Hooray for long weekends! I'm going to Louisiana with my mom and sister to visit my grandfather. Mom and I are flying out tomorrow morning at 8 (which means leaving the house at 5:30am UGH!), and my sister will come on Saturday. And we're staying until Tuesday. That means a 5 day weekend. :-)

Also, I'd like to point out that I'm getting my first paid holiday on Monday. Sometimes the working world can be pretty cool.


In other news, apparently my mom left out some chocolate today. Annie got into it, of course. She's been very hyper and running around like crazy. *GROSS* At one point after I fed her dinner (before I realized she'd eaten the chocolate), she threw up on me!!!!!!!!!!! YUCK!!!! Apparently it's going to be a nice long night.

work is never dull. And even though everyone I work with is an adult (most of whom are college educated), it still feels like high school. In fact a lot of the stuff that goes on is more like stereotypical high school drama than I ever had to deal with when I was actually in high school!


Anyhow, I'm having dinner tonight with my KTbug. I haven't seen or talked to her in a while, so I'm very excited. She's currently working on a pet rock project with her class, and she's stopping on the way to dinner to pick up supplies for the pet rock makeover.

Not much new here. I finally picked up my dress from David's Bridal. There was no reason that I could not pick it up on a weekend. Except that they are morons.


I'm sick of Northern Virginia. The longer I live here, the more I despise it. There is no possible way to live here unless your job pays more than triple minimum wage (and even then you'd only be able to afford rent). I need to either work on my masters in Blacksburg or give up on it completely. But if I give up on it, I'm destined to make no money for forever. Yuck. I feel like I have no options right now. And it sucks.

I'm off to Blacksburg today! My itinerary includes Happy Hour at HoHo (don't they call it something like Power Hour? That doesn't help much with my alliteration...), stopping by my uncle's to show him the new car and see about selling the old one, congratulating my cousin, and Gwen's graduation party.

Too bad it's graduation weekend, or I might have been able to get into brunch at Gillie's on Sunday. Ah well. Annie gets to spend the night at the Barker's in because my parents will be up in Leominster for the weekend. She'll love that.


And in case you were wondering (which I'm sure you weren't), I got my first grad school grade yesterday. A-. Not too shabby. I'm still waiting on the others.

It's really fun to see what Google searches return my blog as a hit... For example, apparently if you search for "girls of the acc 2004 virginia tech playboy" you'll get my blog... There have been some interesting ones - I'll try to post the good ones as I discover them.


I'm done with all of my work for the semester. Unfortunately, my Natural Resources professor (read: Dep't Head) did not get the memo that classes actually ended last week, and this week is for exams. Tonight I drove into Alexandria (will be a 2 hour round trip) for my 1.5 hour seminar that's pass/fail. And I have one more class on Wednesday - at least that one's 3 hours. But the work is done.

I'm not taking any summer courses. I figure I'll put that off until next summer. This is going to be a good summer. I'll be working 6 hours a day, so I'll have afternoons free. I'm *planning* to go to the gym some since I'll actually have some free time.

I'm going to the 'burg this weekend. Hooray!! I haven't been down since the last football game. It'll be kind of sad because more of my friends who used to be just babies are graduating. At least Emily will be around for a long time to come ;-)

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

35% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

On the way to class tonight, I got pulled over on 66. BOO!!!!!

I was going about 72 mph, with the flow of traffic, and had passed 2 other police cars going the same speed. I watched a cop pull onto the interstate, merge over, and then put his lights on. BOO!!!!!

So he gets out, walks to my car and asked for my license and registration. He asked if I knew how fast I was going, and so I said no. He said, "You were going 70. The speed limit is 55."
So he went back to his car, then came back a few minutes later. He handed me my license and registration and said, "You need to slow down. You had a speeding ticket last June in Prince William County. You need to be going 55. Have a nice day."

And then he walked away.


PHEW!!!!!

Talk about huge sighs of relief. And then I played the lottery. I guess I was feeling lucky. I'll be a millionaire on Friday. :-)

Alas, no post in quite some time. I've got just 2 more papers to write, and 3 classes to attend, and it's the end of my first semester as a grad student. I'va also got to give a dinky presentation in class tonight. Woo...

Last night Matt was my hero. Again. He solved my computer woes. :-P


This weekend I went to Hershey park with my sister, bro-in-law, and some of their goon friends. It was very fun. We rode on roller coasters and travelled through the park on the monorail. We also visited the World of Chocolate and saw a very impressive reenactment of what it takes to get chocolate from the cocoa plantations to your mouth. Plus there was free chocolate at the end.

I had lots of tasty treats to eat while there as well. A chocolate covered frozen banana (because everyone knows there's money in the banana stand), and Dippin' Dots. Yummy. Unfortunately, Lauren did not get funnel cake. The line for that was longer than the lines we waited in for rides.


In other news, Jenny got a job where I work. Woo hoo! She started orientation today. She also got cable on Friday. A very exciting thing, as the only time she ever had cable was while at Tech. There's also cable modem, so her mom won't make her get off line all the time.


I got the new MV cd. Very good. It's funny because it's easy to tell that a few of the songs were recorded later in the day. Also, I'd like to note that there is a hidden track. That made my day. It makes me want football season to come sooner. No game until the middle of September????? Sheesh... too long.

Plans for this summer include:
-Blacksburg for Gwen's graduation party
-Louisiana to visit my grandfather and his puppies
-Hopefully an O's game and a Nats game (or more?) and some Potomac Nationals games...
-work... bah
-Michigan for a week (there had better not be a major power outage on the way home this time)