A&M v utep

I was invited to speak in a Freshman Chemistry Class on Halloween so I convinced Stacee to come down for the weekend so we could catch the game and see the sights. I took some pics around campus that I will try and share but there might not be many words we shall see. On Saturday morning we shopped and then walked in research park for a while. I was getting so excited for the game, it was hard to think about anything else. 

Eventually we got to campus and had a few beers and we wondered through the Bonfire Memorial and walked around campus. Before the game we headed down to Northgate to grab a bite to eat (we had high hopes of hitting up a tailgate but it just didn't happen). After dinner we walked back through campus and just saw the sights. 

Once we got into the game I realized that I should not be allowed to purchase tickets. Apparently, the handicapped seats that I accidentally purchased were not seats. It was one seat and a space for a wheelchair. Crap. We stood there for a minute speaking to the people in the next seats, who said that this has happened to several people, then we decided to just find somewhere to sit for a while. We got super lucky because those people never showed so we just enjoyed their seats. We were however right under the lights so excuse the red glow in some of the pics.

I am not going to lie the band is one of my favorite parts of the game. It was amazing. I love every single second of the band playing, when I was a 2%er (aka a bad aggie) I would go to the game at the end of the first quarter and leave in the third. That is right I just went to see the band. Yikes, I was so dumb.

The Fightin Texas Aggie Band

The Block T

In some ways a day game against a great team might have been a little more visually exciting but we could totally afford these tickets and it was nice to watch the Ags BTHO utep (BTHO: beat the hell outta). The first quarter was a little rough but I would guess they were working on a few of their crazy moves that they are going to need to beat the Tigers (mizzou and lsu). 

 At the end of the game the team sings the fight song with the rest of the fans that are left (yet another thing I had never seen before). It was neat to watch the guys celebrate with the fans that watched them play.

Fight Song

 After the game we decided to walk to Northgate and grab a beer at the Dixie Chicken. I will admit that my beer was not that cold and tasted a little off. Actually, it tasted like college… so it was fine. We had our beer and then realized that we were tired so we walked back to our car and headed home for the night.

Hitting up the Dixie Chicken after the win

This was a great way to spend the day with Stacee, it was so fun to see the Ags win and just enjoy so much of the city that we grew up in together. I hope that we will be able to go again next season, maybe even to a conference game! Love it.

All in all, best day ever with one of my besties!

College Football

As football season is in full swing, there is rarely a Saturday morning that I am not watching College Game Day with plans to catch the Aggie Game on TV. I know that it is pretty rare for a girl to love college football but I do. I don't know that I really enjoyed it as much as I should have while I was in college but now I love it. I read the blogs, I follow my teams, and I cheer with best of them. I think I really fell back in love with football in St. Louis when it was an escape from the trials of grad school and a chance to hang with some Ags. Recently, I am enjoying the football just for me.

When a chance came up to catch the Ags in College Station at Kyle Field (before renovations) came up, I jumped on it. I also stepped up to the plate to buy in on some tickets to see A&M play in Death Valley (LSU, for you non-cajun folk). I am seriously considering buying some season tickets for next season or at least seeing if I could get on the list or maybe just saving a few dollars and buying more tickets.

Either way when Saturday morning came and it was time to spend the day prepping for the game, I was pumped. Actually, I was a little tired and concerned that an 8pm kickoff would be rough. Oh well, at least I was in College Station and I was ready.

Besties

I hope to write another post with the rest of the pictures from Kyle Field but I will just say this that it was one of the best nights I have had in a long time. It was so fun to get to hang out with my girl Stacee and watch the Aggies BTHOutep.

I find that I spend most of my summer waiting for football to start and love the 12 weeks that really encompass the season. I don't mind spending a Sunday afternoon watching some professional football but I love spending my Saturday's watching the Ags and the LSU Tigers. I look forward to sharing my pics from the two games that I will see this season.

Gig'em Ags!!!

Haircut

Many months ago… when I first moved to Dallas I needed a haircut and I didn't get one until just this week. I will admit that my hair was slightly out of control before I finally got it cut. I was so afraid that I would hate it that I put off getting my hairs did for over a year. Yes you did read that right I put it off for a year which means that the last time my hair was cut was April 2012… over 18 months ago. I finally decide to get my hair cut when I realized that it was taking my an eternity to get ready since blow-drying that much hair took forever.

Before… so stinking long

I asked around for a good hair salon and got lots of interesting answers and finally decided to try Toni&Guy. This salon has a scale so you pay more for people that have more experience. I think this is great because I don't really want someone just out of school. I found one that was pretty close to work and then put off calling for over a week. Then I bit the bullet and called and got an appointment for the next day.

As I walk in I thought I was going to pass out, what if it looked horrible? what if I get a bob? what if I look naked? There were so many panicking thoughts running around in my head that I just didn't know what to think. Finally this wonderful woman named Sandra came around the corner and brought me back.

She listened to what I wanted and when she cut my hair, she would cut a little off and ask if I liked it before taking more off the bottom. In the end I took about 4 inches off my hair.

In the past I would chop my hair off and then let it grow out. I did this because I was too poor to get it cut all of the time but now I think I can afford to cut my hair at the length that I actually like. Crazy! In the end I think this might actually be a little longer than I wanted it to be but that is OK next time I can just have her take a little bit more off.

Here is the reveal:

I am loving it

I am going to try and get a better pic but selfies are somewhat hard to take and still look flattering. This was before my big talk at Texas A&M, more about that soon.

