I don't know if I'm happy or sad!

It's my last day at the Counseling Center - I'm sad!

Tomorrow I turn 25 - I'm happy but also a little sad!  (I really think that is the official adult age, I can no longer the "just got out of college" phase...even though I'm still in college sort of, sigh)

I go visit Dan tomorrow in Kansas City - I'm happy!

It's my last day of summer session 1 class tomorrow - I'm happy! I have to present three separate times tomorrom - I'm sad!

I'm officially a fourth year because the first years have now started - I'm happy but also still don't feel like this can actually be true! But I have to start doing lots of work on my dissertation - sad. But I get paid to do all that work! Paid more than I have any year before - happy!

I could go on and on but just thought I would inform you of how crazy I'm feeling right now. It's been a good last day at the Counseling Center though. I have said some goodbyes to some great people that I've loved working with. The best part is now we get to be friends rather than coworkers/supervisors/etc...which is really a lot easier and at times more fun. Tonight I have to say goodbye to Sammie as well since I'm leaving her with Matthew and Camden for the week while I go to Kansas City.

Thanks for putting up with me getting out all my feelings here! Here's to a great year of being 24!

The One where the Gang gets Paid to hang out with me

Wow, it's really been almost a month since I last posted! Luckily, it's not because I sunk into a deep depression or died or anything...just that I've been busy.

It's true! I've been busy - I have friends! It has been so great since Dan left. Even though I knew that I had friends beforehand, I have had SO many people ask me to hang out with them since he left. I don't know if he's paying them to do this or what, but it's just great. And my sister, mom, and grandma visited last week too, so between spending time with them and all my other activities, I have actually been doing okay rather than just sitting around alone being sad.

So I'm doing okay. I really miss Dan and I really don't want to do this until December. I think he feels the same way. But on the other hand, we are surviving and I know we will survive until then even though it's not that fun. And in the meantime, I'll try to see the positives in this situation, such as finding out how many friends I really have down here. :)

Dan's job is going well, and I don't know, I feel like he should be the one to tell you about it but he claims he's too busy to post on the blog. Sigh... Oh well. So, he's basically going to be the project manager for two small medical clinics that his company owns. As far as I can tell, he's doing great so far and has already been nicknamed "Doogie Howser" by the people he works with, so that's kind of cool. (Or not cool, depending on your opinion of NPH...)

In other extremely exciting news, I will be defending my dissertation proposal on Tuesday, July 13th. This is a big deal and I'm so excited to be at this point in my dissertation. Actually, most of the work is still ahead of me, but defending my proposal means that I can get started on all that work rather than just sitting around worrying about it.

So in a nutshell: yay for family visits, yay for friends, yay for proposing, boo for living in a different city than Dan.

The Fogles do KC

We made it to Kansas City!

Monday morning at 7:30am, we left Waco with the Civic packed to the brim.  We drove through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and then Missouri before finally reaching KC at about 5:30pm.  The trip went well, although it took us about an hour and a half longer than we thought it would, so we were getting a little nervous that we weren't going to make it to the apartment before the office closed at 6pm. Luckily, though, we made it no problem.

The past few days have been a whirlwind of trips to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Goodwill, and random people's apartments to get stuff that they advertised on Craig's List. I'll have to post more details sometime about how we went about getting Dan's apartment ready for as cheap as we could...but for today, I'll just show you some pictures of his bachelor pad that he'll be living in for the next seven months.

Oh by the way...I didn't clean up at all before taking these...so ignore all the extraneous random stuff such as suitcases and vacuums!

Here's the living room, which is where you come into when you walk in the front door. The couch is from Craig's List and was a great deal! It's really nice and comfortable.

Here's the kitchen (and front door) if you are standing in the middle of the living room. 

You also go to the bedroom through the living room.  Here's a picture of half of it.  Obviously, Dan was unpacked within a half hour of arriving. Also, have you noticed the decoration theme for his bachelor pad? Apparently it's "flags." I can't make fun; I was with him when he bought them and helped put them all up.

And the other half. Notice the nice futon he's laying on as he talks on the phone (Hi Mom!).

We've been doing a lot of shopping, and I'm pretty sure this was Dan's favorite purchase so far. Can you tell what it is? 

Did you guess.... a shower curtain? That's right! Admittedly, we bought it since it was on clearance, but so far it's made me smile every time I've walked into the bathroom!

And finally, here's the view out the back door (in the living room; you couldn't see it from where I took the picture of the living room but it's there.) Yes, he has a back door and a patio. It's amazing. I'm really jealous and I'm not even going to show Sammie these pictures because I know she'll be completely jealous and want to move in with her dad - which we all know is NOT going to happen.

