Officially a Longhorn...

Well, I do have to say that if I had to choose a cool mascot the University of Texas Longhorns would have to be on my list... it's just so different than any other school! And now I'm justified in going out and buying Longhorn paraphernalia- I actually almost bought some pajama pants as I was wandering through WalMart the other day. So, the REASON I had to go to WalMart was actually that the ward relief society president who had told the bishop she would find me a couch to sleep on didn't actually ask anyone so I got down here at 3 am this Wed morning after a long and somewhat frustrating drive which included my motorcycle trailer detaching itself from the tongue that hooks it to the hitch on my car. Luckily I noticed before it came off and destroyed my mostly new bike. I had to find a welder willing to come fix the trailer though it was after 5 pm... after getting it towed back north to a town of 800 inhabitants. What a fun night.

Anyway, I get to a friend's house who lives over an hour from El Paso, sleep on her couch for 2 hours or so, then get up and leave on my motorcycle for orientation that starts at 7:30 am (Wed). I didn't want to take my car and leave all of my stuff in it all day in the middle of El Paso. I thought I'd have time to go back and get my car that afternoon, which turned out being wrong. The RS pres finally answered her phone Wed afternoon (i've been calling for weeks now) but said she had nothing, but the institute director overheard all this and in the middle of me asking if he knew any old ladies in his ward who wouldn't mind me staying for a few days he called his wife and asked if I could stay with them. So, I found a place to stay after a lot of stress and not much help from my ward, but there wasn't time to get all my things that night and I had meetings again the next morning. Thus, the trip to WalMart to buy more clothes.

It looks like my cohort is big- about 60 of us scattered through the 6 UT campuses that offer the DrPH in Health Promotion. Four of us are here in El Paso but two are still finishing pre-req's and I'm the only full-time student so I'll be on my own most of the time. I'm jumping in with program evaluation and am hoping that I learned enough to know what they're talking about...I get the idea behind it but just don't know all the different ways to do it. I've heard it's a bear.

And I did a triathlon last weekend in Idaho then moved the next day. I don't recommend that since it doesn't really let you spend any time stretching or jogging out the soreness. It was fun though, and I ran it with a friend, which made it infinitely better. I hate running, so even though I'm faster than her and I had to grab her hand and drag her along several times, just running WITH someone alongside me makes it so much easier somehow. Not to get too sentimental or anything ;-) but I started thinking about that on my long drive to Texas and was thinking about the idea of a cohort. Thanks again to all of you for making the journey through the MPH so much enjoyable for me, even though it was still hard!

Thought you guys might appreciate this one...

Sorry it's so huge.

FIRE FIRE FIRE

We had a fire at AED last Thursday! The day started off with crazy thunderstorms and then around 1pm, while I was happily plunking away at SPSS, my supervisor told me to grab my wallet, phone, and keys and evacuate immediately. There was a fire at our building, but for some reason the fire alarms on our floor does not work. That should be checked into. Anyway, I headed down 11 flights of stairs and as I walked out of the building I saw this....

It ended up being an electrical fire and you could smell it as you got closer to the first floor. We hung out for about an hour, then our department director sent us home as we would not be able to get back into the building. I happily hopped onto the metro at 2:00 and spent my afternoon chillin'. What an exciting day!

*The building was open for regular hours on Friday. Dang, I thought I would have gotten an extra long weekend.