Things I was "never" going to do

For some reason, I've been sitting here thinking about all the big milestones, events, and activities in my life that I said I would "never" do. You know, those clubs you'd never join, colleges you'd never attend, the things hell would have to freeze over for you to do. For example, I am deathly afraid of needles and never ever thought I'd get a tattoo, but I decided to face my fear and get one. I love music and I love hearts, so I got a treble clef and a bass clef in the shape of a heart. Not life-changing like my other "nevers" but still a biggie.


I was never going to be in Academic Decathlon...

Too many horror stories of the long hours and crazy workload. Whoops, lol. I was in Octathlon my sophomore year and AcDec junior and senior year. It helped prepare me for college and develop my study habits (or procrastination habits...).

I was never going to go to a private religious school for college...

Going to Baylor was an amazing experience. I met some of my best friends there, studied under great professors, and loved every minute of it. I am a Baylor Bear and proud to say so :)

I was never going to join a sorority...

Like, omg, I could never join something like that. One day though, I turned into pod-Lizzy and went to a Kappa Delta open house my sophomore year and never looked back. Best decision ever. I love my sorority and being a member of that specific chapter (in addition to being on council) taught me valuable lessons that I'll always take with me. If people ever ask if I "was" in a sorority, I'll say smile and say, "No, I am a Kappa Delta."

I was never ever in a million freaking years going to Texas A&M for any degree.

HOLY CRAP, HELL FROZE OVER Y'ALL...yes, I'm still a Baylor Bear, but I'm a weird, rare hybrid Bear-Aggie. Going to TAMU made fiscal sense for my Masters. In state tuition and all tha fun stuff. Since being here, I've made fantastic friends in my department because, let's get real, anthro people reall are the best kinds of people. Oh, and I met my boyfriend, but that wasn't that important or anything...

If I had gone to NC State, or UNC-W, or USF, or Columbia, I never would have met Andrew. I love him with all my heart and couldn't imagine not having him in my life. So, while I am begrundgingly an Aggie, I wouldn't change it for anything.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't put so much weight on the word "never." I take it and use it more for emphasis rather than literal meaning. At one point, I never thought any of these previous things would have happened, let alone completely shape me into the person I am today. Look back and see what things you've said you'd never do. I wonder how many of those might change and end up changing you..

My Best Friend's Wedding

On Saturday, July 14^th 2012, my best friend married the man of her dreams—her best friend, her lover, the future father of her children, the person who will ALWAYS be able to reach whatever she needs on the top shelf (he’s 6’ 7”), the one person she will always be able to count on in good times and in bad.  I had the honor of being able to be a part of her special day as a bridesmaid and I am so thankful for it J

Many, if not most, people reading this know what Tiffany and I went through.  If you didn’t know either of us at the time, I talked about it in my very first post if you need a background summary.  Those six and a half months were the worst months of my life.  I felt like a shell of the person I used to be, unhappy and angry.  The turning point for both us had, actually, nothing to do with me.  Tiffany met Shane J Meeting him was the major turning point for her.  She realized that this is the type of guy she needed to be with…or exactly the guy she needed to be with.  She broke up with Chris, which set in motion a gradual road to recovery for our friendship and our very long overdue confrontation with Chris for both of us.  Without Shane, she and I would both still be miserable.  Maybe we would have gotten to where we are today, but I don’t know that for sure.   Shane was our saving grace.

Shane, she is yours now.  Yes, she still belongs to her friends and family, but most of all, she is yours.  Take care of her.  Love her even when she irrationally freaks out (I love you, Tiff).  Be prepared to get back to Texas the SECOND you are done with school.  Y’all are NOT having any Tennessee babies.

