#WEverb14: Rebuild

Today's prompt is: REBUILDWhat do you plan to pick-up or rebuild this year?

This is something I've thought about a lot. When I was a teenager I was on the phone all the time, like on the phone until 3 am on a regular basis, but now that I'm in my late twenties, I avoid the phone. I spend my whole work day on the phone and answering email, so then when it comes time to do those things in my personal life, I simply don't want to. The consequences of that mean that my relationships with my very best friends are conducted sporadically and via social media. That's simply not good enough for the women who have been by my side throughout it all - high school, college, my wedding - nope, the occasional Facebook poke isn't enough.  So what I'm going to rebuild this year is my real life friendships. This means more calls, more emails, more face to face time with my friends, even if that takes some work.

I can't wait to hear about the projects that they are working on and the hot date they went on and whether or not they are planning to buy a house or have a baby - all this not from a Facebook post or from a photo on Instagram, but from them one on one.  This year, I'm going to be a better friend.What are you rebuilding?

Love and Bacon,
Kelsey

#WEverb14: Hasten

Sorry for the late update, I didn't have a chance to check out the prompts today.  Here's the 3rd one:

3: HASTEN
What new trick or shortcut did you learn in 2013? What do you want to speed up in 2014?

Ooh this is a tough one. I mean, I have two whole Pinterest boards dedicated to exactly this idea - one is Clean & Tidy (dedicated to being clean and organized) and the other is Good To Know (Things that don't fit in Clean and Tidy like remedies and charts).   I think the best thing I've pinned this year that actually helps me do things quicker is from the Kitchn - the article breaks down how to cut, dice and chop fruit and vegetables. 

The one most helpful to me was definitely cutting onions. Onions always make me cry, so I don't have a lot of practice with them, but their method makes tons of sense!  You essentially cut the onion in half, then use a grid pattern to get perfectly sized pieces of onions - GENIUS! I've even offered to cut onions for dinner now that I know this trick!

Source: The Kitchn

For 2014, I really need to apply myself to keeping a clean home all the time. The Baconator and I are both pretty messy, and we both go through bouts of cleaning, but my goal is to figure out how to get my house cleaner faster and how to keep it that way.  A clean, mean, twenty fourteen!

What are you hoping to Hasten in 2014?

Love and Bacon,
Kelsey

#WEverb14: Remember

Here's the second prompt for #WEverb14:

2. REMEMBER
What did you do in 2013 that you will remember the details of forever?

Last year (OMG, that went by so fast!!), I purchased my first car. Well, we purchased it, and technically, it's not my first car. But it is the first time that I've had to buy a car. I made spreadsheets and we did test drives and it took foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Who doesn't love The Sandlot??

Not just picking out the car, but the actual buying process. I am not kidding around here when I say that it took us 3+ hours to buy the vehicle once we got to the dealership. We decided to go with a Toyota Prius V Five because we liked the drive, the liked the features that came with it, with liked the storage capacity (only 3 cubic feet smaller than the Rav4) and of course, we liked the amazing gas milage. As an added bonus, the Baconator gets a family discount on Toyotas because his dad works for them down in Indiana. We walked in knowing exactly how much we'd pay for the car, and we'd even been emailing with the dealership and had picked out the exact vehicle we would be driving off the lot.

There was no haggling on price, but man-oh-man, the things they try to up sell take hours. I mean, we talked to 5 different guys, maybe even 6, on the day we bought the car from the showroom to when we finally got the keys. But now that we've had our little red car for 4 months, I could not be happier.

In 4.5 months, we've put over 4000 miles on it, filled up gas 10 times, drove back and forth to Evansville 4 times, road tripped to Peoria and I have filled the windshield wiper fluid. (Ok, so that wasn't actually significant).

Here she is: Penny, our Red Prius!

What's your Remember moment from 2013?

Love and Bacon,
Kelsey

#WEverb14 Kicks Off Today!

So you may have noticed that I'm a little... willy nilly with my blogging frequency, so I've decided to kick of the year by tackling one of my resolutions: blog more often (yes, I realize that this was one of last year's resolutions, too).

