Your daily dose of Awesome... on the road

Come back to Texas

2010-06-18T01:04:00.000-05:00

I'd love to say for my last day I did something awesome, but not really. I did go to Saratoga and do 1 last wine tasting at Cinnabar. To take advantage of the weather for the last time, I went to one of the places on Santana Row that has a rooftop bar. I got to drink a glass of wine, listen to some classical guitar, and watch the sunset. A perfect way to end my stay in Califonia - if only Mark were here!

What I'll miss most about California:

1. Hanging out with David and Tim

2. Trader Joe's

3. the weather (although I do enjoy a few really hot days!)

4. H&M

5. Baja Fresh

Au Revoir, Mark!

2010-06-17T00:51:00.002-05:00

Mark left for France today, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't totally jealous. To add insult to injury, my parents also left for Sweeden! To get a European feeling, I visited the Rodin museum on Stanford's campus (made me feel smarter just being there!). Later in the evening I decided - what the heck, I'll go back to the drive-in. I ended up seeing Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. Shrek was really funny - I especially loved fat Puss - he cracked me up! HtTYD was also really good - I knew it got good reviews, but I really enjoyed it - super cute, too. I loved the drive-in - wish we had more of those!

The days go by so fast

2010-06-16T00:42:00.000-05:00

I had a list of things I wanted to do in California, and since I only have a few days left I'm trying to get as much done as possible. I went to Overfelt Gardens, which is one of the places I've been meaning to go. Big disappointment! Most of the ponds were drained, and there were hardly any flowers. I did get to see a goose and some goslings, though. Mark and I went to Tied House for dinner and our last night together for awhile. Garlic fries are so good - IDK why they aren't popular anywhere else! Overall a good day!

Marky Phelps

2010-06-15T18:48:00.000-05:00

Tuesday was a crazy day for me - I was all over the place! I finally got to have lunch with Mark at Invidia, and it was more exciting than he thought it would be! :) Afterwards I drove around and finally found Mission Santa Clara (see previous post), and followed some random people around to try to find a bathroom. After that, I drove to Los Gatos to check out the cute downtown. It was an odd mix of boutiques and J.Crew/Gap/Williams Sonoma stores. I also found another Powell's candy store and stocked up on some goodies. :) Then I picked Mark up from work, and we went to SJSU to swim. The pool is heated, but outdoors so it feels good when you're in and cold when you get out. I ended up swimming some laps with Mark (Katie-style - look for it in the next summer olympics :P ) and got a pretty good workout. I took 1 picture of Mark before the lifeguard told me no pictures (check out the contraband below - ha!). Despite excercising, I thought it was fun! Luckily I negated the calories I burned when I got home and had dinner...b/c you know I'd hate to lose any weight.

Below: Cork tree, cork tree up close, mission, birds of paradise, Marky Phelps

Peace that passeth all understanding

2010-06-15T18:12:00.000-05:00

Like most Christians (or people of any religion, probably), although ever present, my faith ebbs and flows. Lately I haven't felt really close to God - I know he's still there, but there has been something missing on my part. I visited the Mission Santa Clara de Asis today and felt complete again. The mission is from 1777, and it was the first mission in CA dedicated to a woman (woo!). They still hold regular church services and have those scary old fashioned confessionals. At the front of the sanctuary there's a book where people write their prayer requests. There were so many, and I stood there for about 15 minutes reading them. One of them really touched me, though. It was in a child's handwritting, and said something to the extent of: "Please help my mommy get through this hard time, and please let the baby in her tummy live. I already love him." There were also several asking God to give them direction in their lives, help them find jobs, etc. It was very moving - I am so glad I decided to go check it out! It never ceases to amaze me - when I am feeling down or lost, God always finds a way to remind me why I am here.

When in doubt, read my favorite verse:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart; on your own intelligence rely not. In all your thoughts be mindful of Him, and He will make straight your paths." - Proverbs 3:5-6

Crazy dog lady

2010-06-14T18:47:00.001-05:00

Move over, crazy cat lady(s) - a new breed of need-something-to-smother-in-affection animal lovers has come to town! Presenting the crazy dog lady!
California seems to have a knack for breeding crazy...I have seen a few crazy dog ladies, but this woman today changed her dog's outfit TWICE in the span of about an hour. Dogs are not people. They do not want to wear clothes. Period. I hope the dog rips off the outfit and pees on it.

Anyway...this is my last week in California, so I'm trying to make the most of it!

This mug says, "why do dishes when you can do daiquiris?"

The pic was taken with my cellphone so it's hard to read!

Mark and I checked out the Egyptian Museum and saw some cool stuff

Now I know where flies go to die

2010-06-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

So after staying up until 4:00 the night before, we woke up around 12:00 and went to breakfast with Anna, Mariana, and Shraz (I have no idea how to spell his name, ha!). I love Maudies and I hope this won't discourage anyone from going there, but we got a table next to the window and there were like 50 dead flies - and some others trying to escape. It was gross...but I still ate my delicious food b/c there were no flies in it - I promise! Then we got to the airport and found out Mark's flight was delayed several hours...and that there was a direct flight to Oakland that had seats. The irony is we bought a ticket for Mark in case he couldn't get back to San Jose non-reving b/c he had to be back at work. As it turns out, his flight was later cancelled. Ha! So we got on the Oakland flight - I was seated in the middle which I don't usually mind except I ended up between 2 married older people. The wife kept yelling at the husband OVER ME. Pleasant!

Below: San Franciso's artistic way of stopping skateboarders. So cute!

Above: Bay Bridge

Since we ended up in Oakland, we took the train into the city and had dinner with David and Tim (love those guys!) and walked around a bit before they dropped us off at the Caltrain station, then took the Caltrain back to San Jose to get the car at the airport. On the train I was subjected to listen to awful conversation from teenagers, one of which said: "If this train, like, didn't make so many stops, we'd get there like so much faster." - DUH. Also their friends across from us made out the entire time. When we finally got to the tram stop that would take us to the car (yep...another mode of transportation!), I had a kind of awesome moment. So you know when you have an idea of what a book character should look like? This is before they ruin it by making a movie out of it...anyway, I *saw* a character I've been following for a little while now. It was amazing - almost to a "t" what I pictured this guy to look like. Crazy! Too bad I didn't get a picture.

Bonus picture: I uploaded the pic of the asian guy from my phone - however, it doesn't capture the true essence.

"I was concerned that the rolls wouldn't be good, but luckily they were really good"

2010-06-12T13:36:00.000-05:00

Saturday was Aaron and Candice's wedding. Aaron is a good friend from school, and he and Candice are kind of like me and Mark at a few years delay, so I was happy to see them get married! The wedding was outside, though, so everyone was pretty hot - A & C must have been dying under all those layers! I was thrilled to get to see some of my best OT friends - Aaron, Anna, Mariana and Laurie. We were pretty hungry by the time the reception started, but we ended up being the last table to get food...so as we waited in line, Aaron came over to chat and talked about how good the food was. He mentioned that he was concerned about how the rolls were going to be. At the time nobody thought anything of it, but then the more time passed the funnier it got. Just a trivial thing to worry about on your wedding day! We danced a little bit, ate some yummy cake, and snarked about the other wedding guests. We had orignally planned to meet the bride and groom in downtown Austin (their idea!), but they never made it out (no big surprise!). We ended up at Mean Eyed Cat again and Mariana's boyfriend met us there - very fun, and Austin met Dallas and it was fine. Duffy had also been to a wedding that night and showed up drunk and fun as always. Anna and Mariana were staying at our apartment, so we all headed back to our house once the bar closed around 2. Instead of going to bed like normal people, though, we opened a bottle of wine and stayed up until 4 AM - that's crazy late in Katie time! Mariana called her boyfriend Papi, and had to explain that that is not the same as Papa. Somehow Anna thought it meant neighbor?? We also watched some You Tube videos and laughed a lot. It was a great night! Unfortunately, I left my camera at home so I have like no pictures.

"Do you have 30 seconds for the oil spill?" "No, I hate the oil spill!"

2010-06-11T00:55:00.003-05:00

I was so happy to be home! MereCal and I went to the Drag and looked around the shops and did girly stuff. Then we got ready for bar tab night! So here's the thing - during the 10 week trivia tournament, there was a cumulative count - so whichever team had the most points at the end of 10 weeks won a $300 bar tab. TToA had their sights on this prize, and won. Unfortunately, I was in Dallas and had little to do with this win...but I was there for 1 of the weeks! During the tourney, the bar (I won't name names) changed ownership and I guess the previous owners forgot to tell the new owners about this agreement. So Duffy, our friend and trivia host, was trying to arrange our bar tab. First they said No b/c the World Cup was on (which we had a field day with, b/c the WC games were on in the morning and we wanted to come in that evening...and the bar was empty), then they didn't want to do it at all b/c it wasn't their agreement, so Duffy negotiated $200. Most people wouldn't complain about $200, but you have to consider: we're some of their most loyal customers and they're trying to screw us over. So we get to the bar, and we ask to meet the manager, tell him thank you, etc. He comes over like 10 minutes later and clearly just wants to get away from us... doesn't make eye contact and tries to dash off ASAP. As he's walking off, Mark is like, "Hey, by the way, we were told $300, what happened?" and he's like, "Well, uh, it was supposed to be $250 but Duffy said $200...I can do $250 if you want." - Whatever, we take the $250 b/c that's not bad. Plus we had a $20 gift card frp, trivia another week. We ordered food and drinks and were there for several hours having fun. The manager made fun of us b/c we were there so long and hadn't spent our whole tab, but he didn't realize we were playing it smart. See, we discovered that Lonestars were $2, so we ordered like 40 of those. Total bill: $272.40. Woohoo!

During the evening, someone in our group stole mustard and may have eaten it from the bottle (which is about the grossest thing I can think of), and then someone else in the group stole that mustard from the first person and also ate it from the bottle. Double gross. We also ended up at Mean Eyed Cat with Duffy, and drank Boone's - yay! At the very end of the night we went to Donn's, because Jerry Jeff Walker was like 1 table away - so cool! Made home about 2 - of course it was only like 12 to my body, but still pretty good for me ;)

^ Making fun of the fact that it says "open early for the world cup"

Home sweet home

2010-06-10T12:42:00.000-05:00

Yay! I managed to make it back to Austin without too much trouble. Flight was at 6:30 AM, and since I checked a bag I had to get to the airport at 5:30! The line was so long that by the time I got to the counter they said the bag might not make it on the flight. (Spoiler alert: it did.) I had a layover in San Diego, and ended up with a 1 hour delay. It was 7:00AM and people were drinking beer - wow. There was a crazy obnoxious kid 2 rows behind me who talked REALLY LOUD the entire 2 1/2 hr flight. He was cute when we took off - "whoa! We're flying!!!!" and landing "WHOA! It's so WINDY!" but the rest of the flight it's like seriously, shut up. Also, the kid was like 6 so way too old to be acting like that and why didn't the parents tell him to talk quietly? My awesome Austin bestie had off work, and so she offered to pick me up - YAY! When I got home I found out my car wouldn't start...so I ended up walking to 7-11 to get something to eat. It's not a long walk, but it was pretty darn hot! Long story short, Camden came to my rescue as well as my neighbor,(and my dad via phone!) and we eventually got it started. I picked Mark up from the airport at 11:30, and then we went to bed - I didn't realize how awesomely comfy my Austin bed was until I had something to compare it to!

I always wanted to see my name on a marquee

2010-06-08T12:38:00.001-05:00

Today I went with Lori and Isabella to a shopping area in San Jose. Lots of cute stores and such, but by far my favorite was Powell's sweet shop! It's one of those old fashion candy stores, but it was fun seeing everything with Powell on it! (if you didn't know, Powell is my maiden name). It was fun hanging out with the girls! I spent the rest of the day getting ready for my trip back home to ATX!

Would you call this stealing?

2010-06-07T22:31:00.001-05:00

As I mentioned in my previous post Monster, I've been doing a lot of reading. I recently finished The Hunger Games, loaned to me by Lindsey. Today I was bored, so I wandered over to Borders and decided to take a peek at the next book. Cut to me an hour later 50 pages in...but of course I am not going to buy the book. So if I go to Borders or wherever on a daily basis and read the book, is that stealing? :)

Other books I also looked at:

My Lobotomy by Howard Dully which looks fascinating

SH*t my Dad Says - pretty funny

Urban Hiking

2010-06-06T21:59:00.000-05:00

Mark and I went for a 5 mile hike today around the Almeden Quicksilver Mines. It was very scenic and covered a very large area - all within a few miles of San Jose!

Animals seen today:
Lizards - lots
Stellar Jay (very pretty!)
No rattlesnakes!
No ticks!

"Oh yes, it's so lovely now it's almost a shame to bury it."

2010-06-05T21:33:00.001-05:00

We started the morning off by driving to Monterey Bay and going to the aquarium - supposedly one of the best in the world. It was pretty neat - there was a huge exhibit on sea horses and a giant tank with huge tunas. I didn't realize they got to be like 500 lbs! There were also otters (so cute!) and lots of other neat stuff. We spend awhile there, and then went to Islands for lunch - again, very good! Then we drove up the coast on 1 to take in the beaches of California. So we pulled off onto one beach, and I saw a big pile of...something? As we got closer, I figured out it was a dead seal/sealion on the shore. Gross! And then the wind blew, and yes, it was definitely very dead. I had to laugh, though, because it reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of Frasier, "The Seal Who Came to Dinner". Anyway, we tried to splash around in the water but it was very very cold.

Tim was having a party at his house, and at the same time his upstairs neighbors were also having a party...so at times we would migrate upstairs and they would come down. It was very interesting to see a house in San Fran - very different than Texas homes! I also followed one of the upstairs guy's dogs, and I walking in and declared I was "Alice in Wonderland". It was a good party - lots of fun, and I got to meet some really cool new people.

Animals Seen today:

Marty the cat

lots of fish

bears

otters

Davexiety

2010-06-04T21:26:00.002-05:00

Something I have always wanted to do is go to a drive-in movie. I finnnnnnally got to go to one! The way it worked was you could watch 2 movies for the price of 1, so we saw "Killers" and then "Iron Man 2". Killers was pretty bad - not horrible or anything - but it's ok b/c I was really distracted by the setting. From where I was, I could see Shrek very clearly, and also kind of hear it from the other cars, so I watched part of it, too. We watched about 45 min of IM before we decided to go home and go to sleep because we had to get up early the next day.

