good morning, texas

A subtle reminder on the way to work that Austin is still in Texas. 

the fat lady sang

Peer evaluations: the gift that keeps on giving. 

So we had our last marketing class. My group managed to meet for 4 hours and not kill each other, and we turned in a fairly respectable product. By the grace of God, we somehow scored a 95. I'm fairly certain this means the teacher didn't actually read any of the final papers though, since 2 other groups got 95s as well. This makes me feel really good about the caliber of teaching I'm receiving. But anyway.

We also had to turn in some peer evaluations, ranking each other on a scale that we set ourselves at the beginning of the semester. The evaluations were somehow tallied, weighted, flipped, curved, smacked upside the head and BOOM out came some grades. Unlike you might assume, I actually didn't crucify my group members (on this particular evaluation). Nor did I get totally bitch slapped on my own. Thus confirming that miracles, in fact, do happen. 

However, then the e-mails started rolling in. One woman wrote, "Thank you for your peer evaluations. I hope if there is someone who you don't feel is doing 100% of their share of the work on the next group project you're on, you'll be adult enough to speak to them in person, instead of hiding behind the annonymity of the peer evaluation at the end of the semester." Um okay, well I hope the next group project you work on, you actually work on it. That is my hope for you. Oh, and I'm telling Tommy that you ate dirt on the playground today. So there. 

Then the Little House on the Prairie dude in the group responded that he agreed and he was contacting the teacher for more information and an explanation. 10-4 detective, good luck cracking the case of the Confidential Peer Evals. Bet you'll get real far with that. 

The really unfortunate thing is that I tried to be less vindictive in my evaluation than I actually am in real life. So I gave these douches the equivalent of an 88 and a 93 on this particular element (much lower on another, but fortunately that one's not on the discussion board yet), and now they are absolutely going to believe I was single-handedly responsible for them getting a C in the class. No good deed goes unpunished!

two little words

I have once again been captured by the Lochness Monster otherwise known as “my retarded marketing group” that makes me do more work than necessary, but I am coming up for air long enough to yell two little words: I’M ENGAGED! Not only am I engaged, but I am engaged to my most perfect match. Ummm I feel myself becoming uber gushy so earmuff it if you’re not interested in lollipops and rainbows.

After the first time we met, we spent a painstaking 5 months getting to know each other before deciding to take the plunge and see each other in person again. And literally from that first day that we “re-met” we were both echoing with a resounding “uh oh” because neither of us wanted a long distance relationship but there seemed like no other alternative. Neither of us had ever been so instantly connected to someone or so perfectly complemented. So we saw each other again 3 weeks later. And then, oops, the week after that. And then 2 weeks after that. And now we’re engaged!!!! There was more in the middle but that’s the important part :) From the beginning we both knew deep down that we were done looking around, but now it’s in stone…an awesome, beautiful, sparkly stone that makes me turn into the biggest girly girl every time I look down.

First picture, first vacation, second time to meet. Crazy.

For the first few days after the engagement, I was mostly overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the fact that I totally didn’t see it coming even though I had subconsciously been wondering that night why Brian gave a shit about me forgetting my shoes that were meant to go with my dress and about us being on time and about us getting a nice table. I was also overwhelmed by the fact that Brian actually really truthfully wanted to marry me and not just live a common-law existence for 10 years with joint bank accounts and kids with hyphenated names. And I was overwhelmed by the fact that this amazing person that I’d found and wanted to spend the rest of my life with not only shared my desire but couldn’t wait for that to start. We actually will have to wait, because school and cities and jobs and such will be in the way for a while longer, but at least we finally have an end-date on the horizon. Or a beginning date, rather.

Now that my shock has worn off, I've moved on to pure excitement. So watch out. This girl's been obsessed with weddings forever (hello! it's the biggest party you'll ever throw!). And now I have an excuse to totally indulge the little wedding planner inside of me! I definitely want to turn down the "freak" dial during the engagement so that Brian doesn't think that my true colors are as a wedding nazi, especially because there are so many other exciting things to do...like read books about marriage. Ha. Our nightstand already has 3 new books, 1 magazine, and 1 journal. If he's willing to have me after seeing the crazy that I'm now convinced overtakes every sane girl, then I'll promise to make sure it's worth his time. But if you think I'm not making a Knot page, theeeeeeeen you're wrong.

