Abbie's Real Life Blog

Oh, ignore my fiddling.  I’m trying to do some stupid stuff that I probably shouldn’t do.  I’ll make these changes, then change my mind, delete it all, and then go back to ignoring everything except for writing half-hearted blog posts every once in awhile.

So, yes, I’ve started making blog posts out of my tweets from Twitter, which is currently automatically creating tweets every time I post something new on my other two blogs.  I’m also trying to figure out a way to post here whenever I upload new images to Flickr.  It might all seem like a big mess after awhile, so who knows if I will let it stick around.  But it would be cool if you could just come here and see what I’m up to in other forms besides long-winded paragraphs of all the chores I did around the house last weekend.  Or it would be, if I can get it to work out.

This weekend!  It’s graduation at Mizzou, which means A) I won’t be able to get a table at a decent restaurant anywhere in town all weekend because all the students’ parents will be around and they will want to go out for every meal, and B) the students are starting to leave town, so Columbia will be a lovely empty playground for the locals starting in just a few days.  Columbia in the summertime!  It’s wonderful.  I always look forward to it.  I always crow about it on my blog.  I know.  But I really, really look forward to the university breaks and then I am disappointed when they come flooding back at the end.  This town is nice without the students.  But it wouldn’t exist except for the students.  So there’s that.

I am leaving for vacation in just over two weeks!  I can’t believe how the time flies by.  I am trying to make myself start working out every day before I leave, but the effort just seems gargantuan.  I do not like to exercise.  It just seems like a huge block of time in my day.  My sister and I stopped going together in the mornings at the beginning of this semester.  I will pretend it was mostly due to her schedule, but I was pretty pleased with it (embarrassingly, I will admit that I like it mostly because it works with my hair care routine.  If I go to the gym in the morning, I either end up going to work afterwards with uncooperative, sweaty gym hair or very damp, unstyled hair).  I did manage to make it to the gym almost more regularly than when we were going in the mornings.  I didn’t skip as often.  But I have gained some weight at the same time, so I think that going in the morning makes me less likely to consume junk food during the rest of the day.  Since my sister is now done with her semester, we made the plan to try to start back to a morning routine this week, but it was very, very painful to get up so early after so many weeks of sleeping later and having nice hair at work.  So the other option is fitting in an hour at the gym in the evenings when it is busier there and I often have other stuff going on.  But, honestly, I need to feel like I am in better shape before I head off to try to lug photo equipment up trails in the mountains.  I am not in terrible shape, but a couple of weeks’ worth of solid effort would be useful preparation.

When I return from my trip west, I will have less than twenty-four hours before I am due in north Missouri for a weekend family reunion.  I expect to have just enough time to make backups of my photos and do a minimal amount of laundry between the two events.  But we are staying at a state park, so I will not be required to be ready for prime-time.  They will have to put up with a slightly dirty, sunburnt me, desperate for conversation after two weeks more or less alone.

What else is going on?  Well, my brother and sister-in-law, who currently reside in northeast Kansas City, have decided to pick up and move to Columbia.  I thought they were being offhand when they mentioned it as a possibility in early March, but no.  Just a few weeks later and they have a contract on a house here, a contract on their house there (passed inspection last week, more or less), closing dates right after the family reunion, and they’re working on transferring jobs.  It is crazy, but it will be really cool to have them in town.  I have not lived within 100 miles of my brother since I graduated from high school fourteen years ago.  Same with my sister until I moved back to Columbia in 2006, and the proximity there has made us very close.  So this will be new and interesting and all kinds of fun.

It is already Thursday!  I have a number of things I need to get done this weekend, but most of it is the usual: laundry, house-cleaning, lawn-mowing, picture-processing.  A couple of other events.  Next weekend I will be in Kansas City for a chunk of time, so this is really my last full weekend to get stuff done before the trip, though there isn’t that much to do.  If I have anything I need to get, this is the weekend to do it!