Moving!!!

I'm moving this blog. Eventually, all the posts will be migrated over, but until then check out the new home!

http://sarahisintampa.wordpress.com/

Work and school have been killing me

Honestly, unless you want to see pictures of a messy workspace everyday, not much has been going on that is interesting. I've been busy at work making GIS maps, and my group project at school isn't really a group project anymore. It's the Sarah show. I have a good recap of the rest of March coming in short order, I promise.

Day 78: Back at School

I'm back to enjoying the scenery in the graduate lounge as I start studying for my midterm this week. Why is this a mural in the business lounge?

Day 77: I'm still on break, right?

It's been a weird day. I wasn't ready to go back to work, especially after the cool thing that happened last week. I never dread work as much as I have recently, even after a long weekend. That's never a good sign.

I need to keep this short and sweet tonight. I have a midterm on Thursday that the sangria is helping me to studying for.

Spring Break! Days 70-76

Let's be honest for a second. I have no idea what happened when last week, so I'm shoving all of last week into one (somewhat coherent) post.

Johnny and I decided to be adventurous and make tandoori chicken on Monday. It was absolutely amazing!

On Monday and Tuesday, the internet at work was down, which led to a lot of waiting around. Eventually I just decided to work from home.

Campus is extremely beautiful when no one is around.

On Wednesday, I insisted that we go out to celebrate the beginning of spring break (for me, at least). I love to celebrate with Mexican food! Johnny got the nice looking meal; I got the one that looks like Mexican food vomited all over the plate.

The restaurant also had 2-for-1 margaritas and 32 ounce beers. This is where the night both got fun and went downhill. It was no big deal though, because I had a four day weekend. This is also where I run out of pictures...

I spent Thursday working on homework at the library like a true nerd.
On Friday, I went into work to try to win free beer in a contest we were having. I came in second-to-last. I also had lunch with my dad. It's always nice to catch up with family.
Saturday was a low-key day spent in pajamas with coffee and Mad Men. Eventually I got dressed to enjoy corned beef and cabbage with Johnny's family.
Sunday saw a trip south to celebrate the wedding of a good friend from work.

69/365: Well, someone is a little disgruntled

I found this walking around USF on Sunday. Someone wasn't happy...

68/365: And over by USF...

So, there are some new apartments ging up right across from campus. According to one of my facebook friends, "They're going for that mod unfinished look."

67/365: Hello Spring Break!

With the end of class on Thursday, I am officially on spring break...from school at least. My spring break from work starts on the 14th. It's so close! Johnny and I went to the Independent with two of our friends last night, and then we all decided to make a trip to the original Taco Bus. If you've never seen Taco Bus on Man vs. Food, it's a Mexican restaurant where the kitchen is an old school bus. They make some of the best food in Tampa. I kept it simple last night and just got a chicken quesadilla. It's amazing with butternut squash as a filling too.

66/365: My biggest fear right in front of me

I really hate things that sting. This little bastard sat on my windshield until I sprayed it away with my wiper fluid. It kept trying to sting through the glass too!

This has been the most mundane week ever. I'm really happy I took some vacation next week. I can't wait to have some time off during spring break. I have never had a spring break where I wasn't working or in a hospital. I'm still working, but it'll be nice to have a longer weekend.

65/365: Busted!

The police caught someone doing something near the community college. There seems to be a theme this week of catching things while I'm driving.

64/365: It was an uneventful day

You know it's a pretty boring day when the most eventful thing that happened was seeing this truck.

63/365: Around town

Hey, gas is finally going down...slowly.

62/365: Its a cold and windy Sunday

Mmmm, green tea and honey.

It's about 50 degrees outside, so I've stayed inside under a blanket all day. I love a lazy Sunday every once in a while, but I need to get around to finishing a case analysis that is due this week. It's just so hard to get motivated when your in sweatpants and VH1 has a Best Songs of the 90s marathon on.

61/365: What do you want to be when you grow up?

I have been asked thsi question my whole life, and until now I never really knew how to truthfully answer it. I know I want a steady job with steady income that gives me some degree of freedom. However, I have never really known what would lead to that. Right now I can describe myself as a research analyst for an economic development organization. While it is nice, I'm not entirely sure it's what I want to do.

