A minor case of nerves

I'm a little nervous...my vet school interview at A&M is tomorrow. Heh heh... <--nervous laughter. I mean, it should go fine, but it's still scary. I'm spending the night with Em tonight down at the duplex, and that should help calm my nerves a little before tomorrow's 9am interview. I will of course let everyone know how it goes.

In related news, I'm going to tell the vet at Highland Park Animal Clinic no thanks on the tentative job thing we had worked out. Mainly, this is because I don't want to start a new job there when all signs point to full-time employment with Dr. Sarpong at her new clinic starting in March. Also factored in is the fact that Dad is willing to keep me on at Cisco until Sarpong's clinic opens. So, I really don't need the HPAC job, and I also don't want to have to abandon it soon after starting. And the fact that I've played phone tag with the vet at HPAC way too much and awkwardly for me to be terribly confident about it all.

Any other news? We got a new computer monitor after mine died the day after Thanksgiving. The new one is a Dell 20" widescreen flat-panel, and it is just lovely. I'm over halfway done with my Christmas shopping. Piper likes to eat Christmas decor. And...? Yay for the holidays! Thanksgiving was great, and I think this Christmas season will be even better!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy (slightly early) Thanksgiving to all of my readers! I uploaded a few new pictures of Piper onto roberts.overt.org (of her time while we were in California) and was then compelled to post an update.

My birthday week passed relatively without event. On Friday, Matt skipped out on work early to take me to see Harry Potter. I thought it was very true to the books and enjoyed it, although my lack of any other comments makes me think something magical was missing. I just haven't figured out what yet. But anyway, I thought it was good and was thrilled that Matt surprised me with the tickets to see it on its opening day. I had to work on Saturday, but then we had a relaxing night involving Chinese food and a new RPG (for me) - Tales of Symphonia. I enjoyed my two wonderful days off in a row (Sunday and Monday) by playing some WoW (Nyda's 56 now but leveling is getting slower and harder) and ToS. Yesterday was a crazy day at Cisco, starting with a leaky pipe that Mike Shannon could luckily fix, followed by a late waiter, and then the busiest lunch I've ever overseen. It made for a exciting day, though! And then Dad came and ate lunch with me and Tom after the craziness had subsided, which was a fun treat.

Leslie and Bryan get into Dallas sometime tonight, and then we will have a traditional Hall Thanksgiving tomorrow. That means Carolyn comes over early and we eat turkey around 1:00. Untraditional elements: Uncle Mike and Cousin Michael are joining us, as well as Bryan (heck, Leslie hasn't been home for the last two!), and Matt isn't just coming over before his family's dinner. Also new - we're heading to the mini-ranch to spend the night as soon as the last plate is washed and put away. Matt and I are scooting out on Friday in the morning to head to Texas Stadium to watch HP beat the hell outta Ennis (in what should be a much closer game than another football game taking place on Friday). Graham is joining us, which is very cool. So...yeah, that's all I have to report!

Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Matt just remembered tonight that he had a birthday present from Leslie for me in his possession. And it was AWESOME! A shirt, with this graphic on the front:

and "First United Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" on the back.

Hehe.

Recent Adventures and a note about comments

I've had a busy life since my last update. First off was our trip to California to visit Leslie, Bryan, UC Davis' vet school, and of course, the Jelly Belly Factory. I'll give a run-down of that trip in a minute. Then after a brief day of rest at the apartment, Matt and I went to the mini-ranch for the Harvest Ball, a celebration of Mom and Dad's 35th wedding anniversary. And, well, of course today is my birthday so I'm living it up with a day of WoW.

Here's my note about comments - I've been experiencing all sorts of comment spam and it's getting old. I changed my settings a while back so I'd see when new comments were posted so I could delete the spam ones, but it's getting tiring. So now there is word verification before you post a comment. Please continue to comment - I love hearing from people - it'll just take a tiny bit more effort on your part. Thanks!

Now the California awesomeness [pictures here]. Matt and I left for the airport at 5am on Saturday, November 5 to catch our flight with Frontier Airlines. We were a bit worried flying them (what do you expect when their fares are hundreds of dollars cheaper than everyone else's?) but the whole experience, including our changing of planes in Denver, went very smoothly. Leslie and Bryan picked us up in San Jose and we paid a visit to the tasty In-n-Out Burger. We picked up Bryan's friend Doug and spent the afternoon in San Francisco at the Exploratorium. Afterwards we headed to Berkeley to get checked into our place and get settled. Matt and I stayed in a place Mom had found - it was an apartment setup in the back of a house in Berkeley. It was very nice and had a full kitchen and a living area. That night we had South American food in Berkeley. On Sunday, Bryan tried to get schoolwork done while Matt, Leslie, and I hiked around a regional park in Berkeley. We followed that up with a walk around campus and downtown Berkeley and beers at a place Leslie and Bryan like. That night we cooked a yummy meal of beef stroganoff and watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. On Monday the four of us piled into the car for our trip to UC Davis/Sacramento.

UC Davis is to A&M what Cal is to UT. I felt much more comfortable on Davis' spread-out campus and in their laid-back college town than I did in Berkeley (not that Cal's campus isn't great, but so is UT's). My tour there was not with a vet or professor as I had hoped, but rather with a proud father of a vet. So I didn't get a tour geared with a prospective vet student in mind, but it was still very neat to see all of the buildings and hear about the school. They are in the process of building four new buildings for the vet school, which was very impressive. Overall, I wasn't blown away, but I liked the school and Davis about as much as I thought I would.

After a lunch in Davis, we drove through Sacramento to check it out. Then we hit up the Jelly Belly factory for its free tour. The tour itself was neat, seeing the week or more that it takes to make a jelly bean, and we all enjoyed the sample bar where we could taste every flavor of Jelly Belly, including Bernie Botts and their new chocolate jelly bellies. That night we went to Triple Rock, Leslie and Bryan's favorite local brewery, where I had the most amazing pomegranate cider and we all dined on fun and yummy food (my hot dog was excellent!).

On Tuesday Leslie and Bryan had to get back to their school business, so Matt and I ventured to San Francisco on our own via public transportation. We checked out the Metreon, a building full of Sony stuff, including a Playstation store, arcade with very spiffy games, and a movie theatre. We walked over to Chinatown for lunch and for the experience (this was my third time out of three trips to go there in recent years but since Matt had never been to California it was a must). Then we headed back to the Metreon to see Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. And then we headed back to Berkeley to relax before our amazing dinner compliments of the parents at the cafe of Chez Panisse. It was wonderful...We started with fizzy drinks and goat cheese and sardines on crackers. Then the entrees: Leslie had salmon, Bryan chicken, Matt ricotta pasta, and me pork leg and sausage; with wine, a nice bottle of pinot noir. For dessert, Bryan had a cranberry and apple tart, Leslie cinnamon ice cream with bittersweet chocolate sauce, Matt a dish of pear, dates, and almonds, and me ginger and caramel custard. We all ate off each others' plates and enjoyed almost everything (my dessert was too gingery). We made sure to toast Mom and Dad several times during the meal, because it was excellent.

On Wednesday Matt and I wandered around Berkeley and had brunch, and then Bryan took us to San Jose so we could catch our plane. It was an awesome trip and Leslie and Bryan went way out of their way to be hospitable and show us a good time. We had a blast.

We had a brief time to rest up from California before heading to the mini-ranch on Friday to the Harvest Ball. Basically, Mom and Dad threw themselves a big party to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. On Friday and Saturday morning a group of us worked on getting the ranch ready for all our guests. The ranch was decorated wonderfully with definite Western and autumn themes. A ton of their friends and family came, and Matt and I had a really good time. There was a poker tournament (my cousin Taylor tied for first place!), great food from the restaurants, and Mom's brother Stan provided entertainment with his band "Straddlegrass." I also got to spend some time with Emily, as she was in Dallas for the weekend and came to the party with her parents (yay!). Some people even spent the night camped out in tents. On Sunday we were all a little slow, but we had a great breakfast with all the remaining guests and then tried to put the ranch all in order. It was awesome celebrating Mom and Dad's marriage and seeing the ranch so lovely and full of people and merrymaking!

Matt and I came back to Dallas midday and totally crashed, good for nothing but sitting on the couch and watching our TiVo-ed shows. Then today I celebrated my 23rd birthday by playing Warcraft and getting Nyda the paladin to level 53. Go me! I think Matt and I may do something a bit more involved this coming weekend to really celebrate. He did cook me a lovely pasta dinner tonight though...which I ate while running Nyda through the Sunken Temple and getting her a new shield.

California is *mumble mumble mumble mumble*

So I'm lazy and haven't updated my blog recently, but lots has happened! Most immediate is the fact that Matt and I are going to California to visit Leslie and Bryan and UC Davis vet school tomorrow (to Wednesday). I'm *very* excited.

Runners up: I quit my job at the EAC so I can go work part-time at the Highland Park Animal Clinic (a day practice - yay!). I start on November 28.

