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10/09/2007 Went back to the doctor this morning for another check-up. Nothing much to report. I'm down to 5 mg and will be going off completely at the end of the week. Whoo! Then when I got into work, I got a call from LifeSouth asking me to come give blood because they're short on O+. So I left early to do that, spent an hour and a half there, and didn't end up giving them any because my blood clotted as soon as they stuck me. Sigh. Also, on Monday I got two calls from an 800 number, which was odd, so I didn't answer and nobody left a message. Same number called today, I picked up, I heard music for a second or two and then nothing. It disconnected. Any thoughts? posted 8:33 PM / post / view (2) 10/03/2007 I had a really nice compliment tonight, and I wanted to write it down before I forget! I was sitting across from the dean of faculty tonight at dinner, and he said he was really impressed with my work on the admissions material; that it was so good, he thought they must have outsourced it. :D And then he said that he'd been trying to steal me for Dr. Stubbs, the registrar (what for exactly, I don't know) because they needed someone analytical and talented, and my name kept coming up. But the president wouldn't let them take me away from Su. Which is fine, I love working for Su. But yay! I'm apparently appreciated. :D Labels: work posted 12:57 PM / post / view (0) 9/06/2007 It's really bad that I'm too lazy to update my blog. I managed to get all my publications done (relatively) on time, and then went on vacation for 6 days. Last Wednesday, I flew up to New York to spend some time with Ellie and go wedding shopping. We found her wedding dress (which is gorgeous) and I tried on some bridesmaid dresses. I'm very frustrated with myself right now, though, because I can remember a time when I bought a size freakin' 0 (I was, like, 13, but still) and now I'm running about 8-10. I think a lot of it is a side effect from my medication. I'm about 20-25 pounds heavier now than when I first started taking it. And I may not be a healthy eater, but I don't eat that MUCH of anything. In any case, my doctor agreed, and we're phasing out the paxil at the moment. I have a follow-up on the 11th to check my progress and hopefully discuss alternatives. It seems to be going okay so far; I'm on half my regular dosage, and I've only noticed a slight increase in irritability. Nothing too severe. I hope it stays that way; I'm supposed to decrease another 5 mg every two weeks until I'm off completely. ANYWAY. Aside from the wedding shopping, we mostly just hung out. We did spend Labor Day doing regular shopping, which was pretty darn successful. I got to see Deena and Brannon, and that's always fun. Oh, I designed a Save the Date card for Alison and Saul, too. I think it's pretty cute. I can't wait to see it in print! And on Tuesday, I flew back here and went back to work yesterday. I have a lot to catch up on. I'll probably be pretty busy this weekend, too, because it's Family Weekend at school and there's events to photograph. I need to remember to check in with my boss about that tomorrow and see which ones I need to cover. Okay, it's past 9, and I still haven't eaten yet. Time to go! posted 10:08 PM / post / view (1) 8/06/2007 I'm staying busy, wheee. I'll be glad to make it to the end of August; all of my publication work will be finished, I'll go on vacation, and I can start fresh when I come back after Labor Day. 22 more days! I wasn't planning on doing anything Friday night, but Terri asked me if I wanted to join her and Demetrius for dinner at Kabuki. I had already eaten, but I'd rather go and hang out with them that sit at home alone, and I had never been there before. So we had dinner, and then Terri really wanted to play Apples to Apples, so we went back to my apartment and did that. I think they were there till about midnight; it was lots of fun. Saturday, of course, I slept in... I had a work thing to go to in the afternoon. They were dedicating the newly-renovated art gallery. I didn't notice a whole lot of changes, but I believe Mark said that they weren't completely finished yet, sooo... we'll see. They painted the outside (which I hate, because they painted the brick foundation, and I hate it when people paint brick, but whatever), fixed the roof (yay), re-carpeted the walls (I think), and replaced the light fixtures. They also said they replaced the air conditioner, in which case, they got robbed. The heat index was at least 100 outside (at 3:00 in the afternoon, not surprising) and it was COOLER outside that inside. Granted, it's a small space and there were about 50 people in it, but still. It was ridiculous. I'm glad so many people came, though. I was out of there by 3:45 and had plans to meet Terri and Demetrius again to see Hairspray, but Melanie called and asked me to go with her to a work reception at ASF because everyone else had backed out. And she was having a bad day, so I said yes. I finally got to wear one of my new dresses, yay! The reception was only an hour, followed by a performance of Fair and Tender Ladies. We weren't that into it. We left at intermission and went to play pool at the new place where Bumpers used to be. It was pretty nice; cleaned up on the inside, new tables and cues, and best of all, NO SMOKING. It has to be done outside. I was so excited. And on Sunday, I went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum with Jason. The movie was awesome, and then we ended up sitting around chatting and catching up for another two hours afterwards. Fun times. So now it's Monday and back to work... I have a lot of photos to review and pubs to work on. Blaaah. posted 8:42 AM / post / view (0) 7/31/2007 I've been terrible about writing here, I know. So let's catch up! I went to visit Robin and Amanda in Marietta a couple weeks ago. It was Amanda's birthday, and I promised I would see her. It was a good trip, but I think Robin was a little upset that I didn't see her more. I tried to be fair, though; I've seen Robin more because she still visits Montgomery. She was here this weekend, even. Visiting the two of them is like splitting time between divorced parents, I swear. Anyway, I also got a ticket for running a red light. They mailed it to me. I got it a week later. I don't specifically remember doing it, but I'm not surprised. I kept getting lost and having to turn around, and I probably got frustrated and went right on through it. Oh well. There are worse ways to spend $70. I'm killing a little time at work right now... I finally got to my first publications deadline, so I have a break, but I can't work on the Web site because I broke it. Again. Long story. But how was I supposed to know I couldn't upload a 100 MB file? I mean, really. posted 8:51 AM / post / view (0) 7/12/2007 Thursday, May 24 We gathered in the hotel lobby at 9:00, I think there were 14 of us, to take a day-trip to Prien, a little town on the Chiemsee lake. Our train left Munich around 9:45 and arrived around 