The Thick of the Moment

Jess on October 11, 2008

I officially feel like a graduate student. I can’t seem to really get ahead, but I feel like I’m treading water quite well in the program. I’ve already had my first test and round of papers and I have another coming up this week. I’ve also apparently not blogged in forever. i’m going to have to fix that. I think I’m too reliant upon twitter to relay my daily goings-on. It does a pretty good job of that, but really, I think I should write more complex things about my life.

Thursday I have my second test in the class with the hardest professor. Or at least, the tests are hard. She’s probably one of my favorite professors because she’s so interesting and I learn a whole lot but her tests are more stress than they’re worth, I think. I got a solid B on the last one and that’s a good start to the semester so I hope I do better on this one to continue that trend. I also have a paper due next Sunday night in a different class which will probably be labor intensive but not that difficult.

Meanwhile, I have a huge group project in every class and trying to stay ahead of that is sort of difficult. I think since we all have the same classes we’re pretty aware of how we need to stay on top of this so that the end of the semester isn’t hell. Also, I think all of the projects are pretty manageable, time just goes by so quickly it seems.

I’ve been handling homesickness pretty well. It helps that I’ll be home a week from Monday for a conference and get to spend a night or two with my family. And it helps that I have Kyle here and things. It was really, really bad between when I took that test and when I got the grade back mostly because Maco had to be put down back home which made me really, really sad. He was one of my favorite dogs that my parents fostered and while I knew he was really overweight and therefore in poor health, it didn’t really occur to me that the last time I said goodbye to him would actually be the last time. It made me think about how being here means missing out on a lot of moments with my family (and the dogs) and that made me question my decision to come here in the first place.

For that reason, I’m not quite sure what my ideal scenario is for post-grad school. Ugh. Hopefully in the nearish future I’ll get all of that figured out but at this point I don’t really know that I want to move somewhere to do law school or a phd right away. If things work out though in a really clear direction that would be great. I just miss my family a lot… and my friends too but I know that by the time I’m considering returning to Topeka/Kansas City they’ll mostly be spread all over the country again for a while and who knows where they’ll end up living.

I feel like I have a good group of friends here though and that’s making things a lot easier. I like a lot of the museum science students and I’m glad that we’ve finally gotten to know each other well enough to let our guards down and show our real personalities. I also have some friends through Kyle or through whoever that I like. It’s nice to finally feel like I have an assortment of people to call when Kyle is out of town or to make plans. and hopefully the more time I spend here the closer we’ll all get.

Alright. We’re attending a potluck dinner party tonight and I have to start rolling sushi so that we can go. And then it’s back to studying and hopefully finishing all of the thank yous this weekend. Man, having a wedding before grad school is absolutely ideal until you have like 200 cards to write as class really gets going. I’d recommend against that part. But marriage is awesome! So I can’t really complain.

we'll have a good time, then

Jess on September 22, 2008

I had a chat with Mei today about my workings in the African Art collection and she’d like me to do a research course or a practicum writing a grant so we can get a conservator and an art historian who can authenticate the collection.  This is pretty awesome news.

My trip to Skooners went really well the other night.  David Trout was funny, as per normal, and I had a good time with Amanda, Heather, Jamie and eventually Amber.  Maybe next time I’ll get gutsy enough to sing a little.

Other than that, I have absolutely nothing to report except that this weekend I proved myself to be good at time management. I managed to balance cleaning, socializing, studying, and all the law and order and svu that my DVR could handle.

After my test tomorrow, I plan to reward myself by reworking my layout and site map a bit and relaxing until Thursday.

so happy, together

Jess on September 20, 2008

For perhaps the first time in my life as a blogger, I’ve had a long gap in blogging simply because I am so happy.  Sorry for the lack of updates.  Things with Kyle are totally fantastic.  I’m happier and more in love than i ever have been with him, or anyone, which is great.

My classes are also going well.  I’ve been finding work a little bit boring but I think it’s getting better now that I’m actually working with the african art.  It’s interesting how much work needs to be done on that collection, and it seems to me that I’m plenty encouraged to get to doing it, so that’s neat.  I think next I want to work in education and exhibits to get a feel for those, but I would really enjoy being a curator.  Researching on collections is pretty rad.