And news honorable mention: the kitten has a new home with a lovely woman named Jennifer who is a regular customer at Cisco and friend of Debbie's (the Cisco waitress). Check out happy pictures at roberts.overt.org/Foster.

I have to pack still, but if I have time tonight I'll post more. If not, there's a potential for an update from Berkeley or definitely when I get back.

Update Time

Leslie's been having these lovely little posts lately, and they made me feel guilty. So here we are...

A week ago Matt and I went to see the musical "Wicked" at Fair Park with Mom and Dad. We got to the fair a few hours early to walk around and eat horrible but wonderful food (in my case, a corny dog and a funnel cake). We also took in a bit of the auto show, where I displayed my enthusiasm over a Jeep Rubicon by opening the door into Matt's eye (it swelled up rather magnificently 15 seconds later, and he had the fun time of telling coworkers I beat him). Then it was time for the musical, and it was awesome. The premise is, if you don't know, that it tells the story of the Wizard of Oz starting when the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba) and Glinda (Galinda) are girls in school and ending in just about the same place that the Wizard of Oz did (Dorothy is never seen, however, in this one). And not surprisingly, there is quite a twist on the original tale. Anyway, the actress playing Elphaba had an amazing voice and both female leads were wonderful actresses. Of course, the sets and costumes were amazing, and the story itself was very fun. All in all, it was insanely good and I was really happy Matt and I got to go. Plus it was great to spend some time with Mom and Dad.

In other news, hopefully you've seen pictures of the cute kitten we're fostering. They are up on overt here: http://roberts.overt.org/Foster (there are new ones up and a video!). The story behind her is that she was brought in by some good Samaritans on October 1 who'd found her injured and stray somewhere. Her only real injury was that most of the skin had been ripped from her left front arm (not detached completely, but certainly not intact either). Dr. Jackson sewed her back up, but they figured that at her age (8 weeks) and with her injury, she'd be euthanized if she went to the city. So they hung onto her hoping someone internally would either adopt or foster her. Normally one tech at work is good for taking kittens - LaNell is associated with a cat rescue group and has a ton, but she has a contagious kitten virus at her house right now. I thought "hey, we could foster a kitten and it'd be good for Piper to get a little more socialized with other animals." Matt said he'd consent to it as long as the kitten did not become a permanent member of the family. This was fine with me - I don't want a second cat and as cute as she is, we didn't have that connection I felt with Piper. So anyway, I took her home. On Friday, Piper stopped hissing and swatting her, and now she grooms her and they chase each other and wrestle and even sleep next to each other occasionally. I did have a bit of a scare when the kitten (no, she doesn't have a name) had a temperature, so I took her to Dr. Sarpong at her new clinic (Hillside) just to make sure something wasn't going horribly wrong with her stitches at about 10pm tonight. It was really good to see Sarpong anyway, and Hillside is nice. They are open until midnight, too, which is neat. She gave the kitten something to help her fever and said nothing was too bad about the leg, just to up her antibiotic dose. And I got to congratulate Sarpong on her upcoming blessing (she's pregnant!) in person.

Hmm, what else? Oh yeah, Matt's been insanely busy with tax stuff (for instance, he isn't home yet) but thinks he'll be done by the weekend. We stayed at his house with Luke on Saturday night because his parents were in College Station, and that was fun (except for the Aggie game). So yes, I'm looking forward to having my husband back!

WoWzers

Yes, I'm still playing lots of WoW. I'm in mourning, though, because Bryan is giving up the game for good. He was my one real-life friend who played the game with me, and I don't know how fun playing Horde will be without him. :/ Luckily (?) for me, just before that, I'd been getting more into playing on the other side (Alliance) with my paladin Nyda. She was level 34 when I left the game in March, and I hadn't played her at all when I came back, focusing instead on getting Zetarg the orc warlock to the top level of 60 and making a troll warrior named Zyda, now level 39. Well, when things in my Horde guild got bad and Bryan had to spend more time studying, I turned back to my pally. I found a RP guild called the Crimson Knights on the Alliance, and for the first time on a RP server (which means theoretically everyone should be "in character" all the time), I got to role-play. It's been really fun and added a new dimension to the game. Add that to the fact that my guildmates are very cool and Nyda just got her warhorse (increasing her travel speed by 60% which is HUGE) and I think I may be playing the game for at least one more month. But interest in the game really varies, so next week or the week after I may feel differently.

In other news, Graham got back from his 47-day European adventure a few weeks ago and we hung out a few times. We got together on 9/20 and had dinner and he showed me all his pictures and told me his stories. He had an awesome time. Then last Tuesday we got together again because he was going back to LA on Thursday. We drove to his dad's studio and after I got the tour, we picked up the DVDs of our Latin trip to Italy and Greece in the summer of 1999. We also picked up a bottle of cabernet. So, we sat on the couch at our apartment and watched the awesomeness that was that trip, seeing 6-year-old version of ourselves, Elliot, Louis, Carl Jackson, Boniface and diverse others while splitting the bottle. I was really sad when he left because he was moving back to LA. It makes complete sense - he absolutely needs to be there to do what he wants - but he was here in Dallas since the wedding (except for the 47 days in Europe) and I got to see him more than I had since high school. I guess I just got spoiled. There's one more person in the UC Davis camp, though, encouraging me to go out to Cali for vet school.

Speaking of vet school, my application is all taken care of. The main app had been submitted to the TMDSAS a few weeks ago and I got a letter saying they have forwarded it on to A&M. And my A&M supplemental app is in, and all three of my letters of recommendation have been mailed (2/3 received by TMDSAS). Now, this doesn't mean that something might still get messed up, but it appears as if everything is in order. The website says I should know about interviews by December 22 (hopefully it is sooner than that).

Mercedes Lackey

I've been reading a lot of Mercedes Lackey recently. It all started when Raye-Jean loaned me The Last Herald-Mage trilogy, which got me completely hooked. She's written a ton of books, and the ones I've read are all set in the same world and centered around the country of Valdemar. Here's a list of the books I've read so far:

Heralds of Valdemar
Arrow of the Queen
Arrow's Flight
Arrow's Fall

Vows & Honor
The Oathbound
Oathbreakers

The Last Herald Mage Trilogy
Magic's Pawn
Magic's Promise
Magic's Price

The Mage Winds Trilogy
Winds of Fate
Winds of Change
Winds of Fury

Kerowyn's Tale
By the Sword

The Mage Wars
The Black Gryphon
The White Gryphon
The Silver Gryphon

Oathblood

The Mage Storms Trilogy
Storm Warning
Storm Rising
Storm Breaking

Owlflight
Owlsight
Owlknight

Brightly Burning (read this one yesterday)

Take a Thief (finished this one today)

Exile's Honor
Exile's Valor (these two I'm about to read)

I don't know if I'll try reading any of her non-Valdemar books (of which there are lots) or move on to something else. A lot will depend on what Raye-Jean has in her possession, I think.

In unrelated news, I got a 100% on my Spanish test (yay!), and I'm having dinner with Graham tomorrow to discuss his grand European adventure.

Quickie

Just a quick note so no one thinks I've fallen off the face of the planet. I just got back from a girls trip to the lake (girls = work friends Sarpong [and 2-year-old daughter Abigail], Malaika, Stephanie, Jennifer, and Rynn; lake = Stillhouse Hollow by Temple; reason = Malaika's goodbye party; house = Sarpong's parents). We left Wednesday night and got back this afternoon. It was very fun and involved lots of sun, water, a really nice house, girl talk and, well, you know, alcohol. I had a really good time. Other than that I've been busy with work at Cisco and the EAC and Spanish class (I had my first test on Wednesday). I got the first half of my vet school application, the part that goes to TMDSAS (Texas Medical & Dental Schools Application Service) and represents the majority of my application, submitted last Saturday. My goal is to have the other part, the supplemental app to A&M, in on Monday.

Other news...? Well, Graham's back from his European romp and I'm anxious to see him. The Aggies play SMU tomorrow. Matt's manager at work had her baby and he weighed almost 10.5 pounds. Oh, and "My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas is a horrible horrible song that gets stuck in your head and won't get out.

I've decided change is bad

Well, some change. The thing is that people are leaving the EAC and that sucks. Sunday was Raye-Jean's last overnight shift. Raye-Jean, you may recall, is the woman who trained me from my second week. She's the one that loaned me all the Mercedes Lackey books I'm reading. The one who understands what Piper's all about. The Cat Whisperer. So I'm very sad, although not for her, as she's going on to a job where she says she'll get to work less for more money, not have to deal with clients, and the only people there on the overnight will be her and another tech (who happens to be another former EAC person). But I'll miss her like crazy, and the Sunday overnights will not be the same. Of course, they wouldn't be the same anyway because one of the two vets that works them is also leaving - Dr. Ferguson, also known as Fergie. She works at several other clinics and is picking up another shift at one of them to replace her one overnight she works with us. But the vets are just as much part of the fun of Sunday overnight as the techs... :( and there's a chance Malaika's leaving us too, as she's waiting to hear back from a research company in Washington DC that she interviewed with a couple weeks ago. *cry* The people are what make the Sunday overnight worth working, and I know that the ones who will replace those who are leaving won't be the same. So yes, my conclusion is that change is bad.

