I guess...
I guess I should update once a year or so. Its so tedious. I keep wondering why I do this. But here I am anyways.
Well, for the mother of all updates, this should be short. I have a flowchart to do that sumarizes my entire semester of research so far.
Well, February. I turned 21! Congrats to me. I had my birthday shot and got back to studying kinda. That weekend I went to visit Lori. It was definitely eventful. I have never been so terrified in my life. Okay, I'll back up. Friday night is fine. We go to Jay's Bistro which is a piano bar in the square in San Marcos. Major fun. Went with Maite, Jennifer, and Lori. Met up with Ryan, Jordan, and James and had a guy friend of Lori comment on the size of my boobs. Lori does an admirable job avoiding certain someone's until he walks right up to our group and starts talking to me and Maite. We do our best to ignore.
Saturday, there is a party going on for the birthday of another person. We go to the apartment complex and are having a pretty good time. Watch a few people do keg stands, watch the guys dance for Nova, talk, chat, drink. Then some strange guys walk in. The scary part is coming now. I wanted to leave because I was starting to feel uncomfortable and my head was starting to hurt. Migraines are a bitch. Anyways, Jen doesn't want to leave quite yet and so I give in for 15 more minutes. I go to stand outside in the cold, cold are so I can cool off and get away form music. Meanwhile the intruders are chugging whiskey from a heavy, square glass bottle (Evan Williams whiskey) and being really rowdy. By the time I went outside I had seen one of them basically pour the last of the bottle over his face and shoulders. There were BIG guys and wearing big camo jackets. Anyways, I'm standing outside when Ryan opens the door to tell me to come back in. He said they were going to get rid of the rowdy big guys and he didn't want me to be in the way. So I go in and stand on the stairs which go down to the back door. I didn't even have to get through the drunken idiots to get to them. Ryan, Jordan, and Oliver have gotten me, Lori, Jen, and Nikita (Ryan's girlfriend at the time) to get on the stairs and at least halfway up. Well, the railing only goes up halfway and then there is a wall blocking the view from the stairs. I'm peeking down at the point where the railing ends and watching. The guys are politely asked to leave. Then not so politely. Then the fight breaks out. Its a free for all and fists are flying. One guy upends the coffee table and throws it. We girls are heading upstairs to get away from everything. But Jen is down towards the bottom saying she will open the door for them as the leave. After all, they wouldn't hit a girl right? We keep yelling at her to come upstairs and she finally gets dragged up by Lori. They head into Stefan's room and I hang back because the inruders are being shoved through the door, one of which is waving the whiskey bottle around as a weapon. He had already laid one guy out with it. I think maybe its over now. Then the glass back door shatters and the windows are breaking. I head up after the rest of the girls. We all go hide in Stefan's room. Jen is freaking out and she wants her "boys" to be up there with us. Lori is handling her reminding her that Ryan is a black belt and he and Jordan are perfectly capable of handling themselves. I'm telling Ryan's girlfriend Nikita the same thing because she is crying and freaking out too. We are paranoid about who is going to come through that door. Stefan comes in and is calling the police. Its terror in that apartment. Then its over. The glass stops shattering, the yelling stops, its quiet. Lori goes down to check how things are going. Lori comes back up to warn us to be careful of glass everywhere and blood. Jen darts out of the room before Lori can stop her and I take Nikita into the bathroom to be out of the way for Nikita is only 19 and drunk. Nikita's sister calls and Nikita can't answer her phone she is so upset, so I answer it. I have to explain to her that Nikita is fine, I'm a friend, and a fight happened at a party, Nikita is fine. Then Nikita gets her composure enough to talk to her sister. Ryan comes up and I go sit on the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, the door is ajar, caught on the shattered glass that covers the carpet entirely. And there is that damn Evan Williams Whiskey bottle. That heavy, square, glass bottle just sitting there. I barely held it together. Lori brought me my hoodie and I had to shake it to get rid of any glass. Lori couldn't put her scarf or jacket on because they were full of glass. She goes back down to help Jen some more. Finally, its time for me to go down. I'm wearing flip flops so I have to be careful where I step. There is glass everywhere. The carpet is made of glass from the back of the apartment to almost the kitchen. Then there are also the blood. There are drops of it here and there. On the walls, the floor, broken chairs, tables, etc. Its a wreck. I lost it for a moment. I just had to cry. And then I was okay. One of the guys hosting the party told Lori to get me out of there and Lori told him I was 21 and okay. The cops tend to crack down pretty hard on underage drinking in San Marcos. That is why they had to get Nikita out the door pretty fast. The rest of us were 21. Anyways, they caught most of the guys. On our way to the car, we had to pass by to patrol car where they were arresting the guys they caught. One starting yelling about how Ryan was one of the ones who started it when we came into sight. We hurried by even though Ryan had to stop and was handcuffed. We had to get out of there. We got in the car and started driving when Ryan called to let us know he wasn't far behind. That rested our minds a bit. But all I could see was the sight from when I was sitting on the stairs. The broken, open door, the glass, the bottle. We met up with Ryan and Jordan at their apartment. All we could do for the next 2 hours was talk about what had happened, how we could have done something different. We decided to go to a restaurant on the square that is open 24/7. We did our best to put it out of our minds and relax. It worked for a while. Then we went home and had to go to sleep. It took forever to clear my mind enough to get there. It was so hard. The next day I had to go home.
