Brad's Blog

There has been a lot going on in the past month since I last posted here.  Katy finished up school and there was some drama with that, our friends Misty and Ed got married, we went on vacation, and there's been mucho drama at work.  But the biggest news is Katy's graduation.  To add to the usual stress of end-of-semester tests and wrapping up her internship, she got a letter from the university saying her professor had not turned in a form on time and she would not be allowed to graduate in May.  She could attend graduation ceremonies and have her name called etc, but the registrar's office would show her graduation date as August.  Kinda a problem because that could keep her from getting a job until August!  Turns out the form in question was a sheet where the professor marks whether the student is going to pass or not.  He'd had the form since late February, it was due at the end of March, but the school didn't contact Katy until the end of April!  And the first she heard of it was the letter saying 'Oops, it's too late now.'  UNT definitely should have sent something sooner saying 'Get this taken care of by X date' so she could have done something about it.  Well, fast-forward through a crazy day of running between the registrar's office, the professor's office, and everywhere else on campus, and UNT said 'OK you can graduate in May since this wasn't your fault.'  Very good news because I don't think they would have wanted to face Katy if they hadn't fixed the situtation.  It wouldn't have been pretty, to be sure.

And thus, on Saturday afternoon May 13, Katy received a Master's degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of North Texas.  Hooray!  Afterwards, we had a big ol' Hawaiian-themed party at her house.  We had bbq, beer, washers, a new game called Teste Toss (don't ask), and plenty of fun.  I'm very proud of Katy for completing her Masters degree, and it's hard to believe that it was 18 months ago (just a few weeks after we started dating) that she moved to Denton and started working on it.  And now she's done and on to bigger and better things!

(See if you can find Katy in the picture above)

Spring is here!

Spring has arrived here in Austin.  Wanna know how I know?  Because I got my first sunburn of the year!  On Friday I played disc golf (first time in forever) and worked in the yard.  But apparently, it was the driving with my arm hanging out of the window that did me in, because it's just my left arm that is burned.  Either that, or I constantly faced south in the morning and constantly faced north in the afternoon, which seems unlikely. 

In house/yard project news.  We have completed replacing the fence.  We still need to build a gate, but that will be a little time consuming so we didn't have time Saturday.  I don't know if I mentioned it, but we planted some shrubs by the back deck before winter, and they managed to survive!  They've got little green leaves sprouting out.  Next up on the project list: shrubs in the front yard, prep the house for painting, finish building the step off the deck, and maybe lay some sod in places that need grass.

Explorer pics added

I've put up some pics of my new Explorer.  They're just the pics the dealership emailed me before I went to see it.  Enjoy.

Vroom Vroom

What's up peeps!  This past month has been a little busy.  Plenty of stuff going on, but I guess the big news is this picture to the left.  I bought a new car yesterday!!!  My trusty old red '97 Explorer was having some trouble, which turned out to be a bad timing chain.  That's expensive to fix, so I decided it was time to trade her in for something new.  I still love Explorers so that's what I set out to find.  I wanted something fairly new with not a lot of miles. 

So here's what I ended up with.  It's a 2003 Explorer XLT with lots of options.  It's got a v8 and 4 wheel drive, and it had almost 27,000 miles.  I got it from Kinsel Ford in Pleasanton (south of San Antonio).  It was a pleasure working with them; they gave me a fair price on my trade in and a fair price on the new one, without hassling me about financing or extended warranties or whatnot.  I was in San Antonio for work Monday and Tuesday, so I cruised down to take a look at the car.  They had emailed me some pictures, but I needed to see it in person before deciding.  It looked and drove great, so we made a deal and I drove it home Tuesday night :) 

Katy can tell you I've been nervous the last week or two as I starting planning this purchase.  This was the first time I bought a new vehicle all on my own.  My old Explorer was handed down from Dad, and when we bought my Ranger I was still in high school so Dad handled the dealings and I just said what I liked and didn't like.  This time it was all me-- finding the vehicle, getting the financing, dealing with the dealership.  I was nervous about taking on the debt and worried that I would make a mistake somewhere.  But now that it's done, I'm happy with the deals I got from the dealership and from my bank, and I'm confident that I'll be happy with the vehicle.

Now I just gotta work on putting 150,000 miles on this one!  (The old Explorer had 149,000+ as of Tuesday afternoon)

Beautiful crystal football

Today I installed my Sirius satelite radio in my car (more on thatt later) and went to the UT basketball game with Blake, Mom and Dad.  The game was pretty fun, but what made it different than most games was at halftime they brought out the crystal football National Championship trophy.  Believe it or not, it's somewhere in the middle of this picture (my phone's camera sucks).  Right now, I'm waiting for my old friends David Haverlah and Joe Hebert to come over and hang out.  I say old friends because I've known David since the summer before 1st grade, and Joe, well, he's just old :)  I haven't seem them in a while so it'll be good to hang out and catch up.  Also, either later tonight or tomorrow night, Blake and I are going to take some pictures of the Tower all orange with the big 1 lit up in the windows, so I'll post pics when I get 'em.

