April 29, 2012 - Posted by danielle- 3 Comments
I feel like even though things are really busy, that I need to at least put a quick post up about what I’ve been up to.
School has taken over most of my waking hours. And the small amount of hours that are not dedicated to school are ones that I fill with time with family, band, and church.
This time of year is hectic, because we are headed into finals on Friday (May 4). Which means that every quiz, exam, homework assignment, or lab assignment that I’ve given this semester needs to be graded RIGHT NOW. And grading is the thing I like the least about my job. So, it is tough to do it.
The things that keep me going are the times I get to spend with family, with the band, and at church. Band stuff has been really fun and exciting lately. We had our 2nd, 3rd and 4th official performances within the last couple of weeks. We were the entertainment for a dinner and silent auction for our school’s Relay For Life team. We were the entertainment for a really terrific monthly happy hour that we do at school. Mom and Dad got to attend that one!
And last night, we were the entertainment for a party that was auctioned off for $3200 to raise money for a local charity. It was a really, really cool venue and cool party. I made some new friends, met a potential donor for my research, and our band has now been invited to play at a local place for a paying gig! It would be our first paid gig! woot woot!
I’d love to take in some money to pay for the music I’m buying from iTunes to learn these songs, the tambourine I’m about to buy, and the “band” clothes that I’m buying. I’ve also been borrowing Texas Seestor’s boots for now (Thanks again, Texas Seestor!!), but I also need to really buy my own. Seestor-ly love only goes so far, and stretching it to borrowing boots is pretty far. 
The music we are performing is just getting more and more magical. Each night a different song sounds better than we’ve ever done it. We’ve been practicing together for about 4 months now (most weeks we practice 2-3 hours), and we are getting to the point in our songs where we don’t have to think about the notes and the timing, and can really have the nuances that bring out the magic in the music such as changes in dynamics, changes in tempo, and harmonies that are tighter than ever.
Chills abound.
My voice is getting stronger and better sounding with all of this singing. It has more depth to it too. And I love practicing and performing with the other band members. They are just a fabulous group of guys.
March 17, 2012 - Posted by danielle- 1 Comment
I’m writing this on Saturday morning of Spring Break, so it isn’t like break is over, by any means. But this is a chance for me to reflect on some of it and tell you a little bit about it.
Last weekend, I celebrated my birthday with my family. I drove up to Austin on Saturday morning and had breakfast with everyone. We shopped, played games, napped (yay!), and I had a fabulous steak dinner with appetizers and a margarita! yum!
After supper, we tried to burn off some of the girls’ energy by having them walk/stomp/skip around the block while singing songs. It was fun. We sang “skip-to-my-loo” a lot. We sang “Old MacDonald” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” also.
After that, everyone sang happy birthday to me and we had cake and mint chocolate chip ice cream!!!
I was trying to recall the last time I had a cake with my name on it. I think the closest thing would be my thesis defense for my Ph.D. which had my name on it.
Who can forget the chocolate peanut butter cake that we had that day??? Not me! Oh man, was that ever good.
Anyway, I digress.
The rest of the weekend was really great too.
AND THEN!
On Monday morning, my actual birthday, ViolaGirl and I packed up and drove to Fredericksburg. We had lunch outside at a really great sandwich place. They had amazing fries. We headed out to a local park to hike Enchanted Rock only to get caught in a line of cars of all kinds of people who wanted to do the same thing on their spring break. But we saw our first wildflowers while we were waiting.
We made a strategic decision to drive out to Wildseed Farms instead and check out the wildflowers. Here is one of my favorites from that trip.
There are many more on my Flickr set.
After that, we chilled out and had a glass of wine and talked some more in the patio of the bed and breakfast where we were staying. We got gussied up and went out to a bar/restaurant that had outdoor seating and a live band playing blues/rock. Most people were just drinking, so we really didn’t have any hopes of getting a table where we could hear the band, because they didn’t look like they were leaving anytime soon. But after about 10 minutes, a group got up and some tables became available! We had a really fun time. And I got to have another margarita along with my Pacific salmon and rest o’ my meal.