Anyway, what better way to get back in the swing of things than to join the #WEverb14 cycle that is kicking off today? None that I can think of :)

So what is #weverb? It's essential 31 prompts that will help you reflect on 2013 and looks forward to 2014!  How you participate is up to you, one prompt, just a handful or every one of them.  My intention is to answer each of them through the month of January.

I'd love if you did it along with me! I'll post the prompt along with my response every day.

Kicking it off, here's the first prompt:

1: COMPOSE
Write a haiku for 2013 and one for 2014

2013:
Travel (Gold Status!)
Sky blue waters, wedding days
And Cincinnati

2014:
My resolutions
Last all year, no matter what
With no excuses

What are your haikus?

Love and Bacon,
Kelsey

I Love My Pit Bull (and why you should, too)

I just learned that today is National Pit Bull Awareness Day and that October is National Pit Bull Awareness month. I am so glad that these under appreciated and totally misunderstood pups are getting some national coverage for being fantastic family dogs!!

Bowie and Alice

A number of years back, my best friend had a pit bull named Bowie and this dog was the exact opposite of what I'd heard about pit bulls. I mean, c'mon, I literally spooned with this dog when the Baconator and I visited Harlem. 3 people and a dog in a full-sized bed made for tight quarters, but this dog was the best. It was during this one little weekend that pit bulls started sneaking up the potential breed list for me.

Before we had fully decided to adopt a dog, I was volunteering at a no-kill shelter here in Chicago, PAWS.  It was there, that I became fully sold on adopting a pit. I fell in love with not one, not two but 4 different pit bulls there that, while very energetic, were extremely loving and eager to please. PAWS has a dedicated program for pit bulls that fully vets potential owners and dedicates an entire course to educate new owners on how to be responsible with their new pit bulls. (In Chicago, there is still quite a bit of illegal dogfighting, so shelters need to be extra cautious when vetting owners for pits to make sure the dogs are going to good homes.) When the time finally came time to adopt, we actually chose to go with one of the smaller pit bull specific non-profits in Chicago to ensure that we would get a puppy and since the smaller ones need more help. (You can read all about adopting Leia here and here.)

Leia's first day with us!

We adopted Leia last April and she has turned our lives upside down, in the best possible way. She is on the small side for a pit (47 lbs), but full of wiggles, doggy kisses and the occasional snore. Everyone that comes to our house has been converted into a pit bull lover, and that includes a number of folks who were afraid of all dongs before meeting her. She loves people and practically throws her whole body into you because all she wants to do is be near you and get some puppy pats. In fact, I've never seen a dog that is so patient - all winter long she is dressed in sweaters (and sometimes booties), and she has a costume every Halloween! Leia loves to play with other dogs, our cats and will do anything for a good scratch behind the ears... well, maybe not fetch... that classic dog game seems to have alluded her...

Trying on Costumes at Petco

She is nothing like the growling, snarling, angry, biting, terrible and terrifying dog that is on the news, and let's be real, most real life pit bulls aren't.  Take for example, Miss M and Mr. B in the amazing blog, Two Pitties in the City - they are stand up citizens here in Chicago that are just fabulous dogs, I'd even put them in the column of "rolepups" for Leia. They are well mannered, sweet, obedient PIT BULLS that are happy to wear doggy goggles and trek around town meeting people. Of course, much of their great training comes from their really wonderful owners, but the owners aren't master trainers with their own video series. Nope, they are regular people that love their dogs and decided to tell their story online. I'd highly suggest checking out their blog if you are a pit lover or a pit skeptic.

I love the infograph that Huffington Post shared earlier this month. I think it really encapsulates what we've been trying to tell the world: Pit bulls are great dogs and they deserve the opportunity to become family dogs.

Source: The Huffington Post

So this month, tell someone about the pit bull breed, and remind them that breed specific legislation is unfair, unjust and kills thousands of dogs every year, just for being born.

