New News, New Toys and Post #700!

So yesterday, I found my next apartment! Katie, my stepsister, and I will be moving in on the 30th of July, so plenty of time between now and then. Still super excited, though... it's a step up from where I'm living now, that's for sure! 

Also, I'd like to take a moment and mention that this is my seven hundredth post! Can you believe that even with how often I don't blog I've still managed to write 700? Go figure! Let's celebrate with a photo montage, thanks to my NEW TOY:

Hellllloooooo Fancy Camera!

It's a Nikon D3100, and it is shiny and new and I love it. I have two lenses and I see myself being very happy with it!

Fancy Camera is watching you...

I celebrated my purchase by taking a walk around campus to see what it could do! Sunday evening means that the campus was pretty empty, so mostly I found flowers and plants and things to photograph!

It doesn't look all that far away, but I was unreasonably far. I love my zoom! 

Turtle pond :)

There were some adorable boys who were racing with their dad around the main mall. Cute! 

Lonely bicycles!

I realized there is a lot of floral color around campus, even during summer! How lovely!

Baby Lily

You guys have met Lily before. She's grown just a little since you guys last saw her, even since last time I saw her in March.

My job for the summer is just about the same as it was three years ago when I looked after Emma every day. Except this time, I get Emma once a week (aww...) and Lily five times a week! 

I've been looking after this little munchkin for a week now, so I am going to lay down some things about her. Just so you guys can get a better impression. You know, get to know her a little.

Lily is five months old, and looks Lily looks just like her sister (except she's got some really adorable baby pudge going on).  Same bald head... same big, blue eyes, same face. 

Except her head's a lot smaller! 

Lily likes to do a lot of things. She likes to wiggle. Although she did the stomach to back flop once for me, she hasn't really gotten more mobile than pitching her legs into the carpet and pushing. These have earned her the nicknames: Wiggles McGee and Scootch McGoo.

Lily LOVES to smile and laugh! She also loves to see herself in the forward-facing camera on my phone. 

Totally toofless! 

Lily loves to sleep, too. She sometimes has a hard time getting there and accepting that it is naptime, but once she's down, she's out!

What a beautiful blanket, too!

And Lily, like her big sister, LOVES to eat! She occasionally will hold her own bottle, but mostly she makes me do it. Of course I'm only happy to oblige.

But above all, Lily likes to chew on things. And drool all over them... can you imagine anything more fun than to spend your day snacking on your fingers and toes? (Rhetorical question!)

I know Lily can't! 

Other things Lily loves are watching tv with me (I've been watching a lot of Discovery Channel documentaries lately, and she really likes watching the animals) and listening to me read. I am working my way through the Sherlock Holmes stories right now, so since I want to read, I read aloud. She likes Sherlock, and I like practicing character voices. She also likes it when I sing to her - this week it's been "Once Upon a Dream" from Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Most of the time I call Lily "Boo" partly because it's a popular nickname, but partly because she reminds me of the little girl named "Boo" in Monsters, Inc. (a Pixar movie).  All Boo does is laugh at the monsters in the movie, just like Lily is always giggling and smiling.

Emma stays home with me once a week and keeps me very busy. One of her favorite games is "bedtime", where she makes me "go to sleep" with her on the couch, and then she waits until she can no longer stand it (usually about fifteen seconds) at which point she cries "Oh! Is it morning already!" and makes me stand up and get all of her toys out of their little nests. Then we put them back in the nests and the whole thing starts again. 

Emma is a busy girl. She's always up to something.

And Emma made me the BEST present for my graduation! It's a painting... and yes, it is hanging on my fridge.

Enough baby stuff for now. Upward and onward... to victory! (And to the rest of the summer!)

Well, I did it!

I did it, guys! I graduated... Woohoo!!! 

(I hope you guys are prepared for the photo montage!) 

Still haven't received my diploma yet though - that they send in the mail! 

Look, there I am in the back! 

My family can clean up when they have to.

One of my favorite professors, Dr Berry, stopped by for a photo too! She is fabulous.

After I walked, no time was wasted before it was Meg's turn to graduate from law school!

Waiting patiently. The law graduates wear white, according to a  UT tradition.

Father and daughter. The law graduates are given sunflowers when they cross the stage!

At night, the tower was lit JUST how I imagined it would be... burnt orange, and proudly displaying "12"!

I do love my tower!

And as for the main event? FIREWORKS.

No rest for the wicked, however! Sunday was THE PARTY day! We had plenty of people come and celebrate with us - Whole Foods catered (come on, in this family, would there be any other option?), plenty of beer was consumed, and Guy Forsyth played! 

Another picture to add to my slowly amassing a collection of pictures of me with singers.  (I have one with Willie Nelson on my piano.)

No party is complete without CAKE. 

In this case, the cake is NOT a lie! 

Graduates, ASSEMBLE.

After cake, some people were nice enough to give me presents (despite there being a strict "no present" rule imposed by my mother!) I got a vintage 2-sided puzzle from one of my mother's coworker friends who is apparently just as big a Tolkien nerd as I am! On one side it has a map of Middle Earth, and on the other, a watercolor of Bilbo and the Dwarves floating down the river on their empty wine casks!

Yeah, I totally built that puzzle the next day.

And along with some nice jewelry and other lovely trinkets, Dad and Pippa gave me a 2-volume copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Nobody loves the dictionary like me!

 After the party cooled down and people started to leave, drinking games occurred! A little beer pong here, a little flip cup there.

