Show Me Your Books!

Back and a day late for a link up about what I've been reading lately...

Since I didn't link up for September, I'll review the books I've read since the last time I linked up.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

I'm a big fan of the post-apocalyptic YA genre. I can't get enough. This one about what might lead to those worlds I so love fascinated me, if only for the description of the plot. It's part of a series, but I just couldn't get myself interested in finishing it. There's no real resolution by the end of this book and the second and third are about different characters before they somehow meet up or their stories intertwine in the fourth book. It's ok, but not the greatest...

The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson

Just not super impressed with this at all. I don't even really know how to describe it other than a grown up Divergent in Canada and with booze...

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

Lizzie and Evie are besties. They do EVERYTHING together and even look alike. Then Evie goes missing. Lizzie feels it's up to her to find Evie. Oh yeah, they're like 12. Fairly interesting, but a little farfetched if you ask me. No one asks Lizzie anything really considering she's kind of at the center of things... Feel kind of like a 12-year-old wrote it.

You Deserve A Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tale of Debauchery by Mamrie Hart

All the stars for this hilarious account of YouTube star Mamrie Hart's life. Each chapter contains a drink recipe and the drink's name relates back to the story. Personal favorite chapter was "Frame the Cookie," because the drink looked DELISH and the story was HILARIOUS. Also, you guys really need to look up her channel on YouTube. Each week (or month or whenever she feels like posting a video), she finds one person in pop culture who deserves a drink and makes it for them. The videos are built-in drinking games with TERRIBLE puns. She's hysterical. Get on the bandwagon.

Grace's Guide: The Art of Pretending to Be A Grown-Up by Grace Helbig

My YouTube education continued with another of the Holy Trinity's books, Grace Helbig. She's got another book coming out early next year, so again, jump on this bandwagon. Grace is me, guys. She perfectly quirky and awkward and just awesome. Her book is a how-to guide on everything from dating to getting a job and more. Not a memoir like Mamrie's, but still a pretty fun book.

My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with Your Gut by Hannah Hart

The Holy Trinity's book tour concluded with Hannah's suggestipe guide with funny anecdotes thrown in for a little hilarity. Based on the premise of her YouTube channel, like Mamrie's, the book borrows it's title and fundamentals: nothing sharp as these are recipes (or suggestipes) for when you're drunk and need food. If it can't be cut with a butter knife it's not in here (so it's not like a super legit cook book, hence the suggestive term Hannah came up with). Foreword by novelist and YouTuber John Green. Buy it. Watch her. Get on the Holy Trinity bandwagon, guys. Drunk Pumpkin 3 is coming.

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

Mindy's long-awaited second book is HERE and it does not disappoint. Her first book was a classic and still on my Suggest to EVERYONE You Meet list. This book was not quite as great, but still hilarious and had more stories about her time in Hollywood and starting her own show, The Mindy Project, one of my all-time favorites and second-most-watched on Hulu now. Side note: if you're not watching, we can't be friends. Definitely a must-read if you're like me and love memoirs, Mindy, and mmmmreading (I wanted another M word. Yay alliteration).

That's what I've read lately. I'm currently nose-deep in Stephenie Meyer's retelling of Twilight, and boy is it RIDICULOUS. I hate the Twilight series, TBH, but this was just too stupid not to read and it's not disappointing in that aspect.

What are you reading?

Good Sports Luck

It's a little known secret (at least on the internet) that I am good luck for my sports teams when in attendance for BIG games. This is a newer phenomenon as I am a new-ish sports fan. I mean, I went to most of the football games in college and a handful of baseball games, but I've only started actually understanding these games in the last 4-5 years.

Anyway, back to my good sports luck resume:

• I have seen TCU baseball punch their ticket to the College World Series twice now, including 11 of 22 innings in 2014 and a 16 inning game in June this year.
• I have gone to two college football bowl games (Rose Bowl 2011, Cotton Bowl 2014) and the teams I cheers for came out victorious.
• And now I can add watching the Texas Rangers win the American League West division to that list!
• And watching TCU football beat the absolute crap out of the UT Longhorns the day before is also going on that list.

This weekend was homecoming and I got to see so many friends! Homecoming in high school was always kind of boring, right? In college all of your friends go back to your favorite place and hang out wearing your favorite color(s) and it's just a wonderful time. Also, when your team beats the "big brother" of your state (if you're not the "big brother," that is), it's always an added bonus.

