LifeofBobbi.com

This weekend, Tom and I are taking a trip to South Carolina for his cousin’s wedding.  We leave tomorrow afternoon and will be there until somtime on Sunday.  The deal is that we’ll take all back roads and stop and do whatever we want on our return home.  I’m sure we’ll see lots of cattle and cattle supplies (hay bales, troughs, cow dips, etc.) and I can’t wait.  I’ve always wanted to live where I could have my own horses and cows.  This trip will be nice to escape reality, if only for a few days.

Struck by the amazing accomplishments of Michael Phelps, I decided to drag out some of my swimming stuff from high school.  I came across some promotional pens that each swimmer would get at the beginning of the season.  Each time we used it, it was supposed to remind us of our commitment to do our best both in the pool and in the classroom.

I have this intense urge to get back into swimming right now.  I may take a look at the open swim hours on campus and fit that into my schedule during the day.  It sure would be nice to feel the water on my skin like I used to!

Among some other things I found were some of my times (not as good as Michael Phelps by any means, but they were improving throughout the four years I swam competitively), pictures, and my “Swimmer of the Week” cap.  I’ll never forget it - I got “Swimmer of the Week” the night of my very last swim meet during my senior year; literally the last swim meet I would ever swim in.  It was a really gratifying experience and a wonderful close to my high school swimming career.

I also started thinking back to the swim lessons we used to have in our pool when I was just a little girl.  A woman (who used to compete on the FSU swim team during her time at college) used to come to our pool once a week and work with my sister and I individually.  We used to spend hours upon hours of time in the pool during the summer; it seems like we could never get enough of it.

I definitely need to find a way to get back into swimming.  All these memories and the Olympics have me itching to swim now!

I’ve decided to definitely drop ASL 3 from my fall schedule.  I am aiming to take it in the spring (as I really won’t have much to take for my major or minor and will need to be full time), but I’m sad I won’t be taking it in the fall.  Hopefully I won’t lose any of my ASL skills and vocabulary that I worked so hard on this summer.

Speaking of ASL, during Tropical Storm Fay, the governor had a few press conferences.  I had forgotten that an interpretor is always present during these press conferences.  Needless to say, I was excited and watched each press conference!  I didn’t care what they were saying, but it was really good practice to mute the TV and just watch the interpretor signing.  Unfortunately, though, my TV has this weird thing where when it’s muted, the closed captioning automatically shows up, so I was a little distracted.

Many blue screens, two reinstallations of Windows XP Professional, another blue screen and driver updates later, I have my computer working again.  It has been one HELL of a weekend for me and my Dell Inspiron 600m.  I spent about 4 hours total chatting with a Dell representative.  The first reinstallation wasn’t a completely clean reinstall, so we had to start over.  Then this morning, I received the exact blue error screen that I was receiving in the very beginning, when this entire problem began.  After all that, it seems that the only thing that needed to be done was update the drivers (which I could’ve done on my own).  After researching this problem, I was convinced it had something to do with the wireless card on my laptop; sure enough, it was.  Too bad it took four Dell people to finally pinpoint the problem (despite me asking about the wireless card drivers in the very beginning).  Anyway, I’m just glad everything is back to normal.  It’s nice to have a fresh clean slate of a computer to work with, too! I have everything working and looking the way that I want.

So, is this tropical storm going to affect my first week of my senior year in college?  I hope not.  I’ve had enough of a break.  I’m ready to go back to school and focus on something.  Four hours of work a day isn’t enough to keep me busy.  I’ve decided to drop my ASL 3 class; as badly as I want to take the class, I feel like 16 credits (one of which is Business Finance - one of the hardest classes to take at UF) is too much.  I need all the other classes for my major or minor, so ASL 3 is really the only one that I can drop.  I can always take it in the spring, though (when all my other ASL friends are taking it).  Tom and I are keeping an eye on this storm and if need be, we’ll go home to help our parents prepare.  If not, we’ll just make sure we have gas in the cars and cash and we’ll be set here in our apartment.

I made the BEST spaghetti sauce over the weekend.  I used a jar of spaghetti sauce that I bought from the store and added to it - ground beef, chopped onion, minced garlic, baby portabello mushrooms, spinach, italian seasoning and pepper.  It turned out really nicely and we had enough for leftovers.  I ended up having an old friend over for dinner last night and that’s what we had (along with a salad and homemade garlic bread).  It was a yummy dinner!

Hunter is growing so much.  I really love having him despite how difficult he can be to control sometimes.  We took a long walk earlier and he did so great; didn’t pull on the leash and wear himself out, didn’t freak out at cars, and best of all, didn’t stop completely when he got afraid of random noises.  Now that Tom is working in the office full time again (he was out doing field work the last couple weeks), we’re getting serious about looking into puppy classes.  Tom will do that (since I have school and work to worry about) and I am hoping it will really help him bond with Hunter.  Hunter listens to me a little better than he listens to Tom, and I think it’s because Tom is at work and I spend more time at home with him.  Speaking of Hunter, I really need to post some new pictures of him!

My list of things to get done today is waiting for me, so I better end this right here.  I hope you all have a wonderful week! :)

For the past several weeks (when he’s not working in the field), Tom has spent Wednesday evenings playing golf with his work buddies.  At first it threw me off - was I still responsible for dinner for BOTH of us?  Just me?  What about him helping out with Hunter in the evenings?  Eventually, though, I just learned to go with the flow (it wasn’t really a big deal to begin with, but it stressed me out a LITTLE because I really enjoy cooking for both of us) and let him play golf with his new friends.  Afterall, interacting with the people you work with is so important (at least I think so) because it tends to make the work day go by that much faster.  Of course, all he talks about when he gets home is golf: golf balls, golf bags, golf gloves - you name it and he’s talking about it!