Smorgasbord

I know that I have been severely slacking but I will make up for it here.....

Kayla left me and it made me sad, we were having such a great time, but all good things must come to an end sometime, but I'm not losing sleep over it because I know that soon we will reconvene. As for the whole flight attendant thing which I believe at first started as sort of a joke, but we have both looked into and have found it to be a viable option as well as an interesting one. Don't worry though I am going to pursue my real passion first after school which is being a sportscaster, if I can land a job doing that soon after school I would be ecstatic.

Two days after Kayla left I drove 3 and a half hours to a whole other world, Houston, and yes that's in Texas and yes that's where I am living but if you've ever been to Austin then travel to Houston it really is another world. Houston has about 6 million people living there, a little less than 5 million more than Austin and I thought Austin was big. Anyway, I drove to Houston because Grandma Kitchel, Annie, and Lexi were there for a JRA convention. After getting lost in downtown I finally made it to the hotel got on the elevator to the 15th floor, got off the elevator to find Grandma and Lexi there, and I smiled real big at them, and Grandma just kind of gave me a blank look before saying, "Oh oh look who it is Lexi." Apparently I don't look the same or Grandma forgot what I looked like. ha She hadn't seen me with my new haircut, and over the course of the two days I was with them she worked wonders for my self esteem, telling me how pretty I was. :) It was so awesome to see some family, although it felt weird that I was seeing them in Texas. Annie was also able to meet up with an old college friend and he took us out to eat and showed us around which was lovely. We also went to this really cool aquarium place that had all sorts of fish and it was really fun for Lexi, well for all of us. They flew out on Sunday so I headed back to Austin.

My internship just keeps getting better and better too, as if that's possible, well it is. I just keep getting deeper and deeper into what this kind of job entails and I fall in love with it all over again. This is something that I love doing and love doing well. It's not work to me, it's just fun. I get to watch sports at work, record what happens and meet famous people, it's ideal, and the people I work with are awesome. I would really like to get on at FOX 7 after I graduate, but there are lots of stations in downtown Austin where I could get my feet wet, it's just so exciting to think that in less than a year my life will change completely, but at the same time, it's scary. I haven't ever really been one to back down from something, and I trust that God has some amazing things in store for me, so for now I'm keeping my arms wide open and accepting whatever comes my way.

I thought I would end with a little dose of reality I have gotten recently, while I have missed all those dear to me back home, they are never further than phone call or plane ride home, but this week means it's fair time, and for the first time since I can remember I am missing the fair which just seems so weird to me, and for the first time since being here, I miss Indiana/Walton. But that's the way it goes sometimes, it happens.

Ain't the Leaving Kind

Texas in my mind is still the greatest place on Earth, but it's even better when you have a friend to share in the awesomeness with. Kayla got here on Monday and we have been hitting it pretty hard. We have been shopping on the "Drag" which is on UT's campus, floating down the Guadalupe, watched the bats, and even ventured to 6th street watched Kayla get a tattoo. It hase been great having her here, and I hope I have convinced her to move her, because that is my intention. I forgot how great she and I were at formulating ideas, seeing as how we go to school in separate states it's been awhile since we have been able to throw some ideas around. Here are a few that we have mutually decided upon.

1. We want to move to Austin...when we have money.
2. We want to be flight attendants after college to make money while living back home. (see 1)
3. We want to live in a downtown loft.


Those are like the top three we were able to come up with I'd say. I really wish, and I think I can speak on Kayla's behalf that we were finished with school and we could just do all of this now and not have to leave, but that's neither realisitic, and is much too formidable at this point to come to fruition, but one day in the very near future I see myself and perhaps (hopefully, fingers crossed) Kayla.

Summer Camp

This week I have been incredibly busy with helping out at a basketball camp. Everyday from 8:00-4:30 we are dealing with about 180 kids. It is a lot of fun and the seeing the kids faces after they learn something new makes it all worth it, but there are a few kids that like to test you, and that just wears me out. At 8:30 the first session starts and we have 60 kindergartners-1st grade....woo wee! I'm spent by the time they are done but they are absolutely precious and bless their hearts the basketball is bigger than they are, but they try and it's fun to watch them get better over the course of the week. The next session is 2nd and 3rd graders and they get the hang of things a bit better, but they are chatty little things, it's hard to hold their attention for too long. The last group is really easy, they are the 4th and 5th graders and they for the most part get it. In both the second and last session I have all girls and there are some pretty athletic little girls there, and being a ball player myself I love seeing that.