Oddly familiar

2010-06-03T19:54:00.002-05:00

Happy 32nd Anniversary to my parents!

I wasn't feeling great Thursday, so I didn't really leave the house during the day (I finished Hunger Games instead :) ) and I was itching to get out that evening, so Mark and I went to the historic rose garden and then dinner and then to some mall. This mall was reminiscent of Richardson Square Mall circa 1995, but what was even weirder was the bathroom. Does anyone remember the bathroom that was down an eerie white hallway at RSM? It was really creepy, and I was always afraid to go down there. So anyway, this mall also had a creepy hallway bathroom. Nice!

Also, the other day I went into a yarn store (I know, right?) and I seriously had had a dream awhile ago and the store I was in looked just like this yarn store. So weird.

Anyone know what this fruit to the right is? I couldn't figure it out.

Monster

2010-06-02T21:41:00.000-05:00

For the past few years I haven't been able to read anything other than school books, because when I read I READ. The past week or 2 I've gotten to read for fun, which has resulted in Mark calling me a "monster" because I'd plowed through books so fast. Today I ventured out to Campbell to find a used bookstore called "Recycle Books". It's like Half Price Books, but less commercial (not that there's anything wrong with HPB - I love it, actually! But it's not an option here). My favorite part of this bookstore was this cat - she was orange and fluffy and let you pet her as she stared out the window. Every bookstore needs a cat!

My home away from home away from home

2010-06-01T20:13:00.002-05:00

After such a whirlwind weekend, I had to take it easy. My only real adventure outside of the house was to my (I guess) favorite spot, Santana Row.

One of the things I've noticed about California - people aren't as nice here. Not that they're rude, but I guess it's hard for me to imagine people not saying "good morning" as they pass by you, or smiling or nodding or whatever - but people here stare straight ahead. Even if in Texas it's faux forced politeness, it feels better than being ignored!

TBD

2010-05-31T21:39:00.000-05:00

Stay tuned - details coming soon!

annnnnnd we're back!

2010-05-30T20:40:00.000-05:00

Woke up surpisingly ok on Sunday...except even with a shower and fresh makeup I looked at least 35. Let this be a lesson to you - alcohol really does age you! But today was my chance to see the lovely capitol city of Sacramento. Actually, there wasn't that much to do. At the recommendation of many many people, we went to the Railroad museum - which was actually better than it sounds. It was really big with lots of trains (obviously) and other stuff. There was also a jazz festival going on, so that was kind of cool. We watched this short film on the RR, and some guy next to me first was complaining that he couldn't hear (and he sat in the back row??) and then talked through half of it. There were also children on leashes.

After lunch we walked over to the capitol building, where we saw some people getting married, and the bride had a hideous bright purple dress. The building was cool, but we didn't stay too long - not that much to do there!

A slight miscalculation

2010-05-29T19:17:00.040-05:00

One of the biggest attractions here in Nor Cal (and the one I was most looking forward to!) is wine tasting in Napa and Sonoma. There are many many vineyards close together, and if you're not careful you can spend a lot of money sampling these fine wines. Luckily, I had done research and printed 2-for-1 offers and such so that we could do it for less than $50. Of course these wineries tend to get the most busy, so I figured we might end up skipping one or 2 if they were too hectic. We got to the area around 10:30 and started at a free winery: Jacuzzi family winery. It was good - but already quite crowded, and we had the privilege of witnessing a great parenting fail. This place was rather large, and someone managed to lose their toddler - who couldn't identify or tell anyone who his parents were. Whoops. After that we went to Cline, where I got to feed fish and look at birds. Then we went to my favorite winery of the day, Anaba. it's a boutique winery that serves delicious unique and large samples while you chat with the owner and his son. At this point, though, it was about 1:00 and we hadn't had lunch yet. Translation - I wasn't all there. Luckily, Mark was fine and we made it to a nice Mexican food place. For me, things went down from there. After lunch we still had a few places left. You see, in my lovely trip-planning I didn't calculate that drinking wine rapidly doesn't always work out so well for me. So after lunch we visited some nice places: Valley of the Moon, Chateau St. Jean, Arrowood (very nice - they also had to-die-for chocolate sauce) and Benzinger Family. I don't remember Benzinger too much - I know we talked to a couple next to us from Texas, our bartender was named "Dr. Bob", and I may have stolen a glass. After that I fell asleep in the car while Mark drove us to the hotel. In spite of me, we managed to have a nice dinner, but didn't do much else in Suison City. I was pretty much ready to go to bed! :)

My first National League game

2010-05-28T23:00:00.000-05:00

For my birthday Mark, David, Tim and I went to a Giants game. They were playing the Diamondbacks, who, as it turns out, were terrible.

We had a really good time though, and the Giants won! It was a very cool stadium - you could see the bay! It got very very cold though - I thought I had been prepared, but I guess I didn't bring enough clothes!

As a bonus, we got to see crazy woman! Not only had she changed the window, but she was actually standing outside. She looked like a trainwreck.

Is that a mirror or a door?

2010-05-27T10:54:00.000-05:00

We went to Emma Prusch park, a farm in the middle of San Jose. Most of the animals had been put away for the night, but there were still a lot of birds walking around.

Animals seen today:

Roosters and Chickens

Peahen

turkey

other birds

cows

sheep

goats

I stand corrected - there was a funnel cloud in the bay!

2010-05-26T22:00:00.039-05:00

Today I had the car, so I decided to make the most of my time by going to places I can't normally get to. I ate lunch at Baja Fresh - NOMS!! Last time I went to BF in Texas the green salsa looked and tasted different. I thought maybe it was a fluke, but when I ate at this one it was the same thing :( Luckily the black salsa I also love was the same...but alas, it looks like my favorite green might be gone forever! Next I decided to be adventurous and check out the Saint Joseph Basilica in downtown San Jose. Something amazing happened here, which I can only attribute to an act of God - I successfully parallel parked, and on the first try! The church was stunning - very beautiful with chapel ceilings, etc. It was really amazing.

My next adventure took me to a park I've passed on my way to Target. It's a Rose Garden/research center, but I was amazed at how much stuff they had. As I was walking down these very narrow paths, I kept hearing noises. It was like on Lost (which I realize if you didn't watch Lost, you won't get this) - when people run through the jungle and hear whispers. I kept hearing it - and finally caught a glimpse of this lizard - and then another, and another. There must be hundreds of them! I also came across and orange tree, which of course fascinates me. Unfortunately, all of the oranges within my reach had been plucked off. Maybe some other time!

It's not as bad as it looks

2010-05-25T17:09:00.000-05:00

Since I got here, I've heard lots of people complaining about the weather - how it's cooler than it's supposed to be, and more significantly, the rain. Let me break it down for you - the "rain" they have been complaining about lasts very briefly and isn't very hard. It's been in the 50's and 60's - so I definitely am not complaining about that! I don't think they realize that in places like Texas, flash floods, tornadoes, hail and other thunderstorm related stuff that's like the norm for May.
The clouds were looking onminous, but it didn't every really rain and they blew past pretty quickly.

Desperate Housewife

2010-05-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

Most of today was spent doing wifey things - I did laundry, and cooked a nice dinner using the lemons we got yesterday.

Menu included:

lemon drop martinis

Chicken, fettuccini, peppers and onions in lemon-thyme sauce

corn on the cob (from the farmer's market!)

garlic bread

lemon poke cake with persian and meyer lemon glaze

When she gave me the lemons, Lori mentioned that one was a persian lemon and the rest were Meyers lemons. Their neighbor, Mark, said people don't like the persian ones b/c they're not lemony enough. I thought maybe that was just a front, but I could definitely taste a difference between the two - weird! I feel like a lemon expert now :)

Farmer's Market

2010-05-23T21:37:00.001-05:00

This morning Mark and I met up with Steve (his boss), his wife Lori and their 18 month old daugter, Isabella, and went to the Farmer's Market in Campbell. There was some delicious fresh produce, including berries, cherries and citrus fruits. Among other things I picked up some avocado cilantro hummus and it's killer! I have to excercise some control not to eat the whole tub in one sitting. After the market we went back to Steve and Lori's house and had a nice breakfast. It was fun hearing about their adventures in CA and what they've been up to. Isabella is one of the cutest babies I've ever seen, and was very very well behaved. My favorite part about this trip, though, was the lemon tree they have in their backyard. Having killed just about every plant I've ever owned (including a cactus) and growing up in Texas, the idea of picking fruit off a tree and being able to eat it is very amusing - and so I came home with a bag of lemons! Lori said if I needed any more to let her know...however as we drove up to our apartment, I saw a lemon tree in our parking lot - with lots of ripe fruit! Looks like everything I eat this week might have a twist... :)

San Jose State University

"Physics? Come on!" "Um, that says psychics, David."

2010-05-22T20:37:00.000-05:00

On this beautiful Saturday we finally went to the big city to visit David. On the way we stopped at J.Lohr so Mark could try some of their deliciousness. We ended up getting to try a few extras and bought a $10 bottle that was pretty good and a rare varietal - Wildflower. We made it to SF around 2:00 and were fortunate enough to find parking very close to David, which I'm told is a rarity. I was reallly impressed because the house is huge and they have a ton of room - very cool. We walked around the Mission a little and David took us to a park with slides (hint: they work better if you use cardboard and sand! ) and a fantastic view of the city. On the slide I got going so fast I couldn't catch my balance on the way down and landed flat on my back - ouch. We checked out the view, and then had some delicious cookies.

After all that, we played Fluxx and Apples to Apples with David's roommate/friends Molly, Rowdy and were later joined by Tim. It was so much fun - hopefully after we left everyone didn't think we were just total weirdos, but I wouldn't blame them if they did :) We had dinner at a great mexican place. Can't wait to go back and hang out again!

So my best explaination for this picture - David has a quasi-creepy neighbor who changes this display in her window seasonally. While seasonal decorations are normal, creepy doll/angel/bear-bee things and old scary pictures are not. Niether is admiring your display from every angle including across a busy street.

Animals Seen today:

Hipsters

What's the plural for Prius? Prii?

2010-05-22T12:08:00.000-05:00

Yay for Friday! Mark got off work a little early, so we decided to go to Santa Cruz for dinner. On the drive out, we found a winery in Los Gatos that was open until 6, so we decided to stop in and do a little wine tasting. As it turns out, this winery is owned by Peggy Flemming (the skater) and her husband - and my favorite wine we tried came from John Madden's grapes. Weird!

Los Gatos is actually where ONR started - it was a cute town and hopefully I can go back and poke around the shops sometime. Maybe I'll run into some ONR people, too!

Driving on to Santa Cruz, it was very scenic - lots of trees and hills. I had done some research and found what I thought was a great restaurant on the beach with reasonably priced food. When we got there, it was about 7:00 on a Friday night...and we were the only ones there. We ended up splitting food because it was a little pricey ($15 per person) but it was plenty. It was pretty good, great view, etc. except it was weird that we were the only ones there. Then we walked to the light house at the end of the pier. It was FREEZING!! I had a sweater and a jacket on, and I was still cold! The highlight of the walk, though, had to be the seals and/or sea lions in the pier! It was pretty cool.

This lighthouse was pretty, but we got up close and saw that it was built in 2001 - so not exactly old/cool like it seemed.

That's pretty much it for Friday. Looking forward to a fun weekend!

Animals seen today:

Cat on a boat

seal/seal lions

pelicans

other birds

skunk

Asian guy in cutoff short-shorts and a tank top...I've officially seen it all

2010-05-20T23:14:00.001-05:00

Another day of walking around the area. I had lunch at a place called El Jardin where I had basically a $10 glorified Chipotle burrito. It was good, but probably not worth $10 (although it was a nice atmosphere!). Then I walked over to the movie theatre next door to the Winchester Mystery House (the only real mystery is why anyone would pay $30 to get in) - which is where I snapped this nice picture. As it turns out I didn't want to pay $8 to see a movie, so I went to Borders and bought a book instead - I think I made the right call! :)
I also did laundry today... so life isn't all that exciting here, particularly when I don't have a car!

Animals seen today:

Hermit crab (in a cage)

Asian guy at mall

Nothing better than a wine tasting room in a school zone

2010-05-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

Today I had the car, so I got to drive around and get to know my surroundings a little better. Ironically, the 2 places I really want to eat - Baja Fresh and In-N-Out Burger - I never passed. Once upon a time we had Baja Fresh in Texas...and now we're down to 1 in Irving. Their salsa is killer, but I digress...
I stopped in at J.Lohr and did some wine tasting. It was 3:00, so I was the only one in there - but that's ok. The wines I tried were really good, but the best ones were a bit out of my price range. I can't wait to go back with Mark, though :) The room was across the street from a Jr. High, which I found really strange.
After he got home from work, we decided to check out this rooftop bar on Santana Row. I knew it would be pricey, but figured we were paying for atmospere anyway. It was pretty cool - inside a fancy hotel with confusing elevators. $6 for a Stella, but we got to drink it by a firepit. It's very nice here, but I am already missing home!

Sales tax is 9.25% here?!

2010-05-18T00:30:00.001-05:00

Today I went across the street to Westfield Mall -which, again, is an upscale mall that is comparable to a cross between North Park and Barton Creek. I got my free gift from Sephora (yay, happy birthday to me!) and some candles for our apartment because there's a lingering smell from the tacos we had last night. I also decided to saunter over to Old Navy and found that they were having an awesome sale - in fact, I ended up with 4 tank tops 2 pairs of jeans a shirt and pyjama pants for less than $30.

Then Mark came home, and we decided to check out the Japanese Friendship Gardens in San Jose. We had a picnic and walked around - it was pretty neat, albeit not as cool as the garden in San Francisco!

Animals seen today:

Ducks (plus a duckling)

2 house cats

a woman carrying a dog in the mall - why??

Mark saw a snail

Wow, that's a really big snail

2010-05-17T22:22:00.000-05:00

Today I ventured out of the house to Santana Row to check out the area. This outdoor mall is reminiscent of Northpark Mall in that even on clearance I couldn't afford anything at these stores. Well, not entirely true, because it does have an H&M! I didn't buy anything, but I got to look around. I was hoping for a bigger store, but I can always visit the big one when we go to the city :). Other than that, I didn't really do much - not so much of a grand start, but I'm sure I'll find adventures.