At work this week I told someone that I really want to be an academic the rest of my life. I have always felt the most secure and productive when doing stuff for school. The more I think about it, the more I want to give myself the Ph.D. option. I think the university will be the best place for me in the future. I was talking with Jenny about this last night and she warned me of all of the strange research assignments and weird hours. I'm the queen of strange research assignments, both in school and work, and I really love having the freedom to work at 4am if that is when I'm feeling the most productive.

Anyways, today's picture represents me giving more thought to the Ph.D. option. To get in at USF, I need to seriously increase my GMAT score. Right now, I am not Ph.D. material with my GRE score, which equates to a 500 GMAT. I need at least a 600 GMAT just to be considered, and much higher to have an actual chance of acceptance. I might as well start now instead of waiting until the last minute again.

60/365: Beer me!

I'll admit, I cheated with this. My camera died on me while I was out, so I missed getting pictures of the beer to celebrate my friend getting into a Ph.D. program.

It's beer week in Tampa next week, so this is still a good promo for a classic Tampa brewery, Cigar City Brewing.

59/365: I'm a sucker for free food

Our building at work has new owners, and they are already trying to win us over with free breakfast and coffee mugs. They even had a pancake bar! It's an old college habit, but I get too excited over free food.

58/365: Have you seen my matryoshka tattoo?

 I love tattoos that represent parts of my past. I studied Russian in undergrad, and I'm still in love with Russian culture. One symbol of the culture that I cannot get enough of is the nesting doll, or matryoshka doll. I even have owl matryoshka dolls on my tv mantle. In 2011, I decided to start my Russian quarter sleeve with one giant matryoshka doll.  Two session, six hours, and $600 later, I have my beautiful beginning.

If you look close, it's three different dolls in one, instead of three separate dolls. It provides so much graphic detail and gives me more arm room for future imagery. The red hair and green eyes were done to match my hair and eyes at the time.

I haven't done any work to it since, but I've started actively planning the next stage of the half sleeve. I can't wait to add to it!

57/365: Oh no, the sickness caught up with me

At least I get this adorable view every time I reach for the tissues. Runny nose, headache, sore throat...this is miserable.

56/365: Finally taking a breath

Courtesy of my CEO, a picture from the bridal shower we threw for our investor relations manager today during lunch. It was nice to relax a little.

This weekend has been a whirlwind. Johnny got extremely sick, water had to be boiled to do almost anything, and there was the concert to balance with an intense weekend of reading and paper writing. This was a nice break.

55/365: Household upgrade

I've been complaining for a while now that our current bookshelf doesn't hold my obscene amount of books AND all of my books from school anymore, so I finally went out a bought a second bookshelf on Sunday for what I have deemed "MBA Corner". I love it so much! It fits perfectly in this random corner we have. Somehow, the living room was just pulled together with this shelf. I'm also excited to better show off my school stuff, because that's just the kind of nerd I am.

54/365: Muse on a Saturday night

I bought tickets to Muse for my brother's birthday, and the show finally happened on Saturday. Absolutely amazing! Hopefully I can get a video that Johnny took to upload here, since my phone failed both on picture taking and recording aspects at the show.

Look at that face behind us...

53/365: Boil water advisories spoil the weekend

Do you need a laugh?

A squirrel, or some related rodent, chewed through a main power line for the biggest water plant in Tampa, and the backup line failed. That meant a water outage and a subsequent boil water notice starting Friday afternoon. That's cool. It also meant happy hour beer served in plastic cups. I was excited at first because I technically live outside of Tampa city limits, which lead to this Facebook status:

Then I checked out a water service map. It turns out that I still live within the water service zone, so the notice affected me as well. Damn.

52/365: Throwback Thursday

I completely forgot my camera. Luckily throwback goes well with Thursday. This is from early 2012 at the World of Beer five year anniversary block party. I took 10 beer shots in a row. Nothing special, but it produced this hilarious picture of me all sweaty with no makeup.

