Happy Hump Day!

Man, I don't know about you guys, but I feel like this week has just been dragging on. Maybe it's because I'm still recovering from getting sick after vacation; or maybe it's because I'm actually on my own at work this week. Either way, I know I am ready for this weekend. I have some very exciting things coming up and I'm ready to start celebrating them!

I think this Friday will be my favorite part of the weekend though. I probably haven't mentioned this, but I have a third cousin who is very musically gifted. He has been playing at places around Tulsa for some time now. His name is Jason, and he has been doing all kinds of things to get his music out there, and he just recorded his first EP! Friday night is his CD release party at the Historic Cain's Ballroom here in Tulsa, and I couldn't be more excited, happy, and proud of him for accomplishing his dreams. Feel free to buy his EP, The Unicorn EPisode. It's available on iTunes [HERE] and it's also available on amazon [HERE]. Yep, I'm totally spamming my cousin. I think it's wonderful, but I KNOW I'm biased. And I'm okay with that.

Now for some goodies to help me (us) get over my (our) Wednesday woes. It's hump day people, we're on the downhill side to the weekend!

Here's to Thursday and hoping the weekend is as awesome as it's building itself up to be!

June 11, 2013

DAY TWO!!

It's really not that hard to jump back on this bandwagon. I quite missed it.

In (the last book post I did), I mentioned that I would like to start doing book posts quarterly. That means you guys get to look forward to a book post coming up at the end of the month! I'm very excited about this one, because I have a sweet deal to tell you guys about! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Along with loving my full time job, I am able to return to my part-time job that I have had since the summer of 2007. I began working at a local baseball field here in Tulsa, where I alternate between keeping score/announcing baseball games and working in the concession stand. When I worked at the bank, it was in practical for me to keep returning to the fields because our workday ended at 7 p.m. Then I worked most weekends, even Sundays until January. I think I worked 3 days total out there during the 2012 season. With this new job, I do get off at 5 p.m. every day (which is AWESOME to have a set schedule), and I don't have to work weekends. HOLLA!!

I've already put in time at the concession stand, and now I get to work the score box two nights a week. The score box is a lot of fun to me because I actually have fun saying "Smith gets an RBI double to left center, bringing Johnson to the plate with 1 out." I know, I'm weird. Plus, you just can't beat watching baseball in person.

So even though I work OVER 40 hours a week, I'm doing things I enjoy doing. And that's not real work at all!

And just a random thought I had for you all (because that's how I am, you should know this by now!):

After a fairly cool April, May, and first week of June, it's flippin' hot in Oklahoma already. Any carymba! Walking to work will probably make me sweat, and it's just 3 blocks! Don't be jellyyyyyyy!

June 10, 2013

Hello my dear readers (if I have any left!)

I do apologize for being so non-existent for almost a year now. I am always constantly thinking "I should update my blog, but then I think about it a little more and I'm not quite sure where to start. So then I don't update. AND, I hate doing posts like "In this month, these are the cool things I did." I've done far too many of those to even begin to count. So here are the main points I think you should know so that I can hopefully be a little more consistent from here on out:

• I'm still living in Oklahoma, just now in the Tulsa area.
• I, my belongings, my family, and my family's homes and belongings were not affected by the recent tornadoes.
• I started a new job in the health field back in April!!!! (This is a big thing for me, as I got my degree from the University of Oklahoma in Health and Exercise Sciences. Plus I hated my job at the bank.)
• Dillon and I are 10 months strong!
• I went on a wonderful but short vacation to Cancun last week.
• I am reading a lot. And spending a lot of my money at Better World Books.

So there is the fastest update for you guys. Now for a little more information:

Beginning about October 2012, I began looking for a new job. I had come to the realization that the banking industry, while it is a great industry and growing industry, is not the industry I was meant to be in. So I filled out application after application doing all kinds of things. I even got a few interviews here and there, and even at other smaller banks. All of these interviews didn't really lead to anything, and it was SO FRUSTRATING. I was not happy by any means, and it began to take a toll on my personal life. I would come home crying from work almost every day. I would argue over and over with my boyfriend for no reason. I would shut myself off from everyone because I didn't want to be "helped," I just wanted a new job.

