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.

Happy Halloween!

Weeeeelllll, aren't I a cool cat. Got to go to two super fun Halloween parties this year.

The theme for the first, was 1980's Prom of the Living Dead. I got this great dress on Ebay. My cause of death was bitten by a vampire. You can't see in this pic, but I had blood at the corners of my mouth and a bite marks on my neck! I washed the blood off my mouth halfway through, as I decided it spoiled the pictures....I won the award for biggest hair too!

Kyle had to inform me that vampires are not dead, rather they are immortal. But I decided to ignore his negativism!

The second party was this past weekend and the theme was Graphic Novels/Comic book characters/Cartoon Characters. So, my friend, Kim and I were power rangers! We made the costumes ourselves!

Kyle again informed me that power rangers were alive, thus not cartoons and they were also not comic book characters. He sure knows how to be negative nancy!

fun times!

hello all! thought i would share some of my fun times with those of you interested. Been having lots of fun hanging out with people from school. The first set of pictures here are from a fun place in moore. We ate pizza, rode go karts, climbed the rock wall (which i dominated!), and played mini golf. lots of fun. :)

last weekend i got to go to lake texoma (and see you guys during the game). a group of 8 of us go to have a great girls weekend complete with karaoke. it was so much fun, the karaoke was not too pretty tho.

got to see mom and kim and claire this past wkd briefly. they came up to norman so claire could have some pics made with her other cousins. mom and i got some quality time in by going to eat lunch, shopping, and seeing a movie. brace yourselves. we saw "w". which was actually really good. i recommend seeing it.

i'm very excited for halloween parties! i think i'm going to two this year! stay tuned for pics of the festivities! :)

'long time no blog'

well what can i say? last week was abc stay at home week! so, you know my social calendar was quite full. only partly kidding....i did have a quite a bit of work also. but i found time to watch dancing with the stars, america's next top model, project runway, the office, and greys anatomy.

kyle came to visit me last weekend. we got in some good shopping, burn after reading, and several good meals. kyle also managed to squeeze in a little movie time with a lady friend as well. but of course, i wouldn't want to detail all of his happenings online!

teaching is going well. at least i think it is....not sure if the students would agree or not! sometimes they are listening and then i can tell sometimes they are completely zoned out! i actually enjoy teaching for the most part though, i think.

katie and i saw ghost town this weekend. it was pretty funny and i would recommend it given the current slump at the cinema.

here are a few pics from my house...since i haven't taken any others lately. the first is my bed, the window in my room, and then the guest bedroom.

Master of Disaster

I defended my thesis today!! So, now you can call me Master Shipman. :)

Woo hoo!

I was so happy to have that finished.

In other news...school has started and it is already busy busy. I thought I would take the evening off, but no luck. Going to start reading some articles now before bed.

I'm teaching a class this semester, well co-teaching with another grad student. I haven't taught my first lecture yet, we are swapping off. I pretty much feel like a poser--I'm teaching an upper division psych course, so the students are only a few years younger than me! I'll update on that later.

I'm also workin on some new projects this semester. One is what I like to call the Army Emo grant. In which we are developing training for emotional management for army leaders. Also working on another grant, no details available for that one!

I went to Miami this past week to see Nathan's parents and celebrate his bday. We had a nice time. Sorry, no pictures. My camera is MIA.

I took very few pictures from Andrea's wedding, but here is one.

Just because its a fancy hair place doesn't mean they won't do this to you....

Don't worry, I removed some of the flowers from the 'do before the ceremony.

six flags, andrea's wedding shower

mom, ty, and i went to six flags to help celebrate ty's 9th bday! it was a blast and ty was even brave enough to ride batman!

the 3d ride was a bit later in the day as you could probably tell....

andrea's bridal shower was today at my house! katie and i (the ladies in white) were two of the hosts. it went really well, all of our food was delicious! including the always popular (c/o kim's recipe) fruit dip.

andrea cracked us up with her one request, a barbie bridal cake.

vacations all i ever wanted

well i'm back in norman, ok after a long vacation, including the family trip to florida and then relaxation in coleman for several days. in florida, we got to enjoy plenty of beach time.

There was plenty of driving time of course--15 hours total! and that was with three of us in the backseat together. it wasn't too bad though and we really didn't have one of our traditional knock down drag out fights luckily.

Every evening we got to enjoy delicious seafood. By the last evening, however, kyle, ty, and I were wanting something different! so we ordered Chinese food while the others had seafood yet again!

I didn’t make many pictures over the fourth, but I will share my favorite one! This one captures a dramatic moment by miss jenny, when she saw lightening in the distance and feared there would be no swimming.

Fun with friends

Hi everyone! Had a fun time this weekend going out with the girls! We had lots of fun chatting, laughing, and busting a move.

On Sunday, Nathan and I went to church in Norman. There was a really good lesson on hungering and thirsting for righteousness. As opposed to always pursuing happiness, as most people try to do. In pursuit of righteousness, happiness will be a byproduct. It was very uplifting. After church we got do enjoy a delicious meal at Ted's.

4 more days of my summer class!! I will be glad when its finished. After that I really need to finish up my thesis. Although, the time pressure on that has kind of eased up since one of the profs on my committee is apparently going to be out of pocket until the the second week in August! Ah, the leisurely life of a college professor....

I will be co-teaching a class this fall! I'm excited about it because I'm hoping it will help me decide if teaching is something I would like to do after I graduate. Its an upper division I/O psychology course. So, we'll see how it goes....

No pics, just updates

I don't know about any of you, but sometimes I feel a little funny about posting details of my happenings online. Sometimes I feel like I should be intentionally vague about certain aspects of my life, like when I'll be out of town. Anyway....

My old roommate and dear friend has left me for Peace Corps work in Moldova. If anyone wants to hear chronicles of her tales, check out http://sunflowerlenses.blogspot.com/. I miss you Rebecca!

In other news....I've been busy as a bee with house work. Well, more purchasing things for my house and deciding where to put/arrange them. I'm very pleased with my progress and the look of my home. :) I'm just very slow to get it the way I want it. Stay tuned for pictures in coming days!

Family vacation is coming up very soon! I'm hoping for some fun on the beach, good meals, and relaxation with the family.

Tonight I'm going to go up to OKC to have dinner and go out on the town with some girlfriends. In fact, I should probably be getting ready now! We are going to eat dinner at Cheesecake Factory, which is one of my absolute favorites. :)

its magic!

i have honed my skills in photoshop. now i can be the airbrushed model ive always wanted to be!

btw....dani is supposed to get induced tonight! everyone keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

summer times

hello! i've been a busy bee the last week or two. i've been waiting to blog until i had the pictures that detail my business!


not last weekend, but the weekend before nathan and i went to a wedding of one of his old college friends. the wedding was in norman and the reception was in okc. we had a great time, the only downfall was the fact that my fabulous new dress was also seen on another guest!! *gasp. i know.

here is nathan with one of his best friends who flew in from california. he impressed us with stories of meeting carrot top and carson daly.

here is the happy couple!

the next day after the wedding we went to miami, ok to meet nathan's family. his parents were very friendly and warm, so we had a nice time. this is us with nathan's nephew who was also visiting.

on the way back we decided to drive through missouri and arkansas. we went to the ouchita state park in arkansas and devils den! the picture of us driving is also a good shot of nathan's head injury, acquired when he was giving me a piggy back ride after the wedding. it was pretty bad!

the next weekend was off to coleman for dani's baby shower at kim's house. it was nice seeing the family!

after the shower we went out to lake with dad. i would post a picture of that, but i've got one in my bikini and i don't want to be one of those girls.