Countdown to Margaritaville

It's Friday. And that means two things. One, I'm done with attending college classes forever. And two, only four more days until I let my math final determine my future (more on that later) and two weeks until I walk across the stage. I hope I don't fall.

Last night as I was working on my math homework, I found a place where I could see how long I had worked on the program. My syllabus at the beginning of the semester said I should dedicate 3 hours a week to the class, which would equal out to about 48 hours at this point. Want to know what my time was? 85 hours. That's almost double the recommended time and I don't have ANYTHING to show for it. In other news, I like to beat my head against the wall sometimes.

Anyways, I'll be working on math for the next three days in preparation for the big final on Monday and then I may be paying a phone call to my professor and there might be tears involved. I'm just being honest here.

After Monday, regardless of how the test goes though, you will be able to find me at Happy Hour drinking Margaritas until I forget the whole thing ever happened.

Also, I've been thinking a lot about graduation. More specifically though, walking across the stage. I've done it before at my high school graduation, but that was in Frost. Where everyone knew me and had no doubt I would mess something up. Standing up when nobody else does is always fun. Anyways, I'm worried about walking the stage because um, it's in Reed Arena, where there are more than 150 seats and usually for graduation they're all full. What if I trip? Or go to the wrong person for my diploma? Or drop my diploma? Or shake with the wrong hand? Or get so excited, I decide to run across the stage? I know these are silly things and they probably won't happen, but really, anything is possible where I'm concerned.

Oh well, I'll just drink a margarita and forget it all happened.

On a completely unrelated note and because I just like to include pictures with every post, here's one of me, Haley, and Jaryn at another one of Haley's wedding showers. When I bought that dress I really thought it looked good on me. I'm hoping it's the way I'm standing, but I need to hit the gym again. Crunches here I come!

I wanna take yo' pitcha

So I wrote yesterday that I would post some fun pictures from my recent trip to Colorado. I finally found my camera tonight, so here they are!

This was at the zoo overlooking Colorado Springs. It was so beautiful and this is one of my new favorite pictures of Taylor and I.

This is Taylor's favorite animal at the zoo, a lynx! They do have pretty sweet pointy ears so I guess I can see why he likes it.

It's a weenie dog of the sea! The otters were such good swimmers, Taylor and I are jealous of their skills.
I love this picture of Taylor, he is so cute! He liked feeding the giraffes more than I did.
I don't think Mr. Giraffe was too pleased with me stopping to take a picture. He wanted his cracker!

And now...pictures of the best hotel I've stayed in so far! Taylor's Air Force hookups are pretty much awesome. When Taylor booked the room, he reserved just a regular room, but I guess since it wasn't very full, they upgraded me to a "Distinguished Guest" Suite. We even had our own parking spot!

And I'm not letting Taylor forget that I'm distinguished. The Air Force said so.

I apologize for the order, I guess I added them backwards.
This is the KITCHEN! It was in the hallway between the living room and the bathroom. Just like my kitchen at home though, it didn't get much use.
This is the sitting area of the bedroom with a big flat screen tv. The room was huge!
Looking from the door, this is the other side of the bedroom. That bed was so comfortable and amazing. And the blinds shut out all the light. I slept until 11:30 on Saturday and when I woke up, I thought it was before dawn!
This is the living room area, it had two chairs and a couch. Not a love seat, a couch!

I should probably get out more.

Another TV!
We never sat in the living room. I wish I could have stayed longer to enjoy the whole suite, but I wasn't ever in the room except to sleep!

Too bad this was my last trip to Colorado before Taylor graduates and leaves forever! We've tried to reserve the on base hotel before but it's always been full. I'm glad I got to stay at least once though!

Silly Monkeys

Tonight as I was taking one of a million breaks from my math homework, I caught up on one of my favorite TV shows, Modern Family.

If ya haven't seen it, please do that immediately.

It has to be the funniest show I've seen in a long time. Has to.

I don't know why, but it just tickles my funny bone every time.

And when I have kids one day, I hope they are all like the little girl that plays Lily. Seriously, that kid just hangs out like it's her job. I mean it is, but if all babies were that calm, I would have a million of them. Not really. Why am I talking about this? Moving on...

This weekend I got to visit Taylor in Colorado. I feel like a big ol' dork for saying this, but it just gets harder and harder to go a long time in between our visits. Even the 2.5 weeks since Hawaii was torture.

We had such a fun time, even though it was a relatively short visit. Normally I fly in on a Thursday and leave on Monday night. But neither of us had Monday off, so I flew out on Sunday evening and even though it was 4 days, it only felt like an afternoon. To me at least. I'm sure Taylor was ready to put me on that plane. I can be a handful.

Shocking, I know.

