Week 1 Recap

My dad mentioned that he hadn't seen a blog in a while, and when he notices, that's a big indication that I should write another one!

This week has been one big learning experience, which I suppose will continue for the year (such as getting used to the lab, classes, etc.). I seem to enjoy my courses, and was delightfully surprised that I seem to remember a lot more statistics (err, basic statistics, but still) than the majority of my class! I'm positive it will get more difficult, but at least I'm optimistic for the moment! My memory and cognition class is going to be a lot of work, but so far it's a lot of fun too! Plus, the professor is very well-versed in memory, so it's easy to become interested because he's so excited about it.

I am basically in love with my office-mate, Robyn. On Friday, we were extremely unproductive by watching razor commercials and sung Kristen Chenowith songs. It's nice to have someone who has been in my position a few years ago and has insight to what I'll be going through! Plus, she's the biggest sweetheart in the world, so I can't go wrong.

On the cockroach front, today I had a rather large one come out of my faucet/up my drain/however they're getting into my tub. Regardless, I've been keeping a couple of inches in my tub so they drown, so I find them in the morning, drowned and dead (just the way I like 'em!). I bought some steel wool and put it where the shower head comes out of the wall--it was installed very poorly, so there's a huge hole. I don't think the cockroaches are coming out that way, but regardless, I'd much rather be safe than sorry. I bought a drain cover that looked to be fantastic, but alas, I can't get the damn old drain out (Daddy, help!), so that doesn't help me much. I Draino-ed the tub, though, so maybe that'll kill something...

I also made sure that all of my food was in ziplocks, such as the extra flour and sugar that aren't in my canisters (thanks, Anne, I love 'em!). I haven't had any bugs in my kitchen, but I hope to keep it that way! I also put all of Chloe's kitty food in a tupperware container, so hopefully that'll be a deterrent as well.

Oh, Mom and Dad, I forgot to tell you, while I was in Lowes today, I looked at the ceiling fans to see if they had the one that broke in my living room. They have the entire fan (for $99! Ah!) but not just the lighting fixture... :/ Ew.

Happy Labor Day tomorrow, and enjoy your day off! Miss you all!

So Far So Good

Today was my first official day of classes, and it turned out much more promising than yesterday so I have high hopes! It started off with Memory and Cognition, taught by a very fun-loving man named Dr. Charles Weaver III who is fascinated with memory and has a good sense of humor. In his syllabus, he stated that if anybody plagiarized, he would not only recommend that we be expelled from Baylor, he'd try to expel us from the gene pool. Good start, huh?! ;)

Then I spent the middle part of the day with Robyn (my office-mate) showing me around the lab and teaching me how to administer the WAIS and the WASI (creative titles by the same inventors, can you tell?!). She was also very helpful in directing me towards any resources I would need for the semester, and kindly let me borrow her notes from when she took Memory and Cognition--I'm seeming to find that in grad school, the more notes you have, the better, so I'm glad to have Robyn and her notes as a resource! She joked that I was her student and she was going to 'teach me the ways' as she was taught, and so I'm excited that she's so willing to show me around. She must remember what it's like to be a new grad student!

My last class (yes, I'm technically only taking two courses, but one of my courses is a research lab in which I administer tests, such as the WAIS, and code the data) was my statistics course. Every current grad student who has taken this class has some sort of horror story from it, citing it as very hard and time-consuming. I'm not too worried about the time I'll be spending as much as I'm worried about the content, but I have Robyn for help as well as Nathaniel (the other grad student in my lab) and the professor seems genuine. He is a lovely man by the name of Dr. Roger E. Kirk, who, literally, wrote the book on statistics. HERE is a link of him and his wife ballroom dancing.

His 16-page vita full of papers he wrote, books he authored, and awards he received cites that he achieved his Bachelor's degree in 1951, so I'll let you do the math. He has a lot of fun stories too, telling us all about how he wanted to be a trombone player when he was younger but had no talent, so he proceeded to take an aptitude test that told him he liked people and loved numbers. He laughed and said he hated people and numbers didn't make sense, but he stuck with it and has lived, eaten, and dreamed statistics ever since. Cool guy.

Other than that, stay tuned!

Holy Grad School, Batman!

I had my first day of grad school today, which, to say the least, was pretty anticlimactic. I taught my first lab session at 8am (ew, who takes an 8am course?!) and basically handed out the syllabus, told them my expectations, and then started lecturing. My lab is all women, and there were only ten students in class. My attendance roster shows sixteen, but apparently the others assumed there wasn't a lab or got lost. It went well regardless, and I'm pretty confident that I can teach the lab course pretty well.

