being sweaty and stuff

yeah day 3 in my new place and the a/c broke. i walked in and it was a sauna..i thought maybe it just wasnt on or something but unfortunately it was and it was just blowing kinda cool, but not really, air. my roommate was outta town so i sucked it up and slept thru it the first nite. it wasnt too terrible bc it cooled down a little overnite...still..it was cooler outside than it was inside. thats not a good thing in the summer in texas. i was smart and camped out at caseys the next nite and it was absolutely glorious to sleep in such cool conditions..normal conditions that is. but alas, the a/c was fixed and all is well now. i dont feel like im working out when im sitting in my apt. now although it probably wouldnt hurt for me to work out but thats another story.

today is the official last day of me being able to occupy my old apt. im going by after work to pick up my last bit of mail and to give them my keys. heres something interesting..i hadnt met any of my neighbors since moving in until a WEEK ago. yeah...and then they act all sentimental that im leaving and one of them even offered to help me move my furniture if i needed it. what?? dont act like youre sad im leaving...we dont even know each others names still!! it didnt really upset me..it was definitely more entertaining that we acted like we were so close and that we would really truly miss each other..oh, and by the way, my name is kate. since moving into my new place, aka the retirement home, ive already met like 10 people..but i guess its different with old people who have been there for 20 years and wanna know who is moving into their community. ive never seen more old people laying out at the pool though, thats for sure..

did you watch the nba draft? did you see that fellow aggie antoine wright was picked 15th by the nets?? i was pretty excited about that. although the nets are usually in competition with my beloved sixers for playoff spots, they are a team that has players i respect. i would have cried if say, he got drafted by the lakers. so that should be pretty cool to see him playing with them this next season..way to go, antoine.

this weekend is july 4th weekend. i dont have big plans except for some designated family time on sunday bc my grandma is in town from NC. besides that..ill probably get some quality pool and sleep time in...sounds so good right now..

15 minutes..

15 minutes. thats my new commute time to work - absolutely amazing. i love it..i wont have to be filling up my car every 5 days - that was just a little ridiculous. so with that new fun fact lets talk about moving. it was a process but overall a success and not too terrible. but i guess bryan and joey might have a different opinion about the situation seeing as how they are the ones that actually moved all the heavy stuff. thanks again guys - dont know what i would have done without yall. so yeah, all sat. and sunday were spent moving out of the old place and into the new. luckily the weather wasnt even that bad which made it a lot more bearable. and now everything is all moved and the only thing left to do is clean..luckily the place isnt too dirty so i dont think it will take me that long.

my new place is great. i kinda feel like im staying at a motel...or a retirement community. or maybe both? the setup makes it feel like a motel bc the complex is made up of 4 bldgs forming a rectangle and all the doors face the inside and in the middle is a great courtyard with a pool, hottub, and cute little sitting areas with grills and stuff. i think about 85% of the people that live there are over 50 which makes for a pretty quiet complex which is nice and the people are sooo nice and cute. theyre all so friendly and know each other bc come to find out, some of them have lived there for over 20 years!! ill probably set the record for shortest stay. my roommate is really cool and i think we'll get along just fine. our balcony and my window overlook the pool which has always been like a life dream. ive always wanted a poolside view and now i got it!!! right now im in the unpacking process so i have boxes and my crap all over the place. hopefully i can get that in order a little this week.

the rest of my weekend was great too. on friday nite casey and i ate at ski shores on lake austin which was so fun...she told me all about her NY trip and nothings better than eating on the lake! then we did some celebrity stalking and found lance armstrong and dennis quaids houses. they were set back a ways from the road so we didnt get to actually see the houses but we know where they live!! oh, then we went to her parents house to see the new puppy who is the cutest thing ive ever seen. its only like a pound and is just a big puffball. i wanted to steal her...i probably could have just stuck her in my pocket...

after moving on saturday the boys and me and beth ate at county line which was pretty fantastic. then we went downtown to hear some jazz music..i was pretty tired already but it was still fun. we got to hear ben tell stories about his new motorcycle...hes had it less than a week and yeah, already has stories...im sure he'll have plenty more. putting ben on a motorcyle is about as smart as telling a blind kid to drive your car...i feel so sorry for his mom...shes probably in a constant state of worry...

so anyways...the weekend was nonstop but im just glad the whole moving process is coming to a close. now its back to another week of work and suprise, i have nothing to do!