The Powling Coalition was a little bit slaughtered by the Clifford Collective. If you'll notice, my mom elected to be part of the Cliffords, despite the fact we reminded her that she'd been a Powling for much longer!

Now that it's all over, it's time to kick back and enjoy a few more days before I start working again. I plan on borrowing a few puzzles from my mother, because I am suddenly totally obsessed with them. They're delightful, really!

My cousin Josh is in town, too, so we've been going out and enjoying ourselves! It's been wonderful to have him here with us, even for only two weeks!

Today's the day, y'all! Get your Horns up!

Hey guys! 

Today's the day! 

I'll be posting some more photos later, of course, but I just wanted to write a quick blog and say thank you. Without this blog, and you readers, I don't know what I would do. You've supported me over the years in ways that I cannot enumerate, and I love you all dearly! 

Thank you for being there though good times, rough patches, football games, endless homework, exam periods, failures, and successes. Thank you for sticking with me through three computers, four printers, and five phones. (Good lord, I go through a lot of electronics... Hey, remember that time I dropped my phone into a pot of boiling water?) Thank you for your supportive comments, wonderful advice, and readership. I couldn't have done this without the support of you: my friends and family. I look forward to continuing to share my life with you all for a long time.

So... 

Who's got two thumbs and is ready to become a college graduate? 

 THIS GIRL.

Last day of school!!!

Friday went a little something like this: 

8:00: Wake up, tweet about it being the last day of school. 

9:00: Sit through Victorian Lit class, in which my professor gave us breakfast tacos and then sauntered out of the room and let us do course evaluations. Turn in paper. Skip away. 

10:00: Sell back textbooks, get pathetic amount of money for it, but still skip all the way home to grab wallet, which I had forgotten in all the haste of getting my paper into my professor on time. 

10:30: Settle in Medici with a coffee and my notes. Study a little, do a sudoku. 

12:00: Take the LAST EXAM OF MY UNDERGRADUATE LIFE.

12:22: FINISH THE LAST EXAM OF MY UNDERGRADUATE LIFE.

12:24: Call my mother and cry. 

I knew I would: I walked home not quite sobbing like an idiot, but not quite holding it together. It was a weird, mixed feeling of excitement, done-ness, and sadness, for all the times I had during the last four years of my life. I know that I will always treasure my time at UT (and even at UTSA) but it's weird to think that it's over. 

Everybody says I should be proud of myself - and of course I am proud of myself - it just feels weird. It doesn't feel like it's over quite yet, although I know it is. I think I will get some more closure after the commencement ceremony in 13 days (but who's counting?) 

I think it's been hitting me in little increments. Like yesterday, when I was getting ready to head out to my mom's place, and I thought "What books do I have to bring? What work do I have to do?" 

Not a damn thing, I realized. And boy, that felt good! 

I bought a new copy of Pride and Prejudice at Barnes and Noble before I went to work on Friday. I tell you, it's never felt so nice to walk into a B&N not having any obligations to read anything.

1 Day: Taking Bets

So I skipped a day. Whoops! Not like any of you didn't expect it. (I think!)

Endless books in the library! Be still, my beating heart!

Today, I took a test, turned in a paper, and finished writing my pseudonym paper. Boy, it sure feels good, too! I can't wait to turn that in tomorrow morning, and my professor says he will be bribing us to come to the last day of class with breakfast tacos! Woohoo!

I printed out my paper and put it in a fancy report cover. Partially because it would be silly to attempt to staple 20 pages with my puny stapler... partially because if I'm going all out on the last paper I ever turn in as an undergraduate, I'm going to give it a fancy cover!

I spoke for a while this afternoon with Siobhan over skype. Siobhan is also graduating (but she is not finished for another month and doesn't graduate until July) and she is experiencing similar panicky urges to flee and cry in a corner for a while, so it somehow gives me hope that others are feeling the same way as I am. My friend Ally (who is in a rather different position than I am in, being that she is student teaching and isn't finishing up classes the way that I am) is ecstatic, and I am... left somewhere in limbo.

SURE, come tomorrow around 12:30 when I finish my last exam, I am going to feel some kind of strong emotion, but will it be excitement or sadness? Or a little bit of both? Part of me expects to skip down 21st street all the way back to my apartment singing songs in harmony with birds! Part of me expects to exit my classroom and immediately burst into tears. I hope it's a happy medium between the two.

Tomorrow stares me in the face more steadily than I can at it, but I know I will have to meet its gaze soon enough.

3 Days: Choices, Choices

3 days to go. Stuff's about to get real. I have an exam today, a exam and essay due tomorrow, and an exam and essay due Friday.

Caffe Medici is one of my favorite places to study between classes! Right across the street from most of my classes. Delicious coffee and plenty of places to sit, not to mention free wifi! :)

Technically, I should have written this yesterday. But I ran out of time... So today will feature two blogs!

Yesterday, my brain was somewhere else: I had a horrible nightmare on Monday night and I think I was knocked off balance all day because of it. It was a dream about loss and tragedy, and I woke up completely drained.

It represents a lot going on in my life, as dreams generally do. One possibility is that represents the choices that I have in front of me and the consequences of choices wrongly made. The emotion that ruled my dream was regret... and I am so, so worried that I will make the wrong choice, that I'll misstep, that I will come to regret what I didn't, or couldn't, do. I've never felt so unsure of what I want.

I can't make these choices yet, and yet I have to. Not everything will be better after Friday, but after I leave these exams and papers behind me, I sure will feel a whole lot better.