Then an opportunity came about with some networking that I had done in college. The process of starting this new job began in March (that's 5 months of job hunting for those of you keeping score). I came in for an interview with my contact, was told by the HR department that I was under-qualified, then got referred back to the position I had been originally referred to over the holiday break. I was technically still waiting for a phone call from that supervisor for that position. I waited for a couple weeks for this phone call, as I had done over the holidays. Then at the beginning of April, I received a phone call from my contact in the company asking if I was still interested in the positions I was "under-qualified" for. You bet your sweet booty I was!! I immediately scheduled an interview and then got hired in a few days' time for the position I am in now. I put in my notice at the bank, which wasn't a full 2 weeks (making me ineligible to ever work there again), and started on my job on April 22.

I work for a local health insurance company in the HMO department. I answer phones ALLLLLLLLLL DAAAYYYYYYYY LONG, and I love my job more than you could ever imagine. I am 1000% happier here than I was at the bank.

And the cool thing about me updating you on my job? Today was my first day out of training. Today I did (almost) everything on my own, and it was pretty darn neat. I  love having my own desk, my own cubicle, and being able to walk to work! (I live about 3 blocks from the office.)

I hope this was enough of a post to keep you guys coming back. I'm going to try to be better now that I have come to terms with the fact that I won't be able to catch you up on everything that has happened in almost 8 months.

Recent(ish) Readings

So the last post I did of the books I had read was LAST JULY! Granted, this was right before I went on my cruise with my mom, and you all know what happened after that...I came home from vacation, met Dillon that weekend, and then started neglecting all kinds of stuff, including y reading and blog.

So here is an update on what I have read from vacation to now:

Sisterhood Everlasting - Book 5 of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series written by Ann Brashares.

I don't know how many of you guys read these when you were younger, but I ATE THEM UP. I loved following the lives of Lena, Bee, Tibby, and Carmen. I personally felt like I could relate a little bit of myself in each of the four of them, but honestly Carmen was never my favorite. I won't go into details about it all, but I'm sure that you if you read them you would know why.

This book meets up with the four of them quite some time after the last time we saw them in Forever in Blue. It is very much like the previous four stories: Lots of drama, lots of heartache, but most of all, LOVE. Because pants = love. love yourself, love your friends. And the love between these friends, even though they are nowhere near as close as they used to be, is still the constant in this book.

Other than that, I really wish I could divulge more information, just because it is SUCH a good finale to the series, but it just gives entirely too much away. I cried within like 5 chapters. But don't let that turn you away from reading the last of this series. Do it.

Sorry I'm not Sorry, Sorry I'm not Sorry: Sucks to Suck, and Sorry I'm not Sorry: Shitshow Part 1 - first three novellas written by the infamous twitter author @SororityProblem. I started following this twitter handle after months of watching my sorority sisters retweet some of the funny ones pertaining to wine and wanting to be like Adele. I mean how could you not love an honest person who likes to tweet about these things?

During my weeklong cruise, I giggled along to these three reads. WARNING, they are very crude and very inappropriate and filled with curse words, sex scandals, and drinking. But if you can look past all that, it's actually a little entertaining. Behind all the stories of how bad girls in college can get, is a story about a girl named Alexa that has some serious mommy issues, trust issues, and issues with staying sober. I personally think it's a pretty funny set of books, just because she never seems to stop constantly sticking her foot in her mouth. She's always constantly battling for her best friend TA's attention with her best frenemy Taylor. The stuff she gets herself into is entertaining to me. They are cheap books for your reader (or reader apps like kindle), and really easy reads.


The Fifth Vial - Michael Palmer

I was introduced to this book by my sorority sister Kaitlin last February when I was visiting Norman. She said that she loved it because it was a medical mystery, and since I studied health and exercise sciences and loved mysteries, that she thought I would like it. (Feel free to correct that run-on sentence.) Well you know what, she was right. I really liked this book.

This is one of those books that follows the lives of a three different characters whose lives are intertwined and they just don't know it yet. Each of the three are victims of a 5th vial of blood that has been taken against their will in an international blood testing/blood typing facility. The fifth vial gives a lot of their information to a secret society, who has taken on a god-like personality to choose who lives and who doesn't. This secret society is a very complex structure that spans across the continents and truly believe they are doing the world good. This book touches on the very serious issue of illegal organ harvesting that seems to be a growing crime.