Not that it wasn't fun, it just went by lightning fast. Some of our weekend activities included a night out in downtown Colorado Springs, a bowling night, and THE ZOO.

Oh the Zoo was so much fun! We got to FEED THE GIRAFFES. They reminded me of cows. One even stuck his tongue all the way up his nose. I had a hard time feeding them, because I have issues with animals. I don't like getting animal slobber on me and I have a deep dark fear that they're going to take my hand with the food.

Anyways, after we left the giraffes with all body parts attached, we wandered around and visited the other animals. I liked the otters the best. I wish I could swim like an otter. They remind me of weenie dogs.

Weenie dogs of the sea. I like it.

I think Taylor liked all of the cats the best. Especially the Lynx because of its ears. If he could keep one as a pet, he would!

Towards the end of our visit, we got rained on just a little bit, but we ended up seeing everything and getting to our car just as it really started to rain. We saw the entire zoo in just under two hours. How do people stay there all day long? Or for that matter, go every week? Animals pretty much do the same things all day every day. Especially when they're cooped up in a cage their entire lives. We had tons of fun, but I'm not going to plan my next visit for a couple of years. The monkeys stunk too bad.

The night before the zoo, we went bowling with some of Taylor's friends at the Academy. I've decided that I prefer Wii Bowling. Like 1,000 times over.

If we were playing golf that night though, I would have beaten everybody by a mile.

Unfortunately we weren't, and my competitive nature had to take a seat once I realized there was absolutely no way on Earth that my ball was going to stay out of the gutter. I lost part of my thumb nail too.

Like I said, I prefer Wii Bowling.

Oh well, I provided the entertainment I guess. LBMM is always sure to come with the entertainment.

I'll have pictures of our zoo outing soon, but not until I find my camera in the abyss of my suitcase.

I should unpack sometime before May. We'll see though.

In other news, only 24 days until graduation. I want it to hurry, but I still have a ton of stuff to do so I hope it doesn't hurry. I've started applying for a few teaching jobs, so I'll be crossing all of my body parts hoping somebody wants me to mold the minds of their innocent children.

Update!

Does anyone remember when I wrote that post about New Routines? Just to update you all on that process...it ended I think the week after that. I was doing really well with it by going to the rec center every day and then I got sick with strep or whatever it was and I didn't go for a week. And then I got busy with my alternative teaching stuff. So I got out of the routine and haven't been back since February.

I knew as soon as I put that into words that something would happen and I would stop going. But the good news is, I have kept up (for the most part) with the healthy eating part. I still don't eat fast food unless it is my only option and I don't remember the last time I had more than a sip of Dr. Pepper. Unfortunately I have visited the land of unhealthy, aka my parent's house a few weekends in a row and junk food just always tastes so much better here! Just cutting out carbonation and fast food though did a lot. I lost about 5 pounds, which on me is almost an entire size. It was really just all of that water weight that eating junk food and cokes adds. But I feel better and I'm really glad I have stuck with it. Being 21 doesn't really help too much though because alcohol still has a lot of calories! I haven't been overdoing it or anything, but I do like my margaritas at dinner!

In other news, only 33 days (HOLY COW) until graduation. I talked to my advisor last week and she said that I can walk the stage regardless of if I pass my pesky math class. So far though, it looks like I will pass it so not only will I get to walk the stage, but I will also get my diploma in the tube! I'm really excited about that because my diploma will say May 2010 instead of August 2010.

Also, I just found out on Friday that I passed my content exam for my alternative certification. I was ECSTATIC. When I started reviewing for the test and taking the practice exams, I really thought I had no chance. And then when I got to the test and started going through it, I still thought I had no chance. Thankfully though, I passed it! It only took 2 days for my scores to be reported. I thought that was crazy, but I'm glad I didn't have to wait 3 weeks to get them. I was happy to be done with the whole process and to hand my book off to Haley so she could take hers soon!

Speaking of Haley, today was her lingerie shower at Jaryn's house. Jaryn and her mom did SUCH a cute job decorating their house for it and it was a lot of fun. Haley got so many cute things, that I'm sure she (and Andrew) will enjoy! ;)

It's so weird sometimes to think that we are old enough to be throwing wedding showers for each other and that Haley is going to get married in just a couple of months! And that I'm graduating from college in a few DAYS. Below is a picture from the shower! I think we have a few like this from when we were in elementary school!

Now all that's left for me to do in the near future is find a job and figure out where I'll be living starting in August. Send up some good location prayers for me! :)

LOL, TFFN, OMG?

For a while now I have been checking out sites like Lamebook.com that make fun of people for posting silly/stupid/weird things on Facebook. It's pretty entertaining and definitely passes the time at work. One thing I have been noticing though on the sites, the real Facebook, and especially comments on other people's blogs is that people are typing in short hand pretty often. Especially the older generation, i.e. my mom's age.