Animals seen today:
Snail (size of a thumb!)
house cat

This is my temporary home

2010-05-17T19:21:00.000-05:00

Here is our lovely studio apartment in San Jose! It isn't much, but I only have to live here for a few weeks...and it's next door to a grocery store and 2 malls - including an H&M!

Califoria, here we come

2010-05-15T21:25:00.011-05:00

Once again we hit the road early - this time to make it to LA. Since we had been doing lots of outdoorsy things it was a big shift! We tried to stop at the mining and mineral museum in Phoenix, but it was closed. Instead we walked around a nearby park devoted to memorials. There were monuments to everything - including service dogs. We also got to play around on the equipment outside of the museum.

We got to Burbank/LA around 3:00, so decided to go "sightseeing". Since my dad is sort of the LA expert, we took his recommendations and drove around Sunset Blvd, Mullholland Drive and Hollywood Blvd. Unfortunately we couldn't find the Hollywood sign (hey! It's harder to find than you might think...) and we didn't make it to La Brea before they closed. Since it was a Saturday night in LA, we had no idea where to eat, and then I came up with a brilliant plan - ISLANDS! Islands is a restaurant that they used to have in Texas (both Mark and I used to go there years ago), but for some reason it closed there. We found one nearby and ate there - delicious, just as I remembered! We also went to Trader Joe's and picked up some 2 buck chuck - not that bad for $2.
We stayed at a Marriott and I was thinking how weird it was that they had a catalog to buy the stuff in the hotel room including the bed. After spending the night there, though - I totally get why a rich person with all kinds of money might buy it - it was amazing! Alas, we had to get up, and finish the drive... luckily just a few hours left!

Watch out, Tuscon, here we come!

2010-05-14T20:26:00.000-05:00

We left Roswell before 8 and headed to White Sands. I went here when I was young, but I don't remember it too much except I was excited that Boys II Men had filmed a video ("Water Runs Dry") there. In fact, I had that song stuck in my head like the entire time we were there. It's basically an area of NM that had pure white (Gypsum) sand dunes - random! Some of the dunes have plants, but a lot of them don't, making them look like big snowy hills in the middle of a desert - except the snow is actually sand...so it's just a big white desert :) Then we headed to Tucson and got there fairly early. We went to Saguaro National Park (West) to see the giant cacti. I have wanted to see these for a long time - particularly because I remember Spike, Snoopy's cousin, being friends with them and living in one. Weird, I know. But it definitely did not disappoint. There were also lots of different animals and plants there, too. We went to a local "mexican" (would say Tex-Mex except not Tex!) restaurant for dinner and it was kind of weird, but really good. Who would have guessed green beans went with fajitas?

I guess I should mention what we're doing to entertain ourselves in the car. Afterall, driving through the desert for 3 days gets old pretty quickly. We listened to Simple Genius by David Baldacci - It's the 3rd book in a series about these 2 detectives and I have to say I am totally addicted to them. Esp. when we moved on to a different book (shall remain nameless!) that is terrible!

Animals seen on this day:

Lizards

Coyote (dead)

more birds

On the road again!

2010-05-13T00:00:00.040-05:00

After a night of partying with my OT friends and saying goodbye :(, we woke up at 6 to take care of some last minute things before we hit the road. I'll just say this: hangover + 9 hour drive = bad decisions were made. After all was said and done, though, we left Dallas around 9 and made it to Roswell by 4:45. Luckily, we ran over to the "Area 51" museum thing and since it was almost closing time, the guy let us in for free. We got to take some cheesy pictures of aliens, which is all I really wanted to do in Roswell. Lots of the city had alien stuff, but there were some other cool things like the Bitters Wildlife Refuge. If we hadn't been so tired, we might have stayed until dark to check out the stars - since there aren't many lights you probably could see a lot more out there than in the city. We also learned a lesson here about not blindly following the GPS - it ended up leading us into a field and a dirt road (road is a bit generous...). Live and learn! :) I'm really happy I got to see Roswell - even if it is dorky I can still say I've been there! I have to say I have the best husband ever :)

Animals seen this day:
Prairie dogs (very exciting!!)
Roadrunner (?) - some kind of bird with plummage
lots of birds

Aliens
Jackrabbit

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

2010-05-10T20:43:00.000-05:00

It's Monday night, and we're just about ready to hit the road. Tomorrow Nick is helping Mark move my furniture to Jenn's house, so after that I just have to get through exams and it'll be time to go! The plan right now is to leave Dallas Thursday morning, go to Roswell, NM, Friday head to Phoenix, and Saturday in LA. Sunday we'll arrive in San Jose! I think all of our hotels have internet access, so hopefully I can update from those places. Stay Tuned... :)

2 weeks of epic fails!

2010-03-19T13:14:00.004-05:00

First, we have midterms - I studied like crazy for my lab, and still didn't know anything so I just guessed on everything(I guess they call that clinical reasoning?). I didn't really study for lecture because I was burned out, and man...that was a trainwreck, but luckily mutually agreed by the rest of the class. Actually, There were 2 parts: 1 for medical lecture (85 questions) and 1 for the rest of lecture (100) questions. I'm not a test giving expert, but 185 questions for one test (on top of 100 for lab!!!) is NOT A GOOD TEST! Niether is making every question have answers like: A) A B) B C) C D) A & C E) All of the above. By question 27 I was thinking, "FML, I give up." Also, in true fashion, there were typos in nearly every question (no, seriously). Some of our favorites:
Which of the following are true EXCEPT:
answer choice: X compared with... (there was nothing to compare it with)
a. something
b. something
c. A&B
d. all of the above ...

Last but never least, we had Management...Ok, so Wednesday night I tried to study but again was so traumatized from that last midterm that I couldn't. Tried to study Thursday AM but we were getting our FW II placements so I was really nervous. I didn't excpect the exam to go that way...it was funny how much our class didn't know. Anyway, we haven't gotten any of our grades back yet which is just as well since I don't want my last spring break ever ruined!

That was week 1 of fail... week 2: Spring Break!
Sometimes I think school makes me dumber - or maybe it's all the alcohol I have to drink to get through it...but anyway, I tried some new recipes with hot mess results. First, I made pretzels - well, I followed the recipe exactly, but they were waaaaay too sticky, and then they wouldn't make pretzel shapes, and then they weren't cooked all the way - but they did taste pretty good when all was said and done. Ha!
This is what my kitchen looked like afterwards.
and the pretzels...

Ugh! Later that evening I tried to make greenbean fries - I did pretty well EXCEPT I added a bunch of flour to the mix, which I was supposed to keep separate. Darn it! They weren't terrible, but they definitely weren't great.
So maybe I should have quit while I was ahead! I need to bake something tasty and good to get my self esteem back up! Of course going back to school isn't going to help that...

Rats on the Roof?

2010-02-03T10:52:00.002-06:00

After a few nights of wondering if I was going insane because I was hearing people walking around above me (I live on the top floor) and in the walls, I finally figured out - it's an animal! There must be some kind of animal that lives in my wall. It's most likely a rat or a squirrel, and I had a bunch of dreams that they ate a hole in the wall (which is apparently fairly likely) and a giant rat burst out... so I guess I'll report it to my apartment complex and see if they can do anything about it before they come tumbling out of my wall.

I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself to hold onto these moments as they pass

2010-01-19T20:01:00.002-06:00

It's the eve of the first day of my last semester of classes in grad school. I have mixed emotions about this - on the plus side, it's good to get it started b/c once it does, it will surely fly by, and once it does, I'll be ready for my big SF adventure, and then FW II. I am excited to see my friends, too. I can't believe how fast it has all happened - I still remember sitting in the auditorium praying that I made the right decision. I'm sad, because of course after spending time here in Big D, there are people I love here. I love hanging out with Lindsey on weeknights, drinking wine and bitching about whatever - watching movies and making snarky comments (ok, maybe just Twilight)and playing with her pets. I also love having my dad at trivia, and just being able to run to my parents house for a few hours. Of course my sister made the terrible mistake of buying a house in Dallas (who told her to do that?! ;) ) so I won't get to see her as much, either.
I think my Dallas friends just need to move to Austin - that would solve lots of my mixed emotions!

This last semester - bleh - who knows what to expect? At least at this point I know I'll survive. I think.

2010: return of the blog?

2010-01-02T20:03:00.008-06:00

Ok, so I am sad I lost interest in my blog less than 6 months in, but the New Year is a clean slate, so I thought I'd try again. I realized my blog was sort of therapeutic for me, but after awhile I didn't neet the "therapy", and I think that's why it trailed off.

2009 ended in a good but interesting way. I spent it with some of my favorite people, including Jenn.
We went to Clare and Anthony's, ate too much food, drank way too much alcohol, and had a good time.

The next day we woke up late watched "I didn't know I was Pregnant", and then went over to Ben's to watch the Rose Bowl. It was fun, but by the time it was 4th quarter I was so sleepy! We went home and took a nap, and then decided to take Jenn to Common Interest. Duffy met up with us, and by the time we had had a few drinks and felt prepared to sing, the wait was really long. There's a "game room" that has pool tables, and we also discovered a private karaoke machine, so we got to sing some songs by ourselves. Finally it was our turn, and Jenn and I sang "Sweet Caroline". The audience loved it and they all sang along - it was definitely one of my best karaoke moments ever!

So far a good start to the year...let's see what else happens.

I put gorillas because they have fuckin tails, right?

2009-07-29T10:36:00.018-05:00

Picture it: Dallas, Texas. June, 2009. Ok, well June 8th I had to go back to school -but I had had almost a month off, so I was prepared-ish. First, I had to say goodbye to my awesome friends in Austin for awhile. So of course, we did trivia. At the time of Ben's birthday, he had made it clear he didn't want to celebrate. Note to everyone: if you tell me something like that, I take it literally! So we could tell he was kind of bummed that we listened, so Mere and I brilliantly threw a surprise trivia party for him a month after his birthday. guaranteed surprise! I made a dirt cake b/c he had said a few weeks before how much he liked those and hadn't had one in years! Then Mere brought balloons, including a singing Elmo balloon that kept going off in her trunk. FTW!
So back to school and work...as it turns out, I was asked to help some of the staff move offices. No problemo - except as I'm moving one, Luci points out that the prof. I'm moving is very particular about her things, and doesn't know she's being moved...and also, it's the prof I am most afraid of - AHHHH! SO I took a ton of pics and made sure everything was EXACTLY the way she left it. She ended up happy about the move and wasn't mad - whew! I don't have to have her again, but I was afraid maybe she'd try to take away previous credits or something - hehe.
First day of class, we take a fieldtrip to these 2 guy's houses, which is pretty cool - one person has paraplegia so we got to talk with him and see how his house is laid out, and the other had MS and was quadriplegic. Both people were so sweet, and when we got to the second house, Bill's, he was waiting for us outside. He told our prof, Ms. Lipoma, that she needed to move her car b/c people tended to come around his corner fast, but she could park right in front of the house. She asked Sajid to move it, and we're all kind of watching him and Bill says, "You think he can do it?" and I said, "OH yeah, he's a valet on weekends so he knows what he's doing." Aaron added, "But he might want a tip." Sajid parks the car perfectly, and gets out. Bill says, "Son, I don't know whether to give you a tip, or a razor." It was pretty hilarious! Later that week, we were given instructions to build a tower our of newspaper that touches the ceiling, and that was pretty much it. So we divided into 2 groups, and my group ended up getting ours to touch the fastest - we had a little newspaper flag on top that did the touching. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't stable, but it touched! The rules also mentioned that it wasn't a contest, but we were pretty happy we finished before the other group, which had Luke. During our discussion, the main point of this activity was to identify which group members took on which roles. Lauren, our observer, pointed out that we worked well together, but then we were way too competitive with the other team. Too funny - and Luke maintains that they won b/c theirs was more stable and their's more legitimately touched. Sorry dude, we followed all the rules and we beat you fair and square. Next we did an activity where we cut out pics from a magazine and glued them onto construction paper - 1 side represented what we see ourself as now, and the other was what we want to be in the future. I was in a good mood that day, but I wanted my collage to be perfect, so I ran out of time - and therefore only had 1 side.
oops. So I put the word "shimmers" on there for future, and then had to explain why. My basic words were: "I've always really liked the poem Richard Corey, and ok, I know he commits suicide at the end, but it's got really good immagery...the townspeople describe him as 'he glitters when he walks' and I always loved that image! So to change it a bit, I put 'shimmers' b/c I want to shimmer when I walk - like people see me and are like, 'wow, she's so pulled together!'...but I'm not going to kill myself or anything.......I am actually really happy with the way things are right now........" I was the only person that had to say that!
Then Luke goes, and his has this tiny "alcoholic" in the corner, and he said, "all of the best times I have with friends have alcohol involved, so I put this as kind of a joke" and I commented that we'd have a good time without alcohol, too - it's just a coincidence - trying to explain that he's NOT an alcoholic, but then the teacher says something like, "well, this might come up in a group, and it's hard to admit" etc. so Luke thought I had like thrown him under the bus - whoops! She was just saying that to everyone in general - not specifically to him.
Onto birthday party part 2 - Well, it ended up when we had to volunteer during a fishing tournament the weekend after school started - either Saturday or Sunday. My Dallas birthday party had been scheduled for Friday, but some of the people at the party had signed up to volunteer at 4:30 on Saturday. We had beer, wine, sangria, margaritas, and other random alcohol...and at some point we decided it would be easier to stay up all night. So...yeah.. everyone left about 3 to head to the fishing tournament, and I went to bed :). Apparently it wasn't much fun to be awake all night then work the next day. I went on Sunday, and aside from getting up incredibly early, it was OK. There were some really drunk guys from a frat there with us, and one of them followed Carrie around like a lost puppy. On Saturday, , Mariana had planned on picking up Pri and Shubi before the tournamnet. After the party, she went home to change, called P and S and told them she'd leave in 10 minutes. She fell asleep, and woke up to someone pounding on her door. Pri, Shubi and Ms Lipoma had called several times and gotten no answer, so they finally went to get her. She wasn't in trouble - they were just worried. They ended up eating at Denny's before going to the tournament.