I’m also making friends, somewhat slowly.  I am so glad that Amber and Sid moved down here with us because I think I would have gone crazy had I not had someone to hang out with while Kyle was gone for the weekend with debate.  I was supposed to go out for sushi with Rachel and Nancy tonight but Rachel can’t and Nancy got sick so we’re going to do it next weekend instead.  And I texted Amanda and I think I’m going out to Schooners later with her and presumably Heather which should be nice.  I liked them a whole lot when we were all at Chimy’s about two weeks ago.  Chimy’s is pretty badass, by the way.  They have really good happy hour specials from 4-7 and their fish tacos are craveable.

I put in a couple job applications in the last week.  One is for a museum event coordinator position that is part time at a city museum.  Only nights and weekends which would be great.  And the other is for an asistantship in the president’s office.  I think I’m super-qualified for the one in the president’s office so hopefully that works out. Both job searches closed yesterday so I hope to hear back soon.

So far, I’m finding lots of good ways to have adventures and I look forward to continuing to make my niche in Lubbock.

My weekend ends on Monday

Jess on September 8, 2008

And starts on Thursday. Baller.

I think I promised a blog sometime this morning about my weekend and it never arrived when promised, but here it is now! My weekend technically begins Thursday at 5:30 or whenever my class is out. This particular Thursday I had plans with the museum science girls to go to Wild West which is a hip hop and country dance club in the Depot. It was pretty… interesting. I had a good time even though I ended up only really hanging out with Nancy, Mary and Hilary. I really like those three girls though so it was fine. The night started with us meeting at Nancy’s where we pre-drank a little bit and then we got a cab from Hilary’s to Wild West. We watched people dance and got some cheap drinks and eventually met up with the other girls for a few minutes and then headed back to watching people dance. Texas clubs are so overwhelming during country songs because everyone two-steps. And it’s not like during hip-hop where if you have a partner you dance with them and if you don’t then you dance by yourself. Pretty much, you have to be dancing with someone. So my new goal is to make Kyle learn to two-step. We’ll see how that goes. (Hint: probably poorly). Since Kyle was home sick and watching 24 with Sid and Amber, I two-stepped once but mostly just danced during the hip-hop-ish songs.

Friday, Kyle stayed in sick again but mostly just sleeping and Sid and Amber and I went to the First Friday Art Trail. I was so impressed! I was worried that it would be too Georgia O’Keefe and I’m not really her biggest fan, also I don’t like a lot of Southwestish art which narrows out the Taos scene. It turns out there’s a lot of painters who do things that I really do like here and the art gallery selection is pretty huge, especially on first friday. I made a couple lists of artists I was particularly impressed with and plan to return first thing in October! Next time, with Kyle in tow. Also, at the trail, we learned that the Llano winery which is right around here is pretty good at making wines so now we have plans to go on a tasting! I’m excited. I haven’t been wine tasting since last Labor day when Kyle and I went out with Duran and Neely.

Friday, we decided to go to the National Cowboy Symposium on Saturday but instead we went to the Pow-wow which was free. Unfortunately, we showed up right as they took their hour dinner break so we left without seeing much and ended up not returning. The chuckwagon cook-off looked like a lot of fun though. There were all kinds of wagons about and the leftover smell seemed delicious. Hopefully we’ll make it next year before we leave.

Last night, new episodes of Entourage started on HBO and also their new series True Blood aired its first episode. I really liked True Blood and I think Entourage is going to recover from what was a lackluster ending of last season. Hopefully, at least. Jeremy Piven’s character is as appealing as ever and seems a bit snappier than I remembered him, but then, my love of Ari Gold is pretty unfailing in its sincerity. True Blood was really good too. Maybe I just love Anna Paquin. Maybe I just love vampires. Maybe most shows with pilots on HBO are good (though Rome I found not catching). Anyway, I’m excited for the next episode and I’m hoping Anna Paquin ceases to be blonde soon.

Speaking of blondes… I dyed my hair lighter. In bright lights it is the color of honey and it makes my eyes look pretty. Kyle seems to like it quite a bit and I figure that in six or so weeks I’ll go red so I’d rather go from already-lighter to red so my natural hair color doesn’t suck most of the luster out of the red. Or something. Anyway, I like how it looks.