Happy Halloween

I wish I had a great costume pic of me or Lily but I am actually out of town so there will be neither of those. I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I am actually trying to get better about posting but I think I am over pressuring myself to write something fabulous. We shall see how that turns out in the month of November. I thought that since a new month is about to start I would share my goals for the month.

-Blog more frequently (hopefully 3-4 a week, not a month)
-Run 2-3 days a week
-Try 2 new recipes
-Get my new plates for my car
-Take the dog down to whiterock lake twice
-Find something fabulous to wear to the A&M/LSU game (as well as the A&M/UTEP game that is in two days!)


In other news here is a cute picture of Lily to tide you over until I come up with something a little more enticing.

DC Pics

When I finally finished the post about the Korean War Memorial I realized that I had a few other pictures that didn't really fit into any of the other sections but I thought that I would share then with you. I don't have much to say about these things but I thought I would just give you an insight into what we saw. I am sorry for the vast number of me and my dad selfies but as I looked through my pics I realized that in some ways they are a tour of DC selfies.

Front of the white house… didn't see the president from here

The back of the white house, you can't get very close on this side

I love the sunset on the capital building

This was such a great trip I wish I could share more of what I saw but in the end we were only there a few days and I am already dying to go back. There is so much to see and we just saw a small chunk of what there was but it was so fun to be there with family and learn so much about the Korean War. I am so honored to have been able to share this with my family.

The Korean War Memorial

I know it has been months since I posted about our trip to DC but this post was running around totally unfinished so I decided it was time for a little more DC (the earlier posts are here, here, and here). I did consider posting this while the government was shut down but let's get real I am sure someone would have asked me to take it down since we were not allowed to visit the memorials when it was closed. Anyway, this is not the place for a political ramble this is about honoring our Korean War Vets. 

We were ready for the bus

The morning started very early since we had to ride a bus from the hotel to the pentagon to get screened by some very cute secret service gentlemen. After that we rode another bus over to the Korean War Memorial and once we got into the fenced off area we couldn't leave. By this point I realized that something very exciting was about to happen... I was going to get to see the President!!! Sweet.

When we walked into the ceremony everyone got a bag of goodies which included some snacks, a very odd looking hat, a towel, and a wonderful book about the Korean War put together by South Korea (we might have gotten this after the ceremony but it is in the bag now). My grandfather got a medal for his service which was given to him by members of the American Military.

At this point we took our seats, maybe 50 yards from the podium, and waited for the excitement. There wasn't a whole lot going on at this point, there was a wreath laying by all of the nations that participated in the war, the president, and most of the military groups (including the POW group and the KWVA). 

Eventually the ceremony got started and several people spoke prior to the president getting up to speak. I may not be his biggest fan but it really was an honor to hear him speak to my grandfather and apologize for the governement forgetting about them. So often the Korean War is thought of as the forgotten war because so many people just never wanted to talk about it. The Pres then spoke about our military today and vowed to stand up for them and also vowed that even when our men came home from overseas that we would not be getting rid of all of our weapons like they did after WWII. This was my favorite part of the morning. 

This is zoomed in but on a regular camera... so close

I was honored to hear the president speak. After that part of the ceremony we were able to head back over to the Memorial which had been closed that morning (so that the president could lay a wreath). It was neat to see the memorial in the day and hear my grandfather talk about the different types of people that were displayed. It was so neat to hear him talk about the War and listen to his stories, so often he wouldn't talk about the memories because they were so terrible but it was fun to hear him talk with some of his friends or other men that served. 

The USMC Wreath

This memorial was the whole reason that we were in DC and it was so neat to see what the President had to say and to listen to people honoring the men that served because they were asked to by their country. I loved seeing my grandfather honored for his service to the USA. I will admit that by the end of the ceremony I was melting, this was the hottest day that we had in DC, but I would not have missed this for the world.

Homemade Mac and Cheese

One of the ways that I save money and calories every week is to bring my lunch to work. I will admit that I don't really love sandwiches, in fact I kinda struggle to eat them for more than a week at a time. This forces me to be pretty creative in what I eat for lunch, sometimes I have salad, pizza, soup, or really just about anything. I saw a recipe on Pinterest for a Mac and Cheese that only had three ingredients so I figured that I could try this one and see if it worked. The original post for the recipe can be found here.

I was intrigued by this because it was easy, boil pasta in milk, add cheese. I have found that adding cheddar cheese to hot items causes the cheese to break down into a grainy cheese sauce so I opted to purchase cheddar-jack instead.

This was super easy to make, I made sure to watch the boiling milk because it takes just a few minutes to scald the milk and burnt milk is probably the worst thing in the world, actually that is an exaggeration but it would have been gross. Since the post wasn't really descriptive on this part I put both the milk and the pasta in the pot at the same time and boiled it, it took about 15 minutes (maybe a tad longer) until the noodles were done. After that I slowly added the cheese (the recipe calls for 2 cups of cheese) since I didn't want to over cheese it. I think I added about a cup, feel free to add more but I didn't want grainy cheese and this was about borderline for me. In addition, I don't think my heart could have handled more cheese than what I put in there. Now I missed the note about adding some salt and pepper so I didn't do that and I totally should have.

Lily thinks I should just give it to her

I ate it for dinner and it was good right out of the pot, I then split the leftovers for lunches. I only got two lunches out of the rest. It was still pretty good, the cheese actually melted back down and was just as yummy as the first time. I think I will have to make this again for lunches and keep working on what type of cheese I think works best. If I come up with something amazing I will be sure to let you know.