Whew! A three day weekend is just what I needed to catch up on 10-Gallon-Hatting! It has been pretty busy around here for the last bit…Most importantly, I turned 30! Hooray! It is very exciting to be a real grownup…whatever that means! Wylie and I also had a few Christmases…We had one here, where we made a Tofurky and had champagne from Messina Hof (which is right down the road). Then we headed to Lowell, MA to visit with his folks. I was pretty nervous since I hadn’t met them before (but we were Facebook friends already, so I don’t know what I was worried about…). Turns out I had nothing to worry about! We had a super-funtastic time! I had never been to Massachusetts before really, so it was an adventure. It started in Austin, where there was some question about whether we should even try to get on the plane because there was a ton of snow happening in the Northeast…basically though, since we’re a couple of badasses, we did it. When we landed it was snowing and the wind was blowing it accross the tarmac and it looked really eerie. Very cool.

The good news is that all the snow made it so we got to chillax some, and I got some mad cookie skills from Wylie’s mom. (I have been practicing them here at home…excellent skills to have, I must say!)  In between the chilaxing we were very busy! We visited Concord, where I learned that it is REALLY fun to kick snow piles. And we went to Boston twice, and it made me want to go back when it is not 7 degrees with the windchill because everything is so cool! I saw Harvard Square (though not Click and Clack, even though I was looking!), and Boston Common, and Newbury Street and the “T” (not named for me, though I will continue to tell myself that it is), and the North End (where I had some amazing manacotti and a canolli and dined next to some very adorable old men, who in the story I made up in my head about them had something to do with important Italian families…if you know what I mean , and lots of historical things like the place where Paul Revere is buried! It is very cool to see the things I learned in history class.

We also squeezed in a road trip to Pittsburgh to see Wylie’s sister in The Nutcracker. It was really awesome and some pretty incredible stuff that those dancers can do. Along the way I saw the ACTUAL Eerie Canal (and I sang the song, and it made my heart do a little backflip to be right there singing about Sal!). And a trip to the beach at Plum Island. Again, it made me want to go back in the summer, but I was pretty enamored with a snow-covered beach!

It was a jam-packed trip, and I was glad that I had taken an extra day off to rest up before going back to work.  The spring semester looks like it is going to be pretty amazing at the SCS. I will be co-leading a group for first generation college students this semester, and I am super excited. We are also starting to think about looking for jobs for next year (if you know anyone who needs a really incredible, though unlicensed, psychologist, I’m SO your girl!)…which is kind of stressful. And, I am dedicated to finishing my dissertation this semester…in between practicing my cookie skills.

This week was really fun because we were having interviews for the next round of interns, and three awesome kids from my program at Auburn got interviews here, so we had some REALLY fun company!

Today was for relaxing, and I did it like a champ. I finished reading (for the second time) Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. Can I just say that he is maybe the most funniest man alive. We also went and saw The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It was very pretty and visually amazing, though I felt that the story left me wanting a little more. That being said, I am sure it’s not that easy to put a movie together when you didn’t get to finish it as planned, so I am overlooking some of that…

OK, one of my resolutions is to write on here more often so it’s not these mini-novels every month or so, and then I can start sharing more funny stories about our neighbors and their eternal quest to get their cat inside at odd hours…

I hope you are all having 2010’s that are off to great starts!

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Ahoy there, 10-gallon-friends!  It has been a long time (too long of a time) since I was on here, and unfortunately that seems to be the trend for me…perhaps 10 Gallon Hat will make it to my New Year’s Resolution list…

In the meantime, I have had some good reasons for being absent. In the few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, things at the Student Counseling Service really kicked in to high gear. I was seeing a ton more clients, and hence, was really wiped by the time I got home. It has been really great to be learning so much about therapy and being a therapist full time, but I will be honest that there is a bit of an adjustment period. Luckily, Wylie is very nice and supportive. In addition to all those students who somehow just realized that they should have been doing their homework all semester, we have been reviewing applications for interns for next year. I am enjoying being on this side of the process, that is for sure. The SCS got about 90 applications this year and we will invite about 30 folks for interviews…it is very interesting to see how it is done.