Sunday, I woke up still happy from TCU beating UT for the second year in a row (which hasn't been done since my dad was a BABY) and the third time in four years (our QB is the only TCU QB in history to pull off this feat, y'all). I proceeded to get up and get dressed because it was baseball gameday in America (and Canada... North America?) and I had a date with the Rangers.

Naturally, Snapchat has a Dallas story going on so my goal was to get on it with some Rangers snap videos. Womp Womp, didn't quite manage too, even with my GENIUS snap of SANTA dancing to some Queen during a pitcher change for the Angels. I'm sorry, but if Santa. who is rooting for your team, dancing to Queen can't make the snap story, I don't know what will.

Anyway, the Rangers absolutely KILLED the Angels after hitting in 7 runs in the 7th inning and now they take on Toronto on Thursday! WOO!

How was your weekend? Are you good luck for anything specific? Like getting your friends jobs? That also might be me (everyone around me, mom included, has gotten a new job lately so hi, it's my turn, right?).

Not So fUnemployment

Here it is, October. The real start of fall. I mean, it even feels like it in Texas. At least in the morning. It's been a week shy of six months since graduation and I have yet to be hired by someone.

I'd be lying if I said I'm not worried or disappointed. I've gone through three different staffing agencies, been on more interviews than I can count, and not one application turned interview turned even second round has turned into a "You're hired! Here's your office/cubicle/desk/WHATEVER." And yes, the job market is BEYOND better than it was 5 years ago when I finished my Bachelor's. I could barely find jobs to apply for, let alone get called back for an interview. I've had SO many interviews. It's a confidence booster that people want to talk to me for a bit. Then comes the soul-crushing no.

I know, I know. I have the rest of my life to work. But it's hard to feel like yourself and like you have a purpose if you're constantly getting rejected either by a "No" to your face, a "No" in e-mail form, or just straight ghosted. Never been ghosted? You're clearly not online dating or looking for jobs. Ghosting usually applies to the dating world, but it definitely applies to unprofessional professionals that say "You'll hear from us either way" and then drop off the face of the earth (unfortunately, the act of ghosting is not as cute or fun as the ghost emoji or snapchat logo).

👻

Around month 3 is when FUNemployment turned fUnemployment... That was also the time I started BINGEING on YouTube. And I mean BINGEING. I watched at least 30 hours in the first 3 days I got onto YouTube. I'd always been a fan of a select few like Jenna Marbles and her boyfriend, Julien, and a few of his friends. But my friend Amanda was into Mamrie Hart, Grace Helbig, and Hannah Hart (aka the Holy Trinity). Then I discovered Flula, Miranda Sings/Colleen Ballinger, Glozell, Zoella, and Tyler Oakley. Then I read the Holy Trinity's books. Now I'm waiting for Tyler's book to come out later this month. I follow them on Snapchat. I follow them (and some of their dogs) on Instagram and Twitter. A week or so ago, Jenna Marbles started following me back on Twitter.

The Girl Code by iiSuperwomanii featuring lots of wonderful, funny people

Watching these people's lives was fascinating and a distraction from my own, namely that hellish job search. Amanda and I have a fantastic idea for a YouTube channel of our own. However, we need a camera, and SD card, a ring light, etc and ALL of that costs money. Starting her own job search around the time of my YouTube-ducation, we are BROKE as JOKES. So the channel is on hold. Money obviously is one half of the equation. There's also the factor of not wanting potential employees to find said channel where we may or may not plan on drinking and may or may not act like the complete weirdos we are and decide we're crazy and/or immature or whatever adjective they might decide we are based on a 7- to 15-minute video every other week or so that they watch about 2 second of before passing judgement.

So for now, I'm a 27-year-old, overeducated, female mooching off my parents, wishing I got paid for interviews because I'd have a couple hundred extra bucks in the bank if so. I've also decided I want to write a book. I've read my fair share of funny females' books in the past couple of years and I'm totally capable of writing some of my thoughts down. I mean, I'm doing it now. Not that there are many of you reading, but whatever. It's cathartic.

Anyway, I hope you're not taking your job for granted. And if you are on this beautiful Friday afternoon, remember my little story. I'll gladly switch places for a few weeks as long as I get your paycheck. No, seriously. my bank account is looking like a kid from District 12 in Panem.