So that's it! It's so nice. Small but perfect for Dan for the rest of the year.  And if you're wondering how we got all the furniture here..well...here's a clue:

Oh yeah, we totally rented a big van. I got a lot of honks as I drove this guy, that's for sure. 

I fly back to Waco on Saturday, so we are hoping to just spend the next few days hanging out and maybe exploring the city a little more. Dan starts work on Tuesday, so wish him luck! We'll keep you posted. :) 

Fish Biscuits!

So we're moving Dan to Kansas City tomorrow morning. Sammie is being dropped off at our friends' house in a few hours, we packed up the car, and Dan is on Craig's List searching for furniture right now.

But.

BUT.

First, the LOST finale is tonight. The series finale. The one we've been waiting for ever since we got sucked into this little show.

We actually did move our moving date back a few days in order to be able to watch this here.

And Sean and Faith bought their honeymoon tickets for tomorrow rather than this weekend, as originally planned.

As you can see, this is a big deal. However, it's also a four and a half hour long show. So from 6:00 to 10:30 tonight, seven of us will be glued to the TV at Sean and Faith's apartment. Naturally, we are going to need some sustenance to keep us going for that amount of time. So we decided to have a Lost-themed potluck. Also naturally, I volunteered to bring dessert. But what to bring? For an event that is this important, dessert can't just be any old thing. We thought about some sort of tropical fruit crisp, but someone else is bringing fruit salad, so that idea was out. We also talked about rice krispie treats in the shape of the statue or just trying to make cute cupcakes or an awesome cake. But the thing is, my decorating skills are really not up to making any of those. If this was going to be a success, I knew it needed to be simple.

And then came the idea.

Fish biscuits!

If you haven't seen Lost, watch this clip (even just the first minute) to see what a fish biscuit is. It was part of the show during the first season, when Sawyer ate them.

So I decided I had to copy them. First, I went to the store and bought a fish cookie cutter. The woman working there asked me why I was buying an icthmus, and I had to explain that no, actually, it wasn't for religious use, but because of a TV show. With that embarrassment behind me, I then set out to make the cookies.

First, I made these citrus flavored sugar cookies. Thanks to this inspiration, I added equal parts yellow and red food coloring to the dough in order to get the lovely salmon color of the actual fish biscuits. I then cut them out with my new cookie cutter. Dan came into the kitchen at this point and couldn't stop laughing. He thought the color made them look like real fish. I had to reassure him with a taste that they actually tasted okay, and that accuracy is important goshdarnit and we want them to look real.

After baking them and letting them cool, I made the frosting for them. I left it white and then thinned part of it with extra milk to make it possible to glaze the cookies with the frosting. Again, accuracy is very important and we can't have frosting taking away from the color of our fish. Also, the real fish biscuits didn't have frosting so it had to blend in. I brushed both sides of the fish with the a pastry brush dipped in the glaze and let that dry. Again, Dan came in and freaked out because he said that they now looked like dead fish. Another cookie was stuck in his mouth and he left the room happy again.

Finally, I added the "Dharma" on each fish with the rest of the frosting that I didn't use for glaze. I dyed it brown (equal parts red, blue, and yellow) to be authentic (obvi) but couldn't get it as dark as I wanted. Oh well, close enough. I then painstakingly wrote Dharma on each fish. If I messed up, it was easy to redo because the glaze underneath allowed the writing to be wiped off easily.

Here they are drying:

And here are the finished products!

At this point, you're probably thinking...Wait, aren't you leaving for Kansas City early tomorrow morning? Don't you have better things to be doing?
Answer: Probably.

You're probably also thinking... You take awful photographs.
Answer: Sorry, deal with it. I don't know how to take pictures well to begin with, and I was taking those photos at night.

You're probably also thinking...Wow, Kristi, that seems like a lot of effort to make sort of ugly and unappetizing cookies.
Answer: People! It's about authenticity here!

Everyone enjoy the finale tonight!

Waco Love

We couldn't let David's visit pass without taking some pictures on some bulls...or cows...actually, I'm not really sure what to call these animals. But they were some sweet metal cow statues...

On second thought, I have no idea why this was important in David's visit. But it was fun! So after visiting the Dr. Pepper museum, we walked over toward the Brazos River and climbed up some cow statues.

David was brave and climbed up first.

He's a natural cowboy!

We finally convinced Dan to climb up as well. Here they are riding together...awwwww

David had a good time bonding with the cow.

Yep...that's what we do when you visit!

Done with the Semester!

Friends! It's been a while. I hope you haven't abandoned me.