We have been fortunate enough to squeeze in some R & R on the weekends–today we went and got massages, which was awesome. And the weekend of Nov. 14 we went to Houston to see some friends. (The son of my dad’s BFF from his Air Force days and his wife). I was pleasantly surprised by what Houston had to offer, and it was really fun to see Joe and India and their wonderful pooch, Lennon. We went to a showing of The Big Lebowski in a park downtown, explored the Montrose area vintage shops, and saw the butterflies at the Museum of Natural Science.

It was a really wonderful weekend, and a much needed break…and a nice getaway from Bryan/College Station. We are looking forward to getting back to Houston in the spring for some rodeo action, and some NASA action as well…

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This past weekend Teresa and I took a trip down to San Antonio. We were celebrating our first-date-aversary with a weekend away. We got in a little late on Friday, but had enough time to walk around downtown for a while before feeling tired and hungry. Back to the room we went, and soon had some pizza and TV to finish the night off.

The next day was spent walking around again. We walked from our hotel to downtown, all around the River Walk, over to the The Institute of Texan Cultures. That was okay. We learned that lots of different cultures moved to Texas many years ago. We also learned that the tickets are a little overpriced, and that the lights in the building were acting funny. We thought of going up the Tower of the Americas, but we were getting tired and hungry and needed to sit down for a while and not pay $12.00 for an elevator ride.

Off to the River Walk we went. We found ourselves a boat rental station and headed out on to the water with a bunch of other people and a tour guide. We learned of many things while on our boating adventure. We learned when every hotel along the river was built, and even a thing or two about some of the restaurants. The guide also threw in some facts about the flood gates and other things like that, but the most interesting thing had to be when we boated by the mall! The guide did focus a lot on some odd things, but it was a good ride, and I think we both would recommend it.

After the boat ride we decided to eat at the oldest restaurant along the river, the Rio. It was nice, we had a table right next to the water. We got to watch ducks swim all around, some boats pass, and a girl have her 16th birthday. Fun was had by all!

From the River Walk and the restaurant we walked over, closer to our hotel, to a pedestrian street with many Mexican things on it. Mexican shops, Mexican bands, Mexican food carts, Mexican girls singing Journey songs… just watch the video.

On Sunday we drove home, but first we stopped by Cascade Caverns for a peak inside the Earth’s guts. It was a nice sidetrip. We learned some about the “living” walls and why we should not touch them. We got to see some bats, hit our heads, and have a good time in the cool, damp caverns. If you are in the area I would say you should check them out.

After posting all these pictures I realized, I forgot about the Alamo! We went there on Saturday, and it truly is something you can forget about. I am sure there is plenty of interesting history that one can know about the Alamo!, but they were not telling anybody that history when we were there.

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Over the weekend Teresa and I went on over to Lake Bryan. We went for a little exploration. One of Teresa’s cohort members had gone with his family, and they enjoyed it, so we decided to check it out. Plus, it has been a little warm, and getting in the water is a good thing on days like those.

We drove out to the lake, which took about 20 minutes, and drove around a little to find the best spot to park. Then we walked around a little. Since we are in a bit of a drought here we were able to walk along the not-usually-there beach. Tons of jetsam was on the beach; beer cans, water bottles, various other garbage, and a bikini top. It made us want to come back with garbage bags and pick some stuff up. It seems like it can be the kind of lake that college kids, or just kids, go to and do stupid things on. Such as; driving boats too fast, drinking too much beer while driving boats too fast, listen to bad music on their fast boats, and other such shenanigans. Thankfully the day we went was the day of a football game, and the lake was not as crowded as we thought it might get. Though there were a few knuckleheads who seemed to like going fast on their watercraft.

So, after walking around for a while, we decided to put our blanket down on the grassy, shaded, area near the beach. I laid down, and relaxed, while Teresa slowly immersed herself in the water. As she was doing that, we both watched some of the knuckleheads try to get their boat out of the water. Their pickup kept spinning it’s tires and not going up the ramp. Eventually some other knuckleheads offered their “expertise” on the situation, bouncing up and down on the back bumper. This actually worked, and the knuckleheads with the boat problem were able to drive away. I was kind of hoping that they would be stuck there, and that maybe their pickup would end up in the lake and some drama would follow. Oh well, maybe next time.

It was a good outing, something we will have to do again, and hopefully with more people. The only problem with the whole thing, besides knuckleheads, were some unusual bug bites. We ended up with red dots on our arms and legs, only a few for each of us, but still more than we would like to have.

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Sheesh! It’s been awhile since I have been able to get on here and say a few words…by now it’s probably clear that that means I will have more than a few words to say…Oh well.

