Friday, November 1, 2013

short and somewhat sweet.

So senior year has been nothing like I expected in pretty much every way. I'm still deciding whether that's good or bad. In some ways it is disappointing, frustrating, and hard, but in other ways it's helpful, exciting, and crazy good.

I don't really want to go into detail on much of it for a myriad of reasons, but I do want to reach out for prayer. A lot of this year has been busy [see: it's November and the last time I posted was the beginning of September]. I've never been as busy as I have been this year. On top of the full schedule, there are things internally and externally beating on me. How's that for vague? I just want some sense of peace and encouragement in the midst of these hard times. Pray for my attitude to remain positive towards all parts of my life and for me to not pull away from things because it's easier, but to press into the hard places.

As for all the exciting and good things, there are equally as many of those things are there have been rough things.

For starters, I mentioned in my last post how I was doing Pigskin. I'm not a singer, dancer, or performer by any means and I did all that and loved nearly every minute of it. Performing was actually really exhilarating and fulfilling when I finally performed all my parts without messing up!

Pigskin photo booth with some awesome friends!
I've gone to a bunch of football games and sweat till I thought I'd turn into a puddle and shivered two weeks later. Thanks Texas. I never thought I'd enjoy football games. Granted, half the time I'm still confused as to what's happening, but I do know Baylor is super legit and we can score!
Homecoming football!
Fall break was really fun, too. I went to Independence, TX and Brenham, TX. Independence is the home of the original Baylor campus and sort of a right of passage place that freshmen who go to Line Camp in the summer do. But I didn't go to Line Camp, and it's my senior year. So we went. It was really neat to see all the history and the iconic pillars.
Independence, TX
Brenham, TX is home of the first Bluebell Ice Cream Factory. It's obvious why I wanted to visit there. I was amazed at the insane number of cows it takes to make enough milk for the ice cream each day...something like 160,000 if I remember correctly. What?! So much ice cream! We got a free taste at the end. Who wants to guess what kind I had?
Chocolate peanut butter, anyone?


Kelly and I with loads of ice cream flavors
So that's the fun in a nutshell. There are more fun things I've done, but those are the biggest things. I'll likely post in May about my senior year bucket list. Aka when it's all said and done. All of these fun things I've mentioned here are things that were on my bucket list. It's keeping me sane. Checking things off a list is so nice. When everything else seems out of control and overwhelming, I remember my bucket list. And things I'm thankful for! 
Today I'm thankful for:
1. Cool morning walks to campus when riding my bike would be quicker, but I need to slow down.
2. Friends who help me accomplish things on my bucket list and things that aren't!
3. Surprise mail from my mom.
4. Fridays.



Friday, September 6, 2013

busy busy beth

Alright, I tried to think of a clever title, but that's nothing too exciting...par usual. Y'all, it's a Christmas miracle that I am actually posting again in August. Oh my gosh, just realized it's not actually August anymore. Failboat.

So guess it's back to the monthly blog updates! Although September may be able to swing more than one since I'm posting early in this month. I'm at work again posting. It's Friday. I just want to be done. Done with everything, but sadly it's only September. It's actually been moving pretty quickly which scares me a little but is also kind of nice. I'm insanely busy, something I'm not used to, but it's been okay. I have to get used to not having time to extensively relax since I don't get home until after 5 every day except Fridays. And weekends, but that's implied, right? So at least I still have my weekends. Granted, my weekends aren't exactly not busy. Football games are on Saturdays and Sundays are church days and grocery shopping every other week. I also start Pigskin (winners of SING from February perform their song/dance acts over Homecoming) practices this Monday and practices are also on Sundays, so I'll have to be diligent about getting things done on Saturdays...or become that person who does homework on Friday nights. Ugh.

