"I'm a Grown-Up Now!" said Head Little Kid

Eggplant Parmesan

2012-01-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

I recently made eggplant Parmesan. I've made it a few times, as Justin and I try to eat a meatless meal every now and then to feel healthy. I've found breading the eggplant is easier when you're well prepared: I set up an assembly line. Eggplant -> flour -> eggs -> bread crumbs -> wire rack to dry. After letting them dry for 30 minutes I'm ready to fry them in olive oil. Like almost anything frying in oil, they smell really good. Here's the yummy crispy eggplant in the pan waiting for the rest of the Parmigiana.

The tomato sauce is super easy now that I have an awesome Ninja blender/chopper/food processor/lightbulb changer. First I loaded up the stuff I need chopped super fine (garlic, parsley, basil, serrano pepper) Ninja it; then I load up the tomatoes and olives and blend it all together!
And it's so easy to clean when I'm all done! What an awesome Christmas present.

Ezekiel's favorite Christmas present is still the ribbon ball.

And he recently learned to stick his tongue out and make that sound by blowing between his tongue and his lips. How do you spell that sound?

2012 Year in Preview

2012-01-09T18:33:00.000-08:00

Here is what we imagine our 2012 might look like:
Justin should finish his Master's degree and start his new job.

We plan to go visit Mari and Chris and Isaac in their new home in Pensacola.

This Summer we may go to a family reunion/90th birthday bash for my paternal grandfather in Colorado. We might drive.

Later in the Summer we hope to go visit Luke, Amber and the kiddos in Alaska. It will be a great time to leave Houston behind for a while!

In August we will celebrate Ezekiel's first birthday!

Though there are no specific plans yet, who knows- we may even have baby #2 on the way!

2011 Year in Review

2011-12-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

In January of this year Justin and I went to Washington D.C. for a few days before school started. We had a lot of fun seeing the Smithsonians and such, even though it was VERY cold. Unfortunately, none of the food we had was very good. I would attribute this shortcoming to my pregnancy, as I was not quite past the morning sickness phase, but Justin agreed with me that the food was disappointing. Here is a picture of Justin and me in front of the Washington Monument.

In March we flew to San Diego, where we got to see Grandfather (my dad's dad) and both of my mom's brothers and their kiddos. Justin had never been to San Diego, nor had he met many of those relatives. The weather was beautiful. The purpose of our trip was to pick up Grandmarm's (my mom's mom) Passat, which we purchased, and drive it back to Houston. The drive back was fun- our last road trip together without babies. Unfortunately I failed to take any pictures of this whole trip (what???).

In May we bought our house. We began our house-hunting in January, and saw many so-so homes. In April we had a particularly depressing day of house-hunting in which our best option was a home that we referred to as the "bird house" due to the 2 dead birds found inside the house when we toured it. The next day we decided to slightly increase our price range, visited one house, and immediately agreed that we wanted to put a bid on it. About six weeks later we closed on the home and began the clean-up (it was a foreclosure). I am happy to report that we are feeling very settled in and thankful for our home. Here's a picture of Justin and me (about 6 1/2 months pregnant) on the day we closed. Bonus: in the foreground is a portion of the car we bought in March.

The biggest event of our year was the birth of our dear son, Ezekiel Thomas O'Shay, on August 17, 2011.

A week and a half later I went back to school. I had help from several friends who watched Ezekiel while I went to school, including lots of babysitting by my parents. I have found my interest in school to be a bit less than it was B.E. (Before Ezekiel). In October Ezekiel's baby cousin Isaac was born in Japan. Hooray!

In November we got to see my whole family, including Isaac for the first time. He and Ezekiel are already getting chummy.

We have just finished celebrating Christmas with the whole family.

We had a really good time seeing everyone, but it was bittersweet; we had to say goodbye to Luke, Amber, Titus, Joy, Apollos and Constantine. They have been part of our life for the last seven years and we are going to miss them a lot. But we're looking forward to seeing them in Anchorage!

Now we look forward to 2012, in which we hope to make new friends, see Ezekiel continue to grow and learn, and continue progressing in our school/work. Cheers!

Birthday Birthday!

2011-12-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

We got to celebrate Titus's seventh birthday with Amber and the kids. It was a lot of fun. It's so cute to see Joy delightedly watching Titus open his presents.

Apollos saw me taking pictures and asked if he could take some.

Here are a few of the pictures he took:

Ezekiel always likes hanging out with his cousins. We are all going to miss them when they're gone.

4 Months Old!

2011-12-20T07:14:00.000-08:00

Ezekiel just had his 4 months doctor's appointment yesterday. Here are his stats:
Head circumference: 14.75", 56%
Length: 26.25", 90%
Weight: 15 lbs, 9 oz, 63.7%

The doctor said I should start feeding him rice cereal so he can get some iron!

I am often told by strangers / acquaintances to "enjoy him now... he'll be grown up before you know it." I think it's funny that this is such a common thing to say to a person with a baby. I also think it's funny because of course we enjoy him! We enjoy him every day! I'm torn between looking forward to him getting a little bit older, so that he can actually talk to us and walk around with us, and wanting him to stay his precious baby self as long as possible. But we certainly do enjoy him. Mari and Chris: enjoy Isaac while he's this young. He'll be 4 months old before you know it.

Ezekiel got a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament from his Granny in Cushing. He tested it out and decided he liked it before we put it on the tree.

Ezekiel enjoys some rough-housing with his daddy. He expresses his delight by cooing, smiling, laughing, and then barfing.

We recently got to see Santa at a shopping center near our house. Like many young children, Ezekiel seems a little unsure about being put on a stranger's lap. Actually this Santa wasn't a stranger, but I don't think Ezekiel could recognize Mr. and Mrs. Carico through their awesome Mr. and Mrs. Claus costumes.

Quack Quack!

2011-12-03T11:24:00.001-08:00

Here's Ezekiel on the morning of Thanksgiving:

Unfortunately he didn't get to wear that very long before it got dirty and he had to change into something else.

This morning we put him in his Johnny Jump-up for the first time. He seemed to like it - he was finally able to look all around him, and even turn around if he wanted. I think it will work even better once he gets a little bit bigger.

9 Cousins!

2011-11-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

This past weekend Ezekiel got to meet his Dallas cousins. And today he finally got to meet his little cousin- the only one who's smaller than him!

It was great to see Mari, Chris and Isaac. And all 9 cousins were in one place (unfortunately Luke & Amber were still in Alaska, but they'll be joining the party soon). We'll be taking pictures of the whole fam next weekend, but today we did a few practice shots: one of all the babies born between October 2010 and October 2011

And one of all 9 of my parents' grandchildren

I have more pictures on my facebook page.

3 Months Old!

2011-11-17T13:46:00.000-08:00

Today is Ezekiel's 3-month birthday! Here are a few of the developments we've been impressed by:

He has become HUGE. Well, he's still tiny compared to an adult human. But he's much bigger and heavier than he was when he was born.
He has started to grab things with his hands. He often holds his hands together in front of him.
He can now suck his thumb! He is becoming less attached to his pacifier.
He's working towards rolling over. When he's lying on is front, he can twist his back so that he's pretty much on his side.
He's laughing a lot! (That's my favorite)

A few times I've wondered at what ages certain developments are "supposed to" happen, but usually I forget or lose interest before I look it up. I've decided I pretty much don't care. While the above developments probably seem un-interesting, especially if they're completely average for his age (or even--GASP--below average), but as his adoring parent, I totally don't care. I'm so proud to see him slowly acquire these life skills, regardless of their indication about how he compares to his fellow babies. And then I had an alarming thought- what if I feel this way about him his whole life? What if I'm always proud of what he's doing well, regardless of whether or not he's better than other people? I guess that's a mother's job. I've always felt opposed to the idea of "celebrating mediocrity", and I certainly hope that my dear son has areas of talent in which he is truly outstanding, but perhaps I will just always see him as outstanding.

Happy Fall!

2011-11-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

Ezekiel has really been enjoying the cooler weather, since that means he gets to wear his favorite dragon sweatshirt.

I also means nice snuggle time with his daddy, while wearing his quack-quack sleep sack.

I tried taking Ezekiel to school with me a couple of weeks ago. I thought, "he often naps during this time. He'll probably fall asleep in the car and then sleep through my class." WRONG. He did sleep in the car, but then woke up as I arrived on campus. My professor graciously assured me that it would be a treat to have my little guy in class, but Ezekiel demanded constant attention and then worked himself into a fuss midway through lecture, so that eventually had to leave. So now I know that Ezekiel isn't ready to learn about tax policy yet. Perhaps next semester.

As this semester winds to a close, I'm finding that my enthusiasm for research has slightly waned. Next semester I'll be taking a class from one of my favorite professors, whose research interests I almost always enjoy hearing about. I'm hoping that taking her "topics in microeconomic theory" course will jump start my drive to research and get finished.

I look forward to being done with my degree, because then I'll have to freedom to use it in whatever way I choose. While I do enjoy micro theory research when the problem is interesting enough, finding such interesting problems is not easy. My goals and priorities have been in flux this semester, and as my desire to be a world class researcher peters out, my enjoyment of teaching remains strong. My tuition waiver and stipend depend on me being a teaching assistant, and this semester I'm a TA for an upper level mathematical economics course. I enjoy trying to make the material accessible to the students, and at the same time trying to encourage and reassure them. Pastor Carter has repeatedly emphasized the fact that everything we do, including our work, should be viewed for the context of how it furthers God's kingdom. While economic research clearly works to bring order out of chaos (I love efficiency!), it can be hard to see the impact of this in the day-to-day spent trying to work out the math on some of these models. But it is more tangible to see how I can be a blessing to students every day as a teacher (or, hopefully one day as a professor). So right now I'm hoping to finish my Ph.D. so that I can then have the freedom to do research, as the interest arises, and also to teach.

Almost 2 months old!

2011-10-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

Today I took Ezekiel to the doctor for his 2 month checkup. His actual 2 month birthday is Monday. Here are his stats:

Height (or length): 24.5 inches

Weight: 12 lbs, 3 oz

Head size: 40 inches (circumference)

He is filling out his fleece footie pajamas nicely!

Last night we went to Luke and Amber's house to celebrate Constantine's first birthday. Joy is a great baby helper- she takes such an interest in Ezekiel and is getting to know how she can help (shaking is little rattle is a great Joy task). As we were getting ready for dinner she helped bring the little bouncer seat for him to sit in and put it in the middle of the kitchen, saying, "here he can look at the family!" Good thinking! Except it turns out he was a little bit in the middle of a high-traffic area. After I had set him in it, Joy accidentally backed into him. She tripped on the seat, and as she fell the seat folded up on Ezekiel. I saw this from a couple feet away as though it was happening in slow motion. I said "Oh no! Oh no!" and I couldn't seem to get there fast enough. I saw the little plastic part of the seat fold up on him and Joy fall on top. She got up quickly, and by the time I got there Ezekiel was letting out an extremely distressed wail. I scooped him up and hurried him into another room to calm him down. I'm not sure what I was afraid was going to happen to him- I knew it didn't kill him. But all I could think was "PANIC! PANIC! PANIC!" What's funny is that I have seen other moms react in similar ways to seemingly minor incidents in the past, and subconsciously thought "that seems like a bit of an over-reaction." At least I didn't voice that thought, or else I would be having to eat my words.

Ezekiel calmed down and was fine, except for being in a slightly grouchy mood (he was tired already). When I joined the family at the dinner table, I told them he was fine but a little bit grouchy, and Titus helpfully said, "I bet I know who he's grouchy at- Joy". Poor Joy- but I think Ezekiel knows it was an accident and won't hold it against her.

Sometimes I think that I can't wait for Ezekiel to grow up so that he can talk to us, be more interactive, eventually grow out of diapers! But other times I feel like he's growing up too fast already. I know I'm going to miss the feeling of holding a floppy sleeping baby. We like to snuggle in bed in the morning before we get up, and his little face just looks so peaceful, like a porcelain doll. I love my baby!

Happy 1 month birthday, Ezekiel!

2011-09-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

Ezekiel turned one month old two days ago. He already weighs over 10 pounds! He has gotten to where he has more good nights (waking up only twice, and each time eating and then going right back to sleep) than bad nights (waking up every hour, or just not going back to sleep). Last night he was particularly badly behaved. He woke up at 3 am acting like he wanted to eat. He ate a little bit, but then started wailing. I tried burping him with no success. Then he acted like he wanted to eat some more, but refused when given the opportunity. This continued, mixed with periods of relative calm (just grunting and squirming) until about 6:30 am. BLEH! This morning when I tried to feed him again, rather than eating he just looked up at me with his big blue peaceful eyes and a little smile on his face. It was the cutest look I have ever seen, and he kept it up for a few minutes, forcing me to admit, "I can't be mad at you."

