I have been a little lax in posting here lately. Time to get on a better schedule. First off, here are some photos from recent adventures.

So, first off, Teresa and I have been here over a month already. It was actually one month on August 15, but like I said, I have been lax in posting. We went out for dinner at the same place we did our first night here, Café Capri. Again the food was good, even if we had to wait quite a while for a table. Café Capri seems like quite the hotspot in downtown Bryan.

Next we have Teresa at our new favorite restaurant in town, Blue Baker. Actually I kid, Blue Baker is good, but not our favorite place in town. This photo is from our first time there together. We were going for breakfast, but it seems that breakfast ends at 10:30 a.m. Even on the weekends. In a college town. Just seems weird to end breakfast that early. We both wanted bagels, but they turn the bagel toaster off at 10:30 also, and apparently it is a big pain in the buttocks to turn it on again, so we had un-toasted bagels. Not the end of the world, but not the best breakfast either.

On the suggestion of Teresa’s sister Maria, we were in search of Full Sail Brewing beers, specifically their Sessions brew. Teresa is not a huge fan of the beer, and it seems that her sister thought that she would dig the Sessions kind. In order to help us find the Sessions beer, I used good ol’ Twitter. I got a reply from the brewery that yes, I would be able to, I just needed to check H-E-B grocery stores. Thank goodness I got a reply, because their website was not much help at all. After checking a few of the H-E-B’s, we finally found the beer and picked up a 12 pack of the stuff. I like it, Teresa not so much.

Next is softball. Teresa and I have joined a softball team! We had our first practice last Thursday, we have another one this Thursday, and a game the next Thursday. We purchased teresa a glove a couple weeks ago and have gone to the park to throw a softball back and forth in order to get her used to using a glove. Practice was good, we all tried different positions to see where we best fit. We also all took turns at bat in order to give the people in the field something to do while trying out positions. Teresa did good both in the field, and at bat. I have a quick video of her at bat, though it is very dark and small, that I need to post. I will do that a little later.

The next photo is back at Blue Baker. We wanted to try their non-breakfast food, like we had a choice, it was well past 10:30 a.m.. Blue Baker has the makings to be a good food place, there are just little things that hold it back. They have a confusing ordering process. The kind that if you know how to do it it is fine, but if you are a newcomer to the restaurant it might be confusing and frustrating. They do not have very many items on the menu that do not contain meat. This is not a problem for most people, but for me it is, and this site is about Teresa and me so I can whine a little. Third, the menus are crazy. The menus have “Build Your Own” sections for sandwiches and pizzas, but nowhere on the menus do they have the ingredients that you can use to build your own. Again, something you might not think is a problem, but when you are hungry and you want a sandwich that does not have meat and you are trying to build your own veggie one, you get a little frustrated with the whole thing. Okay, enough of that rant. We ate, we were sated, it was fine. After the Blue Baker we went to see (500) Days of Summer. We both enjoyed the movie, so if you are in the mood for a good romantic comedy, go see it.

Our next picture is of our second laundry experience. We had this experience earlier today. It was good. We got our laundry done close to home, and for cheaper than we had before. We will be going back to PJ’s Laundry.

We also saw the movie District-9 and would recommend it as well. It was a little more than Teresa thought it would be as far as the violence goes, but the story, effects and everything else were pretty good. The guys who sat next to us in the theater didn’t think so though. They mentioned something about “suspension of disbelief” and the theory that the movie was a dramadie. They were morons.

We also went to a nacho party at one of Teresa’s cohort member’s house. It was good, a little swimming by some, some nacho/tortilla making by all, and the downing of the most amazing desserts. Yum.

This next week sees Teresa starting her actual job, no more training sessions! She is excited, but I will leave it to her to talk about that stuff. I, on the other hand, have just a regular old work week ahead of me, nothing special. Oh, we have new neighbors! The people in the apartment upstairs have moved in. It took a while, but they finally did it. When we moved in we were told that the lady upstairs would be moving in on August 1, or the 15th, they weren’t really sure. The first came, and left and no tenant. Then came the 15th, and again no tenant. We were confused, until we bumped into the guy who had ben doing some work upstairs and he said that they were moving in on the 20th. It was nice having the whole building to ourselves, and the footsteps upstairs still sound a little weird, but we are getting used to it. We are very glad that they are not kids, and not loud… I should knock on wood or something.