Although I think the story is a bit far-fetched and extreme in the world of organ harvesting, I still think it is a really good read if you enjoy mysteries. About halfway through, you can see how two of the three lives are related, but the third one takes almost to the end of the book to see how he is intertwined with the other too. The very serious subject matter actually has a really good happy ending, and it's definitely worth checking out!


After I finished The Fifth Vial, I decided to start picking up my Christmas presents as my next read. Dillon, being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, bought me three very. awesome. gifts. for Christmas: The Nashville Soundtrack CD, the Pitch Perfect on Blu-Ray, and the complete set of Harry Potter!! Between the end of January and the beginning of March I read the first three in these series: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Originally, my intentions were to read all 7 of them at this time, but after I finished book 3, I decided that I wanted a break and come back to them before they start getting really dark. After I finished book 3, my brother, my roommate, and I all decided to take a day trip to the Tulsa City-County Library. While I was there, I stumbled across a book I had marked as "To-Read" on my good reads profile, so I picked that up:


Man in the Blue Moon by Michael Morris

I believe that I marked this as to-read as part of a giveaway, but the summary that was on goodreads was enough to keep me intrigued, even if I didn't win the book.

This book is set in Florida during World War I. We follow the story of a family whose husband has left them due to a drug addiction. The mother, Ella Wallace, was left to man the shop and land he left her, land that has been in her family for as long as she remembers. In fact, her father's parting lands with her were to never sell the land that is her birthright.

Then a man stumbles upon her doorstep, claiming to be her husband's relative. He agrees to help her out with maintaining all of her property. The man, Lanier, is a very mysterious man who doesn't reveal much about his past, his family, or how he stumbled into Ella and her family's lives. Just claims it was  an arrangement previously set up with her husband. Along the way, we find that Lanier seems to have some kind of extra ability that allows him to heal people who are suffering by simply praying over them. This ability also stirs some trouble in the small town in Florida, and there is lots of speculation about the kind of man he is. Being in the small town, there is also lots of speculation of the manner of his relationship with Ella.

Throughout the book, we watch Ella struggle with money, feelings, and keeping a good image for her sons, no matter what is being spread about her throughout the town. Then the Flu plagues the town and almost completely decimates the town.

The book is very intriguing. It keeps you guessing the whole time about Lanier, about the corrupt banker Clive, and about a reverend who makes a brief appearance in the book. If you enjoy historical fiction, it's definitely worth a read!


So that is what I have read. Not near as many as I would like, but it's starting to change. I do love having the option of what I own and being able to walk a few blocks to my local library. It's definitely helping my relationships with books.

I think I'm going to make this a quarterly thing. Definitely a lot better for remembering specifics of books to be able to summarize them.

Anything good on your bookshelf lately? I love suggestions!! And as always, you can find me on goodreads.com here:  http://www.goodreads.com/mbattiest

On 2012's Resolutions

For as long as I can remember, neither I nor any one family member has been to keen on committing to a New Year's Resolution. I know that this is typically when people decide they want to exercise more, eat healthier, quit smoking, etc., but I also know that most resolutions never make it out of February. And sometimes even January! So I never really had any intentions of creating "resolutions" for the year of 2012. (As a side note, for all of those health-related things, I know they are difficult. I also know you won't stick to them until you are TRULY ready to make LIFESTYLE changes. That takes some time.)

But last year, I decided, to heck with it. I'm going to do it! Because I have some fun ones that I've been wanting to do for some time now!!

The result: C-

Let's recap what my 2012 resolutions were:

1 new local restaurant each month, totaling 12 new local restaurants for the year.

The Result: 9 new restaurants.

Blogged: 7

9/12 not so bad. Fail on blogging and picture taking.

See them here:

January. February. March. April. June. August. August part 2 to try to catch up.

1 book each month, totaling having read 12 books the entire year.

The Result: 4 out of 12 of the books I intended to read.

According to my "Reading List" page: 8 books.

