Snow!

Yes, I know it's been eons since I last updated, but here is one for my family back in Georgia. Here are a few pictures of all the snow we got last night! I think someone told me it was at least seven inches. Enjoy and know that I'm looking forward to warmer weather at home. :-)





(As a side note these were all taken while standing in my slippers on the back stoop at the Kappa house, probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I got some good pictures. )

Homesickness and Jealousy

So I called the fam tonight. I'm missing them WAY too much for my own good. I think it may have something to do with the whole being engaged thing and not seeing my parents until 3 and a half months after the fact. It was nice talking to them and I can't wait to see our beautiful house!

On a more jealous note, I was reminded that my lovely 18-year-old sister, Vivian, has officially received a PAID singing position BEFORE her older, music major sister. (aka me...) Needless to say I am very jealous but am very proud of little bibby-ibby. Hopefully one day I'll get paid to sing... :-)

night night

It's over!

My "life" has been returned to me! SAI Province Day is over! I will be posting many pictures shortly to share my adventures from the last couple months. I hope you're all doing well!

YAY!!!!

All I can say right now is go here:

http://deansimmer.blogspot.com/

Summer is over...

I've determined that it's harder to post over the summer, and I have a hard enough time posting during the school year. Anyway, now that summer is OVER...it's back to the grind. I'm not much more tan than usual...sadly. I may have to do something about that before I go back to school, it's a little sad when you come back the same color you were when you left, especially when it's a three month span. We'll see. I was actually productive this weekend. Didn't have anything crazily busy to do, so I hung out with my next door neighbor, Joni Tenney and her youngest child, Will. ("my baby", he was born on my birthday last year) I also did about 4 loads of laundry and folded the gajillion towels that were clean as a result, but the best part of folding them was that my wonderful Daddy installed a loverly mirror door in the girls' bathroom to replace the old broken one. Now you no longer see all of our towels and the closet itself even looks semi-nice since I folded all the dang-blasted towels. :-) Tomorrow it's another solo/duet in church (I sang a solo at All Saints' Episcopal Church last Sunday) and then The Cheesecake Factory on Peachtree for Margaret's birthday dinner and a visit to Grandma Jago in the hospital. Poor Grandma has been having atrial fibrulation...I think...that's about all I've gathered. She's feeling pretty crummy about the whole thing so us girls and Momma and Daddy will go over and try and cheer her up. :-) That's about it for now. T - 7 days until Margaret and I return to Hillsdale. I've got so much work to do before then! Ah! bye

Memorial Day Weekend

I've decided I should write a post about something so I'm going to write about what an absolutely hysterical time Memorial Day was in the ATL.

The festivities took place at Kingsland, my mother's parents house on Kingsland Court in Vinings, GA, and BaaBee, my grandmother, decided she would invite lots of friends. So who was there? Well, Momma, Daddy, Giles, Margaret, Vivian, and PeggyDee and BaaBee and DanDan, of course. Now the company included Becky, her nurse Shwana, Joan Palmer, who went to high school with BaaBee, her daughter, Gail, who owns the Pottery Shop and Doodlebug in Symrna, and cousin Karen. Let me just say it was quite a crowd. For those of you who have ever asked me how people are in the South, especially women, this was the epitomy of Southern women. Everything relates to a story and oh, did you know so and so and it's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life, it addition to hoping in some odd way that I'll turn out just the same. A Southern woman who has seen her fair share of history, had some adventures along the way and just happens to know some incredible people and many of them well known, famous or only so in their own mind. :-)

I got to hear about Joan's "home," MLK, Jr.'s secretary, stories from the first female air traffic controller to Hartsfield Airport, learned about some new connections of friends who sing for the MET and conduct, stories of playing for Robert Shaw, discovering penicillin in Alabama before it was discovered in London and the list keeps going. The amazing thing is that it all comes from people in my family. Isn't my family cool?! I love family gatherings, they're so hysterical, you hear great stories and you manage to learn something along the way.