51/365: I like getting mail

Or, newspaper in this case. My WSJ subscription is finally live, which means I get a real newspaper to read every morning. My inner nerd is so excited! I love a good newspaper and cup of coffee in the morning.

50/365: Hello Sunshine

The sunshine feels nice.

49/365: 10 Thoughts on a Quiet Monday

1. Johnny bought me new TOMS for Valentine's Day. My old pair had a hole in the toe. It's so nice to finally have a new pair. It's also perfect timing with how much the temperature dropped this weekend.

2. Florida kids are such wimps with the cold. I mean, 31 degrees this morning was cold, but all it takes is a jacket and a scarf until you can get back indoors. I love the few days a year where I get to wear hoodies and thick scarves without overheating. It doesn't happen very often, but it happened this weekend. I love it.

3. I think if it stayed 31 degrees any longer I would die though. It's almost 10:30 and it's warmed up to 55 already. I do have Florida kid syndrome sometimes.

4. Federal holidays are amazing. I've set up shop at Starbucks and I'm working through some finance review while laughing at everyone in work clothes. There is no guilt either, because I didn't take a sick day to do this.

5. The kid across from me is reading Relativity by Einstein. I really hope he has to do that for class, otherwise he may be a bigger nerd than the girl doing finance review for fun. He's taking notes, so I'm thinking it's for class. But this begs the question...what crazy professor would make someone read that?

6. My tax return is hitting my bank account this week. Of the $3100, $2800 has already been earmarked for one summer class and student loan interest. Being a responsible adult sucks sometimes. But I do have $300 for some fun. I've already decided that the majority of it will go towards some new work clothes (for example, pants. I wear black jeans that are two sizes too big to work). I might use a little upgrade my PS Elements. I'm running version 8, and I've heard great things about version 11. Does anyone have a review on V11?

7. Doing my finance reviews have reminded me that I did really enjoy the subject. I had a terrible professor who ruined the class for me, which drove me away from the track. Finance was my highest grade during the semester where I did all of my quantitative classes at one time. It makes more sense mathematically for me than accounting did. I was a math major during my first year of undergrad, and I still gravitate towards the quantitative sides of business. I think finance will be a good decision for my MS minor.

8. I want to check out the new Wawa by campus today, but I don't want to drive that far for lunch when I have pizza waiting for me back at home.

9. I'm so glad Adam was finally in an episode of Girls again. The Ray-Adam scenes were amazing, especially after how strange this season has been thus far.

10. I wish today didn't have to end. I love studying and being out and having strange hours. I'm destined for a career in academia, I swear.

11. I'm sitting in a Starbucks blogging on my Macbook. Sometimes I hate myself.

48/365: Good beer, good friends, good food

It was poutine night this weekend at the Independent! I love poutine so much. Salty gravy and cheese on fries? It's a fat kid's dream. I'm so happy that the bi-weekly Independent outing just happened to be on the one night poutine was the cafe special. It made up for the fact that we were sitting outside in 40 degree weather with wind. This isn't your typical Canadian-style poutine. It was made with oxtail gravy and manchego cheese sauce.

Good beer, good friends, good food. What else could a girl ask for?

47/365: Miscellaneous from the week

I got access to a new picture editor this week, and I finally tested it out. I love that I can do some of the more vintage effects now that have been giving me trouble in Photoshop Elements. I'm too cheap to get the real version right now. I'm going to eventually, though, even just to have access to Totally Rad Actions.

At some point this week we were at Starbucks studying. I love going out to study, but I hate it when we end up at this table. It's in a sectioned-off area that is easily 20 degrees colder than the rest of the store. I  need a parka to study in there! As usual, I had stopped reading at this point and was just taking pictures. Terrible student, I know.

The USF library has some really old books if you go digging enough. How am I supposed to learn finance with these old books, USF?

46/365: We finally get our time

Johnny and I finally had our Valentine's Day yesterday. Thanks to an old gift card I had laying around, we were able to go out to Bonefish Grill for dinner. In typical style, I forgot my camera, but my phone managed to get a halfway decent picture of the food. I had grilled mahi mahi with chimchurri sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, and garbanzo beans with turkey sausage and spinach. Johnny had spicy shrimp pasta and a bowl of crab and corn chowder.

