Just because

Just because I needed something of substance to post, here is a picture of my dining room table with all the furnishings. I have gorgeous, off-white satin placemats (for aesthetic pleasure, as I have Walmart ones to actually use) and deep brown cloth napkins on top (again, for looks). I also randomly bought fake orange calla lilies because I liked the contrasting color against the monotonous brown/off-white. I think it looks nice and classic, regardless of what Robyn says about orange flowers. :)


In other news, our lab signed papers to officially turn the copyright over to the journal for our antiepileptic drugs paper. Yay team! I have a statistics test tomorrow that I'm ready to kick butt on, and a chapter to present on Thursday in my Learning and Behavior class. Other than that, it's all downhill from here, baby! :) Love you all.

Jesus is a friend of mine

I have nothing to say, so I decided to show you my favorite video of the month of February. A shout out to my favorite Midway (and Vanguard, Riley) High Schoolers who also share my love for the best music video ever made. Check it out. You have to watch the whole thing because it's just so darn good.

Better video

Click here for the video

Uploaded it to YouTube so you could see it better! It's still ridiculously dark compared to how nice it looked on my camera (which is weird), but if you make it full-screen, it looks better. Notice the tree on the far left side, and then when the camera pans to the right, there's a tree that I'm focusing on. Good luck!

:)

88-mph winds!

This past week has been relatively uneventful, except for Monday night [Tuesday night? I can't remember...] which proved interesting to say the least. We were warned to be careful as there was a "storm" coming through--which was true, but only for 20 minutes.

Those 20 minutes, however, were intense! My lights flickered twice (and my lovely neighbor Sharon came over to make sure I had plenty of candles and flashlights, just in case). Waco experienced 88-mph winds and at least two stop lights (full stop lights with big support poles) were knocked down. A Chinese restaurant on my way to school had the roof ripped off, and a tree fell through the fence behind my condo complex and almost hit one of the buildings (there is a tiny bit of building damage, but apparently nothing that couldn't be fixed in a day because it's all clear and repaired now). Here's a picture of the tree.

Here's a video of the quick storm. It's about 30 seconds, but lightening strikes twice. In the summers, lightening storms are gorgeous because there's no rain and little clouds, so you can see the entire lightening bolt across the sky. In February, however, it is rainy and windy (you can see the trees swaying back and forth) and the lightening is less than awe-inspiring. Note that the background "shhhhh" noise is actually the sound of the pouring rain from inside my window. Sorry it's dark, but all I have is a camera that I pretend to use as a video recorder.

[Edit: I just re-watched the video on this blog, and it's ridiculous to watch because it's so dark...you can barely even tell how windy it is. If you want the actual video, let me know and I'll email it to you. The bigger version is lighter and you can see it quite well.]

I'm having a friend for dinner...

This weekend has been fun thus far, because my friend Tyler from college is visiting. He's practically like a little brother: he's a year younger, and would always come to me for girl advice in college. Anyway, he was thinking about looking at Baylor for a graduate degree (which I'm pretty sure was squashed, but regardless he came to visit anyway) and so I've been entertaining a guest all weekend.

He came here Thursday night, and I was a tiny bit late to pick him up only because I had to attack a Girl Scout to buy cookies (can we say "Thin Mints and Caramel DeLites," anyone?!). It was sunny though, so I drove him around Waco and showed him Baylor. I knew the forecast for the weekend was supposed to be pretty cloudy, so I wanted to be able to show him the campus when it was sunny and gorgeous outside.

On Friday, he wanted to go to Dallas to see the new Cowboys stadium (my dad said $1 billion!) and the Texas Rangers Stadium. Because I don't know Dallas or Fort Worth very well, we researched a little bit before we left and found a Ripley's Believe It or Not and a Palace of Wax (in the same building, of course) and decided to have a little bit of fun. I only have pictures of me because Tyler had his own camera, so we both have a ridiculous amount of photos of ourselves. Enjoy!

Hey mom, I got eaten by a shark.