Here's Ezekiel on his one-month birthday, snuggling with Dad.

And here's him snuggling with me yesterday.

And here he is balled up on the couch this morning.

Three Weeks of Love!

2011-09-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

Today marks Ezekiel's third week of life outside the womb! Hooray! I'm already feeling somewhat normal physically, and getting better adjusted to taking care of a baby. In just three short weeks I have already observed the truth in a few baby-isms that I had heard. One is Luke's aphorism that the less comfortable you are, the more comfortable the baby is. Here is Justin, demonstrating this: he had Ezekiel resting on his legs, with Ezekiel's head by Justin's knees, but Ezekiel was fussy and uncomfortable... until he threw his little body sideways, forcing Justin to hold his head in his hand.

We have also experienced the truth of Sean's anecdote: "before I had kids, I didn't really have any poo stories. Now my life has become on uninterrupted poo story." Ezekiel is constantly pooing! Already we've had so many diaper changes interrupted by an onslaught of poo that they no longer seem like interesting stories.

I went back to school last week, with Mama's help. I only have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I fed Ezekiel in my office before leaving him with Mama while I went to class, then met back up with them afterwards and went home. The whole process of getting all his stuff (stroller, diaper bag, car seat) in the car and then unpacking it in the hot parking lot was rather difficult. And my office is shared with several other graduate students, so his farting sounds that seem so normal at home made me self-conscious in the office. And I got pooed on a little bit before going to class. Starting this week I'm leaving him behind while I go to school- anyone want to volunteer to watch my dear little baby for a few hours on an occasional Tuesday or Thursday?

Here are a few more cute pictures of Ezekiel:

And Constantine says, "Don't forget me- I'm cute too!"

Welcome Baby O'Shay

2011-08-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Justin and I are proud to announce the birth of our first son, Ezekiel Thomas O'Shay, on Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 4:36 pm. He weighed in at 8 lbs, 6 oz, and measured 21 inches.

Justin and I are so proud- we think he is a very good-looking baby. Overall the delivery went well- no major complications. It was a lot of work and very tiring (duh- I guess that's why it's called labor), but of course totally worth it. We got to bring him home from the hospital on Friday and are still adjusting to life with a baby. Some things have been as I expected them- I love holding my baby and/or just staring at him. In fact, I have found that I love him even more than I expected. That is a good thing, because something that is not as I expected is how much work he is. I'm sure this is totally cliche and all new parents say this, but sure enough I had not correctly anticipated how frequently he would need his diaper changed (seems like about once an hour, on average), how difficult it would be to feed him at times, and how much he would wake up in the middle of the night. I keep thinking, "good thing I love him so much, or else I would find this very burdensome." Needless to say, I am looking forward to settling into a workable routine where I start to feel somewhat normal. That will happen eventually, right?

Classes at Rice started this week; I'm only registered for one class, but I'm missing it this week. I emailed the professor to let him know, and he responded with his congratulations on the birth of our baby and a gracious "not to worry" about missing the first week. My goal is to start going next week- Mama will accompany me as I go in for that one class, and she will hold Ezekiel while I am in class. I am a little bit nervous about it, and about how I will be able to do school when so much of my time and attention is occupied by little Ezekiel.

Home Improvements and Baby Things

2011-07-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

We've been making some preparations for the arrival of our baby. We got this cute little high chair from Ikea as a gift from Simon and Katrina. I know it will be a while before he's sitting in it, but it just looked so cute sitting at our table!

We also got this cute Moses basket from Justin's grandparents, plus some snuggly little receiving blankets that Mema sewed.

The car seat is in our Passat, ready to carry OB1 home.

Mama came over the other day and helped me do a little work in the baby's room- we set up his dresser, filled it with his little clothes, and set up the bookshelf in his room to hold miscellaneous baby things.

Here's his crib, in front of the wall that just had its wallpaper scraped off. We still need to paint his room.

I replaced the curtains in the living room. Previously I had some leafy-print ones that I got when I lived in my apartment by myself before we got married, but they clashed with the plaid couches. Then at Ikea I found these nice solid green ones! They were on sale, plus I got an extra discount because the only set they had left had a slight tear in it. Hooray! So what did I do with the other curtains?...
I put them in the dining room! We were wanting to get some curtains in there.

We found this kitschy lamp the other day at KCM for $12. I liked it, as it goes with my general leafy theme. It seems nice, and it's pretty heavy. I found a sticker on it that had some designer's name on it, so I looked him up and found that he makes lots of ostentatious "statement lamps", mostly priced in the $300-$600 range. I couldn't find my particular lamp, so I don't know if it's actually one he made, but it seems like it could be. Hooray! Art!

Baby Countdown

2011-06-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am now about 7-1/2 months pregnant with our first baby, a boy! We've decided on a name for our little son, but we're keeping it a secret until he's born, which should happen in mid-August. We are very excited and also nervous. We've been taking weekly childbirth classes in which we're learning the Bradley method of natural childbirth. I am kind of nervous about this whole birth thing, but I take comfort in knowing that millions (billions? trillions? quadrillions?) of women have done it already and most of them turn out fine, including my own brave mother who had 4 all-natural births. But still, I hear it's not a pleasant process. Sigh.

Justin and I bought a house in Katy, and we moved in almost a month ago. This is Justin and me the day we closed on our house.

The house was a foreclosure, and we got a pretty good price on it. It was in good shape overall, but it was quite dirty. Thankfully we had a lot of help from family and friends in fixing it up and cleaning it the weekend we moved in. We really like living here- it's so spacious, especially compared to our one-bedroom apartment in Rice Village! We still have a lot of work to do to get the baby room ready for our little guy. Speaking of which, is anyone wanting to get rid of a crib, dresser, or high chair?

This Summer Justin is working at an internship, which is scheduled to end Aug. 12, 6 days before my due date of Aug. 18. I'm kind of hoping that the baby will come a few days early, like maybe Aug. 13 or 14, to give us maximal time at home together with the baby before we go back to school (me on Aug. 23 and Justin on Aug. 30). After this Summer, Justin will have one more semester of school before completion of his Master's degree. I will still have several more years (2? 3?) before finishing my Ph.D, but for the rest of the time I'm in school I will mostly be doing research and only taking 1 class at a time (if any). As a theory person, my research can mostly be done from home, so I'm hoping to be able to continue school on a flexible schedule while taking care of my little guy.

I am not working this Summer. Or, I should day, I'm not working outside the home. I have been spending most of my time getting our house unpacked and arranged in a homey way, and now I'm starting to have more time to work on my research. My goal is to get some good progress on my research before our son arrives in August, since I'm guessing his arrival will shake things up a bit and may forestall my school work for a while. I'm trying to finish my field exam, which for micro theory is just a paper surveying current literature on our intended topic. I'm studying public goods. My paper is pretty much written, but I still need to go through a few iterations of getting feedback from my adviser and fixing it up according to his recommendations. Finishing that paper is my first academic goal for this Summer. My second is making some good progress on my own research- maybe coming up with some theoretical results that I can work into an outline for my first original research paper.

So there you have it. That's what's going on with the O'Shays right now.

Happy 2011!

2011-01-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

Here are a few videos I took shortly after Constantine (my nephew) was born. I wanted to email them to the fam, but they were too big. So here they are:

In this first one, I thought it would be cute to have each of the kids record a message for their new baby brother for when he's old enough to talk and watch these. I only got around to recording one with Joy... it was less wonderful than I had pictured.

This next one is just the kids running around upstairs.

Last weekend Justin and I went to Washington D.C. for a few days. Over a year ago I used the rewards points from my credit card to get a Hyatt gift certificate. We still hadn't used it last November when I realized it expires this Jan. 31! We had been thinking it would be fun to visit DC, so I checked on hotel and airline prices. We found that we could stay at a nice hotel for 3 nights for the gift certificate price, and plane tickets for mid-January were pretty cheap! So we decided to go.

It was fun but super-duper cold. We spent a lot of time at the Smithsonian museums. Did you know that there are a bunch (maybe 8 or 10) different Smithsonian museums, and they're all free? We only made it to two of them: the American History museum, where we got to see the first lady ball gowns collection;

and the natural history museum, where we got to see lots of rocks and fossils and stuff. (no pictures yet- those are on Justin's camera).

We also spent some time shivering as we walked around the monuments. The highs were in the mid-30s while we were there, plus wind that made it feel like it was in the 20s. Notice that all the reflection pools are mostly or completely frozen!

Justin in front of the Potomac, with ice chunks floating on it.

Birthday!

2010-09-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

Happy (belated) Birthday Mari! And Happy Birthday Chris!

We also recently celebrated Justin's birthday. He was in College Station most of the day, which gave me plenty of time to put up balloons before he got home:

I also made a cheese pie, and even though I put candles on it, I was too nervous about setting off our super-sensitive smoke alarm to light them.

Justin's parents sent him a funny birthday card that doesn't actually open. They secretly informed me ahead of time, so that I would be sure to be watching his face to see his reaction. I had my camera ready and everything... I watched him open it, and he chuckled slightly... "what's happening?" I thought. He had taken the card out backwards, so the first part he saw was the back that said "...birthday cards that won't open" and had a birthday message from his parents and sister. I snatched the card from him and turned it around, but it was too late- he already knew the joke. Oh well. He still got to appreciate the funny card, which I think is the main goal.

Back To School

2010-08-16T09:48:00.001-07:00

Last Friday was the last day of our Summer internships for both me and Justin. I'm happy to report that they both ended on a good note. During my last week of work I had informal review meetings with both of my bosses at work to discuss my internship experience. Both bosses reported that they were very pleased with my work and that they would be happy to have me come back to work for them. They said they thought I fit in well with the company and seemed very capable and intelligent. It's always nice to get positive feedback! Right now I'm focusing more on school, and looking forward to being back in academia, but it's nice to know that there's a spot for me in the working world if I choose to go that route.

Justin's bosses seemed very pleased with his work as well. He gave a presentation summarizing his summer's work on Tuesday, and there were high-up geoscience people there who were listening, interested, and asking good questions (which Justin was able to asnwer!). Over the next few days he got lots of positive comments from mentors and coworkers. This makes us feel optimistic about his job prospects after he graduates in December 2011.

I'm really looking forward to going back to school. I like school. Last year I had an office on campus, but it was in building all the way across campus from where we had class... and it was in the basement... and it was pretty small... and I shared it with the 6 other first year grad students. So we never used it. We found that it was convenient to work in the Library or coffee shop. But this year I've been assigned to an office in the building where all my classes are! Well, it's actually just half of a cubicle in an office in that building, but still, at least it's in the right building.

All grad students have some TA assignment. Last year I was a grader for a freshman-level undergrad class; my job didn't involve any teaching. This semester I'll be a TA for a graduate-level class! I think it will involve some actual teaching / answering questions. The class is in microeconomic theory, which is what I want to study, so it will be a good review of the basic concepts. And I feel like it's kind of a promotion, showing that the professor (who's the director of graduate studies, I think) has confidence in my abilities. I'm looking forward to this new job.

Work and Exam Results

2010-06-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

I started my Summer Internship a week ago Monday. Overall I like it. It's a long way from our apartment, so that's not ideal. But it's in the same direction as Justin's work, so we've been carpooling. I really like this. Even though we don't get home until 6 pm, I feel like I'm home at 5:25 when I meet Justin because that's when I get to chat and relax. But it would be nice if work wasn't as far.

The company I'm working for does price consulting. Even though I've had some boring moments of staring at screens full of data, at least the data is meaningful. For example, I've been looking at a table of dates, prices, quantity sold, and promotional info, trying to determine how much a certain promotion (price reduction, newspaper flyer, grocery store display, etc.) affected sales of an item such as chewing gum. After studying economic theory for a year, it's neat to be able to sit down in front of a bunch of real world data and see how it works.

Speaking of studying for a year... Friday before last, June 4, I took my last qualifying exam. We were told to expect results in 1-2 weeks. I'd heard that last year results were out 10 days after the exams, so on Monday (June 14, 10 days after my last exam) I was anxiously checking my school email all day. Nothing. Same thing yesterday. Still nothing. Again today I was disappointed time and time again as I looked at my email account. As I was getting ready to leave work today I gave it one last check... RESULTS!!!!! I had hoped to be able to tell how I did based on the subject of the email, but the subject was ambiguous: "Results of the Qualifying Exams." Nervously I opened the email. The text read, "Please click the attachment to view the results of your qualifying exams." I clicked the attachment, heart pounding. It opened up a zip file with 2 word documents. I clicked the first one. After about 30 seconds of nervous waiting, my computer spit out a message the this document wasn't compatible with my version of Microsoft Word (I've been using the boss's old computer). I tried the second document... [drumroll]... I PASSED! ALL 3 QUALIFIERS!!! NO RETAKES!!! I'm so relieved.