Pictures are up at pulse of the new furniture in the house and stuff from the rehearsal dinner!

Are we really happy with who we are right now?

Jess on September 7, 2008

So I’ll admit that I’ve been listening to Moneen again. Sorry. I can’t really help it too much. I just like them so much live. And it seems that they’re in that category of bands that I seem to never outgrow.

The answer to the question is yes, by the way.

Kyle and I are both starting to recover from our colds. I feel a lot better every day and he’s starting to feel a bit better everyday though he is taking longer to get back to fully functional than I did. I basically annihilated this cold with sinus rinse and zicam. I’m convinced this cocktail is one of the best for knocking out a cold. I’m also pretty impressed that I managed to keep the cold from moving into my sinuses cos that would have made for a bad time while we wait for my new health insurance to kick in. Kyle’s still asleep this morning and I’m hoping that a really long sleep will knock all of the sick out of him before we have to start a new week of classes tomorrow. He doesn’t have class until tomorrow afternoon though so he can probably be sick for much longer.

We’ve been keeping house pretty well, despite our sickness, and I really really enjoy being married, at least after the first week. One of our wedding gifts from the Bearman’s was placemats. I think Shelley will be surprised that such a simple part of their gift has made such a huge impact on our apartment, but basically, the table that Kyle painted (which I think is beautiful, by the way) suffered a bit of damage on the way down here. The damage that’s really bad is limited mostly to the leaf, however, so we were using the table in the center of our dining area as a square. Now that we have placemats, combined with a table runner, we can cover up all the damage so our table looks even better. I’ll have pictures up in the gallery later. I took a bunch last night.

Yesterday morning I woke up at 7:30 which seems to be my body’s new preferred time to rise. I’m not complaining though, it’s nice to have a whole day at my command instead of just part of it like when I sleep in. I started thinking about the few things we still needed to do around the apartment to have it exactly to my liking and decided that a trip to Home Depot was in order to get things to build the bench we had our wedding party sign at the wedding. It’s the bench that was a section of the bleacher on which we got engaged that Dr. Wynn bought us. It looks great now with it’s white legs and can hold a person but will more likely hold my purse and his wallet and cd faces or whatever in our entry way where it sets under my other project of yesterday. I made, in honor of Nicky’s coffee table chalkboard on her wall, a chalkboard out of a 2×2 piece of plywood. It hangs above the table and suits the living room well, I think. I like the graininess of the plywood and I’m hoping that it catches a little bit of chalk so it really starts to look interesting. As it is, I do not yet have chalk so I need to get going on that. I’m anxious to see how it works! Since it’s so close to the door, I included some key hooks on it so we have a place to always find out keys. Haha. I feel like such a grown-up these days.

Alright, I have a lot more to say about last weeks social engagements but I will save that for my next entry when I’m a little farther in to my reading for the week. I still need to straighten up the house and get to the museum library at one so I can get back here quickly. I’ll post pictures and journal again this evening or this time tomorrow.

Wedding Re-Cap: Pre to Post Reception

Jess on September 3, 2008

When it became clear that having a catholic wedding would mean a long gap between the wedding and the reception, a lot of people—our parents, mostly—told us that people would leave in the gap. That turned out not to be that true. Instead, we learned that people would stay during the gap and go out and have a good time… hoping we would attend. So my day started at 8:30 when I woke up and watched some Homeward Bound and did not end until 2 a.m. when I excused the last of our after party guests.

After the ceremony a good smattering of our friends and wedding party members headed to Henry T’s where we joined them. I snagged some lunch, a blue moon, and an irish car bomb and we chatted for an hour and a half or so and then headed to Kyle’s parents party for their friends. I really enjoyed Henry T’s both because the buffalo shrimp sandwich is so delicious and because it was nice to get to really socialize with our friends as that is not always a gaurantee at weddings. We got to chat about the ceremony and laugh about parts. For instance, during the ceremony Kyle was like “My knees hurt” which was a result of us having to kneel through the whole ceremony. I said “mine do too.” and then he said “oh? wait till later.” I could hardly keep from showing shock and awe on my face. 🙂 Also, the priest was Indian and his accent made “fidelity” sound a lot like “fertility.” You could imagine this would perhaps cause some giggles during the ceremony as well. So we got to giggle about that finally at Henry Ts and spend quality time with the people we care about most.

