babies don't need coffee

it's 8:00 p.m. i'm in a local coffee shop trying to study. and suddenly this place is more hoppin' than a bar at northgate. only it's hoppin' with the goth people who are loud, with sorority girls who aren't here to study though they have books, and apparently a group of mom's with their babies. what is the deal with that? why do babies and mom's need coffee right now? shouldn't babies be asleep? i'm pretty sure my bedtime was 8 p.m. until like 3rd grade or something. i have decided two things: 1. if/when i ever have a baby, i will not bring him/her to coffee places where students are trying to study and 2. i need to move to a bigger college town. there are only like 5 coffee shops in town so everybody in the free world is here. i know, i know..it's a business and people come here to drink coffee and it's not a library. i'm just sayin'...it sucks asses.

sara and i decided that we need to open a coffee/wine bar in town that is for graduate students or people over 23 only. i think it would be a huge success...and it would be quieter.

other than that, i'm having a good monday.

happy easter

happy easter everyone. easter in my family was never as big of a celebration as christmas, but it was always a fun time for the parks fam. we'd anxiously await our easter baskets and try to locate all the hidden eggs. i find myself missing that a little today. i'm appreciative of tim and lidia though for letting me invade their dinner plans. :) today i didn't get an easter basket or marshmellow peeps (though i might go to the store to get some..love those things!), but i did get to hear mike rant about mass and i get to have yummy dinner. woo!

i got home yesterday from a conference in new orleans. it was a great time and i'm really glad that i went, even though i didn't originally want to go. ate so much good food, had some good drinks (probably too many as tim can attest to from my failed attempt to drunk dial him), and the conference itself was also really great. my presentations went really well and going to the sessions gave me lots of ideas for research. ideas that i should write down so i don't forget them. met some new people, made some new friends, hung out with old friends..it was great.

now it's back to the grind.

happy easter everyone. i hope it's a blessed day.

i'm on to something

see...green tea is made of yoda juice. if you don't know what i'm talking about see my previous entry entitled: green tea is yoda juice from february 21st or something.

i could use some right now. as it turns out, 3 hours of sleep isn't enough. starbucks hasn't even helped. but i bet yoda juice would. aw yeah.

by the way, if there are three multi-colored dots by the title, you can click on them to get to the link i was referring to. or it's right here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7187847/?GT1=6305

the weather person is the devil

so i wanted to check the weather today to see if there'd be more hail like there was yesterday. i tuned into the weather channel and it appears there is something wrong with their sound. all the people sound like they have devily voices. it sounds like when someone is being interviewed and their voice is disguised. it's actually kind of funny and i wonder if people nation-wide are a bit startled when they hear demon-voices on the weather channel. :) it's especially awesome when the cute weather guy has this huge smile and his voice is just devily. good stuff.

grading stuff led to deep thoughts

i've been getting a sneak preview of my future life as a prof this week. i've been grading marriage and family exams for the past 3 days or so. someday i'll be dr. kate and i'll be paying some crazy poor grad student (or undergrad) to grade stuff for me. :) grading isn't too bad in general. these exams are especially interesting because they've been writing about how women have to choose between career and family a lot of the time, or in sociology speak...they veer towards or veer away from domesticity. some of their insights about that subject are really interesting and some of them scare the pants off me. not in the usual way that you might expect if you've graded undergraduate essays before. inevitably there is one or two that goes on a moral tirade instead of actually answering the question that's being asked of them. sort of a "wwjd" response to an exam question. so far there haven't been any of those in this set. instead, they just keep writing about how when women choose the career path, it's hard to choose the family path. the longer i'm in graduate school the more i wonder if this track really will lead me to being that crazy cat lady in the future who has a lot of publications and a lot of litter boxes. i'm not convinced that ph.d. women are destined for that path. i just hope that it's possible to have it all. sara and i have been talking about the lack of role models we find in our graduate lives of women who get to have a fulfilling career and a family life too. crazy veering. :) i'm pretty sure there's some research to be done here. don't steal it from me bastards! we can co-author it. word!

in other news, i'm kinda bummed because one of my favorite local websites has crapped itself. it was http://www.aggielandmenus.info totally rad site! you could look up pretty much any restaurant in town and they would provide a menu, as well as contact info and some places you could even order online. it was great and i hope that it will come back to us.

well, it's 2:03 a.m. and i almost reached my goal of grading 30 exams since 9 p.m. just 5 short but it's bed time. night yo!

spring break?