I didn't want to tell anyone in my family what happened. Mom was understanding when I finally told her and offered some tips. Never back yourself into a corner. JoAnne wasn't so understanding. She basically accused Lori of not having enough sense to read the situation and get out. Things did not go well between the two of them for a while.
During rehearsals for Cymbeline I managed to drag a 12 seating heavy oak table across my foot. I managed to not break it but briuse it all the way through. I was restricted to my house shoes for about 2 weeks until it healed enough to wear regular shoes and flip flops.
The next weekend, Lori came home and JoAnne, Bobby, Lori, and me went to a comedy club to celebrate. I had to make them play nice because Lori didn't want to hang out with JoAnne, but they are both my sisters and would damn well be there. They were. Afterwards, we went to Katz's. Pretty nifty place. I enjoyed the food but it was pretty salty.
Anyways, the rest of February was filled with Cymbeline rehearsals.
March...midterms, spring break, making comstumes, sewing by hand, and the play itself. Spring Break, I went to visit Lori again. Went to sixth street in Austin, had a good time. Lori is now very paranoid about strange guys hanging around. Figured out I really like Cherry Vodka Sours and Blue Hawaiians. Next night we go to the restaraunt right next to Lori's apartment where Jordan is bartending for the first time. He gets Lori and Jen shnokkered (pretty drunk) and laughs at the fact that the 21 year old is taking care of the 23 year olds. Some new neighbor guys of Lori's show up and one of them proceeds to hang all over Jen feeling her up. Gives me creep vibes. We head home after making sure they leave before we do. I ask Jordan to come check on us after he gets off work in half an hour to make sure the guys don't invite themselves over like they invited themselves to our drinking time. Anyways, just a note, Jordan had been mixing them strong and with top shelf liquor for us without charging top shelf prices. It was awesome.
I go home and avoid campus because I just didn't want to be there. Tech week for the play goes on. It's been interesting getting things going for the opening night of Cymebline. It was great. Anywys, one of the scenes call for Jove on the back of and eagle. How do you do that without making it look hokey? Well, we used mostly tnransparent UV paint to paint symbols all over the stage. We then shined to stage strength black light with all the lights cut and made it flouresce like mad. It was awesome. I've never seen something so spine tingling in real life ever. I also was ringing the big bass bells (handbells for those of you who didn't make the connection) to add to the eeriness. Wow. We did so fucking good with that scene. Okay, so during the run, one of our actresses falls sick along with her boyfriend. So our director is drawn in his place and I have to take hers. Therefore, two costumes have to be made on a moments notice. Not easy. Especially with all our sewing machines not working. I had to hand sew all the hems on almost every single one of those costumes. People were amazed because I even took it to lab with me to get things done in time. Wow. That was way more hand sewing than I ever wanted to do in my life. Either way, we also had a destructive actor who could not dress himself. Every night until one of the other girls took over, I was pinning his costume back together with safety pins and stitching and tieing his belt on as well as pinning his toga in place. So inept at dressing himself! Argh! Other than that, it was an awesome play and an awesome run. There was the good and the bad, but I'll leave it at that it was not the best experience in my theater life, but not the worst moment for me personally. Oh and cast party, I took care of the first kiss. I was drunk so I asked one of the guys to kiss me. He did. All taken care of.
Unfortunately in the middle of the Cymbeline run, my grandfather died. I missed 2 of the last 3 shows to go to his funeral. It was very sad and heart breaking, but at least he is in no more pain. I couldn't stand to see him in all the pain he was in. Death was a releif for him and for my grandmother who had been taking care of him.