The next week we went to a Ranger's game - Hamilton was out (boooo), but Kinsler got a run and the Rangers ended up beating the Astros in the 10th. Traffic was horrible when we left, and Aaron still needed to take his Quant quiz. We ended up calling Mark on speaker phone, and he logged in as Aaron and we tried to answer the quiz questions. He ended up with a 70, but that's better than a zero. Good times! I can't wait to go to another game. For class, we took a tour of the Mary Kay factory and took note of ergonomic risk factors. I was annoyed I didn't get any free samples, but it was neat to see the factory and it was comical how many ergo notices they had - my favorite was the "American Safety Idol" contest.
I also got to go to the Anteparum unit at Baylor and help lead a group - it was a great experience, and I learned a ton from the OT there as well as the group participants.
That was pretty much my June - stay tuned for July!

The triumphant return of DDoA!

2009-07-29T10:04:00.009-05:00

Ok, so it's been a looooong time since I blogged. I get it - but the people are asking for more, so I give you... MORE KATIE! I'll give a mini-update in a multi-part series.
Part I: End of May!
After Boston, we came home. Spent some time in Austin - yay! - before school started back up. It was almost my birthday, and I turned 26 - AHHHHHH so old! I also share a birthday month (really more like 2 weeks) with Clare, Mary, and Ben, so we had Birthday trivias, which = fun times And as a bonus, we won! Had birthday happy hour on the 28th - got to see some old friends, and Duffy cameEnded up at Mean Eyed Cat which was awesome! Had a great time, lots of drinks, and we had a pizza delivered there that said - no lie - "your pizza experience has been managed by Christ". ! It was a really great night. On Saturday we went kayaking in the morning, and ended up tying Mere and Mary's kayak to ours for awhile while they got the hang of things. Later that evening we went to Mellow Mushroom, which I get like once a year on my birthday, and it was delicious as usual. The month ended, but I was definitely not finished celebrating! Stay tuned...

How do you like me now, Biznatch?

2009-05-19T13:31:00.010-05:00

Ok ok... I know it's been almost a month since I've posted anything, but between school projects and finals I haven't had any time. Plus, things haven't been all that interesting. Here's the quick version:

Kinsese practicum: hated it - was grilled and graded too hard, but it worked out in the end.
Last day of class: went to Toys R Us as fieldtrip, got to play parachute and boxing in class - lots of people got agression out this way :)
Thursday after last day of class: awesome - went to Sherlocks w/ Anna, Mariana, Luke, Aaron, Sajid and Courtney Armato and had a blast - got drunk, laughed a ton (my abs were killing me the next day) and left at 1:30 AM.
Weekend before finals: lots of studying - went to Taste Addison for Mother's Day and got to do Robert Mondavi tasting. Fun and free wine! Got a little tipsy. Ate lots of food, too. Went home an took pictures for David's bizarre graduation present.

Finals week: took finals - not as motivated as I was during midterms but still did fine. Finals suck, as always. Wednesday night was end of year party, and I was the only grad 4 that went. Still was fun - glad I got to stay goodbye.
Thursday after finals: Sherlock's again - this time lots of people came. Got drunk early as I had to leave early. Played pool and darts - beat Aaron at darts once! Shout out! Group got "strongly encouraged to close our tab" and some people got kicked out. Also left Ben a happy birthday message that might have been a little too obnoxious. And wished him a happy 29th even though he was turning 28.
Friday: Shuttle came to pick me up to take me to airport at 4:25 AM. gross. Got to airport - total asses. They forced me to check my bag, so when I got to Boston I was kicked out of the secured part of the airport to the pre-security section, so there were only a few restaurants. Mark's family got there a few hours later, and we drove around to meet up with David. Took 2 hours as we went the wrong way forever- finally made it to dinner at Dali. It was awesome! Tapas are killer good. Made it back to hotel and crashed.

Saturday: Mark made it! Met us at the museum, where we went on a duck tour (quack). Saw lots of stuff - old churches and Big Dig. Really wanted to go to H&M but didn't make it. Ate at famous foodcourt. Saw harbor - no tea, though. Rainy and cold! Went to reception - free alcohol = drank too much and embarassed David. :) Hibatchi for dinner - yum!

Sunday: Still rainy, so went to Cambrige to see Jim's seminary w/ Cordy. BIG FIRE!!! Turns out, fire was one block up from where we were going - very smokey and gross. Cordy saw seminary (made her life!) and we saw big mormon fire. Crazy!
Went to David's graduation - very nice ceremony, very personal (they all got to give one quote or whatever). Drove as fast as we could to liqour store that closed at 6 (actually 7), but no corkscrew so lady employee opened it for us. God bless her! Ann drinks in parking lot. Ann drinks in car on the way to dinner. Dinner at Legal - so good! All the food we had was great! Go back to hotel and crash.

Monday: Mark and I go to Manchester to catch flight back to Austin. Barely get on, but got to sit together. Made it back to ATX!

Presentation FAIL

2009-04-27T21:13:00.005-05:00

Ok... so after a week of sort of planning this presentation, the only thing I needed to do was finished editing for grammar, and Aaron was going to add a reference - easy peasy, right? Sunday AM 1st thing I finished editing, and sent it to everyone so they could practice their parts. Later, I was doing something with the document and I realized - FRICK. I once again opened the document from gmail and hit save - which means it gets saved in some secret secret buried "Temporary" file. I have no clue why it's made that way - WHY would I want to save something that I don't want? Why doesn't it just pop up and say, "YO! You can't save it here!" Anyway, NOT the first time I have done that, unfortunately, and I had to redo it all. Ok, still good. I texted Aaron like 5 times to make sure he was finished his reference, and that he was using the RIGHT document. No answer all day, and finally he's like, Yeah, I'll do it as soon as I'm done w/ quant quiz. Ok, good. Also, we have to have a handout for the class, so we made this crossword puzzle. I forgot, so then I was like, crap, Aaron needs to send that, too. Except then Anna forwards me the crossword and the file is corrupt or doesn't open. Instead of texting Aaron again so he doesn't kill me, I text Sajid and ask him to call Aaron and see if he's done it yet and to remind him about the crossword. Ok, he's going to do it. ...Monday morning comes around, and there's no message from Aaron that he sent it, so Anna sends the incomplete version to the professor b/c part of our grade was turning it into her before the presentation. Turns out, Aaron actually did send both the crossword and the powerpoint to teacher. As it turns out, the crossword was indeed broken and therefore not saved. So we have to re-do the whole thing in about 30 min before class, and it's online, so apparently you can't really save it. We get it all done - - just waiting to print 37 copies for the class, so Luke and I go upstairs to set up our powerpoint and everything, because we have like 5 min before class starts and we're going first. A few minutes later, Anna and Aaron come upstairs w/out the copies. Wait...what? Turns out, Aaron sent the stuff to "print" but it never made it to the network printer, and he logged out of the computer before they knew that. SO NO CROSSWORD AGAIN. We ended up having to redo it AGAIN, and the teacher moved our presentation to last. Print - SUCCESS!!! Ok, so we're done...we present, it goes pretty well, everyone likes my homemade I <3 Kielhofner shirt...Really, you have to have a sense of humor about these kinds of things. But we still suck at life.

As long as they don't stare at me in a creepy way I'm ok

2009-04-26T21:56:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to go to my parent's house on Saturday, but since Rebuilding went so late, we rescheduled for Sunday. We pretty much just had a low-key dinner at Olive Garden and I got to hear about my dad's new job. Otherwise, most of the day was spent doing homework galore. After 3 weeks, I'll have a break, but until then it's going to be crazy!

That stuff kept getting in my mouth - it was gross....shut up.

2009-04-25T20:37:00.003-05:00

manual labor - blar! Things I did today (almost all we new to me):

1) threw roofing shingles into a dumbster via a wheelbarrow
2)cut roofing shingles
3)shoveled concrete
4) spread concrete with a skreet board
5)brushed concrete to make it smooth
6) brushed concrete to make it textured
7) nailed shingles to roof
8)fixed bathtub, "installed" carbon monoxide monitor
9) lots of time on hands and knees picking up nails and junk from the roof

Yep - I was doing it all today - and I'm going to be crazy sore tomorrow, I'm sure.

Movies that make you dumber

2009-04-24T22:12:00.000-05:00

Housebunny. While I didn't expect a lot from this film, I thought it might be kinda funny. There were a few funny parts/lines, but for the most part it was pretty dumb.

"I want to be your girlfriend more than protons want electrons" and the whole scary voice thing were the best parts!

2 MRS. GEBHARTS??

2009-04-23T21:49:00.000-05:00

Today I went to observe my mother in law's kindergarten class, which happens to be at my old elementary school. The kids were pretty interested in who I was (naturally), and when she explained that I was her daughter in law, the kids were supposed to try to guess my last name. To give them a hint, Cindy told them my last name was the same as her son's. The problem is, most of these kids do not have the same last name as their mom or siblings. Hmmmm...so finally, she just told them. The fact that there were 2 Mrs. Gebharts was very interesting to them. Anyway, I had a lot of fun watching the kids do their activities, and it was a really good learning experience. Some of them come from really tough backgrounds, so I really hope they'll be successful. I also got to see 2 of my old teachers, Mrs. Ludtke and Mrs. Sidweber, and they both remembered who I was (and my sister)! Sadly, they painted over my name on the bricks as well as the mural in the cafeteria. So sad!
That evening I went to Luke's house for a get together and had a little too much vino. But that's ok :) It was still fun, and I really like his friend Sam's girlfriend, Jessica.

I suck at goodbyes

2009-04-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

Today was my last day at Fieldwork - I can't believe it's done, and I am a little sad. I really enjoyed working with Justine and her kids, and learned so much in a short amount of time. She told me I could call her anytime if I needed help (or if I'm ever back in Dallas - a job). Then I went up to school to work with Courtney on our kick ass treatment box, and then I had my backpain balance study. It wasn't too bad - kinda interesting! They checked my reflexes and all that, and then I got in a box and did some things with my eyes open and closed and balancing. The only one I thought was awful was closing my eyes and balancing on one foot. I actually didn't do too bad on that compared to other people, but it's hard - try it sometime! My COG is really far back (ironic since my trainer used to yell at me for being on my toes!) and I guess I don't like it when the walls move - it confuses my brain. Anyway, $20 free to Target for participating!

Hey, who am I? sticks out chest

2009-04-21T22:01:00.000-05:00

...the answer would be Luke.

The guys kept making fun of him for some picture I took - Sajid has crazy eyes b/c he was jumping up to be tall, and IDK what Luke was doing. Anyway, went to Dr, went to open lab, went to work...came home, worked on homework. It wasn't a very interesting day :)

I know, you waited almost a whole week for this.

Happy 2 1/2 year anniversary!

9 years ago

2009-04-20T21:17:00.003-05:00

This morning didn't go quite as planned. Last time we checked, the 9:05 flight to Dallas had plenty o seats left. Excellent! But when I got there, apparently there were like 20 non-revs in front of me and it was "not likely" I was going to get on. ... luckily I made it on at the last minute and was ready to head back to school life. As we're pulling away from the gate and the flight attendant is giving the spiel about safety, some guy stands up. "Sir, you need to sit down." NOPE - not going to happen. Dude grabs his laptop and shoves his way over everyone and starts walking to the front. Post Sept 11 you cannot do this, so the flight attendants surrounded him and he started saying something about his purse and pointing to the bag. Not sure what happened next, but he got up to the front, the plane stopped moving, and started moving back toward the gate. Guy gets off, and we leave again. Later the pilot said the guy "did the right thing since he wasn't feeling well". I guess he had a panic attack. EVERYONE was staring at him though, and I thought - this must be really mortifying for him.

So yes, 9 years ago today I started dating Mark. The pic is as close to 9 years as I could get with what I have on my computer (all of our older stuff is on mom and dad's at home) but you get the gist. We were young and crazy! After 9 years, I still am not tired of him - weird, right? I often wonder how he's not tired of me, either. One of life's mysteries!

Another finally!

2009-04-19T19:27:00.000-05:00

Mark and I went for a walk today, and I finally got to see this windmill. I've seen it from the highway several times (it's a trail between the NB and SB lanes of MoPac), but I finally got to see it up close. I'm running out of things to do in Austin that I've been talking about for years! Later Mark and I had a nice date at Mozarts - great evening!

Baby talk

2009-04-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

It's probably a good thing I didn't stay at ONR, because apparently there's been a pregnancy outbreak since I left. But anyway, I finally got to meet Venus's baby, Isabella, and she's so cute! It was really cool to see all these reflexes in real life, too. Isabella was really happy and never cried, but she loves to be held. She also was surprisingly strong and really wanted you to tip her backwards! It was great to finally meet her, and to see Venus again. I don't miss working much, but I do miss my coworkers!

Shut up, the couch!

2009-04-18T22:12:00.004-05:00

Tiffany had a game night at her house, and after about 30 min of driving around and taking wrong turns we finally made it. As most parties like this go, there were 2 groups - us vs. them. Well it didn't start out that way, but... some members of our group may have gotten a little tispy, and therefore a little rowdy. Some members of the other group may have not liked this. I think the highlight was when we were playing Taboo and Mark yelled out "PRECIOUS!!" (which was clearly the correct answer) for the other team. Then the guy says, "We should get the point for that one because that was ridiculous." Of course we were going to give them the point - IT'S JUST A GAME! Also, at one point we were being very loud (hmmmm) and obnoxious, and someone said to someone else, "It's OK" and she said, "no, it's really not." So to the other group - sorry we ruined your game night. We had a lot of fun, but sorry we didn't take Phase 10/Taboo seriously. I rarely take games seriously, which may be why lots of people don't like me.

Also, this painting was hanging on the wall in Tiffany's living room. I didn't think much about it until she explained: "It's so horrible, but they tried so hard!" Then the more I stared at it, the more ironic and funny it got. It's called "Midnight Snack".

I want someone to lay on top of me!

2009-04-16T10:13:00.001-05:00

...Also, I had a weird flight to Austin. First, they gave me a ticket for a different flight on accident, then called me back to the desk to get on the correct flight. Then, I got on with no problems, but then they decided to wait for a connecting flight so we were delayed an extra half hour. We pulled away from the gate, and then we sat on the runway for 10 min waiting our turn. We had to go around some crazy thunderstorm. 1/2 way through the flight some drunk guy stumbles up the aisle (while the fasten seatbelt sign is on), stumbles back down to the back, then ends up at his seat again with a wad of paper towels. As it turns out, either he or the crying baby next to him threw up. Gross.

Ha-HA your rocket didn't launch!...that's what she said!

