Blog Every Day in May Challenge: Day 1

This blog has been super quiet for the past couple months.  Part of that is because I moved, another part is that I've been working ridiculously long hours at my new job, and part of it is just because I'm lazy.  I figured a good blog challenge might help me get kickstarted and back up and writing again!

I found out about this challenge through a couple other blogs (which directed me to Jenni's blog, story of my life) and am super excited to join in!  I may or may not write to her prompt everyday, but I will try very very hard to get a blog post out everyday.  For today I will use her prompt, well kinda.  Her prompt is the story of your life in 250 words or less, mine will be heavily focused on recent events and how I ended up in Washington State. Here goes:

Born 12/21/84, grew up in Tahoe, love the outdoors. Somehow made my way to school in Michigan.  Decided to study Mechanical Engineering because everyone told me I'd be good at it.  Going there was one of the best choices I've made, not only did I meet RoB, become a huge fan of college football, but it set me up for a successful career.  I started my career in controls and instrumentation engineering in Oakland, CA with some awesome, very knowledgable, coworkers.  I loved living in the bay area, it was everything I wanted after college, but the big city started to wear me down.  With the sad closing of that office I packed my bags (and boyfriend and dog) to head to Kentucky for a year assignment.  Kentucky was awesome, I got some new work experiences, made some very fun friends, and took in all Kentucky had to offer: bourbon and horse racing.  As my time there came to an end I took my career into my own hands and pursued a job I was interested in in Washington state.  Next thing I knew, I was packing up all my stuff again to head back out west, this time to the pacific northwest.  This is my new adventure!  Work is more demanding than it ever has been, but I've already met so many awesome people and there is so much to explore here.  I have a feeing this place is going to be another on my list of great places to live.

The Great Lexington Dog Park Tour Part 2

See the explanation for this tour and part 1 here.

The next stop on our dog park tour is Jacobson Park.  Jacobson Park is just off of Richmond road on the south east side of town, again this is a dog park inside a much bigger city park.  This park, like most in Lexington, is very green with rolling hills. 

The dog park here is the smallest in Lexington and the only one surrounded by a chain-link fence, all the others have nice horse-farm like fences.  There are two different places you can park, above the dog park or below it (the park itself is on a hill), most people like to park at the top but parking at the bottom will give you a nice short uphill walk once you get into the park. 



The view form the top parking lot



Looking in the fence

We go here quite often because it is the closest to us and there are almost always other dogs there to play with.  I've heard people complain about this park getting too muddy and that it's too small, but it really isn't that bad.  The only downside of it being small is that as a human you don't get as much walking in, its more of a stand around and watch the dogs play type of place. I think the most important part is that Angel almost always enjoys his time here. 

Lower entrance

Happy Angel

Next stop, Wellington Dog Park!
Previously, Masterson Station Dog Park!

Moving Forward with my Blog

Last night I was cooking (no seriously, I was, stop laughing, it's not a joke!) and listeneing to College Football Live from the other room.  They mentioned something about us hitting the halfway point in the college football season which made me very sad.  I was already thinking about how I sad I get when the season is over and having to wait until the next season.  Then I realized I have no clue where I'll be next year during football season, and I got a bit shocked (not quite scared).  My job has had me moving around lately, but I always kinda knew what was up next.  When my job is done here in Kentucky in June, I have no clue where I'll be headed next.

I like to plan things and micro manage and I get a little freaked out with not knowing what will happen, but my company has been good to me so I expect that whatever happens next I will be ok with.  I do like having this blog as something constant in my ever changing life, but I've been a bit flighty with some of my posts.  There are quite a few  things I start and then never finish (Lexington dog park tour, 30x30, ect).  Well my new goal is to finish up and follow up on all those things so I can move forward with other stuff on this blog!  I might also try making some other improvments to explanniefyfed as well, please let me know if you have any suggestions!

Football Friday – Deciding if this SEC thing is for realz

I strongly dislike the SEC.  Yes, they have had some great teams but as an overall conference I don’t think they are that much better than some of the other AQ conferences and they cheat (see oversigning).  Yet they always seem to get all the media love, and as a big ten fan, I hate that! So, this weekend I will be attending my first SEC conference football game, and I hope to be impressed.

Michigan has a bye this week, which allows me to take a closer look at thing happening elsewhere.  Since I live in Lexington, I’ve decide to take in the UK vs South Carolina game this weekend.  I know UK isn’t exactly a powerhouse of the SEC when it come to football, but they are playing a top 10 team and it is the SEC so it’s suppose to be better than anything else, right?  I will report back with how the atmosphere is different at SEC vs Big Ten and if the football played really is that much better than anywhere else in the country (which I know it won’t be).  Also I will get to see if people really dress better to go to these games, and I may have to step up my game and actually look cute for a football game!

There really aren’t very many good games this week, but Big Ten conference play starts and there are two decent matchups there.  Wisconsin vs Nebraska was suppose to be a battle of two of the best big ten teams last year but Wisconsin ran away with it pretty early, I wouldn’t be surprised if the opposite were to happen this year.  MSU vs OSU is the other big one, I really just want both teams to look bad and have it turn into a giant slop-fest, and then declare them both losers for cheating.  But really this game is a total toss-up, I think it will be close and I can’t even venture a guess as to who might come out on top.

That’s it for this week, I will report back soon with my thoughts on an SEC game vs a Big Ten (and possibly vs a Pac-12) game.  Spoiler alert; I think the Big Ten will come out on top!