Next, we were off to Kyle’s parents’ party for their family friends. It was nice to get to meet all of them there as I didn’t run into them quite as much as I’d hoped to at the wedding reception. I got to chat with some of their friends absent Kyle and get a good idea for how his parents friends are. Largely, it was just nice to put names with faces. All of Kyle’s parents friends seem really nice though and it was good to get to meet them.

After we left there, we went to check into our hotel room which was awesome. It was huge. Like a giant main room with a flatscreen HDTV and a dining area and a kitchenette that was mostly enclosed and then a huge bedroom with a jacuzi tub and a bathroom with a shower that was gigantic and didn’t have a water catch which looks stylish. It was bad ass.

So at about 5:15 or so we showed up to the reception site and did more photos with Karl until our guests started arriving at 6. The reception went so well! From 6-6:30 we mingled with guests then we did our formal entrance into the ball room and I announced that at 7 we would start toasts.

At 7, start toasts we did. James toasted us first. He told lots of cute stories like how I put off James meeting Kyle because I was worried James would disapprove and about the time that I went to bed and Kyle and James were hanging out and Kyle was literally at a loss for words to explain how much he loved me. He told the story of the time Kyle surprised me by driving 7 hours to hang out with me for a weekend I was expecting to spend apart from him. Then Nick toasted us. He was hilarious, as expected. He ended with a jibe on me being from Kansas. After that, I stood up to do my toast and my brother interjected to say that whether my last name was “Mylast” or “hisLast” or “MyLast-HisLast” or whatever I would always be “sis” to him.  It was really sweet and totally brought me to tears.  I then said my toast which was just a really long thank you to my parents for all that they’ve done.  I also explained how I think Kyle is like both of them because he’s sensitive like my dad and a fierce protector of me like my mom.

After the toast we got going with the cake cutting which was delicious.  My aunt’s cake was absolutely beautiful.  It was white cake with chocolate icing.  It had yellow polka-dots and chocolate trim.  Then their was a grooms cake that was a sunflower.  it was beautiful.  I really can’t get over how amazing it turned out.   And it was yummy.

We let people have some time to eat the cake and then we danced.  Jack’s Mannequin’s album got leaked last week so we danced to a song from that.  I know that it seems a little depressing but I think that the lyrics are pretty special to us:

These hammers and strings
Been following me around
From a box filled garage
To the dark punk rock clubs
Of 1000 American crowds
And my friend calls me up
She says, “how have you been?”
I say, “dear I’ve been well,
Yeah the money’s coming
But I miss you like hell.
I still hear you in this
Old piano, oh yeah.”
She says, “Andy, I know
That we don’t talk as much
But I still hear your ghost
In these old punk rock clubs
Come on, write me a song
Give me something to trust
Just promise you won’t let it be
The keys that you touch.”

Give me something to believe in,
A breath from the breathing
So write it down,
I don’t think that I’ll close my eyes
‘Cause lately I’m not dreaming
So what’s the point in sleeping?
It’s just that at night,
I’ve got nowhere to hide
So I write you a lullaby
A lullaby

These hammers and strings
Been following me around
Behind passenger vans
Through the snow, dirt, and sands
Of 1000 American towns
And my friend calls me up
With her heart heavy still
She says, “Andy, the doctors
Prescribed me the pills.
But I know I’m not crazy.
I just lost my will.
So why am I, why am I
Taking them still?”

I need something to believe in
A breath from the breathing
So write it down,
I don’t think that I’ll close my eyes
‘Cause lately I’m not dreaming
So what’s the point in sleeping?
It’s just that at night,
I’ve got nowhere to hide

To the sleepless, this is my reply:
I will write you a lullaby,
A lullaby.