Anyway, that was my weekend in a nutshell, in addition to a voice lesson Saturday, singing in church and several times over again Sunday evening at church and for the lovely Tenney family and getting back to work at NGPC this morning. :-)

I hope everyone's having a wonderful summer!

Procrastination!

Avoiding everything I should be doing right now... :-)

The Wonderful Women In My Circle

Adrienne sent this to me. Sorry about the funky text. :-)

THE WONDERFUL WOMEN IN MY CIRCLE
-----------------------------------------------------------------

When I was little, I used to believe in the concept of one best friend, and

then I started to become a woman. And then I found out that if you allow

your heart to open up, God would show you the best in many friends. One

friend's best is needed when you're going through things with your

children. Another friend's best is needed when you're going through things with your mom. Another when you want to shop, share, heal, hurt, joke, or just be. One friend will say let's pray together, another let's cry together, another let's fight together, another let's walk away together. One friend will meet your spiritual need, another your shoe fetish, another your love for movies, another will be with you in

your season of confusion, another will be your clarifier, another the wind beneath your wings. But whatever their assignment in your life, on whatever the occasion, on whatever the day, or where ever you need them to meet you with their gym shoes on and hair pulled back or to hold you back from making a complete fool of yourself... those areyour friends. It may all be wrapped up in one woman, but for many it's wrapped up in several... one from 7th grade, one from high school, several from the college years, a couple from old jobs, several from Church, on some days your mother, on others your sisters, and on some days it's the one that you needed just for that day or week when you needed someone with a fresh perspective, or the one who didn't know all your baggage, or the one who would just listen without judging...those are good girlfriends/best friends. I thank my girlfriends, those who honor intimacy, those who hold trust, and those who hold me up when life is just too heavy! The special bond we share is unique. Thanks for the words we've shared. The prayers we've sent up. The laughs, the tears, thephone calls, the emails, the shopping, the movies, the lunches, the dinners, the talking, talking, talking and the listening, listening, listening.... So whether you've been there 20 minutes or 20 years, you are special to me!

Pass this on to the women that God has placed in your life to make a difference.

__________________________________________________

Back in GA!

Hello. Just wanted to say that I'm back in my beautiful home state of Georgia. Don't know that I'll be able to see many people other than my family and co-workers this summer but hopefully that will change. I'm working at the North Georgia Pain Clinic again as a receptionist, making money, saving money. That's about it. Off to work! :-)

Kim Kallianos

I know you'll probably never read this or even know how I found this out, but I'm really proud of you and glad that I'm able to call you a friend, even though we haven't seen each other or talked to each other in forever. Love you!

http://www.distinguishedscholarships.unc.edu/2005_Goldwater_recipients.html

It's been a while...

Hi everyone. So I'm posting something really short just to complain about how many random little things I have to do and I really don't know where to start! So I'm currently avoiding everything and writing a post...okay...1...2...3...here I go!

Junior year is almost over...scary...

Saturday Night in the 'dale

These last few weeks have truly been crazy, this past week included, but I was truly grateful tonight to be able to go to dinner with cousin Julia and her roomie Jen, Kris-Twin, and Dean at El Cerrito, get ready to sit desk, have the first part of sitting desk include eating ice cream and hearing Dr. Reist speak to the honors students and then Have Kris-Twin come over and watch a movie and work on her art project with me watching over her shoulder. Dean is over at his house having a guys night, I think they're all watching pro-wrestling; it sounded like they were going to have a great time. Relaxation for us both is good. I'm almost ready for another busy week hoping all the while to get everything finished that I need too. I hope all the guys and gals at KKG formal had a good time! night

SAI Sword of Honor

The Sword of Honor, a tiny jewelled or plain gold sword, is given for outstanding fraternity service, or for exceptional campus or community leadership, providing the member has maintained loyal support of fraternity activities. It is awarded upon a vote of the chapter secured by secret ballot and the approval of the Province Officer. The recipient must be in good standing and have fulfilled all chapter responsibilities in superior fashion.

