holiday hoopla

howdy do xanga!

at the end of 2009 my life has been quite boring. somewhat productive, but mostly boring. hmmm... let's see...

school...
i defended my oral prelims, so i'm a doctoral candidate, but i didn't defend my dissertation proposal because they said  it was so huge i could have pulled three different dissertations out of it. (see?! this i why i like sending drafts before the final product!!!) so i have to revise it. being that school is out, and doesn't start back up until after MLK day, i'm in limbo because i can't do nothing, even if i turn it in. they mostly likely won't come to a decision about it until late january/early february. THEN after that i have to submit it to IRB (research compliance board) so they can approve it (since i'm working with minors) THEN i have to submit it to DISD's IRB so they can approve that i won't harm the children in their district. WHO KNOWS how long that will take. so i am in limbo limbo limbo. they are really pushing me up against my august graduation date goal. in order to graduate in august i need to be done writing it by may. that will be hard if i don't get approved to START IT until MARCH!!!!! argh. i need to get my ass outta school!

ministry...
i don't know if i've ever said it on here, but i teach bible study at my church. i wanted to work with the youth, but somehow i got assigned the college students. they are cool though. i'm glad i got the more mature crowd. my sister teaches 9th grade bible study and one day they got so bad she said she wanted to throw them through the wall. bad asses. and they KNOW they bad. and they think its cool. oh gosh... do i really want to work with kids the rest of my life? some kids nowadays are nice and somewhat good like they used to be. they are in the minority and the bad asses are in the majority...

family...
now my immediate family? they are awesome. even my dad, whom i had to bail out of jail in october (i'm not ready to tell that story yet) is doing good. i worry about him, but he so stubborn he don't want nobody to help him. my mama and sister are awesome. sis is settling in her new house she bought and she's finally buying furniture because her government homebuyer credit finally came. mama is running a rooming house for her relatives in her house because it seems like her sister and all of her descendants suck at money management and/or parenting so my sister and i's old bedrooms are occupied by her relatives every so often. when i used to come home from college, i could stay in my own room. now my room is (STILL) occupied by my aunt and her granddaughter. another cousin just moved out because she (FINALLY) got an apartment. she didn't like staying there because her grandmother (my aunt) don't like her. how do you NOT LIKE your own grandchild?! that's how you KNOW she stupid. my mama say i need to quit being mean to them (my aunt and her granddaughter that live there) but i just have a low tolerance for stupid people who know they stupid and don't do anything to get UNstupid. then my aunt gets mad cause me and my sister still have keys to my mama house and we just show up whenever we feel like it without calling. uhmmmm.... this our mama house, we can do that. we don't have to let you know we coming. then she wants her trifling ass son to be able to do that, but he cant because a) its my mama's house not his mama's house and b) he stole money out my mama's purse so he can't come over without my mama being there so she can hide her stuff first. she (my aunt) dont like living there, but i don't see her getting a job or getting some job training so she can get a job, so she needs to suck it up and get with the program... or get out! she barely helps my mama with the bills that her and her granddaughter run up through the roof. my mama works two jobs to keep herself afloat. luckily she owns the house and she just has to pay utilities and taxes on it. my aunt still dont contribute enough. ol moocher.

social life...
haha. what's that? i don't have one of those...  part of the problem is me. i get invites to go places but i always find an excuse not to go. my hair don't look right, my skin is acting up, i have nothing to wear... yadda yadda yadda. i would like to get out more, but i'm a homebody. i like chillin at home and inviting friends over. but all the friends live across town so they not driving over this way.

physical appearance...
i got fat.  my mama hid my scale from me, but i can guesstimate that i'm a good 150lbs right now. i was 135 when i moved here. i eat too damn much. i see food commercials and i'm like ooo i want to try that.  i need to take my ass to the workout facility in my building and work on this flabbly flab on my stomach. i'll keep the big hips, thighs and ass, that looks hot on me. but this gut? it has GOT TO GO!

