Life is a Whirlwind

In 4 weeks, I will be graduating from the University of Oklahoma.
Today, I was initiated into the Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi, honoring the top 10% of Seniors.
I found out last week that I am being honored with one of Price College of Business's Outstanding Senior Awards.
I will also be graduating with Academic Distinction.

I am not saying these things to gloat, although I am damn proud of myself.
I say these things because I can't believe this has all happened. I can't believe that my days here are almost done. I am so excited to start my new life, but leaving here will be bittersweet. I know that life will never be like this again. However, I love confidently knowing that life will be so much better. Many of my friends are not this lucky, and while I pray for them to find jobs/grad schools/etc., it also serves as a reminder to not take for granted what I have been given.

I am so excited for all of the things I will be able to accomplish this next year as I begin my career. For years I have been living in an environment with competitive people who try to push other people down. I have learned a lot about myself and how to deal with this kind of environment, for which I will be eternally grateful. The lessons I have learned are invaluable. However, I will be moving home to an environment of people that constantly believe in me and inspire me to do great things. And that is what I want to do. I don't know what these "great things" will be, but I know they will happen because I will be surrounded by encouragement. I know this next year will be a big, BIG change, but I know that these changes will enrich my life for years to come.

I swear that it was just a year ago that I was playing on my elementary school playground. But here I am, preparing my cap and gown. Life is a whirlwind.

Blackbird

I am getting back into playing guitar. I used to play from 8th-10th grade. I started out taking lessons privately, and thought things were great. Then I slowly realized that my teacher was extraordinarily sexist, and Katy doesn't deal with people like that. So I quit the lessons and kept playing on my own with the music from my lessons. One night, one of my brothers came in and took one of my strings to make a tattoo gun. He promised to replace it. However, he never did. Sure, I could have gone and done it myself, but I have pride issues and wanted to make him do it. That was the end of me playing guitar.

This semester, I enrolled in the Guitar class offered, and I am absolutely loving it. I already feel like I have learned more than I ever did in my year and a half of private lessons- which is sad. It is so great playing again though. My muscle memory is slowly coming back, along with the callouses.

We are currently learning "Blackbird" by The Beatles. I love this song!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

I tried posting this last night, but the internet didn't want me to do anything. So here it is, 9.5 hours late. :)


AWESOME:
-Sunday "Superbowl" Funday
-Leaving late for a group meeting, then getting offered a ride. I was right on time.
-OU Memes Facebook page. Endless laughter.
-Half of my Thursday night class tweeting/emailing/texting each other all night. #boredMISstudents
-Wednesday night pitchers with some of my favorite people.
-Following @country_words on Twitter.
-Hearing "Tribute" by Tenacious D at Oconnell's.
-Betty White, Ferris Bueller, and puppy commercials.
-Starting my 4th and 5th "for fun" books of the year!
-Volunteering at the Food Bank and scoopin' potatoes with some awesome people!

Awkward:
-My entire body has been sore all week, and I wobble everywhere. Seriously.
-Turning into my mom: Standing up for what I believe in to people I don't even know via facebook. Yes, I was that girl.
-Realizing that I took pictures of my friend Michelle and Matt, and then with all three of us. I didn't think it was awkward because we are all friends, but then my roommate pointed out that I was the awkward third wheel.
-Sitting in the back of the bus on the way to the food bank, with nobody sitting by us for about 7 feet. It was set up for a wheelchair, and the bus driver didn't know how to fix it. The engineers couldn't figure it out either.
-Apparently I haven't been that awkward this week. Which just can't be true.

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

AWESOME:

-The weather being in the upper 60s all week

-Groundhogs day says more winter! This is awesome because winter hasn't started yet.

-Ordering girl scout cookies! Samoas and Trefoils, here I come!!!

-Laughing to tears 3 times in the past week with my friends

-Discovering the animal "finger monkey" on Google Images thanks to my friend michelle

-Going to and 80s themed date party

-Pilates, Guitar, and Creative therapies being my most of my class schedule

-Frozen Sangria. Strawberry Margarita. Need I say more?

-Reading for fun!

-Organizing my jewelry and hanging up the rest of my decorations... 

including this new poster:

Awkward:
-Wearing summer clothes in January. I packed up all my summer clothes and took them home. : |
-OU put in the paper that we will now only have 1 day off school for snow because they upgraded the maintenance equipment. Womp womp.
-My friends thinking I am crazy for loving tiny animals (finger monkeys, dwarf goats, lap giraffes, and teacup pigs) and obsessing over them on Google image search.
-Having a class on Thursday nights from 6:30-9:20 that always gets out late.
-Going to a date party with a freshman/18 year old. I had fun though!
-Volunteering for "family mapping" in my Creative therapies class. You pick people in the class to be your family, then place them near/far from each other depending on how close they are. You also pick the emotion on their faces. I even had to pick someone to be me.
-Going to Ted's and being the only one dressed up in 80s attire
-Facebook. Timeline.