2009-04-15T10:27:00.000-05:00

I STILL don't speak kinsiology

2009-04-14T10:33:00.000-05:00

Today I was really frustrated, because I just don't know anything about kinesiology. We're doing wrist and hands, and there's just so much info it's all jumbled up in my head! Luckily I have a big break coming up, so I can learn all this stuff.
Then I went to work, and I actually had a lot of work to do! AND...(drumroll) I am FINALLY on the payroll! So in a few weeks, I should be getting a paycheck! So that's how this works, huh? Also, I found out the next AOTA conference is in Orlando, so I am totally going to try to go next year.

No you didn't, you bitch!

2009-04-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

Dr. Neville had an open lab for kinese that I fully intended to go to...except, it was at 8:00. And I took Mark to the airport at 6:30...soooooo...I was really tired. Anyway, apparently like 5 people went (it's 8 in the morning on MONDAY!) so she was a little annoyed. She passed Anna in the hall and said, "Did you miss me this morning?" and Anna said, "oh yeah!" and she replied (jokingly of course) "No you didn't you bitch!" She also called Aaron a smartass (which is true). It's things like these that make me think I could possibly handle teaching at a college level. Still don't want to, though! Ms. Lipoma was sick...Dr. Candler was sick...so we got out of all of our classes early, and there's no class next week. YAY!!

Happy Easter!

2009-04-13T19:43:00.004-05:00

It's Easter! and I survived Lent!

To celebrate my dad's birthday (from January)/ him getting a new job, we went to Fogo de Chao. If you've never been, it's quite an experience. It's all you can eat, and there's a gorgeous salad bar (enough to be a meal on its own) plus gauchos with skewers of different kinds of meat. By the end we were all so full I wasn't sure we were going to make it home. Fogo definitely makes my top 5 list of ultimate eating experiences (Also on the list are cruises and Melting Pot). It was nice, but I'm glad we don't get to do it very often.

Blar Saturday

2009-04-13T19:38:00.002-05:00

So I wasn't feeling so well on Saturday - I had pretty much no energy and felt cold all day even though it was pretty nice outside. I just couldn't imagine getting up and moving around. Mark made dinner, and I felt a little better, so we decided to go to the VCC. It wasn't too bad, and we didn't stay too late. We ended up watching women's bowling for no real reason, and Mark kept making fun of them. To be fair, though, they didn't get nearly as many strikes as they should have. Then men's bowling came on, and it was even more apparent how bad the women were. Oh well. And I have no idea what this was, but there was a basketball game on where the teams were "USA" and "World" - Hmmm.

What's this cloud of black surrounding Dallas?

2009-04-11T17:08:00.003-05:00

Wish I could tell you I had and awesome and crazy Friday, but really not so much. Went to work at 8:00 AM - I thought today was the day I FINALLY got paid, and we were soooo close, but... nope. Well, the other campus called at 9:00 AM to tell Luci that they need my SS card by 11AM if I wanted to get paid today. Could you have called, like, I dunno, a week ago? a month ago? Anyway, my SS card is in Austin, and Mark was already at work. Being the awesome hubby he is, he ran home (actually took the bus, which dropped him off at the first stop - ran inside, grabbed the card, ran back and got on the bus at the other stop - my hero :) ) and copied it. By 10:00 I had a copy, so we faxed it to the # HR had given - noooo answer. Called the woman back - also no answer, and she never returned our message. So we faxed it to a different number, but I was never able to tell them what hours I had worked, so I won't be getting paid this time. Hopefully next pay period!

Then I went to fieldwork and worked on my big fat assignment for fieldwork class. Getting closer to being finished!

Then Marky Mark arrived, so I picked him up and went to dinner with his parents.

Was planning on maybe meeting up with Luke and Michelle for a drink or something, but it was like 9:30 and I was so flipping tired, so we just went home and crashed. I know, we're too cool for words!

I had a friend who was Gayzilla! He'll tear down Hong Kong he's so gay!

2009-04-09T16:58:00.000-05:00

Thursday - Of course I had class at 8 - luckily Ms Buckingham keeps it interesting. I also learned that my purse weighs a little over 5lbs. Then I went to Lab, and we watched a video about a kid with no arms or legs - it was really interesting because he could do most things anyway. I was planning on doing laundry at my parent's house, but I wanted to leave later b/c I knew traffic was going to bad, so I decided to eat dinner first. Well, first I cleaned up my apt, then I ate dinner. I was doing pretty well, until... SPLOSION! Diet Dr Pepper everywhere! It was all over the floor, appliances, walls, ceiling...it even made it to my table somehow. Luckily since it's diet it wasn't too sticky, but ugh! Then I went to Mom and Dad's but they weren't there, so I did some laundry and watched TV. They came home, and my mom walked in first (well, ran in, actually). She looked at me, screamed, and then screamed again. Then she said, "Don't scare someone who has to go to the bathroom!" Like I did it intentionally! Anyway, after I was done there, I stopped by Sherlocks and had a drink w/Anna, Luke, Emmy, Wes, and some of his coworkers. Fun! Didn't stay too long, but enough to get this awesome expression from Emmy. Even she didn't know what it means :) Always a good time with those guys!

There's a street called "Spanky Branch"

2009-04-08T22:15:00.005-05:00

Went to fieldwork - I think after this week I only have 1 more time left, which is good and bad. I can't believe how fast the semester has flown by. Went to quant (SO glad that's almost over) and presentation class. Courtney K made these awesome cheesecake things. NOM. After class, ended up going to trivia. We had talked about going somewhere else, but since it was likely my dad's last trivia for awhile, we stuck with Pluckers. I was super excited because the weather was so nice - I thought we'd get to sit outside. Enough people in our party were there, so we ended up getting booted. We got a table inside, but then the way it was positioned there was a big pole between us. Ended up in 4th (bleh) - but it just wasn't very fun, and after talking to my dad we kind of decided to call it quits for awhile. It's really difficult for everyone to get there an hour before to get a table, and then it costs at least $8 every week. Plus it always seems like the day I have to get up the earliest is the next day!

We're going to look into some other places in Dallas that do trivia - hopefully they'll be cheaper and won't require hours!

Feels like I'm 17 again

2009-04-07T20:58:00.006-05:00

No Fieldwork class today, so I got to sleep in until 8! I put on some fancy clothes since I was going to Pearce later. Then I headed up to school where I quickly met with Ms Campbell, who gave me my summer schedule. As it stands, I have 4 classes (who knows how many hours they're worth?). More classes now = fewer classes later though, and I think Mark will be able to spend more time here in the Summer, and if I already have to be here... :) Went to Kinese, and afterwards there was a big job fair going on. I got tons of free stuff - mostly pens and highlighter - and some bags. And someday maybe a job offer :) After that I drove over to Pearce to observe Lindsey - an hour later than I said I was going to be due to said job fair (SO sorry Lindsey!). I didn't get to do a ton of observation but I think I got the gist of what she does. Also, I got to meet some of the characters from her stories ;) It made me a little sad to see that some of the posters for people running for student council said things like, "Vote for Chelsey, class of 2010!" I'll have a MASTERS degree in 2010!!

What season is this, anyway?

2009-04-06T22:16:00.003-05:00

So tired today - I slept a ton this weekend, so I guess my body wasn't too thrilled with getting up at 6:30 this morning. Plus, it was like 35 degrees outside, which definitely didn't help. Random freeze warning - it's APRIL!! I managed to make it to class and everything else today, and got some homework done. Also managed to randomly shout something out, too - the Grad IVs are looking for gag gift ideas for the profs, so they asked what they should get for Dr. Neville and I said, "A bong!" Luke, Anna, Aaron and Sajid thought this was HILARIOUS, but then I got embarassed and was like, "Who said that? That was so inappropriate!" and the people who hadn't heard me the first time thought I was serious. Excellent! These next few weeks are going to be crazy, though!

I got my new (signed!) Gomez CD in the mail - word! Haven't gotten to listen to it yet, but I'm excited :)

"I ate crawfish for 10 hours straight"

2009-04-05T22:07:00.005-05:00

Sunday came all too soon! I woke up late

and pretty much did nothing until it was time for me to go to the airport. Mark dropped me off (luckily he changed out of his "all khaki all the time" outfit), and I made it through security just fine. While I was waiting to board, I got some coffee from Austin Java and noticed a $20 bill on the ground - YAY!! I looked around, asked a few people if they dropped it, and nobody did. MINE!!! But oh no, counter lady says, "I think this guy dropped it when he was taking out his money." Ok, cool, give it back - but wait! "This guy" denys that it's his. So I should get it back, right? I hung around the counter for a bit (getting milk and such) to see if she gave it back, but as far as I know, counter lady pocketed it. RUDE! Maybe she needed it more than me. Anyway, I got on the flight, but I got the LAST seat - like, there was an off-duty pilot who had to sit in the cockpit. However, I did get to fly in the Califonia plane! Once I got to fly on the Shamu plane, too. It was awesome. (BTW, not my picture - I stole it from the interwebs) During the flight I spilled my water on the elderly lady sitting next to me, and I appologized a ton, but she didn't say a single word. Then she said something about it being a nice day when we landed, so maybe she didn't know what happened. Anyway, my big plans to do lots of homework last night didn't happen, of course - but that's ok. I'm really good at wasting time.

"If someone got a little drunker than me, I'd be like, 'get a life - it's my birthday.'"

2009-04-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

Morning started off with the Independence Brewery party/tour - basically, it's free to get in, you get 3 beers and if you want, you can pay $6 for a souvenir glass that you can drink your beer from or you can use good ol plastic. It's all around awesome! They also had a live band and crawfish boil (gross - I went over to watch this, and it was just about the sickest thing I've seen in awhile!). So then we went over to Camden's and played Wii and old school nintendo until it was time for dinner. After sitting in a lot of traffic thanks to Texas Relay, we went to this place called Vivo - it was very interesting. Upscale decorations (lots of naked women paintings) and fancy drinks with orchids in them. Not too expensive (but not that cheap, either.) It was an odd blend of upscale/romantic and loud. Also, the bathroom sinks had ice and rose petals in them - no idea why. The food was OK - the salsa was good but super hot, but my dinner was pretty much a glorified nacho. Although the guac was pretty darn good. All the girls got a rose when they brought the check. Not a bad experience, but not super-great food, either. Then we headed back to Camden's, where we played Cranium and had cake. We pretty much demolished the cookie cake his co-workers had brought! Attempted to watch Teen Wolf, (to which I said "YAY TEEN WOLF!" and Amy starts cheering too and says, "Wait...Oh...I thought we were cheering for something else.I don't know what that is.") but of course we were a little too loud to hear what was going on. Hope you had a good Birthday, Cam!

It burns the flesh.

2009-04-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

Celebration of Scholarship - YAY! Luckily, I pretty much had nothing to do here except show up. Another fabulous reason I'm glad I am not in PTE. We attempted to take a group pic of as many grad IV and grad II as we could get - which wasn't too bad. However, we took it in the auditorium, and the lighting isn't great. Winnie Dunn was the keynote speaker and she was AWESOME! I learned so much and have a better understanding of sensory integration now, plus she was really funny and entertaining. The rest of the day was for the Grad IVs to present their lines of research and what they have concluded. After a few hours of sitting in the auditorium, I decided to venture off and try to get some homework done. At lunch I met up with a bunch of people, and we had fun. At one point, Emmy spilled her soup of her hand, and we all gave appropriate respose like, "Oh!" "Ouch!" "Are you ok?", and then Aaron says "It burns the flesh." LOL, WHAT? I guess that's true. I got to talk to Justine for a bit, and then went back to the auditorium for the rest of the presentations. Since I wasn't sure how long this was going to go on, I had planned on flying to Austin. The last flight of the day is at 7:25, so I knew I should make this without too much trouble. When you're going through the security line, and you've passed the metal detector, and you're going to grab your shoes - do NOT stand there and block everyone else and put your shoes on. Particularly if your coin slot is more than showing. Keep it moving, ass crack! Anyway, this didn't really matter because my flight was delayed. Several hours. 7:25 flight is now departing at 10:05. Well, there's not much you can do - the previous flight had already left, and the 7:25 is the last flight to Austin. Of course, people forget details like this, and then start yelling at the gate agent, as if she controls the weather (or when planes get to leave). "What do you mean there isn't an earlier flight to Austin? You're telling me one flight leaves at 6:50 and the next one doesn't leave until 10:05?" - UM, YEAH, but remember it was supposed to be 6:50 and 7:25, dumbass. Then someone else rolls their eyes and says, "I could get in the car and drive there by the time this flight leaves." - ???? Ok. Do it, then! You're right - it's a 3 1/2 hour drive. SW will totally give you credit to fly another time. Whatever - as frustrating as it is, the ticket agents/pilots/flight attendants have nothing to do with it. I was content to sit at the airport and work on homework - which I got a bunch done! - until the plane got here. There's really nothing we can do about it! So I got in about 11, and Mark and I went back to the apartment and went back to sleep - it all worked out just fine!

It's B-I-N-G-O, right?

2009-04-02T11:34:00.000-05:00

This morning we went to CDC to observe and get an idea of how the program works. I wasn't looking forward to this too much - it's a place for adults who are unable to keep a "regular" job for various reasons such as TBI, Stroke, MR, etc. I wasn't sure how this was going to go - last year I did OK at Walnut Place, but I just never know what to expect with adults. Luckily, the people were so welcoming and excited to talk to us that it ended up being a really good experience. I helped some of the people with their jobs - today it was peeling labels off of jars. Yep. It was actually pretty darn hard! I tore up my nails. I'm still not sure why they're not allowed to use anything like goo gone or a coin to help, but those are the rules. The funny thing was, the labels they were peeling off were for anti-cellulite cream. Wonder what the new labels will be - face moisturizer? Then we played Bingo, and when Priyanka was the caller, she asked me "It's B-I-N-G-O right?" So despite my reservations, it ended being a good experience. Then we had Peds lab, and it was all about feeding and eating. We watched a few You Tube videos with feeding methods, and then we tried it ourselves. Not sure how much I got out the whole thing, but I guess it got us thinking about how we eat and our preferences. The last thing we did was watch a video of a kid throwing tempertantrums. The mom commented that they're getting worse as he gets older, and she couldn't show the worst parts of them because it was too much for her to handle. So Mrs. Fletcher asks what we would do if this was our kid. My answer: "Start drinking?" Not the answer she was looking for. Then we all rushed to Mrs. Campbell's house for a pre-celebration of scholarship party. It was ok - awkward at first, but then people got more comfortable. We also got to talk to Dr. Dunn and got some good advice about practice and school.