job front...
like tommy on martin... i ain't got no job maaan! i have a couple of part-times (the traveling job and the tutoring job) but they only call me when they need extra help, so its not anything steady. my lil flimsy check from TAMU ended because they don't want to give funding to this student who has been there FOREVA so no more income from them. i don't want to get a full time gig because i have to write a friggin dissertation. but part-times are hard to come across here. i would love to get into teaching, but i don't have a teaching certificate. i shall work on that in spring 2010 if i can come up with the money to pay for the classes.

the future...
is TOTALLY up in the air because i have no clue where i'ma be when i graduate. i don't know when i'ma graduate, i don't know where i'ma live or work at... i don't even know WHERE i wanna work at... i know it will be either dallas or houston. i want to stay in dallas but my heart for some reason is tugging me to houston. i have good friends there and their job outlook is way better than dallas' job outlook. if i stayed in dallas i would be commuting to the suburbs to work in those districts or driving to fort worth (the next major city next to dallas) to work because they have openings. dallas is on a hiring freeze because their budget is so jacked up. then i'm coming up on that age where everybody is settling down and all that crap. it ain't really me, i'm SO not ready, but a date or two would be nice. i don't want the drama. i just want some company that ain't triflin! its gonna  be hard to do that being a black woman under 30 with a phd, cause dudes gonna want to be intimidated and shit. insecure asses. if you had your stuff in order, i wouldn't have to come in and fix it for you. and bump that "baby i'ma get with you while you at the bottom while you work your way up." HELL TO THE MF'IN NAW!!! i got a couple of friends/associates/random people i know that did that and i see them struggle. me no want to struggle. how or why would i walk into a struggle on purpose?! i'd rather be by my damn self than do that.

ah well. that's enough for now.

TOODLES!

my new addiction

hello, my name is saturdai, and i am addicted to ancestry.com.

i saw that commercial ONE TOO MANY TIMES... and i gave in.

true to their advertising, i type in people's names and birthdates and birth-states (because i often don't know the name of the teeny towns my older relatives were born in) and viola! those lil pesky leaves pop up, signifying that i've got an "ancestral hint", or a close or exact match to whom i'm looking for.

once you get one leaf, you become a leaf hoarder. you want more and more and more leaves and you can't help yourself! by golly, i even got a leaf for myself when i entered my name, birthday and birth place in. who knew birth records from the 1980s would be grainy and pixelated?

so with my addiction to getting leaves and finding out old info about family members who passed on before i was even alive, i began pestering my parents and only living grandparent for info. i pestered mama for all old family reunion programs and the programs to people's funerals. i pestered dad because i didn't know whether they were from texas or louisiana (they were from the state line so they crossed back and forth often). and i pestered my bigmama about all her brothers and sisters (there was 11 of them) and her mothers information (there was 9 of them i think).

my tree is pretty extensive. 228 people.  i started out only working on my dad's side, being that our family reunion is coming up and sister thought it would be a great idea to sign me up as responsible for making the family tree. but i guess she knew best, because i am really into this. hell, if this phd thing doesn't work out, i can be a genealogist! i've found relatives all the way back to 1832! and that's pretty good being that black people weren't considered people until 1863. apparently, i have a crapload of mulattos (sp?) in my family, and they were sneaking and passing their way into the census. also, with the number of mulattos i have in my direct lineage, i think the next step of my addiction is to get the DNA testing to see how much of everything i have in me. that'll have to wait though, it costs 600 bucks.

after i had so much luck on my dad's side, i started on my mom's side too. i've had good luck with my dad's dad's side and my mom's mom's side of the family. i didn't find out much about my dad's mom's side until last night when i pestered mama for her funeral program because i knew it had her information in it. mama found it in 10 mins (she has EVERYTHING) so i anxiously sped home to my apartment from her house and entered all my grandmama's info in, and of course, some leaves popped up. i found her parents and a whole lot of her brothers and sisters (there were 9 of them). the only side i haven't had much luck with is my mom's dad's side. she didn't know him well, so of course she couldn't tell me much. i really want to know about them because they have native americans over there, my mom's dad's mom is native american. but she had 3 friggin husbands so its hard to track her down. i've only found one so far, and he's not even my granddad's dad.