On the way home, Justin proposed that we go out to eat to celebrate. We went to Two Rows, which is pretty much across the street from our apt. They have $1 beers on Wednesdays! We enjoyed a relaxing meal of burgers, fries and beer, and Justin ordered me a surprise ice cream sundae cake. YUM!

Me vs. The System

2010-06-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

When we first moved into our apartment in August, we paid a deposit for the apartment, plus a $50 deposit for a clicker that opens the garage. The apartment people will henceforth be know as "the system". We were told that each apartment was entitled to one garage spot; if there were empty spots once everyone who wanted one had been assigned a spot, the remaining spots would be allocated to those who wanted a second spot.

In September I got an email from the system saying that there were indeed extra spots available, so I claimed one for my car. At the time I went by to pick up the second clicker I didn't have my checkbook with me; the guy in the office said I could just drop the check in the rent drop-box, which I made sure to do next time I left my apartment.

Since then there have been some move-outs and move-ins. Recently I got an email from the system saying that a new move-in wanted a parking spot, so we had to give up one of ours. Apparently we're at the bottom of the priority list, since we live in a one-bedroom apartment. Bummer. But the good news is that we get one of our $50 deposits back... right?

I moved my beloved Beigey out onto the street in front of the apartment and returned the clicker. The girl in the office at the time said she'd make a note, they'd do some paperwork, and I'd get my deposit back shortly.

Later that day I got an email from them saying, "it appears that the second payment of $50.00 for the second clicker had not been received. I now show that we have $400.00 on deposit which is $350.00 for the apartment and $50.00 for the gate clicker you still have."

Hm. I thought I had paid that... I replayed the scene from last September in my mind. I did drop it in the rent box, didn't I? Perhaps it got stuck in there and they never picked it up. Ok Hannah, time for some detective work! I checked my bank account. Unfortunately they don't keep check images online after a certain number of months, which was more than the number of months since the incident. I found a check for $50 that had been deposited on October 7, which happened to be the same day that my rent for that month was deposited. I couldn't see to whom the check was made out, but the fact that it was deposited on the same day as my rent suggested that it was collected along with my rent (i.e. from the rent drop box), making me highly suspicious of the system.

I called the bank and fumbled through their automated voice guy to finally speak with a real person. The girl was helpful and said she could get me my check images, but unfortunately I'd have to wait 5-7 business days for them to come via snail-mail. The suspense! But I found my evidence convincing enough to attempt a follow-up with the system. I sent them a polite email along the lines of "I really think I did pay the second deposit back in October. Please check again." I expected a reply of either, "Our mistake! Here it is! We'll get this refunded right away," or at least, "We've checked again and I am still not seeing it." I got neither! No reply! They seem to be underestimating the value of $50 to a poor graduate student.

Today I received the check images from my bank. As I suspected, the original (apartment + first clicker) deposit AND the second clicker deposit were both made out to and deposited by the system. Vindication! Well, not yet. I guess vindication will be when I get them to refund me my deposit. But I sent them a strongly worded email stating that I did pay the deposit and that if they had lost the record, I had obtained check images that I could show them. Hannah: 1. the system: 0.

My Wonderful Mother

2010-05-22T11:44:00.001-07:00

And here's a picture of my wonderful mother on Mothers' Day, doing what she's always done so well- taking care of us little ones.

But I don't Want to Study

2010-05-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been feeling the need to justify anything I do other than study. I have my second qualifier (macroeconomics) coming up on Monday and I'm sooooo tired of studying for it. My excuse for this break is that I need to keep everybody informed about my important goings-on (wink wink).

This is where we live:

Here's Justin and me outside our apartment building, about to go on a nice walk to Rice Village. That's one of our favorite things to do.

On Mothers' Day we had a nice lunch with Mama and Daddy and Luke and Amber and kids after church. Then later in the afternoon we went over to Luke & Amber's house for some bocce ball!

It was fun. Also, Sunday, May 9, happened to by my and Justin's anniversary. We went on a date the night before so as not to compete with Mothers' Day, but we did enjoy the top layer of our wedding cake! Mama had kept it in the freezer all year! We were happy to share with the kids and everybody.

Recently when we were babysitting the kids, we gave them an extra helping of berries and cream for dessert. As we sat around the table snarfing down our dessert, Joy, whom I guess has heard "snarf snarf" to describe such an eating situation, looked up from her berries and said "snawf snawf" in a delighted little voice. It was cute. Apparently they don't think of us as real adults- when we were discussing our wedding anniversary, Joy said "and even though you're just kids, you still got married." I sometimes feel that way.

Now I have to go squeeze in a few hours of studying so I don't feel guilty about having fun with the kids later today when we go babysit! I'm really looking forward to being done with qualifiers and getting to work on research and stuff I'm actually interested in.

Reflections on Our First Year

2010-05-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Justin and I are coming up on our first year of marriage! Good for us!

I'm sure every married couple has patterns that they see a lot in their interactions; I wonder how similar those are across couples, i.e. are our quirks unique to us, or are they the same ones that all married people experience? Here are a couple of examples:

Sometimes after we've had a moderate argument, one of us will try to make a joke, thinking "hey, this will signal to my spouse that I consider this argument over and am ready to move on." Unfortunately, this is usually the person who was less disgruntled by the argument, so the more disgruntled person, who may still be in the process of becoming un-angry, feels they're being made fun of. We've observed both parties being guilty of the post-argument joke, but now that we're aware of it we are better about avoiding it. And when it does happen, the other party can simply state "too soon for a joke".

Here's something that I've noticed myself doing: I feel a tiny bit disgruntled (or maybe even not), and somehow Justin gets himself in the path of my annoyance. It escalates, and before I know it I find myself in an argument thinking "what's going on? Why am I arguing with my beloved husband about this? I do not feel strongly about this issue! Why can't I just stop? For some reason I feel committed to this argument!!! STOP! " It's like I'm rolling down a hill too fast to be able to stop.

It tends to happen in the following manner:
Hannah: [frowning]

Justin: What's up? Are you mad at me?

Hannah:[Hm. Maybe he is part of the reason I feel grumpy] Well, I'm not mad, but I'm annoyed that you ... [insert imagined offence]

Justin: What? That's ridiculous! [insert self-defense, plus one degree of intensity]

Hannah: [He's just getting defensive! I must make my point] It's your fault because ... [etc.]

A few lines later is where I start realizing that we're actually becoming angry, and I start wondering why we're arguing.

Recently I had my first realization and successful stop of the pointless argument. It was a beautiful Saturday morning. Justin had spent the morning reading, and I had been studying or doing something un-fun. Around noon we got in the car and headed to an event with Justin's family. The day was so pretty that I felt the only way to fully take advantage of it would be for a day-trip through bluebonnets. So I told Justin it was his fault since he had been reading all morning. After a minute or so I realized what was happening and said, "I'm sorry. I know it's not actually your fault that we've been inside this morning. I just don't know how to take full advantage of this beautiful day and I feel frustrated about that. I should not have blamed you."

Justin said "Wow. That's never happened before. Thanks."

So we're growing!

Lord Willing, we will go here and do that...

2010-04-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

I have been asked recently about what Justin and I am doing and what our plans are, so here is a brief summary.

[Note: any references to children are speculative. We are not pregnant, we just know we want to have kids at some point.]

I am in my first year of graduate school (for a Ph.D.) in economics. I would like to be a professor when I am done. There are a lot of caveats to this however. Supposedly being a professor is very competative; your research has to be very good. I've never done research so I don't know how good I will be at it. Also, it depends on where we're living. Since I am not a single person, I cannot just apply to lots of places and go wherever I get a job. And of course, most importantly, we want to have kids. We don't know exactly when, but assuming I have kids by the time I am looking for jobs, they will be my first priority. Ideally I could find some sort of job that allows me to teach and research part-time. One of my undergraduate professors who was encouraging me to go to grad school said "everyone needs to hire women! And being a professor is an easy job. You'll have lots of time to raise baby!" I don't know how accurate that is, but I suppose I'll find out. Of course, all this depends largely on what Justin is doing.

Justin is in his first year of graduate school (for a Master's) in geophysics. He thinks he might want to be a professor also, or maybe work in industry doing research & development. He has the option to continue at A&M for his Ph.D. The benefit to this would be continuity (working on the same stuff with the same professor), and he would be done sooner than if he were to go elsewhere. The (obvious) downside is that he would have to continue commuting for several more years, or we would have to move to College Station. We also have anecdotal evidence that to stay in academia (i.e. become a professor) it's better to get your Ph.D. somewhere other than where you did undergrad. So another option for him is to go somewhere else for his Ph.D. If he were to go to Rice, he could of course start as soon as he finished his Master's. Or he could wait until I'm done with enough of my school that I can live somewhere else, and we could move to be close to his school of choice. If we were both students or professors with reasonably flexible schedules, this might work well for raising children. Of course, if Justin goes to work full-time then I would need to be a lot more available for taking care of our future children.

There are certainly benefits to staying in Houston, most importantly being close to family. Having grandparents and aunts & uncles and cousins around would be good for our kids, I think. But we also think it would be fun to live somewhere else, at least for a while. We really enjoyed living in Denver last summer, getting to see a new place and experience different weather than we're used to.

I feel a little bit overwhelmed thinking about all the decisions we have ahead of us. Thankfully I know that I am not the controller of my life; for now Justin and I will both do our best in school, and try to plan responsibly for our future.

"Come now, you who say 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what you life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.'" James 4:13-15

Rice International Cultural Night

2010-04-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to the Rice International Cultural Night. One of my classmates was dancing with the group of Lebanese students. She's the middle (short) one:

Also, one of my TAs was playing in a band with other Turkish students. Both of these performances were very good, although I had trouble seeing, due to the chairs and people in front of me, and hearing, due to the noise of people that didn't stop talking the entire time.

There were a few lame performances/presentations, including a pre-recorded audio-visual presentation (i.e. a video) about Egypt that looked like it was made by the Egypt tourism department- it showed the airport, beautiful hotels, and white people enjoying Cairo's nightlife. There was also supposed to be some sort of traditional music performance by the Russian students' group, but it turned out to be one Russian student and 2 Turkish students (including my TA again!) playing a Turkish song. I guess the Russians didn't have enough musicians to make up a whole performance. Afterwards there was a variety of international foods for dinner. Yum! I even got to take home some Kung Pao chicken!

Classes, Homework and Qualifiers

2010-04-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

At the conclusion of this school week, I will have only two weeks of class left this semester. I look forward to that with great anticipation, as I am getting quite burnt out from this semester.

I have 3 classes this semester. They can be summarized as follows:

Microeconomic Theory: this is my favorite class, and is what I want to focus on. We don't have many homeworks for this class, and those that we have are not that bad, in my opinion, because I really like the subject.
Macroeconomic Theory: I can see how some of this material is interesting, but it's not my favorite. This class has a LOT of homework, which seems very laborious to me since I am not as enthusiastic about this material. We are expected to have 2 more assignments in the remaining 2 weeks of this semester.
Econometrics: this class is alright. We don't have much homework assigned, which is nice, but we're not forced to stay on top of the material. So there will be a lot of preparation required before the qualifier.

April 23 is our last day of classes; after that we'll be very busy taking finals and studying for qualifiers. However, I consider the end of classes to be a reasonable event to look forward to. For one thing, it's much closer than the end of qualifiers, so it seems more tangible. Also, I currently feel like I need to be studying for qualifiers as well as attending class and learning new material and doing homework assignments. Once classes are done, I will be able to focus on just one thing; I'll be making sure I know the material I've already covered, rather than trying to learn new stuff.

Regular Stuff

2010-03-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been thinking that it would be nice to take more pictures of everyday stuff because those are lots of fun to look at later. So here are a few of our apartment:

This is Justin locking our door as we leave to go to Luke & Amber's house:

And here is Justin walking out to our car in the little parking lot behind our building:

Here are a few pictures of us having fun with the kids.

Graduate Housing

2010-03-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

The other day Daddy asked me if I was acquiring lots of good stories about living in this graduate student housing that I could pass on to my kids some day. So far it's actually been quite nice, but here are some things I will not miss about living in this 1940s graduate housing setup:

Not having a dishwasher
Not having a washing machine/dryer
Having a small kitchen
Having only small-ish windows
Being able to hear lots of sounds from neighbors, including: crying baby next door, noisy parties next door the other way, arguing couple somewhere downstairs, and a lugy-haucking neighbor in an unidentifiable direction

Here are some things I will miss about our apartment:

Nice hardwood floors
Great location near Rice Village
Pretty tree visible from our window (see previous post)
Cheap rent

On a different note, guess how much Justin and I are getting back from our tax return? $3000! (That's $3000, said excitedly, not $3000 factorial) We plan to put it toward student loans.