April...Beer Bike, end of Cymebine, Becky got way too drunk at cast party, cousin Sally got married, cousin Justin got married, Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium (RURS)...that's about it. To learn about Beer Bike, go to Wikipedia and search for it. Trust me, its very amusing. My cousin Sally got married and her groom is the nephew of the family that my family has been canoeing with for years and years. The irony is that they met online, not through us. Justin got married also. The wedding was beautiful and was the prefect example of my family and tardiness. My grandmother failed to tell anyone that Trish (the bride) had told Gammy to be there at noon but she didn't tell anyone else in the family she had said that. So Gammy forgot and caused my uncle, my parents, and herself to be late to the wedding by half an hour. It was very embarassing to sit there waiting for them knowing the delay in the wedding was my family. Either way, they got married.
Rice Undergrad Research Symposium is where all undergrads involved in research make a poster like in the real scientific world and present it. It is referred to as RURS or as Dan calls it, (ROUS--Princess Bride analogy). I was quite proud of mine. It was blue with really pretty drawings. I thought I did okay.
May...finals, final papers, more projects...etc. Finals are done. I'm staying at Rice for the summer since my college Baker is the summer housing. I didn't have to move any of my stuff. Went to San Marcos. Maite graduated and Blake proposed to her. So now I have another wedding to go to in September. Saw Mikel again at the graduation. Went to the river to hang out. Got a nice tan. Came back. Back to work. And the best news of all...JOANNE (my oldest sister) IS PREGNANT!!! We were almost sure she would never be able to have a baby because of her medical problems. But she is pregnant and the entire family is ecstatic. Come January, if everything goes all right (she is a high risk pregnancy) there will be another baby to cuddle. Unfortunately, I beleive Alexis is going to have problems. She will no longer be an only child and not the youngest in the family anymore. That can raise quite a few issues, but no one else seems to think she might have problems adjusting. Hell, my family has a history of adjusting to new babies at that age range. JoAnne did not want Lori when she was born. She was an only child all her 6 years. I had issues no longer being the baby of the family when Alexis was born and I was 10. I'm pretty sure that Alexis will have jealousy issues regardless of what kind of person she is.
So, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm sorry this was so long. I don't know how to create the link thingy to make it shorter, so, well, I guess deal with it. Some of its been stored up for a very long time considering. So if you made it all the way down, good on you.
Well, for the mother of all updates, this should be short. I have a flowchart to do that sumarizes my entire semester of research so far.
Well, February. I turned 21! Congrats to me. I had my birthday shot and got back to studying kinda. That weekend I went to visit Lori. It was definitely eventful. I have never been so terrified in my life. Okay, I'll back up. Friday night is fine. We go to Jay's Bistro which is a piano bar in the square in San Marcos. Major fun. Went with Maite, Jennifer, and Lori. Met up with Ryan, Jordan, and James and had a guy friend of Lori comment on the size of my boobs. Lori does an admirable job avoiding certain someone's until he walks right up to our group and starts talking to me and Maite. We do our best to ignore.
Saturday, there is a party going on for the birthday of another person. We go to the apartment complex and are having a pretty good time. Watch a few people do keg stands, watch the guys dance for Nova, talk, chat, drink. Then some strange guys walk in. The scary part is coming now. I wanted to leave because I was starting to feel uncomfortable and my head was starting to hurt. Migraines are a bitch. Anyways, Jen doesn't want to leave quite yet and so I give in for 15 more minutes. I go to stand outside in the cold, cold are so I can cool off and get away form music. Meanwhile the intruders are chugging whiskey from a heavy, square glass bottle (Evan Williams whiskey) and being really rowdy. By the time I went outside I had seen one of them basically pour the last of the bottle over his face and shoulders. There were BIG guys and wearing big camo jackets. Anyways, I'm standing outside when Ryan opens the door to tell me to come back in. He said they were going to get rid of the rowdy big guys and he didn't want me to be in the way. So I go in and stand on the stairs which go down to the back door. I didn't even have to get through the drunken idiots to get to them. Ryan, Jordan, and Oliver have gotten me, Lori, Jen, and Nikita (Ryan's girlfriend at the time) to get on the stairs and at least halfway up. Well, the railing only goes up halfway and then there is a wall blocking the view from the stairs. I'm peeking down at the point where the railing ends and watching. The guys are politely asked to leave. Then not so politely. Then the fight breaks out. Its a free for all and fists are flying. One guy upends the coffee table and throws it. We girls are heading upstairs to get away from everything. But Jen is down towards the bottom saying she will open the door for them as the leave. After all, they wouldn't hit a girl right? We keep yelling at her to come upstairs and she finally gets dragged up by Lori. They head into Stefan's