I’m sitting in class, sipping on a can of Barq’s Famous Olde Tyme Root Beer and polishing off a small bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos.  I’m having a hard time staying focused.

It rained a lot last night. It was kind of a weird rain though. There were times where I felt like I was on the set of The Truman Show and someone was flicking the rain switch on and off.

The husband is out of town this week which means I’m left to fend for myself.  Fend against my own paranoia, my own laziness, and my own bad habits.

I’m a little paranoid about writing that he’s out of town because I worry that someone will read it and decide now is a good time to rob us.  Yeah, I know.

Usually I get pretty lazy about school work.  And usually, it’s the husband that’s getting on my case to hurry up and finish during the week so we won’t be stuck at home all weekend.  I finished writing a paper last night but I didn’t get around to putting together my powerpoint presentation on pathological gambling.  I’m almost done reading the memoirs of a pathological gambler (that has been pretty fascinating) called Born to Lose by Bill Lee.  I can’t wait until I can start devouring my to-read-for-fun list.  It’s runs 14 books deep, not counting that whole magical wizard kids series.

Luckily, we haven’t had to turn on the A/C in about two weeks (I love double paned glass & insulation!) so I haven’t had the opportunity to forget to turn off the A/C.

The strange phenomenon that always happens is that I see myself becoming ultra-responsible in his absence.  I wake up earlier in the mornings for fear of oversleeping, I clean the house more often, and I eat healthier.

Unfortunately I have a big stack of school work waiting for me so I can’t indulge in me-time with good books, shopping, web surfing (I’m way behind on TED talks!) and television.  So my nights are quiet, in front of my laptop, at the dining room table, with one of my cats sleeping on my lap.

I’m actually an introverted person, I’ve always loved spending time alone, I think the husband has just become an extension of self (or the other way around?) and it’s a weird feeling to miss yourself.

I really like Twitter.  Thanks to everyone who has kept me entertained on there.  Special shoutout to RawkHawk who reviews music albums.  A recent fave tweet: “Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns: Sounds like a mega-church’s dream worship band creating mostly secular ballads in moody chords.”

Haha, I knew that album sounded familiar.

Good thing the husband’s coming home soon.  If he weren’t, I’d probably start undertaking projects like the two below:

I came home two nights ago from a late meeting to find my husband sitting outside the front door, hammering away at what I could only describe as a gizmo.  I parked the car in the garage and went in the house while he continued to hammer.  After a few moments I heard laughing.

“I can’t believe I did it!  I got it out!”

“What? Got what out?  What are you doing?  Why were you doing it outside?”

“I’m fixing the sink.  This is actually really cool.  I figured out how it all works.  I can show you later.  I needed to get this one broken part out because Kohler didn’t send us all the parts so I have to mix the old parts and the new parts…”

His voice faded as he ran upstairs.  I took my shoes off (because sometimes cultural habits die hard) and chuckled to myself.  It’s really rare that the husband shows himself in this form.

Let me back up.  Hurricane Ike came and went almost two months ago but its effects still linger.  Many of my classmates are still displaced from their homes and some have no homes to return to.  We were incredibly fortunate and did not suffer any hurricane related damages.  Not a single plank in our fence or a single shingle on our roof was affected.  During the hurricane, my parents evacuated from Clear Lake to stay at our house and we evacuated to stay at my brother-in-law’s house.  While my parents were at our house, the sink somehow broke and the knob to turn the water on and off was stuck in the on position.  The husband contacted Kohler because they have a lifetime warranty (which apparently only applies to the first owner of the house) and they sent out some of the parts.

Okay, fast forward to the present.  Well, two nights ago.

Some hammering, wrenching (I don’t think this word is used correctly here), and sealing…

… the sink was fixed!

The husband is not really an engineer by personality.  He doesn’t have a top of the line computer setup, he doesn’t have any engineering projects of his own, and he enjoys socializing more than I do.  So it’s a lot of fun to catch him in these rare engineering moments.  And it’s also really nice being married to someone who knows how to figure this stuff out because I know I would have tried to Google it and then I would have chickened out by calling Joe the plumber.  Juuuuuuust kidding.

Wearing new shoes usually adds about thirty points to the greatness level of your day. Today is no exception. I picked these up a few weeks ago at DSW. What can I say? I’m a sucker for argyle. Crazily enough, they are a size 8 and they fit snugly. I could have sworn that I used to wear a size 7. This lady at DSW overheard me lamenting this shoe size change to the husband and she said, “Oh honey, your feet never stop growing. I used to be a size 6 and now I’m a size 9!”

Yikes.

I think that’s crazy talk but I sure hope I don’t eventually grow to wear a size 9.

The husband and I experience an incredibly high frequency of strangers who feel compelled to comment on our conversations. I’m not sure if we are talking too loudly or if the topics we discuss are just too provocative – or maybe we just look really approachable. And it’s not just when we are conversing together. We also experience this when we are alone and are minding our own business.