In other news, Spanish started yesterday. I realized as I kept glancing at the clock last night that I must be having an authentic school experience, since I couldn't wait for it to be over. Mostly this was because we spent the first hour of class with people explaining why they were taking Spanish and some of them would not stop talking. There are 25 students, and people seem to be split into the very few (of which I am one) who have had almost no experience with Spanish, Latinos who speak Spanish but want to learn the rules and improve their writing and reading skills, people who have taken Spanish before or picked up a lot through work who want to learn it formally, and morons. I guess that last category is to be expected at El Centro in a freshman-level class. Anyway, we didn't get to much yesterday except basic pronunciation rules and the usual phrases (good morning, my name is..., etc), but I'm looking forward to diving in more on Wednesday. And figuring out how to get to class, because I'm not paying $5 to park again...it's unfortunate that class is at 5:30, so I have to travel downtown at the peak of rush hour traffic.

Oh, and the first Aggie football game is this Saturday. Matt is *so* excited :)

[I forgot to mention - the GRE went great last week and unless my essay scores come back as 1, I'm not taking it again! Yay! Happiness :) ]

Statistics

For those curious about A&M vet school admissions info, here is a link from them on the 2004-2005 Admissions Statistics. [stats]

Oh, and I was wrong about my Spanish class - it starts next Monday, not yesterday :) This is fine with me - so that I can finish the GRE first. Hopefully. I'm glad they tell you how you did roughly when you finish the test.

Hola

I've been busy. No really! This past week I began training at Cisco as the "lunch coordinator," a mini-management position Dad created after one of our assistant managers moved away. I'm going to be working three lunches a week (9-4: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) at Cisco until at least the first of the year. It's been very fun so far - and I've appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the restaurant business. It is, after all, the family business! And it's a great way to make some money and spend my time since the whole full-time-at-the-emergency clinic didn't work out. For the curious, my duties include: opening up the restaurant in the morning (turning on lights, A/C, counting money, etc.) going to the bank, receiving orders from vendors, paying said vendors, running errands (like going to the grocery store and Amore), answering the phone, seating people, getting drink orders and busing tables if the service assistant needs help, handling the cash drawer, getting the waiters their checks, taking responsibility for things and taking care of problems, etc...So, yes! So far I've been working with Dad and Mike Shannon, and it looks like I'll be done with my official training at the end of August.

Also keeping me busy - studying for the GRE. It's on Wednesday...I have been studying, but finding out the average math+verbal score of enrolled vet school students last year was 1160 didn't help my motivation. I will be going full-steam ahead the next few days, though.

A third drain on my time: getting Zetarg to level 60 (the highest level) in World of Warcraft. Bryan got his warlock Arla to 60...so I must. We've also been playing together as a badass team of troll warrior and priest.

Finally, an upcoming source of excitement (?) - I'm taking Spanish at El Centro for fun this fall, and it starts tomorrow night. I hope it'll be fun and keep my brain from shrivelling up between now and vet school. Plus, it'll come in very handy at Cisco and the clinic, and I hope the opportunity to hear Spanish and practice with people will make me learn it better and faster.

Oh, and I chopped all my hair off. It's off my shoulders. I like it! (even though this hastily-snapped picture of myself doesn't do it justice)

Colorado Pictures

I'll have more of a real post later, but I just wanted to let readers know that all of our Colorado pictures are now up, captioned, and organized for your viewing pleasure. :)

And I stole an idea from Leslie's blog - I now have a "currently reading" section, because I've been reading a lot recently, thanks to a load of books loaned to me by Raye-Jean.

Back in Big D

Matt and I made our marathon car ride straight from Breckenridge to Dallas late on Saturday without a hitch. We were on the road for less than 14 hours, which is pretty awesome in our opinion! First I'll fill in what went on the rest of our time in Colorado.

• After my last post (on Wednesday), Susie, Emily, Jeff, Matt, and I hiked up to the lake above our house and walked around there. No moose or fox sightings, though, unlike previous times. Then we hiked down the other side of the lake, which took us below a ski lift and spit us out on the street halfway to town. Susie headed back for the house while the four of us continued down to hunt for a lunch spot. John and Susie ended up joining us for a breakfasty lunch and then we got ice cream and caramel apples at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.
• Wednesday afternoon, Jeff and I got fishing licenses and headed up with Matt and John to fly fish (Matt was our fishing caddy). We had a great time fishing in the streams that ran into the big reservoir. Many fish were caught by all (I got three on my own and two with John). I also fell down a lot in the thick bushes, but they made for soft landings, too. It just meant that several times observant people would have seen thrashing bushes with a fishing pole sticking out and heard mad giggling. :) We were gone until after 7pm and returned to house to find spaghetti waiting for us.
• Wednesday night Matt decided he wanted us to climb a 14er while we were in Colorado. For those not so familiar with the term "14er," Colorado has almost 50 mountains on a list that are over 14,000 ft and qualify as a true "14er." A few are left off the list because "to be ranked, a peak must rise at least 300 feet above the saddle that connects it to the nearest 14er peak (if another exists nearby)" [for more info, check out www.14ers.com].
• So Thursday, John, Luke, Matt and I climbed to the top of Quandary Peak, the 13th highest mountain in Colorado. It wasn't that long of a hike, but the elevation gain was pretty intense (about 1,000 feet per mile). And over 2/3 of the hike was along break-your-ankle rocks. We saw lots of pika and a couple marmots, and the view was spectacular at the top. All in all it took us about 6.5 hours, which is much better time than my previous 14er experience, climbing Longs Peak with Dad. And a really cool unexpected feature of the summit - crystal clear cell phone reception, which enabled me to call Dad from the top and tell him what we'd done (it was such a last-minute decision to do the hike that no one in my family knew we were doing it). It was quite a different hike than Longs Peak...but not so surprising - on that 14ers website, it has the routes ranked by difficulty and Longs is "difficult" while Quandary is "easiest" (I would guess mostly from starting at a good elevation already and the hike being short - 6.75 miles for Quandary vs 15 for Longs). Well, anyway, the hike was fun and we felt a great sense of accomplishment.
• Thursday night we ordered in pizza and then went to a classical music concert in town. It was performed mostly by the National Repertory Orchestra, a bunch of talented young musicians, which made me think of Brittany. They performed Wagner and Mahler (the latter being much nicer than the former, although both kept us sleepy hikers awake).
• Friday was a low-keyed day. Jeff left us early that morning, heading for a wedding in Canada. John spent the morning fishing, so Susie, Emily, Luke, Matt and I were left to our own devices. We ended up going to town for lunch, where I also hunted (unsuccessfully) for a birthday present for Dad. Matt and I spent the afternoon watching DVDs and packing up while John, Susie, and Emily fished at the local lake. That night we ordered delivery (mostly Chinese) and watched Cool Hand Luke, a Roberts family classic.
• Saturday morning Matt and I rolled out of the house at 6:40am and made the trek back to Dallas. We recovered from the drive by watching almost all of our TiVo-ed shows on Saturday night and Sunday before I went to work.

There were four digital cameras in use during the trip, so acquiring all of the pictures is going to be a bit of a challenge. I'm also waiting until I get my computer back, which just had its motherboard replaced. But I'm optimistic that pictures from the trip will be up by the end of the week.

This month will be a challenging one for me. I need to get my vet school application wrapped up and take the GRE on the 24th (which might require me to study a little beforehand). Also, I have to work on employment opportunities. And Matt's work is picking up and will stay that way until mid-September. I guess that means it is finally time for me to jump back into the real world with both feet. :)

A Mountain Post

Here I am, reporting in from Breckenridge. We've been having a great time. I don't have too long, since Emily will need the computer shortly to work on her tech writing class (online through DCCCD), but I'll give some highlights.