11:00. Unfortunately, when we got there, we found out that the train that takes visitors from the main train station to the docks didn't start running until Saturday, so we had to walk the 2 miles there. I'd say it was about 12:15 by the time we reached the docks. When we originally paid for this day-trip, we thought it covered all our expenses. Not so. As far as we can tell, it only covered the mini-train we didn't get to take. The boat tickets (and later, the palace tickets) were left to us; that was about 14 euros we weren't expecting, so no one was particularly thrilled about that. We crossed the lake and disembarked on the island in the middle, where there's a palace at Herrenchiemsee that's modeled after Versailles, complete with its own Hall of Mirrors. I was particularly happy about that since the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles was closed when I visited a couple years ago. We stopped just off the dock and bought our tickets, then walked about another 2 miles to the palace. I think this was one of the most beautiful places I saw on the entire trip, but of course, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. The outside was just as beautiful, though, so I have lots of photos of that. I believe our tour of the palace was at 1:30, after which we stopped briefly for ice cream because we were all starving, having never had lunch. We walked back to the docks, crossed the lake again, and walked back into town where we stopped briefly at a church before sitting down to rest; we had about 45 minutes before our train back to Munich. But of course our guide made a wrong turn going back to the train station, so we missed it and had to wait another hour for the next one. We finally made it back to our hotel at 7:00, still having never eaten all day (except for that little bit of ice cream around 2:00). It was hot all day, too, and I got a little sunburned. We walked about 8 miles. Things could have gone better, but I still enjoyed it. It's just too pretty to get caught up in negative thoughts. Friday, May 25 At this point, I stopped actually writing a narrative and just made notes about where I'd been that day, so details will be a little sketchy. After breakfast, we loaded up one or two buses and drove to Neuschwanstein, a castle built by Ludwig II. Take a look at some pictures; it's absolutely amazing. But I could swear they told us he never lived there. It was built for entertaining and to impress people. It was designed by a set designer rather than an architect; this is what Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland is based on. Unfortunately, the interior was once again off-limits to photography. But I think I bought a book of postcards. Anyway, as you can see from pictures, it's up in the mountains. The bus took us to the little town at the base, and then you could either walk up the path, ride in a horse and carriage, or take a shuttle bus up. The walk is a bit steep but not too far. Near the castle is Marienbrücke (Mary's Bridge), made of steel and extending over a sizable gorge (someday I'll finish putting up my pictures on facebook, and you can see it better). The view is just breathtaking. The walk to the bridge was a little more difficult than that to the castle, but it was worth it. While we were up there, some foreign couple asked me to take their picture with the castle in the background. :) We had a little time afterwards to eat in town before getting back on the bus and driving to Wieskirche (Church in the Meadow), which basically is a small, rococo-style church in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but the inside is gorgeous. You can see some really good pictures at their web site; they might take a minute to load, they're fairly high res. While I was there, I decided that since I seem to visit so many beautiful, famous churches, I'd start buying a rosary from each one. So Wieskirche is my first. We didn't get to spend much time there, maybe a half hour, 45 minutes. Then it was back on the bus and on to Oberammergau, a pretty standard little town where they happen to perform the Passion Plays. Apparently, they started in 1634 after making a vow to perform the plays every 10 years if God spared them from the plague. The plays are performed in years ending with zero. Whether they've kept it up continuously since 1634, I have no idea, but that would be pretty damn impressive. Labels: travel posted 9:40 PM / post / view (0) 6/06/2007 Germany, Part I Monday-Tuesday, May 21-22 I ran a little late Monday morning because my alarm did not go off, and I had been pretty vehement in telling my parents not to wake me. But I made it to the school by 8:30 a.m., as required, and checked in. We collected our passports and had a last-minute meeting, and then I snuck off to the office to do a couple of web site updates before we left. I think the buses were supposed to leave at 10:30 a.m. (I'm not positive) but 10:30 came and went without their even arriving. I know they were at least 30 minutes late, possibly more. When we finally got going, we ran into three traffic jams between Montgomery and Atlanta due to car accidents or construction, so we were even later getting to the airport than we might have been. Five people were on an earlier flight than the rest of us, and they missed it. They had to stay the night in a crappy motel in Atlanta and catch another plane the next day. The other 150 or so of us were divided up between a 767 leaving at 4:30 and a 777 leaving at 6:30. Our individual itineraries specified which flight we were on, but some people discovered at the airport check-in that they were on the earlier flight when they were told they would be on the later one. I was one of the first people to get my bags checked and get into the main terminal, but by the time I got through security and to the gate (stopping for 5 minutes to grab a sandwich at Arby's to take on the plane), they were already on last boarding call for my flight (it was probably between 4 and 4:15 at this point, and I hadn't eaten all day, hence the sandwich). I got on the plane and to my seat, sat down and looked around, and easily half the plane was empty. Last call, and half our group wasn't there. But they apparently waited for us because people kept getting on, and I don't know of anyone who missed that flight. Some people, as I mentioned, didn't know they would be on this flight and had to run for it, but they did make it. Being on the 767 flight, we had a large tv screen in each section rather than the individual, headrest screens that the 777 had. Unfortunately, the screen in my section was malfunctioning. It would flick on for about four seconds per minute, then flick off. It did this for 9 hours. Even while we were trying to sleep. Also, the lights in our section flicked on and off, but at different times than the screen. I have a hard enough time sleeping sitting up to begin with, but this made it pretty close to impossible. So besides not being able to watch the movies, I couldn't sleep, either. At least I had my iPod and a book.
