Becoming yourself.

Ok, so I'm sure it's boring for you to just read about what I'm doing in Austin. If its not boring, its certainly not worth reading about how much we love it here. ( though we do, and encourage all friends from home to visit!)

But I get that, blogging is more about expressing my ideas and thoughts and not my day-to-day activities.

Moving to Austin, has though been a life changing experience. It's given me the independence I needed so desperately to become the person I know I can be. I know I can push myself further, physically and mentally if I'm doing it on my own. If I fail, I fail and I can pick myself up, wipe off and learn from my mistakes.

I'm sure some of you hate it, and that's fine, but CrossFit has certainly helped teach me this. I'm not going to go on a tangent about how you should try it. It's not for everybody. It's for strong minded people who enjoy fitness. It's cultish and I like that. It's also provided me with friends that I otherwise wouldn't have made and an idea of fitness that I hadn't been accustomed to. It can be for anybody, but its not for everybody, and thats what makes it unique.

At 29 years old, I feel better and stronger, mentally and physically than I ever have, and that includes playing sports in high school and at George Mason. CrossFit has also given me a much better relationship with my girlfriend. Which was the original idea for this post.

Mel and I have only been together 15 months, which in real world time is nothing, not even a year and a half and I love her, I legitimately do or I certainly would not have moved out to Austin with her, packing up my life to live with someone that I kind of sort of like. We have our differences, but that makes us real people not robots. She is the missing piece in my life that has finally made me the person I want to be. I like to think I do the same for her. Though she will never admit it :-P We push each others buttons but I can honestly say there is no one better for me.

She told me once, joking, that girlfriends will mold their boyfriends into the what they want them to be. We joked that "Oh no honey, I'm not changing you, I just want you to be the best version of yourself... that I want" I can't say she's molded me. If you knew me before and after I'm still the same person, I think. But I am much,much happier. I can promise you that.

We have shown each other our passions and interjected them into our lives. She is passionate about working out. I need someone to make me more passionate about working out, as I found myself, being very complacent with my own body, gaining excess weight that I didn't need and certainly felt it. When running a mile was a challenge I knew something was wrong.

So after 10 months of her telling me, CrossFit wasn't what I thought it was, and persuading me that I would love it. I did it. I'm not as hooked as her, and I'm fine with that. It gives me what I need physically and more importantly it gives me time with her in a unique way.

My dad told me, and before that, I think she told me via a story that couples that stay together are the ones who are into the same things, that its important for each person to at least try to be into the activities your partner enjoys, whether they be poker, or book reading, or working out.

Sometimes when you least expect it, you might find something you like as well. Or you won't. I wouldn't suggest faking it, to make the other person happy. That's just as detrimental, it will harbor a sense of resentment, the old "I'm only doing this because you're making me" will one day cause a major fight.

As I talked to my dad about this, he made it clear that it if she liked it and I liked it that it would only strengthen our relationship, and CrossFit certainly has.

Last night, we worked out at almost 11pm with our friend Kayla at Crossfit Westlake, for a grueling hour or so. I can say without question that most of you see no fun in working out at 11pm, especially not doing deadlifts, kettlebell swings and pull ups. But we had a blast, we were getting tired prior to going to the gym, and got a second wind that lasted until almost 3 in the morning. After working out, we went out to a bar in downtown Austin, which for our first time drinking downtown, I will sadly admit, was in sweaty workout clothes, but its in Austin, people are in Austin are weird, no one even took a second glance.

It was sort of unconventional, but so are we.

It's what makes us, us.

In April on 2010, if you would have asked me if I would have moved to 2000 miles away with a girl I would have probably said yes under the right circumstances but deep down, I would have wanted to say no, probably not.

