i have no idea what i was going to blog about...

but i won't let that stop me from posting something. i fell out of the practice of blogging for a while and would like to change that. so please tolerate some rambling.

last week was a really busy week for me and i'm finding it a bit difficult to adjust to having less on my plate now. and of course, that's a relative term, since i have plenty of stuff to do before school starts, but my time is mine to use as i please, unlike last week.

fortunately i got to split my time between something that wasn't very fun (research project) and something that was a lot of fun (hanging out with my nephew luke.) luke and i had a great time and managed to do a lot of awesome dubuque stuff in one day. i think we were both wiped out by night time. he was sad to be leaving the next day and honestly, i was sad to let him go. i know he had good times with grandma and grandpa but it was so great seeing the sites with luke and even doing things like making mac-n-cheese with hotdogs and watching how happy he was to get a free birthday sundae at happy joes. gives me hope that eventually i'll be a pretty good mom.

the research project was not as fun, mostly because i didn't get the template for how it needed to be designed until after i had put 18 hours in. that was quite frustrating to say the least.

this week i'm hoping to get some syllabi done and then i'm going to spend some time with dennis and mom and dad this weekend. i'm even planning on making it a long weekend and getting some quality time on mom and dad's deck before heading back to dubuque. (cross your fingers for good deck weather.)

other than that, this summer has gone really fast. i can't believe that i'm going to be heading to ASA in San Francisco next week already. i'm really excited about that trip and in now way ready for it. :D

alright, enough pointless rambling for tonight. i promise to have more intelligible posts next time. maybe. ;)

wrapping up vegas

i am finally getting around to finishing my blog about this trip. (jody just pointed out that we've been home for a week, but it already seems like we were in vegas a long time ago. figure that one out?!)

we woke up late and got ready for breakfast at New York, New York. by the time we got to America (the restaurant...i know Vegas is in America smart-asses) it was 11:30 so we got the modified "you're too late for real breakfast and should be eating lunch" menu, but we still made out pretty well. if memory serves, we did some gambling after this in ny ny and jody got the longest and most amazing bonus game at a monopoly penny slot that i've ever seen. we also kicked off the early afternoon with some vodka cranberries that did not taste like ass (unlike sahara.) i even had a cigar while wasting my pennies away.

eventually, jody and i decided not to waste the beautiful 107 degree temperatures by staying inside (that was sarcasm, people!) so we got ready to go to the pool at the MGM. we got there around 4 which is peak vegas hot-time. needless to say though, it was really relaxing out there, for the most part. towards the end of the first hour there was a flock of drunk loud girls chatting up some dude who was really, really sunburned (we called him sunburned guy) very obnoxiously and non-stop, but it's hard to stay mad when you're enjoying some sun, reading a magazine, and mocking people with an old friend. :)

speaking of mocking people, we saw the tannest white guy ever. he was so tan that i ended up taking a picture of him just to prove to you that he exists. we called him tan man....'cuz damn.

jody left me out there for a while so she could get ready for our evening and i just wasn't ready to leave the pool yet, so i hung out for another hour hoping i could get a little tan (not like the saddlebag over there -------------> ).
mostly i get more freckles in the sun, but whatever, that has to be a step up from pasty white, right? i also was freakin' thirsty out there (107 degrees?! hello!) so i ordered bud lime and got carded. so apparently, even in las vegas i look under 21. thanks mom! :)

eventually i ventured back up to the room and got ready myself. our plan for the night was to go to the MGM buffet and then hit NYNY again for the dueling piano bar. we even got a little dressed up! the buffet was pretty good, though it was not as good as Mandalay Bay (which is the only other good one in Vegas i've been too.) we were on a quest to eat our body weight in crab legs and they had them, but on ice. still good, but not the same. regardless, i managed to eat WAY too much.

after all these desserts we made our way over to the dueling piano bar. i have to say, i'm a BIG dueling piano fan and the times square bar in nyny doesn't disappoint. we had some beers (eventually...i was so full that i had to give it a bit), sang along to a bunch of songs, and even danced a bit. it's even possible that some boys hit on us. always good to have an ego boost! we closed down the bar and then headed back to MGM to get some sleep. i think by the time we were finished chatting (just like high school days) and packing, it was close to 3 a.m. the next morning, we got up, got ready, and packed up the rest of our stuff. jody was my hero and went for a quest for coffee for us. once we were checked out, all that was left to do was wait for our shuttle back to the airport. unfortunately we were in different terminals so jody and i had to say adios at security, but we still mocked people via text. :) then after a very long travel day (which included a 4 hour stop over in denver and a ride back to Dubuque from Madison in a nasty thunderstorm) i made it back home in one piece, having had a really awesome vacation. i'm thinking this is something jody and i should make an annual thing. not vegas necessarily, but somewhere fun. :D

we're freakin' adorable!!!

here are some random shots:

random, tiny closet in my bathroom stall at sahara (of course)

















rod stewart.


okay we didn't really see him. that was on a giant screen while we were waiting to check-in to MGM but it sure looks like he was right there.