After we’d hung out there for a while, we headed back to the hot tub at the B&B to star gaze, drink wine, and eat more chocolate cake (I’d brought my leftover b-day cake with us).
We actually saw a shooting star!
On my birthday!
I think it was the first time I’d truly seen a shooting star and been sure of it and not just had someone else tell me that there had been one. It was really cool.
The next day, we had a fabulous breakfast at a local coffee shop and headed out to hike Enchanted Rock again. This time, we made it into the park and to the summit!
The thing that surprised me most about the rock was not barren at the top like it was as we were headed up! There were all kinds of depressions in the rock that held water and plant life. They are officially called vernal pools.
I found them really fascinating.
We did other hiking, shopping, and more eating of yummy foods. But those were the best parts of the trip. ViolaGirl and I just had a total blast together. It made us realize how much fun it is to go out too!
We actually went out last night to bars in our local town. We scoped out 5 different ones to see where things seemed the most lively. One of them now has a Rock piano bar with drums on Thurs, Fri and Sat nights! We went there, of course. It was so much fun! And now for another first: last night was the first time I’ve been hit on by a guy at a bar! What a fun experience.
You have to realize, that since ex-HB and I met in high school, I didn’t go through the usual stage most people go through where they hang out at bars and get hit on by guys. So, this was quite novel.
I mentioned the bands I’m in to this guy and he was particularly fascinated by the Praise Band. So I ended up writing down the name and location of the church on a bar napkin. When he asked for my number, I told him, get this, that I’d give him my number when he comes to my church.
ha!
ViolaGirl thought that was hilarious. It was truly inspired, I have to say. By God? I’m not sure. But I’m happy with that decision. I wasn’t really ready to give this random guy my number. But hey, now he knows where to find me if he is really interested in me. ViolaGirl wants to use this strategy in the future too. She thinks it would weed out the guys who are just sort of interested from the guys who are really and truly interested. too funny.
And now, I need to get out of my apartment. They are jackhammering the building next to me in order to make a business center/fitness center, and they did it all day yesterday too. I’m headed to the coffee shop, I think. And then I’ll head out to Mom and Dad’s for the day to spend more time with everyone!
December 22, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 3 Comments
I have happy news! (health-related)
I don’t have breast cancer, uterine cancer or colon polyps! AND I don’t have to have another colonoscopy for TEN more years. TEN years! yay!
“What?!” you are probably thinking.
Well, it has been an odd couple of months. I’ve had some odd symptoms that required ultrasounds, mammograms, and a biopsy to check for breast and uterine cancer. All of that came out normal/negative, which was great.
Due to family history, I had a colonoscopy Tuesday. I was pretty convinced that I was going to have polyps, to be quite honest. But I do NOT have polyps, which is really exciting and joyous.
The procedure was really straightforward. The team that prepped me, did the procedure, and helped me after recovery was really terrific.
Everyone had warned me that the “prep” was the worst part. I would have to agree; I was pretty hungry and a little dizzy/cold at times. My last solid food was Sunday night for supper and I didn’t get to eat real food again until Tuesday at about 4 pm. Going almost 48 hours with only “clear liquids” to drink is a really unusual experience. I was actually getting pretty dizzy and lightheaded Monday morning, but I kept guzzling gatorade. Interestingly, I went to Target on Monday amidst the dizziness looking for a clear nutritional supplement (which they didn’t have), and found a type of gatorade that I hadn’t seen previously. It was CLEAR! This is critical, because I wasn’t allowed to drink anything with red or purple dyes. Better yet, the flavor was mango passionfruit! Turns out that once I drank THAT one, I wasn’t dizzy any longer. So, for those of you out there who have to have a colonoscopy, I highly recommend that you drink the 02 Series (Perform) Gatorade! It is terrific. Instead of 2 grams of sugars, it has 7 g. But it doesn’t taste overly sugary.
Texas Seestor was great about taking care of me before, during, and after the procedure. Trainwreck was really understanding and helpful too.