I have a pretty view

2010-03-13T06:54:00.001-08:00

The other day I noticed this beautiful tree just outside my window.

It looks very Springy to me and makes me feel cheerful. I thought "if I was Mari, I would take a picture and write a blog post about it. And if I was really Mari, I would take a picture from this same window in Summer, Fall, and Winter."

I can't promise the all-seasons-from-the-same-vantage-point, but here is this Springtime tree picture.

Shortly after I had noticed the tree, one of my classmates who had come over to study said "wow! That's a nice tree!" In a later discussion with my neighbor/classmate who lives downstairs from me, who said he is thinking about moving to a "nicer" apartment next year, my other classmate said "Hannah's place is nice- and she has this great view of a really pretty tree!" It turns out my downstairs neighbor can't see the tree from his window- all he can see is the parking area (whose corrugated metal top is visible in my tree picture). Yesterday another of my classmates, who lives on the 4th floor of the apartment across the street, said she is able to see over the top of our 2-story building to the beautiful white-flowered tree beyond. I'm glad we are all able to appreciate this lovely tree... except Xin, who lives downstairs.

When I loaded the tree picture from my camera, I realized that I had some pictures from Japan on my camera that I still hadn't downloaded!!!!! So here are a few of them:

Spring Semester

2010-03-10T07:38:00.000-08:00

The first half of this semester was spent counting down the weeks to Spring Break, which was last week (March 1 - March 5). It was a nice week, though it didn't coincide with Justin's Spring Break (next week, March 15 - March 20). But I did get to relax and spend some time not doing anything. I also got to enjoy a day of shopping with Mama, which was a belated birthday outing. I got lots of cute stuff on sale! Thanks Mama! Justin and I also got to spend a super-fun day at the zoo with Amber, Titus, Joy and Apollos. Justin and I get in free with our Rice I.D.s. As we were leaving, Justin offered to buy the kids ice cream. Yay! We get to be that fun uncle & aunt that spoil the kids! We sat by the duck pond while the kids ate their ice cream. Apollos crawled around chasing pigeons and trying to get in the water with the ducks. Then he spotted a cooler and headed speedily towards it. I pulled him away just as he was about to reap a bumper crop of strawberries and juice boxes. Thankfully the guy whose cooler it was seemed to think it was a funny as we did.

Sadly, my spring break is now over. I have 8 more weeks of class (finishing on April 23), then a couple weeks of finals, finishing no later than May 5, then ... my qualifying exams! I have to take 3 qualifying exams, each of which pretty much summarizes one of the subjects we've learned in our first year: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics. I'll be done with those on June 4, so 13 more weeks until I'm really done with my first year of graduate school! In the meantime, I have to study diligently, first for my midterms (going on now through next week), then for my finals and qualifiers. Based on past exams I've looked at, it is not unreasonable to expect that I will need to be studying pretty much constantly (or at least very regularly) from now until the exams. Wish me luck! Or, better yet, pray that I'll do well.

Happy Christmas!

2009-12-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

When we were writing our Christmas cards, Justin pointed out that "merry" implies drunkenness, and that it is therefore more appropriate to say "Happy Christmas," as our British brethren do.

We did indeed have a happy Christmas, though quite busy. Justin's graduation went well, although his diploma says "Justin Oshay" rather than "Justin O'Shay". Boo. We spent 4 days with his sister Lillian who's 14 and a freshman in high school. We think she had a good time; on her last evening with us we overheard her chatting with a friend on the phone, telling her about all the fun things we'd done. Yay!

After four fun-filled days with Lillian, culminating in a 3-hour each-way drive to take her home, we began our final Christmas preparations. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family, then Christmas dinner with Justin's. Amidst the hubbub of all the Christmas festivities, we have also been putting final touches on the planning of our trip to Japan, for which we still have not started packing (yikes!) We even had a brief moment of "I know I'm excited about the trip, but it feels like I haven't had nearly enough time to prepare for it and how did my month long Christmas break become so full with so little relaxation/veg time?"

However, this feeling was soon overcome. I had lots of fun visiting with my family, which this year included: Mama, Daddy, Grandmarm (Mama's mom), Grandfather (Daddy's dad), Luke, Amber, Titus, Joy, Apollos, Simon, Katrina, Carsen and Canon. I particularly enjoyed Joy and Carsen's rendition of Jingle Bells. It was so good, Titus and Canon could not resist the urge to dance.

It was lots of fun, especially getting to see Simon & Katrina and fam, since they live in Dallas and we don't get to see them that often. The only thing that was missing was Mari and Chris! This realization refreshed my excitement of our trip to Japan. Not only will we be getting to do lots of fun sight-seeing, but we'll get 10 days full of Mari-Hannah-Justin-Chris time! Hooray!

A+

2009-12-18T08:43:00.000-08:00

After 16 weeks of sparse (non-existent?) blogging, minimal apartment-cleaning, and lots of time with my 7 classmates, I have completed my first semester of graduate school. So far, it's a lot tougher than I had expected, but I think my mathematics background prepared me well. Although I have definitely been having to work hard, I enjoy what I've been working on, which is very encouraging. I took four classes this semester. My favorite class was Microeconomic Theory; this is the field that I would like to focus on. My other classes were Macroeconomic Theory, Math, and Statistics (bleh!). I found out I got an A+ in Micro, and since that is my favorite, and the most important for me to do well in, I consider this semester an academic success.

Now I'm enjoying a month of no school before starting next semester on January 11. During my month off, I plan to celebrate my husband's graduation from TAMU (he graduates tomorrow, and will be beginning his M.S. in Geophysics at TAMU in January); do fun stuff with my sis-in-law Lillian (justin's younger sister) for a few days; visit with my mom, dad, grandfather (dad's dad), grandmother (mom's mom), brother, sis-in-law, nephews, niece, who all live in Katy now, and even see my other brother, sis-in-law, niece and nephew, who will be in town for Christmas; and ...drumroll... fly to Japan with Justin and spend 10 days with my sister and bro-in-law!!! Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to this Christmas break, especially the Asian Adventure! Oh, and of course spending some quality time curled up by the fire with my 1000 pages of Microeconomic Theory.

Our Apartment on Shakespeare St.

2009-08-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

I started Grad school this week. I'll write about that later (maybe).

2 weeks ago today Justin and I moved into our new apartment!!! It's part of Rice Graduate Housing, which consists of 3 apartment complexes. One was built in the '90s, and is recommended for first year grad students, but married students are not allowed. That left Justin and me to choose between the brand new building in Rice Village, or the much older building across the street. Justin and I chose the old one- it's bigger, cheaper, and has more character than the new ones. We love it! After several trips to Ikea, we finally feel mostly settled in. I would like to he done "before" (boxes and junk all over th

e floor) and "after" (current decorated, organized state of the apartment) pictures, but my camera didn't surface until the end of the unpacking period. So here's a photo tour of our apartment as-is. In fact, it's a little bit messy, since these pictures were taken this morning and I didn't feel like cleaning up, so blog readers can get a feel for what our apartment is really like!

Living room, viewed from just inside the front door and looking left:

And then looking around the room from left to right:

Justin's working at the computer.

And now facing the wall with the front door:

(notice our 32" TV, about which Titus said "Aunt Hannah, since you have such a cute little TV, how can we play Wii Mariokart with 4 players?")

And our small bathroom (no space wasted here!):

Dining Area, with our nice little Ikea kitchen cart, and wine glass rack:

Kitchen table, with this morning's leftover pancakes: (note the plants by the window- these normally go in the living room on shelves, but they're here for there occasional sun-feeding)

And now, the wood-panelled kitchen! (ignore the drying dished that wouldn't fit on our dish-drying rack).

I'm going for a Japanese theme in my kitchen; note the authentic Japanese panda oven mits and wall hanging (unfortunately not very visible, as it is behind me).

This picture looks pretty bad. It was difficult for me to get the right lighting, since it was right by a bright window, but I wantd to show the cute stuff on my sink-side shelves. On the middle shelves you'll see a Japanese tea set (mine, from Mari 'n' Chris) and a Japanese sake set (Justin's, from Mari 'n' Chris). On the bottom shelves I have some cool Japanese sushi / side dishes, and my cream and sugar dishes. And on the window sill are the rosemary and basil plants I'm trying to grow, as well as an unsightly dirty rag.

Justin and I hope you've enjoyed this photo tour of our apartment! If you want to see more, come and visit us!

Zebras are Reactionary

2009-06-15T06:19:00.000-07:00

The weekend before last Justin and I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Justin liked this big piece of really clear quartz. We spent a couple of hours there, but when we left we decided that we like the Houston Museum of Natural Science better. I think their exhibits are more extensive, and they have more variety.

This past weekend we went to the Denver Zoo, which we decided was quite a bit better than the Houston Zoo. The weather was quite a bit nicer than it ever is in Houston in June, and they had lots of animals that Houston doesn't have (kangaroos, gorillas, polar bears, zebras). The Denver Zoo covers 80+ acres, and it was a challenge to visit every interesting animal in the whole park, but with persistence and good route planning we were able to see pretty much everything. Everyone knows that the most disappointing thing about the zoo is that all too often the animals aren't doing anything even remotely interesting. I was particularly disappointed with the lethargic kangaroos (last picture) because there aren't any kangaroos in Houston; I don't think I've ever seen a live kangaroo, and who knows when I'll have another chance? These kangaroos had a huge enclosure that they shared with a couple of emu, who were just standing around at the other end, also being boring. Luke has proposed a good solution to the "lethargic zoo animal" problem- give each animal a shock collar, and sell remotes to the collars at the front gate. Then zoo-goers who want to see the animals jump up and run around can make this happen for a small fee. Unfortunately, I don't see animal rights people allowing this to happen any time soon.

Thankfully for me, on Saturday the emus did the job for us. After staring at the boring kangaroos for several minutes, hoping to see one jump or at least stand up, I was ready to move on to the next exhibit, when I guess the emu decided he was bored too. So he ran over to the group of kangaroos and started chasing them. I'm not sure when the kangaroos were afraid of, i.e. what the emu would have done if he had "caught" one, but they jumped up and hopped around, allowing me to get these good action shots:

Colorado, Here We Come!

2009-06-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

This is how Justin and I spent the 8 days following our wedding: 5 days honeymooning in Cancun, 1 day in Katy packing up and saying goodbye to family, 1 day making the 1,049-mile drive from Katy, Texas to Denver, Colorado, and 1 day moving into our new apartment. Monday morning (day 9) Justin began his new job.

A quick photo tour of our apartment: Living room
Bedroom
Dining Room

Last weekend Justin and I went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park. As it was our first time camping on our own, we decided to just go for one night and thereby get practice with planning camping trips. On our way there we stopped at REI and got North Face sleeping bags, nalgene water bottles, and hats! So we totally looked like legit campers as we headed out to the park... that is, after we removed all the price tags.

The park was beautiful!!!
We saw lots of wildlife, including elk, marmots, ducks, bunnies, and chipmunks!
On Friday afternoon after setting up our tent, we went for a short hike (2.3 miles each way) to a small lake. That was really fun, and would have been more fun if it hadn't started to rain as we got close to the turn-around point. Saturday we went for a slightly longer hike (3 miles each way, with a 1,000-ft elevation gain) to the top of a mountain. That was also fun, and the view was BEAUTIFUL. As we sat at the top, eating lunch and shooing away chipmunks, we saw (and heard) threatening thunder clouds approaching, and it got pretty cold. So we packed up, making sure we didn't have any chipmunk stow-aways, and headed expeditiously back down the mountain so as not to get rained on. A short way into our descent we started to feel wet drops on our skin... cold wet drops. Soon the frequency of these drops increased, and we heard them falling on the ground also. I looked at the ground around me and was astounded to find that rather than simple wet spots, there were little white spots on the ground! I turned to Justin, who had just had the same realization, as we both said "it's snowing!!!" This was very exciting for us, and we would have enjoyed it more if we hadn't both been wearing shorts and t-shirts. We hurried down the mountain as quickly as we could, so we didn't have time for photos. But we weren't quite quick enough to escape getting snow, which soon melted into cold dirty water, inside our sneakers. Bleh!

Here are a few photos from our hiking. We have so many, it's hard to choose which ones to post, but this blog takes so long to upload each photo that I will only post a few. There are more on my Facebook page.

Eat, Drink and Be Married!

2009-06-01T15:26:00.001-07:00

I have taken a large step towards becoming a real grown up: I have gotten married. I think this means I might not even have to sit at the kids' table anymore at family gatherings, but I'm not sure. I might have to have my own kids before that happens.

