Work and Play

Okay...so I have to have some kind of new activity to get involved in - so I decided to join a sewing class! I am taking lessons from Glitzkrieg - here in Austin. This has been a blast! Our teacher, Leslie, has made sewing so accessible and fun! I am thrilled to be doing this. I am in the Sewing 1 class. We have made a few projects so far:

On our first class we made these:

The first one is a small drawstring bag - with a little square bottom so it will sit up!

The second project that day was this pillow - just your basic small square pillow. Skulls on the front and the back is a solid teal color.

Yesterday, we made a more complex pillow. It is a 16" round pillow, contrasting fabric on the front and back, with a zipper (so you can insert the round pillow form).

Here is how it turned out:

Here is the front of the pillow - kind of an exotic floral.

The back is a contrasting green fabric, textured with tiny diamond squares.

And here is the zipper I installed! Proud of that, cause, I had no idea how that would turn out.

I am in the process of picking out fabric for next week's class: a reversible skirt! Looking forward to that one - I am thinking some kind of funky floral on one side and skulls on the other. I will have to see what I end up with in terms of fabric choices.

Well, I wish I was more upbeat today...but I guess the spring allergies have got the best of me - I have been alternating between sneezing and coughing all day. My throat hurts too - and I haven't felt like talking. Ugghhh....Hopefully I will feel better with some Claritin and some hot tea.

Things are going pretty well - have some clear deadlines for my dissertation work - yay! and yikes! all at the same time. I will be graduating in Spring 2009 - which sounds like a long time from now, but in terms of the deadlines I have...well, it will be here before I know it.

No need to panic, just meet the deadlines as they come. I will be completely focusing on my data analysis and interpretation this summer. Good timing too - I have some fellowship money to help with our home and school expenses and I won't have to work! What will that be like??? Hmmm,  I am hoping for a very productive summer :)

I had been out of town for a conference (a gerontology meeting) and it went great! Lots of fun people, good information and networking. Great conference center, I will post a pic or 2 when I get home. It was located just outside of Washington, DC. Chantilly, VA to be exact.

You conferencing friends out there will understand this one - TPTB wanted it to be a 'working' conference...no sightseeing and shopping instead of going to meetings. So...the solution to this issue was to locate us far enough away from EVERYTHING that we never left the hotel. Just a trip to the local Target (because, I will never pay 2.00 for a diet coke or snack crackers) was 16.00 cab ride! So, we all stayed there - and made the best of it. It was a harsh conference schedule: Friday night 5pm-10pm, Sat and Sun 7:30am-9:30pm. There were breaks of course, and the evening included dinner and cocktails - but yikes!! I am conferenced out at this point.

You will see more about the place here. It is a lovely place and super comfy rooms, tasty affordable restaurant and coffee bar, fun spa and rec center and excellent service - so if you need to head to that area, I can highly recommend it. If I was going there for fun, I would certainly stay again.

So, I left this a.m. out of Dulles Airport - no probs there at all. Flew into Dallas and that is where the fun began today! We waited on the taxi-way for 30 or so minutes because there was a plane in our gate with mechanical problems. We finally were allowed to deplane - and got sent to the wrong gate. Ran to the right gate for the connecting flight to Austin and there was a very large crowd.

The flight attendant staff said there was a "weight issue" on the plane. Now, I don't know what that means, but it scared me. Was there too many passengers (it looked like it) - was there too much stuff on the plane? too much fuel? I didn't want to be in something too heavy to stay in the air - so....She asked for volunteers with flexible travel plans and said if we waited for the 6pm flight, she would give us a 300.00 travel voucher. Yay! Free travel, you would have done that too right...?

I got out of line, got my voucher, got some lunch and took the Sky Tram to the other side of the airport to do some work and wait for my flight. Internet is not free - so I decided to do the one day pass in the American Airlines Admiral's Club. Ordinarily, I am booked pretty tight between flights - so no time for chill. But I thought I might like it today. Boy was I right :) 

For my 50 bucks I got free internet, free drinks, free food and nice comfy chairs :) It was worth it to me - especially when I just found out that my 6pm flight is now cancelled and I *might* get to leave Dallas at 7pm! Ha! So much for giving up my seat.

Well, no time like the present to get back to the blog! Lots to catch up on - all good - just quite busy :) Tomorrow is my bday and I am working out of town, so I thought I might get started back on Vox.

We absolutely love Austin - the move has been great! I have lots of pics to post. We feel settled and have a great little home. Work and school are really good too. Our pets are really happy (shout out to WestLake Animal Hospital for their excellent care!) too. Our daughter even got to come out to visit over her Spring Break.

