New fiance, new internship, new job and a new blog

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  This has been a very exciting December for me and it's not even over!  The last week of work December 13-19th was just packed full of fun.

Monday the 13th- Bruce met with my father to ask for my hand in marriage (well kinda he asked for his blessing).  And of course my daddy said yes cause everyone loves Bruce.  I was so excited but then had to play the serious waiting game because he had the ring, he asked my father so now all he really had to do was propose.

Tuesday the 14th- I met with my internship advisor at the Cafe College downtown. It's a P-20 initiative to get students from middle school, high school and adult learners through college and beyond.  It's a super cute building on a weird side of town, so it kinda sticks out and you can see it from the high way.  But the inside is nice and cute and bright and friendly.  I will be doing 150 hours there helping future students apply for college, fill out Financial Aid packets, pick colleges and plan.  It sounds exciting.

Tuesday night we had plans to hangout with some friends and karaoke.  We went out to dinner and karaoked at the place we met so I totally wanted him to propose there but alas he had other plans.

Tuesday was also the first day of #ringwatch

Wednesday the 15th- Was a regular day at work but it was frustrating cause I was waiting to hear back about a job for UTSA and Grades and my ring.  So these three very important things I was waiting for and it just felt like none of them were ever going to get here.  I was also trying to wrap up work stuff before the break.  I emailed the lady from UTSA about the job and she said she was still waiting to hear from HR, I checked the UTSA grade page like every hour and nothing, and then it was time to go to the Braniff Christmas Happy Hour.

And very luckily!

I totally wasn't expecting it to happen there but soooo glad it did!

After happy hour we went and Karaoked the night away at Legends Sports bar!

Thurday December 16th- Nothing too terribly exciting happened this day but I did get to show off my beautiful ring to all my work friends and then created a new blog to start sharing about that journey.  Tyler Getting Married

Friday the 17th- At about 9 AM I got a call from a UTSA number I was sooo excited and ran out of the office, only to have it be another interview for a different job I'd applied for at UTSA.  Back to the office to wait.  I kept checking for my grades and nada.  Around 10AM I got another UTSA call and was a little slower to run out of the office but this was the call I'd been waiting for!  UTSA was offering me the job as Program Coordinator in their University Center.  So excited!  And so totally scared!  First they wanted me to start right away but I couldn't cause I needed to give SAC 2 weeks.  I called my mom, Bruce and Deirdre to try to figure out how to negotiate some of the finer points like my cruise and school and salary.  Friday was only a half day at SAC so I was already running around like crazy to finish everything that needed to be finished but adding this to that day made it seem even more rushed.

At five o'clock I checked for my grades again at UTSA and still zip.

Then we added two Christmas parties to this list and the day just would not end!  First we went to the office Christmas party at Mr. Posadas' house and I was able to share with everyone my good but sad news.  I spent most of the afternoon crying and stressing about leaving SAC and how I was going to get everything done in two weeks when we got back.  After that party we went to my dad's where we knew absolutely no one!

By Saturday the 18th we were wiped out.  It felt like it'd just been a week of celebrating which is good when you're newly engaged.  But we were just drained.  Finally around noon on Saturday I was able to see my grades.  I passed yay! One more semester!  Bruce got off late Saturday night from work and so we decided to do some light Christmas shopping, dinner and call it a night.

Sunday the 20th- Another Christmas party and more Karaoke!  It was the ToneDeaf Christmas Party at Oak Hill Tavern and it was a blast.  We got to sing which always makes us happy and got to see a lot of the karaoke people we didn't see Wednesday night to share our engagement with.  

It was a busy busy week and if only this week had been calmer.  But last week was perfect cause I got everything I wanted my grades, my job and my wonderful fiance Bruce.  

Merry Christmas!

New Blog!

I'm getting married and I have a new blog to prove it! Check it out!

http://tylergettingmarried.blogspot.com/2010/12/december-15th-2010.html

The First Year with my nook

Yah if you don't know what a nook is that might sound not right...nook (mine is the first generation on the right).  January 31st 2010 I got my nook.  I was so excited I'd been wanting one since the previous November and finally got it for myself.  The reasoning behind me getting an electronic reader was that I am a weird book reader.  I usually have a book in my purse, a book in my car, a book in my desk, a book in the living room and a book by my bedside, Bruce can totally attest to this.  I am usually reading 6 or more books at once- I like to have a fiction option, non-fiction, bio, short stories or sci-fi to chose from at all times.  That's a lot of books to carry around so an e-reader just seemed like the logical choice.  I went with the Barnes and Noble one because B&N is my FAVE bookstore, and I really only buy books online when they're textbooks so the Kindle didn't really interest me.  But to each their own...

I raced home from La Cantera, opened my nook, turned it on and waited for the magic to happen!  Pride and Prejudice, Little Women and Dracula were already loaded onto the nook under the "Barnes and Noble Classics Series" heading.  Then there were a lot of free books you could chose from.

The books I read this year on my nook from Barnes and Noble were (in order):
Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea
Accidental Billionaires (book The Social Network was based off of)
A Little Bit Wicked (Kristen Chenoweth bio)
It Sucked and Then I Cried (dooce  book)
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
Eclipse (yes I own the hard backs, what's your point? needed to reread it before the movie)
Breaking Dawn (no good excuse really, I think I was bored in an airport)
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro- READ THIS)
Shit My Dad Says
The Toaster Broke So We're Getting Married (might have been a free book or maybe I just liked the title)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Hunger Games (READ these too! So good- thanks Taylor)
Catching Fire (I loved them so much I read then in August and again in October)
Mockingjay (They're that good!)
My Horizontal Life
I Love, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti

Wow looking back on the year it looks like I was really into bubble-gum books.  In my defense I didn't really want to read heavy stuff while on the cruise in Greece...The Chelsea Handler books were hilarious so I had to read all of them.  I did take some flack for downloading books I already owned, but my nook fits so much better in my purse than a 450 page hardback book and if I get tired of one book I can so easily switch to another!

Another great thing about the nook is you can download countless classics from Project Gutenberg its this huge archive of books in different digital formats.  I downloaded the entire James Joyce library for free!!! I haven't explored the Gutenberg press as much as I could but there are tons of great books in there for free that I hope to get next year.  My nook also has the internet and games and the ability to be an mp3 player but I really just use it for books and the occasional Sudoku game.

Now my nook didn't take the place of paperback books for me at all I still read real books.  In the Spring I was making my way through all of Alain de Botton's books, on Valentine's I always reread his "On Love".  Almost ever summer I reread an Orson Scott Card series, this year I reread both Ender series with the new edition Ender in Exile.  So my nook wont replace all the books on my shelves its just a nice portable library I can take wherever I go and one that can constantly grow.