Monday, July 25, 2011

What it's like to have a unique name

Credit
I've been a little off-track with the weekly money check-ups hosted by MyPrettyPennies. I'm so excited that she revealed herself to her readers last week! Not in a flasher kind of way. She told us her name. She is Ginna!

Bloggers often have quite the dilemma when considering whether to blog publicly or anonymously. Some reveal very intimate details about their lives in anonymous writing. I think there must be something very therapeutic about that! Others, chose to put it all out there. They blog under their real name AND reveal intimate details. I fall in another category; I write under my real name, but censor my writing to some degree. I chose to do this for several reasons. The main reason is because my name is so unusual. If some future employer decided to do some serious spy work, I feel like there would be some risk of them figuring out that an anonymous blog belonged to me anyway. It's not like an anonymous blog would link back to a Sarah, or Katie, or Emily. It would link back to TusaRebecca. so, here's my take on my name.

My name is who I am. My name represents family history. My name means I never had a personalized lunch box or back pack, because those embroidery companies only allowed 10 letters. My name means I have to explain myself every time I'm introduced. Of course, that's a good thing, because then people almost always remember my name.

Here's the story. My great great grandmother was a Native American named Tusa. At that time in US history, Native Americans we not treated with any respect, so she was sent away to England. When she came back, she didn't claim her Native American heritage. The first part of my name helps keep her story alive. Rebecca was my grandmother's very close cousin. They grew up more like sisters than cousins. I always imagine them playing together during the summers and having loads of tea parties and picking wild flowers. This may not be what they did, but I'll keep that idea in my head!

To answer all the usual questions:
No, you may not call me just "Tusa" or just "Rebecca."

You may not call me "TR." Only a select few people can call me TR without getting a scowl. In fact, I think there are only 3 people who I let get away with it. I can only think of one of those people who may be reading this. She can still call me TR.

I have a nick name, but you have to be grandfathered in. If you already know my nick name because we were friends in college, feel free to keep calling me that. Otherwise, you may only call me by my name.

TusaRebecca is my first name. Rebecca is not my middle name. My middle name is Eleanor.

So far as I know, I am still the only TusaRebecca. Google my name and you will only find stuff about me. It's kind of scary to have a name so unique that a last name is not even needed, but it's pretty super cool at e same time! It's almost standard that employers at least do a Google search of your name. At least most of you have the benefit that multiple people will come up in that search and might throw the employer for a loop. On the other hand, could be bad if your name is Sarah P. Jones and another Sarah P. Jones from your same town has a serious police record! Do a Google search of my name and you will find a few manuscripts for which I am an author, a few news articles, my blog, etc. It's all me and it's all relevant!

Well, back to the weekly, money check-up.

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on a new Patagonia Margot dress.




2. Today I am thankful the rain we had this weekend!

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was "real science" with my nephews.



4. I will consider this week a success if I pack my lunch every day, put away all my clean clothes, get at least 2 workouts in.

5.A good friend is someone who likes you just the way you are, but will encourage you to be better every day.

Friday, July 22, 2011

A few things I'm loving right now.

Here are a few things I'm hooked on right now.Things other than school, that is. I'm on a roll at school for sure. I've written about 20 pages in the last week or so. Might not sound like much, but trust me...it is! Every word has to be chosen carefully. I have to spend time reading articles that will help me develop my expertise in the area I'm working in, etc. It all takes more time than the term papers I used to whip up in undergrad, that's for sure!

StumbleUpon
Thanks to Paula over at afford-anything.com, I discovered StumbleUpon. She was (maybe still is) hosting a book giveaway. To earn an entry, one option was to post one of her blog posts to StumbleUpon. Now I'm a wee bit hooked on the site! Ack! Basically, you key in a few interests on your account, click "Stumble" and random web sites come up! I've found tons of great recipes I want to try, so decorating ideas for some day when I actually have my own apartment, and some cool blogs I might end up following for a long time!

Pinterest
Thanks to StumbleUpon, I discovered Pinterest. Pinterest is this cool site that allows you to catalog ideas you find online. You could make a page of craft ideas, or recipes, or gift ideas. You name it! I requested an invite and I'm seriously hoping I get my invite soon! I already have ideas of the pages I want to make. 1) DIY projects 2) hand made gifts 3) Party ideas 4) recipes which will probably be divided by category 5) Store bought gift ideas 6) ok that's all I can think of!

