God Bless Our Veterans!

Happy Memorial Day, you guys! I hope you've had a fantastic weekend! Mine's been pretty good, albeit a little busy. :-)

But I'd like to take some time to really think about what Memorial Day is, and what it means, and what it should mean. It's not all about hitting the lake, cooking out, or grabbing a cold one. Although all of those things can be super fun, of course!

What it is about, and what it should be about, is honoring those wonderful, brave men and women who fight for our country and keep us free. It's about being thankful for the men and women who have lost their lives for our freedom, our country, for us! Veterans who have served, are serving, or will serve. They definitely deserve our respect, honor, and gratitude.

I'm proud to say that my late Grandpa was a Veteran. I wish I could tell him thank you today, and I really miss him.

Thank you to ALL of you Veterans out there. I'm so grateful for every single man or woman who serves this wonderful country of ours. God bless you all, and thank you for what you do, not just on Memorial Day, but every day!

God Bless America—God Bless our Troops!

T.V. Coma

I have watched so much television in the past few days to last me for several months. I'm so tired of laying on the sofa. But for the time being, those are pretty much my activity options.

Starbucks Frappuccino. One of the few things
that's made me smile lately.

I mentioned getting sick in my last entry. I ended up going to the doctor a day or so after that post, and it was there that I learned that my lovely illness is actually strep throat. So I've been on antibiotics for a couple of days now. I feel tons better than I did. It's kind of fantastic how quickly those antibiotics kicked in and boosted my energy, my I-feel-good...ness, my morale. I still have two days worth of antibiotics to take, so hopefully by then I'll be back to 100%. But for now, even though I've got some energy back, and my head hurts much less consistently, I'm worried I'm still contagious. So I'm stuck here, watching the boob tube, kicked back on the sofa.

Tucker doesn't mind being my napping pal. :-)

I know, I know. It doesn't actually sound too bad. And truthfully, it's been nice to have little to no responsibility, aside from taking my medicine on time. And Tucker's been a good sport about being my napping buddy. But most of my movies are still down in College Station, and there's only so many hours of Court TV that a person can watch before going nuts. And the fact of the matter is, I've only got a few more days left before my summer classes start. Being sick just isn't how I intended on spending some of my few honest-to-goodness free days of summer. That being said, at least the week I got sick was a free week so I didn't miss anything I needed to be doing.

Yesterday I had myself an animated movie marathon, which was pretty fun. Anastasia, The Lion King II, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was quite fun. And either tonight, or tomorrow night, I'm going to watch Avatar. :-)

Despite my not feeling so good, I'm still super excited about the move. I'm down to three days! The rough part is, I haven't had a chance to pack anything because getting sick has delayed my going back to my apartment to do the packing. But...nevertheless, I'm still pretty darn excited.

I hope everyone is having a fantastic Memorial Day Weekend so far!

And I hope nobody else got as sick as I did!

You Give Me Fever

Well, something did anyway. I'm not sure what I caught or when I caught it, but it's really put a damper on all of the stuff I had planned for this week. I move in less than a week, and I'm starting to worry about the time I'm losing laying around being ill. I think if things aren't looking up by tomorrow, I may have to pay the doctor a visit and see if we can't get this taken care of. Because really, I'm over it.

Tucker has been a good sport about things. He'd rather play fetch, I'm sure, but instead he takes naps on the sofa with me and counts his blessings when I DO have the energy to throw the tennis ball for him. Poor kid.

I'm just glad I'm home this week, and not at my apartment. Even at 23, it's nice to have a Mommy to take care of me.

At this point, I kind of hope I end up going to the doctor. Maybe he'll drug me up with something that'll help me rest. Ironically, the pills I'm taking, the ones that usually knock me out if I've just got a runny nose, haven't been helping me sleep at all. In fact, I've actually had less sleep since I got sick than I usually do. That doesn't make sense to me at all.

So much for enjoying this week.

Wild Weather

Living in Tornado Alley can be a little crazy at times. I was driving home from college yesterday, and as soon as I left, my roommate texted me to let me know we were under a tornado watch. Neat. So I called Mom to see how the weather was looking, and what did she tell me? "I just saw a tornado!"

Yikes!

Apparently while she was at work, a tornado touched down pretty darn close to where they were. I don't think any significant damage was done, but wow! What an experience!
The Fox 4 news team even came out to interview them. And of course I have the video of that! :-)

The beginning of the video shows the tornado in question, and about 50 seconds in is when the interview starts.
(My Mom's the lovely lady in purple, closest to the news guy. She doesn't actually talk, but she looks cute!)

Those are my girls at Claire Lynn! I'm glad they're all safe and sound.

Tourin' Texas—Fort Belknap

One of the next stops on our trip was a little place called Fort Belknap. It was founded in June 1851, and now it's a historical landmark here in North Central Texas. It's a pretty little place, nice and quiet, and it was very fun to take some pictures of.

