Happy New Year!

Susie made me feel guilty for not posting in my blog, so here we go again!

Christmas was great, we all (Carrie, mom, and I) went to Susie and Mike's house to celebrate. It's awesome that Susie has room for us! Carrie left the next day to spend time with her friend in NYC and then went back to DC before leaving for NC to see family on our dad's side. Mom had to leave the 29th to go back to work, and I left the 2nd. I got a chance to babysit Ethan while Susie and Mike went to see Avatar. He's so cute! But it's pretty difficult to get him to do something when he doesn't want to.

I'm back in Ithaca now, working. It's pretty slow... we didn't have a lot to do when I left, and the projects haven't started up yet. This weekend is the Rotary Interview Weekend, so I'll be leaving Friday to help choose the kids to go abroad, and where they'll go. It'll be really good to see all the other rotex again! I really don't see them enough.

I'll try to keep my blog more up to date, but my life really is boring! Work, school, dance... that's my life!

Time goes on...

The service for grandpa last Saturday was perfect! It had Jim Vanarsdale talking about things gpa did as a kid, in college, and after the Navy. Clyde Embling talked about gpa's faith, and Esther Dake talked about gpa's love for his family. We had a military burial for gpa, with the gun salute, taps, and flag folding.

This past Tuesday I went to a picnic on the patio for gma's assisted living home. It was fun, there was music and food (lots of food!), and it gave us a chance to talk about gpa, dad, Castile, etc. The staff there is so friendly, and I can totally see gma getting spoiled there :)

Other than that... I'm doing the whole work thing. 8-2:30, class at 3. Luckily class is ending in mid-July, but after that I'm starting to work on a research project for my advisor. I get to enter data about milk! WHOO! But it's cool, I'm getting credit for it and I'm learning SAS (statistical stuff).
Time off? What's that??

Grandpa Walkley

As most of you have read from Susie's blog, our gpa passed away last weekend. After having our gma Hartman pass away this winter and then gpa now, it's really made me think about grandparents in general. I feel that every grandparent needs something special that whenever you think of that thing or do something you think of them.

My Grandpa Hartman had Alzheimer's Disease, and was too far gone by the time I was old enough to remember him. So, unfortunately, I don't really have anything to associate with him.

My Grandma Hartman had a dish of spoons. Random, I know, but every day at breakfast the dish (I think it was an ice cream sundae dish) made it's way over to the table. My mom has this dish now, so whenever I go home I use it and think of breakfast with grandma.

My Grandma Walkley was a baker. Every time I went to her house I always hoped that she would offer me one of her special cookies- oatmeal, coconut, and chocolate chips. Yummy! She doesn't bake anymore, but I have the recipe. They taste the same, but they're always missing something... I'm guessing it's grandma's love :)

When I think of Grandpa Walkley, I think of games. He was good at every game we played- from croquet to hearts. Every Sunday our family got together after brunch and played hearts or bridge. Every day during or after lunch my grandparents played rummy together. When I lived with my dad at my grandparents house during the first part of the divorce, grandpa taught me how to play cribbage and played other games with me to keep me occupied. Now whenever I see a croquet set or a deck of cards I think of grandpa, and the fun we had playing together.

busy busy

It feels like April and May have gone by so quickly... I was in Teszia's spring show (Spring Shimmy 2009: Pangaea), I went to the district conference for my Rotary district to chaperone the exchange students, I finished classes, and this past weekend another Rotex and I put together a camping trip for the exchange students. I'm working now, basically full time. I'm taking a summer class as well, so I'm going to have a busy summer as well! I have a bunch of pictures for the show and the district conference, so I'll make seperate posts for them.

yes, yes, I'm still alive

Nothing really has been happening around here...

• Becky went to Rome for the semester, which is awesome for her (but sucks for me).
• I'm working at the same office that I've been at for the past... how many years?
• Still going to classes (for the most part). I'm in a hotel business computing class, intro to business regulation, macroeconomics, retail speaker series, and I'm still a TA for the freshman AEM class that I TAed for last year.
• Still belly dancing, good fun there. I feel like I haven't worked out in years, so I think once I've paid off my plane ticket to gma's funeral I might join the gym. My roommate goes all the time, so she'd help me get my money's worth
• I'm actually choreographing a dance for our spring shimmy. It's a fan veil dance, which I've never done before, so it should be interesting.
  

I know I haven't shared any part of my life in several months, but I just HAD to share this cartoon from xkcd.com... It's 'a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language', and amazingly hilarious

new stuff

Since the last time I wrote, crazy things have been happening in my life. The first thing that happened I guess was right after the welcome home dinner. I was driving home and fell asleep at the wheel. I completely wrecked mom's car, but I'm fine. Just a few scrapes and bruises, but they took me to the hospital because I had some neck and back pain (obviously, I had just gotten in a car accident...). But yeah, the worst part about the entire thing was that I left mom without a car. So she's been looking for one, and I think she just bought one this weekend. But, we weren't able to go down to Susie's on Friday like we had hoped. We were thinking that we wouldn't be able to go down at all (mom couldn't rent a car because they were all gone- big car race that weekend in the next town over)... and then mom's co-worker offered her car! So we were able to go down Saturday morning and still have a great weekend together.

The next weekend I moved out of my old house into a frat house. My leases had a gap in them, so I was basically homeless for 10 days. My friend was going to be gone for two weeks during that time, so he offered me his room in his frat house. There were only 5 or 6 guys in the house, and I was friends with most of them, so it was really fun. Plus, the house was a LOT closer to work than my old place, so I was happy :)
The weekend after that, I moved into my new apartment! I now am living with 3 other girls in an apartment complex SO FAR away from campus that we have a shuttle that takes us up the giant hills.

Classes started last Thursday, and so far they're pretty good. I'm taking finance, business law, business statistics, market researching, and psych 101. Finance is going to be difficult... I almost fell asleep in the first class. Really not a good sign. Haven't had b-law yet, but that'll be rough too... class at 8:40! Business statistics and market researching are going to be really interesting, I think I'm really going to enjoy those classes. Psych 101 is going to be cool, I have a lot of friends in the class with me, so that'll be fun.

This weekend we had the first Teszia rehearsal, and I'm so excited to be back in the groove of things! Today we had club fest, which is where all the clubs, a capella groups, and dance groups show off what they have and people can sign up to be part of the list serv. We had our first performance there (they had a little stage set up), which turned out really well. I'm really excited for this semester, we had 50 girls sign up for emails about auditions! We're really going to be getting the cream of the crop this year