I wish y’all nothing but joy and happiness.  Thank you so much for letting me a part of y’all’s special day. I love you both J

The feeling I never want to feel again

That feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you don't hear from them.  You worry, you're scared.  You don't want anything bad to have happened to them.  Then you get angry and frustrated.  It's not the first time this has happened.  It's gotten to be almost routine to not hear from them.  You should almost expect it.  You sit there and try to go about your day completely preoccupied, going back and forth between being worried about them and being angry with them.  Then finally, after you've been awake several hours, you hear from them.  First, a pathetic excuse of a text saying they just woke up and completely crashed from being exhausted.  Then, they say they're sorry (if they even do that) and say they have errands to run or tons of schoolwork to delve into.  They text sporadically throughout the day, disappearing and not responding for hours at a time.  You get to deal with their excuses and lies, trying to figure what to believe, what to ignore, and what to call them out on.  You usually believe most everything because they ALWAYS have great explanations, ignore very little, and call them out on even less.  Calling them out on the most egregious lies just leads to a fight with you being the one to apologize.  Why would you want to deal with it?  Ignoring it works just fine...

If you get a phone call that day, you feel like a princess.  The most important girl in the world.  They actually called you.  If there's no call, then there are at least some texts at night, with maybe, if you're lucky, a goodnight text.

Thrown in there is always placating "I'm sorry" and "I love you" texts to smooth everything over and to make you feel like everything is ok.  To not worry. To not be angry. To not give up...

I don't have to ever feel that feeling again.  I moved on and realize that I needed to be treated better.  Now, I don't have to wonder if he's lying to me, or hiding things from me.  I know he loves me.  He doesn't text that often because he's usually with me.  We talk on the phone even when he's not with me.  He loves me.

Academic Epiphany, Part Two: End of the Semester and Thesis Changes...Again

One year down on my Masters degree.  The grades are all in and I survived what was a pretty difficult semester.  Issues with professors, issues with content, and issues with procrastination made for an unpredictable outcome grade-wise.  I pulled it all together and came out unscathed.  I can say with no shame that I am happy with my B in ANTH 602 and hope to never have to take another archaeological method and theory class again.

If anyone out there has been keeping score while reading my blog, you will know I've been having trouble with my thesis topic.  I thought for sure that I had gotten it all straightened out.  I was going to study the effects of the Texas drought on the hunting industry.  Yes, kinks were still being hammered out, but research topics are always in a sort of fluctuation, being melded and molded every which way until its absolutely perfect.  I thought that was the stage I was in.  After the end of the semester calmed down, I emailed my adviser essentially asking what my next step should be.  I wasn't sure if he wanted to meet with me to work out a summer game plan or if an email would suffice.  In the email, I *may* have alluded to being stressed out about the whole researching and writing a thesis thing, so he knew I was having reservations about my topic but understood that I wanted to be working on something.  I really hate sitting around doing nothing.  I have a whole stack of recreation/non-school related/fun books to read this summer to keep me occupied.  In addition to reading and working at the law firm again this summer (which I am always eternally grateful that they let me come back year after year), I wanted to make some headway in my thesis, which I couldn't do until something was finalized.  

Fast forward to today at 3 pm.  We have finalization!  I have a real thesis topic!  Hallelujah! 

Ok, yes, the topic is different, BUT, in my defense, it is a topic I've (somewhat) worked on before in a class in the fall: ANTH 604 with my advisor, to be more specific.  I'm no longer looking at the Texas drought and hunting.  I'm not looking at the US at all even.  In addition to completely changing locales and topics, my research style is changing.  No field research...which is comforting and scary at the same time.  I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and do field research, but I think that doing archival and literature review research will ultimately be what is best for me.  

The new topic feels better to me.  My research is still a comparative study, but now, it is focused on two different areas affected by earthquakes and tsunamis (Indonesia/Thailand [which one is still being worked out] and Japan).  I'm focusing on disaster modeling and how the two areas/countries were affected and reacted differently after the disasters struck.  A huge curve ball to all of this is the pesky nuclear reactor problem that Japan has, but it'll add an interesting perspective to how it was affected differently.  

Even after changing my topic (again), I'm still scared.  Laying this all out in this post has me nervous (again).  What if I lose focus again and start to over-think and over-analyze my entire research project?  I think it really comes down to me worrying that I'll fail and not be able to complete this.  I don't want to let anyone down, especially myself.  I've never really embarked on anything of this magnitude and it scares the crap out of me.  Luckily, I've already found some articles to start reading.  I downloaded a 500 page book, chapter by chapter, so 1) I wouldn't have to buy it and 2) so it could write/highlight/underline on it.  

