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.