Other than that, there wasn't much to do. I got to see my office--completely blank on my side, completely full of life on Robyn's side (she's my office "partner," a fourth-year student who attended undergrad at Baylor as well). I'm bringing in a small number of books and pictures tomorrow, hopefully to make it feel more like "home" considering I'll be spending a lot of time in there.

Christopher and I had a lot of fun while he was down here visiting, and Mother Nature decided to have it rain and thunderstorm almost the entire time he was down here so he wouldn't get overheated and hate Texas. :) We killed cockroaches (ugh, a small infestation in my bathroom and I can't get rid of it, so I'm spraying with bug spray at least twice a day), went to a Rangers game, and hugged a lot. It was needed! I played Susie Homemaker and actually cooked for him (insert gasp here)! We had a good time, and Chris fell in love with Chloe (but you can't have her, she's mine)!

Chris took this picture while he was playing with Chloe...isn't it adorable?!

At the Rangers' Ballpark in Arlington (yeah, that's the full name) an hour early

We had just finished watching "The Sandlot" where Hamilton Porter (the catcher) grows up and goes by the name of "The Great Hambino" (a play-on-words for The Great Bambino, Babe Ruth) and we saw this sign in reference to Josh Hamilton, a Rangers player.

It's 94º outside on a Friday night at 7pm! That's Texas, for you! Anybody find it ironic that Starbucks is a sponsor of the Rangers but you have to actually look for a Starbucks in Texas to find one?!

All smiles on the drive to the airport--sad but inevitable!
What's a roadtrip without a Sarah/Chris silly-face picture?!

Chris Comes Tomorrow!

I figured I'd update today since I probably won't be updating at all next week, because Christopher will be here! I pick him up at DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport) at 1:13PM, and I cannot wait! I'm very excited!

In other news, Wednesday was the day from hell. First the cockroach (actually, the American Winged Cockroach, and yes dad, they fly), and then another near-death experience. I'm sitting in my living room around 11PM at night, and out of nowhere, the overhead light turns on. I immediately look up at the light, and as my eyes glance up, I notice the glass cover to my ceiling fan light is falling down. (It's prudent to note here that the light turned on from the sheer force of the glass cover hitting the pull-light-switch.) It hits the ground and shatters, and I stare in disbelief. I come to my senses, grab Chloe and throw her into my bedroom and shut the door (and in retrospect, I probably should have made sure she didn't have any glass shards sticking out of her side, but rest assured, she's fine). I call my mom because I can't believe it happened, and while I'm on the phone with her, I'm looking around for the nut that was supposed to keep the glass cover on the fan--I can't find it, which is probably why the glass cover is now in a million pieces.

The shattered glass cover

The still intact outside rim of the glass cover
My shocked, "What the heck was that?" look (please note that I was about to go to bed and thus not as presentable as normal)!

Chloe is doing well, although she's becoming more mischievous. I ran to the post office and to get my car washed today ($1 Express Car Washes with free vacuum use on Saturdays, can't beat it!) and when I come home, I lay down on the couch. Chloe jumps up and crawls up to my chest (her favorite spot to hang out) and we watch TV. Then I notice that my hands feel a little grimy, so I go wash them, and then come back and sit with Chloe. I pet her for another ten minutes or so and realize that my hands are grimy again, and I start thinking about all the things that could be making Chloe this way. I look in the bathroom but can't find any make-up or powder she could've gotten into, and I don't notice anything different in the kitchen or bedrooms. I pick Chloe up and stare into her eyes hoping that they'll give something away, when I notice baby paw prints outside my fireplace. Oh yes, my baby kitty decided to take a romp in the fireplace. I haven't used it yet, but the woman who lived in my condo before I bought it did not seem to clean it well enough. I gave Chloe her second bath (but not after throwing her into the fireplace again so she realized the consequences of what happens when she goes into the fireplace) and she was surprisingly calm! She only tried to jump out of the bath tub twice, and didn't fight when I shampooed her! She gets very cuddly after baths though; I think she gets cold and just wants to be held. Here's a few recent pictures of her, because she's so darn cute!

