Houston's Worst Blogger Award....

Who is Houston's worst blogger? Read on to find out...

It's no secret that TheSizzle has... fizzled. 2016 kicked us real hard in the nether regions. I lost my fire, my spark and my motivation and hustle. Is it just me, or did almost everyone have a pretty shoddy 2016? 

I am awarding myself the award for Houston's worst blogger for 2016. But guess what? 2016 is O-V-E-R. As I was leaving Soul Cycle last night, I was chatting with one of the front desk gentlemen and we bonded over the fact that we need/crave someone to kind of get in our faces during a workout. We want the person next to us to be crushing it, thereby motivating us to out-crush the competition. Yes, I'm a wildly competitive animal, and with that wildly competitive motivation comes a crippling fear of not being the best. It gets discouraging, you feel downtrodden and you freeze up. 2016 was my year in the cryo-chamber. I was frozen and unable to see how I could move forward. 

2017 is here. I'm not promising magical, hilarious, witty and regular posts, but I always promise to keep it real. I love Houston, I love this city a lot. It's truly worth writing about. Even Anthony Bourdain showed us some love. But I also love myself. A lot, and embracing that was hard for me. 2017 is the year I will thaw out, un-freeze and move forward. I will crush it, slowly. More of an anaconda-like, slow but deadly crushing... I took that way too far, didn't I?

This year, I encourage all of you who feel frozen, scared, self-conscious and generally "meh" to join me and move forward, even if it's a teeny baby step. Baby steps count, it's how you start walking and eventually running. 

So here's to you, to me, to our big, bad-ass city and to making 2017 the year where we all out-crush the competition. 

Yours with lots of love, 

THESIZZLEHOUSTON

crushing it in 2017.

The non-foodie foodie post, aka #brokentummies

Howdy amigos!

In the daze that is wedding planning, working at a grown up job and maintaining some semblance of sanity....me and MainSqueeze have developed #brokentummies. MainSqueeze spent the last weekend in Memphis at a BBQ competition/bachelor party, so his blood and internal organs are literally 99% smoked meats and beer. 

Then there's me. When TheSizzle is stressed, my stomach basically forgets how to be a stomach and decides that it hates anything and everything I put into it. It's not awesome. At all. 

So....Sunday evening as MainSqueeze and I sat clutching our #brokentummies, we decided something needed to happen, and fast. So the girl who loves food, and her food loving fiancee are doing a juice cleanse. Starting tomorrow. For three days. THREE days. The amount of HANGRY-ness will be off the charts. We might not survive. But maybe our mission to #healbrokentummies will be a success? I'll let you know. 

The Skinny on the "cleanse":

-I am not doing this to lose weight. Nor is MS. We both just need a few days of nothing but green thangs and fruit and water. 

-We decided to go with Squeezed Houston, and will be picking up our juice tomorrow morning.  We are doing the 3 day cleanse with almond milk. 

-I am scared. I get very very HANGRY and I have to interact with humans at work....recipe for disaster? Yes. But if it's a recipe to #healbrokentummies then I'll take it. 

Have you ever done this craziness? Let me know your thoughts.... I'll keep y'all posted since typing will hopefully distract me from eating my fingers in desperate attempts for food. 

Life on the Island

Bonjour amigos! I hope you enjoyed the September Music Sizzle. I'll try to keep posting some musical treats for you. In the meantime, let's pick up where we left off. HAWAII. 

We've been having an absolute blast down here. The picture above was taken at Lanikai beach in Kailua, which is absolutely beautiful. You may know it as "Obama's Beach" but we got to know it as , "Um heaven is that you?" 

Adventure #1. 

Fact: I have a little problem with heights. I never used to be afraid of heights, but one fateful day, I was high up and suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to lay flat and hold onto the ground for dear life. Basically, I get a mean case of vertigo. So now you know. 

MainSqueeze and I decided to hike up Koko Head. It's a very steep "mountain" where the "trail" is made up of a railroad track. Sounds easy enough, right? 

We decided to go at 1:30 pm (also known as the hottest part of the day) and I decided that I should wear a black top and black shorts, because obviously. 

Looks harmless. 

We started up the trail and it seemed easy enough. The steps are pretty huge, so my short legs were werrrrkin hard. Then there's a terrifying part. Where you literally have to get on all fours to climb up the railroad tracks because if you don't, you can fall through the middle and....die? break all appendages? Needless to say, I forgot to breathe during that part and had to stop a little ways up and take a breather. 

Once we made it to the top, the huffing and puffing was WORTH the view. You feel like you're on top of the island. Both of our phones were dead so we can't really prove we were there, but if you ever make it up, you'll see that we wrote our names on the concrete block at the top. So there IS proof. 

Now, I have to get to gettin', but tomorrow I promise to wow you with SWINE. Yes. I will be telling you about a hot restaurant here in Honolulu that was recently voted top 50 in the USA and was nominated for a James Bear award. EXCITING. 

Peace out for now amigos, 

Vacation(s) and Re-Appearances?

Hola. Bonjour. Ciao. 

Guess what? TheSizzle isn't dead. We've just been:

a.) caught in a glass cage of emotion?

b.) caught in a whirlwind of boxes, trashbags, movers and departures?

c.) literally playing "guess what's in this box" to pick outfits for the past 4 days and therefore  dressed like a Container Store employee (sans the apron) today and is pretty embarassed about it?

d.) all of the above

e.) b&c, a was just fun because who doesn't love a casual Ron B. reference?

So, E. 

Between coming back from Hawaii/San Diego/Florida, moving MainSqueeze to Hawaii and then moving myself out of my apartment, things have been a little...cray? However, I'm (almost) back and better than ever! I have some new features coming up and lots of food/music/interviews. Get excited. 

In the meantime, hold tight, let me unpack s'more and I'll be back with a vengeance. Promise. 

First is the worst...

You know the feeling. It grips your lungs, your muscles tense, and usually (on my end at least) you emit a high pitched squeal as you anticipate jumping into a pool for the first time. And it's not heated. That's how I feel writing the first post on TheSizzle. 

Inner Monologue:

"Just write the darn thing, it won't write itself, and you look silly just having an "about" and "contact" section. WHO is going to want to know about you or contact you if there's nothing to read?" 

Sigh. Get up from computer and maybe stretch, maybe walk around my huge (read:tiny) apartment and contemplate the weather. 

"Fine. I'll start writing, but....what if no one reads it?"

And there you have it. My hot pink elephant in the room. The fear. But you know what? I'm over it. Bring on the hot pink elephant. TheSizzle is ready to rock n' roll and in the next few weeks there will be an onslaught of posts and fun things for you to feast your eyes on. So get ready. And in the meantime tackle your own pink elephant. I promise it's not that scary. Swears.