The wedding was a lot of fun but also very stressful. I had thought I would LOVE having a huge party with all my friends and family all paying attention to ME, but it turned out to be really tiring. There were so many people I wanted to talk to, and I had to be paying attention to what was going on because people were looking at me. I had a really good time, but as Justin and I were leaving we agreed that that is something that is best to only do once.

Thankfully, we only had a few mishaps. First, Luke and Amber and family were late. This would normally be a big deal simply because he's my brother and I want him at my wedding, but it was an extra big deal because he had the ring bearer and one of the flower girls with him. We did have our other flower girl, Carsen, who had dutifully been at the church since 3:30, but the flower girl task was a little too big for one little girl to do on her own. When it was 5:00 pm and we were still unable to get ahold of Luke and Amber, we were quite concerned. Thankfully they were fine and safe, and there had been some mis-communication about what time the wedding started- they thought it started at 5:30. They arrived shortly after 5:00 and sent the kiddos down the aisle. Once it started, the wedding ceremony went smoothly.

After the ceremony, during pictures, my step-grandpa had what appeared to be a stroke. Thankfully a couple of the guests were nurses and were able to attend to him until the paramedics arrived. Sadly, he had to be taken to the hospital, so he and my uncle who drove him weren't able to attend the reception. After several days in the hospital, Pappy was released and doing fine.

The morning after the wedding Justin and I flew to Cancun for 5 nights at an all-inclusive resort. We had a great time. The resort was beautiful and not very crowded (thank you, swine flu!). I think we got a room upgrade because of the low occupancy, and because we were honeymooners, and because we were so charming. The resort even put flower petals on our bed!
We found that it was hardly necessary to leave the resort, since there was a beautiful pool (with a swim-up snack bar / drink bar), lots of nice restaraunts, and beach access. We spent most of our days at either the pool or the beach, while waiters brought us an unlimited supply of margeritas, daquiris, beach combers, quasadillas, chips & salsa, chicken wings, etc. It was great, and very relaxing.

One day we took a tour to Chichen Itzah to see the Mayan ruins. It was really cool to see, but it was very hot that day.

For more pictures, check out my facebook photo album.

Towards the end of our 5 days at the Cancun resort, we decided that that was just the right amount of time for us: it was long enough for us to really be able to relax and enjoy all the food & drink we wanted, but by the end of it we felt refreshed and ready to get on with married life, especially with our upcoming move to Colorado!

Next time: read all about Justin and Hannah's move to CO and their first few weeks there!

Honeymoon SNAFU

2009-05-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Justin called me and said "a long time ago, people used to say that we would have a black president when pigs can fly. Well, now we have a black president, and 100 days into his presidency, ... SWINE FLU!" Ha ha ha.

He used this as a lead-in to telling me that we would have to re-book our honeymoon.

Several months ago, we put a good bit of time and energy into researching resort rates, airfare prices, etc., and decided to go to Cozumel for our honeymoon. So we booked the trip, including plane tickets and resort. When we heard about the swine flu, we discussed our options, and decided that we would continue with our honeymoon as planned. We're young and healthy, we can make sure to wash our hands and not touch our eyes/nose/mouth, and Cozumel isn't even part of mainland Mexico. Besides, who wants to completely re-book their honeymoon 10 days before the wedding?

Then today Justin got a call from the resort at which we were planning to stay and they told him that the resort is closing down for the entire month of May. So now, 8 days before the wedding, we're being forced to consider other options. The main contenders at this time are

Go to a resort at Costa Rica that is owned by the same company; this would require us to rebook our plane tickets. Even though we would not have to pay a rebooking fee, we would have to pay an extra $200 because apparently tickets to Costa Rica are more expensive than tickets to Cozumel.

Go to a resort is Cancun that is owned by the same company. We could keep the same plane tickets to fly into/out of Cozumel, and the resort would pay to taxi / ferry us from the island to mainland Mexico. But how would this be safer? Why is the Cancun resort, on the mainland, still open, when the Cozumel one, safely secluded on an island, closed?

Meanwhile, we are trying to make sure all our final wedding preparation fall into place.

I'm unemployed and moving

2009-04-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I quit my job. As today is Monday, it is my first real "unemployed" day. I was planning on putting in my two weeks notice, but my boss said "well, I know you're planning a wedding, which takes a lot of time, so you don't have to stick around for two more weeks you don't have to. Today can be your last day if you want." After some careful consideration, prayer, and consulting with Justin, I decided to take his suggestion. So last Friday was my last day to be an IT consultant!

For those of you who don't know, my plans are to finish planning my wedding/move out of my apartment and relax a little bit before my wedding, then spend the summer in Denver where Justin has an internship, then begin a Ph.D. program at Rice University in the Fall. I am really looking forward to all of that! Wait... not ALL of it...

I HATE moving! It's always such a hassle. Besides the sadness of leaving a place I have spent a considerable amount of time in, there's the hassle of going through all my stuff and deciding which is worth moving, and which I don't really need, and how to pack it most efficiently into boxes. And this move is even worst than most. The unusual difficulties in this move are:

Combining households with another person. So for everything I move, I have to ask "does Justin already have one of these? Or is this really girly and/or something that Justin really doesn't like?"
I have to decide which stuff I want to take with me to Denver for a few months over the Summer, which stuff is not worth taking on that 16+ hour one-way trip for that short a period of time but are worth keeping at my parents' house for when we return to Houston, and which stuff is not worth keeping at all.
I want to get rid of stuff for which I will receive replacements for my wedding. For example: we registered for a nice coffee maker. So if we get it, I don't want to bring my dumb old one... but what if we don't get one?
I'm going to be staying at my parents' house for the next 5 weeks, and then going on a honeymoon, before I actually move into my next place, so I don't want to pack up anything that I will need during that time.

I have spent most of the day today working on this more-difficult-than-usual move. Witnss the wreckage of my apartment:

On a different note, I made myself a yummy dinner tonight! I was going to just make chicken because that's one of the few things I have here, so I put some breading and seasoning on it and stuck it in the oven to bake. After it had been in there a few minutes, I thought "Hm... I have a tomato in the fridge that I ought to use before it goes bad. I think that would make nice addition to my chicken". So I chopped up the tomato, sprinkled with salt and basil, cut up a string cheese to go with it, and dumped that onto the baking sheet with the chicken for the final 5 minutes. I was quite pleased with it, but didn't think to take a picture of it until after I was a good part of the way through it.

I was quite pleased with my attempt to make a yummy dinner out of what I have in the fridge. Hopefully soon I will be a master of this art, like Mama!

I know- I'm way behind

2009-02-25T06:20:00.001-08:00

I haven't blogged in a long time. Here are the main things that have happened since my last blogging:

1. Christmas, which was very nice as always. It was great to get to spend a whole week NOT working and hanging out with my family and Justin.
2. Justin asked me to marry him!!! I said Yes, of course. We're getting married on May 9 at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church. The ceremony will be in the chapel and the reception will be in the fellowship hall. I am very excited, a little bit about the wedding but more so about being married to Justin.

3. I'm supposed to transfer to a new project at work. Since I started at this company in July, I have been on two projects, both using SSIS to convert data. It is very boring and not what I was told I would be doing when I was interviewing with this company. So I am looking forward to starting a new project next week. This new project is supposed to be custom development, which should be more fun, but we'll see. We will be working from the office, which is much closer to my apartment, so that's good.

Happy Thanksgiving, from Texas!

2008-12-01T18:52:00.000-08:00

Today I had to return to work after my brief but very enjoyable Thanksgiving break. Although work is getting a little better, as I have more to do and less time trying to make myself look busy, I would rather post videos from Thanksgiving than talk about work.

First, Joy says "Hi".

While we were eating dinner on Wednesday, Luke said something that made us all laugh. Titus wanted a turn having everyone laugh at him, so he told us all wonderful "joke". It was so good I had him repeat it in front of the camera. After telling it, he said he wanted to tell Aunt Mari his joke. I told him she would be able to watch him telling it because I was recording it, but he said "I want to see Aunt Mari and tell her my joke." Awww. So Mari, you'll need to skype with your nephew soon.

The rest of my videos don't really have any explanation. They're all from us preparing our Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday night.

My More Intersting Pursuits

2008-11-16T18:23:00.001-08:00

I started working at a new client site last week. I was afraid that it would be a depressing environment, boring work, and non-fun people. So far I have been a bit pleasantly surprised; the environment is nice, its only shortcoming being the lack of good comestibles nearby. The work is not the most exciting thing I can imagine, but because it is something I am familiar with (SSIS) I am able to jump right in and impress my coworkers with how quickly I crank out deliverables. And so far I have found my coworkers pretty personable. While these factors are better than I had feared they might be, I still would like the opportunity to move on to something more interesting in the not-too-far future.

On Tuesday, I had to have my laptop scanned by the client's IT department to make sure it was virus-free and safe to connect to the network. After delivering my computer to the IT area for said scan, I returned to the communal work room for the remainder of the 2-hour scanning process, where I realized how challenging it is for an IT consultant to appear productive with no computer in front of them. So I got out a pad of paper and a pen, hoping to at least look like I was writing important notes about something. But what to actually do with this pad? I had no notes to write. So I attempted a portrait of my stuffed penguin which sits on my desk. On the left is my drawing; on the right is a photograph of the actual penguin. I am quite impressed with my artistic creation!

On Wednesday I went to the mall for no reason in particular. I found a few awesome things, which are laid out below in photos arranged less artistically than Mari's similar posts and described in less appealing language. Mari: if you want a not-very-cool-project, try to make my clothing purchases sound more fun.

Left: Plum ruffle-top shirt; originally $39.50, I got it for $7.50 at the Limited. Behind that, a bright green sweater I got in Spain. Gray skirt, originally $59.50, I got it for $24.99 at the Limited. Fall-Green flutter-sleeve blouse (100% silk!), originally $69.00, I got it for $23.97 at Banana Republic. With the silk blouse is a brown cardigan I got a the Limited a few weeks ago, also on sale but I don't remember any specific prices.

Right: Jade Knit dress with tie waist, ruffle detailing on front, and made of very nice fabric, as indicated by its original price of $98.00!!! I got it for the a measly $23.00! Yay!

In summary, I spent $79.46 on items that originally totalled an impressive $266. I feel very pleased.

Sparse Update

2008-11-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

I know that I haven't updated in a long time.

Last Tuesday (a week ago tomorrow) I went with Mama and Daddy to drop Mari, Chris, Pounce and Mouse off at the airport to go to Japan. Obviously I was sad because I am going to miss them (indeed, I already miss them- mosly Mari and Chris, not Pounce and Mouse quite as much). But it was comforting to know that we'll be able to see their smiling faces via webcam! I have already had at least three webcam conversations with Mari in the (less than) one week they've been gone, and they were very nice! I'm glad we have that technology. It makes them feel not so far away.

As I headed back to work Tuesday after dropping them off, I felt glad to be returning to a normal routine- sitting at my usual desk, around the usual coworkers, would help me not think about the absence of Mari and Chris. So I felt very sad when I was told that that was my last day at this client; the next day I would be reporting to the home office! Normally this would have been good news, since I had long ago run out of work to do for this client, and the atmosphere was a little bit depressing. But on this day of having to part with my sister, I didn't feel like also parting with my familiar desk in which I had been sitting since July.

So for the past 3-1/2 days I've been at the Houston office, and I've taken up a project: learn how to build a website. It's kind of fun, and it's cool to be learning something new and useful. If I get good enough, I may endeavor to replace this blog with my own website! For those of you who might be asking "wait- isn't this blog a website that you have built?" the answer is "no, not really." In setting up a blog, all the hard work has been done for you- the blogger simply chooses fonts and formats and whatnot. In building my own website, I would start from scratch. Think of it as the difference between baking a cake from scratch and ordering a cake from a store where you simply choose flavor, icing, and shape.

So far I have learned how to do the basics of a website, like put in text, pictures, and even links, but it doesn't look very nice. I am also still hosting only on my local machine, which means that it looks like a website and I can open in my internet browser, but noone else could access it from their browser because it's not on the web. Anywho, once I learn those things I may have my own publicly-viewable website! Wouldn't that be neat?

A Nerdy Reason to Miss College

2008-09-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

First of all, I know I still haven't posted pictures from the hurricane. I feel guilty about this, but I just don't feel like spending any time at the computer once I get home from work. Right now, for example, I am blogging from work.

For those of you who might be asking "blogging at work? Are you being a bad employee and blowing off your responsibilities?" I would answer "No, I am currently waiting to hear from the client. Today we're getting some stuff to run on the server; we had some errors at first, but after some troubleshooting I got it to run successfully and am now waiting to hear back from him about what he wants to do next."

