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!

[nggallery id=9]

This is one of the giant pizzas from Gumby’s. They are still in one of the top spots for best pizza around. We only have a few other pizza places to try.

At the movie theaters here you can not only get a trash bag size bag of popcorn and a wheelbarrow full of soda, but you can also get a cold pickle in a bag! I am not trying one, though maybe I can get Teresa to…

This is a little bar somewhat near us. It is the type of places with no windows, and some interesting locals. It is also the kind of place that draws the greek people around. Not sure why that is yet. Anyways, we have gone a couple times, and besides being an play bar, it has very cheap drinks, especially during happy hour. The Aggie Martini is just a beer with an olive in it. We don’t know what the Flaming Dr. Pepper is, but I think we can make a good guess.

Teresa was brave enough to try the wings during happy hour at the Ptarmigan Club. She is still alive, so I guess they were okay.

They put Texas on everything out here, even on the porta-potties. It’s crazy.

Yesterday we tried out the local burrito shop Freebird’s World Burritos. It was pretty tasty…and you can get the hugest burritos that I have ever seen in my life. Wylie got one–but you can get one that is 2x as big as that if you wanted. You can see in the photo that it is really big. Burritos are pretty high on my list of favorite things to eat, so I am happy that there is a place in town creating some for my eating pleasure. Something that I liked about this place was that people made art out of their foil burrito wrappers and put it up all over…and also that even though they have Pepsi products and not Coke, they included Diet Dr. Pepper, so it is not a soda bust, which is something that is important when you are eating burritos.

Then we headed over to Kroger for some grocery shopping…and there was a bird in there. What in the world is going on with all of the birds in TX doing crazy things? Are they just messing with us? It’s very interesting…hmmmm……

Today Wylie is working and I am headed out to get my vehicle inspected so that I can register it in TX. I can’t say that I am thrilled about that, but, as my parents told me yesterday while I was whining, I do like driving on paved, pothole-free roads…so I guess I need to get over it.

The good news: One week untill internship!!!

The drive out here seemed long (partly, I’m sure, because both of us were running on less sleep and more adrenaline than usual) but with the help of walkie-talkies we made it! Bryan/College Station seems like it will be an interesting place to spend a year. We have already been having all kinds of explorations–grocery stores and Target and a few restaurants already. There seems to be an abundance of Taquiera-type Mexican places around, which is something I have been missing for the last 4 years, so hooray for that!

The trip to Austin was good too. I am pretty much thrilled to be so close and get to do some exploring there as well. The drive from here to there is mostly through farms and ranches. There were fields and fields of what appeared to be dead corn, and it looked kind of eerie…so if anyone can shed some light on what that is all about, please do!

Tomorrow Wylie will start working from home, so he got the office all set up for us today, and it is quite nice (see photo below)…although I will be sad to not have an exploring partner tomorrow afternoon…

Anyway…it’s old news now, but we made it! It doesn’t suck! Hooray!

It was a great day, it was fantastic to see Kristen again, be introduced to Austin and some fantastic Mexican food, and know that I can set up the office tomorrow for work on Monday.

Enjoy the pictures!

And here is a video of our new place.

Have we mentioned that we have an apartment? I don’t think so. Or maybe I forget. Well, we have an apartment! The image above is from the road in front of the house. We just got some photos of the inside of the apartment, so now we know that the whole thing is real and not a scam. Or if it is a scam, it’s a really good one.

So, the place looks cute from the outside, and it looks pretty big on the inside. We might need more furniture. Or we can just see where we end up next year after this Texas adventure before we start to fill up this place with stuff that might not fit into the next place.

First, we snuck on to the park, Teresa said all the cool kids were doing it and if I didn’t do it also I wouldn’t be cool. I so want to be cool, so I went with her and snuck under the barbed wire onto the park. We walked along a nice little stream with some fierce rapids. Along the way we saw the little frog laying on the arrow sign. We thought it was dead, but you could see it’s little sides flutter from it’s heart beating. We left the little frog, walked past some toads, and ended up at a man-made lake where people were swimming and frolicking. We had no time for that for we were here to see a waterfall of some kind.

Thankfully the waterfall did not disappoint. The water level in the lake was extra high so the river flow was stronger than normal. We hung around on some giant rocks for a while and watched silly children lose their shoes into the water and attempt to retrieve them. Soon it was time to leave and we bid the waterfall adieu and headed home.

It was a good little hike through some of the wilderness that is Auburn, Alabama.