• Thursday night we camped in Sugarite Canyon State park just outside of Raton, NM. We got to use all our new camping stuff for the wedding, and it was very fun. It also got very cold that night, which was great!
• We rolled into Breckenridge around 1 on Friday. We were greeted by Susie and had lots of time to get settled in to the house, which is *very* nice, before John, Emily, and Luke returned from a hike.
• Saturday was a lazy day. While John was fishing, the rest of the crew went to the Peak 8 activity center on the ski mountain. It has things like the Alpine Slide, trampolines with bungee suspension, putt-putt, and a maze. After we'd completely exhausted its possibilities, we returned to the house, leaving again to have Mexican food with Matt's Aunt Trish and Uncle Neville (they'd driven in from Denver). A lively game of Uno was played beforehand.
• On Sunday we all drove up to Boreas Pass and hiked and picnicked there. It was very beautiful, with wildflowers everywhere. Then we spent the afternoon walking around town.
• Monday was rafting day. We left Susie to have a relaxing morning, while John, Matt, Emily, Luke, Jeff and I went to raft the Arkansas River in a section called "The Numbers." The water was running high from rain, so the rapids were only class IVs, but they were all fours (at some water levels they can all be class V). It was the most technical run I've ever done, but it was great. The 6 of us had our own raft with Axe the guide, and we were a great team.
• Yesterday Emily and I drove north an hour for three hours of private horseback riding, while the boys went mountain biking. Em and I had fun time - we were on horses that were best friends. Hers was Comanche, a brown and white paint and I was on Tom, an Appaloosa. Our guide took us around the land, which was beautiful and had some amazing views. After riding, lunch, and driving back, we collected Susie and went to town to paint some pottery. It was a nice relaxing afternoon. The boys popped in while we were there and Matt showed off his bloody knee, acquired when he fell of his bike. That and Jeff's empty stomach were the only casualties from their trip, for which the womenfolk were grateful!

And there we are. A summary of what's been going on up here in Colorado. We don't have many plans for the rest of the week. Jeff leaves early on Friday, and the rest of us on Saturday. Matt and I are doing the drive in one day, which will be very interesting. He'll have to let me drive more, that's for sure!

Rocky Mountains part deux

We leave on Thursday for another Rocky Mountain adventure. This time we're staying in country, heading to Breckenridge for a week in a beautiful house with the Roberts family. Emily, Luke, Susie, and John have been up there since this past weekend, and Jeff Lydecker and Matt and I join them for the second week on Friday. Matt and I are driving, and we are going to use all our new camping equipment at Sugarite Canyon State Park in New Mexico on the Colorado border. Then we'll have a nice little car ride into Breckenridge on Friday. So we'll hang at the house for at least a week, and then we'll either leave either the next Friday or Saturday with plans to camp sometime on the road or just drive it all in one day. We're really looking forward to hiking, fishing, and hopefully whitewater rafting! With all of us there, we should have an entire raft to ourselves! In case anyone is concerned, Piper is spending the week with Grampa Hall - he's going to spoil her rotten, I just know it!

Oh, and couple random things. I forgot to mention in my last post another one of my recent activities. I went to the Fort Worth Zoo on July 11 with Malaika, Jennifer, and Sarpong's 2-year-old daughter Abigail. Jen wanted to go for her birthday, so Malaika and I fought off our overnight-induced sleepiness and accompanied her. It was really fun - highlights included the reptile house, tigers, hippos, elephants, and primates. It was also fun being there with a young (well-behaved) child - we could be as goofy as we wanted gawking at the animals and could attribute it to doing it all for Abigail. I hadn't been to that zoo in a really long time, if ever, so that was neat too. Second random thing: if you haven't looked at them yet, Leslie has some fun wedding week pictures on overt's gallery [here].

A Friday Post

It is Friday. I think I was compelled to write a post because of this picture that Matt just sent me. Pretty funny :)

So I haven't been blogging much. I just got overwhelmed with all the major events that happened. I wanted to post about them, but at the same time, how on earth could I capture the wedding and honeymoon wonderfulness in a blog post? And therefore...nothing. I did put pictures up on our spiffy new overt spot, which I think captures the honeymoon really well. And I did post a link to the wedding pictures, so I think I'm just going to press on from there. If my readers want more details, I'm like phone calls and e-mails, so I'd be happy to tell more stories through those channels. Oh! Also, speaking of roberts.overt.org, I put three little videos of Piper up in the Piper Picture album, and they are very cute!

What have I been up to since we got back from the honeymoon? We got back on the night of June 26. We gave a slideshow of our pictures and narrated for our families. The next day, Matt took off work and we did a ton of shopping and organizing at the apartment. We had a lot of presents to sort through, and I was identifying things we still needed for the apartment. Tuesday-Thursday Matt had to work, and I played housewife. Mostly I tried to organize, write thank-you notes, grocery shop, and move more things from my house to the apartment. Matt had a four-day weekend for the 4th of July, and we spent that weekend relaxing. We didn't even leave the apartment on Saturday. That Sunday was my first day back at work. It was really fun getting to talk about the wedding with my work friends that had been able to come. Unfortunately, it was a crazy day at work. Really insane. It was a hard thing to come back to, but...crazy days at work can still be fun. I got to experience my first post-overnight sleep at the apartment, and that went well. Piper was nice and let me sleep, too, I think until past 3pm! Matt had been at the Park Cities parade when I got home from work, but he was nice too and watched TV quietly while I continued resting. The rest of that week was uneventful. At some point, I had a fun day with Mom where we bought fabric for curtains and ate lunch with Dad at Amore.

Last Saturday, Matt and I got up early to drive out to Plano to the house of one of his work friends, Kacie. We were joined at 9:45am by another friend of Matt's, Nick, and we proceeded to watch all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings DVDs back-to-back. It was actually really fun - with breaks for food (Kacie made Kraft macaroni & cheese for lunch and it was yummy), it took almost 12 hours. Kacie and I worked on a LOTR puzzle during The Two Towers. None of us had seen The Return of the King extended edition yet, so that was something we were looking forward to during the day as well. And it was great - I love all the new and extended scenes! It was also the longest...we were so tired at the end of the day! And all we'd done was sit on the couch! It was really cool to watch all three in a row because it was just like watching one really long amazing movie.

Last Sunday at work was much more sedate. We each had 3-4 cases, which is really nice. The only weird thing was that three pets did not get picked up by the time we closed in the morning. That's really awful for them, because all the trained staff leaves at 8am. The animals have to sit in their cage, without medication, fluids, food, or being cleaned up after, until their owners come and get them (from our bookkeeper who works during the day). So if there is a medical emergency...too bad. I think everyone got picked up sooner or later, though.

Another thing that's been going on in my life is work scheduling. Nine days ago I was supposed to talk with my boss about coming on full time and what a potential schedule for that would be. Two technicians are leaving in August so it seemed like a good time to be adding hours. Well, the first time I called the schedule wasn't done, so we were going to talk at work on Sunday. Then it still wasn't done, so I was supposed to call on Wednesday. Finally, he called me on Wednesday night and told me what my schedule could me, and goodness gracious, it is the worst schedule I could imagine. When you read it, just keep in mind that Matt works 8-5 Monday-Friday. Here it is:

Sunday 6pm - Monday 8am
Monday 6pm - midnight
Friday 6pm - midnight
Saturday noon - midnight

Um, yeah, I don't think that'd be a great way to spend our first year of marriage. So that really sucks, because going full time at the clinic is what I want to do this next year. But it just doesn't look like it's going to happen. Right now Dad and I have discussed me doing something at the restaurants that would let me keep my current shift at the clinic (Sunday 6pm - Monday 8am).

And finally, the only other thing I think bears reporting is the play date that Piper had on Tuesday with Malaika's kitties Shango and Eshu (they are brothers). She'd gone over to their place once and all she did was sit on the futon and hiss. But this was her second time seeing them and this time it was on her turf. We were hoping it'd be better. Ha! Wrong. She just sat around the table and hissed (and attacked if they got too close). So they made themselves at home in the other 2/3 of the main room and were wonderful little cats (while Piper kept an eye on them and hissed a lot). Eshu liked the spot in front of the fireplace and Shango liked the floor by the door. Piper hissed when she sniffed by the fireplace for two days afterwards! And because Shango got into her carrier, I had to wash her towel and it was also two days before she didn't think there was a cat hiding in there. But Malaika and I don't want to give up, because our cats need to be socialized. It may just be that Piper's a lost cause.

Wedding Album

Our wedding pictures are viewable online at http://www.hallrobertswedding.weddingherald.com/

They are pretty cool :)

We got the desk set up today and my computer is happily ensconced - I think this is a good sign that I'll be able to get my wedding and honeymoon tales up sometime this weekend.

Pictures are up!

All of our honeymoon pictures are up! (http://roberts.overt.org) Now, time for bed :)

(thanks again Bryan!)

roberts.overt.org

Loyal readers: I bring tidings of good news! Thanks to Bryan, Matt and I now have our own gallery, located at http://roberts.overt.org, where we will be able to post our pictures! Our first album will be, of course, the honeymoon, which I'm working on as I post this. Now that I have my computer set up, I'll try and make the time to post my wedding and honeymoon stories and thoughts. But the apartment is still such a mess and there are so many things to do that I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. Maybe one part at a time. :)

Whoop!

