And I've learned so much already

I've only been to work 8 days now and I feel like I've learned so much. Not necessarily about the job but lots about Houston. Here are some fun facts.

1. Baylor College of Medicine is NOT a part of Baylor College
2. There are two, yes two, fabulous-amazing looking cupcake stores less than a mile from my office - what are they trying to do here?? 




Image from Celebrity Cupcake - right down the street.


3. My office is on a major thoroughfare in Houston so I also have the best tex-mex place in Houston across the street (or so says the new boss), and all the shopping a girl could want less than a mile from my office - again, really? Do you know how much I love tex-mex AND shopping?
4. I left the house at 6am my first day to make sure I got to orientation by 8am. I arrived at 7am. I left the next day at 6am in the pouring rain and arrived by 6:45am. Traffic is strange here and a bit finnicky.
5. Shadow (we named our foster dog) should have the name Houdini - each of the first two days I worked I came home to her outside of her crate, where I put her before I left - she's really talented. The third day I put her in the laundry room and she destroyed it - now need to replace the door, molding, and ironing board cover.
6. Gracie felt left out of the fun of destruction and ate our bathroom door which will have to have pieces replaced. Lesson here - the dogs are less destructive together.
7. There are something like 6 or 7 hospitals in the Texas Medical Center - about a mile from my office. See the large complex below. (It includes Texas Children's Hospital where Jen Arnold works - she's on the Little Couple on TLC - yes, I like the show, mainly b/c she's in Houston!)



From http://www.north-houston.com/developers/healthcare.html


Ok, that's all for now - I'll update about other busy things going on in our lives later in the week.

A job? What's a job?

In preparation for starting my new job on Monday (eeks), I've decided to share some random tidbits with you. Thanks to being in school for the last 21 out of 23 years of my life, I have an interesting job history. (Yep, I know this dates me - I'm sort of like a tree with a lot of circles). My last full time job ended in 2005 so although I've worked my hiney off for the last however many years I haven't actually gone to one job every day in 5 years. I sort of feel like its the first day of school all over again! I'm excited and nervous and worried (its hereditary) and hopeful and really excited!

Oh yeah, my last job was at NC State - and they won last night!

On another note, I'm introducing our foster who is feeling so well these days that she's turned into quite the handful. She's slowly getting used to things around here and we are slowly getting used to her crazy level of energy! We are having trouble with names, primarily b/c the husband is ridiculous when it comes to naming dogs - I've come up with multiple lists of dog names and he responds with 'no' to all of them. Since its becoming harder to try to teach/train, etc a dog with no name, she will be named today. We'll keep you posted!

Hope y'all have a great weekend!!

Weekend fun

This past weekend was surreal in a lot of ways. We did things we haven't in a long time - like watch NC State football with people from NC State, who we've gone to games with, who we've lived with. We also cooked for our friends - something we both love doing. I went to Ikea with a really good friend, and not the husband (he was especially happy about this one). We talked and hung out with friends and it was easy because we're friends who've known each other since college. And wow, it was pretty amazing. We needed it. I miss these moments that we had so often before and have so rarely now. I would give a lot for a little moment with about 100 people right now - all of whom live in Alabama or further east. Love you all!

And for the fun of it - some pics of our visitors (not from the weekend b/c we are terrible at remembering to take pictures).

Hope your week is starting off well!!

Labor Day Weekend Part II

Here's what we did the other days of this past weekend! We will not be doing that much this coming weekend - no worries! :)

Saturday - Got up early again to head back to the Humane Society with Grace-face for the dreaded meet and greet. Lets face it, Gracie is a B when it comes to meeting dogs and I really dread all that nonsense. Anyways - we'll save you this info for later. Came back and got to work!

The plan for the day had been to paint the trim in the family room. After attempting to cut the trim by hand I gave up - trim is a beast to paint. I moved on to taping out all the trim and two hours later the room was taped. That was right about the time the game started so I painted some of the trim while the husband watched football. Did I mention painting trim is a beast? When the game was over, the husband joined in and we finally finished the two coats of trim around 11pm. Another trend of our weekend.

The newly painted den!

Sunday - Um, dead tired and sore and feeling like behind. Plan was to go to store and have a nice somewhat relaxing day. Got a call about fostering a dog, so got ready, got the room for the dog ready, and drove to the Humane Society for the third day in a row - its approximately 48 minutes from our house. Waited a very long time for them to bring the dog to us - like an hour. That nice little trip took the WHOLE afternoon. But we came home with another foster. Update from yesterday - took her to the vet, not sure about her health. We are majorly hopeful she'll be ok but certain not-to-be-named problems "cannot be ruled out." So keep her in your thoughts over the next week please.

Can't remember what else we did that day b/c I was out of it. Oh yeah - the husband finished painting the last coat of chalkboard paint around 11pm and I did some dinner related stuff and really, who knows what else.

The finished chalkboard - we're hanging it soon!

