Lots of things

I have been negligent in blogging for the past week or so. Here is a very quick run down (in no particular order):

1. I joined the swim team and have been practicing for the last two weeks. I love that someone gives me a work out to do. Tomorrow, I'm ordering a sweat shirt!

2. I turned in my PhD application. The actual deadline for the application is Wednesday. I assume I will know something by the end of October.

3. I have been very proud of the NKY community in recent events. A friend of mine's mother passed away unexpectedly last weekend, and I'm very impressed with the way the community has rallied around my friend's family. My mind is marinating a post on this topic, we will see if it comes to fruition.

4. My brother departed for Iraq last Friday. We are sending him many prayers, and I would love it if you could keep him in your thoughts. I am going to miss him a lot this year, especially because the internet connection is going to be spotty and we won't be able to talk on IM!

5. My parents are on a Mediterranean cruise. I am very jealous.

6. I start data collection for my thesis on Thursday.

Yesterday was a very special day

Yesterday was my dad's birthday! Please don't think I forgot. I called and sang to him and talked to him several times yesterday. We celebrated his birthday last weekend when we were home. Yesterday was a very busy day that kept me from blogging, so I'm making up for it today.

My parents are awesome. Both of them took so much time in raising us. They played with us and coached our teams. Their care of us has extended even after I have been married and out of the house. They are incredibly generous and so much fun to be around.

With Dad, we played many games as kids. In "Indestructo" we tried our best to stop him from crawling across the living room while he chanted "Indestructo" and beat us every time, and in "Yoo-Hoo" he hid somewhere in the house and we had to find him by following his calls of "Yoo-Hoo!" We cleaned the kitchen to "Inna Gadda Divita" and we shook the house with movies and music once we got surround sound. He threw football and baseball and passed soccer and shot hoops with us in the yard (both my parents did), and when the neighborhood kids came up to play, he included them, too.

He teased my boyfriends and gossiped with my friends. He and I use puns constantly, and sometimes we're the only ones to laugh at them. He's witty and smart and silly.

There's so much to write about, but I'll stop there! :) All there pictures here are from my wedding and taken by Tine Hoffman. In the top picture, Dad was thrown out of every room by a gaggle of loud young ladies as we rushed around to get ready. Finally, we disturbed him in his room, his sanctuary, because we ended up dressing in there. Poor Dad. In the bottom two pictures, we were obviously having the father/daughter dance. Before I picked my dress, church, photographer, anything, I knew what I was going to dance with my dad to. Dad sang "That's Amore" by Dean Martin to me many times as a little girl, you know the one, it's the, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore!" song. We spun wildly around the dance floor, throwing our arms way up in the air and then way down to the ground. It was awesome. And us.

Mom and Dad left last night for a nice vacation in Europe. It's the first time they'll be there together, which is so exciting. I can't wait to see their pictures.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Tales from the Bus: Locker Love

It's been somewhat of a reawakening. Maybe a rude reawakening.

First, all of those leggings-as-pants strolling around campus. The added traffic on the streets. The piles of beer cans in garbage throughout town.

The students are back.

Today I rode into campus and saw something on the bus I've never seen before. Well, "saw" might not be an appropriate word because I was trying my hardest not to look.

Let's put it this way -- when I was in high school one of the teachers used to refer to couples hanging out in the hallways as "Locker Love," as in, "Quit the Locker Love and get to class!"

Today on the bus, I was standing near the front, and there was LOCKER LOVE going on in the aisle right across from me. I could touch these people's feet with my feet.

And what do I mean by Locker Love? Well, think of the most simpering, please-tell-me-that's-not-your-real-voice, I'll put my arm around you to protect you from falling when the bus makes a quick stop, "I couldn't stand four days without you," and "I will not forget to meet you at 3:45" type of guy. Well, that last one isn't too bad, is it? Scratch that. Give him a little girlfriend in jean capris (thankfully, I don't think I would have lasted had she been wearing leggings).

And have them googly-eye each other while giving each other multiple kisses.

On the bus.

At 1:00 in the AFTERNOON.

I stared straight out the front window. I couldn't believe it. Why did I have to even hear that? Because, my friends, we all know that if someone is in love enough to exchange saliva on the city bus, they aren't caring so much about the sound of all that lip mashing. I won't say more. I might be sick.

But really? The afternoon! I was headed to lunch for goodness sake. Did I really need the googly-eyes? I mean, at night, after a rousing evening at the bars, maybe I can understand getting carried away on the bus. But I had a rousing good appetite for a BLT that could have been ruined! (But let's be honest, I ate the whole BLT, which also had Swiss cheese and avocados, a work of art.)

Go to class, people. Hold hands if you're feeling crazy. Perhaps I sound like I'm 90 years old, but let's not have any more suck face on the bus.

(Especially if you're wearing leggings-as-pants at the time. *shiver*)

Happy Birthday!

