Mitch called me Friday night to say goodnight, as he had to leave town to attend to a family matter. As we were talking, he mentioned that his grandmother asked when we were getting married. He told her that we would be getting married next year. She was pretty excited.

I said, “Really?” I thought, hmm, that’s news to me. So then I asked, are we really getting married next year? He said I guess. I said so does that mean we’re engaged again? He suggested I get my engagement ring out of the drawer by the bed.

So I was like, I guess we’re engaged. I called him Saturday morning to confirm if we were in fact, engaged. He said no, and then I said whatever, we’re engaged.

Later, I went to go buy him a ring. When he came home, I gave him said ring. I asked him if I had to get down on one knee. He said yes. I said, no I’m not going to do that because the floor is dirty. So I put a ring on it (by “it,” I mean his ring finger). Yeah, like the Beyonce song.

Here’s a video of the song. I know it’s totally in your head now.

Anyway, I guess it’s legit now. I’m going to make him an honest man.

I know this story is pretty silly and it isn’t meant to make the engagement seem frivolous. Here’s the truth. Mitch and I were previously engaged, we broke it off, got back together and now the time is right. Life isn’t perfect.

I really couldn’t imagine my life without him because when he isn’t around, it’s pretty boring and sad. He’s pretty much the funniest person I know, my best friend and partner in crime. He also drives me bananas. The boy can get on my nerves. But that’s relationships. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Relationships aren’t perfect.

Next year, it will be our 10-year anniversary. I still remember that cute boy who sat in pre-calculus (Did I make better grades than him? I should ask his mom for his report card. Did I mention we’re super competitive?). I totally gave him my number on a piece of notebook paper. I’m glad he called me. Anyway, it’s the perfect time to celebrate it by making our union official under the law, God, taxes, my insurance at work, the dogs’ veterinarian.

We’re very happy about all of this. I couldn’t imagine all of this happening any other way.

Seriously, I’m like a 3-year-old. If I don’t eat enough, my blood sugar drops below sea level, I get mega-cranky and jittery. Not enough sleep — I can barely focus. I get anxious or tense — my back starts to scream.

That was today.

After coming home and eating half a container of hummus and pita chips in order to function like a normal human again, I started making dinner. Cooking is what soothes me. It’s like gentle rocking or listening to the ocean. It’s a comforting process because it involves rituals like chopping and measuring, and I get to create something tasty.

So, what was for dinner, you ask?

Albondigas. That’s Spanish for meatballs. Yes, meatballs.

Albondigas are the ultimate comfort food. Mexican meatballs aren’t too different from your Italian or Swedish variety. They’re little balls of meat when it comes down to it. However, it’s the seasoning and other ingredients you combine to make the meal that make them different. My mom would cook albondigas in the colder months of the year, since it’s soup-like with the veggies and rice. That’s what makes them so comforting.

I try to make a slightly healthier version with lean turkey and plenty of veggies.

I start off by cutting all my veggies, including the following:

2 diced zucchini

2 green onions

1/2 red bell pepper

2 cloves of garlic, minced

About 1/4 cup of chopped cilantro

Edit: 1 small chopped jalapeño

Unlike my photo to the right, I would suggest keeping your zucchini in a separate prep bowl. We’ll add that last to the pot. I just got ahead of myself.

Next is the meatballs. In a mixing bowl, combine about a pound of ground turkey with a salt, pepper, garlic powder and cilantro. To be completely honest, I don’t really use measuring spoons. It’s one of those arts you master after spending a lot of time in the kitchen. A LOT. So if I had to guess, I would say I used about 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, pepper and garlic powder, each. I was more generous with the cilantro, using about two tablespoons. Finally, I added a little less than 1/2 cup of raw white rice.

Now it’s time to get your hands dirty. Literally. Get your hands in there and mix everything together with your hands. Once everything is combined, start grabbing little chunks of your meat mixture and rolling them in your hands to make meatballs. I didn’t snap photos of this since, well, my hands were covered in raw turkey. My bad.

A side note: Some recipes for albondigas call for adding an egg or even breadcrumbs. Traditionally, that is how meatballs are made, but I choose to skip that part to reduce the calorie count and because you don’t really need either to hold them together. I’ll get into specifics about that in a sec.

Next, we start our soup base. You can use either 4 cups of chicken broth or 4 cups of water and some chicken bouillon. I used bouillon today since that’s what I had on hand. Either will be OK.  Add the chopped garlic, green onion, cilantro and bell pepper to this. Bring it to a rolling boil in large saucepan or small stock pot.

At this point, we can add our meatballs. Drop them in one-by-one into the boiling stock. The outside of the meatball cooks right away and helps keep it intact. So it’s really important to have things boiling in order for this to work. Got it? Good.