I need to stop second-guessing myself.  I need to just jump in and start reading the preliminary lit that I've found and that my advisor recommended.  I have to start somewhere.

Academic Epiphany--Thesis Edition

I've been struggling all semester with figuring out my thesis topic and narrowing it down.  The more I talk to my advisor and my committee members, the more they tell me that it is still too broad.  They're worried that without focusing it down, I won't do an adequate job and/or will never finish my Masters.  I agree with them, but I keep hitting walls.  Do I look at purely municipal data?  No, because I'm an anthropologist and I want the humanistic aspect to my research.  I can't ask a water table or a reservoir how they're personally coping with the drought.  The municipal data is important and it will be included but it's not going to be the focus.  I'm not looking at purely how the towns I've chosen have coped as a whole; it'll only be part of it.

Today, I've been looking at one of the towns' local newspapers for articles on the drought and related topics, and I realized that I need to find some part of the town to focus on.  Ok, it's a realization I keep having, but I finally had information in front of me to figure it out.  (I usually have grand realizations when I have no paper, pen, or computer, and I'm usually about to fall asleep and promptly forget everything.)  I kept noticing ads on the side panel of the newspaper website for hunting stuff.  Then it hit me.  Hunting is HUGE in Texas.  Not so much for me, but I couldn't believe I hadn't thought about it before.  The animals have been severely impacted by the drought, so I'm going to guess the hunting industry has too.

I'm not a hunter.  My family doesn't hunt.  I don't even particularly like guns, but the more I'm thinking about this idea, the more I think it can work.  It's more focused.  I can look at the hunting businesses in the towns and talk to local citizens who are hunters.  I can find out their perceptions on the drought and how they have coped with it.  I can see how hunting season was affected last year before it started raining in 2012.  Just by doing a two-second Google search, I've found that some people were happy about the drought affecting feral pig populations because they're so rampant in Texas.

Y'all, am I crazy to try and tackle this particular route?  Does anyone have suggestions?  Anything is appreciated.

Why Alcohol and Politics Don't Mix

I mentioned it on Facebook and Twitter Sunday morning, but here's the full story (with pictures at the end) on what happened.

For those of you who have never been to College Station (or who haven't been in 25+ years), there is a part of town, right across the street from campus on University Dr., called Northgate.  It's the part of town with a lot of bars, a few restaurants, and, nightly every weekend, lots of drunk Aggies.  I was out with a few friends and Andrew at the local pub, O'Bannons, drinking, people watching, and just generally hanging out.  In the center of Northgate, across the street from where we were drinking, there is a numbered parking lot where many people park.  It's a high traffic area for vehicles and pedestrians walking to their cars, other establishments, or home.

Andrew and I only paid for two hours and I still needed to read and study, so we didn't want to stay out late.  We said our good-byes and headed back to my car a little before 12:30.  We were in my car because I was wearing a dress and hate climbing in and out of his truck while wearing one (it's not lady-like...and I'm sooooo not graceful).  Andrew was driving home though.  When we get in the car, I looked back and thought my back window had condensation on it because it was so clouded...but there was super low humidity and no condensation anywhere else...I started to freak out and said "Oh my God, is my back window shattered?"  Andrew told me to stay in the car and he got out.  I didn't listen and got out too because I was freaking out.  My back window was shattered!  He went and found a bicycle cop but I knew that were was going to be no point.  No cameras and with thousands of drunk people walking around, no one would be caught.  My back window was shattered because a beer bottle full of dip/chew spit was throw at it from, probably, the sidewalk or road running behind where we parked.  The point of impact was obvious.  The spit was all down my car, and the broken bottle was shattered by my driver's side window.