i'm 6 days into my 14 day free trial, and i've think i've made good progress. i want to find all the records for the older people first and save them to my computer. i have 3 census records from 1880, 4 from 1900, 4 from 1910, 3 from 1920, and 4 from 1930. i've even created a lil checklist to see if i can trace people in every census. (yes i'm THAT into it).

another perk about paying for the service is that if a relative of yours is also making a tree, they link you together. of course, a cousin that i never knew existed is also creating a tree about my mom's mom's side of the family, so i copied a good bit of her information onto my tree. of course, i had to verify it because some of her information is wrong. but its easy to get information wrong. on each census, my dang ancestors were putting different information. like one year they were born in 1851, then on the next census they were born in 1854. then they're born in kentucky, then they're born in alabama. sometimes they're black, sometimes they're mulatto. going back and forth sucks, but this is soooooo fulfilling.

i am going to make good use of my remaining 8 days of my free trial. hell, i might even pay for a month so i can get more.

until next time...

TOODLES!

the verdict...

I PASSED MY PRELIMINARY EXAMS!!!!!

I AM A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE!!!!

ALL I GOTTA DO IS WRITE A FRIGGIN DISSERTATION AND I'M OUT THIS BITCH!!!!!

and i will elaborate on my preliminary experience later. i'm sleepy as hell, being that i haven't slept good in DAYS.

TOODLES!!!

cowboys stadium baptist church

YEP! that's where i worshipped at on sundai. i thought about going to the 8am service then heading out there, but sis and nem wanted to be there at 9a so that was out the question. and no we did not listen to gospel music on the way there.

heading over to HT's house so we can consolidate cars was a mess, because my craptacular GPS on my phone decided it wanted to freeze up right when i exited off the freeway. grand prairie, tx, is not my part of town, so once i got off I-20 i didn't know where in the hell i was going. so i just put my hazards on in the middle of the street (like my truck broke down) and waited for the GPS to reboot. it did, and i finally made it to the house, only to leave and go to mcd's cause i did not eat breakfast before going over there.

sister sucks because she got there last (WAAAAAY after our planned departure time of 9am) so we didn't get to the stadium until 1030ish. we parked over a mile away because it was $20 to park. with 5 people in the car, that's a helluva better deal than parking closer and paying $60. yes, jerry jones is charging 60 bucks to park on his lot. jerry jones was not finna take aaalllllllllllllllll my lil money that day!

we get a nice workout walking to the stadium and find a good spot to take pictures, so here are some:

that's my sister on the left. older, yet shorter, sister.

the game was awesome, besides the fact that the cowboys didn't score until the last 3 minutes of the game. hell, that score is all that mattered. a W is a W!  we didn't have actual seats in the game, we had what were called "party passes", which basically gets you into the stadium and you can just get in wherever you fit in. they have lil bar areas in the end zones and on the platforms in the upper levels, so we hung out on level 3. couldn't see the field, but i got a nice view of that LOVELY HD screen the entire game. being that i need to update my prescription on my glasses, that was good enough. those players would have looked like ants if i actually tried to look at the field.

in the last quarter, we went up to the top level to watch the rest of the game in one of their "club" areas. it has a dj, a bar and flat screens all around. and PLENTIFUL drunk people. i thought i was gonna see a fight between the cowboys and redskins fans break out, but they just stuck to yelling at each other. such a lovely environment. sister and friends went around walking the stadium meeting people and getting numbers (she called it "networking") but when she game back the game was over and the dj had started playing music again. we like music, so when they play good music, we dance. apparently the drunk yt lady liked dancing too, so she ran over to us saying "teach me! teach me to dance! pleeeeease!" (yes she was THAT drunk). sis and CG tried to teach some basic stuff, but that wasn't working. the lady's husband comes over and says, "she's white, she's not going to get it". WOW. he said it, but i sure was thinking it. and yes, i have pics of that hilariousness too:

we stayed in the cowboys club for a good 30 mins after the game to let the crowd leave so we wouldn't get caught up in the stampede to the parking lots. for some reason CG wanted to walk out the WRONG end of the stadium (tryna meet up with some dude she know). but we passed the time by taking more pics:

dang sun. i couldn't keep my eyes open for the picture.