Sundresses
It's been over 100 F all week and I can't imagine wearing anything other than sundresses. I have a Patagonia Margot dress that I love, and I've been wanting to order another. Lucky for me, they are on sale right now!   

Gardening
It's hotter than hot, so our garden isn't producing too much this week. Everything is just trying to survive the heat. I love ol' X6 though! It's so peaceful out there! Yesterday I took my nephews to see the garden. You may be tired of reading about them, but I don't really care! They are my favorite little boys in the whole world and I could pretty much write an entire blog about all the funny things they do and say! Here they are helping me out in the garden!




Thursday, July 21, 2011

Confession of a girl who LIVES to be an Auntie!

 Well...I confess that I didn't get to the office at a reasonable hour today. I just thought making strawberry pancakes with my nephew was way more important than an hour of work. In my not so humble opinion being an Auntie pretty much rocks! My nephew wakes up with more energy than 10 spider monkeys or 100 ninjas. Today he woke up as soon as he heard my alarm and was very patient with me when I hit snooze and wanted to go back to sleep for a few minutes. Pancakes just seemed like the right thing to do this morning. He did a great job stirring the batter! Couldn't have been a better breakfast! I mean really...how do you resist a little guy with underoos hanging out his pants? Look at that face! It begs for strawberry pancakes!




Wednesday, July 20, 2011

County Fair 2011

I love the county fair. Brings back so many happy memories. Don't get me wrong. During my 11 years of 4-H, there were plenty of unhappy memories too! One year the judge told my mom that I didn't get one of the top prizes for modeling a skirt I sewed because I insisted on carrying my doll with me. She was wearing a matching outfit. It was completely adorable! Everyone EXCEPT the judge thought so! The happiest memories are of the heat, the lemon shake-ups, climbing on the tractors, visiting the animals and wish I had my own horse, and generally the rest of the fair food! Yesterday I'm glad I got to share those happy memories with my sister and nephews and some friends! Last year the animals were a big hit. This year John Deere won the kids' hearts!
New Friends

Giant yellow digger thing wins every time!



When you get big, you can come mow my lawn any time you want!

Way too cute!

Please don't figure out how to put this thing in gear!

Ready to farm!
On a money saving note, we all had our own drinks for lunch. Buying sodas would have seriously doubled the price of lunch. Do they really need to charge $2.50 for a soda? That's just nonsense! It was actually too hot for sodas anyway. The air temp was 97 F and heat index of 110F. Way way way too hot! Lemon shake-ups and water was all anyone really wanted!

Monday, July 18, 2011

Disjointed News!




Baxter loves the garden!

I can't believe I didn't post Monday morning. Actually, I can. I don't know many people who had a fantastic Monday today. So that's my excuse. Monday was just kind of a bummer of a day. Anyway...here are a few disjointed thoughts that will suffice for Monday and Tuesday. All pictures are just for fun.

As it turns out, I have a lot of lotion. Special lotion I got for gifts, lotion from hotels, big bottles of lotion I bought because I thought I needed "good" lotion. In fact I'm pretty sure I won't have to buy any for a very long time. I also have several bars of pretty soap that are still their original packaging. My guess is I'm not the only one. Pretty sure other people do the same thing with pretty candles too. Why don't we just use this stuff? Why is ingrained that pretty things have to be saved and not used? It's one of my new goals to use up all that lotion. I'm not a daily lotion user, so it could take a while. I suppose if I become a daily lotion user my skin will look much nicer! Maybe I'll think to post about it again when all the lotion is all used up!



Never thought I'd get 3 dogs to sit long enough to get a picture!

In other news, I got a raise! The best part about Monday. Very exciting as pretty much no one in the our academic world is getting a raise right now. My raise ends up being about 2% which isn't too shabby for anyone. If I were making "real" money, that could be a decent chunk of change. Two percent of a little bit isn't actually very much. We all know every penny counts, and for me this raise basically means I don't have to worry about things like fluctuating prices of gas, the headlight that's out on my car right now, and I can still meet my savings goals. Yay!