Paris!


















i took this picture because the T is in quotation marks. i'm a big fan of inappropriately used quotation marks. nice one, bonanza's.
















our view from the MGM room...and a reflection of my pants apparently. :)















sweet relief. thanks denver airport!

vegas day two

so, day two. i slept in for a while given the lack of sleep from the night before. we got ready and decided to head back to the champagne brunch, because as i realized after some thought...it's sunday! (it's easy to lose track of time when you're tired and in vegas.) though we didn't intend to relive morning one, we sort of did. we checked out of our sahara room, took note of the bread tab thing that was still in the hall, and left our bags with a crabby bell hop so that we could go across the street again to bonanza's. you see, there was this talking stuffed animal parrot that we both fell in love with the day before...mostly because it does a parrot whistle and then says "hey. you. go f--- yourself." (next time you come over i can show you the awesomeness.) we headed back to the sahara and did some gambling on the penny slots, unable to resist the game "dam lumberjack beavers." it's fun. trust me. then after losing money, we retrieved our bags and jumped on the monorail to head to the MGM.


the ride was uneventful, but i think jody and i were grateful to only have to spend $5 to get all the way to the other end of the strip. and luckily it wasn't a long walk to the MGM once we got off the train. (this was good news because our feet were already killing us.) when we got to the registration area, there were long lines every where. we got in line behind the man you see below...i dubbed him "angry man." you see, he was asked by an MGM staff member to inform everyone who got in line behind him that this line would be closing as soon as he was helped. this made him very happy. especially because his line was the shortest, thus the first one everyone who wanted to check-in stepped into first. jody and i moved over to the next line and quickly found ourselves already ahead of our poor, angry friend. it turns out there was some dude (our douche as jody called him) holding up angry man's line looking at pictures of suites and stuff. i put my sunglasses on the back of my neck the like guy holding up the line and said something like "is this the cool thing to do now?" to which jody responded "no, now you look like that douche." this comment cracked up the strangers behind us which is one of the great joys in life. making total strangers laugh. classic.


we eventually got checked in and were happy that our room was really nice. we settled in and then did some walking around. we went to see the MGM lions.
































we checked out the miracle mile shops in planet hollywood, went over to new york new york, walked up to the bellagio to see the botanial gardens and the fountains. (it's hard to tell from that picture of smoky the bear, but the water was dripping through him since he was made entirely of moss and stuff which made it look like he was really sweaty. understandable given the 106+ temps while we were there. we also thought that water orb was really awesome.)















































eventually we headed back to the room and we were both pretty exhausted. we had thought about going to a dueling piano bar, but we were both wiped out and hungry so we decided to order a pizza and watch tv for a while and call it a early night. we called papa john's and i learned of jody's intense hatred of sausage, peppers, and onions. :) about 40 minutes later we headed outside to meet the delivery guy. as we were waiting, we had some fun people watching/mocking. at one point this giant limo pulled up and jody predicted some sort of rock star type or skinny ho-bag would jump out. we were surprised when instead a very large family exited it instead. just goes to show you that you never can accurately predict what is about to happen next in vegas.

i spotted our pizza delivery guy from a distance so trotted off to get our pizza, which we promptly devoured, while sitting on the floor watching sex in the city. (i made the point that sitting on the floor having a pizza picnic would have been unthinkable at the sahara.) so that was the end of day two. we went to sleep happy and full and ready to get some rest to prepare for vega

what happens in vegas ends up on my blog

or at least some of it. :) jody and i had an AWESOME time in las vegas, so i thought i should share some of the fun with you, my beloved reader(s). if you'll bear with me, i'm going to attempt to upload goofy pictures from my iPhone as i go.

i left dubuque at the flat-out ridiculous hour of 2:30 a.m. in order to catch my 6:00 a.m. flight in madison. thankfully, my friend clete gave me a ride to the airport so i wouldn't sleepily crash into a cow or something on my way there. the madison airport was surprisingly bigger than i thought it would be. i debated whether i should bother with having a coffee, having slept exactly not at all, and decided that it probably wouldn't hurt anything. while standing in the line with other travelers who made the same choice as me, an older lady walked past all of us to the counter and asked if she had to stand in line for coffee. the cashier was a bit stunned by the sheer stupidity of this question, given the fact that this wasn't elizabeth taylor or the queen of england or someone, and informed her that indeed, the rest of us were waiting for coffee. i know it was early, but what the hell else would we have been doing in that line. but i digress...