(excited)

So I'm sitting at my computer, killing time until Mom and Dad bring Leslie home from DFW. Yesterday's shift at work and Leslie's arrival really mark the beginning of wedding week for me. I don't work again until July (crazy!). Tomorrow the bridesmaids are going to the ranch for the night, my own low keyed bachelorette-type thing. Then Matt has his boys' party on Wednesday evening - he and his groomsmen are going to the Ranger game in their own suite. Very late on Wednesday night, Bryan comes to Dallas! Thursday is free until rehearsal (free, yeah right, that just means that nothing official is scheduled!). The dinner is at Maggiano's, which should be very yummy! Then Friday is full of craziness: a bridesmaid luncheon for the womenfolk, followed by hair and makeup, while Matt gets a bowling party thrown in his honor at Mount Vernon on White Rock Lake (random info on Mount Vernon and bowling here and here. Then we all converge on the Arboretum and wahoo! We also have a celebratory BBQ the next night at our house, and then on Sunday Matt and I leave for Banff! And get back on the 26th!

So yes, that's my schedule for the next two weeks :) I don't know how much time I'll have to post between now and the 27th...maybe a lot of little posts like this one, maybe one big one, maybe nothing. We'll just see. I'm excited.

Oh, and one more thing. I got my bridal portrait done at the Arboretum on Thursday (I thought the pictures turned out awesome). The pictures are on a website and available for viewing with a password. If you want to look at the pictures (basically a ton of different shots of me in my dress, with my bouquet), ask me for the info!

Long Promised Pictures

At long last, I bring you...duckling pictures! And a bonus!


The ducklings enjoy the pool.


Duckling cluster under Mama Duck.


Murphy as a tiny puppy! (plus puppy versions of Leslie, Emily Watkins, and Cameron)

*New Cell Number*

I just got a new cell phone, rate plan, and phone number. If you need the new number, post a comment or shoot me an e-mail and I'll get it to you!

Countdown time!

I say countdown time. But let me be honest - I've been counting down for roughly 50 days now. :) The wedding is now 13 days away! Less than two weeks! Eek (of happiness). Now I have to think about what's worthy of report in the last couple weeks...

On May 23, I had some of my work friends down to the mini-ranch. Malaika, Stephanie, Jennifer and I went down Monday afternoon and spent the night. Steph and Jen had to get back on Tuesday morning, but Malaika and I stayed until Mom and Dad left that afternoon. We had a great time - horseback riding, cow feeding, badminton playing, eating, swimming in the lake...they appreciated Murphy's wonderful personality, too, which was great. And Mom and Dad were amazing hosts, making my friends feel very special. It was fun to share the mini-ranch with some friends from work. :) That Friday Matt and I went back down to the ranch to spend the first half of Memorial Day weekend. But before that, I had my first ever facial! It was a plan hatched by the girls while we were floating in the lake, and the four of us went to the Ogle School of Hair Skin and Nails on that Friday. I thought it was awesome. Besides a machine facial, I had an enzyme exfoliation and my eyebrows waxed (ouch! also a first). Then Matt and I trundled to the ranch, where it was never hot enough to get in the lake, but we had a good time hanging out, watching Star Wars Episode IV with Mom and Dad, relaxing, feeding livestock, and playing LOTS of badminton.

Matt and I returned to Dallas on Sunday so I could go to work. Besides working my normal Sunday 6pm - Monday 8am overnight shift, I was assigned to work from midnight Monday - 8am Tuesday. So, I got home from work on Monday morning, slept from about 9-4, had a nice Memorial Day cookout with the Roberts and messed around there for a bit, and then went back to work! It really went okay, though. I'm getting used to the whole overnight experience and recovery.

On Thursday Mom, Dad, Susie, John and I went to the Arboretum along with Christine Craddock (she's playing music before the wedding ceremony) and her mom for a detailed walkthrough and discussion with our Arboretum wedding coordinator. It was very cool being able to talk details! Then that night, Mom, Matt, and I met with the DJ. All these plans falling into place! So cool! But today was the best - I tried on my wedding dress for the last time with Laurie! I get it tomorrow when she's done sewing on the pearls. It looks amazing :) :) :) Mom took a couple pictures, so e-mail if you are interested. I can't post them here because of Mr. Matty. :)

There, I think we're all caught up! Oh, right - my computer seems to be fixed now. I'm writing this update on it, and that makes me happy. Luke's the best.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess!!!

For a while I wasn't posting because our euphoria over ducklings had turned to sadness when they turned up missing a few days after my last post. But we now have word that our neighbors watched the whole family trundling down the sidewalk to the creek at Goar Park a block away. Nothing much is going on here. Matt moved into his apartment on the 7th, and that's been super fun. We had the wedding shower on the 14th, and goodness, we had a great time and got some wonderful gifts. Every day I check the mail for reply cards to the wedding, which is fun too. But the most exciting thing going on right now is E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo)! They are revealing all the next-gen consoles and games and I just watched the new Zelda trailer and it was amazing! And I want a Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo Revolution - they look great (although Nintendo has me worried that theirs won't be competitive). That's all for now.

Make Way for Ducklings

Yesterday Mom and Dad got back from the ranch. When Dad when back to their bedroom and looked in our pool, he was surprised with the sight of a mama duck and eleven ducklings swimming around! We knew that a pair of ducks had been frequenting our pool in the last six weeks, but we didn't know Mama had build a nest back in the corner under a bush. Sadly, after watching them for a while, we realized the babies couldn't get out of the pool. We made them their own stairway on top of the highest step out of bricks, but they wouldn't go to it. So...Mom chased them around the pool with the skimmer while I herded with a broom. When she got one in the skimmer, Mom would fling them into the bushes as quickly as possible (otherwise they tended to fall either back into the water or on something hard). I had to pick up several by hand to transport them (they aren't nearly as quick on land). They are about hand-sized too. So cute!

Well, Mama Duck moved them down into another part of the back yard that got them stuck, so Mom and I found two pieces of wood shelving. One became a buoyant ramp out of the pool and the other a ramp from a low part of the yard back into the planter that contained their nest. They got the hang of that pretty quickly. So far this morning, they've spent their time sunning on the concrete, swimming in the pool, and nesting in the greenery.

The UP Animal Control officer that convinced us to let them stay (in a real pond they'd be turtle food at this age) said that Mama will come back to us next year to lay her eggs again. She called our backyard a duck heaven. Oh, and I'd love to post pictures, but I'm not yet prepared to do so on this computer. But when I can, I will.

Hokay, so...

Yes, it's been a while. I was waiting to let more people comment on the awesomeness of the apartment, but I was disappointed. Bad readers!

The major events in the last couple weeks have been work-related. I got a call from my boss a couple days before my last post asking if I could start working the Sunday overnight shift (6pm-8am) that Sunday (the 24th). I suspected I knew the reason why he'd ask with relatively little lead time, and turns out I was right (someone was fired and the peasants rejoiced). So I said yes. If nothing else, I was pumped about not having to get to work until 6:00 rather than 4:00. So that Sunday, which happened to be Matt's birthday, I worked my first official overnight shift. The only major event took place before the overnight, when Raye-Jean, Pablo, and I were trying to take an x-ray of a 95 pound, seven-month-old greater Swiss mountain dog. She exploded with urine and managed to get all of us. Luckily I was wearing my lead apron which took the majority of it, but I also got it on my arms and (ick) face. Everyone else had a good chuckle. Except Raye-Jean - she had to go wash her pants in the bathroom sink and try to dry them with a hair dryer so her leg would stop burning, all the while grumbling about stupid owners who don't train their big dogs. At midnight, everyone but four of us techs (Raye-Jean, Malaika, Stephanie, and me) and two vets (Drs. Jackson and Ferguson) went home. The overnight wasn't too bad, but we were kept busy. After all the animals were gone in the morning, I went and had breakfast with Malaika and Stephanie at The Original Pancake House and then we went to David's Bridal, where Stephanie had picked out her wedding dress (she's getting married next year). We got to see her model it, and then she got to take it home! Then I went home and crashed.

On Tuesday night, Piper had a play-date with Malaika's two kittens, known as "The Boys" (Shango and Ishu), two of Jennifer's cat's 9 kittens. Piper went over there and was quite the unsocialized torti, hissing and snorting the entire time. To their credit, the boys were very polite hosts. I also spent some time with Carmen last week. We had a late lunch on Thursday at Amore, came back to the house so she could say hi to Piper and meet Mom, Dad, and Murphy, and then walked around Snider Plaza a while.

On Saturday, Matt, Susie, and I had a wedding invitation stuffing and stamping party. In a couple hours, we had them all bundled up and ready to go. Mom and Dad mailed them yesterday (they were Mom's babies; she looked back over her shoulder when she had to leave them at the post office). Last Sunday brought my second official overnight experience. I was more used to it, meaning I was able to see midnight as halftime rather than game over. I had four patients, one of whom was a 150 pound mastiff mix named Baby! He was a good boy, though, recovering from surgery that afternoon. No breakfast or excitement for me after work this time, though - I came home and crashed for a few hours instead. I'll get my sleep schedule sorted out eventually.

This Saturday Matt will move into the apartment! We're very excited. :) This is his one time to live by himself!

We have an apartment!!