Which leads me to the topic of this blog: as I sit here at my computer, anxiously waiting to hear back from the client, I realize I have an excited anticipation similar to what I feel when waiting to recieve a score on a test I think I did well on. I think I did very well in this fix, and am hoping to hear from him "Great job! This is exactly what we needed. I'll go ahead and move on to the next step and let you know how it goes" (equivalent to A+, or maybe just a regular A on a test), but a little bit afraid that he'll say "No, this doens't work. This isn't what we needed. I don't see how we can make any progress until this is changed" (equivalent to a B-, or C, or F on a test).

This made me realize something: I like tests. I remember thinking this when I was actually in school, so it's not just something I'm imagining now that I've been out of school for several months. But I like the chance to test my knowledge and see if I can come up with solutions to challenging problems. Some people dislike tests because of the studying that is required, but for most of the classes I've taken (or maybe I'm just remembering math classes; I like math tests) the amount of time/energy required to study for a test is significantly less than the amount of time spent during a non-test week on homework. The best example is the graduate-level math class I took last fall. Each week I spent 3-5 hours (at least one of which was spent in my professor's office getting help) on really difficult homework problems. On test week, however, there was no homework assignment, and since I had learned so much by doing the homework, there was very little left to digest to prepare for the test.

Putting the "IKE" in "Yikes"

2008-09-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

Please take a moment to appreciate my cheesey title.

[pause for appreciation]

So this weekend I had planned to go up to College Station to visit Justin. Imagine my delight when I found out that, due to hurricane Ike, work was ending at noon on Thursday and cancelled all day on Friday! Yay! 3-1/2 day weekend! So I got to go up to College Station Thursday evening after spending some time in Katy with the parents.

The weekend was pretty good, but wierd, since the hurricane made it rainy and a bit windy, so we couldn't do much outside. Sometime Saturday I got an email saying that the client's office would be closed on Monday. I'm thinking "yay! no work Monday!". On Sunday I got an email from my apt complex saying there was no power there. I start formulating a plan: go back to Katy on Sunday night, stay with the parents and hang out with the fam all day Monday. Sounds like fun.

On Sunday evening we had a regrouping conference call. I find out that, while the client office will be closed on Monday, the home office does in fact have power, and that people should report to work there. If you need to take some time to deal with property damages/hurricane debris/help family members, you should take a day of vacation to do so. Boo! That stinks! So I am at work now. Since I don't have power or running water at my apartment, I am staying with Mama and Daddy in Katy and commuting to work in Houston. Today wasn't too bad because MOST people don't have to go to work today so there was no traffic. I'm not looking forward to the commute once downtown is back open; hopefully by then my apt will have power so I can go back.

I did stop by today (I had to get my key to the office), and there was an unpleasant odor in my apartment. It wasn't too strong and it didn't reak of spoiled food; it seemed more like a musty smell. Now that I'm back at work, I look forward to getting back to life as normal.

Also, there is a ton of hurricane debris (trees, branches, fences, etc.) all over the streets around there. I've taken a few pictures and hope to take some more, which I plan to post online later. I'll have to fetch my camera cable, which is currently in my powerless, musty-smelling apartment.

You know, for kids

2008-09-07T19:00:00.001-07:00

Today Luke introduced Justin and me to a very fun game, I think called "ripstick jousting". The idea is pretty simple: two kids get on ripsticks (those pseudo-skateboards that require wobbling your feet and are hard to stay on) and get whackers (Luke made these- PVC pipe with some styrofoam-type stuff on the ends) and try to knock the other kid off. Even though I was not skilled enough to even stay on the ripstick, it was very fun to watch the kids who were good enough joust.

Last weekend I went up to College Station for the first TAMU football game of the season. It was quite a disappointment. But other than the bad football, I had a pretty good time. Our graduate student friends who are from Iran came with us, and I think they had a pretty good time. They had never been to or even watched a football game before, so in addition to explaining all the A&M traditions, which is enough of a challenge, I was also trying to summarize the rules of the game. Justin and I enjoyed our personal tradition of eating overpriced football hotdogs.

This past weekend Justin came to Houston, where we did a bit of exploring.
We went to Swirl, a frozen yogurt place where you add your own toppings:

We went to Discovery Green, a new park in Houston, where we saw a Scottish Dance performance. The dancing was decent, but the real fun was seeing the park. There were remote-control mini sailboats for rent, a fountain for kids to play in, several grassy lawns, and a shaded boardwalk area with free WiFi.

We also went to Ikea to get Justin a kitchen table for his duplex (no picture). Overall it was a fun weekend.

Dressing like a Big Kid!

2008-08-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

One of the most fun things about work is getting to wear chic "grown-up" outfits. Although I start to get tired of having to wear nice clothes by the end of the week and look forward to wearing jeans on casual Friday, there is still some excitement in wearing dressy clothes and feeling like a legit adult, with a job, a computer bag, and everything! Mari recomended that I start taking some pictures of my work clothes and posting them, which I thought would be a fun idea. In fact, I remember that last week (or was it the week before?) I took some pictures of my outfit (with new pants and shoes!) and meant to post them online but never did. Today when I got home from work I took a picture of my outfit so I could post it on this blog. When I downloaded the pictures from my camera, I found out that the outfit I photographed 2 weeks ago was the very same (exact same- note the undershirt and the shoes) I wore and photographed today! I guess I really like this outfit.

Outfit 1: First Day of work.

Fitted Suit Jacket: Banana Republic, $128

Black Dress Pants: Gap, $60

Sweater: Kasper, $45
Tweed computer bag: Harrod's, 90 GBP

Outfit 2a: Just after buying these pants!
Puff-sleve V-neck top: Limited, $56

Tomato Cami: Express, $25

Kakhi slacks: Express, $80

Shoes: Steve Madden, $160

Outfit 2b: Today

[See above]

Also note:

Leather computer tote: Wilson's Leather, $160

Oscar-the-Grouch trashcan: Ikea, $20

(Prices are estimates and may be up to %300 of actual price paid)

Bad Day at Work

2008-08-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

I had meant to take some pictures of a cute new outfit I got earlier this week and post them on this blog, but this week has been busier than I expected. Tuesday Justin came over and we went running together, then ordered chicken wings and watched the Olympics. Last night I drove through about 1 hr 15 min of traffic to go have tacos with Jusitn and one of his friends who had proudly told us earlier that "I make excellent tacos; y'all will have to come over some time so I can make tacos."

Today I had to come in to work early because we were to have a conference call at 7:30. I usually come in at 8 and leave at 5, but since I came in today half an hour early, I figured I could leave at 4:30. The problem with work lately is that I don't have much I can do; there is a lot to be done, and we're working on a deadline, but when we're this far into it most people are busy doing their own work and don't have time to teach me stuff. So I have only had a few actual tasks here and there that I am able to complete. But I feel like some people expect me to have more technology background than I really do, so the little they give me to do requires knowledge that I don't have. It is very frustrating. Today around 3:30 I got sucked into a conference call where I was occasionally asked about things I had been "working" on. I was able to confidently answer about 40% of the things asked of me. And the conference call came across some problems that I might or might not have any connection with, so it didn't end until 6 pm! Imagine my frustration, when I was supposed to get to leave at 4:30 and have a relaxing evening to myself, and instead I found myself stuck at work until 6! Terrible! AND, when the meeting finally ended, it was decided that we would reconvene at 8 to resolve these issues. BLEH! I'm actually on that conference call right now. Thankfully my new cell phone has a headset, so I can mute myself and type in my blog and watch olympics while on a boring conference call.

After work I tried to call Justin, who didn't answer, then Mari, who was busy, and Mama, who also didn't answer, to complain about my crappy day. (there was more crappiness than described above, but that is just not fun to write about).

The good news is that I SHOULD get to leave early tomorrow since I stayed late today.
Extra time today: 1.5 hours => I should leave 1.5 hours early tomorrow, i.e. work 8-3:30, OR sleep in a bit and work 8:30-4.
If I get to count this conference call as work time, then maybe I could even leave 2 or 2.5 hours early tomorrow.... that would be pretty awesome.

Blog Guilt

2008-08-08T09:14:00.001-07:00

I don't know if anyone still reads this, since I haven't posted in almost a month. Which leads me to...
Blog Guilt. I feel like I have let down all my adoring fans by not posting new material in so long. But after sitting in front of a computer all day at work, I am not very interested in booting up my home computer so I can type about my day. I'm going to try to blog a bit more, but probably won't be much more than once a week.

"So how's work, Hannah?"
Work is going pretty well. Last week I got transfered to a different project (still with the same client, so I didn't have to move cubes). This project is quite far along, but the SSIS was developed by 2 guys, one of whom have since moved on to a different project, and one of whom left for vacation and will return to a different project still. So last Thursday I had a 2.5-hour phone call with the guy about to leave for vacation so he could transfer all his knowledge to me. I think I retained about 50% of it, which is better than 0%. Since then I have become a little more familiar with the project, and yesterday I spent all day actually doing work! Ask me about deconstructing the database to make all the column widths match!

"How do you like your coworkers?"
I like them pretty well. I think coworkers have potential to make work much better or much worse. Thankfully I enjoy my cubicle neighbors. Last night we (me and Justin, plus 3 guys from work and their girlfriends/wives) went to Miller Outdoor Theatre and watched Julius Caesar. It was a lot of fun.

"So why are you blogging at 11:20 am? Don't you have work to do?"
Sort of. Our project has already started deploying and we're currently fixing bugs. Since I am less involved in this project than most people, I can't do too much of that. I am currently waiting some further instruction from a coworker who got side-tracked with a more important problem.

"Why don't you have any pictures up? Are you going to post some pictures soon?"
Hopefully.

New Job: Update

2008-07-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

I realize it has been two full weeks since I had anything to say, or time to say it. I will summarize the past two weeks:
Week 1, aka Dolphin School: I learned a lot about the company. You might call it brainwashing; whatever it was, it left me feeling pumped about working for them!!! But I was very busy all week- dinner with all the new employees after work on Tuesday, company Happy Hour on Wednesday, dinner with Simon & Katrina & Carsen on Thursday. On the way to see S&K my car overheated, so Simon had to come pick me up and then he kindly lent me his car for the next day. (Thanks Simon!)
Weekend: Mama and Daddy and Justin came up for Simon's birthday. It was fun. Justin and Daddy fixed my radiator. (Thanks Justin and Daddy!)
Week 2, aka Developer training: I learned a lot. It was a bit overwhelming because I was the only one in the class who had no programming experience (other than what I did in high school). But it was not impossible, and I think I will really pick it up once I start working.

This past weekend I was very glad to return to my apartment in Houston. Justin had bought me some plants to make it seem more homey! I really like them. He did a great job of picking them out.

Today I started my first day of actual work. I have been put on a project updating/tansforming old eclectic databases for an energy company (whose name I don't want to say because I don't want it coming up in Google searches). The guy in charge of the project emailed me some work flow documents to look over, one of which I understood. He explained the project to me in general terms, after which the other documents were very slightly clearer. Thankfully they will not be throwing me in head first; he said for this project the main goal is for me to learn. I have been assigned to two employees who are doing a lot of the actual coding, to learn from them and start taking some of their more managable tasks.

I know this is a boring, un-illustrated blog post, but I'm kind of tired and need to go to bed so I can get up early for work tomorrow. (that's the NOT fun part of working). Just think- soon I'll be an expert in actually creating websites from scratch!

...And Work Begins!

2008-07-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Today I started my first day of training. I had to drive up to Dallas last night; my goal was to arrive around 8 or 9 pm. I got a bit of a late start, then had to go by Cracker Barrel to get an audio book (because libraries are closed on Sundays) and take Justin home, so I didn't get into Dallas until around 9:30. Also, my air conditioner stopped working early on in my drive- I think it was out of freon. No big deal. Until I couldn't find the hotel. I had gotten directions from Google Maps, but somehow I couldn't find the street I was supposed to turn on, and then when I turned around, I found that the road I had been on turned into the one I was supposed to be on, but I was already past the place where I was supposed to be. I tried turning around to go in the other direction, but found that direction blocked because of construction. Long story short, I drove around lost for about an hour and a half in my stuffy car looking for my hotel, going through all sorts of shady areas. It was very distressing.

When I finally arrived at my hotel, it was about 11. Then I had to take a shower and do stuff to get ready for my first day of work: decide what to wear, get all the stuff I need together, figure out how to get there, etc. I went to bed feeling frazzled and nervous, afraid that I would be tired all day and that people would be mean, I would be inappropriately dressed, and it would be obvious to everyone that I had very little technical expertise.