Enough of the blah, "I'm so busy" rant. I'm sure there are people that are busier than me (see: roommate). I'm trying to be more intentional with my time and with people and with myself. I think I may restart my thankfulness journal. I started one last year, but I don't think I got past October. I need to be less structured with it and just write in it when I can about whatever I want. On that note:

Today I'm thankful for borrowed bicycles that get me exercise and to campus and friends' houses.
For lunchboxes so I don't end up with bruised apples (afterthought of thankfulness because I didn't use my lunchbox today and my apple is all sorts of bruised).
For friends who give me rides when I need to get places too far to bike or walk.
For professors who don't give quizzes on days you don't do the reading (whoops already slacking).
For the color blue.
For Floyd Casey allowing any kind of water bottle into the stadium for the football game tomorrow.
For worship songs that I wake up singing.
For time, to make decisions, to sleep, to spend in solitude.
For the SUB and its comfy couches and cozy rooms and old yearbooks.
For Fridays full of adventure.
For posts that end up nothing like expected, but no less refreshing.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

once a month

This is a post that's taken entirely too long to share. I started it last week. So there's that.

It's funny to think I thought I'd write more than once a month on this blog. Although, it's early in August and school has yet to start, after which time I'm sure I will have much to share in terms of my internship and Welcome Week and fun things like that.

I'm at work or I'd be able to include nice photos along with this post, so I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures. This post is rather long overdue seeing as the biggest adventure to be blogged about was like 3 weeks ago...It's really difficult for me to keep track of the days when it's summertime. July also went by in a flash, so I'm still in denial that it's pretty much mid-August. So whenever it was, I took the biggest adventure I've taken in a long time!

I took a spontaneous road trip to the panhandle of Texas with my roommate and best Baylor friend, Kelly. She's a real peach and lets me be weird and indulges my crazy ideas. Although, this idea was hers. It was a Thursday. It was a great day because I got a bunch of free things: a Baylor Theatre fleece zip-up, McAllister's sweet tea, a slice of pizza from Nizza Pizza. The best part was that I had Friday off from work because our office was moving buildings, so I would have just been in the way. So I got off work at 3, and Kelly picked me up so she could get some things from my office for her future teaching career and then we got free tea and pizza. We came home and decided to try to check something off our collaborative senior year bucket list. We thought about going to Independence to picnic and explore the original Baylor campus and go to the Blue Bell factory since it's not too far from Independence, but to go on a tour on Friday we would've had to schedule it by 3 the day before [aka Thursday, aka the time that I got off work and we were getting tea]. So that idea couldn't happen that weekend. Thus, the idea to go to Amarillo and see Cadillac Ranch and other random roadside attractions came into fruition. We managed to throw together food and essentials fairly quickly and create some semblance of directions all getting us on the road by 5:45 that evening. Like whoa. We got kolaches for the next morning at Czech Stop and drove through lots of nothingness. We didn't really have a plan for the night; I might have thought we could just drive through the night and nap, or snooze at a rest stop. We did try the latter, but freaked ourselves out and decided it wasn't a good idea to do that. The search for the least sketchy, but cheap motel began and eventually we settled into an American Inn in small town Texas, about 2 hours away from Amarillo.
The morning greeted us much quicker than desired, and it became a full day of driving. Literally spent all of Friday in a car, minus an hour or two. Bleck. It was really a great day though! We originally planned getting into Amarillo and hitting up Cadillac Ranch and then going to New Mexico since we would be about an hour and a half from the border. But, we made the split decision to go to Oklahoma instead to be in two places at once (on Kelly's bucket list) at the border and that took longer than we thought. Ha. Then we took a recommendation from Kelly's brother to go to this state park called Palo Duro. Aka the second largest canyon in the U.S. or so it claims. It really was a magnificent place, so much red dirt and beautiful rock formations. I like nature. I was really glad we took that detour even if we didn't plan it so we got there when it was hot and we couldn't hike because Kelly is in a boot because of some weird injury. Ha.
Finally, we got to Cadillac Ranch. It was great because since it's one of those famous roadside attractions and on the path of Route 66, there were a lot of people clearly making the stop on their own huge Route 66 road trips [see people wearing shirts emblazoned with roads and maps and "Route 66"]. There was also this cute musical group playing the song "Route 66" in front of the cars. Gosh, I wish I could put pictures! Perhaps I'll create a separate post for some pictures since I know everyone who reads this doesn't have Facebook.
Anyways, after we visited Cadillac Ranch, we stumbled upon this hilarious roadside restaurant that seemingly encapsulated everything that is so Texan. 72 oz steaks because everything's bigger in Texas. Don't Mess With Texas trash cans. A swimming pool shaped like Texas. A motel that looked like an old Western town. A giant dinosaur wearing a cowboy hat. Texas brewed beers. It was fantastic. We spent a lot longer there than anticipated, so a visit to the parody Cadillac Ranch (VW Beetles!) was decided against and instead we hit up downtown Amarillo. We found some beautiful churches and lots of horse statues. Much like the race cars that were in Indianapolis a while back or the panda bears in DC. There was one painted like an American flag that we took pictures with. Haha. We ventured around some more and found a sign that marked the area of Amarillo that was on Route 66, which was in this cute area of town that if it weren't so far from Waco, we probably would have stayed to explore later. But alas, we needed to get home, so we embarked on our return journey. We got home sometime after midnight, so for real: in the car a good 2/3 of the day. Whoo!
So that's my adventure to middle of nowhere Texas for you. I will try to remember to post pictures when I'm home from work today!