Note to crazy woman: a street is NOT the same thing as a highway!!!

2009-04-01T11:49:00.002-05:00

Wednesday. April Fools Day, which I HATE. I don't think anyone played any tricks on me, luckily. Went to Fieldwork and got to participate more with one of the kiddos (I still like hearing "Ms Katie!") and saw an initial eval and a re-eval. It was funny how different the re-eval was than how we learned it in school - as I suspected then, standardization is pretty darn difficult when you're dealing with kids with LD and Autism. Then I raaaaaan over to Region 10 to do a presentation. Except, I went to the wrong building and I was in a hurry. So I ask Ms. Doesn't-Understand-Streets where the meetings was. Convo:

Me: Hi, Um, Can you tell me where the Region 10 OT/PT meeting is?

Ms. DUS: Whaaaat? *pause* *looks at schedule* Um...*keeps looking, scanning* I don't see it. That's not happening.

Me: *peeks over desk and points* Yeah, it's right there - on the schedule. Pecan room?

Ms. DUS: Oh...yeah... that's in the other building.

Me: Ooook, where is that?

Ms. DUS: Um, across the street.

Me: Which way? (as there are no buildings across the street the 2 ways I can see)

Ms. DUS: You're gunna turn left out of here, do a u-turn, and go across the highway.

Me: Highway? Wait, where is this place?

Ms. DUS: Across the street. You turn left outta here, turn right, and cross the highway.

Me: *Getting flustered now* Across the highway? Like, 75? What's the address?

Ms. DUS: No, it's just across the highway. You turn left outta here, turn right, and cross the highway.

Me: Can you just tell me the address? What street is the other building on? *phone starts ringing*

Ms. DUS: Take a Left outta here, do a U-turn, and cross the highway.

Me: OK, THANKS.

And I just left, and I asked my classmate, who was on the phone. As it turns out, it was a 1/10 up the road - sort of across the street, but more like on the other side of the street and further north. There was definitely no highway involved. Anyway, luckily made it just in time to start my presentation - which I hadn't rehearsed or even really read before. It seemed like no one was paying attention anyway, though, so I suppose it was fine. Then we headed back to school for class. Our class that is done at 5:30 ran over a bit, and then we had to stay and finish our Helen Killer treatment plan. Since we were almost done before, I figured it wouldn't take too long. WRONG. Around 6:30 I start getting trivia texts - "Are you going?" "What time?" "How many?" "Where are you?" "Can you get us a table for 10?" "Where are you?" "Coming soon?" "When are you coming?" "WHERE ARE YOU?" By the time we got out of there, it was about 8:15. As we're discussing what else we can do with her, Aaron says, ".....nevermind, I'm not going to say it." So I say, "What, She's DEAF and BLIND?" Yep - lol. We're all just ready to turn this stupid thing in. Ok, so I finally make it to trivia, and we're at a few different tables. We ended up tying for 2nd - so - wing off! Jenn didn't have to do it this time - we had a new guy who was more than willing. and, he kicked ass! We won by almost an entire wing.

I can has paycheck?

2009-03-31T11:45:00.000-05:00

Nope...not yet. They're "still working on it." I'm not entirely sure what the problem is. I thought, well, hey, I'll just get a big fat paycheck someday until I realized that given all the hours I have worked, I'll still have made less than $150. And I actually haven't worked all that many hours. But any money is better than no money!

He's playing fetch... with my kids... he's treating my kids like they're dogs.

2009-03-30T22:06:00.002-05:00

Today was looooong - pretty much like every other Monday. I got up at 6 after a not-so-great night of sleep, and had class from 8 - 12 pretty much straight. We took our class picture, and for some reason some people put up a big fuss. I guess I get that it's 10 minutes of wasted time, but - meh, whatever. We even got out of class early. Then of course we had a long afternoon class, then a student meeting to discuss some things, and then I worked with Aaron and Priyanka on our Helen Keller treatment plan. So pretty much at school for 12 hours. It really wasn't that bad, though. All things considered. Still housesitting - it was weird having a room full of animals this morning!

Things I hadn't considered

2009-03-29T21:15:00.002-05:00

After enjoying a lazy Sunday morning of doing absolutely nothing, I headed back to Dallas. I thought I would be OK, but I was really tired on the way home, so I stopped to get some Starbucks. I ordered a half regular half decaf, but they didn't have decaf so he recommended something else that was similar - b/c they didn't have it, though, the coffee was on the house! Yay!

So now I am stilling my my parents living room, housesitting for them while they're in D.C. Our German Shepherd, Nacho, is getting pretty old. I think he's 10 or 11 (and dang it, I just looked over and the cat is drinking my water! Ugh!). Obviously I knew he was getting older by the way he moved slower and took longer to get up, but I haven't seen him inside the house in awhile, so it was sad to find he couldn't do a lot of the things he used to do - like climb up the stairs. He slid down twice, and then had a lot of trouble getting back up. I also put up a tiny box barrier so he couldn't go into the dining room, and he didn't even attempt to jump over it. This is the dog that used to jump up to open the door, and you really had to outsmart him to catch him. I just hadn't ever really thought about pets aging much.

No!!! We moved there last year!!!

2009-03-29T12:19:00.003-05:00

After years of wondering...I finally know! When I used to drive home from work/anything N of where I lived (which is like everything), I used to see a ton of cars parked on the side of Mopac, and wondered what was there. Mark took me for a walk (hike?) on the Greenbelt yesterday, and we were one of those cars! It's just a big area where there is sometimes water, and lots of trails, including one part where you have to hold onto a chain to walk around this cliff. People also rock climb here. Anyway - it was very cool because it felt like you were in a different place, but then you look up and there's the Mopac bridge, and you can hear the cars passing by.

Ben had housewarming party last night, and his house is AWESOME! It was actually featured on Flip That House in 2006 and they did a fantastic job. I'm super-jealous now! It's sort of what I really want - a house with charm (not a carbon copy of the one next door) but with a really nice interior. Plus it's got a great backyard. I got to watch Old School, too - I love that movie, especially the birthday party part. "Wait, what?"

When we got home, we also had a surprise - a raccoon wandering around the parking lot. Mark got a few pictures, and I threw some crackers to him, which he ate very quickly. So cute - luckily this one did not appear to have rabies.

Get into play mode

2009-03-29T11:46:00.002-05:00

Some people have a hard time going from Academic to play mode. I have no trouble with this - it's going to other way that might be a bit of a problem. We went to NTTI Friday morning, and I was really excited because I knew we were going to get to play on the equipment. She asked for a volunteer to get on the net swing, and of course my hand shot up. YES! The idea is you lay on your stomach in the net and use these two ropes to pull yourself. It always looks like so much fun, and it is...but it's also hard work! My arms were getting tired after a few minutes, but apparently the kids have to do this for 15 - 30 minutes. Then we got to go in the other gym and jump into the pillow pit. One of the things was a rope swing, and I thought - piece of cake! Hmmm...I swung out, and slid right off! There's a big knot that's supposed to hold you on, but instead it just kind of ripped up my thighs - ouch. There's a giant obstacle course, too, and a scooter-ramp. I also got to see nystagmus, which I knew about but hadn't ever witnessed - crazy! Anyway, it was a lot of fun but I was exhaused afterwards. Then I headed to Austin, and once I got here I didn't do anything - pretty much laid on the couch and watched TV. I can deal with that!

Those 3 words

2009-03-26T22:45:00.002-05:00

We got to watch Dirty Jobs in class - woohoo! Mike Rowe! Unfortunately, even he wasn't enough to keep me awake. Speaking of awake, I got the results of my sleep study back, and.... basically I heard the same 3 words I hear from most doctors - "I don't know." It appears that I am, in fact, a medical anomaly. The results indicate that I wake up several times during the night due to breathing problems - and it appears that I have some new form of sleep apnea - not really obstructive, especially b/c I don't snore, and not really central. So...why do I stop breathing??? Also, I had a bunch of PLM which could be a factor, as well. And basically I had horribly fragmented sleep. Dr. said this is almost never seen in "people my age" - and even when it is seen in old people, it's usually secondary to other stuff. Awesome! Thanks Mom and Dad for the awesome sleep genes. Anyway, I went to Fieldwork and then to Lindsey's to watch Twilight again. Even though it's kind of dumb (there are definitely some wtf moments), I still like it! Although I MUST disagree with the box, which claims that it's "the greatest epic romance since Titanic!" - yeah, right!

Which would be a bigger issue- frustration or peer isolation?

2009-03-26T22:34:00.002-05:00

That was the big question of the day as we all prepared to take TWMT 2. Luckily, it went pretty well - no major problems, and I ended up with a 97. That's right - probably the highest grade I will ever get on an exam! Anyway - not so bad, but people were still a little miffed about retaking. They announced that the NICU class will be added to next Fall, so everyone of course signed up for it and we'll see who actually gets to take it. Of course to do this, they ended up dropping 3 of our options (2 classes ((sort of 3 as one was a 2-part class)) didn't make and 1 was replaced w/NICU), leaving us with 6 choices. Luckily none of the dropped classes were ones I wanted to take.

So of course, I went to trivia. I normally get pumped up, but for some reason last night I wasn't feeling it. I was getting bad vibes from some of the team, and we did OK, but not great - 3rd. $15 doesn't split well between 11 people. Anyway - maybe next week will be better, or maybe I'll just take a hiatus. Getting there over an hour early sucks! The picture is us reliving the glory days...or me taking a picture of our picture on the wall.

Did my spellcheck really just try to correct internet with Internets?

2009-03-24T21:33:00.003-05:00

Tuesday! I was so not happy about this day coming. I really didn't want to take my practicum. But alas, it arrived. I got up at 6:30 after going to bed at midnight the night before - this is very bad for me. Some people need 6-7 hours of sleep - I need like 12. Even then I could probably still take a nap. Anyway, woke up early and studied - I felt better, but I was still pretty nervous. Went to Fieldwork class, where I talked incessantly (likely due to nervousness combined with sleepiness and meds). At least it was on topic and to the teacher. I do end up with a lot of questions, though, and I LOVE my fieldwork placement, so I want to share what I've learned! Anyway, I got some really good info from Civello regarding some other stuff and I hope it will help. Then - dangit! Time for the practicum. Anita went first, and she did well - she nailed the Origins and insertions part, and did most of the tests without too much trouble (although she did forget how to hold the goniometer at one point - luckily she caught it and fixed it!) Then it was my turn, and I tried to be sort of peppy and upbeat - which was OK, except I used one of the proper kinese terms and we're supposed to use layman terms with clients, so I tried to cover it up by saying, "That's just a fancy OT word" - the grader kind of laughed. I mixed up the posterior and anterior deltoids on humeral extension (it's anterior!!! not posterior!!!) so she said, "Are you sure it's posterior delt?" At one point I knew the isolated tests, but I completely forgot which was for which muscle, so I said, "Do this, do this" and demonstrated - that was good covering I think - I don't think she noticed I wasn't sure which was for which muscle. I was still testing! So afterwards she told us we did really well and she was impressed with ou knowledge, and not to worry b/c in real setting you won't really remember all this and you'll be able to use your book. Why couldn't we now? Whew! Glad that's over. I went to work for 4 hours (a new record for this job, I think) and did a whole bunch of filing, and finally figured out why I haven't been able to enter my time and therefore get paid - well, first student services told me to check with payroll, who told me to check with student services... someone was finally able to tell me what was missing, so we resent it today and hopefully I'll get paid soon! The lady on the phone seemed annoyed that all this is coming 6 weeks after I started - yeah, no kidding! How do you think I feel? My boss wasn't aware anything was missing b/c nobody called or told her or anything, and when I contacted them a few weeks ago I heard back at first, and then not again so I didn't even know something was missing. Meh! So after this I was crazy tired - ready to go home and call it a night! But first - grocery store. gross. At the store I got a text from Luke/Anna - they're at Sherlocks ("We won't be there that long!"). After a lot of internal debate, I decided to drop my groceries off and go for a little while. Which turned into almost 2 hours. But you know - always fun to bitch about school with a glass of wine. AND we were kind of productive - discussing the questions from the TWMT coming up tomorrow.

...and then things got ugly

2009-03-24T20:46:00.003-05:00

First day back - not so bad, I suppose. Although, I did find out that I have to present next Wednesday at a Region 10 meeting - yikes. The most interesting part of the day was the start of Peds lecture. We're going to have to re-take trainwreck midterm (TWMT). Yep, after ALL THAT, the professor couldn't figure out a way to fairly score it. She was planning on doing it exactly the same way with all the "kinks worked out", but our class would never stand for that. Some people complained that the computers were too slow, might crash, etc. So she suggested we take it on paper, and then we can go back and answer previous questions - you know, like a normal test. Then the debate started - "It's going to take longer for me to fill out a scan tron!" (WHAT?) "It's supposed to be open book and open internet! I won't have the internet then!" (First: I didn't realize anyone actually used the internet during TWMT Second: If you used the internet to look up answers, you probably have already looked most of them up anyway b/c the questions are going to be the exact same Third: IT DOESN'T MATTER!!) And then Aaron points out that, "If we take it on computer and it does mess up again, can we just stop? I really didn't feel like answering that many questions." To which teacher sarcastically replies: "Oh, I'm so sorry that I inconvenienced you. I just didn't know the program well enough beforehand." (quite an understatement). After a lot of debate and discussion, we voted to take the midterm on paper but with a computer in front of us in case we want to use the internet. A few people still grumbled about this, so she asked (in all seriousness) if we wanted to just take it like a regular exam - no books, no internet, no time limit, score is based on # right compared to # of questions. HELL-to-the- NO!!! Then we would actually have to study! So everyone backed down at that point and accepted these new paper terms. THEN someone jumps in, and says, "Can you please explain why we're having to retake this? It wasn't very clear in your email. A lot of us spent a lot of time preparing for this midterm (probably true, but not for me) and it even affected some of our other midterms (I know this to be true on one of mine). Why can't you just use the scores that we had?" And she runs through her explaination of how she can't fairly score it. THIS IS TRUE - I cannot think of any possible way with things the way they ended up that it would be fair to anyone. I'm actually OK with retaking this thing - I think I'll do really well b/c I've had all these questions before, I've gotten to look some of them up, and again - wrong answers don't count against you! However, I did tell her I didn't want to take it in that room again - I didn't think it was a good testing environment at all and I asked if I could forefit my use of computer to take it in another room - "I can only be in one place at one time." Blar - fine. How am I going to cheat, though? It's open book and open note! Ok - it's going ok, but she's definitely starting to get irritated. She reminds us that we have an "advantage" now b/c we've seen the questions before and we can discuss them with our peers. So I ask what I thought was a relatively harmless question (well statement/question) - "Some of the questions I looked up I couldn't find the answer to or it depended on the situation(gave example of a question)." Her response: "You might not be able to find the answer, but you know it." Huh? Why would I have asked if I knew it? So I said, "I don't think I do - I asked around and nobody seemed to know!" Response: "You all know it." Are you listening to me?? Bad move on my part: getting irritated. So I looked around the room and said loudly, "Ok, fine, Does anyone know the answer because I don't???" and simultaneously I hear Luke say from behind me "Stop it!!!" and teacher give a huff and say "we're not going to do this." So I dropped it - but my point was - would it really have been such a big deal for her to explain how we knew the answer? Couldn't she just have even guided us (you know, like teachers are supposed to do) so we could reach a logical answer? Worse case - everyone learns it (GASP) and gets a practically free right answer on the TWMT. Whatever - I shouldn't have done that, but I was pretty miffed at her lack of...being a teacher. Then we dropped all of this and went on to the lecture. That was not so interesting, but it evaporated some of the tension.
I had planned on studying like crazy for kinese, but things went a little askew when my sister dropped by. We chatted for a while (I also practiced ROM on her!) and I'll just say I'm really proud of her.