Monday - husband went to play golf at a crazy early time. Got up a little later and did the morning med routine with the foster. Then got started on the nailhead trim for the headboard. Um, yeah. Please see this post for a partial explanation of what this is like. Again - extremely hard and a big pain, literally and figuratively (I have the injuries to prove it!). I wanted to yell at myself for deciding to do this. It took off and on half the day and to be honest some yelling did occur. In the middle of that I had a dissertation meeting via phone with my dissertation chair and did some work on that.

The headboard with trim - lots to still be done but looking better!

The husband came home, went to the grocery store, and we actually ate at 7:30 - amazing. Then we relaxed some while watching Swamp Men (yes, this is a show about alligator hunters and I really like it - why? because I like their accents and that they live off the land and do their own thing and one guy even makes boats - who wouldn't love it?)

For this weekend we have some light cleaning and at least one visitor! We're excited!  Happy weekend!

Hi there!

Gracie says "We have exciting news!"

I got a job offer today! :) 

I am THIS excited about it!

I'll get the official letter after my background check - no worries peeps, nothing too bad hidden in the closet to keep me out of the job.

The job is at Baylor Medical School doing some really fun stuff that is an amazing combination of things I like to do. Some research and stats, and some training of doctors and residents related to motivational interviewing and substance abuse. And I'll get to do some writing and presenting and really just use everything that I've done over the last 5 years in school - right when I was starting to question how all these painful years were going to help me!! Can you tell I'm excited??? OH, and they are being flexible so I can pick up clinical hours in their family counseling clinic and the nonprofit I mentioned last week!

Anywho. I've included some pictures of our crop of peppers and basil b/c they are looking amazing and pictures (even if not great ones) make the blog look better! :)

Fresno chili pepper bush

These suckers take awhile to ripen - this is our first one of the season.

Jalapenos - you would be surprised how many we can use in a week!

Lots o' basil.

Did you get to relax this past weekend?? Part I

Because over here we decided that relaxing was for the birds this weekend. Well, we did relax some - to watch the State game (yay State!) and to recover from all the hardwork. Here's a rundown of our nutty weekend. Its divided into two parts b/c its kinda ridiculous.

Thursday - I decided we needed to get going on some projects so I took my happy behind to Home Depot and bought all kinds of fun stuff - reasonably priced of course. We usually shop at Lowes so I was a little out of my element and an hour and half later I had 5 pieces of wood, cut to size, plus some other odds and ends.

When the husband arrived home he decided we should start working on said projects then - right then. By 11pm he had measured, cut, and put together the frame for our first project - a chalkboard for the kitchen! I supervised primarily b/c the man likes using those power tools more than I do.

Friday - We got our behinds up, got ready, and headed to the Houston Humane Society. We spent a long time there and then came home to work on other projects. I taped the chalkboard so the frame could be painted first and worked on finally finishing another little project.

Then we started on project 2 - the headboard!  We got that thing cut using a new jigsaw, and the husband worked on framing it out. See here for the info about framing it. Then we cut the foam to fit inside the frame, sprayed glue on the board to attach the foam and got ready to start on the actual upholstering action. Except the husband said we didn't have enough staples for the staple gun. Blast. So he ran out. Well, it turns out I bought the wrong size of batting so he got that while he was out too - only amazing husbands go into Joann fabric on the search for bigger batting! :) When he got home we got to upholstering. We started with the batting.

Headboard with batting - you can see the frame and foam.

Then we moved to the fabric - which was hard. Man do those women on all the blogs make it look easy when its not. And you add two extremely particular people and upholstering becomes hard work - oh yeah, and add fabric with a pattern. Yep, I read the blogs that said not to use patterned fabric but I decided to make my life harder (note, this theme continues later as well). But the husband was a big help - he is great at visualizing things which helps since I am not. He figured out the best way to pull the fabric so it was properly aligned!

The headboard with fabric - please ignore bed and poor picture.

After all of that, we decided to make dinner at 9:00 and ate at something like 10:30 just as delirium set in.

You know what??

I've discovered some things I really love since moving down here - well some I already knew but being here emphasizes them more.

One - I love getting emails from friends and family. Its strange but it makes me ridiculously happy to read about what's going on their world and to know that things are good. I can sit and imagine them smile and its like, for a brief moment, I'm back in the place I used to call home, with that person. It is truly amazing how these glimpses into their hearts and lives really make my day. I'm putting a picture in here of the PhD cohort b/c I've gotten some emails from some of these fabulous gals recently!

Two - I really like rain - maybe not so much during the fall/winter but here in TX rain means so much. Mainly it means a respite from the heat. But our rains have been heavy, hard rains, going just as quickly as they arrive, that really are in many ways magnificent. And the weird (well one of the weird) sides of me is glad to see we don't have to waste water on the lawn and bushes.

Three - I think you might know this already - but I love farms and I love seeing cows almost every day. I love when we walk out behind the neighborhood that I can hear the horses and goats at the nearby mini-ranch. And I love that people ride their horses where we walk (we haven't actually seen the horses but we have seen the evidence of their presence!).

Four - I love the south. Houston isn't as much the south as some places b/c of all the 'transplants' (as the husband calls them - or people who are moved here for work or come here for work), but its still southern enough for me.

I probably could go on for some time but these are just a few on my mind lately!

Happy Wednesday!