It has been nice to spend extra time with them this week. I’ve had a really good time playing and hanging out with my nieces this week too. This is the sort of thing we’ve done in years past when I would fly here for the holidays; Texas Seestor would take vacation and we’d spend time together.
Yesterday, Mom, Dad, Texas Seestor and I went to a Christmas art/music show. I got to hear a really great band play. I bought some art too; small things like ornaments and magnets. But I also got one larger piece of art for my walls. I definitely need to spend some time this break getting things framed and hung up! My apartment could really use some help.
Oh! Texas Seestor is home, I think we are off to the grocery for our Christmas grocery shopping now!
September 10, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
I keep thinking that I’m going to have time to finish posting about the rest of my vacation in Massachusetts, but I really don’t see it happening. So, I’m going to attempt to summarize (with the help of some photos) of the various things that I did this summer.
When I got back from my vacation and scientific meeting in Boston, I started summer research with an undergraduate student. His project involved working with RNA which degrades really easily if it is exposed to the enzymes (RNases) in dust. So, I was able to convince him, by showing him some highlight and tip sheets about working with RNA, that it was worth it to spend the first few days cleaning the lab spaces.
We ordered chemicals and primers for doing PCR and the supplies just barely arrived before I headed off to Port Aransas (TX gulf coast) for a family vacation. When we were planning the vacation, I was thinking that I wasn’t going to be doing summer research this summer. This meant that I basically had to get him up to speed and able to do the experiments by himself (or with minimal emailing/phone calls) in a short period of time. The great thing was that we did a quick RNA extraction, RT, and PCR, gel, and photo. We got a PCR result! That meant that he had a stock of RT (cDNA) to go back to while I was away and keep trying new PCR conditions. It was good for him to have to learn to work more independently and do some trouble-shooting. AND that allowed me to go to Port Aransas and hang out in the pool with my nieces, Texas Seestor, Trainwreck (bro-in-law), Mom, and Dad.
We spent all day at the pool, because my nieces were a bit afraid of the ocean again. The pools are incredible! I had a ton of fun there.
A couple of times, after supper, we went out to the beach to play in the sand.
All of the photos from that trip are on Flickr in a set.
When I got back from vacation, I went back to working with my undergrad all week long on research. I also wrote a Letter of Intent for a grant proposal. It was basically a 1 page summary of all of the parts of the grant; I think I had 2 pages of references for that one page (single-spaced) of writing. It was rather intense. But I did get it accepted and am now trying to find/make the time to write the full grant! (due October 10th which is really soon! – I really need to turn it in about a week or so early)
As an aside, science writing is one of the things that I really dread. Once I start, I’m usually okay at it, but it takes me a long, long time. This is one small part of why I decided I didn’t want to be a full-time PI at a big research institution where all of the funding depends on grants and publications. It just isn’t my passion. However, mentoring students IS my passion. So, a small school setting makes so much more sense for me. But I am finding that the funding is really an issue when it comes to doing molecular biology research. We only had $1200 this summer for a 10 week RT-PCR project! We spent 1/3 of that on the enzymes to do the RT and 1/3 of that on the enzymes to do the PCR! That didn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for chemicals for the RNA extraction, filter tips, RNase-free tubes, etc.
However, we did find out that we could cut all of our reactions in half to make them last longer. And we found other ways to stretch our small amount of money. But that isn’t going to be enough to do cell culture in future summers; which is why I’m writing a grant. We are also trying to get some local businesses to donate some money. I’ll be spending more time on that this year, I believe.
Anyway, around the time that the letter of intent was due, I went to the 4th of July parade in our town.
Towns from towns all around had floats to promote their local festivals and show off their festival queens and festival princesses.
There were a fair number of horses (drill teams) and cars (car clubs) too.
More photos are in the set on Flickr.
Other summer activities included going to the annual ice cream party hosted by some friends.
There were 17 flavors this year!
They have a really great pool, so I spent most of the party with my nieces in the pool. It was such fun! I was so glad to be invited. It is hard to fathom that they make 17 flavors of ice cream and host such a huge party each year.