After months of searching, Matt and I have signed a lease on an apartment, and he will move in on May 7! Here is a link to the floorplan we chose: AMLI at Bryan Place "Dominion". The apartment is on the third floor, which means higher ceilings and a fireplace! It has a one-car garage that we access by going down the main stairs to the first floor (if the apartment were on the first or second floor we could get to the garage from within the apartment). The third floor wasn't our first choice, but the ceilings are great, the actual apartment location within the complex is great, and we like the floorplan. We like the AMLI because it is minutes away from Matt's job downtown and is very high quality. So that's our big news! Now we're just trying to figure out what we're going to do for furniture.

This made me think just a bit of Bryan:
Prank Paper Fools Scientists

MIT is a hellish place, but they sure know their pranks!
MIT hacks
(the One Ring in 2001 is a personal favorite)

misc catch up

First off, Mom is doing great. She's feeling much better and is off her pain meds. She gets her stitches out on Tuesday.

So, it has been a while. Let me try to catch up...

• On Monday (4/4), I tended to Mom and worked on my speech for class. It was based on the book The Introvert Advantage by Dr. Marti Olsen Laney. I hadn't done hardly anything for it until then.
  
• On Tuesday, I gave my informative speech at Richland after working on it for most of the afternoon. On the way there, Malaika called from work to say she had an emergency and asked if I could work for her. She was taking care of Dr. Sarpong's house while she was in Africa, and their two dogs had escaped, so Malaika had to stay there in case animal control or neighbors called. So, after I gave my speech (got a 98), I went home and changed and went back to North Dallas for work. It was uneventful, except that it was Kim's last shift (she had taken a job doing education at the Nashville Zoo a couple before and the next day gave her two-weeks notice). I was glad I got to work that last shift with her, since I'd missed her on Sunday night.
  
• The next day I went to a going away party for Kim. The party was at her apartment east of SMU, and it was me, Kim, Carmen, and a ton of Kim's friends from the Dallas Zoo. After a while, I was tired of being in the tiny minority from the EAC, so I went home. I wanted to be able to drive home anyway, and it looked like they were settling down for a night of heavy drinking.
• I subbed on Thursday and Friday for Ms. Janik. I had to do TAKS review (the new standardized test) with them both days, and that sucked. The end of the week...a sub...test review...an upcoming three-day weekend...I had to give detentions for the first time.
• On Saturday night I got to hang out with Matt. We rented Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. It was okay, in the vein of Super Troopers but not as good.
• Matt didn't have to work on Sunday, so we used my Central Market gift card (a graduation present) and bought stuff for a picnic. We went down to Lakeside and enjoyed the cool spring day. It was overcast, which made the new green leaves glow. I realized later that it was almost exactly three years ago that I was there taking my La Fiesta portrait and getting my CR-V!
• Work that night was different - we weren't terribly busy, and my vet never hospitalized anything, but we treated and streeted quite a few cases. Also, it was just Raye-Jean and me, and 1) I'm not used to working with just one other tech, and 2) I hadn't gotten to work with Raye-Jean in a while. It was a good day.
• On Monday (4/11), I realized that Dr. Bratton at work is the older brother of Greg Bratton, who was a senior at HP my freshman year. Greg was a Scotsman, on the baseball team, and on the Bagpipe staff. I finally knew why I kept wanting to call Dr. Geoff Bratton "Greg" and why he looked so familiar!
• Also on Monday, I went to Stephanie's apartment for an engagement/pre-bachelorette party. The theme was "penis." Rynn even baked a penis cake, although her decision to put sprinkles on the lower half made some people groan. The people there were a group of women from work, including three of the vets! It was a really fun time, people sitting around and chatting, talking about their relationships (one of the vets brought her wedding album). We were supposed to reconvene that night at either a bar or "man club" but we were all too tired. Some other time, maybe...
  
• I was supposed to have a wedding dress fitting on Tuesday morning, but Laurie hadn't left Waco. :( Mom and I still met with Susie, though, to discuss wedding things, which was nice (but didn't make up for my getting up at 7am unnecessarily).
• Today Amanda came by with her mom and got fitted for her bridesmaid's dress. She was in town as a member of a scholarship interview panel. She looked amazing in her dress, but then so have all the 'maids! I was sad that we didn't get to chat much, though, because she had to get back to CS. But still, something was better than nothing.
  

So that's about all the news that's fit to print. I am really looking forward to the end of my internet classes. Just about three weeks left! Then I can start studying for the GRE... :-/

It's April!

So it looks like my computer will be out of commission for a while (but at least we diagnosed the problem after 5 hours working on it last night)...so I'm going to try and update on this computer.
We'll go back to last weekend (Easter), which was highlighted by a lovely trip to Austin! Carolyn and I left Dallas around noon and a short 4.5 hours later (freaking construction!) we were at cousin Lisa and Eric's house. It was my first time at their house. I got to meet their two dogs, Darby and Travis (cute!) and gawk at their amazing aquarium. Eric was in the process of building another one, this one to house sea horses! We had a quiet dinner on Friday night and slept in on Saturday. Then Lisa and I passed the time by playing through Super Mario World on their modded Xbox. She was appreciative of my skills. :) That night we had Mexican food with Mike and Michael (which really appealed to Michael since he'd just returned from a bachelor's party IN Mexico). It was great to see them. We had to leave at 10am on Sunday so I would could get to work on time (and just in case it took 4.5 hours to get home). Luckily, the drive was made in just over three hours! Then I just had time to pick up Piper from the Roberts' (she spent the weekend there, bossing around Petey and Nellie).

On Monday, I got to pick up Leslie from Love Field. She accompanied me to the vet for an emergency check-up for Piper (she'd been having digestive problems all through Sunday night). Piper got a clean bill of health, though! Thank goodness! Dad got back from the ranch that afternoon (Mom was at Roundtop), and we had an early dinner with all the abandoned boys (Dad, Claude, Robert, RV) and Jerry at Peggy Sue.

Tuesday and Wednesday I spent mostly reading and recovering from a cold and the Austin weekend of adventure. Leslie and Dad spent a lot of time together, taking in the sculpture garden and Arboretum (pictures on overt's gallery). Tuesday night Carolyn and Matt joined us for a lovely family dinner (although sadly sans Mom). Mom returned on Wednesday and the people rejoiced. Leslie went back to California on Friday morning, fortified with (sleepy from?) a late-night talk with me the night before.

I got to spend time with Matt on Friday and Saturday nights, which was quite awesome. Yesterday Luke came over to work on my new computer and do some things with Mom and Dad's computer (my old Dell replaced their Gateway). In the evening, Matt came over and watched some basketball while we worked. Then we ordered pizza and watched Super Troopers. Classic. :)

This morning, Dad called me at 10am and told me he was calling from Presbyterian Hospital. They'd left the ranch to come home at 4am because Mom's abdomen was really hurting her (her stomach had been bothering her off and on for a week). They'd come home (come to think of it, I thought, Murphy did whine at my door awfully early on Sunday morning) and then had decided to go to the hospital. They diagnosed Mom as having gallstones and they wanted to take out her gall bladder. So when Dad was calling, they were just waiting to go to surgery. It was pretty quick and it was a laparoscopic procedure, which is great. They did the surgery and things went well. They also said it was good they did it when they did, because her gall bladder was inflamed and one of the stones was impacted in the duct. I went up to visit this afternoon and Mom was talking and able to get out of bed. I left them about an hour ago - Dad is going to stay the night with her. She will come home in the morning. People can send lots of good, happy, healing thoughts her way.

So that's the update. Now I'm going to go over to Matt's and try to relax a bit (seeing your mom in a hospital bed, no matter what the situation is, is not good for the nerves). I called work earlier in the day and they said it was all right if I didn't come in (which was excellent). I'm glad I can be on call if my family needs me.

Just a moment

I will be posting an update soon (a real one) but my computer is sick at the moment. And for some reason, I don't update well on other computers. You aren't missing much, other than an account of my trip to Austin for Easter weekend (yeah, Taylor, that's why I didn't call you back while you were in Dallas). Besides, Leslie's in town! Who has time to blog? (Oh wait, she's gone to bed before 10pm both nights she's been here...)

Well, I need to find Piper and head to bed myself.

Do I Look Middle Eastern?

On Saturday night I went out for a friend's birthday. I know Carmen from the EAC (and always get called "Carmen" at work because she's been there longer...don't get me started on the nights that Candace also works). Carmen had asked lots of her friends to come to Al Amir, Lebanese restaurant by day, Middle Eastern club by night. Apparently almost everyone bailed on her, though, because it was just me, Kim (also from work), Carmen, and her friend Angela. This was actually my first time to a club. We got there about 10:30 pm and paid the $10 (!!) cover charge. That was something I'd forgotten existed. We ordered some food (I had pita and feta cheese...yum!). Then Carmen wanted to order a hookah...so we got some cherry-flavored shisha, cherry of Leslie who told me the place was an old high school haunt of hers. Then Angela had to leave. I bought Carmen a birthday drink (Sex on the Beach...a $6 drink...this is a good reason to not go out to clubs). We proceeded to dance, or rather, Carmen danced and Kim and I made fools of ourselves. There were a couple guys who tried to dance with us...one we called "The Grinder" because that is what he thought equaled dancing. Then there was the guy who asked what my nationality was - when I answered "American," he said "Oh, I thought you were Middle Eastern." I took it to mean that it was time for the bartender to cut him off. I had a good time, but unfortunately didn't get home until 2 am. This wouldn't have been so bad except that I had agreed to get up for breakfast with Matt on Sunday morning.