Give me something to believe in,
So write it down,
I don’t think that I’ll close my eyes
‘Cause lately I’m not dreaming
So what’s the point in sleeping?
It’s just that at night,
I’ve got nowhere to hide

To the speepless, this is my reply:
I’ll write you a lullaby
A lullaby, a lullaby, a lullaby

Basically, to me, it describes how I’ve felt some of the times and how Kyle takes care of me when I feel really depressed.  He makes me feel so much better. And he is so good to me.

So after our dance and chat, I danced with my dad to “My Wish”  mostly we just held each other and sobbed 🙂  My poor daddy.  He’s such a good guy and I love him so incredibly much.

After all of that, we let Clay take control and he gave us the funnest dance I have ever been to.  There were lots of times that those of us on the dance floor thought “my goodness, we are never going to get a break!” and then he’d finally let us slow down and go get more drinks or whatever.  Gracious.  It was so much fun.

At about 10:30 or 10:45, we decided we should head back to our hotel to beat the rush to our afterparty.  We got back up to our room where Nick and Chris had delivered the kegs and started partying.  Clay and Janelle were able to come along with a lot of our guests and we had a stellar time.  Again, it was nice to spend some quality time with a small group of people.

All-in-all, I think I had the most fun wedding that I’ve ever been to and Kyle agrees.  As I’ve always assumed that brides and grooms have less fun than their guests at their weddings, I’m quite happy.  We had so much fun.  We’ve also gotten a lot of compliments on how beautiful and heartfelt the ceremony was and how much fun the reception was.  Later, I’ll have photos up at pulse. And I also hope to type up the full ceremony and get that preserved.  But I won’t really have time to do that until I get caught up on the notes I missed from last week.

Wedding re-cap: Pre-ceremony to vows.

Jess on August 31, 2008

I figure that while I am randomly awake at 8:25 a.m. (really, I’ve been up since 7 after going to bed at 2… ugh) I should go ahead and write a recap of the wedding, especially as I still remember lots of it.

The rehearsal dinner was Friday night. Rehearsal went well with the Bearman children running amok around the church. Then the caterer severely botched their job and for some reason decided the only way to compensate was to comp the whole catering. The catering wasn’t very expensive, in relation to how catering usually goes, but I’ll just throw out there that it was a much more enjoyable meal after it was free. Plus, even if they’d just comp-ed a little, they were totally still missing the correct amount of silverware for us so it would have gone poorly. This makes me glad that I went through a national chain instead of somewhere local, even though somewhere local would’ve gotten it right in the first place. The rehearsal was really nice in general though and I enjoyed getting to spend quality time with our best friends.

Basically, I woke up at about 8:30 or 9 yesterday and went into the kitchen where I found my boutonnieres safe in the fridge. I realized the night before that I had miscounted and that I actually needed 9 instead of 8, so i put a new one together quickly and then watched some Homeward Bound with my parents. I think except for the Father-Daughter Dance, the only/most crying I did yesterday was at the end of that movie because I forgot that Shadow actually did make it back over the hill so I was just as excited as the family was to find out he was returning too.

After the movie and my shower and hair-doing, I had to cut the stems off the bouquets for the bridesmaids and myself. This was hilarious as I held the bouquet and my mom cut the stems with a pruning shear and then the dog, Maco, who is the fattest and really likes to keep things for himself picked up all the stems as they fell and carried them back to his bed. Apparently they didn’t taste good because he didn’t seem too interested in keeping them from there, but he did enjoy catching them in his mouth and such.

Mom got sort of frustrated after the flowers because my dad and brother were taking forever to get ready, largely because they took forever to wake up. I pointed out that they were taking a separate car so it really didn’t matter if they were running late, her yelling at them was only making us late. So finally we left and got to the church at about 10-till-11.

Sarah started doing my makeup which looked beautiful and even better than it had in the trial. She did a orange/peach/pink eye shadow that was just beautiful and made me all sparkly. I don’t usually wear or even like makeup so I was glad that I really loved how it turned out. Karl started his day of photos with that one and we got going. It seemed to me that when my makeup was being applied was the only real chance I had to sit all day. Partially because, after that, I got into my dress which made sitting more of a decision than it had previously been. Also, I was just busy-busy after I put my dress on.

