Say Yah to da UP, eh? Or...Hey Y'all to Tejas...Take your pick!

Belive it or not, I have survived yet another week in the great state of Tejas. Since my last entry, things around where I'm currently living have been pretty normal. I've been working out religiously, spending my token 40 hours/week at my internship, and trying to spend time with friends before school starts. At work things have been pretty steady. I've been trying to inventory some of our rotating equipment which has been an adventure in itself. Since our plant is many many years old, things have changed hands and changed formats so many times that some of our lists have become a bit inaccurate. As a result, I have been given the task and opportunity (if you want to be optimistic and call it that) of making this collection far more accurately documented. So far this whole endeavor has actually gone quite well. I'm yet to throw any computers in the general direction of the wall or trash can so that has been a plus. In addition to that, most everyone I've hit up for information has been pretty easy to squeeze data out of.

On the flip side of my life here, I've been able to spend a decent amount of time enjoying the gym. Anyone who knows me well also knows that I am proud of my obsession with the gym and exercise in general. Surprisingly enough, I didn't even really start lifting weights much until last week. I've mostly just done cardiovascular exercises and left it at that. It has felt good to get a little lifting in yet again in preparation for the lifting I plan to do back at home. I've definitely enjoyed getting my cardio endurance up significantly again. It feels good to be able to walk out of a spinning class and still be able to stand up and breathe. It's definitely an accomplishment.

This last weekend I was able to tag along to a fellow intern's family's lake house about 100 north of where I live. It was great to have the opportunity to meet new people, get back to nature, and spend a few days caring about nothing other than a lake, some food, and how much sunblock I need to pile on to stay un-lobster-fied. (I know it's not a word, but if you've seen me with a sunburn you know it's a reality.) From Friday to Sunday, we got the chance to cook many awesome meals, spend two afternoons on the lake, and enjoy some quality game playing time around the house. In addition to having many people up at the house, we also had a grand total of six dogs -- a Weimereiner, three labs, and two German shorthairs. The dogs were totally ridiculous, but it was nice to have them around. Probably the scariest part of my weekend was going out on the jet ski with my friend's step-sister and her friend. I ended up sitting in the back of the jet ski while the driver tore it up. Needless to say, I did not fall off, but I think the girl in the middle couldn't breathe for 90% of our ride because i was bear hugging her the entire time. My legs are also incredibly sore from squeezing onto the jet ski like my life depended on it. In retrospect, I probably could have induced far less pain on myself if I had just fallen off the jet ski, but at the time my #1 focus was not going flying and for the most part, it worked. It definitely felt good to get a break from the usual for the weekend and I am very appreciative that my friend's family and friends were so welcoming to my pale Northern self.

Aside from my adventures near and far from town and challenges at the gym and at work, I seem to be surviving living far far away from home pretty well. I have to admit that of all my "far away" experiences so far, this is probably the one that I've missed home the most during. I guess I had a decent amount of homesickness in Ireland because of some challenges I had with my host family, but I think the bulk of my homesickness here has come from missing many of my cloest friends and family memebers who are still up north or, in some cases, all over the US or even the world. I know that before I know it I'll be right back home and wishing I was away again, but for now it makes me a little sad that I can't drop in on my close buddies for a good laugh. In retrospect, I could technically fly home for a weekend before I get done, but I would prefer not to have to do all that traveling when I'm just going to be home in 5 weeks anyway. I guess it's kind of like what they say about relationships...when you're in one, you dream of being single because of the advantages of being unattached, but when you're single, you do just about anything to be in a relationship because you may miss some of the perks of having someone around. Either way, you're still dreaming about something you don't have at the time. In the same way, I've been dreaming about the perfect weather in Michigan, seeing my friends and family, and being able to enjoy some of the perks of Michigan summer. But I also know that if I was in Michigan right now I'd be cursing the cool nights because I'd feel like summer was going to pass through my fingers before I could enjoy it, my family would be driving me a little nutty, and I'd be wishing I could visit other places while I had the time. What a paradox.

I guess that's about all for this week. It looks like I'll be making another trip to Baton Rouge this weekend so hopefully I'll have some more yummy food pictures to post!

Time Flies

Yet another week has passed in the land of gators and mudbugs. That leaves about 6 weeks left until I venture back home. Lately things haven't been too eventful around here. Work has been pretty steady and I've been enjoying my evening workouts and hanging out with friends. This weekend has been pretty calm as well. Friday was my day off so I got to enjoy some much needed R & R. I was also able to pick up a gig tutoring one of my co-workers' daughters for her upcoming math exam. Saturday was pretty calm as well. My roomie and I went to see "My Sister's Keeper". It was probably one of the saddest movies I've seen in a while. The waterworks didn't quite match seeing "P.S. I Love You" the first time, but they were definitely in one of the Top 10 of Waterworks Shows. The other highlight of our day was hitting up a pool party with some of our friends.

