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.
Here is the new garage!
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 :)
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!
This was one of my favorite pictures from the shoot - catching the final rays of the sunset.
Picture one is a bronze (I think) Longhorn - in the sitting area of the alumni building on campus.
Two: A group of sunning turtles in a campus pond.
Three: The capitol building in downtown Austin.
Four: Here we are sightseeing on the capitol grounds.
Five: This was the view from the Hilton Garden Inn window - I liked that the wind was blowing and all three flags were in a similar position.
Here's the happy couple!
The next picture was of an actual 'longhorn' on campus...it wasn't special just for us - but it was neat that it was there :)
The last picture is the front of the social work building.
Quick recap of the photos: The first picture we took was the University of Texas exit sign as we were headed to the campus for the first time.
The second pic is the tower on the campus.
Then, of course, the pics of us with the tower in the background ( I know, goofy, touristy kinds of things!)
I would like to be posting our Austin pics and talking about the trip - but I am actually at my office @ school, and thought I should post my progress - to keep myself motivated!
Here is the latest:
Successfully defended the research proposal December 2006
Submitted my research proposal to the IRB (Institutional Review Board) February 2007
Participated in full-board review of my research proposal March 2007
Received my letter of approval (pending revisions) from the IRB March 2007
Working on IRB revisions - currently doing this. This means I that the IRB approved what I am proposing to do for my research, but I had a few questions to address in an amended research proposal document. I *should* be able to do this quickly and send it right back to them for final approval - but it has taken some time to get everything together. In a perfect world, I will have this done tomorrow and will send it off to them.
As soon as I get my final approval letter, I can start my interviews and data collection! Very exciting for me, 'cause this means I am in the final stages of the PhD process. I am so ready to get this going :)
Where does the time go? I think we just hit the ground running the week we left to visit Austin and it has not stopped...March has come and gone, I celebrated my "39th" - bday again ( I see the wisdom in that now!) on Friday and I still hadn't finished posting about Austin.
We had the most wonderful time there! Austin was everything we thought it might be and much more! I think it is fascinating when you mention a place that you are going to visit or move to and you get one of a couple reactions: "Wow, it is such a fun city - don't forget to visit ______, ______, and ____ while you are there!" (everyone seems to have their own favorite places they recommend) - or "I used to live there and it was just wonderful - we hope to move back some day."
Friends, colleagues and faculty gave us lots of travel tips and info - I do believe we were well prepared for our trip. Our biggest regret - that we couldn't stay a whole week! There was simply too much to do in the short visit we were able to make. But we got quite a bit accomplished and for that, we are very satisified.
Helly - you were correct about the Hilton Garden Inn - that was a fabulous hotel to stay in! It was like a little home away from home for us. The room was like a small apartment, staff called us by name, we had wine/cheese option at night, a scrumptious full breakfast every morning, and can I just say, they had a great little laundry center on the premises?! It is great to get home w/clean clothes. We will stay there again, no doubt.
I mentioned in a previous post about having our toiletry items confiscated at the airport - totally my fault - I had failed to read the prohibited items notice on the Delta website. So, our first visit outside the hotel was to get what we needed, but it actually helped us find our way around the NW part of Austin. It was good to see familiar places to shop, eat ,etc - just to ease the transition of being in a new place. That feeling, however, was quickly replaced by the excitement of seeing new things and exploring.
Our first official stop: The University of Texas campus. ( I have to get the pictures uploaded to the computer and will post more soon).
