Heading Back

It's my last night in Houston for the summer. I can't believe summer is over. It's bittersweet to say the least. Tomorrow, I'll be packing the rest of my stuff up into my car. In the meantime, I'll be praying that it all fits and preferably with a spot to pick up a friend on the way to my duplex. I'm hoping to not have to make a second trip down because I'm not sure when that would happen.

I'm hoping to make some semester goals and sticking to them. I've got a couple that have been mulling over in my mind lately, but we'll see what my last major drive for awhile comes up with before I go ahead and tell y'all. Why tell? I need a record and I can't lose this like I can a sheet of paper although I will be writing it in my journal. Mainly though, I need accountability from y'all, whoever y'all may be so that I maintain even a semblance of my goals.

I've been cramming in a lot of last minute things in the last three weeks. I had the joy of travelling to Austin to see the UTXA crew with Matt & Jen, the youth pastor and family from Wrangell. It was wonderful to see everyone and just catch up with them a bit before their semester started.

It's harder for me to leave Austin every time I visit. I'm not really ready to go back to A&M. I'm ready to see everyone. I'm just not get back to the hustle and bustle of everything especially as it consumed me last year.

No breaks though. I already have plans for tomorrow night and all day Sunday. Hopefully Monday I'll have some rest. I'm not holding out for that though. Nothing like being thrust back into the culture of A&M and the college life in general.

Enough about that, I'm sure I'll be revisiting these thoughts soon.

I read some interesting blogs tonight that I can't keep to myself. I'm inviting you to check them out. They both deal with social justice issues, something very dear to my heart, although both blogs are approached in very different manners.

This first one crushes me, but I'm glad that I am aware of this injustice.

The second one makes me rethink my daily life and seems very in line with my life in general. In short it is an inspiration.

Now to return to packing. It seems as if I have quite a bit to do before even thinking about making my thoughts of slumber into reality.

Savoring the last bits of summer...

...or visiting the doctor because I'm sick. Yeah, those seem about equal. Okay, maybe not.

Getting sick combined with last minute hangouts with full families, college friends that are in med/PA school, watching a friend of yours get pantsed by a monkey at Stockholder's reception and hearing your friend preach on Sunday morning for the first time ever has taken a toll on my time. However, getting sick just knocked me out for a few days. I'm back though with a necessity to go 1000mph to get ready to get back to school next week.

There's this problem though. It's stinking hot in here! I rarely ever get hot and always wonder why all the humans with temperature needs closer to polar bears need fans faced at them at all times or have the urge to don the Captain Obvious costumes as they spout off the obvious with phrases such as "It's hot." Well, I don't know how y'all do it, but I'll be very grateful to return to my normal body temperature where the hot is just not as hot. As if that even makes sense.

This isn't much of a read today, but I've got a link to a blog that has a link to a website. Why not just link directly? It'd be way too hard, plus the description on the blog explains a tad about the website in four short paragraphs with a great description. It's worth the extra clicking to go to a world next door.

Forget soul searching, I asked my coffee who I am.

Some days, it seems like college is all about defining yourself - who you are and how you relate to the world around you. Forget college because my coffee told me about my personality in this interesting article about coffee personalities.

Personally, I tend to switch between a wide variety of coffees mainly sticking with iced coffees, frappacinos and the occasional black coffee laden with sugar and sometimes creamer. I guess this makes me a laid back, spontaneous and flirty person who is also adventurous, flouts authority and is ready to enjoy life although at times I can be ambitious, focused and goal-driven. I guess that's accurate?

However, I overall have begun to prefer green tea. This makes the last line of the article cause me to giggle some.

Is too much of a good thing always bad?

I enjoy reading. I'm not sure if you've picked up on that by the 4 books mentioned on my currently reading list and one that I haven't put down on there to resist looking like I'm currently reading a small library.

Last night, I opened up my laptop ready to see what kind of interesting, reflectful, hilarious insights have been shared from the blogs that I have found this summer and devoured every word they have penned. Much to my dismay, not a single one showed up on my RSS feed. This worried me. How would I know what happened next in someone's life? What does the redone HGTV DesignStar Challenge done by that one blogger look like? Am I ever going to be able to find them again?

This has led me to search out some new blogs for a little reading this morning as I online shop. I've enjoyed what I've found immensely, however I just now went back to my feed and all the blogs I've read have been resurrected from wherever blogs go to die. Do I just add the newfound blogs I'm enjoying to the already miles long list of other blogs I read? When is too much, well, too much?

Maybe I'll delete some past people that I don't always click on to actually read. Maybe I won't and will instead just add to the plethora of reading. I'm sure it will have to be weeded out at sometime once school starts, right? Or maybe I'll just leave the whole thing in limbo as I have with the decisions of whether I should delete facebook friends that I don't really know, but may at some point in my life have some curiosity that their cat just threw up or that they really enjoy coffee cake.

Intents

Ahhhhh.
That's a sigh of relief.

The packing is over for now. Everything that I use is in College Station minus a few clothing items, the books I'm reading and my laptop among a few other things. It was good, albeit very stressful.

Sadly though, my room is brown. My chest, desk, and lockers are all brown. My bedding is also brown, which makes perfect sense in Houston since my room is turquoise. In an all white room though, the whole assortment looks well, rather brown and boring. Hopefully, my mom, aunt and I can spice it up with color on Saturday when we go back up there.

I'm back in Houston until then. My tent is set up in the middle of my room. It's nice. I think I'll zip me into my sleeping bag inside of there soon. It makes me kind of happy to even just go faux-camping since I've wanted to all summer but never went. Anyone want to go non-faux camping?

"Packing"

I'm as done packing before moving tomorrow as I plan to be.
I'm completely and utterly sickened by even the word "packing".
Yet, if I was told to grab my suitcase and pack it for travel, I'd be packed in 30.

When I get back here on Tuesday, there will be no bed; there will be no couch. I'm hoping to set up a tent and literally camp out in my room for the rest of the summer. I'm actually quite looking forward to it.

Time for some shut eye. I'm getting up in a few hours for coffee with my parents before the movers get here at 8:30. Early mornings...

Where in the World is Karlen?

I'm starting a packing frenzy. My room, college stuff, etc. I enjoy packing. For some reason though, it's bittersweet right now and I don't know why. It's like I can't put my finger on the exact reason. Oh well.

Friday is the starting point of Where in the World is Karlen? I'll be back in forth between Houston and CS a lot for moving, CLUES mentor training, Impact recruitment, etc.

I'm 100% ready to go back and 100% not ready to go back.
It makes sense, right?


Before it all though, I'll get to register for classes at 6am. I've yet to make a decision major wise.