i love me some marc broussard

last nite was the marc broussard show with eliot morris and son of william opening. im a fan of eliot so it was good to see him live for once and son of william wasnt bad either. but lets be honest, the real reason we were there was to see marc. but lemme back up a second to the rest of the evening..

poor rie...came in for the show but his car overheated about 10 minutes outside of austin so bryan had to go rescue him and bring him to the concert. meanwhile i was eating a delicious dinner at hula hut with jo, ben, and sarah. hula hut is one of my favs so i had nothing to complain about. afterwards we took a short spin on jo's boat before taking it back...ben and jo both showed us their attempts at doing a flip on the wakeboard...they werent completely successful but they say that next week theyll have it mastered. so after that fun we took back the boat and headed to the show...

marc broussard is just a great performer all around..he has a lot of energy and a lot of talent so his shows are a lot of fun. it was somewhat similar to the show i saw at the beg. of the year but still great. he played some new songs and gavin degraw made a surprise appearance during 'lonely nite in georgia' which was pretty cool. he had had a show the previous nite so i guess he just stuck around austin on thurs. to hear marc. so yeah, overall a great show as expected and fun times hanging out with everyone. afterwards we took rie back to his car and he filled it up with some fluids and went back to cs. i was a little scared he wouldnt make it but luckily he did with only 'one little scare' on the way. oh, and rie brought me snickerdoodle cookies!!! oh how ive missed those, rie youre the best!!! come back and visit anytime ;) or just move here like we talked about - it would be so fun!

another thing...rie and bryan and i were talking about naming your car. ive never been one to name my car, and not bc i think im above that..its just not something ive ever done bc i guess i dont ever feel the need to refer to my car in name form. the subject came up bc bryan named his new truck, gertrude, which i told him was a terrible name but he evidently disagrees. and ive known other people to name their cars...eileen has audrey, cam had the bullet, i think..my friend jen called her old car nubs. so we started talking about my car and how it was a free present from my parents (who im still incredibly grateful towards for) and we threw out the name 'freebie' but then rie decided that if he had a free car he would call it 'hell yeah' so maybe thats its new name? i dunno...i feel kinda weird saying, 'i cant find the keys to hell yeah' or 'kids, get in hell yeah' who knows...maybe itll grow on me...thanks for the suggestion though, rielly :)

well im running on about 4 hours of sleep and the day is slowing creeping by but at least its friday!!!!! hopefully i can get some good sleep tonite bc tomorrow is moving day...

10,000 miles later..

yeah...ive had my car since january...of this year...and over the weekend those little numbers on my odometer hit and surpassed an impressive 10,000. wasnt really something to celebrate about...i think the average amount of miles put on a car a year is around 12K and im almost there and its only july!! luckily, im moving in this next week which should cut down my commute to work by about half which should keep me from filling up my car every 5 days. speaking of moving...

i hate moving...with a passion. i hate packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking etc. the whole process is just annoying to me. i am excited to be moving closer to work, having a new, fun roommate, and cheap rent. however, i will miss my cute little apt. i live in now. i guess i anticipated my stay to be short lived though seeing as how my roommate and i never made an effort to actually decorate the apartment or make it feel very homey. still...its a great place and i will miss it. but anyways, ive started to packing/going thru phase and have done a very thorough dissection of my belongings...half of which have been given away or set in a box by the mailbox with a sign labeled 'free.' it always feels good to condense the amount of stuff you have..the 'simplify your life' in a way. however, my fear is always that, in a couple of months, im going to say, 'where is ___?' and then ill remember...oh yeah...dangit! anyways...this is my last week in my apt. and the big move will mostly take place this weekend and i just cant wait...note the sarcasm.

not much else...this past weekend was fathers day so the family got together for fathers day lunch and then remembered that we hadnt celebrated my birthday yet either so we just kinda threw that in. no point in celebrating a separate day to really make me feel special when you can just kill two birds with one stone right? at least i got cake and ice cream...

as far as work goes...or more like, that place where i go for 8 hours a day and do little to nothing, is about the same as it was a couple of months ago...slow. im just dying for something huge and exciting to happen but i wont hold my breath.

went to the ryan adams show last week at stubbs. it was good...but not fantastic. it was pretty hot outside and he was having some problems with the sound equipment for a while. he played a decent amount of new stuff which was great. the downfall of the evening was when he brought out phil lesh from the grateful dead and played a 5 hour long song that was so good that the crowd started to thin as people decided to escape while they could. oh, and then the show ended...yeah..after the 15 minute 'song' he was like, see ya later. and no encore...kinda disappointing. but i still love the guy and his music and will try to just pretend that the duet with phil never happened.