we walked through the players lot, and all we saw were hummers, bentley's (tony nomo romo's bently was NIIIIIIICE), benzes, range rovers and any other luxury vehicle you can think of. but one player did have an acura. i should have walked around to see what the name was on the spot. they have their names on their spots so you could tell who's car belonged to who. the people who own press boxes, luxury suites and season passes have parking spots too. i love the cowboys, but i can't give them ALLLLLLL of my money like that. i aint got that much....

we endured the mile-plus long walk (since we walked out the wrong end of the stadium) back to our vehicles and we drove back to our respective homes. i drove to my mama's house cause she made chicken tetrazini for dinner and that is s l o w l y becoming my favorite dish (watch out lasagna!) so i had to grab a plate and partake in the sundai evening foolishness with my family. it ended on a bad note with my bad ass lil cousin pulling a prank on me and my mama by hiding my mama's memory card for her digital camera in my purse. i wanted to drive back over there and cuss her out, but mama said no. she was going to punish her by unplugging the computer. i said that ain't enough, take away the keyboard and hide it. so she did.

and on thanksgiving i'ma laugh in her face, REALLY HARD. dumbass lil girl.

until next time...

TOODLES!

randimosity from the road, 14.1

greetings from denver, colorado!

i'm chillin up in this (LOVELY) hyatt hotel working again. i like hyatt's and renaissances. they have such wonderful bedding and great bath products- many of which i am going to take and hide every time my room is cleaned. maan, when i worked this job in the spring and summer i did not buy soap or lotion, because i would take it from every hotel. well not every hotel, some hotel products are janky and mess my skin up. but renaissance hotels use aveda products (aveda = AWESOME) and hyatt hotels use pontico products. i've never seen it in a store, which is why i grab so much of it!

the kids here are good. chatty, but good. i hope they're learning something. i don't have super quiet ones like i did in columbus, but they are good kids. tons of fun. my co-facilitator worked together once in the spring, and we trained together in january. she's kinda sick of the job so she's not that enthused about this session. its kinda feeding on me, so i'm feeding off the kids sillyness. ironically she's applying to be a program coordinator for the same program (this program we work now). program coordinator is slightly better than faculty advisor, still crazy travel and crazy hours.

i'ma keep on being a guest FA. i like it. i just can't do the demading schedule where i'm on the road 3 and 4 weeks in a row. i did that in the summer and i almost LOST MY MIND. i seriously criss-crossed the country. i had no concept of time zones.

...kinda like i don't have a concept for time zones now. i'm from central, but two weeks ago i was in eastern and now i'm in mountain. i went to bed last night at 10p and woke up at 3a for NO REASON.   i do know one reason, my dumb self had the heat on high fan on 77 or 78. i don't sleep in heat, but i will hibernate really good in the cold. but ironically i don't like being cold. well, i don't like being cold when i'm supposed to be awake.

oh yes, i have a room to myself! first time EVER. they picked a great hotel to give me my own room. i can control the tv, the heat, and the bathroom. awesome combination!   i'm staying over an extra day here in denver, but i don't know if i will be able to do much because its supposed to SNOW on sundai.

SNOW?!   what's that!??!?!?!?!?

ya'll know i don't do snow.

the food here is aight. not as awesome as other cities, but edible enough to get me full. and they had chocolate covered apples as snacks. i'm not a fan of chocolate covered anything, but chocolate covered apple slices = YUMMY! i ate a good 4 of them. and we told the kids they could only have one. haha. we don't follow our own rules.

i texted BP this morning. of course he is working another conference in princeton. i miss my yt boy. he got soul though, and awesome hair. can you tell i like guys with awesome hair? its definitely a qualification for my interest, along with a college degree, interest in knowledge, fun-loving/adventurous and smart-mouthed. i got a smart-snarky mouth so he need to be able to keep up with me.

i do need to keep my attitude and snide comments in check though. not everybody should be the recepient of my attitude, like my professors.  i know better, i'm just so used to talking shit that i keep it up.

okay, somehow the air is on in my room and it is getting ready to hit me with the sleepy stick.

until next time...

TOODLES!