Monday, April 02, 2012

A weekend! And horrible blogging!

This probably sounds ridiculous, but I just had my first "real" weekend since I started the MBA program. I still had MBA commitments... (I mean, let's not get crazy here!) but I also got the chance to hang out in Austin, doing what I wanted, with people who I wanted, and it was frankly quite awesome.  What exactly has been taking up so much time since August!?

I digress. I will say the weekend officially started on Thursday, when I got out of class at 9:30 and called up my good buddy Rob to see if he could ditch work and meet me for coffee. He could! So we did! And it was so fun and refreshing. I love friends like that - the ones who just inspire you when you hang out. Anyway, I next spent the ENTIRE DAY at home doing nothing. I thought about working on a paper, but I didn't. I mainly played online and hung out with the pups.

On Friday, I met my buddy Kevin for a run around Mueller, and then headed to campus for lunch. With my college ex-boyfriend. Who I actually like now. (I say that because when you awkwardly break up with someone, and then you have nearly 10 years of silence, and then you meet up and can be normal adults... well it's fun!) From there I did MBA stuff... working an org. fair table at Preview Weekend and then hanging out at the Red McCombs Red Zone with my buddies. Tough, yeah, I know. Then a smaller group of us went to Hopfields and caught up, which was so relaxing and nice and lacking the dreaded b-school chatter that usually follows a group of MBA students hanging out. I don't think I heard "benchmarking" or "core competencies" or "differentiation-based pricing" once!

This reminds me - I need to learn what beers I like. The Hopfields menu was way too overwhelming for me. Water please? That's the surefire answer at this state of my beer-knowledge base.
Saturday was equally lazy as Thursday! I didn't even leave the house until 2, and that was just to go to a preview weekend happy hour for the graduate consulting group. I met a girl who was exactly in the same shoes I was in last year, and it was interesting (for me at least) to sell UT as much as I did. I wish a future Erin could have been there last year to help me out. It worked out of course... always does... but still.... Anyway, from there I met the wonderful Tanya and again left feeling so inspired and happy. Did I mention how much I love the friends that warm the soul?  Lastly, Joe & I met up with our buddies Jon & Leslie for dinner and games. (We missed P+M!!) I shall just say...who knew the chicken-dance could elicit such laughs?!

And then... Sunday came! And it was still busy as ever! I took the pups hiking with some MBA friends. It is always easy to get people to meet me when we start at Taco Deli. :) The hike was especially exciting because June went swimming for the very first time. I was so proud. And amused... because she hops like a bunny when she swims. :)  The hike made Sam tired... but not too tired not to safeguard her bone. :)
Then... I rushed home, got ready, and met more friends for a brunch at Moonshine. Delicious! And then... I went to Laguna Gloria with Joe's sister and her kids to play artistic miniature golf. Cute, huh?
 
From there, I went home and proceeded to realize that my naive "I have nothing to do for school" way of thinking was horribly wrong. And in fact, I did have a lot to do for school. So I watched TV for an hour. Yay for procrastination. ;) I did eventually get everything done, and enjoyed an amazing home-cooked meal by Joe. (Because of course, anything home-cooked would not be from me.) And we hung out on the hammock for a while at sunset, admiring his hard weekend's work of landscaping, and for a while I thought... I don't need any more than this. (Here he is last weekend... in search of palm trees. Love.)
So... I suppose my main point of putting this on my blog was to demonstrate to myself that I still remember how to have a fun weekend in Austin. It can happen! School does not have to eat my life away!

And... another thing. I am starting my "Things to Do in Austin Before I Move" list. It is entirely possible that I have the months of April, May, September, October, November, December 2012 left in Austin... and then I will be living elsewhere. Kinda crazy. So it's time to get working on seeing it all!