So I got to see Matt (despite me being sleepy!) on Sunday morning when he picked me up at 9 for a wonderful breakfast at IHOP. Actually, the food was good but Mom's been making some great breakfasts too recently, so IHOP wasn't quite as special as it was back in College Station. One of the big tax deadlines is on Tuesday, so that was probably the last time I'll see Matt until perhaps tomorrow.

Sunday night at work was a little crazy. There was some drama going on about scheduling, and then we kept swinging between no clients and tons of clients. I put in my first catheter! But the scheduling thing is where it gets interesting. It is too complicated to explain, but I may start working the Sunday overnight shift (6pm-8am). Changes in scheduling are always interesting, though, because we commit to cover people's shifts months in advance, so when something changes, people's shifts that have been covered for weeks are no longer so. I have no idea when my boss will get around to changing my schedule, though. So who knows...

Pictures from last weekend's wedding can be found at Mom and Dad's picture site: http://marcandsusan.overt.org/

It was really fun, though tiring. The high points: decorating the honeymoon suite with Mom, Murphy witnessing his first wedding by sitting in my lap (he was an honorary groomsman), the weather being nice, Julie and Phillip being happy. Low points: stupid family drama (although not as bad as we expected) and the plumbing breaking. All in all, a success!

A Ranch Wedding

It's been a while, so I'll try to catch us all up. :) Piper's spay was last Wednesday. I got to watch and it took all of 25 minutes. It was very cool. She had to stay overnight, so I was all by myself that night as Mom and Dad and Murphy had gone to the ranch. They came back the next day so that Dad could leave to go skiing with some of this boy friends at Beaver Creek. Mom, Carolyn, Piper, Murphy, and I went down to the ranch on Friday to work on preparations for my cousin Julie's wedding. It is taking place at the ranch tomorrow. We were joined on Saturday my mom's sister Lisa and her daughter Katie (10 years old). We worked on centerpieces and wove grapevine cut by Lisa around the arbor where the ceremony will take place. Katie and I rode horses. Piper did well at the ranch, and she enjoyed Carolyn's attentions - Piper is actually staying with Carolyn this weekend while I'm at the ranch. On Sunday Uncle Mike and Mike Shannon came to move their boats out of the workshop (where they had been wintering and where the wedding reception will be).

We came back to Dallas on Sunday afternoon. I didn't have to rush off to work because I was working the overnight rather than my normal 4-midnight shift. Instead I got to see Matt! We had dinner and watched the first half of the Academy Awards (which I thought were very disappointing this year). I trundled off to work at 9:30pm. The night was uneventful: I had three cases to keep me occupied but nothing came in during the night. I helped Raye-Jean work on crossword puzzles, and I finished the first book of The Wheel of Time series. I ate breakfast at 4am. I wasn't even very tired when I drove home around 8:45. After my previous overnight experience, I'd decided to not even try to sleep when I got home. Instead, I stayed up and played WoW in a semi-stupor. Piper had been pulling out her stitches starting on Saturday, and Monday afternoon I noticed that she was swollen internally under her stitches. Dr. Myers thought I should go ahead and bring her in to be checked on, so Mom was nice and drove us out there so I wouldn't hit people in my sleep-deprived state. Piper was fine - it was swelling from the internal stitches but nothing to worry about.

On Tuesday Mom, Susie, and I went and ordered the wedding invitations. We'd already picked out the style, but we had to decide on the wording, font, and other options. There was something about seeing the invitation words in print (and the next day when the proof came in over the fax) that made the wedding finally seem to be closing in. After Julie's wedding, it will really be imminent, which works for me!

The rest of the week I've just been working on school stuff and playing WoW. Zetarg turned 49 last night, and I plan to hit 50 on Monday. I'm glad things are trucking along for him (I hit a rut around level 45 that was annoying), because Blizzard will release more content for people who have maxed out on levels (top level is 60) soon, and I'd like to be there when they do. On Wednesday night I had a play-date scheduled from a week before to go through a dungeon in a group. Unfortunately they are all on PST (my server Silver Hand is a Pacific sever) so we didn't get started until midnight CST. I got to bed about 3:30am...but at least I had planned for it!

This morning I had to get up early (before 8am!) to take Piper to get her stitches out. All two of them. When she started with seven. *Sigh* She also got her last round of shots, so now she's all registered and legal! She's doing well, and I won't miss having to yell at her to leave her stitches alone. Dr. Myers gave me some liver biscotti to give to Murphy in celebration of his and Oreo's tenth birthdays (Oreo is Murphy's sister and Dr. Myers dog), which is right around now (we pretend it is February 28, but I think Dr. Myers has Oreo's at March 5...we didn't know the actual date when we got them).

In a few hours I'm heading down to the ranch to help out with wedding preparation. I'm staying at the Pous' with Mom and Dad because Julie, Phillip (the fiance), and the wedding party are staying at our house. I don't have to be at work until 8pm on Sunday thanks to the kindness of one of my co-workers, so I can make sure the ranch gets cleaned up and everything before I come back to town. And that's the update!

And then ... (no and then!)

I forgot to mention that Matt and I saw The Merchant of Venice at the Angelika on Saturday night. It was really good - Al Pacino is great. All the movies that were previewed when I saw some independent films over Christmas are in theatres now, and there are a couple more I want to see. I need to make myself go - quality movies are hard to pass up.

I have to give a "special occasion speech" tonight for my class. Bleh. I wrote half of it last night and half of it this morning. I'm not looking forward to it. But I should look forward to getting it over with because I won't have to give another speech until April 5!

UPDATE: I got an A+ on the speech. A classmate confessed he wrote his in his car in the parking lot. :)

New Computer!

I've been a slacker, I know, but I got my new computer on Tuesday night! So I've been playing with it ever since. And by playing, I mean lots of WoW, but also mundane things like setting up e-mail, reinstalling programs, organizing between the two hard drives (new one and old one from the Dell), etc.

Some of the pertinent specs:
-ASUS motherboard
-SAPPHIRE X850 XT 256M video card
-Intel P4 3.6 GHz processor
-2 GB DDR2 RAM
-10,000 RPM hard drive
-DVD burner, DVD reader
-bells, whistles

Pictures!





Other news...
Work the last two weeks has been interesting, mostly because there has been twice as much of it! I worked my normal Sundays, but also on the 10th from 6-12 for Jennifer, and on the 14th for Angela.

Last Sunday, a Shih Tzu came in grossly pregnant and in labor. She hadn't had any puppies and Dr. Sarpong wanted to do a C-section but the clients didn't have the money. This might be a good time to mention they 1) didn't know she was pregnant, despite her looking as Dr Sarpong put it "like a tick", and 2) they didn't know how their unspayed female could have become pregnant. So Dr Sarpong gave her a shot to induce and said if she hadn't had a puppy in an hour to bring her back. The next day was the Monday I worked for Angela, and the dog came back in. Still no puppies. Her belly was huge, with big blue veins running all over it. There was no choice to do a C-section (well, euthanasia was an option since they still had no money, but Sarpong wasn't going to do that). We figured all the puppies were dead and were just trying to save mom. But we were quite surprised when two of the six puppies were alive! Unfortunately, the people weren't really thrilled that the puppies made it, and the mom died a few hours after surgery. It's really hard to raise puppies when you know what they are doing, and everyone guessed that those puppies weren't going to make it in their indifferent daddies' care. It sucked.

Piper gets spayed on Wednesday and I'm going to watch. The poor thing - she's always tolerated the vet's office really well so far, but this might be the end of that.

Mom has the bridesmaid dress situation completely under control. The skirts are made for everyone, although unhemmed and unaltered. Red silk fabric pieces are everywhere!

To make up for not posting much, I will try to compensate with pictures!


So I'd randomly put a bandana around Murph's neck that day and he'd allowed it to stay on (which is unlike him). But during his nap, it worked its way completely on its own to sitting on top of his head like a wreath. The pic doesn't show Piper napping a foot away from him. :)


I see this view a lot. Gotta love the life of a cat.


Awwww, animal nap time!


She won't be able to fit under there much longer. Now she sits on the desk and bites my typing fingers.


I knew she and Murphy were kindred spirits!


She really likes this stool.

(FYI: The wedding is less than four months away!)

Obligatory Update

That thing I mentioned in my last post - about me being excited - it was that Luke and I are building me a new computer system. I want to play WoW in style! And my college Dell just isn't cutting it anymore. I thought I'd be able to post from said new computer before now, but there was a BIOS issue and a damaged video card, and ... well, no new computer yet. Maybe next weekend.

