Well, Vegas and some other things. Over the week of Thanksgiving we drove out to Phoenix where Teresa’s parents live. From there we drove up to Las Vegas for a couple days. Then it was back to Phoenix, and then back home to Bryan. It felt like a whirlwind trip and like a lot of it was spent in the car (it was), but we enjoyed it.

The drive out was fun, and it was the furthest I West I have driven. We decided to drive all night as opposed to spend the night in a hotel. This was partly to save money, and because we thought we could do it. We ended up driving until something like 3am before stopping to sleep for 3 hours at a truck stop/gas station. We saw lots of deer along the side of the road, both alive and dead, and I think I saw a coyote. On Saturday we arrived at Teresa’s parents house early evening and had a lovely dinner before sleepily hanging around until we had to go to bed. The next few days were filled with driving around Phoenix, a big-bash-birthday party for Teresa’s dad, and a hike that showed me some neat cactuses.

After those few days in Phoenix, we drove up to las Vegas for three nights. We stayed at Paris Paris for two nights, which was fantastic. Being right on the strip was amazing. At night we could hear the fountains from the Bellagio. For our third night we moved to The Rio, which was very nice, but is a little off the strip.

Let’s see, what were some of the things we did while in Vegas… Well, we watched the Bellagio fountain, we ate at Serendipity3, we walked through Caesars Palace, we ate at the Hofbrauhaus, and went to Freemont Street. We gambled at the Hard Rock Cafe, Paris Paris, Binions (I think), Caesars Palace, The Bellagio, and Bill’s Saloon (where we saw Big Elvis). We also had a steak and lobster Thanksgiving dinner, well I did not, but everybody else did. And to finish our trip we saw the Beatles Love Cirque de Soleil production at The Mirage. That was fantastic, we all loved it. There was a chance we were not going to see the show due to some lighting problems, but Maria, Teresa’s sister, did some phone magic and ended up getting us better seats to the later show. Wooh!

On the drive home from Las Vegas we drove to the Grand Canyon, which I had not seen before, and Flagstaff Arizona.

Next it was a day again in Phoenix before driving back to Bryan. It was a great trip, and I was glad to be a part of it. Many thanks to Teresa’s parents for for being very generous and including me on their yearly Christmas trip, which was moved up to Thanksgiving time this year.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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?

The other day Teresa and I met two-thirds of her cohort, and their families, at Double Dave’s pizza. We had not been to Double Dave’s yet, but in our quest to try all the pizza places around, we needed to. Plus it was going to be good to get out and do something with people.

Seems that in these parts they like to essentially take a pizza, cut it up, and roll those cut up bits of pizza into rolls, making what they call pizza rolls. Perhaps these rolls are in more places than just here, but I had never seen them. The most common kind of roll is the pepperoni roll. I believe they have cheese and pepperoni in them, and as you eat them you dip them into either a red sauce, or ranch dressing. Double Dave’s is the one place we know of that has rolls other than pepperoni rolls. They have a 4 cheese roll, and that is what we ordered. The 4 cheese roll is really just dough wrapped around cheese, well 4 cheeses I guess. They have to be the 4 most mild cheeses because we did not detect any 4 cheeses like you can sometimes. I am guessing that the 4 cheeses were different kinds of mozzarella. Perhaps even 4 different brands of mozzarella. Regardless of how many cheeses were actually in the thing, they were good. Better than the pizza in fact.

If you come to this area, first give us a call, second get yourself some pizza rolls.

On Friday evening Teresa and I walked over to downtown Bryan for their First Friday event. They have live music, restaurants have special things going on, and the streets are busy with many local people. We started off the evening by going to the Village Cafe for a drink and to cool off. It was a little loud in there, so we moseyed on over to Los Norteños Cafe for some dinner. We had passed by this place a couple weeks ago and liked the looks of the outside, we liked the inside even better. And with $3.99 breakfast tacos, how can one go wrong? Just a tip, two people can share one, these tacos are huge, and kind of like burritos. After getting stuffed on tacos, we waddled a short distance to the Revolution Cafe (there are a lot of  cafe’s in Bryan it seems) to listen to some bluegrass. I was wondering if the bluegrass in Texas was different than that of the bluegrass in Asheville. The answer is no. They are pretty much the same. We stayed for a little bit, but being stuffed on tacos, and at the tail end of a work week, we were tuckered out so left after only several songs. You can hear one of the songs they played below.

It was good to check out the First Friday and I am sure we will check out some of the others that go on during our year in Texas.

[wpaudio url="http://www.10gallonhat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/The-Devils-Bluegrass-Band-Amber-Alert.mp3"]

Speaking of my cohort…I think I love them! They are all really fun and nice and I will be glad to go through this with them and hopefully hang out some along the way! We all attended the annual Division of Student Affairs social this evening and brought our sweeties and families, and it was good to get to meet them all. We ate some BBQ and a lot of desserts. There were a few weird things though, like a sing along and the chicken dance…I’m not sure about that stuff…

Hmmm…Wylie already wrote about the biking, and I am glad that that seems like it will work out for me, at least some days. We have been having fun in the evenings…last night we made cookies to take to the social and there was the bike riding…we also tried another pizza place on Tuesday–Buck’s–which was my least favorite so far. I do get tired pretty early though, so hopefully I will learn how to manage that better…Any tips???