room and I hang back because the inruders are being shoved through the door, one of which is waving the whiskey bottle around as a weapon. He had already laid one guy out with it. I think maybe its over now. Then the glass back door shatters and the windows are breaking. I head up after the rest of the girls. We all go hide in Stefan's room. Jen is freaking out and she wants her "boys" to be up there with us. Lori is handling her reminding her that Ryan is a black belt and he and Jordan are perfectly capable of handling themselves. I'm telling Ryan's girlfriend Nikita the same thing because she is crying and freaking out too. We are paranoid about who is going to come through that door. Stefan comes in and is calling the police. Its terror in that apartment. Then its over. The glass stops shattering, the yelling stops, its quiet. Lori goes down to check how things are going. Lori comes back up to warn us to be careful of glass everywhere and blood. Jen darts out of the room before Lori can stop her and I take Nikita into the bathroom to be out of the way for Nikita is only 19 and drunk. Nikita's sister calls and Nikita can't answer her phone she is so upset, so I answer it. I have to explain to her that Nikita is fine, I'm a friend, and a fight happened at a party, Nikita is fine. Then Nikita gets her composure enough to talk to her sister. Ryan comes up and I go sit on the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, the door is ajar, caught on the shattered glass that covers the carpet entirely. And there is that damn Evan Williams Whiskey bottle. That heavy, square, glass bottle just sitting there. I barely held it together. Lori brought me my hoodie and I had to shake it to get rid of any glass. Lori couldn't put her scarf or jacket on because they were full of glass. She goes back down to help Jen some more. Finally, its time for me to go down. I'm wearing flip flops so I have to be careful where I step. There is glass everywhere. The carpet is made of glass from the back of the apartment to almost the kitchen. Then there are also the blood. There are drops of it here and there. On the walls, the floor, broken chairs, tables, etc. Its a wreck. I lost it for a moment. I just had to cry. And then I was okay. One of the guys hosting the party told Lori to get me out of there and Lori told him I was 21 and okay. The cops tend to crack down pretty hard on underage drinking in San Marcos. That is why they had to get Nikita out the door pretty fast. The rest of us were 21. Anyways, they caught most of the guys. On our way to the car, we had to pass by to patrol car where they were arresting the guys they caught. One starting yelling about how Ryan was one of the ones who started it when we came into sight. We hurried by even though Ryan had to stop and was handcuffed. We had to get out of there. We got in the car and started driving when Ryan called to let us know he wasn't far behind. That rested our minds a bit. But all I could see was the sight from when I was sitting on the stairs. The broken, open door, the glass, the bottle. We met up with Ryan and Jordan at their apartment. All we could do for the next 2 hours was talk about what had happened, how we could have done something different. We decided to go to a restaurant on the square that is open 24/7. We did our best to put it out of our minds and relax. It worked for a while. Then we went home and had to go to sleep. It took forever to clear my mind enough to get there. It was so hard. The next day I had to go home.
I didn't want to tell anyone in my family what happened. Mom was understanding when I finally told her and offered some tips. Never back yourself into a corner. JoAnne wasn't so understanding. She basically accused Lori of not having enough sense to read the situation and get out. Things did not go well between the two of them for a while.
During rehearsals for Cymbeline I managed to drag a 12 seating heavy oak table across my foot. I managed to not break it but briuse it all the way through. I was restricted to my house shoes for about 2 weeks until it healed enough to wear regular shoes and flip flops.
The next weekend, Lori came home and JoAnne, Bobby, Lori, and me went to a comedy club to celebrate. I had to make them play nice because Lori didn't want to hang out with JoAnne, but they are both my sisters and would damn well be there. They were. Afterwards, we went to Katz's. Pretty nifty place. I enjoyed the food but it was pretty salty.
Anyways, the rest of February was filled with Cymbeline rehearsals.
March...midterms, spring break, making comstumes, sewing by hand, and the play itself. Spring Break, I went to visit Lori again. Went to sixth street in Austin, had a good time. Lori is now very paranoid about strange guys hanging around. Figured out I really like Cherry Vodka Sours and Blue Hawaiians. Next night we go to the restaraunt right next to Lori's apartment where Jordan is bartending for the first time. He gets Lori and Jen shnokkered (pretty drunk) and laughs at the fact that the 21 year old is taking care of the 23 year olds. Some new neighbor guys of Lori's show up and one of them proceeds to hang all over Jen feeling her up. Gives me creep vibes. We head home after making sure they leave before we do. I ask Jordan to come check on us after he gets off work in half an hour to make sure the guys don't invite themselves over like they invited themselves to our drinking time. Anyways, just a note, Jordan had been mixing them strong and with top shelf liquor for us without charging top shelf prices. It was awesome.