I'm high-fiving the tallest man in the world. I have another picture of me standing in front of him and looking up, but it borders accidental pornography as my head barely reaches his crotch. I'll let you imagine it.

You know, just hanging out with my Batman friends. Tyler is a horrible photographer and didn't even manage to get the joker in the picture, but we'll forgive him...this time, anyway.

You know me, just hittin' on a grandpa. :) I promise, he's wax.

I frequently hang out with movie stars.

Then I decided to go on a multitude of talk shows, all at once. Here's me and my good pal, Oprah. She's lost a lot of weight, as you can see. I also have a picture of me on Mama Op's lap.

Me and Leno. I'm trying to make my chin as big as his, but I'm failing. I come close though!

Just hanging out with Dave.

We're excited to start working on interventions and other psychological problems together.

Harry Potter killed me with the Godric Griffindor's sword. Hermione didn't help.

Oh, you know, just feelin' the warmth of Ghandi (with our good friend Mother Theresa in the background).

Weeeee're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz! The characters look pretty real, but Dorothy's looking a bit gaunt, eh?

I look pretty fake here, because I am trying my hardest not to laugh. Jesus! "May the Lord bless you and keep you; May the Lord shine His light upon you."

My favorite picture of the night, so I'll end with it. Here I am with Dr. Hannibal Lector. I'm having a friend for dinner...

SHYC--isn't that a German cuss word?!

This weekend, I went on a youth retreat ("Senior High Youth Connection," otherwise known as SHYC and pronounced "shy-see") with the high schoolers of First Presbyterian of Waco. Although I had a great time, I must say that I am ridiculously happy that I'm not still in high school! I loved it and had a great three years, but after hearing tales of high school drama, I thank the ground I walk on for statistics homework!

:) So here's some pictures for you to pretend as if you're on the trip with me!

Here's Chloe, helping me pack. She's saying, "Aw, mom, can't I come?!"

This picture doesn't give this moment justice. Emily, one of the seniors, brought along her Hillary Clinton mask. Well one of the freshman, Sam, found it and decided to wear it while standing by the stairs on our bus and waving out the door to others. It was absolutely hilarious watching people react!

Here is Angie, Lindsay, and I waiting for energizers to start. Energizers are songs that have choreographed movements to "energize" the crowd--think The Wiggles but for high school students. Apparently they use the same energizers at every camp, because everybody else knew them but me!

Here is one of our juniors, Julian, singing "Amazing Grace" and playing the keyboard. He was the music group leader and did an amazing job keeping everybody singing and dancing.

Here are Pastor Dave and I, recreating a scene in which we got reprimanded by an older lady who told us to stop talking during open mic. For our defense, we weren't talking during the performances, only the break in between the performers. She got mad because she "couldn't hear the girl" introduce her song, but she hadn't even started yet! We thought it was humorous and recreated the talk.

Here is Emily (owner of the Hillary mask, which explains a lot) in her reflective vest and whistle as the lone ranger of the "PDA Patrol" (PDA = Public Displays of Affection). She said that at church camp, people get a bit too intimate during the dance portion of the activity night, so she went around making sure that people were behaving. It was quite hilarious to watch!

On the last day, we all decided to wear identifiers (bright green visors for the girls, light pink visors for the boys) as part of a group bonding activity. Here are Angie and I, representing Waco.

The weekend is set up as follows: A keynote speaker (this year, a British guy who looked a lot like Sid the Sloth from Ice Age) will give a speech, a drama team will act out a Bible verse, we'll sing some songs, and then go to our small group sessions. Most of your spiritual discussions are with your small group, and we had a total of five small group sessions over the three days. Here's a picture of all the girls in my small group.

And all the guys in our small group, plus our two fearless leaders who were seniors at Austin College (in Sherman, TX, which is where the retreat was held).

One last picture for humor, here's a billboard we saw on the way back to Waco. It says "Sara's Secret," and her secret is that it's a porn store. You have to admit it's hilarious!

There are more pictures on Facebook (in an album with the same title as this post) if you want to see more pictures! Love and miss you all!