Once all your little meatballs are boiling in the stock, add 1/2 cup of tomato sauce or half an 8-ounce can. You can do a little more or little less, depending on your tomato love (I have lots of tomato love).

Now add a cup of raw white rice. Toss in your zucchini and jalapeño as well. It’s a becoming a flavorful pot of deliciousness!

Turn down the heat and let your abondigas simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes. When the rice is soft, your albondigas are done.

Serve the albondigas in a bowl and warm up some corn tortillas to eat with your meal. We don’t really eat flour tortillas at Casa Garcia-Ahrens. That’s not how we roll. Besides, corn tortillas are way healthier. I recommend white corn tortillas.

You can do some variations on this by adding more veggies like carrots, celery or even corn. I only had a few veggies on hand, so if you have one or the other, don’t fret. Use what you have.

And that, my friends, is how I get rid of funks and crankiness.

My presentation was on how the Austin American-Statesman used social media to provide coverage and breaking news updates on the Central Texas wildfires that began over the Labor Day holiday.

Check out my presentation and let me know what you think.

So a few days ago, I started to do some research to solidify some points I wanted to make and compiled my notes into a Google doc. It quickly became a dissertation. OK, not really, but it was a lot more information than I expected to write about.

I decided it would be helpful to just go ahead and post my notes on some of the topics we plan to discuss, particularly since we may not hit all of them in the time we’re allotted. I’m actually really glad I did this since I feel like I’ve had writer’s block for awhile. This takes care of that.

Hope you find it helpful. Feedback is always appreciated.

The panel was moderated by Mayank Mehta, co-founder and director of products for Cooliris, and featured Louis Gray of my6sense and Danny Trinh of the photo sharing site Path.

Now that most mobile phones have better cameras, couple with more powerful 3G cellular networks, have made for better and easier mobile photo sharing. Mobile apps like Instagram have seen a rapid increase of users in a short amount of time, but Mehta pointed out that email remains the top photo sharing method.

Will apps take it over?

Gray said a lot of people have talked about email going away for a long time but it hasn’t happened.

The key for apps to capitalize in order to overtake sharing through email is emphasizing relationships, according to Trinh. Tringh’s application, Path, allows you to share photos with people you know versus broadcasting to the public. 

“Mobile photo sharing will make relationships stronger,” Trinh said.

Part of the success for mobile photo sharing are the filters and exclusivity. Instagram, which according to Mehta is pushing 1 million users. It makes people feel like they are better photographers than they are. You take a photo, modify and upload.

“The filter makes your photo look pretty good and makes you feel like a better photographer,” Trinh said. 

However, Trinh said he understands why pro photographers may not find the photos as appealing in terms of their artistic value and quality. 

“It’s really a means to an end with the filters and tilt shift — to get the someone interested in using the app.”

Furthermore, Gray said the success of photo sharing apps is also dependent on whether a person receives feedback they want (and expect), in other words, social validation.

“You post crazy photos and get tons of validation while others don’t and they drop off,” he said.

Nonetheless, Trinh said it depends on what’s more important to you: public social validation or private social validation.

“I feel more engaged sharing with people I know.” 

OK, it might be all the coffee I’ve had lately. Or my anxiety. Or my ADD.

I’ve spent the past few weeks planning for my Core Conversation with Anna Tauzin, so scheduling and planning for anything else fell down to this week. 

I’ll probably continue to harass you all about the Core Conversaton until it’s over, so sorry in advance (kinda). We have a blog for it, which you should check out, and see us in action Tuesday, March 15 at 11 a.m.

Tools to get you organized

The good thing about being a frazzled procrastinator nowadays are all the helpful apps and websites around to get you organized. 

I’ve been using SCHED to create my calendar for each day. I think it’s safe to say my schedule is set.

I also made sure to download a few apps onto my iPhone for the fest. ReadWriteWeb has a great article on five apps you should download.

Beluga and Hashable look like they will be really helpful. Hurricane Party looks like a party. Let’s just hope the wireless networks hold up. AT&T says they will boost the network in anticipation of the SXSW crowds.

Don’t forget

So if you are heading out tomorrow to the first day of SXSW, don’t forget to pack a few things. This is what I won’t leave home without:

Laptop

iPhone

chargers

Flip video camera

power strip

business cards

Noms such as a granola bar and peanut butter sandwich

water bottle (reusable – respect the environment, yo)

chanclas (that’s flip flops for your non-Spanish speakers)

a light jacket or sweater

Film and Music

Tiny baby Jesus. There’s still film and music to stress about! I’ll post about that soon. There will be plenty to watch and see.

Hooray for SXSW – it’s been up for a bit now, but here are the deets: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7624

Join us for our convo Tuesday, March 15 at 11 a.m. Our hastag for the event is #hireme.