We also saw Footloose at an outdoor park in Austin. Next year, they are doing the Sound of Music. Some of my friends (neighbors of Texas Seestor and Trainwreck) are organizers of the musicals and perform in the musicals (the very accomplished teen in the family), so it is always great fun to see the show. There is a wealth of talented performers in Austin, so the local productions are just amazing.
At the end of the summer, I went with them to see Hairspray – another summer Austin musical. And it was fabulous too! Seeing those shows were definitely some of the high points of my summer.
Near the end of the summer, and just before school was starting up, Mom and Dad baby-sat my nieces so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck and I could see the last Harry Potter movie. We saw it in 3D IMAX, which was just incredible!
The 3-D part didn’t matter as much as the IMAX. I wish I could see ALLL my movies in IMAX. It was the first time I’d seen a traditional movie (and not just an hour-long IMAX movie) on an IMAX screen. WOW! The sound was just incredible!
Mom and Dad also baby-sat right at the very end of the summer so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and I could go to the Schlitterbahn waterpark for the day and stay until it closed.
There were two watercoaster rides that we rode that were just incredible. The Wolf Pack was the raft ride that we rode when we first arrived. Dragon’s Revenge is their newest ride and had EIGHT uphill sections where blasts of water shot Texas Seestor and I uphill (on a two-person raft)! It was AMAZING! Both of them had pretty long waits (about an hour), but we knew before we went that all of the big rides would have long lines (even on a weekday). We rode the Black Knight at the end of the day when the line was shorter; it is a black, enclosed tube, which is rather unsettling, but definitely adds to the adrenaline rush.
Other things about Schlitterbahn that I hadn’t realized was just how many inner tube rides there are! I was envisioning the type of waterpark that I’d gone to as a teen where we went on a lot of body slides and rode mats on the slides. Schlitterbahn is almost entirely raft and tube rides; it makes for many fewer bruises!
And I also discovered that a “tube shoot” is basically like going over a (small) waterfall on a tube. They are crazy fun.
Going to Schlitterbahn was the last thing I did before I started work again at school. We literally went on a Tuesday and I had all-day faculty meetings the next day on Wednesday. Classes started the following Wednesday for me. It was a great way to end the summer.
Speaking of classes, I’m teaching 2 sections each for 2 courses that I taught last year. That is helping me a lot with my course prep, because a lot of what I prepared last year (powerpoints), I can use again this year. But I’m also tweaking and revising things that I want to improve. Also, I’ve designed their workload differently as far as the type of prep they do before they come to lecture each time. It makes it so that I have to get their Incomplete Notes posted online earlier than in past years. But thus far, the students seem to be responding well to the new structure. Their first exam is next Friday, so I’ll see how they do!
In other news, I am singing regularly with my church Praise Band, and I have been encouraged by the lead singer to find some songs where I can do solos. We did a song by Casting Crowns (Glorious Day) which was in a perfect spot in my range. I did a couple of solo verses on that song, and I sort of surprised myself at how well I could sing it when it was in such a good spot in my range! I surprised some people at church too! That experience has helped me get some additional confidence in singing solo or in a more exposed setting where the instrumentals have backed off in volume.
I continue to spend most weekends (at least Saturday) with family. We played a lot of slip-n’-slide, baby-pool, squirt bottles, this summer in attempts to stay cool amidst the 100+ degree weather.
Dad got their used golf cart up and running, so one of the fun activities when we are at Mom and Dad’s is to go on golf cart rides. We especially go in the evenings when the sun is setting and it is cooling off.
That is a view of one of the first-ever golf cart rides as you look out across the golf course from my parents’ back deck. There is another road on the other side of the course.
When we are at Mom and Dad’s we also enjoy watching out for deer.
You can see how dry it is in their yard. They had to stop watering their grass a while back this summer when water levels dropped to a certain amount.
Mom and Dad also had a couple of owls that were living in their trees out front.
Here is a photo of just one of them.
As the tree got more brown, the owl became easier to spot.
Of course, when it sat on the roof, it was really easy to see!
Well, I think that covers the majority of my news from the summer. I hope to not go quite so long between posts. But with school and then with getting sick (I have some sort of cough right now), I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write long posts. Now that I’m more “caught up,” I hope to post small things more frequently!