Ask me the same question, 15 months later and the answer, obviously, will be different. But the circumstances were right, for both of us. The commitment towards one another to take this leap of faith into a different state/time zone and part of the country has shown me how much I love my girlfriend.  I know when we first started talking about it, some of you ( our friends) said we were crazy, a lot of you, pushed it off as something that wasn't going to happen. Another crazy idea, that will fizzle out in a few months once reality sets in.

But we are here, and happy with each other. it's kind of amazing to tell you the truth. So is she.

New job, Nancy Grace and No fireworks! plus Casey Anthony

So as many of you know, I came out to Austin without a job. why you might ask? Because I love my girlfriend and because I'm smart enough to find a job. We bought sort of figured it would take a few weeks at the minimum and financially that was scary for me. But I found one in 2 days. WHEW, relief. It certainly isn't the job I wanted. It's an account manager for a logistics company, which in the short version means. A company calls us and says they have 23 pallets of water that need to go from Dallas to Houston, my job is to find a truck to get them on. It's a pretty easy job. Yesterday was my first day and as I get used to it, I'm seeing its not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Which is a good thing, plus, every day I have it, I'm making money versus sitting at the pool all day not making any! So I've got that going for me, which is fantastic!

Not fantastic is Casey Anthony. I'll be honest, I could care less about this case. I'm not going to lose sleep over it one way or another. I never knew Caylee and the only reason I know of her is because of Nancy Grace spending months talking about her constantly. But as a prosecutor you have to do a better job, I can't blame the jury, they got rid of whatever bias they probably had and listened to the facts, and the simple fact was, Baez did a much better job than the prosecutor did. He placed doubt in the jury's head. The state spent so much of their time labeling her as a slut and a terrible mother that the defense said. Ok you're right, she's a slut and a liar. big deal, move on. She is a slut and a liar and whether she killed the little girl or not is something I think we will find out on George Anthony's death bed. Casey will move onto fantastic things like a porn or stripping career and you know there will be a book, ghost written of course, titled something like Justice for Caylee or something equally as nauseating. I just hope she gets pregnant again.

Speaking of Nancy Grace. I HATE her. Really, there are few television personalities, I can say that I would donkey punch more than her. My biggest complaint with her is this. Shes fucking annoying, shes a blabbermouth, overly opinionated and racist. YES I said it, shes racist. How many cute black or asian babies/kids/teenagers, disappear or are murdered every year? thousands i'm sure. But God forbid a cute white teenager, drinks her ass off, fucks an Aruban, and disappears, Nancy Grace is all over that shit like prada on Kim Kardashian. Plus really that voice makes me want to punch a baby, it's that annoying.

I'm done my little tangent, for now!


Other things...as our first real weekend finished up, on a firework-less Fourth of July and captured a really nice, very relaxing, fun just all-around wonderful weekend, I realized I really love it here. Even the constant heat, it is July and all, and going for a run, even at 6 or 7 is painful but hey I won't be complaining when it's 60 in January either!

Everything is just about completely settled in, our routines are starting to get back to normalish. My allergies have been acting up, so have Mel's, apparently unbeknown  to us, Austin is terrible for allergies. but I feel better today than I did yesterday so I'll take it!

I'll be honest, I miss home less than I thought I would, but Its not because of the people, I miss my family and friends terribly. We've just been too busy to dwell on that. Plus we have met some really great friends and that's helped take our mind off things.

That's really all I have for now. Hope you're enjoying this.

Fourth of July in Austin

So, Austin hasn't had any real rain since sometime in what we hear is October, so there is a burn ban in Travis county, which means no fireworks. This sucks! We were excited about seeing fireworks over Lake Travis, but hey there's always next year...

We do still have crossfit out here. Today's workout SUCKED, in a good way of course. For those of you who do CrossFit, it was Hansen, which if you're too lazy to check out the link. 30 Kettle Bell Swings, 30 burpees and 30 sit ups. Five rounds. Sounds easy right? NO, you're wrong.