45/365: Today is Happy Couple Day, so why does it suck so much?

PhD students: Smart, but not smart enough to use correct grammar.

It took me 75 minutes to travel the 13 miles between work and school today. It usually takes longer in the rain, but not that long. I was in a bad mood by the time I got to class, but I managed to be on time because the professor wanted to Skype in while he is away for a conference in California. After 15 minutes, class was cancelled because IT couldn't get Skype up and running.

Class was cancelled after I drove all the way up to campus, and Johnny still has class tonight. On top of that, I ran into more traffic on the way home, and 6 miles took me 40 minutes to travel. That's it. I'm done. I'm just going to enjoy my wine and pinning of wedding decor for a wedding that may never happen, all alone on Valentine's Day. Am I sure I'm not single again?

44/365: Smarty Cat

Johnny put his glasses on his cat, Tigger. Tigger wasn't a happy cat afterwards.

43/365: My building has food trucks!

The building I work in has been renovating the cafe we had, so instead of leaving the tenants high and dry they have been bringing out food trucks for the last two weeks. I finally decided to get close enough to check one out, but a 40 minute wait for a cheesesteak wasn't in the cards today.

42/365: Johnny's Wanderlust

Johnny spent a month in Europe in 2010, and it's one of his most cherished memories. So, for his birthday last year I got canvas prints done of the three places he visited: Paris, Barcelona, and Rome. These hang above our couch in the living room. I love looking at them and thinking about when I finally get to travel abroad.

41/365: I'm terrible at studying

Johnny and I tried studying today in our favorite graduate business lounge. I lasted about 20 minutes before spending the next three hours on pinterest. In my defense, I'm nearly four weeks ahead for class, so I can afford a slacker weekend right now. This is me outlining a chapter on long-term brand management.

40/365: Ten thoughts on a quiet Saturday

1. I love this new mug. The bird almost match the birds tattooed on my arm.

2. I was in Starbucks this morning listening to someone about to graduate and a PricewaterhouseCooper recruiter discuss career opportunities. It got me thinking about what I want to use my four electives to minor it. I think I'll go for finance over entrepreneurship. A handful of finance classes won't hurt, right?

3. I need to organize my design inspirations board on Pinterest. It's getting out of hand.

4. It's really weird to have a Saturday morning at home to myself. Johnny is working overtime again and my class is over. I'm not used to this.

5. I haven't bought a new item of clothing since December. At least I'm keeping with one 2013 goal.

6. Sometimes I wish life was more like a Gilmore Girls episode.

7. Finance sounds extremely boring. How to I reconcile my need for fun against what is better for a career?

8. I need to get on that working from home thing soon. Then maybe I can worry more about fun.

9. I'm kind of happy to not be living in the north right now. It's 70, sunny, and not a snow-pocalypse right now.

10. Writing down ten coherent thoughts was so much harder than I expected. My thoughts don't make much sense usually.

39/365: This made my day at work

I get random requests for information at work relatively frequently, but the requests tend to come from inappropriate email addresses with horrendous grammar. This was my first postcard request. If you notice, descriptive is misspelled. This made up for a long and exhausting week, and it is now in a picture frame on my desk. Best. Request. Ever.

I'm easily amused.

38/365: Apparently these are my favorite colors

Someone told me today that I always wear blue hues and yellow. So, I guess these supersede purple as my favorite

I finally thought about downloading the blogger app on my iPad. This was a pretty painless way to post. Maybe now I can keep a regular schedule.

37/365: I'm a studying machine

Johnny took my camera during our study session and took pictures of Serious Sarah. Brand management starts tomorrow!

Speaking of Serious Sarah, now that I'm settling into a less busy life, I've decided that I need to have a good blog schedule going on. I really like doing this, and I want to make it more than just a 365 picture blog. I want to really make this my space, so watch out for some features and design changes to come later this month and early next month.

36/365: Boyfriend has a cute nephew

Johnny has a cute nephew, when he isn't crying because the tall guy (Johnny) is trying to pick him up.