Thankfully my mother has no clue what any of it means and refuses to type in anything less than full sentences. Usually. Of course there are the senior moments when I have to ask what her thought process was.

Anyways, back to the short hand. I don't know what any of it means! I thought the teenagers today were the ones typing in code words. There's LMBO which I'm only guessing is the mom censored version of LMAO. Ones like that are the easiest to pick up on. But then there are the ones I haven't ever heard of. TFS? DH? There are so many more! I try to use context clues but they never seem to do any good.

While I know that reading other people's posts is useless, it is just something that I find entertaining. Older generations on Facebook still throws me off sometimes. I try to be much more careful in what I post and even though I've successfully shielded any unworthy eyes from my entire profile, I still go through a mental list of everyone who can see my profile just to make sure I'm not putting anybody off. Because making other people mad is my biggest fear.

In other news, I took my Content test for my alternative teaching certification today. I won't know the test results until next week sometime so if you think about it...send up some good thoughts for me to the test results gods! Haha thanks in advance!

Do I have to title this?

I'm a planner. Having plans makes me relax entirely--at least until I deviate from or forget said plans. That happens more often than completed plans do.

I make plans for EVERYTHING. Sometimes they even help me fall asleep. Weird, I know, but some of my best ideas have hit me just as I was falling asleep. Unfortunately I haven't remembered them upon waking up in the morning. I only remember that they were the best ideas I've ever had.

My plans are like a security blanket to me. I make them when I'm stressed so that I can see on paper that what is stressing me is completely doable. I also make them when I'm stressed because I know that there are just SO MANY things going on in my head at once that I'm going to forget something really important. Not only do I like planning things, but also designing things. Unfortunately I'm a bit of a perfectionist and so I never can get it "just right". I have SO MANY IDEAS but they just never seem to come to fruition like I see them in my head. If only my art skills weren't limited to stick figures.

Speaking of SO MANY things going on at once, I have gone back and read a lot of the things I've written in the past and, oh my good grief. It's like following a rabbit! I jump from one topic to another in a paragraph and even sometimes in a single sentence. I've always prided myself on my writing abilities, but after reading other blogs for some time now, I know that it could use quite a bit of work.

I think what happens is, like I said before, there are just so many things bouncing around in my head at once that I want to get them down before they disappear. And trust me, they do disappear. Quickly. Perhaps that's why all of my english teachers had us make outlines. Sometimes when I'm doing something mindless, like sitting in class or driving, I start thinking about topics I could write about. Not just on my blog, but for fun. (Did I just admit to writing for fun?) I have these FANTASTIC ideas and they just keep coming, but once I actually sit down to write them they are gone, just like that.

Also, whenever I would write something for school, I could never think of anything good as a conclusion. If I had it my way, I would have written at the end of every paper, "And so this is the end of my story. If you want a conclusion, reread everything above." Fortunately, I stuck to what I had been taught, even if it wasn't the greatest conclusion you've ever read.

And so this is the end of my story. If you want a conclusion, reread everything above. (Good thing I'm not getting a grade for this.)

Oh, and here's a picture from Hawaii!

I miss Taylor!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

1990 at a family reunion

Today is my dad's 49th birthday! The past week he has been working himself up over the fact that next year he will be the big 5-0. I told him to go ask Mom what it's like since she's had a couple of years experience with that milestone and is still doing ok. (Some days.) Only kidding, she's great!

I don't really get too sentimental or mushy very often, but today as we were all in Tyler for our family's Easter dinner, my dad fixed Merpaw's air conditioner like it NO BIG DEAL. I started thinking about all the things he's fixed for me over the years and I wanted to beat my head on the wall for all the times I forgot to say, "thanks, Dad."

For as long as I can remember, Dad was able to fix anything and everything we could break. One time when I was a senior in high school, I got run off of the road by a trash truck and got stuck in the ditch. I called my dad and he literally picked my car up and put it back on the road. Seriously, how many people can say that?

Of course there have been, and knowing my dad and I, always will be times that we butt heads. And I have had my, "Oh my gosh, he just DOES NOT UNDERSTAND!!" moments while I'm sure he has resisted the urge on many occasions to pinch my head off. But he will always be the first one to help if I ever need it.

Sometimes I forget how great of a guy Dad is. He is always so willing to help anyone, he trusts everyone, he loves his family more than anything and the list could go on forever. Growing up with a dad who showed so much love and dedication, is something that I often take for granted and forget about.

2006 at a wedding

We fight and then fight some more, but at the end of the day, I wouldn't want any other Dad out there.

2008 at Dad's campaign