The Night I used the Jenna Marbles Face

January 15th, 2:15 a.m.

After a great and funny night out, my best friend Mallori and I were eating at a booth inside Whataburger. Two guys and a girl sit down at the booth next to us, separated only by a 4-foot tall partition. One of them asks me, "Hey, do I know you?" Now, at 2 am, or really at any time on a Saturday night, the first thought is, "of course I don't know you and I don't want to get in your pants. Go away." However, I actually did know him. He was my bartender, Brandon, Thursday night when I made a short road trip to Talequah, Oklahoma. From this bartender, I ordered two drinks and about 100 waters. The next thing he says was, "you are the girl who ordered all the waters!" And then I realized how small of a place Oklahoma is. So we start chatting, making small talk, then he said something about me being pretty. Then, the girl gets jealous and grabs Brandon to make out.

At this point, the other guy realizes he should talk to us. Now, Brandon was in his 20s and not scary looking. Plus, I trusted him because he had been my bartender. However, his other friend was maybe in his 50s, and definitely creepy. He had grey hair poking out of a baseball cap, and had a bunch of piercings on his ears. At Whataburger after 2am, this guy is the definition of creepy. I never got his name, so I will call him Oldie. Oldie  starts conversation by trying to take a picture of me on his phone. Since there is only a partition in between us, There isn't much I can do to avoid this other than put my "thumbs up" face on, but he didn't like that and told me to put my thumbs down. So then I stuffed my face with a bite of my sausage biscuit. Then he didn't want to take the picture because I had so much food in my mouth. So I kept eating until he gave up. He also asked me to bend over so he could see my boobs. At this point, I was done with this guy.

He continues trying to talk to me, and I am trying to ignore it but Mallori and I couldn't really stop laughing. Then this happens:
Oldie: "Hey, look down here, is there something on my pants?"
Me: "No you are gross."
Oldie: "I'm un-buckling now."
Me: "I'm done talking to you." And then I turn away.

It was nearly impossible to ignore them, because they kept talking to us. At one point, he says that there aren't any Indians in Talequah-- the Cherokee Nation capitol. I am Cherokee, and decided to get a little defensive. Then he points to a gay guy (who was the star of Whataburger last night) and says that he likes him. I told Oldie that he only likes guys who speak Spanish, because earlier he hit on a a guy because he spoke Spanish and it was "so cute." Then he starts trying to speak Spanish to me, and then reverts to speaking Cherokee because he remembered that I was Cherokee. Now, I don't speak Cherokee- but it is on my bucket list to learn. So, to save face I just start ignoring him at this point. Because we are ignoring him, he looks to the booth past us and realizes that there is a table of Indians sitting there. So what does he do? He goes and makes some new friends. They were pumped about this, and I bet the bent over to show him their boobs.

At this time, Brandon stops making out and gives us attention again. We tell him that while he is okay, Oldie is a creepster. He got a little upset until I explained that in the first 10 minutes of meeting this guy, he tried to see my boobs AND show me his "wee-wee." Then Brandon understood, and started talking about how we were in love because we kept smiling at each other. At this point the girl gets upset again and tells him to stop. I tell her that he's fine, and that I trust him since he was my bartender. I guess that made her realize I wasn't taking her man, and then she laughed along with us the rest of the night. Brandon also kept trying to hold my hand across the partition. To "break-up" with him, I made an ugly face that he didn't like. That reminded me of a Jenna Marbles video that is one of my favorites: How To Avoid Talking To People You Don't Want To Talk To (Warning: there is offensive language in this video, so don't watch it if you don't like it). The jist that you make an ugly face to get people to stop talking to you. Then Oldie came back, said something offensive, so I started making "the face" at him. He was really confused, and even Brandon told me to stop making that ugly face. Unfortunately, we couldn't stop laughing which made the face a little less effective. Soon after, Mallori and I decided it was time to bounce.

As we get up, Oldie goes outside to follow the group of Indian girls. This means that he is standing right outside the exit. So what do we do? RUN. We ran to my car in the Whataburger parking lot at 2:45 am. The Indian girls yell after us, "I'm chargin' y'all five dollars!" I still don't really know why they were charging us five dollars, but we didn't care. We kept our five dollars and took the back way out of the parking lot, and then we laughed the whole way home.