I am happy to report that school has started for the students and I STILL love my internship! We had a full 4 weeks of training before the students came back to school, so I was definitely ready to start seeing some clients and getting busy. My schedule is filling up and I am excited to be doing an assortment of Counseling-Center type things this semester–group, outreach, supervision, learning about the afterhours HelpLine…WOOOOHOOOO!!!

As far as fun stuff goes, I will work backwards since Wylie beat me to it for our weekend in Aggie Land…though I will have a few comments to add there!

TODAY–Sat. Sept. 12: It was very rainy and we were feeling lazy at first, so we caught up on some of our TV watching…that was nice. We thought that the rain would stop us from heading out to Caldwell, TX (about 20 miles) for the Kolache Festival…but we were wrong! We made the trek in the rain and found that at 3pm most of the kolache vendors were ready to get the heck outta that rain, and so we got 1/2 price kolaches! We sampled about 8 different kinds. My favorite was the poppyseed, then the raspberry, and the cinnamon roll (although I don’t think this counts as a kolache). Other than that, they all kind of just tasted like a danish. Some of them were gross and we didn’t even try them. I had a major attack of the sugars by then anyway…I understood why they were also selling giant sausages on a stick…something to cut the sugar! There was a polka band playing fine tunes and some people even dancing in the rain! I wished that the day had been nicer for their sake, but there were still quite a few folks enjoying the festivities.

We then went to Target because Wylie had some gift cards that were burning a hole in his pocket and I needed socks for when I wear dress shoes to work. Now I am writing this and we are relaxing. I still feel a little sugary, and am looking forward to some black bean and corn tacos when I get done here…

YESTERDAY: Fri. Sept. 11: HOORAY! Wylie was born today…well, today, but a couple years back!!! We had a very fun day…I get done with work on Fridays at 12:30 (because I work late other days, not because I am a slacker) so he also took the afternoon off and we went to a fancy-pants place in town with a vegetarian menu for lunch, and then to see Inglourious Basterds. (The movie, I will note, was actually pretty funny. I laughed out loud a few times and didn’t think that the trailer was accurate for the amount of violence–I had been wary of seeing it because it looked like it was going to be non-stop…it wasn’t that bad. I did cringe and hide my eyes a few times, though.) Then we came home for a little birthday celebrating at home–we had 2 kinds of pie (pizza and Dutch Apple, which I found at a local place that makes them from scratch and sells them to you unbaked so that you can feel like you are part of the process. I appreciated that. Except, some of the guts of the pie spilled out during baking and were on the bottom of the oven and made it very smelly and smoky in the house. I did not appreciate that. I think our oven needs to relax. It is an oven. Things will fall to the bottom….)

THURSDAY Sept. 10, 2009–Our first softball game was rained out! BOOOO!! We did, however, have 2 lovely practices before this. There were rainbows at one of them. There are actually a lot of rainbows here because there are tons of tiny little rainstorms that come and go in 10 minutes or less and the sky surrounding them is blue…kind of wonderful, in ym opinion!!! Good for leprechaun hunting, too!

LAST WEEKEND! See Wylie’s post for the details. Parts of it were pretty incredible. The dinner at the General’s house was kind of odd. I managed to insult his wife a little bit on accident…but I didn’t get fired on Monday, so that was good. Apparently the hiring of the general as the VP of student affairs is frought with a bit of political drama that is interesting to hear about, if you like that sort of thing…I usually do. He mainly roamed the lawn with a cigar, and that was awesome. Then we headed to the Dixie Chicken, where we also made friends with two gentlemen from San Francisco who were here on business with the university. It was nice to have some fellow outsiders to share in the awe of midnight yell. I think Midnight Yell was one of my favorite things. There were probably 30,000 people there. At midnight. To Yell. You get to kiss at the end though, which is fun. And whenever the Aggies make a touchdown. The game was cool to go to as well. I am thankful that my training director is generous with her spare tickets and her tailgating spot! Tailgating is one of the best inventions to go along with sports, if you ask me! I liked seeing the differences in the football culture between College Station and Auburn. I will say this: The students at A & M are WAAAAAYYYY more mellow than the students at Auburn, and the scene was more relaxed here. Although, the whole student section yelling in unison is pretty intimidating!!!

Well…that’s about it. I told you I would have a lot to say. I will try not to wait so long next time!

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