Proverbs 3:5-6

CRAP - Spring Break is oveR??

2009-03-24T12:36:00.003-05:00

I woke up Sunday and realized I hadn't done much in the way of homework over the break...hmmm...so I buckled down and studied for Kinese. My mom is going to D.C. next week to meet with senators, so helped her find some good clothes that would help her feel more confident. We found some good stuff for really cheap (always a plus), but I'm not sure that she really liked it. It was hard to get an opinion out of her! Hopefully it will make her feel good about herself. Then she cooked dinner - like with veggies and everything - for me and Mark! Yay! So I didn't get much done as far as homework, but I did get some good quality time in with my family!

The children are the future - I better get the heck out of here

2009-03-23T12:22:00.003-05:00

After some rapid changes in plans - i.e. not staying for the daytime sleep study, Saturday was spent studying (ish) in the morning, then we went to Mark's parents house for dinner. Lindsey and Cindy's college roommate Leslie were there, too, so it was a real party! We pretty much just sat around and told stories all night. A lot of them were about crazy students - both in high school and in elementary. After hearing those, I've determined we might be a little bit screwed in the future.

I'm sure I'll see you around here!

2009-03-21T12:47:00.006-05:00

I can't talk about Friday night without mentioning Saturday morning - I know the suspense would be just too much. Friday was spent mostly just working on ROM, which I have no clue what I am doing. Really, measurements are all off. At 4 we headed to Mark's parent's house, where I pigged out on fajitas and queso - not the best idea before a sleep study. Then I headed to my sleep study - when I scheduled it, I was going to do an overnight, and then an MSLT the following day. Dr would really like to confirm a diagnosis before he treats. Cool. So I meet Marty - the tech who is working with me. Marty's about 60 - a nice guy, but doesn't talk too much. I like it. He hooks up my many many wires and electrodes, and eventually I'm in bed. Sleep went OK - not as good as at home (which isn't good anyway), but I guess I slept enough. Since I've done this before, I know what's coming - the morning after you look like you've been hit by a bus. There's tons of stuff taped to your face, your mouth is all crusty from not being opened all night, you have marks all over you, and then there's the hair. Not pretty, folks. But Marty's cool - sure he won't mind. I ended up sleeping until about 8 - well, I woke up at 6 and was in and out until 8, which is weird because in the past they have woken you up around 6 or 6:30. So in comes...Bryan? Bryan is the new tech on duty - he's 26 and attractive. Of course I'm not trying to impress him or anything, but - seriously? Like, it would be hard for me to look WORSE, and in walks a cohort. Anyway, Bryan tells me he's been watching me (in a scientic way of course) for a few hours, and that I'm not going to do the MSLT due to the results of the night test. BLEH. Fine. So he tells me A LOT about how I sleep (oh man...) and I'm just like....ok. So basically we're back to where we started 2 years ago - we don't really know what's wrong with my sleep, but it's bad. Anyway - that's my story! Oh, and as I'm leaving in all my crazy hair stuck-on electrode putty glory, Bryan says, "I'm sure I'll see you around here sometime!" as he just started working for my Dr. YAY.

Have you ever seen anybody eat hair?

2009-03-19T22:08:00.005-05:00

Thursday we headed back to the big D. But first! I got more happy noms! We stopped at Rudy's for breakfast tacos - mmmmmmm. In the evening we drove out to Arlington to see Nick and Candy's new apartment (really nice and an awesome kitchen!) and have dinner. I left to wash my hands, and when I got back to the table the waiter was standing there blocking my seat, and he was like, "No, you can't sit down." Oh great. One of THOSE. So I had missed the previous conversation, but evidently Candy said something like, "I'm a fire eater," referring to the fact that she eats habanero peppers like they're nothing. Somehow, waiter took that literally. So he starts asking all these questions about eating fire - like, "What else weird do people eat?" WHAT? Trying to be polite, Candy said, "I dunno. On Fear Factor they made people eat bugs and stuff." but noooo...he wouldn't take the hint, and continued to ask questions like, "How do you PREPARE to eat fire?" "Um..a lot of alcohol?" "Whoa, really?" Then she said, "If I literally ate fire, I've got so much hair that it would catch on fire." Waiter walks off, so we're ok - maybe he got it!! But then he comes back, and says "Have you ever seen anybody eat their hair?" - WHAT?? WHAT??? I was staring at my plate because I was really about to burst out laughing. As soon as we got outside, we all just cracked up - something was not right! Then we went to this yogurt place called Pure Bliss, and it kind of was. They had these giant tubs (no, really - one size only!) and a ton of flavors of froyo. Then there was a toppings bar, and you could put whatever you wanted on it - candy, cereal, fruit - and they weight it all at the end and charge you by the ounce. Pretty darn cool!

You'd better be googling porn!

2009-03-18T23:05:00.003-05:00

So, sadly, Natasha Richardson (I know her as the mom from the remake of Parent Trap & the wife of Liam Niesen) died today from injuries from a ski trip. It was a freak accident - she didn't hit anyone else and was laughing afterwards, but it did cause a hemmhorage in her brain, which they didn't catch until it was too late. That's fine, sad - cover it on the news. BUT - Seriously?? SERIOUSLY?? A picture of a brain hand drawn with magic markers? It's not as if this was completely unexpected - she was in critical condition for at least 24 hours previously. You couldn't have come with a computer drawn example? Even I knew what was going on and I've only had 1 neuro class! Another reason why Fox News is... yeah.

Of course, we can't let a little death get us down. In fact, Camden immeditately turned the story around into a team name ("Natasha Richardson avoids Parent Trap, but not death trap") but we didn't actually use it. Things started off slow - we didn't do so hot with movie lines, but as usual we killed in the nerd round. I even taught Duffy the obnoxious "nerd round!" voice so he could annoy everyone when I'm not around. It was fun - not as good as old times (Mary wasn't there!! :( ) but I have high hopes for next time I can make it on a Wednesday! We got 2nd, and we won for team name. I'll be back to dominate Dallas next week ;) This week there was a wing-off for 2nd, and Jenn did it, but she chocked (literally!) so she took 3rd place. She still beat some dude! Here's a bonus picture of that :)

happy St. Patrick's Day!

2009-03-18T10:10:00.004-05:00

Did you know that St. Patrick was never cannonized by a pope?

I got my hair cut! YAY! I asked if I was to cut it today, where would my hair be if I cut off 8 inches, and she measured and it's right around shoulder length, so that's pretty good. Getting close! I think I'll either do it in May or July if I can last that long - I hate getting a major hair cut b/c I hate for the first 3 days or so everyone's like, "OMG! You cut your hair!" so I'm hoping to do it when we're not in school to avoid that - but I doubt it can be avoided so I might as well do it earlier to be less hot and gross during the summer. We'll see how much I can handle!

We went to Sherlock's to celebrate St Patty's Day, and surprise - there was a loooong line to get in. Luckily, it really only took 15 minutes to get through. Once inside, it wasn't too crowded and we ended up getting a table after fighting with some people who wanted it, but only had like 4 people. We traded them our small booth for the big one and I guess they were ok with it. Some woman called me "dense" because I wasn't going to fight for the table - but I was quite content with standing and chatting. So then she appologized. Meh. Overall the evening was a lot of fun (of course)! I knew I probably would get a glass of wine instead of beer, but I wanted to fit in....so I brought my own food coloring, and made it green! The first one didn't go as well (I added blue b/c the wine is yellow) - it was more like jungle green, but the second glass was a perfect shade of Emerald! Holla! Yeah, it's kind of weird - but also kind of cool. Unfortunately I dropped the box of colors under the table and forgot to retrieve them when we left. Hopefully the next person will have some fun with them! Great night - tomorrow is my last night in Austin, but it's TRIVIA night! We're bringing that trophy HOME!

What day is it again?

2009-03-16T21:59:00.002-05:00

Although this weekend felt really long, I didn't get confused on the day until today. It feels like I've been out of school for a long time already ( :) ), but really today was my first official day of Spring Break. Mere and I had some girl time and went to Kismet (yay! finally!) near campus, and did some shopping at Barton Creek. I got the jacket to the left for $15 at Old Navy, because it's cute and my classrooms are always like 50 degrees for some reason. Then we went to bath and body works where I got some awesome deals - soaps were on sale, plus I got a free body wash, and the room sprays were $3. So I cleaned up! Then I came home, and Mark make me dinner - it was yummy! A good day - unfortunately tomorrow (day) has to be devoted to doing something productive so I can accomplish what I wanted over Spring Break! but evening is fair game. Don't forget to wear green tomorrow!

Puppy Party

2009-03-15T22:16:00.002-05:00

Claire and Anthony had a "socialize the puppy" party today - pretty much my dream come true! Ollie (or Olly?) is so cute, and he's really well trained! Anthony has done an awesome job - he can sit, stand, lay down, twirl, spin, and shake. Ollie also LOVES cheese, and will pretty much do anything to get it. They also have some reptiles, including an AWESOME panther Chameleon that was really shy and didn't like to move when people were watching him.Unfortunately for him, I would catch him while he was on the move. So cool - I'm not usually a fan of reptiles (I could take em or leave em) but I've always thought these guys were super cool with their crazy googly eyes and split feet. Anyway - back to Ollie - he's a 15 wk Golden Retriever puppy that's clearly very smart and according to Anthony will (hopefully) one day be a certified therapy dog!

Hoops and YoYo live!

2009-03-15T21:59:00.004-05:00

The big event Saturday was Diggnation live! YAY! Mark, Camden and I ventured out to Stubb's to see Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht tape Diggnation right here in ATX. For those of you that don't know, Diggnation is a podcast/video podcast done every week by these two geniuses on the top stories from Digg.com. We were entertained first by Brian Brushwood (whom I hadn't heard of before!) who did some awsome magic/illusions/gross stuff that we were all kind of wondering, "Is that for real?" - including the "human crazy straw" and putting a nail into his left eye and moving it to the right one.

Next, Alex and Kevin took the stage, and it was pretty awesome, although a bit frustrating because they threw a ton of stuff into the audience including shoes, ipod touches, and some other clothing items, but of course they only got to the first 10 rows maybe, so we weren't even close. It hadn't even occured to me that there would be swag, so it was fine. I was getting a bit tired of standing up and it was really cold. The shiw wasn't too long, though, and we got to meet K & A after the show. Pretty awesome! I told Mark Kevin is probably the wealthiest person I've ever met. They were both really cool, but I have to say Alex was really social and cool - and he told me that he, Kevin, Jay and Hippie Glen (maybe?) are all lefties! Shoutout! Anyway - we had a blast.

Fawsome Friday

2009-03-15T21:37:00.003-05:00

Friday! It's finally here!!!!!! I had class at 8:00 AM - crazy, I know - after staying out late the night before. Flashback to undergrad. Luckily, class was pretty fun - we did a sensory profile, and it turns out we have confirmation - I'm a freak. Well, ok, so there are 4 categories, and in all 4 I was +, ++, ++, and +. ++ means you're in the top 5% of weird. Anyway, professor said my system is probably just kind of deciding what to do and goes a little haywire - as long as it's not interfering with my life it's not a problem. So now I'm sure I'll obsess for awhile about whether or not it is interfering with my life and eventually forget and move on. Anyway, I'm not even entirely sure what the point of the test was. Bleh. I was going to fly to Austin, but due to a slight mix-up in that my sister never got my gchat request to be taken to the airport, I went home and took a nap, then hit the road. The drive was awful! It took over 2 hours to get to Waco because it had been raining for like a week and was not stopping anytime soon. And when I finally got to Waco, car refused to go over 50 without skidding so I was stuck in the right lane. Luckily the 2nd half wasn't so bad, so I made it in just about 4 hours (gross!).