Just engaged, still teary-eyed! Crazy.

da dooce

This will have to be a quickie because in an hour Brian and I are heading to Chicago for the weekend, but I wanted to report that the Dooce reading was everything I hoped for and more! She had a severe Southern twang and told stories between reading excerpts from her website and book, one which was strictly about sex in the wake of lady-parts damage from childbirth...one of the few times when vagina gets funnier when it's repeated 1,607 times in 5 minutes. Everyone should be proud to know that I managed to plug my motormouth when I met her, and we successfully exchanged a nice little dialogue about Memphis without pee visibly dripping down my leg. 

Two particularly interesting things from the reading: 1) The audience was noticeably...how do I say this...homely. What about Dooce strikes a chord in women who hate makeup and hair ties? I hesitate to explore this too much for fear of what it says about me...moving on. 2) I once again fought the urge to CRY when the woman walked onto her little half-ass stage. This same thing happened when I saw Stephanie Klein in person. I have no earthly clue what about a 7-month pregnant ex-Mormon makes my tear ducts go ka-boom, but I had to focus all my energy on breathing in and out so as not to look like a complete ass in front of the hundreds of women (and four men) who were there. Although I guess it wasn't just me; the woman next to me said to her friend "I feel like I'm a kid waiting at the door of a chocolate factory!" First I thought she was a little awkwardly crazy, then I realized she was kind of right, and then I punched her in the face for talking about chocolate in front of me. Amen for the end of Lent on Easter Sunday and the chocolate Jesus I expect to find in an Easter egg! Maybe then my Frosty dreams will stop.

playing nice with others

I've noticed that I don't play very nicely with my marketing management group at school. This saddens me, because I generally feel like a fairly likeable person, but I think there's a 100% chance that the group members have all built dart boards in effigy of me ever since I sent hate mail telling them to pull their shit together. It's gotten awkward. 

Each week, we all write sections of a marketing plan that have to be edited together to make one formal APA-formatted paper, which we submit every week. Feel free to let the word formal echo in your head a few times. I really try to put a lock on my holier-than- thou editor's attitude because my group consists of very nice middle-aged accountants who use words like "supper." I'm sure they have many talents. Unfortunately, reading and writing don't seem to be two of them.

Things that make it difficult for me to not send them expulsion letters:

-One member edited the paper this week and left this sentence in. "Traffic counts – Determine the customer use of the store, If traffic counts are below estimations, is it consist during open hours or is it cyclical from weekday to weekend." When I pointed out that it wasn't a complete sentence, his response was "Grammer check did not note it." Mkay.

-Our teacher is an APA nazi, and when I said that our headings in the paper needed to be adjusted to match the correct style, he said he disagreed because he turned in a paper to another teacher once and that particular teacher didn't comment on his formatting. 

-Another member didn't write her section of the paper last week because she "just didn't know what to say."

-The same woman also volunteered to edit and turn in last week's paper. Yesterday we realized she had not even copied/pasted all three sections together and no edits had been made after we spent 2 hours in the library discussing changes. Oh, and the text was centered.

-When I devastated my group with the information that, no, Wikipedia was not a legitimate resource, they agreed that we should "just turn in the paper and see what the teacher throws back at us."

I'm considering suggesting that the professor administer a test on sentence construction as a weed-out. 

sxsw

I didn't "do" South By (local jargon that I feel slightly uncomfortable using) like all my friends did because I was swamped with school, but I did cherry pick one day-party to devote all of my love to. I knew it was sponsored by Rachael Ray, big plus, and that the Hold Steady was playing at some point, bigger plus, but I really didn't know what to expect at all. I'd heard about all the free shows and parties, but I figured that it was basically too good to be true. Au contraire!