so, i'm glad that i was a lazy ass and didn't do a thing academic or work related this past weekend (well, mostly), because it looks like i'm going to be really really busy for the next two weeks. AND what sucks about it is that this week is supposed to be spring break. i guess i should get it out of my head that this week is any different from the rest of the year. the only change is that i don't have to go to class this week. however, i foolishly took on too much extra work for this week (though i need the money and good karma). still have two books to read, two presentations to prepare for a conference in new orleans next week, one paper proposal to write, and 70 tests to grade. and all of that has led to a bit of insomnia that will likely prevent me from going to swim with tim tomorrow since it's 2 a.m. and i'm not asleep right now. he's going to think i'm the flakiest swim friend in the world, but i bet he'll also understand since he's also in graduate student hell. i'm really really looking forward the days when i just have one thing on my plate instead of like 3022wq342. (yes, i know there's a w and a q in there...bring it.) but you know what, i bet that will never really be the case. there will always be various things to balance. (like maybe career and family and stuff like that...instead of papers and two jobs and blah blah blah..what am i talking about). i just hope that it's not so much all at once all the time. whatever, i'm rambling because it's late and i'm tired even if my brains won't let me sleep. dumb bastard brains. before i know it, it will be summer and it will be hotter and i'll still be posting stuff like this. :)

talked to mike today . he says hi to everyone from italy. i think he's enjoying his time there and i'm sure he'll be posting about all the mopeds and stuff that he's seen. here's hoping he doesn't swear at the pope tomorrow. (side note for dennis: mike was going to tell the pope hi from you and to let him know to make you a bishop).

so that's it for now. better try to sleep so i can get stuff done tomorrow...i mean today.

"i can tell that we are going to be friends"

the subject line is the title of a great song by the white stripes. if you've seen napoleon dynamite, you'll recognize it from the opening credits. if you haven't seen napoleon dynamite, stop reading right now and go watch it already. you are banned from reading my blog until you've seen one of the best films yet. i'm resisting all urges to stop writing this and watch it for the billionth time.
the soundtrack is really quite good too, though this song is strangely missing from it.

anyway, i've been blogging a lot lately and it's not like i have a lot going on that i need to write about. more like i have had a lot of stuff on my mind lately and i'm forcing you all to read it. i've been feeling really nostalgic lately and i'm not sure if that's because spring is just about here or because i just got home from a great visit or because of some other reason that i haven't thought of yet. maybe it's because i live in 205 now and the vibe here is totally different than it was when i first moved back to texas. and things have changed in a lot of good ways since then. tim got married, mike got a new opportunity in new mexico, shells gets to be closer to family, etc etc. lots of good stuff. but i still find myself missing those times past. when brett and mike would pull up outside my apartment on the way to northgate. when tim and cass and mike would smoke cigars in hammock chairs in the back. when shells and i would talk over mudslides trying to understand boys. when the boys and i would go to fox and hound and watch brett do ninja moves in the parking lot or i'd go to lunch with the computer guys and be the only girl and the only one to not get their computer jokes. and that's just the texas memories i have from last year i could go on even more about crazy undergrad adventures or fun times with dennis (like when he farted on a child once or crashed a 15 passenger van into a car), monica, jeremy, jed and jen. or bitch sessions with sociology peeps and the hell and adventure that brought me closer to people at marquette. i guess the reason i quoted that song up there was because i really just miss those close networks of friends that i was graced to spend various points in my life with. luckily tim and i can carry on the college station front and i'm so glad to get to hang out with him and lidia (except when tim makes me go swimming in the morning) :) and i have sara and sociology peeps to keep me sane with boys and classes and all that fun stuff. things have changed for all of us, but the friendships are still there. as the song says: "tonight i'll dream while i'm in bed, when silly thoughts go through my head, about the bugs and alphabet, when i wake, tomorrow i'll bet, that you and i will walk together again..i can tell that we are gonna be friends."

i know..i'm a fuckin' corn dog lately. bite it.

addendum: there are probably people that should have made it in that last paragraph but aren't there. i'm happy and grateful for all my friends. except for tim now who hates my corndogginess. bite it tim. :P just kidding. you all rock asses.

crisp texas air? *yawn*

so, i took almost a week off and relaxed my ass off in albuquerque. it was great and i had a really fun time spending time with one of my closest friends in the world, mike. we ate great food (even some that i made!) and went mini-golfing in the sunshine (i kicked his ass on one round....woo!) and i met some of his buddies in NM. it was just what i needed and i hoped that i would come home refreshed and ready to face the rest of this semester. hopefully that will set in tomorrow because it certainly hasn't today. i'm pooped and unmotivated to read 100 pages tonight, even though i really need to. lucky for me...spring break is next week and i will get some time to get work done. i have two papers to write this semester (one is my dissertation proposal..yikes!) and need to work on another project too so that i can be a superstar when i eventually graduate.

i'm probably rambling now. thanks for a fun time mike and thanks NM for being beautiful and enchanting while i was there. makes it hard to come back, but i'm so glad to have great friends in TX here to keep me sane.

okay, it's either reading time or bed time....we'll see how exciting this book ends up being.

crisp mountain air

right now i'm sitting on mike's balcony, checking out mountains, drinking a beer, and just having a relaxing afternoon. i highly recommend this activity to all my reader(s). very happy to get to take a break and get away from the stress of school and work for a while. sweet!