"Dear Mom: Stop taking pictures of me! Love, Chloe"

One last thing to brag about: when my parents were here, we put up three shelves in my living room (and as amazing as they look, it was a bit of a struggle for all three of us). I was given five shelves from my mother and only used three of them, so I put another one up in my bathroom above my toilet for a "No Parking" picture that Chris took. Here's a picture of the shelf with a level--please note that it's in the middle and perfectly level! My mom taught me amazing measuring skills, and my dad taught me how to use an electric drill like a pro!

Yay for Sarah's handy-man skills!

Near-Death Experience!

I'm shampooing, and I look up, and there it is. The biggest bug I've ever seen in my entire life (my dad points out, "They say everything's bigger in Texas, well that's true about the bugs too!") is clinging onto the ceiling.

Just hanging out.

So I rush my shampoo job, and throw some conditioner in my hair, wash it out as fast as I can, and literally jump out of the shower to call my dad to see if he'll fly down to Texas to kill the damn thing for me. He won't. He tells me to grab the Hot Shot Kitchen Bug Killer we got when we moved in and to spray it to death. He tells me it'll be a quick death and when I express concern that it'll fly at me, he tells me it won't fly. It does. Meanwhile, I call Christopher hoping he'll fly down and kill it for me, but he laughs. I proceed to scream on the phone to him after I try to spray the bug, it climbs across my ceiling, down my cabinets, and FLIES to the outside of the tub.

That's when Chloe comes in and thinks it's a toy and tries to eat it.

I hang up on Chris, stop Chloe from playing with the bug ('cuz I'm trying to spray bug spray and don't want to kill her on accident!) and throw her outside the bathroom and resume spraying the bug. It then FLIES underneath the counter into a corner, where I gladly spray the thing for a good two minutes until it stops moving. It lies on its back, dead. Or playing dead, but I am not going back into that bathroom until I have to, and maybe suck it up in the vacuum cleaner so I don't have to see it. But it's huge, and I don't want to clog the vacuum.

It tried to kill me, but I killed it!

Okay, so maybe it wasn't trying to kill me. Maybe it was just chilling in the corner of my bathroom ceiling (please let me note that I notice it after my relaxing 20 minute bath where it was hanging over my head the entire time) and had no malicious intent whatsoever. But when you're at least three inches long (not including antennae!) and trespassing in my condo, you deserve to be killed.

I've included pictures just in case nobody believes me, but let me tell you, don't click on them to make the picture bigger unless you're brave, 'cuz it's gross. Fair warning.

The deceased.

A picture to show relative size...please note that this picture isn't zoomed and you can still see a great deal of bug. Yeah, that's 'cuz it was huge.

UPDATE: 2:14PM- I swept it up and put it directly into a bag of Chloe's dirty cat litter. Then I ran (literally) to the dumpster and threw it away. Mission accomplished.

What a Mail Day!

Today, the United States Postal Service did me proud--I received THREE letters and a package! I got a letter from Christopher, a card from his sister Katie, and a letter from Niki Lesniak (hi, Niki, if you're reading this, I miss you!). Plus, Mom sent me a miss you/congrats on your new home package...is she great or what? Here's a picture of the awesome "LAKE-->" sign she got me to put on my door. Isn't it perfect? I wish I could have put it on the wall next to my door, except that I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to put things up on "community" property...damn condos!

She knows me too well! She picked up three Obama '08 stickers for me at Whaling Days!

Here's Chloe, destroying the gift mom got her (okay, so it's not destroyed...yet!). It's a toy where it crackles when she plays with it, and although it's extremely annoying, it's quite easy to tune out. Plus, I can tell where she is at all times. The worst part is that it has catnip in it, and Chloe goes kitty-crazy!

I took my clothes out of the dryer and left it open to put some more in from the washer, and when I went back from putting the dry clothes away, guess who was hanging out in the dryer?!
Is she not the cutest sleeping kitty ever?!
Another cute-sleepy-Chloe picture. She loves to hide right here, because she's in a small space but I can still get to her. She used to sleep behind the couch, but she realized I can't come and pick her up so she moved to a better location.
And a random endnote, here's a picture of the card I made Katie to send back (we're pen-pals...loooove it!). If you look, the antennae, the smiley face, the feet, and the line across the bottom are actually sewn onto the paper. It turned out super cute, I'm psyched!
Other than that, life's pretty kosher at the Texan Lake Residence! Chloe goes in next week to get her 12 week shots (aww!) and I received my teaching binder for the lab I'm going to be teaching (ahh!). Wish me luck!
Love you all!