According to mygoodreads.com profile: 12 books

Blogged: 5

FOUR OUT OF TWELVE?! I'm ashamed!

Apparently the only 5 I blogged about, I put all in one post here:

Recent Readings.

Overall, I'm really not too disappointed in reaching 9/12 and 4/12. Guess that just comes with never really having done resolutions before.

So what did I learn?

+I apparently really like American bistros and barbecue. and Mexican food, because one of the restaurants I didn't blog about was also Mexican.

+I tend to read A LOT less when I have people to hang out with.

+These types of resolutions are fun and not once did I feel guilty about not meeting a month.

+Sometimes, you start a book with good intentions. Then it's like torture trying to finish it (Pride and Prejudice.)

+I didn't meet everything I wanted to do in 2012, but it was still a pretty kick ass year!

I never decided on anything I wanted to try to accomplish in 2013. In all honesty, it may just be "read as many books as possible," "do as many tourist-y things I can in Tulsa," and "try to eat at lots of different restaurants when we go out instead of the same ol' stuff every time (not that same ol' is bad!)."

So far, I think I've done a fairly good job of just those!

p.s. Are you on goodreads? Find me here! goodreads profile

6 months

6 months.

24 weeks.

180 days.

4320 hours.

259200 minutes.

That is how long Dillon and I have been together.

I know it was a little dramatic, but guys, this is a big deal for me. I had a couple serious boyfriends in high school, one that I was even crazy about for years after high school. But none of it worked out, and now I know for good reason. Even every boyfriend since high school, I've gotten bored of everything to do with the relationship within 3 months, and just let it kind of die off.

I've tried convincing Dillon that he is wonderful and can do better, especially with the struggles we've been having lately. But he won't hear of it, and that makes me love him even more. Yes, you read that correctly, love. Since certain relationships, I've decided that I am going to be the crazy fun single aunt the rest of my life, and I loved the thought of it. I never wanted marriage and kids, unless I could adopt them. But since Dillon, my whole thought of everything has changed. I've never met any man who has ever been so loving, caring, giving, and supportive to me. And if you knew about my daddy issues, you would understand.

I'm stubborn, I'm crazy, and I'm very independent. It's hard to love and care for a person like me romantically, but he does. And I definitely think this is meant to last. There aren't any wedding bells or anything like that, just two silly peeps hanging out, being a team, living life the way it should be, and loving each other.

To Dillon: Thank you for everything you've done for me the past six months. I never would have thought I would want to spend the rest of my life with a man until I met you. I also never thought I would ever see you outside of Torchy's after that first night. And I also never thought that you were interested in me, even though you semi-half-proposed to me the night we met. Are you sure you still want to be with me? Because I still want to be with you. I love you more than I ever knew I was capable of feeling. The last six months have been some of the best in my life. Here's to many, many, many more. Love you grease monkey.

Remember me?

So, it's been a while. A truly long while. Three months and counting. I'll try to fill you in on everything.

Here's a little synopsis. I work for a bank. I have for a little over a year and a half. I've changed locations. My location got robbed in October. This jacks with your psyche in more ways you can imagine.

I don't like talking about it, but I know you will probably ask and offer support. I genuinely appreciate it.

Since then it's kind of been a struggle. I've gone to therapy for the anxiety, but I've also been having a bit of an identity crisis.

I turned 25 in November. TWENTY-FIVE. That identity crisis? Even worse. ha!

One week before Christmas, boyfriend's grandpa passed away. We were supposed to spend Christmas day with him. It was a rough week for him and his family, and I think we spent maybe one day apart from each other.

Because the funeral was on a very cold day the day after Christmas, both boyfriend and I got sick. VERY SICK. I though I had pneumonia and went to the ER around 7 a.m. on New Year's Eve. So boyfriend and I spent our first NYE together sick at home. Fun stuff.

I've been looking for another job. The identity crisis has made it to where I'm not happy in my current job, and we live in 'MERICA, people! We have the freedom to change our situations, so I need to. Plus I don't like how unhappy I am. And neither do either of my two close friends, as it is causing problems in our relationships.

So that is the last 3 months in a nutshell. I know it's not a lot, but I've got to start somewhere...