I am still not on facebook. One of these days, I’ll get to it. But for right now, I need to go water my plants, prep some Incomplete Notes for lectures, clean my apartment, and work on my grant!
All the best,
Danielle
May 10, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 7 Comments
I never know what to call my posts. There is so much that I haven’t blogged about that I barely know where to start, especially since I need to keep this short. I leave in about an hour to go give my second of three finals. Yes, we are in finals week here. Commencement is Saturday. I have seniors in my classes and senior grades are due on Thursday at 5 pm. This makes it so that I’m in a time crunch right now. I still need to finish writing my final that I’m giving tomorrow morning; I would be designing questions right now, but until I’ve had a bit more tea and am fully awake, it is really hard to come up with exam questions (it is 6:15 am as I write this).
I’m mulling some things around in my mind about faith, divorce, marriage, and relationships right now. It will take me a while to formulate my ideas, more time than I have right now. But I think that I’ll be writing something about it within a few weeks. Right now, what I can say is that I’ve been praying for something for almost 20 years, and it has finally happened. Hallelujah! However, it wasn’t at all in the way that I was expecting, and I am still processing it.
The good thing is that I’m taking next week off, OFF. I will have plenty of time to mull. I, of course, have a to-do list of things that I want to accomplish. But I also want to spend some time in reflection. I know that if I do anything related to work, it will be to clean up my office and figure out my schedule for the scientific conference that I’ll be attending in early June.
Once mid-June gets here, I’ll be back up and running doing summer research with an undergraduate student until the end of July. We’ll spend time getting the lab space cleaned, unpacked and assembled. I hope that we can get some decent experiments done this summer. I’m still trying to get the equipment I need for my experiments. But, I’ve made some progress. Then, I’ll have a week or two to prep for the start of classes in August.
In the middle of the summer, we are taking a family trip to the Texas coast again. I’m really looking forward to all of the vacations.
For now, even though my tea is still not finished, I think that I ought to finish getting ready for work and then write some exam questions.
March 12, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
Hello!
Today is my birthday! AND it falls on a Saturday this year! AND, even better, it is the first weekend of Spring Break!!!!
You know what that means?
hmmm?
Well, I’m going to tell you, of course.
I am not going to work this entiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire weekend!
AND, throughout the week, I’m going to take time to do some fun activities.
You can’t tell that I’m excited, can you?
Right now, I’m at Texas Seestor and Trainwreck’s place. I arrived yesterday at 5 pm just when Trainwreck brought the girl’s home from daycare – or PRE-K as my oldest niece exuberantly tells us. We played/I lounged while she played until about 6 pm. It was a great way to start the weekend. About partway through, the youngest finished her supper and bath and came up to play too. She is such a funny thing. She is at that stage where she loves putting things together and taking them apart and making them fit. Over and over again. Who knew that putting a plunger into the barrel of a syringe (all child-toys and not a real one) would be so fascinating?
We watched a lot of the coverage last night on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. How very awful and sad. My heart goes out to all of them.
I’ve been up for about an hour and I’ve eaten a small amount of cheerios or “pre-breakfast” to tide me over until we go out to breakfast. I think that we are going to go to one of my favorite places where I can get really good biscuits, sausage, and really good shredded, fried potatoes. I LOVE the shredded hash browns and biscuits at this particular place. Of course, if we don’t end up going there, the other 2 places we tend to go out for breakfast are also really awesome.
Other plans involve going out to supper tonight and having cake and ice cream at some point.
Then tomorrow, Texas Seestor got tickets for she, Trainwreck and I to go see a vocal performance (a Pops). I’ve been trying to find some sort of performance to go to in the upcoming months as a treat to myself, and voila! She surprised me with this! How perfect! Mom and Dad will watch the girls so that we can go out.
This week, Mom, Dad and I hope to go to the zoo. There is one in the area to which I’ve not yet been, and I’m really excited to go.
We are also talking about taking a trip out to another town that has artsy-craftsy type stores to spend part of a day.