Master Pancake did Jurassic Park, so we (Claire, Anthony, Camden, Ben, Mark, Me, Dale, Meredith, Eng and Eng's bro) went to the late showing. It was awesome! Beforehand, the guys were walking around and trying to get people to sign up for their email list, and Camden asked a question. We heard, "Have you guys ever thought about doing Passion of the Christ?", to which the guy answered something, "well, that would be really hard to make fun of..." I guess what he actually asked was if people ever request weird movies, such as... Anyway, I haven't seen Jurassic Park in ages, and even though dudes were talking over it, it still scared the crap out of me! Highlights:

- Pointing out the GAPING hole in the electric fence that t-rex could just wander out of

- when Laura Dern is running from dino in the shed dubbing over the scene (and song) from Footloose

- Making fun of pretty much all of Jeff Goldbloom's one-liners

P.S. - this picture is actually from Saturday, but I was bad and didn't take on on Friday and have a ton from Saturday, so...yeah :)

Torturous and Therapeutic Thursday

2009-03-13T19:06:00.002-05:00

LAST MIDTERM!!! It was Kinese, so I was pretty sure it was going to be the hardest. It wasn't too bad, although when I left I wasn't sure at all how I had done. There weren't a lot of answers that I knew for sure, but based on what I do know I was able to deduce pretty well, I think. It was really funny watching everyone take the midterm - since it was Kinese, everyone was moving around in their chairs, doing the gestures to try to figure out what the muscles are doing. One of the questions asked which muscles are involved in putting on a bra behind your back - so natually, like 15 people have their hands behind their backs like they're putting on a bra. I ended up coming back to that question, so I did it twice (got it right, though!). As it turns out - I got an 89 - yay! I am very happy with that - I wasn't very confident in my kinese abilities at all. I feel like this semester is so much easier for me academically - I really well on all of the midterms (I *think*). Anyway, after midterm, I went to fieldwork, where I got to see some really interesting kids. It was really sad watching one of them - this child has pretty severe oral aversions, and I could tell it was something the kiddo really wanted to "fix", but trying to bite into a cut apple was clearly very painful and difficult. This child has been in treatment for years, and they've only made some progress, although any progress is still progress! Very sweet kid - I hope it all works out!
To end the evening, I met up with Luke at Sherlock's to celebrate end of midterms. After awhile (of course) other people came, too - Nicole, Sajid, Emmy and Wes, Aaron, and Lindsey. It was fun - we just talked about all kinds of stuff and told stories and chilled - such a nice change! Emmy has the BEST stories ever! Seriously, they are some of the funniest things I have ever heard. She could probably write a book about her adventures (such as being eyeballed by an agressive turkey named Pepsi). Of course I got in later than I had planned (what else is new?) but it was totally worth it!

Wicked Wednesday

2009-03-12T12:02:00.003-05:00

Oh Wednesday - there aren't enough W adjectives to describe you. I knew this was coming. I was still not prepared. No class today - instead, 3 midterms pretty much back to back! First we had Qual/Quant - I'm in Quant this semester, so it's more statistics based but we all have to take both eventually. But we were all in one big room but divided up, because Dr Pickens was proctoring both classes. She mentioned beforehand that the Quan one would be quicker, so she said, "I'm going to hand out the quant exam first." For whatever reason, I decided to look over at the Qual people and say, "In your face!" Some people laughed - I think others were just thinking, "yep, she's a weirdo." Anyway - Dr. Neville is a great person - she's really funny, and clearly very smart and likely a great therapist. However, her teaching style confuses most. So does her questioning style. Some of the questions didn't actually have a question. Some just didn't make sense. and on one, the right answer was not a choice! Anyway, I ended up with a B on that one, which is A-Okay with me. As you may or may not know, stat is not my favorite anything. Next we had the big event - the one and only Peds exam. This isn't like any other exam you've seen, folks. In the 20 years I've had tests, I've never had one that looks like this. Before I explain, let us consider what a test is typically designed to be:
1) fair and equal to all students
2) a test of your knowledge based on lectures and readings
3)clear and concise
Keep these in mind as you read below!
Ok, so here was how the peds test was supposed to go:
We had 1 hour, it was on the computer, and we couldn't go back once we answered a question. Questions were not necessarily stuff that has been covered in class or even mentioned in the book, and they were randomly selected from a "bank" the teacher wrote and are varying degrees of difficulty. We could use our book, notes, internets, whatever except other people. But here's where it gets really messed up: We had to answer at least 50 questions correctly to "pass"; Questions answered incorrectly didn't penalize us. We had to answer at least 60 questions total (so in other words...if I answer 120 questions randomly and get 50 of them right, I pass. If I answer 75 and get 50 right, I pass.) More than one answer could be correct, but we had to pick the one that was "more correct" even though OT doesn't have a lot of concrete definitions and there are lots of theories, so different texts have different answers. So, basically, why would I waste my time looking up something when I can just randomly guess and essentially move onto the next question with a chance I'd get it right, anyway? And one of my favorite classmates, Aaron (Mere you know him as Notben), says, (to the teacher) "So, if I just go through and answer C for every question, and I get 50 right, I pass?" - yep. awesome. That was back when she said the bank would have like 300 questions, though.
This is what actually happened:
We were divided into 2 groups - one took the lecture exam on the computer, the other took the lab exam on paper, and we switched. There are 36 of us - and we were all in a room that holds max 30 when it's really full. Some people had to use their own laptops because there weren't quite enough computers. Once she gave us the password to start, we could start whenever - the computer kept track of the hour. I waited for everyone to get settled, then started. 3 minutes in, 3-4 people start complaining that the password wasn't working. So teacher went to try to figure it out. Not at all distracting. After about 15 minutes, people in the center started to finish their lab exams, so they turned them in and wrote their name on the board for the next available computer (despite the fact that we all started within 4 min of each other, so we'll all be done at the same time anyway!). THEN Blackboard starts crashing on everyone around me - the next question won't pop up. Page won't load. It logged me out. etc. So Teacher is frantically talking to them trying to get it to work. Meanwhile, I've literally got my hands over my ears trying to read the questions because everyone around me is TALKING (totally don't blame them, by the way - it's the set up). When there are distractions, my focus is like zero. Anyway, so about 20 min in, I see that I've answered 50 questions, so I figure I've got time to actually look stuff up since there are 133 questions total. And then I realize...I've had this question before. and this one. and THIS one. So I ask, is that supposed to happen? No. Turns out, she didn't program it right - either the questions got loaded multiple times, or they just didn't set on "no repeats". So the 133 question test is now an inifinity test. After 150 questions or so I was actually getting pretty tired - I almost wanted to quit, but what would be the point in that. By then, I had so many repeats I knew what the question was based on the first 3 words - so click click click and an hour goes by and I answered 283 questions. Bravo! But - OOOOOOO - the computer timer does not shut off. Indeed, it just keeps going! Hmmm...what do I do? So someone tells her, and she doesn't know what to do, but we can't just keep going, so she tells us to log out. Who knows if it saved? I still don't know if it did!
So we traded with the other guys, and I was taking the lab test in the center. Wait a second...some of these questions - I know these! Yep, sure enough, they were on the computer part. Therefore, MY group had had the opportunity to look the answers up in the book, so we'd know which ones were right. The other group didn't, and the lab portion was closed book. Another reason they should pissed. Anyway - yay! Trainwreck exam! We won't find out howwe "did" until after Spring Break. I have a feeling this won't be a repeat performance.

Torture Tuesday!

2009-03-12T11:53:00.004-05:00

Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but again, I had classes and midterm. First, we had Ms Civello, who gave us back our case study projects. Our group actually did really well, but most people didn't, so, off to a great start. We also had to turn in our SOAP notes, and who knows how that went. Midterm wasn't until 1, so I ate lunch and then hung around the school, not-studying like I "should have been".

The midterm was Ways of Doing, which is a lab class. I pretty much had no idea what to study, as everything we've done in there has been doing rather than talking. Luckily, most of the midterm was common sense (with a few WTF questions thrown in), and I ended up doing really well on that one, too. Woohoo! We had to stay after for class (2 hours for a 4 hour class - at least she cut it in 1/2) but it wasn't terrible. I think everyone was just really exhausted. And knew they had to go home and prepare for the Wednesday from hell.

Monday = March midterm madness

2009-03-12T11:34:00.004-05:00

Hello my beloved blog! No, I have not forgotten you - I just had midterms this week and felt like studying might be a good idea, although it turns out it was overrated. Monday's midterm - awesome. It was in OT Models, and I did pull it together long enough to study for an hour or two, and managed to make an A. Sweet! We also had class (um, hello? Midterms???), and that didn't go so well. One: there was more bitching about midterm for that class (to be taken Wednesday - see Wednesday's post for the trainwreck midterm). Two: at 12, we were given (in our mailboxes, which people only sort of check) a list of "electives" for our class. The rules are as follows: you cannot take more than one elective per semester (and they don't really want you taking 1 in maymester and 1 in summer), you have to have at least 2, and only 12 seats are in each elective class. We had to decide by 1:00 what classes we wanted to take. In Maymester there's 1 class with a particular teacher that people just kind of don't want to deal with - so that's pretty much off the table. There's 1 other class. Then in Summer there are 3 classes being offered: but one of them you have to take 2 parts parts, and...well.. knowing this professor, it's going to be a lot of work (she's a great prof, though). So that crosses off that one for most people (myself included). Fall: 4 more courses - one being the 2nd half of the above mentioned, and the other being a hands class - which, to be honest, sounds like torture to me. So basically I had 4 choices. yay. Not one of these classes is a pediatrics class! So, being me, I asked, "Just curious, why did you guys decide not to offer any peds classes?" and professor answers, "Oh, you're right, there aren't any (as if she hadn't noticed.) Well, we give first billing to our faculty who are on salary, since when we hire an adjunct, we have to pay extra." I just nodded dumbly. Ok. So you're telling me that my education that I pay for is being compromised so you can save a couple hundred dollars? REALLY? Ok, just so we're clear. She could have at least come up with a lie!!!!! 2 more people asked, "what happened to the autism and/or NICU class?" Then I guess she realized she had given a CRAPPY answer, so she asked how many of would be interested in either of those classes - big surprise, all but like 3 people raised their hands. So who knows what she's doing about that - if she's looking into it (doubtful) or just checking for future reference. I tried to ask (albeit at a random time) and she told me, "We really need to stay on topic". Meh. So everyone left school in a really bad mood Monday.

Lame Sunday

2009-03-08T23:54:00.001-05:00

Sorry - all I did today was sleep, study, eat and watch a little bit of T.V. Super-lame! Hopefully once Spring Break starts I'll have all kinds of crazy stories. ;)

Lame Saturday

2009-03-07T20:54:00.000-06:00

Study study study -and that's it.

Crazy Friday

2009-03-07T20:48:00.002-06:00

I ended up doing way more than I expected. I went to a review for kinese which made me feel better (I know more than I think I know, I guess). Then I went to work for awhile and started on a new project, which means more consistent work at work - yay! Then I came home, studied for a bit, and went to Lindsey's. We watched part of Into The Wild, and pretty much the entire movie Much Ado About Nothing (starring "Wilson" as Claudio - mmmm!) while her cat awkwardly tried to strangle me with her love. Then Camden came over, and we just kind of hung out for awhile - and we got gelato and the scooper guy was an ass and started rubbing his eyes when I said, "Wow, there are so many flavors!" Ass. Meh. Back to the books!

Happy Thursday

2009-03-05T21:04:00.003-06:00

Yay - the week is finally over! Classes weren't too bad today - this morning we were all given a disability, and we made breakfast (breakfast tacos, muffins and fruit) attempting to get around. It was really fun -and funny. I tried to use a 1-handed cheese grater (a food processor would work much better!) and it was a total disaster. Chancy had some goggles on simulate vision problems, and she was in a wheelchair and only had one working arm. So this made things very interesting. We managed to get it all cooked, and had a nice breakfast. Then we had Peds lab and had to come up with some treatment plans based from a bag of random stuff - it was actually kind of fun. Courtney Kennedy was having a birthday, so her mom drove in from Shreveport and brought lunch for everyone - so sweet! It was homemade and REALLY good! And of course...after class we went to Sherlock's for a bit before midterms start, and had fun. Awhile in, I got a text from someone I didn't have in my phone book, and they said, "You guys aren't still there are you?" So I said, "Yeah, we are! Come join!" thinking it was a classmate. THEN I get "Where are you? Are you going to be there long? It'll take me 45 minutes to get there." So Luke, Anna and I were trying to figure out who it was in our class. As it turns out, it was Jenn's friend Lisa, who still had my number for awhile ago. Whoops. But it was entertaining! Good day!

Not your typical Wednesday

2009-03-05T20:30:00.001-06:00

...I resisted the urge to go to trivia and did homework instead - ewwwwww.

Your daily dose of Awesome... on the road

Come back to Texas

Au Revoir, Mark!

The days go by so fast

Marky Phelps

Peace that passeth all understanding

Crazy dog lady

Now I know where flies go to die

"I was concerned that the rolls wouldn't be good, but luckily they were really good"

"Do you have 30 seconds for the oil spill?" "No, I hate the oil spill!"

Home sweet home

I always wanted to see my name on a marquee

Would you call this stealing?

Urban Hiking

"Oh yes, it's so lovely now it's almost a shame to bury it."

Davexiety

Oddly familiar

Monster

My home away from home away from home

TBD

annnnnnd we're back!

A slight miscalculation

My first National League game

Is that a mirror or a door?

I stand corrected - there was a funnel cloud in the bay!

It's not as bad as it looks

Desperate Housewife

Farmer's Market

"Physics? Come on!" "Um, that says psychics, David."

What's the plural for Prius? Prii?

Asian guy in cutoff short-shorts and a tank top...I've officially seen it all

Nothing better than a wine tasting room in a school zone

Sales tax is 9.25% here?!

Wow, that's a really big snail

This is my temporary home

Califoria, here we come

Watch out, Tuscon, here we come!

On the road again!

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

2 weeks of epic fails!

Rats on the Roof?

I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself to hold onto these moments as they pass

2010: return of the blog?

I put gorillas because they have fuckin tails, right?

The triumphant return of DDoA!

How do you like me now, Biznatch?

Presentation FAIL

As long as they don't stare at me in a creepy way I'm ok

That stuff kept getting in my mouth - it was gross....shut up.

Movies that make you dumber

2 MRS. GEBHARTS??

I suck at goodbyes

Hey, who am I? *sticks out chest*

9 years ago

Another finally!

Baby talk

Shut up, the couch!

I want someone to lay on top of me!

Ha-HA your rocket didn't launch!...that's what she said!

I STILL don't speak kinsiology

No you didn't, you bitch!

Happy Easter!

Blar Saturday

What's this cloud of black surrounding Dallas?

I had a friend who was Gayzilla! He'll tear down Hong Kong he's so gay!

There's a street called "Spanky Branch"

Feels like I'm 17 again

What season is this, anyway?

"I ate crawfish for 10 hours straight"

"If someone got a little drunker than me, I'd be like, 'get a life - it's my birthday.'"

It burns the flesh.

It's B-I-N-G-O, right?

Note to crazy woman: a street is NOT the same thing as a highway!!!

I can has paycheck?

He's playing fetch... with my kids... he's treating my kids like they're dogs.

Things I hadn't considered

No!!! We moved there last year!!!

Get into play mode

Those 3 words

Which would be a bigger issue- frustration or peer isolation?

Hey, who am I? sticks out chest