Out of town guests and new sights in an old town

Jess on June 3, 2009

ReAnne is visiting from Topeka this weekend and I’m very excited to explore things about Lubbock that I haven’t visited even though I’ve lived here for over 9 months. She gets in Thursday night at about 9:30 so we’ll probably wait until my class gets out at noon on Friday to have any adventures.

I’m thinking shopping Friday and then going to the First Friday Art Trail, an event that I’ve only been present for and missed twice in the 9 that I’ve been available to attend. I missed it last month because Kristen and Stephen scheduled their barbeque for that evening and once when we decided to see Watchmen instead of going. I think it’s the best start to any month in Lubbock and I’m glad that ReAnne will be here for it. After FFAT, I think we’ll go to La Diosa Cellars and enjoy the ambience. Kyle and I first visited it last week to see one of the communication studies professors boyfriend’s band. Their Bella Riojo wine is about the only wine I’ve ever wanted to try twice, but they had me at “blueberry” and “strawberry” flavors in the description. Mm. Maybe we’ll also go to Melt. If Friday night had a theme it would be “Classy on the Caprock.”

Saturday, we’re barbecuing and then going to karaoke or maybe the dance club we like. Maybe during the day we’ll just relax, go grocery shopping and hit up the National Ranching Heritage Center and the Museum of Texas Tech University. There are two exhibits up—”Spectacular Spectacles” and “A Double-Edged Weapon”—that I have been waiting for her visit to go see. Plus, people like to see where I work when they visit, I’ve found. Possibly, it’s because I work at a museum. An office would be far less exciting, I imagine.

I am leaving the rest of the weekend to fate, letting whatever happens happen. Maybe we’ll go to the wineries around Lubbock. Maybe we’ll try to find some prairie dogs. Either way, I’m excited for her to visit and to see some new things that I have yet to visit here.

Another Monday feeling refreshed

Jess on February 9, 2009

I’m planning on redesigning the content presentation of my website.  I would like to possibly eventually turn it into a portfolio, maybe through a url with my name or something of the sort, of all of the various things I do.  I want to start taking and publishing more photos for the sake of amateur photography.  I have a holga.  That is the best thing to do.  I want to create a digital recipe archive, a sort of digital cafe, of all of the delicious things that Kyle and I cook.  I want to start reflecting on more important issues than what I did with my day.  I’m sure that I’ll always keep a blog similar to the format of this one.  I started blogging at opendiary when I was 14.  It’s just engrained in me at this point.  More than half of the time that I’ve been able to write, I’ve invested my journalling energy on the blogosphere.  But, I realize, I’m somewhat outside of it.  I want to be able to use this domain to communicate with more than a few of strangers and some close friends.  I’d like to let people in my family know that it exists.  I think it could help keeping in touch and those sorts of things.  So expect a content redesign soon.  Although, I must say, I’m obsessed with this ugly color combination I’m using  so might as well keep it up.

Class and things are going very well.  I’m enjoying the intellectual stimulation for a change and I especially like my Islam class.  I’m really enjoying being in the groove of friendships.  I started going to the local coffee shop and that has somewhat helped.  I don’t know that I realized how much I feel like I fit in when I start recognizing people I don’t know from places that we both tend to frequent.  Maybe I’m just part of an unfortunate generation overexposed to Friends, but I think it’s more about loving the familiar.

Kyle has been in San Diego this week for a debate tournament.  I think he had a good time, and I sure missed him.  It’s nice to have the apartment to myself so I can sleep in easier in the mornings and get things done at my own pace with no regard for someone else’s plans or needs, but when it comes down to it, I miss him dearly.  I’ve been very nostalgic lately for the early days of when we were first dating.  Our two years of being committed to each other relationship is this week and I think I’m just considering what it’s been like getting to know him and letting him get to know me.  I really feel blessed, we’re so happy.

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!

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.

We have it re-hashed

Jess on August 2, 2008

Moving out is going a little bit more quickly. I have my entire room basically packed, now I’m just cleaning it and actually throwing away the stuff in my drawers I decided I didn’t want (mostly trash anyway). Since Kyle and I finished the garage a few weeks ago, I just need to do the same in there, cleaning up and throwing things out and I have some other odds and ends to pack. Next is the major task of going through my book collection. I think my goal is to sort things in four piles:

1. books borrowed that should get returned which is a short stack.
2. books i’m going to sell which will mostly consist of books that are contemporary and not my absolute favorite that i’ve purchased and read and will not read again or feel the need to loan out. i’ll probably try to take these to lubbock with me and then liquidate them from there through some source or another, i’ve been thinking about bookmooch.com which would mean giving them away or maybe even half.com or trying to sell via normal used means like used bookstores, half.com and other places.
3. books i’m going to keep at my parent’s house which is a pretty large collection but mostly children’s books because i’d like to keep a lot of the one’s that i like and then some classics that i’ve already read.
4. books i’m going to take to lubbock and keep which is mostly contemporary books which i have purchased but not read and classics which have also not been read. and then of course my favorite authors books who i like to have around so i can loan them out. really, i should start loaning books out more

    My bachelorette party and bridal shower are next Saturday and I quit the cap-j next friday. Quitting the cap-j is leading to a period of terror as I have not been unemployed for a period greater than two weeks since I was just barely sixteen. So now I’m thinking that living in lubbock means I should look for a job, with or without going to grad school. I think I basically just have cold feet about going to grad school for something that wasn’t necessarily my first choice.

