Sister?! Sister!

My little sister has gone home now, and I am back to the work and school round. Her visit was so much fun! We went rock climbing at a gym in Houston, where she scampered up the walls faster than I've seen squirrels climb; stayed up late watching the girlie movies 27 Dresses and P.S. I'm Dead Now (AKA P.S. I Love You, but I like our title better); rescued Stan the tiny gecko from certain death and voyeurism (he tried to watch us pee, but we thwarted his plan!);
went to La Madeline's 3 times in 4 days; bought more bath products than you would think any 5 people might need; and generally bonded very sisterly. It was an awesome visit, and like all visits went by much too quickly.

So, now back to work and school and such. I will write up our San Francisco trip when I get a chance, but in the meantime, if you haven't seen the pictures and want to, let me know. I took enough that if you scroll through them really fast it's like a flipbook video of our 8 day trip!

Sweet Tea

My sister is back from Canada! She survived! (narrowly). The pics from her trip are insanely beautiful, all crystal clear blue sky, white snow-topped mountains, and perfectly symmetrical conifers. I really miss snow, I haven't seen it in years. Every time I go home it gets too warm for it. I'm really more of a lounging-on-a-tropical-island type of person, but I love the hush that falls over the world with a fresh snowfall, and watching big fat snowflakes drift down from a dark sky into the light before disappearing again into a blanket of snow is a pretty good definition of peacefulness.

Maybe that's one reason Texans seem so foreign to me, they don't really understand, at their deepest levels, the ebb and flow of seasons. Where I grew up, there are 4 distinct, individual seasons, which balance each other and share time equally. I've always claimed summer as my favorite, but living in it year round just isn't right. It needs to be balanced by a winter, and separated from it by a spring and a fall, each in their own time and each with their own personality.

On the other hand, man do I hate the cold! I've considered moving to the equator, Texas is too cold for me sometimes. Like today, I think it got below 60! In February!

Although today was a good day, I got a free cookie! I went to pick up lunch with friends at McAlister's, they have sweet tea! We were getting it to go so I gave them my name and then we hung out for a bit. A few minutes later, a guy called my name and I started to walk over but this lady got there first, grabbed the bag, and like booked it out of there. So I was like, that's weird, maybe another me?, but my friend was like, we should check that out. So we went up and asked, and they didn't have another me, so one of the guys who worked there ran outside and almost threw himself in front of the lady's car to stop her, and talked to her, and got the bag back. Her name was like Lauren, she just really wanted my lunch I guess. But I go there so often (they have sweet tea!) most of the guys there recognize me, and the manager felt bad and gave me a free cookie. And more sweet tea!

Strawberry Perl

Are you tired of plain old vanilla Perl? Try new strawberry Perl! Garenteeded to make your day a little sweeter ;) Have I mentioned lately that I love Perl? That it is the coolest language ever? And that I have admin rights on my computer at work?

So this is my new workout schedule:
Monday - Stretch class, lots of yoga poses
Tuesday - Belly Dancing class, followed by Kickboxing if I have any feeling left in my legs (not today)
Wednesday - Step class, since I do need remedial lessons in it
Thursday - Ballroom dancing class with boyfriend!

I will be so active! I miss how good I used to feel when I was kickboxing, so now this gives me lots of stuff to do. I'm not focused on losing weight per se, it'd be nice but I just want to move around after sitting in a chair for 8 hours every day.

My little sister's new house. Yes, that's her name over the door. Because she is actually an incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake. (She should really like strawberry Perl then!)