aug 3 ready to work another amazing fair.

In early spring when I received an email from my boss in the Ag dept. of state fair asking if I wanted to work Gate 5, I just could not turn him down. And when the AM supervisor for the Real WI Cheese Grill was offered a promotion she couldn’t miss, I was quick to take the position and be back to my normal duties.

The Cheese Grill is most times a super, fast-paced stand where grilled cheese come flying off the grill every second. I work with amazing people keeping the lines to a manageable distance and the grilled cheese hot and tasty. The crew I work with always impresses me and we work like a well oiled machine together to get through each of the eleven days of the fair.

After the 7 am to 3 pm shift, it was back up to Gate 5 till 11 pm. Gate 5 is almost like home. It is so familiar and comfortable. All the people from the past 2-3 years were back and this fair at the gate was best yet. We all know our own jobs, as well as each others, so when cars get backed up and customers get too excited, we all know how to handle it. We also have so much fun joking around, singing, dancing, teasing, or just chatting up a storm. But mostly it just feels like fun and games and a little work.

It only lasts two weeks, but the State Fair is such a happy time. People come to the fair expecting to see all the animals, eat the delicious not-so-healthy-for-you food, take home free goodies, take home not-so-free goodies, enjoy cold beverages, and walk around just seeing the sites. The Ag exhibitors who come through the Gate are so nice to work with. They come from all over the state and it’s wonderful to get to know them and their faces throughout the fair.

Sleep becomes treasured during the fair as long working hours cut into the bedtime schedule. Food also becomes scarce as throughout the work day you just don’t stop to take a break to eat anything.

But, I enjoy every day of the fair. I love the exhibitors, the grilled cheese crew, and my home at Gate 5. When I take the chance to walk around the fair with a fellow cheese grill worker, ride the sky glider with a good friend, stay up late to hang out with other workers and ag staffers in the Ag Oasis, or just stay longer and talk with someone, the fair becomes complete.

It has not been decided if I will return for yet again a fifth year at the State Fair. If I do, anyone will be able to find me at the grilled cheese stand or working Gate 5.

A Summer Past

The new couple! Jonah and Chrisley!

Summer is such a wonderful time of year. It brings warm weather, picnics, family get-togethers, new life, and lots of fun. For me, my favorite way to spend my summer is at home.

This summer I was at home again after graduating from K-State. I was able to come home and take care of all the beautiful Jersey calves. I love babies. All kinds. So, working with calves is one of the best things to do.

Besides loving and caring for the baby calves, I also do a lot inside the house. We joked this summer that I was my Mom’s Wife for the summer. I did most of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. One may not usually find those jobs exciting, but they worked for me!

All of my summer wasn’t work and no play; I also watched a lot of movies. Anyone who doesn’t know that public libraries have great DVD selections, needs to check it out for themselves. Julie and I brought home five movies at a time and never had to pay a dime for any of them.

Some of our favorites were Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Eragon, The Blind Side, Leap Year, and Whip It. We watched Precious, a movie that received many awards. It was definitely not what we expected. If you really want to see it, watch it. But we wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.

Books are a girl’s best friend if you ask me. Julie and I worked our way through the entire Narnia series this summer. Amazing books is all I got to say! They take you to a new place on incredible journeys through another world. Many times at the end of series it is a sad situation knowing the books have come to an end. Narnia adventures ended in a way that just made me smile. It was beautiful and I would not change anything about the books.

So working at home and living it up with movies and books filled my summer with other random adventures such as a wedding in Montana, State FFA Convention, and the WI State Fair. It was a successful couple of months! A super time to live.