The proposal, titled ‘Landing Your Next Job Through Unconventional Personal Branding,’ will be featured as a Core Conversation at SXSW, which is a format that allows us to interact at a more personal level with our audience. We hope you can join us and we will spread information on the precise time and date, as schedules are still being constructed.

To say we are excited is an understatement. We can’t wait to share our thoughts on this topic. Searching for a job is no easy task, regardless of whether you are a recent college graduate, recently laid off or a veteran in your field looking for a new position. The web has provided us with many outlets to network with potential employers, but standing out from the crowd of job seekers takes some extra initiative.

In the meantime, the process of gathering ideas and solidifying the content of our conversation will be the task at hand. Hope to see you there in March.

I wrote a post a few months ago about goals, and a lot of those have stayed the same. However, some of these goals I’d like to expound upon. Besides, I know I need to get out of the living-in-the-moment mode a bit.

I have divided these up into personal and professional goals.

Personal goals

1. Keep running and stay injury free. Running is how I relieve stress. It energizes me. However, I’ve been dealing with a nerve injury for a couple of years now. It’s been expensive (and painful) to treat, but I finally found a doctor that I feel has put me on the path to real recovery. I haven’t felt better and I have a marathon coming up at the end of January. I’m going to kick those 26.2 miles in the butt!

2. Continue to strengthen my relationships with the people I love most. A couple of years ago, I went through a very rough time in my life. I hated myself and who I had become. I stopped appreciating the people that cared about me most.  I made some serious changes. I never want to go back to that place again. I love the life I lead now and all the people who are a part of it.

3. Get out of debt. I had to support myself throughout college. Thankfully, I had a full scholarship as an undergrad, but I had to pay for graduate school on my own. I have a lot of credit card debt and student loans that need to be repaid soon. I live on a budget now and have started to drive down a lot of that credit card debt. Pretty proud of myself for that, so I want to keep it up.

4. Make art. I don’t shoot photos or video like I used to. Granted, I would do it for the other gigs I had in the past and I had better equipment. I want to focus on shooting more, but with an eye toward art versus something journalistic.

Professional goals

1. Always make an effort to learn new things and see how I can become better at my job. Since I started working at the Statesman in August, I slowed down on blogging and coding in my spare time. However, now that I feel adjusted, I want to continue to explore different ideas in communication and technology. Sometimes a lot of my understanding of new technology requires me to ‘play’ with it on my own before I can apply it elsewhere.

2. Build a mobile app. It’s always cool to know how the backend of something works by building it yourself. I hope do this at some point in my spare time.

3. Redesign my site with a CMS. Last year, I was introduced to several CMS and now that I understand the front end, I want to know more backend here as well. Now that I FINALLY got my domain back and my site is horribly outdated, it’s a good excuse for me to start from scratch.

P.S. Don’t ever forget to pay your domain host like I did…it’s expensive and time consuming in the end.

By this point, I have Christmas No.1 knocked out with my boyfriend Mitchell’s family, which is held Christmas Eve. Only two more to go…

After seven years, this sort of Christmas has become a routine. I pack up my car with gifts, food, two hyperactive mini dachshunds and drive from Central Texas to the tiny South Texas town where I grew up, Cuero. I arrive at my mom’s, prepare any last minute food, sit down, have a tamale or two with my mom, and head out to meet with Mitchell’s family.

His family’s gatherings remind me of the ones we used to have as a child, which is why I enjoy spending my Christmas Eve’s with them. His grandmother’s home is filled with his aunts and uncles, close family friends, little cousins (all boys, mind you), dogs, lots of food, and presents. The boys run around with plastic guns, soccer balls, cans of soda as gift wrap flies around the room where the Christmas tree and gifts reside.

It’s a stark contrast from the Christmases with my Mom and Dad, respectively. They are much more low-key. My dad’s closest relatives live hundreds and hundreds of miles away in deep south Mexico. Cousins from my mom’s side of the family live near, but we usually don’t get together. So Christmas No. 2 begins with my mom, sister, her boyfriend, my niece and Mitchell. Christmas No. 3 is spent with my dad and stepmom.

While things have changed since I was a child, I’m starting to appreciate these smaller gatherings more. My parents are getting older and I understand how important it is to spend time with them. Last year, my mom was diagnosed with Stage Four Ovarian Cancer. It was a scary time, but she’s fought it with a might. She’s doing great and being, well, my mom. Even though she gave Mitch and I an early Christmas present of a new dryer (it’s AMAZING), she still gave me the hideous pair of pajamas I’ve come to expect. It’s become amusing now.

I’ll humor her and wear the obnoxious pink PJs later…