So here's batch two! Enjoy!

Fort Belknap

Newcastle, Texas

The entrance to the fort.

Click to enlarge if you want to read this!

Beautiful scenery!

Tourin' Texas—The Baker Hotel

Mineral Wells was the first stop on our trip. Dad and I took some time to check out some cool stuff, including the Baker Hotel. Rumored to be haunted, the Baker opened in 1929. Just two weeks after the stock market crash, actually. The hotel went bankrupt in 1932, reopened in 1965, but seven years later it closed down for good. In fact, it's for sale now if you want to buy it. Which, let me just say, I think would be awesome except that it'd be a beast to restore. There are several different accounts of several different ghosts being seen at the Baker. I didn't happen to see one, myself, but that would have been pretty cool.

Dad and I spent a lot of time at the Baker, taking pictures, walking around the exterior. It's a shame it's closed, because I would have loved to go inside. But oh well! It was still an awesome old hotel, and an interesting subject to photograph.

So here we go! The first batch of photos from our road trip. And yes, there are a lot of pictures. Enjoy!

The Baker Hotel

Mineral Wells, TX

The Baker Hotel

The top of the Baker.

The Baker is in dire need of window repair.

Sky high.

The bridge to the courtyard.

Bridge.

A glimpse into the courtyard.

Side view.

Up top.

Window detailing.

The view down the street.

The fountain in the back.

This is the garage across the street. Still a part of the Baker Hotel.

Bridge.

Architecture detailing.

A building in the courtyard.

View from the front.

Down the side of the Baker.

Front entrance.

Front entrance, plus me. :-)

Interior.
Anyone else see my name spray painted on a pillar?
Could the ghosts be calling out to me? ;-)

Outside lighting detailing.

A different perspective.

More architectural detailing.

The back entrance, possibly used for deliveries.

The Baker from the back.

Celebrouhaha! It's a new word.

*celebrouhaha; celebration + brouhaha

Celebration meaning—an act of celebrating, the festivities engaged in to celebrate something.
Brouhaha meaning—An uproar; a hubbub.

Celebrouhaha; an uproarious celebrtion; festivities resulting in a hubbub

Or something of the sort.

What can I say? It's a totally made up word.

In this case, the "celebrouhaha" is concerning my birthday. Which is today, by the way. :-)

I love cupcakes for breakfast.

I can't believe I'm twenty-three years old. It seems like only yesterday, I was learning to ride a bike. Climbing trees. Rushing through lunch so I could go play outside, make mud pies, play with my toys. It's like I was only eight yesterday. Where does the time go? For the longest time I was sure sixteen would never come and I'd never get to drive. Looking back, I'm surprised it's been so long since then. Man, does time fly!

Sleeping in a little this morning was like an extra birthday treat. Mom and Dad had already left for church when I finally flung myself out of bed, bleary eyed and yawning. They left me a birthday card in the kitchen, accompanied by a cupcake. The cupcake is no more (it was delicious!) but the birthday card remains. ;-)

Is this not like the cutest birthday card ever?

I almost didn't make it to Sunday school on time, but when I got there the Sunday school class sang Happy Birthday to me and Mom passed out more of those fabulous cupcakes (I'm pretty sure I ate like...five...). So that was a nice surprise!

After church, I had lunch with Mom and Dad at California Pizza Kitchen. Basically my favorite place to eat pizza. Even as my belly was filling and I was thinking, "Lord, I can't eat much more!" I was looking down at my plate, thinking, "Oh MAN! I can't believe there's only three pieces left. BUMMER." Yeah, it's that good.

And since we were in the area, we headed over to Grapevine Mills to browse the stores. I was on the hunt for a present. The plan was, at least in my optimistic little brain, to find a really cute purse somewhere and bat my eyelashes as many times as it took to convince my parents that it was the perfect birthday present. Alas, I did not find a cute purse. But I did find two adorable lantern things for my patio when I move. Candles go inside! They're going to be awesome. I also found a really cool big glass vase with trees and birds on it. I'm not sure what I'm going to use it for yet, but it's equally awesome and therefore I will find a place for it.

My super cute lantern thing. I got 2 of 'em.

My big glass vase, complete with trees and birds.

We finally left the mall because it was super busy and we were tired—especially Dad and I, who just got back from our three day excursion yesterday! On the way home, we dropped by Starbucks. Because I'm hopelessly addicted and, having not had any caffeine yet I had developed quite a headache. Plus today was the last day of Frappuccino Happy Hour! Half price Frappuccinos. What could be wrong with that?

Now we're home again, and I consider today's birthday celebrouhaha a success. Such a success it deserved this new and exciting word that me and my friend Matt (who also blogs, if you care to check him out) made up not too long ago. Mom's making us nachos for dinner, and I think we're going to pop in a movie. I'm looking forward to curling up on the couch with my family and my dog and relaxing for the remainder of my birthday.