The semester is OVER! I officially am done with the hardest semester of my grad school program. And I survived (with an A and a B when all the grades were put in).

Dan is done too, and although he doesn't have all his grades back yet, he is confident he passed all his classes and earned mostly A's. So we are celebrating the end of the semester.

Well, actually I celebrated by picking up my 3rd year comprehensive exams. It's a big paper I have to do and I now have two weeks to write it. But you know what? That's okay.  Because I'm done with the semester! Honestly, this paper feels like a breeze after trying to study for that Molecular Neuropharmacology class for the last four months.

We've had a visitor for the last few days! David - Dan's younger brother - is in town for an inaugural visit to the great state of Texas. We've had so much fun showing him around and I'm pretty sure Sammie has never been happier.  She has snuggled up with him every minute possible, well when she's not trying to get him to play with her and her dinosaur.

I've had to work still so I haven't gotten to spend as much time showing Dave around, but he and Dan have been having a lot of fun spending brother time together, playing racquetball, ping-pong, and going to see Ironman 2. Of course we've taken him out for some good food - Tony De Maria's barbeque, Vitek's barbeque, Dubl-R Burgers, and Papa Rollo's pizza. None of those names sound familiar? That's because they're all local Waco joints. We've also been trying to convince him he needs a pair of cowboy boots but so far he's refused. He did buy a Waco t-shirt, though, so we're slowly winning him over!

Anyway, that's what we're up to...hope you're all doing well!  Happy beginning of summer!

KCMO

We have some really big news that I haven't shared on here yet.  I think I've alluded to it, but I haven't actually stated it out loud in black and white. Why not? Denial, I guess. But the time has come. 

And no, I'm not pregnant - haha.

Dan is required to do an internship for the summer and fall semesters of this year. This means, starting June 1st and continuing through December, he won't be taking classes but instead will be working in a real live hospital.  He'll then come back next spring and take classes for one more semester. He'll then graduate and there is a high probability that he will get a job from his internship site - of course, this depends on a lot of external factors, though.

There is one internship in Waco but the rest are all in other locations around the country. So when he started the program, we had to make the decision about where he was going to do his internship.  His advisor helped us figure out which internships were the best match for Dan personality-wise, and out of those, we tried to pick the one that would have the most long-term opportunities for both of us.  We ended up agreeing that the internship at a hospital system in Kansas City, Missouri would be a great opportunity for Dan and a place that both of us could potentially get jobs after graduation. 

So, Dan had a phone interview, and we went out there over spring break and he had a real interview, and all went well (of course!). So that means that next month, we are packing up some of our stuff and moving Dan to Kansas City! He will be living in a small apartment with furniture that the good people of Kansas City have donated to garage sales or Goodwill. I'll help him move, stay there a week or so, and then fly back to Waco. And then...that's it. He starts up there and I continue down here. For seven months. 

I'm not really sure how I feel about this yet. Or rather, there are a lot of mixed emotions going on. We are both excited for this opportunity. Everything I hear about these hospitals suggest that they are a great company to work for, and what a great place for Dan to get started. Also, there are a lot of psychology internships around Kansas City, or at least within driving distance, and so if he were to get a job there after he graduates I could hopefully get an internship there as well. It's definitely not guaranteed though, for either of us, so there is a lot left up in the air.  We are both praying that we are making the right choices and that it will all work out well in the end. But it could work out totally wrong and we could end up being apart for way longer if things go wrong, like if I don't get an internship the first year. 

So there's our news. We're currently in the process of trying to divide up our stuff such as kitchen items, sheets, and stuff like that so Dan has to buy as little as possible when he moves. We're also trying to figure out the logistics of visiting each other as much as possible - how do people do that with full time jobs?! 

Dan has offered to contribute to the blog when he moves under the heading "Adventures in Kansas City." I really hope he does, so you guys have to encourage him and tell him that you want to hear from him, too! I have been encouraging him to post on the blog from day one of starting this thing and so far I have only succeeded in my efforts one time.  (I'm not complaining though - he does way more important and helpful things for me and I'll pick my battles!) We are both getting nervous about having to do chores that we've been able to give up for the past two years and four months - me: laundry, vacuuming, and taking Sammie out early in the morning, and Dan: cooking and mopping. We will have to see how all that goes. 

So yeah. We are sort of excited and sort of sad. I guess you'll see how this goes for both of us for the rest of the year. The official move date is May 24th. We picked that day because it's the day after the season finale of Lost. Sean and Faith scheduled their honeymoon to start the 24th, too, so it's good to see we all have our priorities straight even though there are all these crazy changes going on!