Day 1: Welcome to El Paso

It's been an eventful few days!

Wednesday was my last day employed at the hotel in Albuquerque. It was bittersweet. It was a rough day full of reminders of exactly why I never want to work in a hotel again, but it was also difficult to punch out that evening and go home. Cue minor panic attack over the fact that I no longer have an income (or at least that I'm officially self-employed and completely, 100% responsible for finding every means of paying my bills from now on. It's an underrated convenience to have a steady paycheck, even when that paycheck is pitifully small).

Thursday was spent packing up and cleaning out my house (and continuing with my minor meltdown, of course). Thursday evening, I had my going away party at my favorite local haunt in Albuquerque, Sidewinders Bar. The turnout was slightly smaller than I had expected, but that's not too surprising for a Thursday. I did get to see most of my favorite people before I left, which was awesome, and my good friend Hannah gave me the new Blink 182 album as a parting gift.

"Quick. Make a sexy face!" Move over, Charlie's Angels.

Camera snapshot of a Polaroid is the new DSLR. 

Friday, I was packed up and moved. I had lunch with my former general manager, housekeeping supervisor, and sales manager from the hotel and said my goodbyes. Jessica got to my house around 1 PM.

Of course, we elected not to tarp my mattress, and everything was fine! Until we hit Hatch, New Mexico. Just outside Las Cruces, we hit a massive dust storm blowing off of White Sands. This tured into a torrential downpour in Las Cruces, which continued as sunshine, wind, and sand until we'd made it to my new home. Surprisingly enough, my mattress was completely dry and not epically disgusting, so yay!

Cue waking up bright and early this morning, Saturday, for our first workout together. I woke up at 5:40 and we headed to the gym right at 6. Disappointingly, the gym was closed, as it apparently opens at 10 AM on Saturdays. I went back to sleep until 10, then we went on with our workout. I lifted weights for about 30 minutes - more time than I've spent weight training (combined) since I was about 14 years old. We also did a little bit of cardio. I realized that I'm going to need to work on developing a love of cardio.

We spent the day together working on content for our new blogs, running errands, and doing random exercises. We also played around with some different exercises (and yoga poses) that seemed worth trying while Jessica planned ten (10!!) workouts for her fit camps (and our workout video series!).

Behold: the most glamorous of all the glamorous home office spaces. 

In case you're wondering what day one of healthy eating looks like, it boils down to this:

• Two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
• One peanut butter sandwich
• An apple. With peanut butter. 
• An Herbalife shake (protein powder and a meal replacement powder, plus some blueberries) 
• Two scrambled eggs
• A dish that was basically mushrooms, spinach, quinoa, and chicken (I'm going to have to develop a love of almost all these things, except chicken) 

Oh, and a lot of water. Like a LOT of water. But still not enough water. 

So far, I still have all my vices (damn), but I will run out of cigarettes very soon, so that's promising. Wish me luck! 

Now, it's time for me to crash into slumber, because Sunday holds no rest for the wicked. We're waking up at 6 AM to kick our own asses with a Jillian Michaels yoga DVD (which I consider atonement for some terrible karma from a previous life). Then we'll split ways while she runs errands and I can get some much-needed writing and scripting time in for my YouTube channel. I may even get a video or two recorded!