Playing catchup

Ok I've just realized I'm a post or two behind my goal of A-Post-A-Day so I'm gonna do a little catching up.  I thought I'd mention some books I've enjoyed lately.  While we were in Denton in December, I finished reading Ron George's second book Of Mice and Mountain Lions.  Ron is Mom and Dad's across-the-street neighbor.  He is a retired wildlife biologist who worked for Texas Dept of Parks and Wildlife, and this book is about his experiences in that profession.  His first book, called Airspeed, Altitude, and a Sense of Humor, is available on Amazon.  It is about his experiences as a tanker pilot in the Air Force.  Both his books are very readable with short chapters.  They don't seem to have a Big Picture or anything, they're pretty much collections of a-funny-thing-happened stories.  And it's fun reading about the adventures of The Guy Across the Street :)

Most recently I read J.J. Connolly's Layer Cake.  I decided to read the book after seeing the film.  And to be honest, I had never heard of the film until I saw it on sale in the Best Buy ad that said "From the producers of Lock,Stock& Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch."  I loved LockStock and Snatch so I rented Layer Cake.  It was different (definately not directed by Guy Ritchie) but still British and fun.  The book had a lot of British slang and dialect that took some getting used to, but I enjoy the way the Brits talk so I enjoyed that.  Layer Cake is one of those movies you need to watch twice to fully understand who's doing what and why, but the book was much easier to follow for me.  Maybe I'm benefitting from having seen the movie and thus having faces to go with names.  One cool thing about Layer Cake The Movie is that it starred Daniel Craig, who was recently announced as the next James Bond.  Since not a lot of people had seen Layer Cake, I was one of the few who knew who this bloke is when the Bond announcement was made.  (Notice the fun British lingo?)  Maybe they'll make the excellent Sienna Miller a Bond girl (she co-starred in Layer Cake, and was in the short-lived/under-rate/very-entertaining tv series Keen Eddie.)

Hook 'Em Horns!

As I'm sure you all know by now, Texas won the National Championship last night!!!  (Wed night, that is. I'm still in my Thurs)  I would have dropped a little post about it, but I was too busy celebrating!  Blake and I had a handful of people over to watch the game, and since our tv is crapping out we used Dad's lcd projector to show the game on a big screen.  After the game, we hooted and hollered, and went down to campus to take some pics of the Tower.  Mom requested a tshirt so we went to the CoOp only to find a mob of peole out front waiting to be let in.  Knowing there's a back door, Blake went to check it out and called me a minute later to say he was already inside the store!  Orion and I went around back and joined the scrum for shirts.  In the end, everyone got a shirt, we dropped them off at Mom and Dad's house, and called it a night.  I thought last year's Rose Bowl was pretty exciting.  And winning the College World Series was fun too.  But nothing compares to last night!  (Except maybe for a repeat :)

OK, one little slip-up...

Well, my resolution to stick with this blog by doing an entry a day for the first week of 2006 hit a little snag right off the bat yesterday.  Yesterday was a busy day and it just kinda slipped my mind.  Katy and I were out late for New Year's so we slept til about 11am.  Once we got up, showered and dressed, we rounded up Blake and went to Trudy's for lunch.  Mmmm, nothing beats it! 

After that, it was time for Katy to pack up and head back to Denton :(  We've been together for about 2&1/2 weeks nonstop and have managed not to drive each other nuts, so I guess that's a good sign.  We've actually spent a longer stretch together in the summer when we went to Cancun, but this time we were in each others face more.  So after packing her stuff into my car, we had to retrieve her truck from her friend Misty's house in Leander.  That gave her about an hour headstart on her trip home, but used up several hours of the day. 

After that, I futzed around the house doing little things that had been neglected the last couple weeks and watching football.  Before I knew it, it was very late and time to get some sleep.  I guess I'll do two posts today to play catch-up (not ketchup, that's different).

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!  I'm heading out for some fun.  Hope you all have a good time and stay safe!

Hello again

First off, Merry Christmas and all that jazz!!  I hope you and your's had a great one.

Secondly, I need to apologize for slacking on this here blog.  It has now been 2&1/2 months since my last post.  I really ought to be a little more active on here.  This brings me to me New Year resolution.  In 2006, I plan to do a better job of sticking with things I start, including eating well, working out, projects around the house, and yes, posting on this blog.  Toward that end, I will post a blog entry every day for the first week of 2006.  I'm starting a little early, meaning from today thru Jan 7, 2006, you'll get a little daily dose of Brad!

So, here goes.  I guess I should catch y'all up on what I've been up to the last few months.  In November, I had planned on spending Thanksgiving in Denton with Katy's family but plans unfortunately changed.  Katy's grandmother passed away the week of Thanksgiving so we spent Thanksgiving with her family in Kerrville instead.  Then, in December Katy had knee surgery.  Ended up not being too bad, but they didn't know what would be needed until the surgeons looked inside.  I took off work Dec 15-26 to be in Denton helping her recover.  While we were there, we did Christmas with her family, then went to Miles to my grandmother's house on Christmas Eve.  We met up with Mom, Dad and Blake there, and had a great visit with my Mom's side of the family.  On Christmas day, we went into San Angelo to see my Dad's side of the family and then came home to Austin.  We did our Christmas at Mom and Dad's house on Monday Dec 26.  I've gone back to work, but I still have a few days off (today being one of them) so we're just relaxing, doing some shopping, etc.  Katy will be here through New Year's Day. 

Okay, so that's Day 1 of my New Year's Blog-A-Thon.  See you tomorrow!