Friday, July 19, 2013

first world problems

Well, again, it's been nearly a month since I had the goal of blogging a lot more this summer. I don't know why I don't blog more, but in the recent past whenever I wanted to blog...I couldn't. First, I didn't have wifi at my house in Waco for a good week and a half. So that was fun. Thankfully we got it fixed a week ago and were able to avoid being scammed by the router/modem company I called for assistance in resetting our password system, which ideally would've been way easier with the CD that came with the router, but my roommate misplaced. Never fear, we got it figured out with the great help of her father, computer extraordinaire. Then, she found the CD. Isn't that how it always goes? You can't find what you need, then when you buy a new one or figure it out some other lengthy way, you find what you need after it's all said and done. Ha. So I couldn't blog at home.
I couldn't blog at work either. Not sure why...I think my computer here is just jank and old so it can't load pages correctly and such. I wrote a whole blog and it didn't upload and I didn't have the heart to try again, so praying that this will work. I'm using Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer so that's hopefully going to allow me to post successfully.

I haven't been up to much of anything besides work every day. It's rather tedious because there's never much to do and most of the time I'm completely alone. Our building is moving to a different building so we're the only office still here in the old building, and then half the office is out of town. People may think it's great not having anything to do at work, but it isn't all that fun day after day. Granted, I could probably be more productive on the grad school research front, but at this point, I'm not really feeling like doing school so we'll see how that goes. I know I should do grad school, but I'd rather be traveling the world. Obviously, it's unlikely I will be traveling the world, but maybe somehow I can swing it to do social work and travel? Meh. Anyone know anyone who is a social worker and gets to travel? International adoption, please. Would I get to travel for that? I'm just having a lot of second thoughts about my future when suddenly I have to really start looking to the real world. Wahhh. I had it easy getting into Baylor, so that makes it even harder for grad school. Plus just looking at the grad school applications makes me want to cry.

I need adventure. The first summer Dwelling Place I went to, the section leader that spoke talked about how much she craves adventure and I was like shoot, why are we not friends? Haha but the craving and longing for adventure, she said isn't ultimately a bad thing, but what if we turned our longings over to God? What if we prayed "God, take my longing and turn it into longing for You."? Oh gosh. That's like so what I need right now. I have a lot of unfulfilled earthly longings, but there's got to be so much more satisfaction in letting those things go and turning my wants into a want for God.
This blog post is literally all over the place and disconnected. But I needed some writing time and it took up time at work to write this. At least I'm getting paid to sit here and do whatever. I tried to make a friendship bracelet last week off of one I'd started forever ago, but couldn't get the pattern right so that's sad. I honestly contemplated untying the whole thing and starting over. Literally would take up a good hour or so of time at work. Oh gosh, my life. Y'all probably think I'm crazy.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

speedy summer

Well, this summer is just cruising by and I'm not doing very well at updating. Sorry! I'm honestly not even sure how time went by so fast. But I'll be nice and give y'all a little update for real instead of some weird rambling.

So I guess since I last blogged with the hope of actually blogging this summer I have...

                                           Visited the Indianapolis Art Museum TWICE.


Gone running: at Butler, by a llama farm, at Potter's Bridge, not nearly as much as I should have.


                       Driven to pick up my parents' CSA vegetable share at the farm many a time.


         Completed The Indianapolis Star crossword puzzle nearly every day; I've become a pro.