and thats all i got.

summer of shows and weddings

this is a busy summer..and its technically not even summer for me since i get up and go to work for 8 hours every weekday - what kind of summer is that?? still..its the summer bc the traffic has minimized a bit and the temperatures are breaking triple digits. two things generally happen in the summer...people get married and people play music. at least thats what it seems like for me. i have one wedding down and four more in the coming months. and as far as music goes...i couldnt ask for a better lineup of shows to go to this summer. to start off i get to see ryan adams tonite debut his new album cold roses which is in one word, amazing. then a new favorite of mine, eliot morris, is playing next week with broussard. charlie mars a week after that and howie day and ray lamontagne in july! its a little overwhelming...and all these tickets start to add up, but its sooo worth it. if youre a music fan then you know its money well spent. oh, and then ACL in september and ive already talked about how fantastic thats going to be! needless to say, my music cravings will definitely be met this summer.

in other news..im back at work and what i feared is coming true...its getting slow again and thus, im getting bored...which is just no good at all. i guess i got a good two weeks or so of busyness...but thats all gone now and its back to days of clock watching and thumb twiddling. the worst thing, for me, about having nothing to do is that i default to browsing the internet and buying things. for instance..yesterday i bought an SLR camera off craigslist. it was a fantastic deal and i got a little bonus in my last paycheck from working overtime in D.C., but still...if i had been busy at work then i wouldn't have been able to browse craigslist and convince myself that i needed to buy it right then and there. so thats a slight problem. anyways..i guess im just going to have to get creative and think of ways to pass the time...all the while looking like im actually working...

well...thats all i got.

and im back..

..back at a slow moving work that is...yeah...i think my days of playing catch up and having tons to do is quickly coming to a halt. i have a couple of things to keep me decently busy for this week, but after that it might be back to my monotonous days of checking my email every 15..i mean 5 minutes.

i guess some stuff has happened since d.c. that i still havent gotten around to writing about yet. kellum and joshs wedding for one. that was the weekend before last and it was good. nothing disasterous happened...nothing over the top...kinda just your typical wedding. i got to see some old friends from a&m though so that was fun. so, congrats alyssa and josh!

ooh..heres breaking news...i found a roommate and more importantly, a place to live. i actually met her off craigslist and to be honest was a little skeptical of the situation at first bc you never really know who you're dealing with on there. but i took the risk and to my relief she seems really cool. and normal! and her place is really cute. its an older complex with a lot of older couples so its on the quieter side and feels real homey. our place has a cute balcony that overlooks the courtyard with the pool and everything - ive always wanted that! but anyways...shes real laid back and letting me stay for as long or as short as id like for a great price. so thats exciting and ive slowly started to begin the packing/moving/going thru all my crap process. i always do this when im moving and try to condense my stuff bc i just hate moving it all...so everything gets asked the question, 'do i really need this??' and if the answer is no...to the trash or goodwill it goes! i soon realize that i have a lot of stuff i dont actually need.

i saw mr. and mrs. smith this weekend - so good!!!! i hate it when people get my expectations really high for movies and then they ultimately end in disappointment. however, mr. and mrs. smith is great - action packed and really funny...suprisingly, more a romantic comedy than anything else...but i wont say anything more about it...just go see it!

last week ben and i played a game called, find me a facebook boyfriend/girlfriend. he was in an office for the week with nothing to do all day and had access to the internet....kinda like my job on most days. anyways...we both claim we're excellent matchmakers so he thought the way to ultimately prove who was better was by each of us finding a good prospect for the other. so the rules were basically that we would each find what we thought to be the best match using facebook as our means. and just in case you dont know, facebook is kinda like an online yearbook or directory divided up by school. so anyways, once we found the ideal prospect for the other person we would share the name with the other. and then it was all in our own hands to start a friendship with this person to see if it was a match. this is the primary hole in the plan. i could very easily find a great match for ben...but once i put the reins in his grip its about as good as lost. so thats where i didnt agree that this 'game' would prove anything but i went ahead and consented to the idea bc of sole curiosity of who ben would pick out for me. oh, and winners he did find. one was a corps guy...another looked about 11 in his picture and was heading off to the army. evidently ben thinks i have a thing for guys in uniform? needless to say, i will not be pursuing any of his choices for friendship and im pretty sure that i will never allow ben to have anything to do with finding me the perfect man. i, on the other hand, found ben some great girls but he chose not to pursue them bc he said, if i wasnt going to then he wasnt. so in the end, we discovered that we're both superficial and shallow and we're both still single...awesome.