After a not-quite-long-enough sleep which was interrupted by a fire alarm at 4 am, I awoke and got ready for work. I allotted way too much time to get there and arrived about 45 minutes early, but I could hear Justin's voice in my head saying, "that will make a good impression. Early is better than late, even if you're 45 minutes early." Good point, Justin. The HR woman who greeted me was very friendly, allaying my fears of everyone being mean, and she admitted she knew next to nothing about computers, which reassured me. In fact, everyone I met at work today seemed nice, and the main IT guy said he would be happy to answer any questions we had, which is good because I am sure to have lots. All the new hires (there were 8 of us: 7 boys, 1 girl) got lots of paperwork to fill out about medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, short term/long term disability insurance, life insurance, 401(k), profit sharing, and Employee Stock Ownership Plans. It was overwhelming and a little boring, but cool because it meant that I am technically a "grown up" (gasp!!! Can it be?!?!?!?!?) and will be making enough money to be "important."

Under our overwhelming stacks of forms to fill out we were each given a padfolio containing pens, pads of paper, and corporate note cards. Neat!!! Apparently my padfolio was used, because one of the pads of paper had some notes on it: call Gayle, go to costco, deoderant, etc. As I sifted through my pile of papers, I found two very similar packets about life insurance and asked the HR woman, "do we need to fill out both life insurance packets?" She seemed confused. "You have two? Where did you get that other one?" "It was in my padfolio," I explained. Her ensuing laughter alerted me to the fact that noone else had this auxilary outdated packet... whoever needed to call Gayle had also left this information in their padfolio.

Overall my first day of work was good. Tomorrow and the rest of this week I'll be learning about the company and what I'll be doing for them.

I like living here!

2008-07-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

After spending several days in my apartment with nothing to do but explore, decorate and shop, I have decided I like living here. I am sad that soon I have to enter a world of full-time work which will not be punctuated by any month long breaks like school is. Sigh.

Here are some things I like about my apartment:

The decor, obviously.

My neighbors. It's easy (at least for me) to feel isolated somewhere like this when I'm living by myself. Since my apartment overlooks the pool, I often see/hear groups out there having a great time, and since I am not out there with them, I might start to feel like I am the only outsider in this place where everyone else knows one another. Sad! But the other day I decided to knock on some of my neighbors doors. Of the four doors I tried, only two people answered, but those who did were nice. One was a girl a little older than me who is a teacher and has a roommate who is a teacher as well. She said she was glad that I came to introduce myself because she has never gotten to know the people that live around her. The other guy was French and moving pack to France in a month or so, but he also was nice and said he hasn't really gotten to know his neighbors yet. So my neighbor-meeting accomplished two things. One: I am not the sole outsider stuck in one big party of good friends; there are lots of people here who don't know their neighbors. And two: I feel a little bit less alien just having spoken to the people who live near me.

The area. There is a lot of interesting stuff around here, including a lot more old stuff than you see in Katy. The Kroger I went to yesterday looks like it was built in the 70s or 80s and has a fun retro look. And most of the people I have encountered have been pretty nice. I always like nice people.

Being able to put my own personal touches on the arrangement of my apartment. In the model apartment, they had a little metal tray with some martini glasses and such sitting on the end of the kitchen counter. I don't drink a lot of martinis, but Mama suggested that I put some tea stuff there. So I made a nice little arrangement involving: the new cream dish and sugar bowl from Bed Bath & Beyond, my butter dish also from BB&B, the kitchen tray Auntie Sonja gave me, a bowl of fruit, and a squiggly mirror that I got to hang on the wall my sophomore year of college that could never stay on the wall so I decided to use as a visual interest piece on horizontal surfaces. You'll also notice a small bowl of skittles, which I put out because I knew a certain little boy who likes skittles was coming over.

Stuff For My New Apartment!

2008-07-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

Today I went shopping with the goal of getting stuff for my apartment with the gift cards I had recieved for graduation. My first stop was Bed Bath & Beyond, to which Justin's grandparents had given me a gift card. I got: a stepstool (for my kitchen, to reach the top cabinets), a trashcan for my bathroom, an over-the-door towel rack for my bathroom, a sugar dish and cream dish (for tea/coffee!), and a butter dish. I did not take photos of any of that stuff because it is not very exciting looking, but very useful.

After that I went to Pier 1 Imports, where I had a gift card from Simon and Katrina. I was hoping to get something to decorate my coffee table (because I have noticed that something that makes model apartments look nicer than my college apartments is artistically arranged stuff on the coffee table) and/or something, preferably plant-like, to put in a corner. I was able to get both!!!

For the corner I got a funky tall, skinny glass vase (on clearance!), a big fake leaf of some kind (maybe palm?), and two chutes of fake leafy bamboo to put in the tall skinny vase. Here is a picture of this decorative conglomeration out of context, and a picture of it in context: I decided to put it on a box (not visible) between the couch and the coffee table.

My next decorative jackpot was a glass leaf (about the size of a small serving tray), on which I put three light brown votive candles. Bonus: they smell really good. I wish I could post a smell online. Since the leaf is dark and my coffee table is dark, I also got a light brown/tan placemat to go under the leaf for a pleasing visual contrast. When I got home I realized that I had some blue stones that were left if my duplex last year, so I put those in the leaf as well. What do you think? Does it look better with or without the blue stones?

Green Frog?

New Apartment!

2008-06-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I started moving into my new apartment! It took several days to get my stuff in, but I think now almost everything has been moved in and a good portion of my decorating has been done! Here are some photos:

Left: My kitchen/ bar/dining area. Disregard the moving debris on the table.

Right: Justin relaxes after helping arrange my furniture and hang my wall decorations. Notice the banana leaf! The couch, though pretty, does not really match my intended decor theme, so I plan to recover it in black & brown, with green throw pillows.

It was quite a hassle to get my furniture. The couch was in Justin's grandparents' garage, and we needed a truck to transport it. Thankfully Justin found a friend who is living in Houston, has a truck, and has been bored because he doesn't know anyone. So he helped us move the couch and then we took him out to dinner. Win-win! My kitchen table, chairs, and living room tables were in College Station in my old duplex, currently inhabited by some of Justin's friends, so we drove up there yesterday to get that stuff. When we got back and got the stuff set up after a long day of driving, Justin helped me hang all the stuff on my walls like I wanted it. That evening we watched a movie, drank champagne, and made dinner. It was fun!

My curtains still need to be hung, and I still want to re-cover the couch and put some more pictures up. But once I have done that (or most of that) I will make a vidoe tour of my apartment and post it on my blog!

Also, I am in the market for chair for my bedroom- not a desk chair, but more like a comfy chair for reading and things like that. Does anybody have one such chair that they are trying to get rid of?

They do exist!

2008-06-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

I accepted a job with an IT consulting company in December. Since then, my communication with them has been rather sparse. I'm starting in less than 2 weeks, and Mama even joked that the company had folded and noone bothered to tell me- I would show up for work the first day and find a "building for rent" sign. Haha... kind of.

At the beginning of this week I got a call from someone in the HR department about making travel arrangements for my training in Dallas. Yay! They still exist! Then yesterday I recieved an email with even more info. I was so excited! The email gave me a list of stuff I need to do before the first day of work: fill out direct deposit forms, employee info forms, company template resume, etc. Hm... this is not the type of exciting work stuff I had envisioned. In fact, I felt a bit intimidated, particularly by the resume template. It outlined where I was supposed to put all my experience, special certification, and highlighted skills. Let's see...

Experience: Taught calculus to freshmen for several years. Never used computer.

Special Certification: Lifeguard & CPR certified (expired 4-5 years ago).

Highlighted skills: Math; Baking; Good with kids.

I'm not sure if these are the things clients will be looking for in their computer programmers.

After my previous post, I had a request for more photos. So I will conclude this post with a few photos of things that have been going on recently.

Jenn and I went to an Astros game, with some tickets that the Lotts got from someone-or-other.

Justin and I drove up to College Station. Check out his awesome sunglasses! Those are his granddad's.

I took Titus to the Inflatable Zone for his half-birthday (because I celebrate that instead of his actual birthday, which is too close to Christmas).

Justin and I went to my friend Daniel's wedding.

Bustling House

2008-06-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

I am entering my final week of living at home before I move into my own apartment!!! (This Thursday, June 26). This week our house be operating at maximum capacity. Actually, that's now quite true- we could squeeze one more sleeper into the crib in my bedroom. But all three guest bedrooms will be full with the Lotts and my Aunt Jill and Uncle Dave, who were in Texas (El Paso) and decided to drop by. There are some stresses to living in a full house, and there will be some things that are quite improved upon by moving into my own apartment. But I do like being around people, so suddenly being in an apartment where I am the only resident may have a bit of loneliness with is as well. Oh well. I'll just have to keep in mind how nice it is to get to have my stuff everywhere.

Yesterday I went to the wedding of two of my high school friends, Daniel and Eloisa. In fact, I have known Daniel since sixth grade and Eloisa since ninth grade. I've been seeing people I know get married for quite some time now, starting with Simon and Katrina and 2001 and gradually getting closer and closer to me in age. But this is the first wedding of people who are actually my peers- they have been my classmates for years now. How strange.

Today was a fun day. After church Justin and I went to a steak & sushi restaraunt, where I rose to the challenge of eating a large blob of wasabi in exchange for a nice date in the near future. After that we went on a brief hunt for some wine glasses I wanted to get my parents and found some similar to the ones we were looking for. Then we came back to our house (Saugier parents' house) and rested/read comics before enjoying a very delicious lunch in the company of our house guests plus Luke and his kiddos (sadly Amber was unable to join us). After that we went to the pool and splashed around for a couple of hours, then came back home and had some enjoyable chat with the parents. Overall a very nice Sunday.

Sno Cones!

2008-06-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday our church had an open house with free food after church. I sat with Titus, who was eating a sno cone, and he told me all about it: "Aunt Hannah, I'm eating a sno cone. It's blue. You should have a sno cone." I've never really liked sno cones, but Titus seemed so excited about it that I told him I might have one after lunch. "Do you want to have a sno cone?" he asked again, so I told him, "Let me finish my lunch first and then I'll have one," to which he replied, "I'll go ask for a sno cone for you." So he did. He brought me a pink one. After eating a couple of bites I passed it on to Joy.

A bit later, Little Hannah, who was also at our table, fell out of her chair, bonked her head, and became very upset. As she was crying, Titus said to me, "we should get Little Hannah a sno cone." Then Kristen got up to take Hannah to a different room to calm down and Titus shouted to her, "Kristen! Get Hannah a sno cone!!!" Cute. I like the idea that a sno cone can fix anything.

The food at the open house was good- I always like things like that where everyone brings a side dish or chips or dessert. Of course my favorite is always the dessert, and I always have trouble limiting my dessert consumption. Yesterday I had a chocolate cupcake with lots of frosting, a rich chocolate brownie, and a peanut butter- chocolate cookie. YUM. Something that I was surprised to see as a side dish was a ham & melon plate. It reminded me of the type of food that was all over the place in Spain! I took a picture to show Mari.

Yesterday evening we had Fathers' Day dinner at Luke and Amber's house. Amber prepared some salmon and side dishes. I marinated some flat iron steak and made dessert. It all turned out very well! The steak was tender and delicious. The salmon was good and flavorful. The green beans and tomatoes that Amber had prepared were a nice complement. The dessert that I made was inspired by something I saw in the dessert case at Kroger. It was called a fruit tart, and appeared to be some sort of pie crust with lots of delicous-looking fruit piled on top, with something unidentifiable between the fruit and the crust. Mama suggested that I make the cheese pie that Daddy really likes and pile the fruit on top of that. I had a bit of trouble finding the recipe, and when I did I realized that I did not have graham cracker crumbs for the crust so I had to improvise. Then it didn't set up quite like I wanted it to so the fruit sunk in a little bit. But it still tasted good and I think everyone enjoyed it. I was quite pleased with it's final appearance with all the fruit on top, so I took a picture. Now if I want to do it again I'll know what fruit I used.

VBS and time with the parents

2008-06-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

This week I've been helping with Vacation Bible School at Cornerstone, mostly with the crafts. I've decided that little kids are hilarious. The first day I helped, the preschool and kindergarten kids colored a paper bush and shepherd which they glued to cups for a "lost sheep" game. Since not much of my help was needed for this project, I just walked around and gave encouragement. One little boy's bush was very neatly colored and looked better than most 5-year olds' coloring, so I said, "Hey, that's a really nice bush!" to which the boy said, "you're just saying that." I was caught by surprise; "what did you say?" The kid looked a bit sheepish and said, "Oh... nevermind"

I think that maybe I should run a day-care or summer camp or something like that. I feel bad for kids whose parents have to work and can't give them as much time and attention as I got growing up. Think of all the fun things you could do with a bunch of kids! You could practically make an army!

I noticed a lot of funny signs in Europe. I tried to take pictures of most of them, which I will now post.

