North Texas Giving Day

Today is North Texas Giving Day! In spirit of this day, Communities Foundation of Texas is matching donations of $25 or more until midnight!  Just go to www.donorbridgetx.org and search for the charity you'd like to donate to!

Don't have one in mind? Donate to Legal Aid of Northwest Texas to help low-income families and individuals get free legal services!

There will also be some festivities and performances at the CFT location in Downtown Dallas. And food trucks! Cause everybody loves food trucks ;)

Some other links:

https://northtexasgiving.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/2012/09/north_texas_giving_day_says_yo.php
http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2012/09/13/north-texas-giving-day-approaches-9-million/
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/robert-miller/20120904-get-donations-to-dallas-area-nonprofits-matched-sept.-13-on-north-texas-giving-day.ece

California Love

I've been feeling sick all day today and after a shift at work starting at 8am, I decided it would be better for me to just stay home and get it out of my system in one day rather than overexerting myself until the weekend.  So instead, I did homework and uploaded photos from my trip to Facebook.  Productive day, no?  Here are some of the best photos:

I'm also thinking about starting dinner and then snuggling up and watching the latest episode of Breaking Bad.  It's the last one until next summer, so I'm anticipating an awful cliffhanger that will probably kill me for an entire year.  That's it for now :)

Flashback

So now I have been back for about a week after visiting Hanna and Emma in Los Angeles! It was an amazing experience, I got to see SO much.  Here are some pictures from Fullerton, more to come but I haven't uploaded the camera yet for the rest.

And of course, I hit the ground running as soon as I landed back in Dallas.  Dinner with the boyfriend, fetch my car from my parents' house, midnight sushi for a good friend's birthday, appearance at a party, crash and head to work at 8am the next morning for a 9 hour shift.  Yup.  Definitely back to normal.

School also started Monday, I'm loving all my classes.  Turns out, Senior level classes are really the best.  They are much more challenging with a lot more projects, but now it's finally wrapping together and making sense.  I can't believe I'll graduate in May already! Super exciting :)

A Stranger In Paradise

My little baby Cleo is visiting my apartment this weekend! Things have been hectic at home so my mom is taking a break from this little troublemaker and I am reaping all the benefits. I like it.

Summer school is going good as well.  In two weeks I'll be done with my Government class and then itll only be classes Monday through Wednesday and no driving 20 minutes each way to a class in the middle of the day.  Hopefully they'll give me more hours at work as well.

I realized the other day that I have definitely found my passion.  I sat through 3 hours of my International Marketing class and not once opened Reddit or Facebook or just glared at my calendar.  I truly love this class.  Everything about it fascinates me and excites me!  I can't wait to get out and really experience it though :)

 Other than that, no new news.  Oh! I moved into my new apartment! And it's awesome! Soooo awesome!  Maybe I'll put up pictures eventually. Haha, maybe.

Good Morning

Just woke up about an hour ago and after a nice filling breakfast (breakfast burritos!) from my sister, I've gathered all my things and moved to the backyard where I'm studying for my Finance exam.  The weather is perfect and the pool is so blue and the water cold, but of course, its study time. Not to mention I have to leave for work in a couple of hours.

School is going both ways all the time these days.  A class I needed to graduate a year early filled up before I could get in and I was very upset, but a week later they opened more spots so now everything is back on track :)

I've been skyping a few of my favorite Swedes but this definitely needs to happen more often.  Time management is something I'm getting better at, but still have a long way to go.




Thats all thats new over here.

My birthday passed, and it was pretty good.  Had a night with friends filled with good food and company, an evening with the boyfriend and family, and another evening at the Dallas-Montreal soccer match with the siblings.  Three days off and missing it so.  But now its back to working 5 days a week, 25-30 hours.

This Cat.

Is such a brat.
Brian went to visit his family for a few days and I am in charge of feeding Luna.
I got off work today and came and fed her and then decided to work on some homework here so she wouldn't be lonely (or do something stupid).
I don't know if it worked or not.  Within twenty minutes she was laying all over my papers and chewing my pen while I was trying to write.

Laying on all my things

Chewing my pen

Buuuuuut I love her.
Right now she's trying to smash her head as far into the keyboard as possible.  Such a silly kitty.

'

All smooshed

I've been essentially working full time this week, spent over 35 hours there. Sheesh. But I enjoy my work and the hours and the paycheck that comes at the end.

Other than that, no news from here.  Looking forward to my favorite korean meal ever on Saturday.  Me madre is going to make sam gyup sal. DELICOUS.

Stressed? Not me!

I'm working a lot this week but the stress hasn't kicked in yet.  In fact, I'm so busy that I'm starting to organize my time better.  It's surprisingly super awesome.  Every hour is booked for something, it seems.  Either work, class, studying or spending time with my boyfriend or other good friends.

Right now I'm studying at my boyfriend's apartment while he sleeps.  I like doing schoolwork here.  I get to play with Luna for study breaks.  Now I'm completing some assignments to free up time this weekend since I work 7-8 hours every day essentially.  Business communications, Finance, and Earthquakes & Volcanos are the subjects for tonight.  And maybe some Advanced Criminology, if I have time and am not too burnt out.  Not to mention laundry.  Hooray!

Listening to Shpongle and being productive.  Nothing better.

Giving Luna snacks

ENTP

A few weeks ago a counselor from the Career Center came to visit my Organizational Behavior class and gave out a detailed personality test.  Last week she came back with the results for everyone in the class.  I was ENTP (Extraversion, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving).

I found this particularly interesting not because I was surprised or anything, but because of the way everyone can be lumped together in 16 categories of personality.

"Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way"
"Apt to turn to one new interest after another"
"May have trouble making decisions"
"May start too many projects and have difficulty in finishing them"
"Tend to be faster, dislike complicated procedures"
"Like to have people around"

Yup. Sounds like me.
Even though these are really general and vague statements that make it easy to group people (that being the point, after all), it makes me somewhat uncomfortable knowing that I'm that easy to figure out.

Anyways.

Spoke on the phone with my wonderful friend Hanna L today for about an hour.  She's in LA living it up, going to school for Recording Arts.  I'm jealous and can't wait until I can go visit her :)  Fall, probably.

We reminisced of the good ol' times.  Nights at Pipe's, filming our own movies and being crazy all over the island of Holmön on Midsummer's Eve, camping and grilling meat on a hot stone over fire (spiced with salty chips!) on Norrbyskär, and other small random moments in the two years we had together.

As promised, here is the first of many clips to come from some of the fun memories of Östra.

Starting Over

I've lost touch with my last blog.  It ended up being something I didn't enjoy writing in.

So I'm starting fresh!
I know there are many people who want to know what's going on in my life but it just doesn't seem like I have the time to write and/or call everybody!

This will be my way of letting everyone know how everything is going.

Right now the most important thing going on is that I am working on graduating University a year ahead of schedule.  It won't be easy but I'm so ready to get out into the world and really experience things that I think it will be worth it.  Of course, I am enjoying my time here and I am having great experiences, but my main interest is travel right now, something I haven't been able to do since I moved back home.

We'll see if I can manage to do it, but my fingers are crossed!