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

So, I didn't have much happen in my world this week- but I noticed that apparently this summer I made a post and didn't actually hit "publish post." So, I leave you with an Awkward/Awesome post dated July 28, 2011:


Awkward:
-Attempting to mail packages (prepaid) from American University. They can't take them for the mailman to come pick them up(even if you schedule a pickup) because it is personal property. They can't take personal property. Yet, this is the same desk that holds our packages from the mailman for us to pick them up. Their rules are ridic.
-Buying a day pass for the Metro for my last day in DC (I always buy weekly passes on Thursdays). However, I totally wasn't thinking-- because they don't start until 9:30 am. I was with a group of 37 other WINS people, and my card wouldn't work. The station manager took forever helping me, and our train arrived. He comes to me and says, "You made a mistake. These start at 9:30." It was 7:30.... Oops. I felt so dumb and pretty much wanted to cry. He said, "I am doing you a favor because I see you are in a hurry" and handed me a one-trip pass. I ran down the escalator and made it just in time for the Metro doors to slide shut in front of my face. Needless to say, I missed the train and met up with everyone else at our transfer stop. Metro: 1   Katy: 0
-Trying to give a "speech" to say how thankful I am for everyone at work and how much I will miss it, but having to stop so I wouldn't cry.
-Doing anything while sitting at my desk. The only room for it is right in front of the door. Anytime I sit there and someone wants to leave or open the door, I have to move. Nobody's fault but my own-- I picked the lofted bed and awkward desk when I got to DC so that my roommates wouldn't have to deal with it.
-Mis-writing someone's name on a thank you card and not having white-out. Hopefully they don't notice the scribbles?

Awesome:
-Received a super legit certificate that is fixed to a wooden plaque. Nicer than what my diploma will look like! I received it from one of the 3 board members at my job, who I really liked.
-Finding my long lost chips in my work's vending machine on my last day. These chips are the best!
-Getting to tour the Pentagon
-Getting a new phone that works AND doesn't have a shattered screen!! Yippee!
-Getting a surprise cupcake going-away party at my work!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

I'm back!!! Here is the Awkward/Awesome Thursday of (approximately) the past week or two of my life. I even put some pictures on it! I promise that I will be back to blogging like a real person soon. Hope you enjoy, because my life sure has been enjoyable lately. :)


Awkward:
-Getting 5 missed calls from a person while I was in class today. They were from the 915, and I realized they were trying to call 915, not 918. They left a voicemail that made absolutely no sense. Apparently "Hi, you've reached Katy..." didn't clarify that I am not in fact a Dentist.
-Taking 2 minutes to convince that person that the 918 is in Tulsa, Oklahoma and that there is no way I could be their dentist.
-Not blogging for 2-3 months. I still haven't looked at my Google Reader. Terrified.
-20 minute long skylink ride at the DFW airport, with no air circulation in my suit and heels. It was only running in one direction- and I was one terminal away, the wrong direction. 
-Walking in a suit with your backpack and the skirt rising up with every step.
-Accidentally confusing your black napkin with your black skirt at a recruitment dinner.
-Your taxi driver not saying a word other than "yes" and "okay."
-Your taxi driver not having change.
-Driving your mom's mini-van because your car got totaled(story on this to come).
-I think I am getting tennis-elbow.
-Sleeping on a plane with your mouth wide open.
-Being that young, somewhat small girl, who has to sit in between two large men on a plane who originally had their armrests up. Nope.
-Not sleeping for about a month and thus making lots of mistakes and losing the ability to speak properly.
-My ring finger is a 1/4 size. The class ring company only makes whole and half sizes, so I got the half size above. Cold front means that my ring doesn't stay on right now, which means I am that girl who won't stop playing with her ring.


AWESOME:
-Almost being done with job recruiting!
-Enrolling for my last semester and taking classes like Art Therapy, Guitar, and Pilates.
-Staying at the W Hotel in Dallas. Staying at the Mayo Hotel in Tulsa. One more hotel stay in Dallas this month. Hotel beds are the BEST. So much better than my twin sized college bed.
-Imagining what I can do with a big kid salary. :)
-Country dancing with the boyfriend and friends all Friday night and some of Saturday night.
-Mom's minivan has GREAT gas mileage.
-I get to eat pizza twice tomorrow.
-Finding great deals on spring break rentals. 
-Finding my honeymoon destination/future retirement home: http://www.adelto.co.uk/luxury-resort-ayada-maldives/    loans will cover that..right? ;)
-Having a PHD student as a teacher for a normally too-difficult-for-what-it-should-be class. We just crack jokes a lot and don't take it too seriously. Perfect!
-Not sleeping for about a month and thus getting lots of delusional hyper moments, in which I am a BLAST to hang out with.
-Having a class ring!!!!!!! and getting a picture taken with our President, David Boren (aka D.Bo) and our rings.