Summer Loving

Helloooooo all!

Thought I would blog about my happenings since it has been a long while.
Vacation to Greece - 14 days starting in Athens and taking ferries around to the Greek islands. Islands visited: Mykonos, Santorini, Ios, and Paros.
It was so much fun! I went with one of my best friends, Katie and we traveled with a tour group that included 18 people total. Most of the travelers in our group were Canadian or Australian except for us and a few people from NY and one girl from Virginia.

The main things to do on the islands are enjoy the beautiful scenery, hit the beach, and dance the night away in the clubs. There is also lots of good food and shopping on some of the islands. There aren't a lot of historical things to see (ahem...okay, Mom?!).

School Stuff - Even though I'm not taking any classes this summer, I am still being funded at the university to do research. Here's what I'm working on this summer in particular - 1) project with UT and Ft. Sill developing a leadership training program and 2) measurement and evaluation project of online communications (purposely vague on this description...).
Otherwise I'm gearing up for the big job hunt!! This includes getting my vita ready, collecting letters of recommendation, preparing a job talk, and beginning to apply for jobs. I'll be visiting Montreal, Canada for a big conference at the beginning of August as sort of a kickoff to this process where I'll be doing 'speed dating' interviews with universities.

Misc - In general, I'm enjoying the summer as it is relatively slow paced. Planning to go out with friends, watch lots of movies, hang out at the lake, visit home (especially to see my bestie/sis and her beautiful daughters), and do whatever I please. :)

One recent fun outing was for my friend, Sarah's bday. We rented a stretch hummer limo in OKC and all of the people in the pic below squeezed into the limo! See if you can spot me in the middle of the pic. I joked that I was looked like Donatella Versace that night because of the super dark spray tan and the bleached blond hair.


If you want updates on my love life you'll have to ask in person, no kissing and telling online ;)

summer update - there may only be one since i'm lazy about blogging!

summah time update for those who are interested...

• Travelling -- Los Angeles/Las Vegas trip with a couple of grad school girlfriends,

Amanda, Cristina, Meagan)

• Travelling (cont) - weekend trip to Austin, TX with Katie to visit our friend, Andrea. Last but not least, trips to Coleman fairly frequently
• Working - latest project is developing a training program for LTs at Ft Sill. Pretty fun project, but unfortunately I wo'nt b e working on it in the fall. Instead I'll be teaching and working on another project! So, I'll have to update you all on my teaching experiences next semester.
• Love life - drama these days...don't want to say too much online, but things have been interesting for sure.
• Fun stuff - been watching LOTS of movies lately and shopping often. AND going for the occasional run in the park close to my house with lou.

Spring Break 2009

Long delay from last post, but oh well. Thought I should share some vacation pictures!

So, there were 10 of us total that flew down to Cancun for the week. Our resort was actually in Riveria Maya, which is in between Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. So, we didn't have to be around a bunch of 18-20 year olds the old time.

Every day we relaxed and laid on the beach. Mostly playing vball and cooling off in the many pools. We all needed a relaxing vacation!


Those pictured here are all grad students, three of which are 3rd year students (me, the guy on the left and the girl in the white dress). The other three are first year students in the program. This group of 6 was all about the sand volleyball. We played every day at least for a few hours. It was so fun.

This is the 8 of us who stayed at the resort (the 2 others stayed in Playa Del Karmen). We were about to go into Playa when this picture was taken. There we had dinner and went to a club, Coco Bongo. The clubs there are pretty crazy! Here we got to see a bit of the traditional spring break crowd.

These are just some beach pictures. :)

new roommate

my new roomie, liz, comes with her doggie, bentley. here he is with lucy.

went to dad's bday party on tues.

holidays! celebrate!

hi friends and family!

it has been really nice getting some time off from school and spending time with family. there has been quite a bit going on....see below

on christmas eve we always go to dad's with our grandma. here is dad, kyle, and ty that day.

Christmas day is at mom's. Kyle and I had the same idea for our gifts for each other!

i got claire this super cute beret. she had to give the french attitude to go with it. ;)

on Saturday we went to Mike & Penny's for the Pannell Christmas celebration. Kyle and Allie were great buddies.

NEW YEARS EVE. I decided to go back to Norman to ring in the new year with some girlfriends. we went to bricktown in OKC.

last night, mom, kim, and i went to dallas to watching the Dancing With the Stars tour! It was a lot of fun. we got to enjoy cheesecake factory beforehand too! my camera didn't get any good shots of the dancers, so i will just show the one that we had to take 3X to get a good one! :)

other things that have happened:

2 day trip to poteau and beavers bend with kim, ty, and claire. my bday! (i'm now 25). dentist appt with aunt penn (no wisdom teeth!). i have a new roommate, who has a dog of her own.... a sheepdog! more to come on that front. :)

even though i have until the 20th before school starts, i have a lot of work to do! so i gotta get crackin real soon.

thanksgiving holiday

it was very nice to go home and see a lot of family over the break! sadly, i didn't take many photos. here are some of my favorite highlights...

1. delicious food! we actually had lots of leftovers on the big day!
2. OU beats OSU!! what a great game! i was especially impressed with ty's interest and attention throughout the entire game.
3. trivial pursuit 1980's - mom & grant were the winners. no surprise that kyle & i were not too good. wait til the 2000's come out though! also, liked how uncle matt repeatedly told uncle mike, ooh, you'll get this one, before reading his question.
4. cranium - holly was convinced she would be 'less than' a full player. however, she and dani beat the rest of us pretty good. my fav was probably dani bodysurfing, dave's many humdingers, and the group sonny & cher humdinger.
5. james' convincing argument to angel on the responsibleness of eleanor roosevelt in apples to apples. she stood her ground tho and didn't cave in.
6. getting to hold molly rose!
7. chatting fashion with kyle and holly
8. kyle's and my confusion over a new word, 'tump'. tentative definition ~ synonym for dump.
9. ordering my very own big screen tv on black friday! thanks for the help kyle.
10. did i mention the food?? :)

OOOOOOOOOOOOOU!

what a great game on saturday! that was very exciting!

i'm looking forward to a great thanksgiving holiday with the family. and hopefully some serious writing on a couple of projects i'm working on.

last weekend i got to go to club rodeo in okc with a big group of girls. we started the evening by eating at sake, a japanese steakhouse in norman (per my recommendation). it was delicious! club rodeo was quite the experience, plenty of line dancing, two stepping, and a real bullriding area with bullriders every 30 min or so. pretty crazy. i had to tell off a guy that wouldn't leave me alone...that's kind of interesting i suppose. i felt bad after i did, but he was being so annoying and stupid! he kept poking me and bumping me for probably close to 30 minutes and acting like he wasn't! it was so dumb! then he asked me to dance and i said, 'no, i don't want to dance with you. i want you to leave me alone. you have been bugging for way too long now.' he left my area promply after that.

had a couple former students from my program come talk to us on friday about the joys of being a professor in a business school. making me think long and hard about doing that when i graduate. sounds like a nice, flexible and rewarding life. we'll see....

i saw the new james bond movie last weekend. it was pretty good for those of you who like action movies.

that's all for now...gotta get to bed so i can get some serious writing done tomorrow.