Reserved for people in casts, pregnant women, and elderly men. Good thing it's illustrated.

For a disco party, try to find this group.

Update: back from Europe

2008-06-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently we did not do any blogging in Europe like we had planned. Now that I'm back, it seems daunting to try to describe the entire trip at once. So I will hit some highlights, maybe post a few pictures, and add more amusing stories or anecdotes as I feel necessary.

The day before leaving Houston, I signed an apartment lease. I am pleased with it- it's a one-bedroom, 640 sq. ft. apt with a balcony facing the pool, and my lease will start June 26. I am looking forward to moving in, setting up my own place, and being able to entertain guests! So, if you know me well enough to be reading my blog, please feel free to come visit me at my apartment once I am in and we can have tea and go swimming!

Our trip to Europe was fun! Unfortunately, we had several very crappy things happen, but hopefully that will leave us with memories of how Mari and I had to stick together to conquer the crappiness. The low-lights of our trip were when Mari's wallet and Aggie Ring got stolen in Morocco, when Mari got sick in a hostel in London, when a bird pooped on Mari's head in Gibraltar, and when we almost missed our connecting flight back from Frankfurt to Houston. Hopefully we will eventually be able to laugh at all those things.

In the meantime, here are some fun things we got to do in Europe:

See Toledo: We took a day-trip from Madrid to the city of Toledo, which was beautiful. I can't remember how old it is, but it was originally a Moorish city and was later taken over by Spanish Catholics. There were remnants of Moorish architecture, including a very old city wall. It was cool to see how the newer city had just been built into the ancient wall, and there were people who lived and worked around this ancient, historical wall everyday. Neat! We also loved the Cathedral in Toledo- supposedly it is one of the biggest in Spain, and it was very impressive. Sadly, we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but here is a picture of the outside, from which you cannot see how awesome it is.

Touch the Mediterranean: We went to Tarifa, which is supposedly the southernmost city of Europe (but what about the Canary Islands? I guess they mean Europe proper). Tarifa is a beachy town, and the Mediterranean beaches were beautiful. Mari and I discussed where exactly the Mediterranean begins and the Atlantic ends, and I concluded that it's probably not clearly defined, since they're touching... there are probably just areas that are clearly one or the other, but some fuzziness in between. Shortly after this Hannah wisdom, we walked out onto a rocky pier and saw a sign on one side that said "Mar Mediterreano" (Mediterranean Sea) and "Oceano Atlantico" (Atlantic Ocean) on the other. Apparently I was wrong.

Explore Windsor Castle: This was awesome!!! Apparently they fly the UK flag (the "Union Jack") from the tower most of the time, but when the Queen is in residence they fly the Royal Standard. Guess which one was up when we went? That's right- the Royal Standard! But we didn't get to actually see her... sad. We would have found tea with the Queen absolutely delightful! Windsor not only looked like a real authentic castle- it IS a real authentic castle. It is the oldest continually inhabited royal residence in Europe, I think. William the Conqueror first built a wooden fortress there in the 1000s, but then they built a stone one there in the next century, and that is the beginning of the actual castle that is still there today! I'm a little embarassed to say that Mari and I particularly enjoyed the gift shot- how touristy. But what we liked about the gift shop was that the stuff seemed nice, and not cheap and tacky like most tourist shops... it felt like it was actually stuff the Queen would use. And I'm sure it was. I'll bet when Queen Elizabeth needs a new tea cup, she runs down to the shop and buys the exact same teal teacup-and-saucer (with a little picture of Windsor Castle on it!) set that Mari and I got for half-price!

We have lots of other fun stories, but, like I said, it's hard to think of all of them in one sitting, and I'm sure no one wants to devote a three-hour chunk of their day to reading my blog. So I'll just post a few more photos.

Thoughts on life

2008-05-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

Graduation report: the ceremony itself was quite as expected- long and boring. I was one of the last people to graduate. Beforehand my family had planned a Hannah-recognition ceremony, which was very thoughtful and special. I was very surprised.

Here's something that I was thinking about lately: I have read in history books and other such literature about people in the 17th/18th centuries that they attributed everything to divine providence because they didn't understand how science worked. For example, people believed they were having a baby because God gave them a baby, or that someone was sick because God made them sick, or that weather patterns and geological formations were what they were because that was what God made. According to these books, this was because they did not know the scientific explanations for these things. The implied (though not explicitly stated) comparison is that we today, with our vast knowledge, know better and can explain everything with science. My opinion is that the two are not at all mutually exclusive. Let's look at the example of weather, say, having nice weather on a day when you have to work outside a lot. Yes, we know that weather is caused by a lot of things like wind patterns and lots of other things that I don't fully understand but meteorologists can explain to us. But does that mean that God had nothing to do with it? May it never be! Clearly it is not completely deterministic- otherwise weathermen would be able to perfectly predict the weather for all time. There is some uncertainty with everything. We might say that we KNOW that given the existing weather conditions, there is a certain probability that it will be nice tomorrow, and another probability that it will be hot, and another probability that it will be rainy. So what determines which of those options it is? The scientific explanation leaves a hole there.

Even in chemistry/physics, in the study of electrons, the typical model that says there are such-and-such number of electrons in this shell, so-and-so many here, and so forth, those are probabalistic- it's just a probability that a certain electron will be in a certain place. The placement of these tiny electrons isn't fully predictable! So it doesn't make sense to say something like, "that person recovered from that illness because his immune system was able to kill the disease cells and it worked in such-and-such fasion... [lots of details]," because there is never perfect uniformity in these results. Yes, we can understand more of the specifics of how things physically happen, but there is still no certainty. What makes one person recover and another get worse under the same circumstances, other than God's plan?

I don't like when history books take on this "we know everything now" attitude.

Ceremonial End-of-School Stuff

2008-05-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

One more day until I graduate! I've been surprisingly busy these past few days. I thought that after finals were done, I would have several days of doing nothing but eating, sleeping, hanging out with Justin and other fun people, and maybe watching TV or something. Apparently I was underestimating how much time it takes to pack. Moving out is not fun.

My moving out has been punctuated with some less tedious events. Last night Mama and Daddy came up and joined Justin and me for an Honors Awards Ceremony/Reception. I got a gold "stole" that I get to wear at graduation, which will make me easier to see from the audience! Today Justin and I went to a Math Dept reception for graduates, where I got a purple & gold cord for being in Pi Mu Epsilon (math honor society), which I will wear to graduation. Yay! More bling (or "regalia").

Dr. Stecher, my math advisor and one of my favorite professors, was there and asked if he would ever be able to meet my family. I told him they were sad that they couldn't make it today, but would be at graduation tomorrow, but apparently he will not be. He is a very nice man and has been very helpful and encouraging over the past four years. I had Justin take a picture of me with Dr. Stecher.

After this reception Justin and I had to walk back across campus to do some other stuff. It is quite hot today, and we saw a sad little squirrel who appeared to be suffering from the heat. He was splayed flat on his stumoch, panting heavily. It was so cute I had to take a little video. Unfortunately, by the time I got my camera out and turned on, he was about ready to get up, but I did get a little bit of panting-squirrel footage.

I am very excited about getting to see everybody tomorrow! Hooray for fam time!

Turn Right at the Goats

2008-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

Today I had a dentist appointment. Last time I went the found three cavities, so today I had to get them filled. As I sat in the dentist chair with two strangers' faces hovering above me and four white rubber gloves, a cotton roll, a suction tube thingy, some stuff that tasted nasty, and an uncomfortable metal thing in my mouth, I thought, "this is not a pleasent experience." I have never really enjoyed going to the dentist. When I was little, the grossness of the tooth polish and fluoride rinse was at least balanced a little bit by the fact that I got something cool- a sticker, or toothbrush, or pencil-topper - at the end. Last time I went to the dentist I did get a cool plastic zipper pouch with a toothbrush, trial-size toothpaste, and floss inside. But this time all I left with was a numb mouth! Boo! I'm never going there again. [wink wink]

After my dentist appointment I drove up to College Station. As I got to the stop light on 359 at the goats, I thought, "this is the last time I will make this drive as a Texas A&M student." How I will miss seeing those cute little goats, sometimes sitting contentedly inside those concrete cylinders, reminding me of the beautiful simplicity of college life. Well, not really. I just felt like I should try to make the goats sound more meaningful.

Anywho, here are some things I will miss about A&M:

Football games (although I'll still come to some next year with Justin)

Being able to take naps in the middle of the day

Access to huge library with lots of cool books- regular libraries don't have as many math books.

Being within 10 minutes of everything, by bike.

Having a schedule that allows me to eat whenever I want to, and sit outside during the nicest parts of the day.

Changing my schedule every semester.

Formals with Justin

Professors telling me I'm awesome

Getting to still be a kid

Turning right (or left, if I'm coming home) at the goats

Summer Break/ Christmas Break/ Spring Break

Math

Here are some things I will NOT miss about A&M:

Terrible parking

The wierd smell in Blocker

Difficult homework

Being poor

Construction on Highway 6 AND Texas Avenue (I could write a whole other blog post about this... maybe I will next time I'm bored)

Grading papers

Feeling like a little kid

Having to put "High School Diploma" as my highest level of education completed when filling out surveys

Graduation Activities

2008-04-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Last night I had my graduation party. Overall it was fun. It started out with mostly corps guys, but eventually some friends that I knew from math showed up. That was a pretty good mix for a while, but as people started to leave, the remaining guests divided themselves into two distinct groups: corps guys and "nerds." It is also worth noting that the people that stayed the longest were those in both groups whom I don't know as well. In fact, the remaining "nerds" included one guy I know, one guy I've met about 3 times, one guy I have seen but never really met, and a guy I've never seen or met. The remaining corps guys included a really drunk guy and some of his friends that I've only met a couple of times. Then one of the corps guys said something vaguely insulting to one of the nerds and they started arguing and everyone got mad and it was very awkward. Then they left. At the time I felt like this made my whole party a disaster, but Justin assured me that everyone else said they had a good time, and most of the people that I'm actually friends with had already left by the time it got awkward.

I have several reception-type events as graduation approaches:
Thursday, May 8
5:30 p.m. Something with the Association of Former Students where there's supposed to be free food and I can get a free bumper sticker.
6:00 p.m. Honors reception at the Hilton. I expect Justin, Mama and Daddy to accompany me.

Friday, May 9
1:00 p.m. ? Reception for math graduates. I hope there's food. I expect Justin to accompany me, but I don't know if I've told him about it yet.

Saturday, May 10
11:30 a.m. Graduation lunch with the fam! We decided that this would work better than dinner after the ceremony. I expect the whole family to be there.
2:00 p.m. Graduation ceremony. What cool thing should I do to my hat to make it visible from the audience?
6:00 p.m. I'm going to watch Justin's FINAL final review!

Then I move the rest of my stuff back to Katy!

...Everyone else is doing it.

2008-04-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently I'm the only one in my family who doesn't have a blog. So I am starting one at Mari's suggestion so that she and Mama and maybe Amber and Katrina can read up on what's going on with me without the hassle of calling or emailing. This blog will not be as well-written as Mari's, and for that I apologize, especially if you feel morally obligated to read mine as often as you read Mari's, lest you feel like a bad mother/sister-in-law/brother (do they even read blogs?).

The most interesting thing in my life right now (besides the upcoming Great Sister Trip of '08, of course!!!) is that I am graduating from Texas A&M University in 12 days and then embarking on a new chapter of my life. I will be working for Pariveda Solutions, a small IT consulting firm, in Houston. I'll still be coming up to College Station quite a bit next year because Justing will still be here and I'm sure we'll want to go to football games together.

I'm still trying to decide where to live in Houston, and thanks to the internet, I can spend/waste hours every day searching for the perfect one-bedroom apartment (mezannine?) within my price range. I currently also enjoy spending time planning my future apartment's decor. I'm trying to build a theme around a big wire banana leaf I got on sale several weeks ago; I'm thinking I'll go with blacks, browns and greens/leafies for a jungly look.

This past weekend I went to the Ross Volunteer Ball with Justin. It was fun, especially when considered with the fact that Justin had a countable number of corps events left! In fact, I think Final Review might be his last corps event ever!

15 more days until Mari and I leave for the Great Sister Trip of '08! We'll fly out of Houston to Frankfurt, then from Frankfurt to Madrid. We will then spend 2 weeks running around various parts of Spain; Mari planned that part. Then we will travel to England, where we will spend a day in Oxford exploring the midevial architecture and historical atmosphere, a day in Bath enjoying the setting of many Jane Austen novels, and a day in Salisbury/Stonehenge, where we will marvel at Stonehenge, of course. I am very excited and will hopefully be able to update this blog a few times while there with exciting travel tales. In fact, that was the main motivation for starting this blog.