                                                  Reunited with camp friends on a rainy day.


                              Cleaned & found gems of my past from when I cadet taught in high school.


                             Traveled to Colorado to visit the relatives and enjoy the mountains.


                                          Made homemade ice cream and picked fresh strawberries.


                                  Taken a blitz of an online summer school class on women's studies.


                      Secured a wicked tan and excellent memories from working a week at SpringHill.


                    Journeyed to the middle of nowhere Indiana on a photoshooting adventure.


           Read more books than I have in ages: memoirs, nonfiction, mysteries, advice, Scottish fiction.

So that's my summer thus far in a quick photo nutshell. I go back to Texas in a week which is exciting, yet a little sad. I feel like time moves faster than I expect it and I'm like shoot I only have one week to do all these things that I could've done all summer. Granted I had a busy month with going to Colorado, taking my summer school class, and working SpringHill, but it was worth it. Summer at home has been pretty quiet, but nice to spend time with my parents and enjoy some random adventures.

Here's to spending the rest of my summer in the Texas heat. Waco, give me some good adventures!







Thursday, May 16, 2013

this is embarassing

I seriously used to be so good at updating this! I apologize to anyone that still follows this. You probably haven't checked my blog in months, so I hope you use one of those blog organizers so this will show up under new posts. Ha.
I can't attempt to update you, only because I honestly don't know what to update you on. I think the last thing I wrote was about the Bearathon? So that's great. I'm officially a senior now! Yay! I almost got a 4.0 again this semester. It's actually more of a miracle that I pulled off a B+ in my Economics class, so I'll take that over another 4.0. Crazy. Junior year was nice. Hard, but good. Frustrating, but satisfying. Alright, I'm getting weird. I'll stop. I haven't really been up to anything exciting since the Bearathon. That's awkward. Sorry I'm the person who chooses school and sleep over having a social life. Yeah, I promise I'm really in college. Plans to get out more start now. or rather, once I get back to Waco. There's nowhere to do anything here and no one to do anything with. Gotta love Noblesville. I don't have a car either. So there's that.
In all actuality, I had a purpose for writing this blog post. Really. Besides the fact that I haven't in forever, I really do want to try to bring it back and I feel like this summer will be the perfect opportunity. So lezdothiz.

But really. If I didn't have all that lead-in, I'd title this blog something like "Airplane Life." or "Travel Woes." or "That time I had the best time on a flight even though it took way longer than normal". So I guess I'll start by saying I don't think I've ever talked past a few sentences with the people I end up next to on the plane. Usually it's just an excuse me I have the window seat, if the middle or aisle person beats me there. Otherwise, it might just be a smile. I'm the worst at starting conversations even with people I know. But there's something about travel troubles that get people chatting. We left DFW en route to Indianapolis at 6 pm. But a half hour later, we're turning around and going back to Dallas. Worst. Why? Electrical problems. That's when my seat buddy, as I like to call him, and I started talking. First it was just about how unfortunate it was that we were turning around and the general Are you from Indiana?...but praise God, my seat buddy was literally the coolest. Okay, exaggeration, but I went on to learn he had just come back from a year-long discipleship school basically that was in small town Texas and there were a bunch of other people on the flight that had just finished the same thing. How cool is that? So thankful that he was so friendly and Jesus-loving. We marveled at the earth, so intricately created below us, intermixed with complaining about how late we were going to get home and how this was his second flight ever. What?! Crazy. We hung out when we got back to Dallas and had to wait a little bit for our new plane and I met some of his friends from the discipleship thing. Normally on flights I just keep to myself and listen to music and try to sleep. None of that happened. We talked the whole time. Who am I? Okay, it wasn't like the whole time, but still, I never talk to people that much. It was so great to have someone to commiserate about our ridiculous flight home and make flying fun. I will say it is always a little uncomfortable never talking to my seat buddies normally, but normally they are older business men or a couple or something like that. But I got lucky this time with someone close to me in age and someone who loves Jesus, too! I'm raving, and I'm not sorry. It was so refreshing. I don't much care for flying anymore, which is really sad because it used to be so fun. Okay, I still like going places, but the waiting in the airport isn't as fun as it was when it was rare, and I never liked the take off or landing or turbulence. But who does? Haha. Traveling alone is okay, but it's so much nicer to have someone to talk to when things get weird or you're stuck waiting forever. So thanks to my seat buddy for making my flight so much more fun and reminding me how cool God is. That's all.
I've zoned out. So if there was more I had to say...whoops. I think I pretty much summed it up. Holler.  God is good.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