Just so you know it wasn't a fluke! Same dos sitting at the same time on a different day! Amazing!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Show Me App Review and update

So I downloaded a free app called Show Me. It's basically a white board. You can draw with your finger or with one of those fancy iPad pens if your have one and talk while you draw. The app records what you're saying as you draw. It's pretty, fun to play with so long as you don't freak out at the sound of your own voice! I think it would be great for communicating concepts long distance. So far it looks like most people are using it for academic stuff. I can see how this would be useful for some academic concepts, but I decided to use it to tell you about my recent hair transformation! I've dropped a serious chunk of change in this transformation, but the end result is the most ridiculously low maintenance situation ever! Watch it here



In other news, I have done some serious writing for school. In my field, writing journal articles and having them published is super important. Publication is your bread and butter! No publications, no job. Seriously...some day when I'm a professor, my career will somewhat depend on getting my research published. I won't get paid for each publication, but I will pretty much lose my job if I don't publish my work. Eek! Good thing I'm getting in a lot of practice now! Besides, everything I'm writing is a part of my dissertation. Yay for being one step closer to graduation!




Tonight I took a few minutes to clean out my coupon file. The bigger pile is getting thrown away. The smaller pile is all I have left. With all the recent traveling, I've pretty much fallen off the coupon bandwagon. It's good to purge them every once in a while anyway. Tonight I got sulfate free shampoo (part of the hair cash dump!) on sale and I had $6.50 in CVS extra care bucks. Made it pretty close to free! Maybe this Sunday I'll see what I can get for close to free at CVS. Fun times. That's all for now. Should have a good garden post soon!

Thursday, July 07, 2011

Too many USB sticks

So the other day I was looking for a USB stick with a specific file on it. I found all of these in my desk only to realize that the one I needed wasn't in my desk! I think if you have more than 7 USB sticks you probably have too many. Just sayin...

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Weekly Money Check-up



Image Credit


This weekend was a fantastic tour of Americana. Cubs beat the White Sox, and I was right behind home plate! I had amazing food all weekend! Generally a wonderful couple of days.
Might as well get back on track with the weekly money check-ups provided by Pretty Pennies!


1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on my hair. I'm in the middle of a transformation!
2. Today I am thankful that I got a good night's rest.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was hang out up at the river.
4. I will consider this week a success if I make my own coffee every day.
5. My favorite 4th of July tradition is fireworks!

Friday, July 01, 2011

My blog isn't dead.

My blog isn't dead. I'm just super tired and can't get everything done right now. I'll get back to it next week for sure. In the mean time, you can enjoy this awesome collage of a pup that my nieces Anja (age 3 and a half) and Greta (age 2) made for me. That's some serious gluing going on! I love it! I need to find a special place to display it. Probably my desk is a good idea. Kudos to Annie for being able to cut out the dog. I mean pup. That's not a stencil folks! She's just that good!

Monday, June 27, 2011

Exploding Garden!

So the garden totally exploded while I was gone! I think we're all a little mesmerized that everything is growing. I know I am!



Tonight was our first big harvest. Check out all the beans! We're estimating 2 pounds!



We even got a good job sign from the Garden Fairies! Right in front of the lettuce we picked tonight.




Baxter was excited to visit for the first time. Don't worry...he didn't water any gardens. Did some preventative toileting to make sure it wouldn't be a problem.


And the best is that our corn is taller than knee high and it's not even July!




Mucking Good Time



I'd like to say that I'm stronger than jet lag, but I'm not! I traveled over 40 hours to get home on Friday. It was a miserable trip. Our first flight was at 7am, so we were up at 4am. Our second flight was delayed an hour. After the 15 hour flight to LA, our flight to Chicago was cancelled. We were transferred to a flight that connected in Dallas. The flight out of Dallas didn't have a crew, so it was delayed a little over an hour. Oddly, I was wide awake at midnight when we got to Chicago and drove the 3 hours home. Got home at 5:30am, took a nap and then got up for the Mudathelon! We had a mucking good time! Now it's 1:39am on Sunday and I'm wide awake. Thanks jet lag!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

I've lost track of the days.