If I’m waiting in a long line for the bathroom, I can always count on a woman next to me to make some smart remark about how “they still haven’t figured out that three bathroom stalls isn’t enough for an auditorium of women” accompanied with a playful elbow nudge and a wink. If I’m at the Social Security Administration Office and the rude security officer has just chastised a person for drinking bottled water because no food or drink is allowed in the office, I can always count on the middle aged woman in front of me to roll her eyes and mutter under her breath, “Can someone say power trip?” Before I can respond, she’ll launch into her extended sob story about how she’s here to change her name because she has recently divorced her husband and that it was a rotten marriage to begin with and truth be told, she’s happy to be free of it. I usually look around the room at this point to try to figure out why she’s chosen me to talk to. One, I’m not wearing a suit. Two, I’m not blowing bubbles with my chewing gum. Three, I don’t have any visible tattoos. Four, I don’t have a permanent sneer on my face. Sigh, the price I pay for looking plain.

This is the kind of thing that I pretend to be annoyed with but whenever I leave Houston to visit another city, I always realize how much I miss it. When a parent swears at their disobedient child in a public space, I miss not being able to exchange a knowing glance with a stranger next to me as if he/she were someone that I’ve been exchanging knowing glances with my whole life. Some people find southern hospitality fake and shallow – and in some settings (especially in retail stores) I agree – but for the most part, I really enjoy it. People who have conversations with strangers obviously don’t take themselves too seriously and probably feel that all people, even strangers, have enough in common to share a dialogue without any of the usual prerequisites.

Something strange that I have observed about men and women (this is, of course, an overgeneralization) is that women love to shop for their unmentionables and men hate to shop for their unmentionables.  I’m not sure if it’s some sort of male challenge to see how long their underwear and undershirts will last but I pretty much am always the one that suggests that the husband needs new underwear.

I have a bone to pick with the person who is in charge of ordering underwear at all Wal*Marts and Targets.  There is ALWAYS a ton of XXL, XXXL, M and S sized underwear and usually a drastic lack of L sized underwear.  This is an inventory control issue.  Why haven’t they figured it out yet?

Also, I have noticed that there is an alarming lack of briefs.  There’s always a lot of boxers, boxer briefs, trunks, and even bikini briefs (yikes), but very few packages of briefs.  I have no theory about why this is.  But the husband is extremely loyal to briefs and I’ve cautioned him to maybe start transitioning to something else because it seems like they are phasing briefs out.

I have also observed that the husband generates three times as much laundry as I do.  He wears business casual clothes to work (dry cleaning), gym-clothes during lunch, sometimes gym-clothes at night, and something comfortable to walk around the house in.  That’s a lot of laundry.

Thus concludes this trivial post.

This past week I’ve written and deleted three drafts posts with dissatisfaction.  So whatever I write here gets published.

It is becoming harder and harder to avoid writing a political post so I’ll try to get one out soon.  Just to be upfront, I have gripes with both the Democratic and Republican sides.  I have problems with the whole political process.  I might have to add a “Political” post category by the time we get to election day.

The economy is frighteningly unstable.  I think with all the Hurricane Ike news and with a ton of people still without power, people haven’t really taken in the stark realities of this week’s events.  I think it’s interesting to see the heavy handed government interventions in the financial markets this past week from a Republican administration.  This just goes to show that there are no promises after someone gets into office.  There’s really no telling whether McCain will provide little government or whether Obama will provide all the programs he’s been talking about.

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I’m disappointed that Apple issued a recall on their ultracompact USB power adapters for the iPhone.  There’s reportedly only a small percentage of adapters that are faulty but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.  You can either exchange it in store in October or fill out the web-based form now.  Thanks to MacRumors for letting me know about this.

October is also when the MBP is supposed to come out.  I’ve been waiting for this redesign for — is it two years now?  Crazy.  But what’s even crazier is I’m considering not getting one.  Well, I’m really hoping that they make it lighter in this new redesign.  But if they don’t, I might consider getting a Mac Pro or a iMac for my photo processing and a lightweight, compact laptop for travel and mobility.  One or maybe both of those will probably have to be refurbished since my tech budget is pretty limited.  Has anyone ever bought refurbished from Apple?

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My internship this year is at Texas Children’s Hospital in Adolescent Medicine through BCM’s Leadership Education in Adolescent Health Fellowship program.  It’s been an interesting experience so far in that I feel like I’m getting a sneak peak at what medical or nursing school is like.  It’s a really robust environment where you’re surrounded by sharp people and you can learn as much as you possibly want to.  It’s also nice to be able to disassociate hospitals with terrible events.  I’m also helping to facilitate experiential groups at a local high school and will be also be working with Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) students both in Houston and in Baytown.

It’s because of these two things and my full load of classes that sockparade might suffer a bit this year.  But I definitely consider it a worthwhile trade-off — hopefully it won’t get too bad.

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I never used to like cars.  I mean, I never appreciated their beauty until after I met the husband.  My brother-in-law was over last night and they were talking cars and while I’m still drooling over the Audi A5, the brand new Audi A4 is pretty fantastic too.  The headlight redesign is amazing.

Speaking of cars, I love car commercials that use great songs.  There’s a Saab commercial that has cool female vocals but I don’t know who she is.  Let me know if you’ve got a clue.

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This is the first weekend we’ve had where we have no plans and no place we’ve committed to visiting.  It’s the first real weekend I’ve had in a long time.  I can’t wait!  See you on the other side.