We arrived in Frankfurt around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, collected our bags, and boarded our buses. According to MapQuest, driving from Frankfurt to our first stop, Rothenburg, should take 58 minutes. We made it in about 2-3 hours. That would put us arriving around 11-11:30, at which point we disembarked, walked into the center of town, and were then led on an hour-long tour. The town is very pretty, but it would have been more enjoyable if a) we hadn't just spent 9 hours on a plane and 3 on a bus and b) we'd been allowed to EAT FIRST. This is a recurring theme. My group's tour guide was very friendly. Her name was Claudia, and she took us to her house. We didn't see the whole house, or anything, she just wanted to show us the cellar, which was pretty cool. We also met her mother and her daughter. We ended the tour back in town square as the clock was chiming, so we got to see the glockenspiel in action. Then we separated to eat and were told to be back at the buses by 3. I joined a few others in finding an ATM and then sat down and had lunch by myself, with my book, and checked a few stores. They had very nice nutcrackers, but they were kind of expensive, so I didn't get any. I did stop in a little shop to buy a print, though. Maybe someday I'll get it framed so it can actually be displayed.
So, we get back on the bus to drive to Munich, where we'll be spending most of the rest of our trip. MapQuest says 2 hours and 16 minutes; again, about 3. I can tell you, I had about the best bath EVER that night. Our rooms were small, but our bathroom was amazing. My roommate, Rhonda, and I had dinner in the hotel restaurant and walked around the block to look around a bit, then went to bed. Wednesday, May 23 We started the day with a bus tour of the city. Not very interesting, really, but we stopped at Nymphenburg Palace, which was amazing and actually inside the city, which is odd. At least to me. I wish we'd had more time there; we had a very quick tour of the inside (just a few rooms, really) and were briefly shown the back garden, which was beautiful. I would've liked to spend time there, but we didn't even get to walk through it, just across the top as we circled the back of the building and returned to the bus. We probably spent an hour there, total. Anyway, that was about halfway through our tour, so after driving around a bit more, we were deposited at the Deutsches Museum. I would have preferred an art museum, but whatever. It wasn't all that interesting to me, but I think other people enjoyed it. I think one of the chaperones called it the German Smithsonian. Lots of scientific stuff. This was the first time I got to spend with Kristin since we'd left the school, so I was glad for that at least. :) We finished at the museum around 1 or 2, I think, and a group of us walked around looking for a place to eat. When we didn't find anything, we decided to head back to the hotel where we were a little more familiar with the area. In the subway station, though, the map conveniently lacked a "you are here" sticker, so we couldn't figure out where to go without knowing where we were. There were five of us, though, so we just split a cab back. And in the cab, I figured out where we were on the subway map and that we were only three stops away from the hotel. Oh well. Wednesday night, 40 of us went to dinner at the Hofbrauhaus. Basically, we were in a huge room with long tables, lots of open space, a buffet, and a stage at the far end where a quartet played music during dinner. Afterwards, there was yodeling, wood sawing, etc. The food wasn't anything special, but it's pretty much the place to go for beer. It's served by the liter. One guy at my table had 4. We had to walk him home. Near the end of the night, they did a Maypole dance on the stage and tapped Kristin to take part, so I have some good pictures of that. :) Another girl in our group helped them with the chicken dance. There was also a group of Japanese tourists who seemed fascinated with us, and while we were taking a group picture (with about 5 different cameras), one of them decided to hop in with us. A large group of us decided to walk back to the hotel rather than take the subway, and on the way back we passed by a Mozart pianist. We stopped and listened and chatted for a while, and one of our girls, who happens to be an opera singer, was persuaded to sing a little. We passed another street performer a little later, a guitarist, and stopped with him for a while, too. At some point half the group separated and went fountain hopping; there were lots of pretty ones. Okay, that's all I can do for now. I still have 6 more days to go! |
