Day 1: Introduction and Recent Picture

I decided that in addition to anything else I just might want to write about, I am going to try a 31 Day Blog Challenge. Today officially being May 22nd, I will try and make it the next 31 days. I thought about waiting until June 1st to start but I am such a procrastinator that I would probably forget to start.

As the title says, this is my recent picture. This was taken on May 13, 2012 in down town Seattle. I thought about taking a much more recent picture but I am currently sitting in my computer chair with my glasses on my face and my hair a mess after my shower wearing what my mom calls my "ugly sweater" and my Stewie Griffin dressed as Santa saying "Rather Naughty" all over them. I determined that it would be best to spare anyone who reads this the horrible image!

I am not quite sure if I have really given any kind of introduction but if I have, it is surely out of date by now.

My name is Myranda and I am freshly turned 28 as of May 4th! I am the oldest of three children. My two younger sisters are Heather (25) and Samantha (21). My parents are divorced (official as of May 2011). I have the two cutest nephews in the world, Cayden (4) and Keagan (3) from Heather.

After high school I joined the Coast Guard and was active duty from August 19, 2002 to October 18, 2007. I spent a year and 18 days on a sea-going buoy tender out of San Francisco before I transferred to Air Station New Orleans. While in Nola, I spent 22 weeks in Elizabeth City, North Carolina (a.k.a. the armpit of America) and shortly after that six months in Houston, Texas. I also met M.L. We worked together and eventually ended up dating and getting married in September 2007.

In May 2008, M.L. was transferred to North Bend, Oregon where we bought a house. My happy little family life was not really all that happy but I tried my best to make it happy and if it was not then I pretended it was. I will spare you another very long story but we ended up splitting up in April 2011 and our divorce was final in July 2011.

In August 2011, I moved back up to Washington to live with my mom. After two weeks here, I landed myself a job at a small local airport/flight training school. I could not have walked into a better job. The whole family is amazing. It is a very physically demanding job but I love it! Plus I work Wednesday thru Sunday and those are the same days that Skydive Snohomish operates so I get to watch people jump out of airplanes while I work. There are very few things that sound cooler to me than the wind whipping through one of the parachutes as they are coming down to land! I will get up there one day and jump out of a plane and you best believe that I will post it here, on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest (if I can still access my account), etc.

When I am not refueling or washing airplanes and now (the sole washer of) helicopters, I am a Zumba Fitness Instructor. I have been active in the Zumba community since March 2010 but I got my very first license to teach in July 2010. Since then I taken specialty trainings for Zumba Gold and Zumba Toning. I am also signed up for another specialty called Zumba Sentao in July and total that will make my fifth license BUT I will be able to teach six different types of classes...that is until I can afford to get the material and obtain my Zumba Gold-Toning badge and then one last specialty that I want is Zumbatomic which is geared towards children.

I guess just a last little bit about myself...some little random tid-bits if you will...I have a love/hate relationship with running. I truly hate running but I love the results I get from running so I endure it. Do not believe me? Check out my last blog about the Hell Run here. I love to cook and bake. When it comes to baking, I really do have to follow a recipe and even then if it is supposed to be from scratch, my mom or sister is usually the better baker but dang it I can make some killer baked goods out of a box! When it comes to cooking, I change and adapt recipes to my taste. I add cayenne pepper, red pepper or hot sauce to just about everything! I make a killer gumbo recipe which I will have to share sometime. I believe it was a Paula Deen recipe but I took a lot of stuff out and changed a few things but mainly it is still the same but I love mine better! I am a huge Britney Spears fan. I love Harry Potter books/movies and Pottermore. I love Twilight books/movies (however I am neither Team Edward or Team Jacob...I am Team Cedric...for all you young people who do not know jack...Rob played Cedric in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire WAY before he was Edward...see?). I love The Hunger Games books/movie(s). "May the odds be ever in your favor." My favorite movie forever and always is "Fried Green Tomatoes". I love all of the Disney classic cartoon movies and own most of them. I have a strange obsession with light houses. My books/DVDs/CDs have to be alphabetized and each of those three have a different way of being alphabetized. My socks HAVE TO MATCH. Even if there is only the slightest color on the socks, if they do not match then I have to change into a pair that do. When I drink, my southern accent becomes more prominent (which is odd given that I was born and raised just south of Seattle but I lived in the south and my mom's family is from Texas so...). I think that I look and feel the sexiest when I am wearing my favorite jeans (not too tight but not too big), my cowboy boots and my red and white stripped shirt...or when my bra and underwear match...and I only have a couple of those sets! I love baseball because it is one of the only sports that I truly understand! Despite not being married anymore, I still root for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bears and Oklahoma State Cowboys (Go Pokes!). I will also root for the San Francisco Giants and the New Orleans Saints but I will pick the Cubs and the Saints over any other team by far! I love candles. My favorite MTV cartoon character is Daria Morgendorffer and I do own the complete series! I may even name my first daughter Daria...maybe not!

I keep coming up with more and more little things and just realized that it has taken me about an hour to write this because I keep getting side tracked...but that is because I was adding links and then trying to find things which lead me to other pages and etc...so I will finally say goodnight at 1:08am on May 22nd! I may not count this as the actual post for the 22nd so I just might do Day 2 after I wake up!

Until next time!