Wake Up and See

Wake Up and See, originally uploaded by a b franzen.

It just stopped raining a bit ago. It has been raining hard since sometime on Friday. I had no idea that TX did that, and it was kind of nice, actually. Our little (failing) pot-garden on the balcony sure enjoyed it.

It was a good time to read, or try to anyways. I am terrible at studying and really need to get this thing figured out soon or it could be bad news! Anyways, I just thought I would take yet another break and put up a pic....

All Golden Weekends

All Golden Weekends, originally uploaded by a b franzen.

Weekends are always nice, but they are even more nice now that it is when Sara and I get to hang out again. The down side is that I still have a lot of stuff to do over the weekend usually. So far it still works out though because Sara has important stuff to do over the weekend still, too, like sleep (and I imagine at some point work, and maybe a bit of studying also).

Office Space

Office Space , originally uploaded by a b franzen.

So I got to thinking about this whole trying put up more pictures and it may not always be too overly interesting as far as content goes, ha. I will try to get some away from books and notebooks from time to time though.

Here at school they provide each of us grad students in the department with our own desk, a computer, drawer space, shelving for books, AND my 'office' (drawback: they are cubicles) has windows! Anyways, it is really good for people like me who really struggle with productivity. It is a good place for me to do work, and I try really hard to only do work here so I can keep it as a habit and compartmentalize things that I need to do in life. I will let you know how that goes!

Torn Pockets

Torn Pockets, originally uploaded by a b franzen.

We went down a little south of here to go bouldering today - while Sara labored away. It was awesome. Seriously. I think this park may have, in one day, changed much of my perspective of TX. There were trees. There were hills. There was green. There was rocks. There were other people outside, doing outside things. There were over a hundred bouldering routes. Seriously - it was really good to get out there today.

A few things:
I have no strength in my hands (ok, ok, it is more of a wide-spread problem than that).
Limestone can be fun to climb on.
Limestone can be sharp.
My hand hurt.
But just a few hours today will go a long way in building calluses!

Purpose is a Niche

Purpose is a Niche, originally uploaded by a b franzen.

It has been pretty much since sara left me alone for like a year that I have posed some pictures just for the sake of posting a picture. I kind of miss it, actually, so I thought I would try and post some pics up on a quasi-regular basis. We shall see how that goes - especially because I don't have the computer processing program at school.

Anyways, this weekend's reading has been consumed by Marx and stuff on religious economies. I thought about trying to work up something profound to go with this picture, but sometimes it is better to play it on the safe side and not fake profundity when it really isn't there. But, here is to a 3 day weekend (for some of us)!

Waco fun

It has been really good to get back into the swing of things with school. it has not picked up too terrible quick just yet; my TA work isn't too bad just yet, with only a bit of grading each week so far. The reading load is pretty terrible and I have multiple papers due each week for the most part, but still not too bad. As far as the religion emphasis goes here, it is me and to girls. One is from Canada and the other is from CO.

living with the lady down by waco has been interesting so far. she is still very active and is a very outgoing lady who just loves, loves to tell stories. She also has taken to making me dinner on most nights that I am here. Typically this is the first few minutes when i get home:
me: hello!
her: hello - dinner is almost ready. I just made ... tonight, hope that is alright.
me: you really shouldn't make food for me all of the time, you already do enough by letting me stay here!
her: oh, it is just some ... and ....
me: i know but still...
her: my husband used to always....

and off she goes. takes a good 30 or more minutes to find a break in the conversation after dinner to get off to do some homework. cracks me up. So, so far we have had stir fry, baked potatoes, pork loin, and one morning she made 'just' sausage and biscuits. Oh, and one night we played a few rounds of sequence. she lives out in the country next to a really big spring-fed pond (where i can go fishing, she says) and a creek down in this little ravine right by her house. she has this little overlook on the edge of the 'cliff' by the creek which i may try and do some reading by - especially now that we are getting some days that are less than 100. i think it will work out alright living here, even if it is like 25 or so minutes out of waco still (but that beats 1hr 40 min, and the price is right!). I have been spending most of the week down here since sara is on night float right now and I wouldn't see her really at all even if i did go home.

oh yeah, and my feet hang off the end of the bed.

600 and counting

this week i put over 600 miles on the motorcycle. in one week. wait - no, in 3 days. i am hoping that my butt adjusts to this quicker than it has decided to so far, or else it may be a more painful experience than i had expected. a few quick things i have learned over the past week:

- texans like to speed. if they don't like to speed, they like to be the turtle on the road holding everyone up.

- those turtle - they like to camp out in the left hand lane on the highway, apparently oblivious to the fact that even trucks barely going the speed limit are passing them on the right. who does that?!

- i have re-joined the instant community that a motorcycle provides you with. all bikes wave to each other as if we all knew each other. that is kind of fun. CO does not do this and it was surprisingly really annoying that bikers in CO are asses like that. i felt like the kid from a small town that is personally offended when not everyone waves back when they go to the city. TX wins that one, no competition.

- buying gas twice a day will get old fast.

I obey the speed limit

So, sometimes I think I have a really addictive personality... kind of. I get really into things, but then I seem to also loose interest in a lot of things. Gambling is an example. I have done it like 2 times and i get real into it, having a hard time stopping, and then I hit some invisible threshold and quickly hate the whole thing for taking my $3 back away from me. jerks.

Anyways, I have started to read the Twilight series and have had a hard time living normal life since. Each of those books are like 500 or something pages and I have read the first three in a little over a week. I know. Grieve for me like the wife does... but I am done until like Thanksgiving break now. No more reading that kind of stuff unless I am on a break. It would be a big problem for school!

Speaking of which, orientation is tomorrow and that kind of totally freaks me out. I got my TA assignment (undergrad social research) and apparently I even have office hours for the kiddies. Something that is kind of cool is that they submit their papers to me electronically, and this system automatically checks the paper against some database for any plagerization. How far we have come.

On a totally unrelated note, tonight I pulled up to a stop light next to a Lamborghini. On the bike. I was able to resist. Mostly. I think it was either borrowed, rented, or brand new because he seemed to struggle a bit with the clutch on the beast.

1979.6

1979.6. That is how many miles I put on the bike in the last couple of weeks. I took it out to CO for a little bit of a vacation before school kicks into gear. It was an awesome trip and I got to do lots of things that I have missed a lot since not going to CO or WA in a while. I got to see lots of friends that I have not seen in a long time and have missed a lot as well. Overall I am glad that I was able to take the bike out there, though. I decided that I really like to travel by bike. You get to see and experience things in a totally different way on a bike than otherwise. The only thing that I wanted while I was out there (maybe besides a softer seat) was other people to go with though.

The last night I stayed at a rest stop in Amarillo, TX, which was interesting. I slept under a picnic shelter on concrete and got eaten alive by mosquitos. A security guards (yep, 24 hour security!) told me that they have been having a terrible time with mosquitoes because they have been getting a lot of rain. Anyways, my face and body had bites all over the place, with the addition of one pretty good size spider bite. So, I fought the bugs all night, tried to sleep totally sealed in a much-too-warm mummy bag, and then a massive thunderstorm came along. It was actually nice though... cooled things down a lot, but didn't help with the sleep thing. I got up before sunrise to start out. one of the best things I have ever done. The sunrise that morning was absolutely stunning, and it lingered for a long time because of all the clouds that were out. It was a very, very deep red; like the red of the inner part of a peach.

Here are a bunch of pics from the trip though...

Landon getting ready to repel...




Sara reading on the boat in the San Juans....




Lopez Island Winery


Me getting ready to ride Buddy, the scooter!


The sunset on the last night in Amarilly, TX.