I’ll have to be really efficient with getting my work done on all of the other days where we don’t have activities. But I should be able to do that. I’ve got incentive, because if I can get my stuff done, then I can take the entiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire weekend off next weekend too!
Don’t get me wrong. I really do love my work. But I’ve been working really long hours, and I’ve sacrificed a lot of “relaxing time” by having this type of job (and by wanting to do it to the best of my ability). And I’m just a tad burnt out right now.
hmm….
I think my older niece is up. I’d better go. The fun begins!
February 23, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 2 Comments
Today is Texas Seestor’s birthday. This is one of those “significantly-numbered” birthdays, and Mom, Dad and I threw her a big bash on Saturday. The party was at Mom and Dad’s house and also served as an Open House party.
People showed up at 3:00 and it went until 10 pm for some. The ones with smaller kids left at maybe 7ish or 8ish; I’m not really sure. So, I would say that everyone was having a good time!
I know I did!
And, the cakes were awesome. Triple chocolate for the b-day cake and strawberry for the open house. yum.
Pics are on Flickr, as usual. There is a special set just for the party of 38 photos (if you are logged in and have access). If you don’t have access, and are a friend of mine, leave me a comment here and I’ll give you access. Alternatively, the link will at least show you a few pics of the strawberry cake. enjoy!
And Texas Seestor, may the next 40 years be as good, if not better, than the first 40!
January 30, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 2 Comments
As you will have noticed if you are reading this, I haven’t posted anything in a while. I was doing most of my posting during breakfast.
However, during break and after Christmas, I started using my breakfast time to read Diana Gabaldon’s latest two books – A Breath of Snow and Ashes and Echo in the Bone. I’d read Breath of Snow and Ashes before, but I had never gotten around to reading Echo in the Bone. I had decided that I’d better read Breath of Snow and Ashes before Echo in the Bone. They are huge books and quite engrossing. Thus, my blog posting fell by the wayside.
Summary of events:
Break was really rejuvenating. I had time to sleep in and read books (aforementioned) a little bit. I also watched some movies, something I hadn’t done since the summer. I missed my chance to see Harry Potter before it left the theaters. Texas Seestor and I were trying to coordinate time to see it and just never managed to do that before it left. Oh well. I’m sure someone will buy it on DVD when it comes out again and I/we can borrow it.
I spent a BIG chunk of break trying to design my Genetics labs and write the lab manual. I’m using some of the lab exercises that I’d done in MN, but I’m trying to use some of the labs that have been done HERE in previous years too so as not to reinvent the whole wheel. I managed to write up the first three weeks of lab exercises before the binder needed to be printed for the students. They’ll get the rest as I finish editing/writing the others. I did look over all of the exercises for the semester very carefully, and I tried to coordinate them/time them with lecture topics. That can be rather challenging, since the info they need for about the 4th week in lab is chapter 19 in the textbook and I had hoped to go through the textbook mostly in chapter order. But I’ve got a plan; now, I’ll see if it works.
The first lab this week was half good and half bad. I had intentionally planned for the first part of lab (1st exercise) to be a “fun” one. And I think that it was. I’m bummed about the second half, but it was one that I’d borrowed from the person who taught it before, and that doesn’t always work very well. I think that they will still learn something from it.
In other news, my mac hard drive began deteriorating those days when I was prepping the lab manual; this was about 1 week prior to the start of classes. It was functioning, but randomly freezing and would require me to do a hard reboot. I was visiting Texas Seestor and family when I tried to reboot it and it wouldn’t reboot properly a couple of times in a row. My iPhoto wouldn’t load either. When I told Texas Seestor and Trainwreck about the issues I’d been having, TS convinced me to make an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple store in the nearby mall within the hour. THANK GOODNESS she insisted. It turned out that the hard drive was failing (it had 470+ bad sectors in it). It was working well enough for me to take it home and transfer all of my school files onto my school computer, but I didn’t shut it down for fear that it didn’t reboot. That ended up being a lifesaver, because when I shut it down before taking it into Apple to be repaired, it wouldn’t reboot again.