hibernation

Remember when I used to update this blog like all the time?!
I apologize I have slacked majorly on it since Scotland.
I don't even know what to write about because it's been so long. SINCE NOVEMBER. and before that was September. Whoops.
Obviously, my life at school has escalated to very little free time. I work on campus now so during times where I'd normally be at home doing homework or fiddling my thumbs avoiding homework, I could blog, but I don't have that time anymore. I have turned into a person who doesn't do homework until after dinner almost every day and I don't like it that way, but I have no other options. Sadness.
I actually thought I'd blog today because I blogged about this same event 2 years ago. It seemed fitting to compare experiences. So read this blogpost, then finish this one.
Alright. Today was the Bearathon. I wasn't nearly as excited about it as I thought I'd be. Especially since I trained wayyy better for it this year. The longest run I did was 9 miles instead of maybe 5. Ha. I ran more than 3 miles every day. Well I didn't actually run every day and usually it wasn't more than 3 miles during the week, but my Saturdays were long run days, the shortest being 5. So really, with those real training runs, I felt better prepared and in some shape. Haha. I didn't have my high school running background to back me up for a lack of training.
This year I also didn't have a running partner, which I really missed. It's so much better to actually have someone you know running at your side when the miles get rough. I met up with some people in my section beforehand and we took a picture [sadly not on my camera so I don't know when I'll get to see it]. Then we prepped and I stuck with the 2 girls doing the Bearathon..mostly because we lost the guys. Haha I knew one of the girls was going to be faster than me because she used to run for Baylor, I think. Regardless, I knew she was faster. The other girl I'd never run with so I had no idea. I figured we'd run together for at least the first part, but boom, the gun goes off and they took off and I wasn't going to kill myself trying to stay with them. Unfortunately, because we were closer to the front and they took off fast, I took off faster than I should have and it came back to bite me at the end. I also used my phone for music and its nike+ app, which is different than the one on my ipod, so I couldn't figure out how to get it to tell me my pace; it only told me every mile, so I knew I went out too fast, but had trouble gauging how much to slow down because I didn't want to slow down too much. Needless to say, my mile times decreased from that point on and by mile 8, I just wanted it to be over. I had to walk way more than I wanted to and my calves got really tight so I had to stretch them out several times. My hips also started aching a lot around mile 8, too. So nice. I don't want to be negative or get pity, because I really do like running. This experience just wasn't my favorite one. The only positive was that I still managed to beat my last time by 6 minutes. I was disappointed I wasn't able to beat it by more because I knew I could, but shame on me for not pacing myself well. Probs won't run with my iphone anymore...or if anyone knows how you can get it to tell you your pace more...because I couldn't just click the home button to get it to speak to me. Lame. Technically, I should've been able to tell intuitively that my pace was too fast, and I could...so I don't really know what was going on because I was dragging by the end. It was bad, y'all. I walked part of the last freakin' mile. I don't think I ran a straight mile after the first time I walked around mile 6. It was rather ridiculous. But enough of that. You all now know that this Bearathon experience was pretty much the complete opposite of the first one. Unfortunate, but it's not going to stop me from probably doing it again next year. I really want to train for a 5k, so might try to find some 5k race to do in the future..I think there's one in May in Waco that because I ran the Bearathon, I get $10 off registration so that's cool. If I'm still here...high possibility I'll try to run it. Because let's be real, 5ks are perfect race distance. Long enough to make you train for it, short enough that you're not dying at the end.
To end...just because I can and I don't feel like writing about everything else..here are some random pictures of stuff that's happened since I last blogged...

Went to Chicago to visit my friend, Elizabeth whom I met while abroad.

Got lots of snow over Christmas Break, so I loved my life.

Ate a tofu "chicken" sandwich in Bloomington, visiting Dianne at IU.

Went on a SB trip with tons of people I didn't know, but can now call friends!

The video is from a Ben Rector concert I went to last week at Common Grounds. Soo good!