Today begins the birthday extravaganza!

Hal's and my birthdays are one day apart, his is today, Sept. 8th, and mine is tomorrow. To celebrate Hal's birthday, we ate at Samira, a local restaurant, and he received two presents from me, a Wii game and a Food Processor! (It's a larger food processor than the one we currently have, so now we have two.)

It's nice that our birthdays are close together so we can have a great celebration during this time. It's even more special because we started dating shortly after our birthdays in 2003, so we will have been together for 5 years in a little over a week.

Hal is wonderful and I'm so glad he's allowed me to hang out with him for so long. Even though at 27 he is the older guy in his Italian class, he doesn't seem old to me! ;) Really, though, I'm glad our paths were able to cross, and it's neat our birthdays were so important in the beginning of our relationship. Makes things a little extra special. :)

I'm happy he's in my life and I'm happy it's his birthday!

Donnie time! Weekend 1

As you all know, my brother Donnie came home for leave from the army from August 14-26. We spent that first Saturday night at one of Donnie's favorite places -- the Cincinnati Reds game! In the picture above, Donnie rides the water taxi from Newport to Cincinnati. We ate dinner at Hofbrauhaus.
Jennie and Pete smile on the Water Taxi.

My cousin Kaysie had knee surgery this summer. When we got off the water taxi, which you can see in the first picture, Kaysie looked horrified at the amount of steps she was going to have to climb. Donnie put her on his back and carried her up these steps as well as the steps into the stadium with what seemed like no effort. He asked her what she weighed, and I won't tell you here, but it was about what he is normally carrying in equipment in the field.

A big group of people came to the game. Here are several of my family members -- Aunt Kim and Aunt Tami and Kaysie are in the front, and Uncle Walt (Kim's husband) and my cousins Kayla, Carlie, and Ryan are in the back row.

My cousin Kayla is my sister's roommate this year at UK. Here the two roomies smile in a Pete sandwich.Family friend Sean and then my cousins Joey and Jacob look at the camera.

Donnie and his friends Brian and Kyle have known each other for a long time.

Cincinnati is pretty from the safety of the stadium -- too bad the team was terrible that night!

Marco Polo .... oh no.

I have many fantastic pictures to post from the time I got to spend with my brother while he was on leave and able to come home. I will tell you that I woke up one day with a hurting face because I laughed so hard the night (and into the morning) before.

But I will leave you with a quick story from this evening before I go to bed:

It started simply.

My cousin Jacob started college a couple of weeks ago at Eastern Kentucky University. An avid swimmer, Jacob thought about swimming in college, but decided to go to EKU for their interesting major (Homeland Security) and to do Air Force ROTC.

He is considering joining the club swim team.

(Side note: Universities often have three tiers of sports -- their "varsity sports," which are the people on ESPN who get paid to go to school and who are usually amazing at their sport, "club sports," which are often filled by people who played before and try out to get on the team and the teams often compete against other universities, and "intermurals," which anyone can participate in...in case you needed to know)

Well, my school also has a club swim team. This club team does not have try-outs and you can compete or not compete. I jokingly told Jacob that I would join the IU team and swim against him. We would compete in the two events he did not ever compete in in high school -- the butterfly and backstroke. The race was going to be approximately 5 yards of Fly (I can only do four strokes of fly before I get tired) and the other 45 of backstroke.

So tonight I went to my first swim team practice. I loved swimming laps in college and I looked forward to having someone tell me what to swim.

Tonight was the last practice of the week and in celebration the team decided to play water polo.
In eight feet of water.

I must have looked terrified.

The very nice girl (who had emailed me assuring me that they do accept all skill levels on the team) asked if I wanted to play.

I said, "I'm not sure I'm adept enough for water polo quite yet." I further told her that I didn't want to be "that girl" who makes everyone on her team mad because she is too focused on not drowning to play well (I spend a lot of my life trying not to be "that girl").

She was very nice about it and allowed me to swim in the remaining reserved lane.

I swam a mile, albeit very slowly, while the water polo game raged next to me. (I think I made the right decision -- it looked exhausting.)

At one point in time, I was kick boarding and I noticed that the lifeguard, situated conveniently at one end of my lane, was joined by two other young ladies. I paused at the end of the lane:

"Hey," I said. "I am so out of shape that you had to call in reinforcements?"

The three girls chuckled and the lifeguard assured me, "Oh no, these girls are terrible, they wouldn't be able to catch you."

I went on my merry way. I swam 1650 meters tonight, although about half was on the kick board. My arms already hurt.

I am glad I went, although I'm not sure what lies in store for this particular adventure -- I might not be quite up to team level.

However, just by going to the work out facility tonight I got a free T-shirt celebrating the first week of the semester.

And we all know how I feel about T-shirts.

So I'd say it was entirely worth it.