I've decided that there is something wrong with the Texas weather in that I have yet to finish a workout with my shirt on. Those of you that know me well know I'm not taking my shirt off to display my six pack abs and killer shoulders, its because I'm sweating so much my shirt begins to get heavier and heavier. I hope one day, perhaps in the winter, I can overcome this issue. until then i should start working on that beach body!

We get cable today, hopefully, it's been a rough week of not being able to watch TV other than the rather large collection of DVD's we brought with us. But even they get old. Plus we haven't seen True Blood, yet and this tells you something is wrong with the world!

That's all I got right now. It's been a good week so far. the people, as mentioned earlier are really nice and the city is gorgeous, albeit the disturbingly hot weather but hey maybe we will get used to it some day!

The following picture is not of me, nor anyone I know, I stole it from a crossfit website, but I loved it!

That's all I got for today, read it, because if you're not. What the hell am I doing writing about it!

To New Adventures and stuff like that!

I'm taking a cue from Mel and starting a blog. It was her idea first and I'll admit I'm stealing it fair and square.

As most of you know we have moved to Austin and as I've lived my entire life living on the mid-atlantic, most of this was in Philadelphia so this is all incredibly new to me. It is however the most daring, scaring and exciting thing I've ever done and in doing it with Mel and I couldn't ask for a better person to do it with.

I've always felt the need to explore the rest of this country and we have decided that this is the best time to do it. I love my family and I love my girlfriends family as well and leaving them was incredibly hard, a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Leaving our friends was equally as difficult.

I'm not going to bore you with details about the drive from PA-Nashville-Austin, other than to tell you it is LONG! Nashville is a city I will definitely go back to. I'm glad we stopped and got to check out Broadway, lots of country bars and good music galore.

We fell in love with a singer-songer writer, Alecia Arnall at a bar called Whiskey Bent Saloon and didn't want to leave.

But we had to push forward and finish our journey into Texas, which I might add is as BIG as people say it is. We got into Texas around noon, didn't get to Austin until about 7. Thankfully, we drug Mel's stepdad Chris along and her friend from work India also came over to help us move everything in. So we unpacked our super large packed to the brim pod in the sweltering Austin heat on Friday night, instead of spending all day saturday doing so. We also got to meet our neighbors Dave and Mike and made quick friends.

 Everyone is Austin has been super friendly and welcoming. I left my wallet on top of the car on Friday night and on Saturday, forgot it was up there as Mel and I drove to Target to grab things for breakfast, it flew off the top, unbeknownst to me. About 20 minutes later as I began to freak out that my wallet was missing, I got an email from Charles, a former co-worker at Genactis, telling me that somebody had found my wallet. This is the kind of shit I'm talking about. This guy, met up with me gave me my wallet and left everything in tact without wanting a reward.

Saturday night, to celebrate our arrival and the beginning of the end of our settling in, we took Chris to a place called Chuy's and had a fantastic meal.

Surprisingly there is a lot of Tex Mex places out here; who woulda thought :-) Barbeque is also a pretty rare find out here as well!

Goal #1 of my being out here was to find a job. Which I did surprisingly quickly, by Tuesday actually! So starting this coming tuesday I will be an account manager for a logistics company!

Goal #2 of course, was to find a Crossfit gym to fill in the space left open from KOP, certainly  not to replace it but fill in the space :-) I've been to CrossFit Woodward and CrossFit Westlake and Mel and I have both fallen in love with Westlake, the people over there are super nice and welcoming. This is not a dig to Woodward, they were also very nice but Westlake took it to another level. Of course my job is in Pflugerville, which is to the north and about 5 minutes from Woodward and Westlake is on the opposite end of the spectrum so to speak! I've got some deciding to do!

As our first week comes to a close it's been the adventure we thought it would be and more. We have met some good friends, and I really love it here.

I'm excited for what it's going to bring us and I'm excited about what we can bring to it. To give it a touch of Philly everywhere we can. Roots are roots and they aren't going anywhere!

'Til Next Time!