Kentucky Wine!

One of the things I've noticed about Kentucky is the lack of users on yelp.  Yes, businesses have a page but there are usually only a handful of reviews, so I'm trying to help that by throwing in some of my own.  I thought a good place to start would be to review all the wineries we have visited since moving to Kentucky!

The first Kentucky winery we went to was Chrisman Mill's tasting room in Hamburg, see my yelp review here.  The wine was not so good, the server didn't really answer our questions but he was nice, and the tasting room was very cute, that about sums it up!  After tasting wine there we were very nervous about Kentucky wine in general and worried that we might not be able to find any that we liked.

Our next free weekend we drove out towards Frankfort to try some wineries out there and had a nice meal at Holly Hill Inn (review here).  Our first winery was Prodigy (review here) which was a good stop, not really what we expected but still glad we stopped by.  Our second stop was Equus Run which we loved, and highly recommend!

Our next wine trip occurred during RoB's birthday bash, and you can read his details about it here.  We started at Grimes Mill which was a very friendly place with good wine, and also was interested in hiring RoB (talk about a great birthday present!) he now works there and blogs for them.  From there we went to Talon, which we had a groupon for, it was a  good deal but the wine was VERY hit or miss.  Last stop that day was at Jean Ferris, where we also ended up eating dinner.  My yelp review is just pertaining to the wine tasting, which was weird.  I wish they had a separate tasting room and not just the bar in the restaurant.  Their wine is great, but the wine tasting experience there wasn't great.

One day about a month or two later we were heading to pick up Angel from doggie day care and saw that Acres of Land winery was right around the corner, so we took a detour.  The wine was just ok, but the tasting experience was a bit awkward, I really hate it when you have to pay before you taste, and that's what they did here.

That sums up my most recent yelp dump, at some point I also plan to add Blackbarn and Harkness Edwards since we went to both of those during the McConnell Springs Barrel tasting.

New Year of Reading

One of the downsides of taking a temporary assignment was that I couldn't bring all my stuff with me.  This meant leaving behind a bunch of books.  I have a book problem, I will go to a used book store (or free book exchange!), or even an awesome local book shop and walk out with an arm full of books.  I also get books passed onto me by my mom and other literary obsessed friends.  I can't read books as fast as I acquire them, which meant I had a great collection of "to-read" books back in California.  This comprised most of my book collection since I rarely hold onto book after I read them (unless they are a favorite or signed or something). I like to pass them on to someone who will like them, sell them back to a used book store to get credit to buy more books (!), or just donate them to a free books exchange/local thrift store.

Of all those books I only brought about 15-20 with me, thinking I would still be acquiring books at a fast rate and if I take a trip home I can always get some of those books I left there.  I also got a library card at the Lexington public library (which is a very nice library).  I'll keep a to-read list here with all the books I currently have and add to it the more books I acquire, along with links to the books I review.  Hopefully that will also remind me which books I've read and should review.  I think I'll make a goal of reading 50 books this year, about 4.17 books per month, and yes that will include audio books (since I drive 30 minutes to work everyday and sometimes have mindless tasks at work).



Yay, reading!



I also got a fantastic little journal as a late xmas present from my wonderful mama!  Its a cute little readers journal where I can keep track of all the books I read and I love it!



Isn't my mom great?



New Year, New Location...Now from Kentucky!

So many new things!

We made it to Kentucky, and it took us 7 days! You can see RoB's recap of day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, and day 7.  It was a great drive especially because we were able to take our time and enjoy ourselves, we also didn't hit any bad weather, yay!

A couple new things I would like to do while I'm here in Kentucky, some of which have to do with my blog!  The first thing I've noticed is that you can't really rely on yelp or urbanspoon the way we used to in California.  There just aren't enough users, leaving us with too small a sample size.  In order to try and help this I plan to join both yelp and urbanspoon and review places I go, in hopes of making it more worthwhile in the future.  I also plan to talk about all kinds of fun Kentucky things like that (but only the good places :) here, on my blog!

One other thing I'd like to do more of is book reviews and other book/writing topics.  I love to read, and I read a lot.  I also used to be more involved with librarything early reviewers and hope to get back into that.  I recently joined the website book blogs and even though I will mostly use that as a way for me to find good blogs to read, I'd also like some of those members to stop by here and see what I have to say! Lastly, I hope to revisit my NaNoWriMo story, the whole point of it for me was to have a good starting place, which I think I do...

Let the Journey Begin!

Tomorrow we start our cross country road trip from California to Kentucky!  I am very excited about moving to KY but am a little unsure about the trip itself.  We are taking two cars so we are each driving our own car out there which means I will have to drive all 2400 miles of it.  I've never driven on a long road trip like this before, I've been the passenger but never the driver.  I don't think I'll have a problem with it and we aren't doing ridiculously long days or anything like that so I hope it will be ok, but it will be one more brand new experience for me!

I will try and do a post each night especially if we go and see something exciting, but that will also depend on what time we get in in the evening and if I have wifi at the hotel.  I'm hoping this is a good way for everyone to keep up with where I'm headed!

I've got 5 books on tape (some Lee Child, Harlem Coben, Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Jane Austin), a couple leftover podcasts, and hopefully I can listen to a bunch of college football over the first couple days.

Any tips and suggestions for a long cross country drive? Any must see places (we'll mostly be on 40 for the first few days once we get to Vegas)?