Beyond all that, things are pretty normal here. I'm starting to looking forward to coming home in a few weeks. Now that a lot of the "new Texas smell" has worn off (that smell is a lot like bad gas from all the sulfur) I've been missing seeing friends and family back home. Plus it'd be nice to not sweat just from breathing. I know that the trade off is going to be way more cloudy days and a whole pile of snow in a few months, but when I get home in a few weeks I'll be okay with that. Until the snow falls of course. Then I'll be ready to move again.

Time to get some of my errands done for the day and get ready for another week at work.

Half Way There (But Where is There...!?)

It's hard to believe it, but I've officially been working in Texas for 7 weeks now and have reached the half way point of my internship! Reflecting back on my experiences so far, living down here has actually be better than I expected. I've gotten to do things I never thought I would, met a whole lot of fun people, and have just been pretty happy in general. Even though I've moved far away to places where I don't know a soul and survived before, you never know what is going to happen somewhere new. It makes me happy that I've been able to make this experience my own yet again. : )

Now let's get down to some of my adventures this past week. One very fun part of my Monday last week was getting to meet up with one of my bosses from school to have dinner and catch up. It was great to see her and the restaurant we went to had really good food! It's a little surprising sometimes how nice it is to meet up with a person from your life at home while you're far from it. We had a great conversation and it was totally worth spending part of my evening driving back and forth.

As far as work goes, this week was pretty normal. I had my midterm review on Wednesday which actually went really well. My bosses really took it more as an opportunity to help me communicate my progress and less of an opportunity to tear me a new one. That is always appreciated. I like that I know what my group is expecting of me my last 7 weeks and what I can do to get everything completed.

Hmm...one very cool event that I was able to particiate in this week was the Soulsafest put on my City Dance Center in Beaumont. This is event is a combination of a workshop during the day and a social dancing/performance event at night. The way the workshop went down is that there were 4 hours of classes (samba, salsa 1 & 2, and hip hop). I ended up doing all the classes except for samba since I got a late start getting to the dance studio. The teachers were great! We have Salsa Eddy and Lucia D (I don't remember her last night at the moment) come in from Houston to teach and then to perform later on that night. Eddy taught the salsa classes and Lucia taught the hip hop and samba classes. They definitely did a great job and I think everyone who attended their classes felt totally welcome and like they learned a whole lot. I had never actually taken a class in hip hop or salsa so it was a great experience! Our hip hop class learned part of a routine for "Boom Boom Pow" and our salsa classes learned about 9 salsa moves to use on the dance floor that night. To say the least, I was TOTALLY pooped after 3 hours of dancing.

After recovering a little back at home, a couple of us met up at a southern cuisine restaurant for the social dance and performance portion of the night. Probably the best parts of the performance were Eddy and Lucia dancing salsa and also Lucia's dance company doing a samba with full Carnival head dress and a whole lot of glitter. We also got to dance before and after the performance to some salsa, merengue, reggaeton, and a few other kinds of Latin music that I can't remember off the top of my head. It was a great time! Even while I was driving home I was thinking about salsa beats. It was kind of like how after you get done ice skating, you still feel like you're gliding for a while. In the same respect, it took at least an hour for me to recover from thinking in terms of salsa.

That about sums up my weekend. Today is a lazy day around here. I just need to take care of some stuff around the apartment and hopefully get some errands done so that I have groceries for the week. Plus I need to recover from some of my aching muscles. Dancing all day then dancing all night in heels definitely wears you out!

This coming week should be pretty calm around these here parts. I have Friday off so I still need to figure out what I'll be doing for the long weekend. Beyond that, it's all open for interpretation.

Austin's Still Weird...We Checked.

A view from one of the Woodburn House's Porches

Phew! What a weekend! I'm proud to say that running off to Austin for the holiday weekend was definitely a great adventure. Thanks to the wonder of 9/80 schedules, I was able to take a 4 day weekend and have my mom fly down to Texas.

The first thing on the agenda on Thursday afternoon (after driving like a bat out of hell to get to the airport at the right time) was to pick up Mom from the Austin Airport and check into our B & B in Hyde Park. Here's a picture of the Woodburn House where we stayed:

Woodburn House B & B

Way cool, right? This house was pretty amazing! We had the entire 3rd floor to ourselves which included a huge bathroom with whirlpool tub and two bedrooms. One bedroom had a king-sized bed and desk then the other had a TV and sofa along with a twin bed. In addition to the fun room, the proprietors of the B & B were super nice and made aaaamazing breakfast! The other people staying there were really nice, too.