    The thing is, I think it is a great choice and a good option and after my internship which ended last week, I am really excited about the prospect of working in museums. I have just been a little hesitant due to some family issues in the last few weeks stemming from financial problems my cousin and his wife are having. Ack. Marriage is a scary institution that should not be entered lightly and I’m not sure that taking on so much debt for something I’m not positive I want is the best way to alleviate all that. Taking two years off and taking another shot at history might have me ending my life more fulfilled at whatever point that is, but then museum science offers so many wonderful possibilities as well. I chatted with Cara about all of this the other day and she had me more excited about museum science than I had been for the few days prior to the conversation so now I think i’m just going to investigate some part-time work in addition to grad school instead of full-time work in lieu of. But let’s be honest, I’m looking pretty heavily into both options and putting in some apps and places I think I would like to work.

    I’m very excited to get to Texas and have the wedding happen. Only 4 more weeks to the day! Eek!

    Changes everywhere

    Jess on July 24, 2008

    I’m completely overwhelmed by the moving process. From buying furniture, figuring out how to move the furniture, and getting a new vehicle for Kyle, it it just too much. Not to mention getting ready to start classes at a new school. At this point, the wedding is such a secondary cause of stress.

    The camera came yesterday. I really like a lot of its features. Now I’m just wishing I had some things to photograph. My plan is to go out and about around Topeka and take pictures of things I’ve been meaning to photograph but I don’t know when I’ll get around to doing that. I’m also making a decision about whether I want to stick with Flickr for photo posting or take advantage of the webspace that I have. I’m thinking I should probably only use flickr for minor things, and I’m probably going to install Gallery 2 for image management on cranewife. Hopefully this works out the way I want it to but if it seems too cumbersome to me, I’m ditching it. I wish flickr was like wordpress and I could host it remotely without paying 25 extra dollars a year for space. I guess that seeems whiny cos 25 isn’t really that much to go pro but I only pay 25 for all the space I have here so that’s quite a chunk of change when I don’t feel like I’m necessarily getting the full bang for my 25 dollars here. Though, I must say, I love wordpress much more off of wordpress.com, even if i understand why wordpress.com would want to limit your features so you can’t muss up their site.

    Another slow week, waiting for the arrival of July

    Jess on June 27, 2008

    I am in the worst mood for some unknown reason.  I even have reasons to be glad like Kyle is in town tonight and I have a clean room to go home to because I spent all afternoon working on it.  For some reason, there is not enough time in the day and there is too much time until the summer is over and I get to move into an apartment with Kyle who will then become my husband.  Maybe I’ll cheer up soon.

    My mom and I are still getting along really well so I hope that keeps happening.  It’s nice.  Every evening when she gets home we sit outside and chat until it’s time for me to go to work.  It’s this sort of getting along that I’m really going to miss when I move away, but I’m sure we’ll keep in touch on the phone and things.

    On the brightside, I no longer think that staying at home would bring on bouts of depression which is a big plus because I’ve mostly felt that way for my entire life.  There is a chance that three days without a whole lot of structured things to do is like my critical point where I feel like I have a lot to do without feeling like I have too much time to do it.  We will see, I suppose.

    Kyle and I officially move on August 15.  We even have an apartment number already! Yay! 203B!  For some reason, I’ve gotten impossibly excited after figuring out what apartment will be ours.  Maybe it’s related to being able to finish the wedding programs, hah.  I still need to discuss it with him, but I think the plan is for his parents to go with us when we first head down and help us move in the furniture and basic things and then for my mom to accompany us, Logan and the wedding gifts when we head back on Labor Day after the wedding.  It should be a good time.  And I’m excited to get there.

    Also, this past week I have been very good with money which is good because I am on a budget.  Go me.

    Here's your future

    Jess on June 11, 2008

    I got word on Monday evening that I am officially admitted to Texas Tech’s museum science program. Now I need to decide some things. Basically, I need to decide by December or sooner whether I want to do all of my correlative courses in history or art history or what. It’s sort of hard to say. I’d like to get into those courses quickly because I find that I tend to better mesh with historians than art historians. Although, I also really like the museum people that I’ve met so far in my internship. Of course, they’re contemporary art and not anthro/history/traditional art museum people. Also, it looks like Tech isn’t really teaching any graduate level courses in African history, or really any undergrad ones either though that doesn’t matter. Plus, they don’t have an actual art history masters program. This is fine, cos they have courses in art history at the graduate level and I don’t need enough of a course load to get a terminal degree in art history. They offer a masters in art education which requires plenty of art history courses so I can basically take whatever art history sections interest me as long as I only care about the west (this is basically true of all art history as art history is way behind regular history in realizing that something happened outside of the european tradition). So I’m thinking about taking intro to feminist thought course and then some contemporary art history. They have a graduate course on basically the art profession in its current state which I think would be super applicable for a career in museum law. It’s also possible for me to take courses through the law school on whatever strikes my fancy. I’m pretty sure that art and museum law is cross-listed in both programs which means that there isn’t necessarily a lot of courses that would be worth my while. Especially as law courses seem to be somewhat or completely impossible to transfer I think it would be better for me to just take mostly electives in art history or history or some other field rather than taking classes that I would essentially need to take twice.

    I am pretty much elated to be in. It’s nice because it guarantees that I have something to do in the fall and I no longer have to say that I’m only like 95% sure I’m going. I also feel good that my official admissions decision came without any strings being pulled. Although kyle and i had offers from both Joe and the chair of the comm. department at TTU to pull strings for us, it turns out that will not be necessary because I can go to graduate school on my own merits.

    I’m so excited to start school, now. I just want to get to Lubbock. We also got word that we’re good to go on the apartment down there and they are willing to pro-rate our rent for August so we don’t have to worry about paying full price to only live there half the month. Our current plan is to quit work by August 8 and then move there the following week. This should give us some wiggle room if we need to stick around for things like cable to get set up before we have to start class on the 25th and then fly back on the 27th to get married on the 30th. Oh blast.