mid summer update

i've been in a busy mode all summer, it seems (ha, i just reread my last post, which said my next post (meaning this one) had better not be a month from now. hey-o, it's been over a month since then. ha!) i've been going back and forth about this blog in my head, thinking about what i really want it to be. a personal blog shouldn't stress me out, but at the same time, i want this to be something worthwhile, meaning i need to keep up with it. do i just want this to serve as a personal memory bank for me? should i revert to only posting about things from that list i made so long ago? should i choose a new focus - teaching? that's one i've been coming back to more recently these days, but that's probably because it's summer and i have the time to reflect on everything i did last year and  (right now) i think it'd be fun to keep a blog of what happens AS it happens. ideally, it'd end up being kind of like a lesson plan diary, and the things i share could maybe (hopefully) be beneficial to other teachers, but again, will i actually have the time to manage something like that once school actually starts? 

if i were better at HTML and all that coding stuff, i'd do it all just under this blog, and tag things/post things to the right place, so readers my family could more easily navigate through what they want to read. maybe it's all easier than i think, and all it'll take is a little time commitment to playing around with blog options, but as of right now, i still have an apartment to unpack, an external hard drive i ordered in january that i haven't even taken out of the box, and 3 years worth of pictures to download/print/upload to an online server or said external hard drive...so i don't know when that playing around will actually happen. and really, even though all those things need to get done, i'll probably mostly be playing around with photoshop, because i'm currently designing a friend's save the date for her wedding (jj's been a great teacher so far!).

anyway, since last time, i went to california, saw nicole + lauren, visited the tim burton exhibit, drank almond champagne for the first time (yum), explored santa barbara + surrounding cities, went to north carolina to see my mom get married (see the sweetest photo from the wedding above), got to know bill better, introduced jj to my family (and to north carolina bbq), rode a greyhound (and nearly ended up in tennessee, but jj used his iphone to help direct our clueless driver), visited kinsey + kevin in richmond, had pho for the first time, rode a greyhound again, visited DC, got a wicked bad case of food poisoning, saw the sights in DC, met up with an old friend, came back to texas and another best friend came to visit me in austin with her 5 month old daughter. then the mobile vet came to see corona, and that was hella expensive but worth it because she's doing much better now. oh and THEN my car broke down AGAIN. this time it was the radiator. i realized something was wrong on the way to see HP 7.2 and thankfully was able to get it fixed quickly after jj came home (he was in boulder being smarty nerdy pants at a conference when it broke down). let's see...after that i bought a couch, got to go to the lake (where a fish tried to eat a mole off my back - TWICE), moved, had expensive dental work done, attended a two week science training at UT, and, just now, i got to spend the evening with a dear friend who is in town visiting - she's taking a little vacation here in texas because she's currently living in spain. if my finances work out, i'd like to be visiting her there soon.

this weekend's agenda is to wait around here because my couch is being delivered. i also want and need to get everything unpacked and in its place, because next week it's my birthday, and then right after that jj and i will head to dfw for a few days to visit family. i definitely want to see my little brother before he starts school, because this year he'll be in THIRD GRADE! fun for us both, i hope.