Now back to Thursday. After getting settled in at the B & B, Mom and I went out to find some dinner, do some shopping, and I got to surprise Mom with something I've been working on for about a month. Mom's favorite massage therapist moved to Austin about a year ago so I googled her and organized a massage appointment on Thursday night. I wanted it to be a surprise so after we got done shopping I just drove over to the yoga studio and when Mom asked where we were going I just said I had to run a quick errand. Mom was SO surprised when we walked into the studio and her MT was standing there. Then she was even more surprised when she found out that I had scheduled a massage. : )

Friday was our main adventure day. We checked out the Stevie Ray Vaughn Memorial, walk the River Trail, checked out ZIlker Park Botanical Gardens, had lunch at Guero's, shopped at SoCo (South Congress Ave.) and went on a long walk around our neighborhood. Our final excursion of the day was checking out the Whole Foods Headquarters. Holy food heaven! That place was amazing! We even ate dinner there! Here's a preview of some of my garden pictures.

Saturday and Sunday were a little more relaxed for us. Our main outings included visiting IKEA (complete OD on Euro home furnishings), Oasis on Lake Travis, and the Texas History Museum. The Oasis was really impressive! That pretty much sums up our weekend! My computer is running out of battery so I'm off to charge it and continue on with getting ready for work tomorrow. More pictures to come possibly!

Is It Hot Enough for You??

Greetings from the South! I sit here today with even more adventures to report on and with much more significantly sunburned skin than I had last time I wrote. This last week has been a total whirlwind with work, traveling, and getting things in order.

The biggest work activity I had this week was attending an intern kick-off event about 100 miles away. While it was great to get out of town, after driving 8+ hours the weekend before the event, I wasn't too enthusiastic about clocking another 4. Unforuntately, I caught some stress on the way to my hotel because I was planning on picking up a friend from the airport and waited around for an hour to find out that his flight was delayed enough that waiting any longer was futile. While that stunk, I had the opportunity to call several of my friends and family members to catch up with them. The other stressor was that when I arrived at the hotel I was hungry, but wasn't able to eat due to a series of events until about 11 pm. I'm not a huge fan of being super hungry so that naturally wasn't awesome for my mood.

The other stressor for that trip was losing my keys until 5 pm the next time. Turns out they were just in the pocket of my bag. Silly me!! The actual kick-off event went quite well. I got to catch up with friends working for my same company in several locations and also meet some new people. It was fun to see people I met at onboarding a month ago who can now give feedback on their projects and experiences with living somewhere new. I even got to catch a yummy Greek meal with a friend from high school. While the trip as a whole was pretty stressful, there were definitely some perks to getting away from my small town and seeing friends.

The rest of my week at work was pretty quiet and allowed me time to get in a good workout at the gym and catch up on some sleep. On Friday afternoon I was so tuckered out after work I passed out for about 1.5 hours. In that time I rocked some REM sleep and had a random dream about a shark. It had something to do with being in a huge pool and the person in front of me didn't believe there was a shark coming our way because their back was turned to it. I'm not quite sure how I managed to dream about something as random as sharks, but that was what I dreamt about. Aside from about one night a week, for the last 5 or so months I've been having incredibly vivid dreams. The other night I had one about getting an IV in my arm and was actually in physical pain in my dream. I woke up when i couldn't handle the pain and looked over at my arm to find it painless and without any odd holes.

My main adventure this weekend was going canoeing/kayaking with about 20 people from work at a creek 30 miles north of where I am staying. Even though it was super hot outside, we all managed to have a great time splashing around in the creek. I ended up renting a kayak to alleviate a spot in a canoe for someone else and was very happy with my decision. Kayaking is definitely a great time and a worthwhile activity. The way our trip was setup was that we had about a 4 mile stretch of creek to cover. We did the first 2 miles in about an hour, stopped for lunch/to cool off, then finished up the last 2 miles. There was definitely a significant difference between the two lengths of creek. The second half had way more shallow sandbars that required getting out of the boat or grunting your way through so it was quite a bit more strenuous. There were also several more trees over the creek so maneuvering was a bit more difficult. I'd say if the water was 1-2 feet higher the entire trip probably would have been better for actual canoeing. Other than that, it was really nice to get out in the sun and be outdoors without a flame retardant suit on.

After getting done with canoeing, quite a few of us came back and had a little pool party. We all had a fun time and enjoyed the cleanliness of chlorinated water. By the time the sun set, any of us who were pasty enough to get a solid sunburn were glowing like a light bulb. My sunburn is a combo of a deep face burn (minus where my sun glasses were), some funky lines on my legs, and some lovely stripes on my shoulders. None of it hurts too bad, but I definitely look pretty funny. I'm sure I'll get a number of comments tomorrow at work about my brightly sunburned face.

That about sums up my weekend down South. I'm very excited to meet up with my mom is Austin this weekend so explore the town with the motto "Keeping it Weird!" After my last trip there a few weeks ago, I've been looking forward to participating in even more activities around town and checking out more of some of the super yummy food Austin has to offer. Hopefully I'll get some fun shots to post on here next weekend so y'all can see what kinds of trouble we got into. : )

A Few More Weekend Shots

Mmm..manicotti!