Other news...

- I've picked up a few extra work shifts for people. I did check-ins for Jennifer on Thursday and I'm working Monday night for Angela.
- Piper has lost her baby fangs and is sporting bigger adult fangs. They are impressive. She has discovered the flip top on my trashcan is very exciting. She will be getting spayed on the 23rd, and Dr Myers said I could watch.
- My solo WoW character (as opposed to my cow I play with Bryan) reached level 40 today. He now has a demon horse to ride. Having reached that goal, I need to back off the gaming this coming week to focus on my classes. Particularly if I get the new computer this weekend.
- Matt sent me a beautiful flower arrangement for Valentines on Friday. We celebrated yesterday (by eating Jack's and watching our recorded Thursday night TV shows) and are celebrating tonight since he has a big deadline on Tuesday (which is one of the reasons I'm covering a shift on Valentines). The flowers are a mix of roses and two other flowers (I'm bad at identifying). They are sitting up high because Piper wants to eat them.

The 12th Man

Our herd is complete now - Belle had her calf yesterday. Jerry had claimed naming rights, and so our little bull calf is named "12th Man." Mom and Dad are going to call him 12. The lucky boy will be exempt from this weekends planned castration party. Midnight and Chief are the guests of honor, although they don't know it yet. :)

Things have been slow but steady over here for me. I subbed Thursday and Friday of last week. Thursday was just another typical day with Ms. Janik's 8th grade language arts class. We read The Diary of Anne Frank play aloud in class.

But Friday! Friday I substituted for the Cube (otherwise known as Mrs. Cubeta, my junior AP English III teacher). She teaches junior and senior English, so for a couple periods I was in charge of kids who were 4 years younger than me. And it was great! The juniors were taking a vocab quiz which only took them about 15 minutes, and then they were allowed quiet free time. And unlike the 8th graders, they took advantage of that time by getting work done. And the volume level stayed reasonable. And there were any boys who I had to say "stop touching each other" to or that threw books or cussed. The worst thing, which was really just odd, not bad, was a boy coming back from the restroom with a volleyball. Also, during lunch I ate with the pre-AP and AP chemistry teachers. They said they'd remember my name for subbing. Teaching chemistry - now that would be fun! After classes were over, I had a wonderful long chat with Mr. Barrows. It was great catching up with him. He cares about his former students so much! He was really delighted with all the stories I had about his former students and what they were doing now. So I came away from the high school no longer fearing it. :)

I hung out with Matt on Friday night and most of Saturday. He's about to be swamped with taxes, so we tried to get as much time in together last weekend as possible. On Sunday, I found out that someone had signed up to cover most of my shift that day. I'd posted it up the week before, thinking no one would sign up for it but hoping they would so I could spend that time with Matt. Well, someone covered it from 6-12, so I only had to go in for 2 hours. And it was the slowest I'd ever seen the clinic, so mostly I just watched TV. Excellent. So I spend the evening over at Matt's. We watched The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Monday was my day of rest. I finished off a new fantasy trilogy I was reading by Jacqueline Carey. I also attempted to work on my "speech of introduction" for my online speech class. But WoW won out and I mostly played that instead. Yesterday I subbed again for Ms. Janik and they read Anne Frank again. During my off period I practiced my speech. Last night I drove out to Richland to give my speech. I met 8 of the other students in my class (we had the choice to send in a tape instead - five or so people went that route) and my instructor. I got an A+ on my speech...but everyone got an A. I was the only one there that wasn't either married or had children. The ages ranged from me and a 23-year-old to a woman who looked about 60-ish. All major ethnic groups were represented as well - quite a different experience from A&M, but I think it'll be a good one. And not very challenging either! My two classes are taking up some time, but so far haven't required too much thinking. I have a lot due this weekend, and how that all turns out will give me a good idea of how the rest of the semester will go.

That's about it. Except for one thing that I'm holding back that is exciting me...but I'll just say there should be pictures up this weekend about it. :)

Murphy

When last I left you, Amanda was coming to visit. And that she did! We had an awesome time together, catching up, talking wedding stuff, playing with Piper, hot-tubbing, eating, baking pumpkin pie... on Saturday we went to the Arboretum with Jeff, Emily, and Matt and picnicked. That was very fun (but cold). And I would have posted a long account of her trip on my blog sometime that week, but for what happened that Tuesday (18th). I took Murphy and Piper to the vet - Piper for her second round of shots, and Murphy because Mom had found some odd spots on him. Dr. Myers checked Piper out and said she was perfectly healthy, but he didn't like the looks of a spot on Murphy's shoulder. It was about dime-sized, hairless, and hard. He looked at a sample under the microscope and said it looked like a mast cell tumor (but he would send it off to the lab for confirmation) and he needed surgery to take it off. So that was awful. And later that week he called and said "yes, Murphy definitely needs it removed." So on Friday, while I was subbing for Ms. Janik, Mom took Murphy in for surgery. It went just fine, but I didn't get to see Murphy until I got back from work on Sunday night because Mom and Dad took him straight to the ranch. So since Friday we've been waiting to hear the pathology report, wondering if Murphy had cancer...was it going to be treatable or were we going to be told he had a certain number of months left...? Well, Dr. Myers called this morning and said the tumor was NOT malignant and the borders where it was removed were clean. He said it was the best possible news!!!! A huge weight has been lifted off of us. But that is why I hadn't updated my blog in a while. I couldn't write about Murphy without knowing the reality of the situation, and I couldn't write an update without mentioning Murphy...so I just didn't write at all.

In other news...

After subbing on Friday I went over to the Stimsons' house (Charlie & Meredith, Matt's uncle and aunt) to babysit for their kids. They were taking a weekend trip, so I spent Friday and Saturday nights over at their house, watching out for the 4 kids. They really didn't need much in the way of actual babysitting. Johnny is a sophomore, so he's independent, and Sarah and Joy (8th and 6th grades) are very responsible. Mary (2nd grade) was the only one who needed actual tending. I had a blast over there, hanging out with them, playing DDR, watching TV, playing cards. I left them on Sunday, when I went to work. Work was uneventful - one of the slowest nights I've been there. We watched football (poor Steelers) mostly. My online classes started last week. I found out that I either have to send in a videotape or go into class to give my speeches for my speech class, which is a ripoff, since they didn't say that when I registered. I'll probably just go into class because otherwise I have to find 10 people to be my audience if I tape it. Neither tech writing nor speech are self-paced, but it is possible to get ahead. I'm sort of going the other direction though, because it is hard to get back in the school mode.

And that's about it. Piper is over half a pound heavier than when I got her. She has the run of the house now, but won't be introduced to the outdoors at least until she's spayed (she might never be an outdoor cat, we haven't decided yet).

Oh, and big congratulations go out to Amanda, who found out on Monday that she got into Rice for grad school!

Happy times

Amanda is coming to spend the weekend with me! Yay! Her Christmas visit has been on the January side of the holiday break, but A&M doesn't start until Tuesday, so it counts! I'm very excited. :) :) :)

In other news...I spent the end of last week hanging out with Louis and Graham. It was great to catch up with them. I'd seen Graham over Thanksgiving but in the interim he'd graduated from USC. And Louis I hadn't seen in about a year. Graham and I ate at Amore last Wednesday (the 5th) and went to see the movie Sideways (I loved it). We spent the rest of the evening playing with Piper. After doing wedding invitations with Susie and Mom on Thursday I had a late lunch at Cisco with Louis, and then we went to the high school to pick up his sister and walk around. Friday evening the three of us went to Trinity Hall and had a pint. I love those boys. And they are both so happy and successful, it makes me happy. :)

Sunday night was quite an experience at work. I ended up coving the overnight shift for someone, which meant I was at work from 4pm on Sunday until 8am on Monday (and then got to drive home in rush hour / school traffic, zones and all). It was a calm night and a good learning experience, so I have no regrets. It did mess up my sleeping for the rest of the week, along with Piper's discovery that she can crawl under the covers to bite my butt to make me wake up. I *definitely* need to break her of that.

Now I'm heading out to pick up Carolyn - we're having lunch and then coming back here so she can meet Piper. And then Amanda should be coming soon after! Wahoo!

Hello Kitty!

So, I succumbed at work on Sunday. I held out for three months, and as a person who has been wanting a cat for over a year, I think that's pretty darn good. There was a little 3-4 month old stray kitten that they were trying to find a home for. I called Matt and he came in and met her. Then I called Mom and Dad and they gave the okay for me to have a cat at home for the next 5 months. And we gave her a FeLV-FIV test that was negative. And dewormed her. And killed her few fleas. And she went home with me. On Tuesday I took her to Dr. Myers - he checked her out and said she was healthy. So...

Meet Piper!


Her coloring is called "blue cream torti."


I made her this toy. She likes the stick end as much as the dangly fabric end.


I love her eyes.


She loves my shelves.


Murphy isn't sure what to think of her. She pounces, he cringes...