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?

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"]

Hooray! 4/5  of the way done with my first week of internship! The good news is that those exclamation points are not just for the heck of it…I am actually, really, truthfully, 100% loving it so far! (OK, maybe not the 6:30am alarm clock part, but that’s no secret…) This week has mostly been meeting the staff and other important people on campus and learning their names and what they do and what kinds of questions they can answer for me next week, when this week seems like a blur and I have to ask where everything goes again…:) Everyone is really nice so far and interested in making this a good experience, so I appreciate that. We have been doing some fun stuff as well–like today we went on a scavenger hunt all over campus to get aquainted with where things are and what is important at Texas A & M. It seems like traditions are one of the most important things at Texas A & M. The Corps of Cadets is a big deal here and there are lots of things that go along with that…there is a dog, Reville (rev-i-lee), and there is yelling at midnight before home football games, and there are class rings being purchased by the thousands and dunked in beer at the Dixie Chicken …  We had a fun time today and took a lot of silly photos along the way, I will see if my cohort will let me post a few.

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???