Sans Cheese

Just About Ready!

Close Up of the Apple Pie

Bob the Neighborhood Punching Dummy Sporting His New Shades and Swimwear

A Foodie Weekend

Before I hit the hay for yet another hectic week at my internship, here's a summary on some of the weekend events for y'all.

Thanks to the beauty of 9/80 work weeks, I was able to have Friday off work and catch up on a little sleep. As a result, I was also able to spend a little bit more time at our friends' weekly BBBQ (the extra B is meant to be there). The guys made lots of shish kabobs which turned out pretty well. My roomie and I brought a pan of brownies and a few extra beverages to keep our thirst quenched since the average temperature around here at night is still around 80 degrees (yaaaay sweating).

The highlight of our BBBQ adventure last week was definitely dancing salsa around the kitchen with six other people. There's nothing more fun than convincing male engineers to dance! Especially something involving hip movement. Some guys get it...and some look like they have a steel rod connecting their hips to their shoulders. Kudos to the guys in this work that give dancing of any sort a try. Girls notice that you're trying even if it's awful and needs practice.

After a solid 8 hours of sleep Thursday night (yesss!), I got ready to venture over to Baton Rouge to visit one of my Northern dojo family friends. It was great to catch up with him and meet some of the friends he's made while working down there. We both agree that moving down here practically requires a passport. We have endless stories about witnessing creative acts of driving and hearing "Is it hot enough for you?" every time someone spies that we're from the North. Yes, it is hot enough for me thank you very much!

Saturday was our main adventure day. Since the heat index was over 100 F, we decided to do something that involved air conditioning and cooking seemed to be the best choice. Here's what was on our menu for the day:

• Manicotti -- Noodles and sauce made from scratch with sausage in the ricotta filling and ground beef in the sauce. All topped with some provolone cheese.
• Fresh Apple Pie -- Made from scratch. Apples from a fun little produce market down the road.

Here are some pictures from the results:

Saturday was also a good day for movies/TV. I watched Taken for the first time. Let me just say that Liam Nieson is a total BA! That movie was fantastic. The way they connected the small details was really great. I was at the edge of the couch for a solid hour clutching the nearest pillow. I probably looked a little strange, but it was well worth it. The other movie for Saturday was my second viewing of The Hangover. Of the random party/guy flicks this one is probably one of the good ones. It's definitely random, sporatic, and profane, but that's what makes it good. To top of the two flicks from Saturday, we also watched a solid amount of the Food Network. Yay for having friends who are into food as much as you are! It helps when you're so stuffed from a huge home cooked meal that the food you're too full to start wanting to cook what you're seeing on TV.

The last adventure of the weekend (besides my adventures in traffic in the bayou) was catching up with a friend from high school. This is a true testament to the fact that I remember people/keep friends for a long long time. My friend and I went to summer camp together the summer before our sophomore year of high school on the west side of Michigan. Her big sister was my cabin's counselor so she became an adopted member of our cabin. We shared two weeks of summer camp together which included snacking on terrible amounts of junk food, suffering through hours of concerts and walking countless miles through the forest. Given that she is from Louisiana, it has been hard for us to see each other often. We met up again the winter of our junior year of high school, but since then have only really kept in contact through the powers of instant messenger and Facebook (whooo for social media!).

Today we were able to get together for a late lunch to catch up on the last...5 years(?). It's funny how time flys and how you can pick up where you left off after many years and lots of changes. We've both dealt with a lot and changed our lives quite a bit, but essentially we're still addicted to Gardetto snack mix, can handle living in the Michigan woods like champs, and truly appreciate hot water after a long camping trip.

My final adventure for the day came in the form of traffic. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Louisiana, there is a portion of land outside of Baton Rouge where normal roads are just not enough. There are about 20 miles of bridges across the bayou. Unfortunately, the westbound portion of these bridge had crazy traffic today. I think I sat in traffic on these bridges for at least a half hour going no more than 10 mph. Fun, right? The best part was feeling the vibration on the bridge as traffic from the eastbound side zoomed along. While talking to my friend, we concluded that if the bridge failed I would be in some serious poo-poo. About 15 feet below the bridge was some serious bayou action. I'm talking mudbugs, gators, a variety of leaches and a smattering of parasites that could make itch for days in all sorts of terrible places. Luckily, the civil engineers knew what they were doing when they built that bridge and my air conditioning pulled through so the drive home was successful. For anyone who is in around the Bridge City area, definitely try driving over the bridges in the evening when all the lights are on at the refineries/chemical plants around there. It was a really cool sight from the top of the bridge.

I guess that just about wraps up this last weekend. More updates to come as events unfold!