I wish that it had been a freak drunk idiot, blinding throwing his gross bottle full of spit, but it wasn't.  It's not really a surprise to anyone that know me that I'm a Democrat.  I may not bring it up in certain situations, but if you've ever kept tabs of my online or in school, you'd know.  I'm not ashamed of being a Democrat.  I have an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, a Texans for Obama sticker, and an HRC sticker.  The bottle was thrown because of the first two stickers.  (Side note: I'm almost certain that most Aggie bumpkins don't have a clue what the HRC, let alone what the blue and yellow equal sign sticker means, so I don't think it contributed.)

Both my parents agree that I should probably take the stickers off my car...and I agree.  I hate that I have to.  I hate that I can't express my views without my vehicle being vandalized.  If you disagree with me, then let's have a civilized discussion/debate.  I am vehemently opposed to many Republican figures/politicians/candidates, but I'm not going to vandalize something because of it.  It just frustrates me so much.

If you disagree with other's views, don't be a dick about it.  That may be crude, but it's true.  Be respectful, be open to listening.  You may not come to a understanding, but you can at least agree to disagree and be okay about it.  Ugh, I'll get off my soapbox now...here are the pics.

Oh, and I got it fixed today so all is well...

EDIT: (like 20 minutes after I originally posted this) I want to thank my wonderful boyfriend for carting me around all day yesterday and today.  He's such a sweetheart, such a trooper, and didn't even complain.  He's a keeper :)

Spring Break Recap

I just got back from grocery shopping and, I've got to say, shopping after being gone for a week sucks.  Eating today before shopping was even worse.  No milk for cereal, no bread for toast or a sandwich, no veggies, no fruit, no nothing.  Now my pantry and fridge is all stocked and it all looks delicious :)

I had a whirlwind week, but I can safely say it was amazing.  Two weekends ago, I got to see a ton of people in a very short amount of time, and I got to have Andrew by my side for all of it.  Dinner and drinks with Oscar downtown Saturday, Brunch with Laura and Jenny Sunday, and dinner with my mom, my bestie, and all my mom's adopted kids (all my high school friends).  Those jam packed two days were just the beginning of the best spring break I've had.  The only sad part was having to leave my cat with my dad for a week, but he was super glad to see me last night when we finally got home and he was even good in the car on the way back to College Station.

Back in December, Andrew asked me to travel to Denver with him over Spring Break to meet his sister and brother-in-law.  Ever since, I was super excited and nervous at the same time.  He had met most of my family already, but this was going to be the first time for me meeting anyone of his.  I was worrying and nervous for nothing because his sister and brother-in-law are super laid back, incredibly nice, and really awesome people to spend time with.  Their house is beautiful and Denver as a whole is a gorgeous place to live.

We watched a TON of basketball while we were there (March Madness, duh) and we all took solace in each other's company as we lamented the utter beating our brackets took.  They were sad Harvard lost, Andrew was sad Montana lost, and I was happy that Baylor won (twice, but who's counting?).  Friday night, we watched Beauty and the Beast on stage in downtown Denver, Saturday we went to the St. Patrick's Day Parade and walked around LoDo (Lower Downtown), and that night, we went to the Nuggets vs. Celtics game.  Sunday, Andrew and I went to Red Rocks Park/Amphitheater, which was absolutely stunning.  It kind of sucked though because I am definitely not used to that high of altitude.  I was sitting down trying to not die while little kids were running around me and a hundred people were exercising, running up and down the rows of seats.  Jerks...anyway...

After Red Rocks, we went on the Coors Brewery tour which was really cool.  I had never been to a brewery before and free beer is always nice.  No pics from the brewery because I suck at remembering to take pictures (sober or otherwise).  The last stop of the day was a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Boulder.  We met up with a couple Andrew knew from undergrad and had dinner with them and a few of their friends.  The food and company was fantastic.  It was cool to get to talk with people who have known Andrew for so long, and I discovered bacon-wrapped dates should be a staple at every meal.  So delicious.

Yesterday, we flew back to Texas, got in around 10 pm, drove back to get my cat, and then drove back to  College Station...needless to say, it was a long long day.

All in all, it was the best Spring Break I've ever had.  I got to spend it with the man I love and got to meet people (family and friends) he cares about.  

Now it's back to the daily grind of grad school.  At least I have my cat and man at my side for it :)