Soooo…it’s been awhile, but we are still here and still rockin’ it Texas style. This past week was good–I still like working and am getting more and more excited about the students starting next Monday and having clients and things. I got my IRB form sent to Auburn, which means that soon (hopefully) I will be able to start collecting data, and that will be the beginning of the end of this pesky dissertation thing…

In funner news, Wylie and I had a wonderful weekend. We started out with a Pei Wei dinner and a trip to the movie theater to see District 9 on Friday. I will say this–there is some good social commentary there, but SHEESH was it violent. I think it took about an hour for Wylie to get the feeling back in his hand after it was over. It was pretty good, just be ready for the violence.

Saturday morning we hit the road to Austin for a more leisurely trip than our last one. We spent the afternoon kayaking and swimming in Barton Springs. I think I heard Wylie’s kayak do a little yelp of joy when it got in the water. It was really fun. There was a whole forest of underwater foliage under us the whole time, which was cool for wildlife viewing. Lots of turtles and fish. Then we had a kick-ass vegetarian meal at Mother’s Cafe & Garden. It was so delicious to eat hippie food. My taste buds did a little yelp of joy for organic carrot cake! We were tired and it was stormy, so we had a lazy evening of resting up after that. Sunday it was brunch and a trip to Costco to stock up on massive amounts of things before we headed back home.

Yesterday we relinquished the nest of pillows on the floor to a real couch–a very comfy real couch! So that was a happy moment…and continues to be happy as our old backs recover.

Other than that…nothing much is new here. We’ve been having all kinds of little thunder storms which make for good lightning shows. The college kids started moving in on Sunday, so that has been fun to watch–all the parents looking around and the kids all excited…Makes me excited for Monday!

So…this weekend marked my second week of work–still planning on going back again on Monday–and 1 month here in Bryan! Hooray! We celebrated by going out to dinner at Cafe Capri, the same place we went on our first night here. Delicious again…and a reminder that these 12 months will go by swiftly!

As Wylie mentioned, we had dinner with most of my cohort and their families on Thursday and we discovered that pizza rolls are better than pizza at Double Dave’s…we will have to sample some others. The other awesome thing about that night was watching 4 year-old’s make friends. It seems like they have it right—the eyeballed each other, saw they were the same height, said, “My name is ____” and they were off and running. That was it. Seems so easy that way. Why does it seem to get so much more complicated later in life? After dinner we walked around campus a little bit and ended up at the Dixie Chicken for an adult beverage. We saw many people playing dominoes and many animal heads on the wall. It seems like a nice place to hang out. Although, the college kids come back next week, so we are not sure how much we will go there then…

Yesterday I got to go to “Fish Camp” with the other interns and the director of the counseling center. Freshmen here are called “Fish,” so it was not something nautical, but rather a whole lot of freshmen doing a whole lot of cheering. We left here at about 6:30am and drove 2-ish hours. The “Fish” spend about 3 days up there learning the traditions of A & M and how to do all the cheering that will be required of them during the football games, etc. It seems like it is probably fun. It reminded me of student council conventions or something–where everyone is trying to show that they have the most spirit for their team and some very zealous folks dress up or dye their hair to match. We talked to them a little bit about the counseling center and showed a video about the services we offer. We did this for 3 groups and then came home. It was a very interesting day. I was tuckered out at the end of it, and happy for a nap and a nice dinner at Cafe Capri.

Today we tried the bagels at Blue Baker at about 11:45, and we learned that “breakfast food” is only to be eaten at Blue Baker before 10:30am–they had turned the toaster off, so we ate our bagels untoasted, which was fine. However, since Wylie and I are rarely up and moving before 10:30 on a weekend, Blue Baker is probably off our breakfast list…Then we ran some errands–got a softball glove for me, and braved the “best” grocery store that is near campus. That was kind of bad thinking on my part because it was a little crazy with folks moving in to town. They do have lots of good stuff though, so I will remember that at a later time, when it will not be so crazy.

We just finished the third Indiana Jones movie, and it was good. I liked them all! (The second one was a little cheezy, but Data was in it (from the Goonies), so the cheeze was overlooked, for the most part!)

Getting ready now for another week of working and maybe planning an adventure for next weekend…any thoughts on where we should go?