They would have replaced the drive in the store, but I told them that I’d had spotty performance on my DVD drive (officially called an optical drive) and USB port (one of the two). It got shipped off to the place where they do more intensive repairs. It came back with a new hard drive, optical drive, logic board, and optical cable. All of this was while it was still (just barely) under its 1 year warranty so everything was free. Labor alone would have been $310. Believe me, when I found out I could buy 2 more years of warranty, I jumped on it.
When it came back, we used my external hard drive to put everything back on it. It looks exactly like it did when I did my last back-up a day or two before the diagnosis. Time Machine, the back-up program for macs, is really amazing. Macs are cool. Having a place to go and get personal service without paying out the butt (like the Geek Squad at Best Buy) is worth any extra increase in cost, to me.
I go through all of this as a cautionary tale to back up your hard drive regularly. AND because it impacted my life quite drastically for the past couple of weeks. Working on my school laptop was really annoying – the screen is small, poorly lit, and the resolution is bad. It does what I need for lecturing, but I really don’t like working on it. Making powerpoints on it really wore my eyes out.
Otherwise, only a couple of other things occurred this month of note.
1) I got to see a high school performance of Les Miserables. It was really amazing. The friend of the family who had a role in it actually had a LEAD role and sung almost the entire second half of the show. He was just fantastic! All of it was really amazing. The depth of talent at the school is really phenomenal. Also, I’d never seen Les Mis before; I hadn’t realized that there is absolutely no dialogue – EVERYTHING is sung. Unlike opera, I could understand every word of it; their diction was also amazing.
2) Our school had a retreat right before the start of classes. I got to know another prof better who started this year who is relatively close in age to me (comparatively – she just turned 30 while I am 36, almost 37). Better yet, she is also single AND lives in my town! We are hoping to go out to supper together and/or maybe check out the night life in our town or in Austin. That will take some planning. But I’m excited to have the beginnings of a friendship here in TX. There are some potential people at church too who may become friends, but not much has come of that right now.
Speaking of church, I should probably get a few things done around my apartment before I head off to sing today. It is so easy for my place to fall into disorder; entropy is definitely at work.
Oh, and also thinking of church, with all of this computer mess, I was testing out various programs on my computer yesterday when I got everything reinstalled. In order to check my Flickr Uploader, I uploaded a photo of me that was taken for the church directory. I got a free 8×10 which I gave to Mom and Dad. The pic is on my Flickr account, because, it worked! yay! It is a good photo of me, I think.
I hope things are going well with you! I send a hug and or good thoughts in your direction.
December 29, 2010 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
During the days leading up to Christmas, Texas Seestor and my two nieces and I converged on Mom and Dad’s house. We spent a day making various types of cookies including: Swedish Spritz, sugar cookie cutouts, gingerbread, and snickerdoodle. We also took breaks to run and play with the girls outside, watch and wave at the golfers, and take the girls on a wagon ride around the neighborhood.
After the everyone else went home, Mom, Dad and I went into town to see the Christmas lights that were put up at the park.
I thought that green tree was an interesting way to do something useful with all of those clear plastic water bottles that are accumulating in our world.
Did you write your letter to Santa this year? Perhaps it ended up in this mailbox…
Ah! Here’s the gift!
Well, to be quite honest, here is the gift….
I guess some other people thought so too.
December 23, 2010 - Posted by danielle- 3 Comments
On Tuesday, Mom and Dad came over to my apartment, and we built the shelves for my garage. They also helped me figure out how to fit everything inside.
Once we got that finished, we headed to the historic/tourist town down the street from where I live. We had a fabulous lunch there and then played tourist for a while. THIS time (as opposed to a trip during the summer), I brought my camera!
Those were Christmas windows in an antique store.
I had to laugh that these are now considered antiques.
This building looks like a lovely place to sit on the front porch, and rock with a glass of iced tea in my hand.
I had to laugh at the barrels that were used to prop up the branches of this tree.
I’ve always loved how some places use these beautiful cabbages (?) (maybe lettuce?) as a way to have something pretty in the wintertime.