my flights to vegas were thankfully uneventful and i met jody at the airport at 9:30 vegas time. we took the shuttle to the Sahara, which at one time was the scene for such greats as The Beatles and all the Rat Pack dudes. now it's the scene for...people on a budget who needed one night in a hotel before they get to their good hotel. i didn't take a picture of our room, despite it's cool wall paper, but i did get a shot of the their ingenius logo...















the bread tie thing that was in our hallway during the entire stay...




















and the teeny tiny shot glasses that we got with our $1.00 kamikaze shots...(i'll spare you the picture of jody's champagne ice cream float...because...damn. :P)




















and this last picture gives you a sample of the aforementioned wall paper. you'll also note that someone added to it by slapping their levi's size label thing on the wall. can't have nice things at the sahara.


























what we can have though is some classy advertising for some of the high quality food that you can eat in this desert-themed masterpiece of a hotel. here are the two best examples.





what are they getting at? :) needless to say, we didn't eat either of these things...mostly because we stuck with the champagne brunch...and well...you can read.









one of our first ventures out of the sahara was across the street to bonanza's naughty town. we saw it on the shuttle ride and were thrilled to find that it was located so close to our hotel. though naughty town provided a great deal of hilarity, we both agreed that it wasn't all that naughty. i started calling it "moderately inappropriate subdivision."

here is a sample of some of the things we saw but didn't purchase.









damn i love those squirrel underpants. that's funny stuff.

we wrapped up day one by getting a taxi to the in-n-out burger where we had AWESOME food. there was probably some gambling and drinking and debauchery (side note: we had to explained to the guy who checked us into the MGM what that word means...how can you work in vegas and not know?). it's a little hard to remember all the details of day one because of getting exactly one hour of sleep. i think i'm going to have to split this into a few posts, so for now i'll leave you with this.




love ya jody!

eat. pray. love. blog. :)

as the title of this post makes clear, i'm reading the book eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert. though the book was published a few years ago, i'm just getting around to reading it now, and i have to say that i think the timing is pretty perfect. a friend of mine recommended it last summer, but i'm not sure i was in a place where i could have really appreciated the message the author is conveying. (plus i might have been downright pissed that i could go on a one-year trip around the world to get over my relationship woes.) as i read it now though, i find some much that resonates with how i've been feeling lately and the complicated path it is to move past a broken heart. maybe i should come up with some sort of 3 part january term course to italy, india, and indonesia? :)

anyway, when bits have been particulary pertinent or inspiring, i've dog-eared the page so i can come back to them. here is one i want to share.

"most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world. one instant, you're just a regular joe, schlepping through your mundane life, and then suddenly what is this?--nothing has changed, yet you feel stirred by grace, swollen with wonder, overflowing with bliss. everything for no reason whatsoever--is perfect." (197)

i have had these moments in my life...where the sun is reflecting off the buildings in dubuque in this gorgeous golden light or the moon shines heavy, full, and red in the sky...where despite all the things i find myself worrying about, for that moment all i care about is the beauty of it all and the blessings in my life. lately, beyond those random moments that make my heart pound with a little more life than it does during the mundane times, i find myself feeling happy for specific reasons. students sometimes make me want to punch them in the face, but i love my job. the debts i have sometimes stress me out, but i see a path out of them. my apartment might seem empty without a companion (pet or otherwise), but i love it. i might need to slim down in order to be happier with myself, but i have this renewed sense of self-confidence about kate than i've had in a while. (last summer was rough.) dubuque might be cold in the winter, but it's been lovely in the spring and summer (and we have the best sweet corn in the state.) there are many people that i miss and want to see more, while being blessed with new friendships. at this point in my life, i'm so happy to report, things are going well...and given the year i've had, i feel like this is big news.

this leads me to another part of the book that i really like and thus dog-earred:

"there is so much about my fate that i cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. there are certain lottery tickets i can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. i can decide how i spend my time, whom i interact with, who i share my body and life and money and energy with. i can select what i eat and read and study. i can choose how i'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life--whether i will see them as curses or opportunities (and on occasions when i can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because i'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, i can choose to keep trying to change my outlook.) i can choose my words and the tone of voice in which i speak to others. and most of all, i can choose my thoughts." (177)

so this quote could lead you to believe that i'm ignoring the sociology in my life, and trust me, that's impossible. (it might also be a bit corny, but i don't care.) i feel like this quote in particular talks about the agency that we all have in how we deal with the social forces and life events that come to be in our lives. i could choose to let bitterness and frustration rule my mind, and undoubtedly that attitude would then impact all kinds of other things. but instead, i haven't done that. i've been determined to be positive despite all shit this year, and it's nice to know that i'm in a better place than i might have been without my "foolish" optimism. (i also think this quote could be handy to paraphrase on syllabi for the fall.) :)

anyway, this is probably a lot of rambling just to say...kate is happy. :D hope you all are as well.