Just please keep in mind, as soon as you start to get bored, that all this was free. 

Our day started with me, Brian, and Peters holding down the fort in line at Maggie Mae's, a sixth street UT bar of sorts that I'd never been to. We waited for an hour and a half with screwdrivers and Taco C in tow, which really wasn't bad at all because of the great people watching, including but not limited to roadies-roadies-everywhere, mustaches and velvet jackets, tatts and drunks. And this girl's hair.

It's a shame she's pseudo picking her nose here because her 'do was rad. It didn't hurt that her tote bag said "I can't pay the rent, but I'm fucking gorgeous."

Once the doors opened, bands started immediately on the upstairs and downstairs stages and played for the next five hours, which was awesome because we got to switch from low-key crooners like Bob Schneider to the flaming Semi Precious Weapons (Brian claimed he knew the lead singer but didn't know why...until we realized he was a coach on Made. Too much TV, what?). Two separate food stations and 4 open bars made me a very happy girl, especially when I realized they were serving divine Rachael Ray recipes, like chipotle and black bean chilaquiles and seven layer chili-beef sliders. I mean seriously, what's the best food you can hope for at these kinds of things? Pizza? 

Delicious food you say? Here we come.

Oh and the best part was multiple Rachael Ray pass-bys. I get so ridiculously starstruck by even non-celebrities that for some reason I couldn't get over the fact that THAT WAS RACHAEL RAY RIGHT THERE NO SERIOUSLY LOOK SEE RIGHT THERE. Picture to prove it? Oh okay fine.

Hold Steady and Rach.

No one else seemed to care all that much. But I'm cool with that. Let's be honest, someone should've given me an award for refraining from grabbing her arm to profess that we just cooked jalapeño poppers from her cookbook like TWO DAYS AGO and now she's here in Austin and it's just so crazy I can't get over it! 

So ultimately, we got to see the Hold Steady again, and hear a bunch of other cool bands, eat famous food, and drink for free, all day. Oh wait, did I make it clear that this was all free? For the whole day? Just checking. I think I would've had a great day despite the free-ness of it, but for my first SXSW experience to actually match with its great reputation really caught me off guard. I'm sure the newness of the freeness will wear off next year, but I guess then I can look back at this little bloggity blog and remember how to be appreciative! 

P is for Power

My favorite line of the P90X videos so far is "Mini break, okay break's over keep going."

 

Brian got turned on by the P90X commercials a while back, which surprised me because usually I'm the one spearheading athletic activity around the house, but he really liked the intensity and structure of the videos. The program relies on "muscle confusion," so essentially you're always working a different part of your body and thus never reach a plateau. (Can you tell I'm drinking the kool-aid?). You oscillate between 12 videos that each have a different focus, like Yoga or Legs+Arms or Core Synergistics (also known as, You Might Die). The majority of the exercises just utilize your own body, so there's no real special equipment needed—just some weights, pull-up bar, yoga mat, etc. 

So anyway, the videos cost $150. No way were we paying that. So we kept doing the poor man's exercise instead (hackeysack...seriously), until Lundy scored the videos from someone and then burned purchased them from a legal site them for him for his birthday! $60 worth of weights and resistance bands later, we accidentally jumped on the P90 train. I say accidentally because we didn't so much discuss the inconvenience or commitment that it would take to workout every day for an hour for 90 days, which is roughly one more hour of exercise a day than we do now. 

But now we've done it. We're one week in and I'm pretty sure there's no turning back. Neither of us really want to put forth all the effort that would be necessary to look as ripped as some of the testimonials we've seen, which I'm guessing requires careful attention to diet, no drinking, et cetera. "Less" is not really on our diet. But surely working out by itself will do some good, no? We totally took before pictures so that we'll be able to laugh at our flabbier selves when we're sipping brandy with our feet up on chinchilla ottomans while being fanned by our posse. Wait...being fit won't make you richer and more popular? Damn.

I'll keep you posted on our weight loss (if any). Oh, and I definitely expect some virtual high-fives, if we actually make it through the entire 90 days!