I will try to ease back into writing a little at a time, but hey - it's a start :)

Battye in Austin

Not much chance to blog lately as we were on the road for the past 7 days or so...a big trip to Austin to do some house hunting. I am VERY happy to say that we found a wonderful little place in Southwest (?) Austin - in Tanglewood Forest. It will probably be a 15-20 minute drive for the UT campus - but the tradeoff was more affordable housing and the kinds of things we were looking for:  fenced in yard, convenience to shopping and basic needs, and it doesn't hurt that there are several parks and a neighborhood pool.

Here are some pics!

You wouldn't know it by these pics, but we are actually on a street right by an elementary school. After getting little rain here in Alabama, it was quite refreshing to see the green grass and trees in the new neighborhood.

We will have our own full garage and will share a driveway with the other unit of our duplex.

Nice little walkway to the front door here and we have another entrance to the garage from the walkway. We were happy that unlike some of the duplexes - our laundry room will be in the house rather than in the garage.

This is view from our backyard! It is a wonderful neighborhood park and walking trail.

Kev admires garage

Here is the new garage!

Side deck and backyard

New living room and fireplace

Neighborhood pool

I didn't want to post too many pics of just empty rooms, but it is a 2BR, 2B and has a great little breakfast nook with a bay window. The last pic is of the neighborhood pool, which is around the corner from us. 

We had a great visit to Austin and to Louisiana along the way! More pics of the trip will follow soon :)

Ahhh... a pretty good day is winding down now :) On the VERY LONG list of things to do before we move - we accomplished a big one today: we sold one of our cars - so now we have some money to put aside to take another trip to Austin. We felt good about that - I am always interested in the selling of the cars - who shows up to look at them, the kinds of questions they ask and ultimately who ends up buying them. Today, the car went to a girl in her 20's and it seemed like a really good fit for her. Her car had broken down and she was sharing cars with her relatives just to get back and forth to work. We have loved the little 92' BMW - but it was time for it to leave us - so I think it went to a good home.

On another good note, I have a job interview by phone for a research position at the University of Texas! I am keeping my fingers crossed - it is just part-time, but it would give us some income, and the opportunity to work at UT while Kevin is getting started in school. Good vibes about it so far :)

Happy Face

Ahhh, just a good old Saturday afternoon around here :) Nothing really going on, and we are relaxing and trying to stay cool. It was a pretty productive week, lots of school-related tasks to do both for UA and UT. We had the kind of scary thought that we have to be moved and settled in a new city in about 15 weeks.....

Guess there won't be a whole lot of relaxing going on if we realistically want to pull that off - but I know us, and we will find a way to make the most of the time we do have.

This time last week we visited Natural Bridge, AL. It is in northwest Alabama, about an hour or so from our place in Tuscaloosa. It was really a cool place - it is the largest natural bridge east of the Rocky Mountains. Here is a website that gives some detail about the place.

Dissertation update:

After a flurry of activity around here - (official, stamped IRB approval was recieved on Friday) I am now just waiting for the facility to let me know when I can come in and start my interviews. I am looking forward to getting those going. The reason for the wait is a good one, many of the inmates at the facility are participating in a Buddhist meditation retreat. I don't know many details, but I was excited for them to get this opportunity.

In the meantime, my list of to-do tasks looks like this:

1. Create dissertation outline

2. Pull together information for Chapter One ( this will be the introduction, the story of how I reached the point where I wanted to do this kind of research, and the potential benefit for social work).

3. Pull together information for Chapter Three (methodology chapter). This is pretty much already written in my dissertation proposal.

4. Send off application for a research support grant.

5. Make my final decisions on what kinds of equipment I need to buy for the project (digital recorder, and external microphone). I already bought an external hard drive, a Western Digital MyBook. I had hoped to recieve some research funds to get the kind of recorder and mic I wanted...but so far, it looks like I am on my own for those. My wish list is: the ShurePro mic and the MAudio recorder

Whew! What a crazy semester here for us...I am still slogging away on the dissertation related tasks -but Kev has officially graduated!! Yay! For his final movie project I helped with a film ("Moon Turn the Tides") he made down in Wolf Bay, AL. Here a few pics from the movie shoot:

The sunsets in Wolf Bay are so beautiful! The film has 2 main characters - the actors (Meagan and Mark) are friends of ours.

The synposis of the film is: A man returns home to the coastal home he left a year ago after his wife left him and the house was partially destroyed druing a hurricane.  On he eve of the sale of the house, the wife returns to the home - little does the husband realize that her goodby comes from beyond the grave. These pics were during rehearsal.

Here is Kevin with his Canon XL1 setting up for a shot.

The next pic is actually us trying to see if some of the 'beach' area from a local lake might subsitute for the actual beach if needed. (It did and it's amazing, but you really can't tell with the way he filmed it!)

The next two pics are of the main female actor (our friend Meagan) - she needed to look like a corpse for the later part of the movie. She is a very pretty person - it was a challenge to create the makeup effects - but lots of fun! 

Meagan and Lisa

Kev, Meagan and Mark

Kev filming at sunset

This was one of my favorite pictures from the shoot - catching the final rays of the sunset.