It's been a good birthday. :-)

One more thing—pictures from our trip are forthcoming! I have many of them, so I'm sorting through the best ones. Expect many a picture in the near future. :-)

Road Trippin' with Dad

There's nothing quite like a road trip. Teaming up with a loved one, in this case my Dad, and hitting the road, not a care in the world except keeping ourselves entertained. After such a stressful and tiring semester, this little vacation is just what the doctor ordered!

Dad and I, about to head out on the highway.
Lookin' for adventure...and whatever comes our way.
Born to be wild.  ;-)

Dad and I left on Thursday to tour Texas, see some cool sights, drop by some places he lived when he grew up, and with cameras in tow, we've taken lots and lots of pictures. And we had so much fun yesterday that instead of going home today, we decided to extend our trip an extra day. It's been totally worth it.

And the weather has been absolutely fabulous the past couple of days! Thursday it was overcast for a lot of the day, and kind of chilly. Made for very enjoyable exploring and picture taking. Today has felt just as great, but we've seen a ton of rain. Even a little hail. But we still managed to get some good pictures. We're awesome like that.


For now we're checked into our hotel for the night, big plans for tomorrow. What better way to end a road trip but with a bang? We intend to have twice as much fun tomorrow as we did today and Thursday. Watch out, Texas. We'll be travelin' you some more tomorrow!

13,000! Unbelievable!

13,000 page hits! Now that is something worth celebrating, if you ask me. Guys, I just have to tell you, getting Blog of Note is really amazing. I am flabbergasted at how much traffic I've gotten on my blog, and how many wonderful comments I've received. On Wednesday, my blog had only nine followers. As of now, well...let's just say it's got way more than nine.

In March, I posted an entry commemorating the day that I finally pushed over the 3,000-visitors-mark. Today, I have over 13,000 page hits. That's ten THOUSAND in less than two days. I'm amazed, and very humbled. I've been blogging for a little over three years, and I've never seen as much traffic as I have since May 11th.

Since I started blogging back in 2008, I've always loved reading comments, getting feedback, having people tell me that something I wrote made them smile, or made them think. And since I found out what Blogger's Blog of Note was, I've been hoping I'd end up on it. Now I have! Needless to say, I'm bursting with pride. It sounds cheesy, but it's kind of been a dream of mine to end up on that list. It feels great, I gotta say.

I wanted to take the opportunity to encourage anyone out there blogging and feeling like they're not getting noticed to just keep at it! Take it from someone who's been doing this for quite some time. It's worth the effort. Don't despair, don't feel like you should quit just because you're not getting loads of comments or legions of followers. If you enjoy it, keep it up. It will pay off in the end. :-)

Thank you all so much for dropping by, commenting, and following. It really means a lot to me!

Here's to 13,000 more page hits. :-)

Noteworthy

Good morning, Aggieland!

When I woke up today, I was pretty sure the best I could hope for was just to live through it.  Six in the morning is brutal, especially when you only have anything to do with each other because of a Criminology final.  It came and went without too much yawning, but I had to have a nap before I could even think about studying for my next final of the day—Philosophy at 3:30.

But as usual, I napped too long.  So then I was sure that not only was today going to be tiring, but also that my Philosophy final was going to completely destroy me.  (Fortunately that wasn't the case, but that's not the point.)

But then, as I was sitting in class, waiting for my professor to show up to give us the final, I saw in my inbox that I needed to approve a comment for this here blog—AND I saw that the comment was congratulating me on getting Blog of Note.  I'm pretty sure my jaw literally dropped.  I was so excited!  I've always wanted to be on that list of notable blogs.

So in short, I want to say thanks to whoever is responsible, I guess.  I'm not sure who it's appropriate to thank.  Either way, I'm thankful!  Which is the point.  And a big THANK YOU to all of you guys dropping by to check out my blog.  It makes me smile.  :-)

Happy Mother's Day!

Even though I couldn't go home for Mother's Day, what with finals stealing my soul and threatening to ruin my life, I got to spend the day with my wonderful Mommy. And as an added bonus, Dad and Tucker came, too! It was so great to be able to spend a few hours with them. I love my family with all my heart, and I'm blessed to have such great parents.

Being a poor college kid, I couldn't afford to do much for my Mom for Mother's Day, but I did manage to write in a card. Dad took us to Ninfa's for lunch—and can I just say, Ninfa's makes the BEST margaritas? Yeah they do!—and we stuffed ourselves with chips, enchiladas, tacos, rice, beans... It was a wonderful feast!

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!
God bless Moms. Lord knows where we'd be without 'em!

Mom and I, Mother's Day 2010
I wish I had sunglasses, too, so my eyes wouldn't be so squinty.
Just sayin'.