It's beginning to look a lot like ... COLD!

After weeks and weeks of warm when everywhere else has been frigid, it finally got cold here in C-Stat. It's MISERABLE! It didn't just get cold, it got cold and rainy. Yuck.
So I'm not going to lie, the reason I haven't posted anything lately is because I've fallen into a bit of a slump. I go to work, I come home, and I either park on the couch and watch whatever's on TV or I putz around the house and/or cook something while watching whatever's on TV. I wouldn't say I am particularly happy with this arrangement - but the past few weeks have been busy enough to keep me from being too miserable about it. But now that I have nowhere to be until Christmas ... I am lonely sitting around doing nothing all the time.

I'll do a quick rundown for anyone who's interested. What have I been up to lately?
• A few weeks ago, Matt and I took a road trip up to Oklahoma. Alyson and Nash and Lola were all coming into town too, so we got together and went out for drinks, and a watch party at Meg's for the OU/A&M football game, and another party with some other friends that are still in town. It was so much fun, and I miss them all so much!
• The week after that, I went on my first business trip! LAS VEGAS! I'd never been before, and I was only there for about three days, but it was FABULOUS! I wish I'd had more time to explore, but we had to work all day in our trade show booth. I need to plan another trip to go back, because I didn't get to see very many of the hotels! (I was staying in Circus Circus, and we only got to see Wynn, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace and Paris. Wynn was ridiculous - there was a Ferrari dealer inside the hotel!) Needless to say, very glad I had the opportunity to go.
• The NEXT week (see where this is going?) was Thanksgiving, and Matt and I headed to visit my grandparents, where we were having Thanksgiving with my family, and his parents were coming up to meet my family. After Thanksgiving "dinner," we headed down to Austin to see his family and also go to his cousin's wedding.

After all that ... this was all I wanted to do. (And I just took this cute pic of my kitty.)

Anyway, back to the main point - I'm finally back home for a while. Hooray! My sister came in to see me this weekend. (She is lonely too, now that she is living back at home and is in a long-distance relationship.) It gave me an excuse to find things to do, and I compiled a list of things to do now so that I don't sit around my house all the time. We went Christmas shopping (and regular shopping!) and had a good time. We went to go see the wind tunnel that Matt's been working on for the past, oh forever, which was pretty sweet (and now I know what Matt does for a living!). Hehe. Aaaaand now my house is a disaster, with dishes piled everywhere and trashes overflowing, and is generally gross, and it is NOT cool. But I am looking forward to this week now.

Blogging has been on my to-do list for a couple days, so I guess I should get on that.

After all, I know you all find my words RIVETING. But YOU know how much I like crossing things off lists, so let's get to it.

Last week, I tried a lot of local food. I won't get into it, because food is not that interesting if you don't know what I'm talking about. (Sarah: Pho John's and Los Cucos. Both MMMMMMM.) Let's just say that local Mexican gives El Fenix a run for its money, and NOBODY puts El Fenix in a corner.

I need to do dishes in a bad way. Also, I know my newspaper amigos will be sad, but I changed my newspaper subscription today so that I will only get it on Sundays (for the coupons!) instead of every day. I don't have time to read it every day, so it piles up and looks like this ... and I'm tired of my living room looking like this. Note the cute new shoes, which I bought while my sister was in town.

WHICH LEADS TO MY NEXT TOPIC ... this past weekend, my sister came into town. I love my sister, and I'm glad we don't live in the same house anymore, because we get along fantastically now that we don't. We got to catch up (on both life and the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother, since she hadn't seen any of it yet). Saturday, Matt took us to an airshow in Bryan that he'd heard about, so we went out to this Air Force runway thing where they had all this little two- and four-person airplanes set up, and they had pilots doing formations in the sky. It was pretty cool, and Matt was pretty much in heaven. Afterwards, we went to get barbecue at C&J's, and the OU/texas game was on, at the point where OU was actually winning. I was wearing my OU shirt, and Rachel was wearing my OU sweatshirt, and there were a bunch of guys there who were doing a little smack talk, and I was slightly confused, because I thought all Aggies hated Texas all the time. Apparently when it's Texas vs. other states though, Texas wins? I am still getting the hang of this. It's weird here.

After a nap and Freebirds nachos (Rachel always insists on going to Freebirds every single time she comes to town), we went to play minigolf and arcade games, and we attempted to play Dance Dance Revolution like we'd never stopped five years ago. Two songs in and we were failing and out of breath, but it was way fun.

On Sunday she went to hang out with one of her friends from middle school who is in college here, so I went shopping for a couple of things. When all of my friends graduated college the semester before me, they gave me a ton of shelving, minor furniture and cleaning supplies, all of which I have put to good use, because I'm into free stuff. Well, I acquired this little metal rack that I had been using as a pantry, until I came home with groceries last week and realized I couldn't fit everything on it anymore. So I bought these awesome shelves, and now I have tons of space to store my foodstuffs. (Sorry about the picture being sideways, it uploaded wrong and I'm too lazy to fix it.) I also complain daily about how cold my office is at work, so I went to buy a space heater to keep under my desk. I unpacked it and put it with my stuff to take to work, and ... it's defective. I'm taking it back tomorrow. Fail.

That's all I have, and I'm sure ya'll were all bored out of your minds about six paragraphs ago, so I'll go. *Checks off to-do list*

Usage + What's Going On

This blog was originally created for a journalism class. I really liked the title of the site, so I didn't want to have to create a new one. So if you are not from OU, please excuse all the journalism stuff already on here. I hate to get rid of things, so everything is staying as-is, at least for the time being.

I'm living in College Station now. My boyfriend, Matt, is going to grad school here starting in the fall, and after a four-year, long-distance relationship, it's wonderful to actually get to see him when I want to. I commented to him the other day, "People who date in the same town have it so easy. It's weird that so few relationships work out even when living in the same city." Long-distance sure puts everything else into perspective.

It took me long enough to get Internet set up; I've been here a week or so and had nothing to distract me, so miraculously I'm already done unpacking and setting things up (although I have yet to figure out how to set up the wireless Internet thing). I pretty much love my new place, and so far I like the town well enough. I keep referring to it as "Oklahoma" on accident, though, as in, "No I don't have [item] with me, I left it in Oklahoma." It will just take a little while to get readjusted.

My sister came to town last night. She is going to help me decorate my place a little today, when she wakes up. Last night was a bit of an adventure, and I learned that McDonald's is the only fast food in this town that has a drive-through that is open at 1 a.m. (Whataburger usually is too, but it was closed for renovations. Sad face.) We drove all over town trying to find some food, before settling on just getting chips and salsa at the 24-hour grocery store not 20 steps from my apartment.

What else ... learned how to play shuffleboard with some of Matt's friends at a bar called Fitzwilly's on Thursday. That was pretty fun, and my team won, even though I'd never played it before and the other team had more members. Then Friday we went back to Dallas to see my cousin graduate high school, and got to hang out with my family. Otherwise I've just been trying to turn this place into a nice place to live and hang out, and I think I've done a pretty decent job (mainly because my sister likes my apartment, and she is not a very complimentary person overall).

So this is my new life. Let the adventure begin!