Eventually, we all made it upstairs to do pictures. Kyle and I did see each other before the ceremony, but first we took a picture of us holding hands unable to see each other from around the corner of the church. Then, we started to see each other. I think by that point it had just been so burdensome not being able to see him and trying to avoid him. I’m really glad we got to see each other because it gave us some private time before the ceremony.

Of course, he’s more involved in the early part of the ceremony than the bride, so I also enjoyed the quality time with the bridesmaid’s in which we chatted about whether I was really ready and if I was nervous and we made several jokes about jilting. In the end though, I just new that what I wanted to do was walk down the aisle and marry Kyle, and so that is exactly what I did.

I’ll say that I think the ceremony was beautiful and we got a lot of compliments on it. It also was nice cos it lasted a full 40 minutes which is about the time I was aiming for.  I, for one, only got a little quivery during the ceremony and mostly did not cry. I thought I would cry maybe when everyone stood for me but I was just so happy to see everyone that I just got exceptionally happy. Too happy to cry, even.

The readings worked so well and the homily was absolutely beautiful. He focussed on the examples of marital love that the Bible gives, from Jacob and Rachel in Genesis, to Solomon, to Tobias in Tobit. He mentioned a prayer in Tobit that was prayed by Tobias and Sarah: “Take pity on us, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.”

I am happy we were able to personalize the ceremony so much. Kyle and I went to a lot of work to figure out what would be best in our ceremony and I think our friends appreciated what was there. For one, we had an intercession about self-determination in marriage, civilly. Also, I think people thought it was cute that we prayed for debate, and maybe more so that we prayed for topical debates in the “Depth and breadth of the resolution.” Also, the priest announced as “Jess MyLast and Kyle HisLast for the first time as partners for life.” Which was cool. I wasn’t sure if the Church would do that partners for life thing since they sort of invented the “Man and wife” part. But at the very least I wanted “husband and wife” and they saw no problem saying our first choice.

After the ceremony, we basically were busy entertaining and being entertained from 2 p.m. until 2 a.m. which is a long time to party.  But I will try to get that post up soon.  I just wanted to make sure the wedding was recorded because people tell me I will forget it.

Wedding season

Jess on August 28, 2008

I’m back in Topeka for the wedding now. I basically feel like I’ve just been tying ribbons on everything I see for the last day and a half.  I actually partially destroyed my back for most of last night because I was in the same position, tying bows, for most of the day.  Gracious.

I just finished pre-prepping the flowers so they’ll be ready to turn into bouquets tomorrow.  Also, when they’re made into bouquets I’ll have some fridge space to store them until it’s time for the wedding and photos.  Just experimenting with the stems, it seems that they will fairly easily tie into bouquets so I’m not that nervous about it.  They’re a great size, and they’re also brown-centered sunflowers, a fact that makes me giggly.  Woo.  So now I think I might go unearth some extra sunflowers to do centerpieces with and I need to run to the store to stock up on 3 for 12 dollar filler bouquets.  I don’t want too much filler, but I’m hoping to find some craspedia so I can add that to the boutonnieres.

Tonight I have my make-up trial with Sarah.  I sent her some pictures of what I was thinking yesterday and one of them was a commercial modeling photo from a bridal magazine and I said “this natural look, but if you could tone down the apparent anorexia, that would be great.”  When I spoke to her about it later she was reading over my message and said “Oh wow, are you sure you want the anorexia gone?  I think this is a spontaneous decision and you should think about it more.”  It made me really happy that Sarah and I are still friends after all these years.  Lol.

Tomorrow, I wake up early and start tying bouquets.  Then I go with Kyle to get his tux, or if he doesn’t make it in to get there at opening, I finish the bouquets and then I’m getting a mani/pedi from a place out north.  I’m going french manicure on my hands and blue on my toes.  As I haven’t had a pedicure in ages, I’m so excited.

And for other life updates: I started class on Tuesday after Monday’s orientation and Sunday’s meet and greet.  Daily, I grow more and more convinced that Texas Tech is absolutely the best decision for me and I’m excited for how great the program is.  Also, I’m excited for the new friends that I’m making.  Everyone in the class seems pretty nice and I’m excited to get to know people better than just superficially.  I’m somewhat nervous that I’m missing out on important social bonding for the wedding, but I’m sure I can catch up.  And it’s not like I regret having the wedding now.  If anything, it’s really nice to have a chance to head home and see my family once more before I’m really moved for good.  Besides this is not kindergarten, friendships are not based on who is there in the first week.