Here are some other great links on why pit bulls really just are great dogs:

Huff Post: 17 Pit Bulls That Prove Breed Specific Legislation Doesn't Know What It's Talking About
Petfinder: 10 Reasons Why Pit Bulls Rule
Dogster: 10 Common Misconceptions About Pit Bulls
Buzzfeed: The 20 Most Adorable Pit Bull Puppy Pictures Ever
Buzzfeed: 37 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Pit Bulls

Just enjoying the sunshine

Love and Bacon,
Kelsey (and Leia)

Bad Customer = Bad Service?

I saw this Huff Post article shared on Facebook this morning that I just had to comment on, because the writer is SPOT ON. Essentially, the writer goes through this bizarre interchange she saw at a burger joint by another customer and has written an op-ed, and here's the part that had me yelling "Amen" from the rooftops:

And that brings us to the possible answer to that query you posed in the midst of your ketchup rant. You asked: "Why can't I ever f*cking get good customer service?" Well, ma'am, that might have something to do with you being a vulgar, miserable, malicious person. Maybe you get bad customer service because you're a bad customer. Did you ever consider that possibility?

It's SO true! As a gal that has worked at two major restaurant chains in her early twenties, I can tell you without question, that the customer is NOT always right.

Just working for those tips!

Like when I worked at Hard Rock and had to walk back to the kitchen with half eaten BBQ chicken that the customer suddenly decided wasn't good so that it could be replaced. Or when I'd spend over an hour laughing and schmoozing with a table of Ladies Who Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory only to be left a paltry 10% tip while they drive off in their Bentleys (which I could always see them retrieving from the valet stand right outside). I've dealt with some iffy folks, but I've only ever been yelled at once, and realistically it wasn't that bad... I wasn't even yelled at when I dropped a caesar salad on a teenager.

And here's one of the hubs, doing that barista thing

But I've been a customer plenty of times and I've seen people like the woman in the article: the ones that think they can yell at the staff because they are the customer; the ones that yell at the Starbucks barista because their drink is too hot or there isn't milk at the condiment stand; the ones that try to use social media to shame an establishment using pictures of their screaming children as bait; the ones that hold up an entire line because there is ketchup on a burger rather than being a grown up and scraping it off like the rest of us. Oh yes, I've seen plenty of those people. The author is totally right, as a server/barista/cashier/postal worker you can see those people a mile away and you know that no matter what you do they are going to throw a stink, so they get the service they deserve - you know, the same way that the nice people get fantastic service.

So go forth and order whatever you'd like, as long as it's not the people behind the counter.

Love and Bacon,
Kelsey

Once, Always

I don't talk about it much, but I am a sorority girl. I have letters and a secret handshake and colors and a flower and cheers and memories full of frat parties, sisterhood outings, big/little nights, semis and formals, late nights in the sorority house and lots of other things I shouldn't share with the Internet.  Being a Phi Sig shaped who I am, starting my first month of college, but I (like many ladies in the PanHellenic system) kind of forgot about how important it was once I graduated from college. That is, until Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday, I was off getting coffee with some coworkers and while we waited in the crowded Starbucks for our liquid energy, one of our newer team members looked at me and said, "love your outfit! Those are my sorority colors: king blue and gold." I literally threw my hands up and was all, "um, what sorority!?!????!!!" When she said Phi Sigma Sigma, I nearly shouted in excitement (and all this before my morning joe). I graduated from GW in 2007, so it's been a really long time since I've met a new Sister. Suddenly I was so filled with pride and excitement that all I wanted to do was chat with her about sorority stuff, thankfully she was equally excited.

As a more senior person at our agency, I don't friend the newer people on FB since I don't want them to feel obligated to add me, but within minutes of getting to my desk I was adding Maura and posting about my excitement. So here I am, 3 days later brimming with pride for the sisterhood that helped me become the woman I am and rocking a Phi Sig themed mani to boot.

Are any of you Greek and found a sister (or brother) in an unexpected place?

Love and Bacon (LITP!),
Kelsey