I go home and avoid campus because I just didn't want to be there. Tech week for the play goes on. It's been interesting getting things going for the opening night of Cymebline. It was great. Anywys, one of the scenes call for Jove on the back of and eagle. How do you do that without making it look hokey? Well, we used mostly tnransparent UV paint to paint symbols all over the stage. We then shined to stage strength black light with all the lights cut and made it flouresce like mad. It was awesome. I've never seen something so spine tingling in real life ever. I also was ringing the big bass bells (handbells for those of you who didn't make the connection) to add to the eeriness. Wow. We did so fucking good with that scene. Okay, so during the run, one of our actresses falls sick along with her boyfriend. So our director is drawn in his place and I have to take hers. Therefore, two costumes have to be made on a moments notice. Not easy. Especially with all our sewing machines not working. I had to hand sew all the hems on almost every single one of those costumes. People were amazed because I even took it to lab with me to get things done in time. Wow. That was way more hand sewing than I ever wanted to do in my life. Either way, we also had a destructive actor who could not dress himself. Every night until one of the other girls took over, I was pinning his costume back together with safety pins and stitching and tieing his belt on as well as pinning his toga in place. So inept at dressing himself! Argh! Other than that, it was an awesome play and an awesome run. There was the good and the bad, but I'll leave it at that it was not the best experience in my theater life, but not the worst moment for me personally. Oh and cast party, I took care of the first kiss. I was drunk so I asked one of the guys to kiss me. He did. All taken care of.
Unfortunately in the middle of the Cymbeline run, my grandfather died. I missed 2 of the last 3 shows to go to his funeral. It was very sad and heart breaking, but at least he is in no more pain. I couldn't stand to see him in all the pain he was in. Death was a releif for him and for my grandmother who had been taking care of him.
April...Beer Bike, end of Cymebine, Becky got way too drunk at cast party, cousin Sally got married, cousin Justin got married, Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium (RURS)...that's about it. To learn about Beer Bike, go to Wikipedia and search for it. Trust me, its very amusing. My cousin Sally got married and her groom is the nephew of the family that my family has been canoeing with for years and years. The irony is that they met online, not through us. Justin got married also. The wedding was beautiful and was the prefect example of my family and tardiness. My grandmother failed to tell anyone that Trish (the bride) had told Gammy to be there at noon but she didn't tell anyone else in the family she had said that. So Gammy forgot and caused my uncle, my parents, and herself to be late to the wedding by half an hour. It was very embarassing to sit there waiting for them knowing the delay in the wedding was my family. Either way, they got married.
Rice Undergrad Research Symposium is where all undergrads involved in research make a poster like in the real scientific world and present it. It is referred to as RURS or as Dan calls it, (ROUS--Princess Bride analogy). I was quite proud of mine. It was blue with really pretty drawings. I thought I did okay.
May...finals, final papers, more projects...etc. Finals are done. I'm staying at Rice for the summer since my college Baker is the summer housing. I didn't have to move any of my stuff. Went to San Marcos. Maite graduated and Blake proposed to her. So now I have another wedding to go to in September. Saw Mikel again at the graduation. Went to the river to hang out. Got a nice tan. Came back. Back to work. And the best news of all...JOANNE (my oldest sister) IS PREGNANT!!! We were almost sure she would never be able to have a baby because of her medical problems. But she is pregnant and the entire family is ecstatic. Come January, if everything goes all right (she is a high risk pregnancy) there will be another baby to cuddle. Unfortunately, I beleive Alexis is going to have problems. She will no longer be an only child and not the youngest in the family anymore. That can raise quite a few issues, but no one else seems to think she might have problems adjusting. Hell, my family has a history of adjusting to new babies at that age range. JoAnne did not want Lori when she was born. She was an only child all her 6 years. I had issues no longer being the baby of the family when Alexis was born and I was 10. I'm pretty sure that Alexis will have jealousy issues regardless of what kind of person she is.
So, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm sorry this was so long. I don't know how to create the link thingy to make it shorter, so, well, I guess deal with it. Some of its been stored up for a very long time considering. So if you made it all the way down, good on you.