All our plans have changed. Stupid volcano in Chile sent it's ash cloud over here and flights are being cancelled right and left. We aren't too upset to be stuck in Sydney today and tomorrow, but it could get tricky after that. Kinda need to get back for our Friday flight.

We've done soooooo much. I can think of 2 museums we have NOT been to. It's super handy that I'm a student and mom is over 65. We get in most places for a fraction of the admission price. Anyway, it's a good thing I've been taking pictures or I might forget all the stuff we've been!

This morning we got a backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House. Super cool. I momentarily dreamt of being in the Australian Ballet Company and dancing on the Opera Theatre stage.



Mom and I both pretended to conduct a symphony in the concert hall.







Then we wandered through the Royal Botanical Gardens where squawking cockatoos surrounded us!



We ended up by the Museum of Sydney which was pretty cool. Did you know that the Australians put all the Germans living in Australia into concentration camps during WWI? They were NOTHING like the concentration camps that the Germans put Jews in, but they weren't exactly lovely either. Interesting exhibit. After lunch we walked all the way back to the Australia Museum which is just plane awesome. There was an exhibit about the history of indigenous people in Australia. Sad to learn about how their culture was nearly ripped away by the white people. The history is similar to the treatment of Native Americans. Sad.

Now we're just wondering how tomorrow will pan out. Pretty much all flights in Sydney and Melbourne have been cancelled for tomorrow. We seriously don't know if we'll be able to get home as planned. Trying to see it as an adventure, but the reality is I'm kind of frazzeled!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Sydney Tour Day 1

Oh my goodness. We had the best day! We're staying on Darling Harbor and can easily take a ferry to Circular Queue. It's basically a water bus. Holds a few hundred people and only costs $2.50 per trip. Great way to view the city!



Here's mom knitting on the Ferry this morning, and me wearing the infamous red sweater that I knit.






We took the ferry to Toronga Zoo. I loved it! It's about the size of Brookfield Zoo. There are 3 baby elephants. Two were born this spring. One was born last fall. All were seriously cute!





I know it's not a great picture, but I was nearly attacked by this peacock at lunch! Ok...not really attacked, but it snuck up on me and I may have made some noise when I turned around.



I think I like the little wallabies even better than the big kangaroos. They were in a walk-about enclosure. One hopped right in front of me! You could get pretty close to them and they didn't seem to mind much.





I'm most proud of my koala pictures. They were in a really well designed space with a ramp around their trees. We were pretty close, but I admit my camera was zoomed in a bit!







One of the best parts about the zoo was the view of the city. Sweet, right?




I think the kamodo dragon likes me.



I love giraffes! Their enclosure had the best view of the city, but I didn't get a great picture.


After the zoo, we hopped on a free shuttle having no idea where it s going! Just did it for the adventure. Turns out it dropped us off at Hyde Park which happens to be across from St. Mary's Cathedral. We sat through evening prayers and then mass. The Bishop said mass which was pretty special. Mom and I went up for a blessing during communion and ended up in the Bishop's line! Totally made our day! After mass we found a great Irish pub with live music and good food. All in all a fantastic day!

Friday, June 17, 2011

How much is too much for Dr. Pepper?

Maybe if soda cost $29.95 for a 24-pack, we'd drink less of it. And that's half price! A 20 oz soda is $4 here in Melbourne. Sometimes I saw certain brands on sale 2/$5. Well...that's one way to fight the obesity epidemic!





Thursday, June 16, 2011

Exploring Melbourn

Yesterday (Thursday) was a day of exploring and celebrating. We visited the old Queen Victoria Markets which were quite the site. Several bunkers full of tourist crap followed several bunkers of the good stuff! There was a fruit and vegetable market and a HUGE meat market that included cheeses. Soooo cool! I loved seeing all the fresh fish. Obviously we didn't have much need for raw meats, but Mark and I finally found kangaroo salami! Now I can say I've eaten kangaroo. It tasted just like any other salami.



Just one corner of the fruit and veg market.



How adorable are these little aprons?!? They were in one of the 2 cute shops in the markets.


Decoration boomerangs were in no short supply. Only $5, but the don't work.


We surprised my adviser at dinner. Very clever of us. She had no idea that we knew it was her birthday!