thats about it in my exciting life. hopefully ill have some earth shattering news for you soon...but doubtful.

you won't believe it

...ive actually been busy at work! i know i know...who would have thought those words would ever come outta my mouth, the girl who checks her email every 3 minutes at work and has browsed practically every website known to man...the clean ones that is. so what has turned me into such a hard, almost overwhelmed, worker? D.C. yeah that little paid vacation i took two weeks ago with work was far from a vacation to say the least. it consisted of days that started at 530 in the morning and didnt end until 530 at nite..sometimes later. needless to say, i was worn out, and going to bed at 930 was nothing to be embarrassed about.

BUT...all work and no play would make kate a boring girl right? right. i couldnt go to d.c. and not see d.c. so...as much as i wanted to jump into bed when 'free time' rolled around on thursday nite, i instead became the ultimate tourist with fully equipped with camera in one hand..map in the other. the map was about as good as my sense of direction..which, if you know me at all...it pretty useless. so yeah, i kinda had a hard time finding the white house. just so you know...there are a LOT of big white buildings. i found one at first that was real big...real white...kinda wondered why no one else was looking at it or taking pictures...oh right..bc it wasnt the white house. all to say...i found it! but honestly, it wasnt even the most exciting thing there. dont worry..i saw lots more...i walked for freaking 4 hours straight and thought my legs were going to fall off. it was probably one of the most miserable touristy times of my life but my thought process the whole time was that i didnt know when or if i would ever come back to d.c. and see all this stuff so i needed to see it NOW. you would think i was running a marathon the way i had to coach myself through the experience to keep going. who knew walking was so hard? up until that day i thought it was something i had actually mastered in life. but four hours later i was ready to hop onto the homeless guys back and pay him to give me a piggy back ride to my hotel. but enough with my crying...it was all worth it in the end..i got to see a lot of cool stuff....for instance...the washington monument, world war memorial, lincoln memorial, nations capital etc etc. and heres the thing i liked the most about d.c...its not just a regular town with a couple cool memorials here and there. its like 15 square blocks of huge, amazing, buildings - each with its own ornate and beautiful architecture. i mean, even the dept. of agriculture was a pretty building. you cant go 10 feet without seeing another person taking pictures...and its probably not even all tourists...its a great outlet for photographers im sure. here are some of the pictures i took if you wanna check them out...ill label them and edit them whenever i have a chance...

so what else about the trip...well i guess the whole purpose was to have our national meeting that my organization, the medical institute, hosts. its actually pretty cool...about 500 people come from all over the US and some other countries to basically be fed a lot of information about sexual health...from stds to abstinence to parents involvement with their kids etc. it was kinda neat bc i got to meet a lot of the customers i interact with on the phone and was able to place faces with names. it was also good bc everyone is so encouraging and shows their appreciation for our company and what we're doing in the world and it makes you feel like your job actually has purpose..which is definitely something i was lacking recently. plus, my boss shawna and i hung out most of the time and had a lot of fun...shes pretty great and now shes not just my boss but my friend too. sounds cheesy..but it makes work a lot more fun when you can joke around and be sarcastic with your boss, i promise.

the only bad part about the trip was getting there and back...and thats only bc im not the hugest fan of planes and airports. ok i hate them. and i dont have a fear of flying or anything like that..its not an anxiety thing. just the smell of airport terminals makes me nauseous...and i dont even get sick on planes...its just not happy, pleasant feelings the whole time. luckily its kinda a hit and miss thing...sometimes im just fine...sometimes its just kinda miserable. and to my dismay..this trip was the latter. i stinking flew to korea and back and was fine...that was like 2 days on a plane...just one of those things i guess. anyways...needless to say..i was happy when the plane landed and the trip was over...our boss graciously gave us the tuesday after memorial day off so we got a nice long weekend to relax and recuperate. and little did i know i would need it so badly....last week and this week in the office has been CRAZY trying to play catch up from when i was gone and then doing all the stuff from the meeting...so that kinda explains my two week drought on here. sorry for that....i still have more to tell to keep you fully updated but youll have to wait till next time bc its my bedtime and this entry has become a novel...

stay tuned!