I feel special because I got one at the meeting last night. :-)

What is Opera?

According to Dictionary.com opera is:

A drama set to music; consists of singing with orchestral accompaniment and an orchestral overture and interludes; theatre where opera is performed.

I would also like to personally add that opera is meant to be a little longer than a typcial play or musical and it is also usually scandalous, pretty vulgar and VERY showy. That's how opera is and how it has always been.

Le Nozze di Tutti has finished it's world premiere and first run here at Hillsdale College. It was lots of fun, I'd do it again in a heart-beat and I hope this campus learns a little about different types of art other than their own. :-)

Georgia

I'm back in Georgia for Spring Break. Many adventures have been had by all and so far it's been quite enjoyable. Dean, Kristin and I woke up early this morning to take Vivian and PeggyDee to school and then showed Kristin around ATL and Vinings a little, lunch at the Varsity and dropped her off at the airport so she could return to Chicago for the remainder of break. Adrienne and Margaret are relaxing at home today and have very exciting plans to go shopping tomorrow. :-) Dean is currently working on fixing BaaBee's computer and I'm just hanging out, listening, and talking to BaaBee when she's not talking to Dean. We'll be heading home in about half an hour or so and relaxing for the rest of the day. That's about all for now. I'll update later about the adventure from Michigan to Georgia with "Old Faithful" now "Sparky" and our trip to Apalachicola, Florida. :-)

Random quote

A random quote for the sake of posterity:

"Don't 'Teague' me woman, I'm cleaning." ~Christopher Teague when asked what he was doing with the Pledge during a cleaning session with 'The Official Checker of Egos'

Old friends

I love hearing from old friends, especially when you haven't heard from them in a while. I'll admit that I'm just as bad as everyone else at keeping up with people, especially when we're all so far apart, but I'm working on it. So, y'all let me know if you're going to be in ATL from March 18-27 because I'll be there on Spring Break and I'd love to see people!

My Weekend

This weekend was crazy busy but it was so fun! My weekend basically started on Wednesday of last week because I got my computer back! Dean, being the amazing boyfriend that he is got it all fixed up and running really nicely for me. Thursday I had no classes, just work and then we went and sang in Hudson at Dr. Burke's church. Friday I had classes and went to work for a couple hours and then the fun began! :-) We had Kappa Initiation this weekend and my came up to surprise my sister, Margaret, for her initiation. Friday afternoon was filled with "hiding" my mom from my sister, having our class dinner and just being at the KKG house in general all night. We had initiation on Saturday and as soon as it was finished I ran over to Howard for Music Scholarship auditions. As soon as those were over I had an opera rehearsal from 2-5pm followed by getting Dean back to his house to change, etc. and then heading back to Howard to hear some MA boys serenade Christina after her senior recital. Last night Momma, Margaret, Dean and I went to Jackson and browsed around in Target and ate dinner at Outback Steakhouse and then came back and crashed after a long day. This morning we went to church and ate lunch at SAGA and then Momma packed up and left! :-( I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning my room, napping and hanging out with Dean. Now I'm sitting desk, doing some random work on my computer and doing homework for tomorrow. Getting ready for another busy week! The Good Woman of Setzuan opens on Wednesday, Parents' Weekend is this weekend and there's an orchestra concert on Thursday in addition to other things. I suppose that's all for now. Maybe one of these days I'll have something random and profound to post about other than what I did over the weekend. :-)

Hey Y'all

Hello everyone. This is the official announcement of my first post on my blogger. I promised Dean I would get a blogger if he fixed my computer and so he fixed the silly thing. I will no longer be using Xanga seeing as...well, it stinks. Time for Dean to instruct me more on the ways of html and computers in general...and then do homework and sit desk. More later on my fantastic weekend.