Oh and I did make it through the museum last week, and I’m really excited to work with the collections.

Welcome to West Texas

Jess on August 20, 2008

I’m officially moved to Lubbock now. Moving went really well. I had everything packed and ready to go when Kyle came to load my stuff and then I helped him get the truck loaded when we went back to Blue Springs that night. We left the next morning after settling a debacle involving a pink tv. Here’s that story:

As a graduation gift, Kyle’s mom bought him a tv (for us). The TV was a really great deal at Nebraska Furniture Mart as they were trying to liquidate their Sony Bravio’s which were available in pink, red, or silver. Kyle went and picked it out and pointed to the silver one and said “I want this one.” and the guy sold it to him, they went around and picked it up and took it back to Kyle’s parents house where it sat in the hallway to the garage for the next month and a half. I told Kyle he should maybe open it but he was right that it would be a pain to get everything back in the box once it was set up and that we knew that was the tv we wanted so since it was covered by a warrantee, if it was broken we could just have them fix it and it wouldn’t matter that we couldn’t return it after thirty days. So Thursday night he picks the TV up from the garage hallway to carry it downstairs to get it in the uhaul and notices a sticker on the side of it that says “Pink.” For some reason, Sony decided the preferred way to warn someone about buying a pink tv when red and silver were available was a small sticker near the bottom of the side of the box. Not cool. So Kyle opened it to make sure it wasn’t just mislabelled and then we made plans to reroute to NFM before leaving town. This pretty much sucked and set us back a really long time as compared to if we could have just left town at 10 or 11, whenever we got around to leaving. At least NFM was nice about it. It helped that the TV had never came out of the box and that Kyle doesn’t look like the kind of person who ever would’ve have purchased a pink TV. instead of the 32″ Sony Bravio, we swapped it for a 32″ Samsung which I’m finding quite fantastic.

After that, we headed to Emporia where we had ice cream with Mallory because despite the fact that she’s one of my bridesmaids we’ve continued our trend of doing a terrible job managing to see each other even when we’re in the same town (which is also pretty rare, especially this summer when she only came in on weekends and i spent my weekends in Kansas City.)

We got in late with only one speeding ticket under our belt that it looks like can be resolved without us paying the insane fees. The one thing that sucks about dating someone who has mostly lived their whole life in Missouri is that there really are hardly any laws there and even less penalty for the laws that do exist. It’s hard to explain that in some places tickets are 207 dollars for 13 miles over the speed limit. Gracious. Kyle is correct that I would have gotten the ticket too and it looks like it’s all going to work out just fine without us being way poor for September.

Saturday Kyle’s parents showed up with our things and we had the truck/suburban unloaded in like an hour. And then we had most everything unpacked by afternoon on Sunday except for our books and our clothes. We bought some bookshelves but Sid and Amber are staying here until they get settled into their new place (Saturday) and I’m finding that I don’t really have the floor space to construct anything. Hopefully by Sunday I’ll be able to take a post pictures.

I’ve mostly spent this week trying to get things organized and getting settled in. I think I’m really going to like West Texas/Lubbock but I’m also sort of lonely as classes haven’t started yet and I have not yet made friends. It’s nice having Sid and Amber here to help me through some of that so I don’t just spend all of my time alone, but it also cuts into the time I have to spend by myself which is making me weird and antsy. As Joey says, I’m a queen of grey areas and he’s pretty much right. Basically I feel like I need time to spend in my own silence and contemplation and I can’t really get any of it. Plus, the only person I have long breaks from is Kyle and that’s not exactly what I wanted. I’m excited for classes to start and for me to start developing a large set of my own friends.

I also applied for a job today mostly because it turns out that I get bored not working.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll escape and do some museums? Sounds like a plan. I should probably peruse the Texas Tech Museum before I start working there. I meant to do that earlier this week and just sort of kept putting it off.