Nothing too exciting has happened at work as of late, this week was kind of slow for sports save for the Longhorns!! :) It's too bad I couldn't go to Omaha to cover the games. All of the Dillard family is finally back home and returned to their daily grind, yesterday we all went out to eat at Papadeaux's to celebrate Callie's graduation and new job, Stephen's new house, and Carla and Steve's 30th Wedding Anniversary. It was nice to see all of the family interact, but back to where we ate, it was called Papadeaux's and it's a Creole/Cajun cuisine....aka Alligator! :/ I'm not big into seafood, fish or Alligator, but I gave it a shot anyway. I had some crawfish which wasn't really that bad, and my main course was jumbo shrimp wrapped in bacon and cheese, it was a little hard to swallow, but by the time it had arrived I was already stuffed from the appetizers. One things for sure I probably won't go there on my own volition again, but it was nice to get out and try new things.

All Better

For the first time in over a week I feel good. After my stint in the E.R. Tuesday night I did absolutely nothing for two days and now I am finally feeling pretty good! This week I was supposed to do some exploring with Carla, but my being sick threw a wrench in those plans, and we can't do it next week because I am working the basketball camp at their church, and then the week after that I am helping out with VBS. I am looking forward to having something to preoccupy me the days that I am not working which is Tuesday-Saturday, I get bored.

I have been working out for basketball and I feel probably the best I have ever felt physically since going to Olivet, hopefully that will be the case when I get back to school. I have sort of developed my own workout instead of doing the one coach has prescribed because his workout has yet to help me get my 300 time, but my goal this summer is to knock his socks off with my physical condition when I get back to school. I feel like I have a little extra incentive though for working out while I am here, because of the slight off chance I may run into Matthew McConaughey.

Today I actually feel good enough to get out and do something so I think I may go play around at the mall again, mom and I barely scratched the surface when we were there, so I have lots of ground to cover! I would also like to declare in this post that I have been to and helped organize more showers in the 3 weeks I've been in Austin then in the previous 21 years of my life!

Mono y Mono

I am sort of slacking on my upkeep of the blog, and I apologize, but this week has thrown me for a couple loops. I actually spent last night in the E.R. after feeling absolutely miserable for about a week or so now. I have had trouble climbing stairs, my heartbeat is irregular at times, I'm not eating, or doing much of anything for that matter. They ran a bunch of tests on me in the emergency room, but all of them came back negative, the only thing that was irregular was the fact that my white blood cell count was a little higher than normal. The odd thing about all of this is that my mom is experiencing the same thing. Though the mononucleosis came back negative mom and I think that's what we may have, and I just went to the doctor before it had become full fledged. At any rate neither one of us is feeling up to par. I know the past few blogs have been exciting and filled with news about the latest celebrities I was able to brush shoulders with, but for right now this is the most exciting thing that's going on. That's all for today it's bedrest and liquids for me...til the next exciting opportunity comes along anyway.

Par, Birdie, Bogie Like it's Going Out of Style

It's been a few days since I have made a new entry, so I am making up for that by jumbling all the happenings into one. First off let me just say that this week was crazy! First of all the family I am living with was generous enough to get tickets to the UT game on Saturday so I went to that, and that was a blast!!! Afterwards their daughter Callie met up with us and Carla, Steve, Stephen and Callie and I all ate at Maudies, which was an awesome Mexican Restaurant. Later that night I got a call from Clif asking me if I could come into work early on Sunday and I obliged not knowing what I was getting myself into.

I got to the station at 10:30 on Sunday and we arrived at the ProAm Champions Tour golf tournament around noon. It was blistering hot outside I was sweating like a stuck pig...not my cup of tea. Clif even began running at one point to try and beat the players to the next hole to get a great shot of the players, and I had no desire to run so I sped walked, held up the tournament for a short time because I was walking in the way of the players getting ready to hit...oops. Yesterday was quite possibly the most boring, long day of my life, but it did get better. When the winner was announced, being as how I am in the media we attacked the winner, and I held the mic for the interview which was exciting, and then I did a mach stand-up which for those of you who don't know is basically practicing a stand-up segment on location to put on my resume tape. Though the latter half of the day was ok, there was one thing I still couldn't ignore and that was the fact that I pulled a 10 hour work day yesterday!!

Hob-knobing's the name of the game

Today started out just like any other day, I woke up at 11:30 and got a call from my internship coordinator asking me to come in today because one of the girls was sick and couldn't make it so I obliged not knowing completely what I would be doing at work. I figured it would be just like Monday which held nothing too exciting, but I was oh so wrong.

I got to work and Clif said alright let's go, and I was a bit confused, I didn't know I was going anywhere and he said oh yeah we are going to the Heisman banquet....whooooaaaa!!! We ended up at some ritzy day spa brushing elbows with former elites. I was toting the microphone around and apparently I looked the part of an anchor because some guy asked for a picture of me and his granddaughter, which was fun in itself, but the real treat was the fact that Tony Dorsett who used to play for the Dallas Cowboys held the door open for me, and I got to help interview Doug Flutie!!!! Today was my "welcome to the big show" day! I know without a doubt that this is what I want to do as a career!!!