The Return of the Sara.

Where in the world is Sara? Here I am! Yes, it has been a 7 month sojourn, but I have returned to blogger land.

Do not dismay my friends, there is nothing really new to report. I am still a working woman. However, I am now 1 year away from turning the big 3-0. The boyfriend and I are still happily dating. And, my niece is still just as cute as ever:

I will try to start posting more often in the coming days/months. I cannot guarantee daily or even weekly posts, but hopefully more often than 2 x a year.

I am excited about one thing at the moment - a tropical and romantical vacay with the boyfriend in a few short weeks. I look forward to spending a week with this fellow:

Until then my readers, much love.

Five years later...

My aunt told me something once and it really stuck - one day you'll look in the mirror and think, who is this person staring back at me? Because I certainly only feel 21 years old... So maybe I'm not that far off from 21, but man has the time flown the past five years.

Five years ago this month I packed my stuff up from my parents house in Arlington, and moved down to this heat and humidity filled sauna. Moving in August in Houston may not have been the brightest idea, but alas, it's what I did. I moved into my first place that I would live in all by myself. A one bedroom apartment. All mine. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that yet, considering I lived with some great girls during college, but I figured it would atleast keep the distractions low for when I needed to focus on that law stuff. I knew a handful of people in Houston (two of which were related to me). And I could not locate the nearest grocery store, CVS, or target. I definitely wasn't in Waco anymore.

Five years ago this week, I attended law school orientation. I remember walking up to the law school, and thinking, what have I gotten myself into. I didn't know a soul. The law school building was, for lack of  a better word, ugly, and there was a strange "thinking" man statue out front. I remember thinking - this is really where I am about to spend 3 years of my life? Really? It wasn't the picturesque red brick buildings and green lawns of my college years. So maybe I was being a bit superficial, can you blame me? Despite my feelings, I was generally excited/nervous about the years that lay ahead of me. What did these three years hold for me? I was about to find out...I checked in, received a name badge, "section B" tag, and told to go stand over there.

Way back in the day...

Another oldie but a goodie (college roomie Sarah!)

Lainey's wedding.

Five years later, I'm now a second year, almost third year attorney, I survived law school, met a boy and fell in love, changed hair color multiple times, and made some amazing friends (many of whom I met that day five years ago). And I now know more than a handful of people in this humid city by the bayous.

My birthday this past May.

I wouldn't do anything different the last five years (okay, maybe a few things, but those aren't blog topics). I like where I am now, who I am now (still a little rough around the edges, but that's okay), and what I've done with my life.

I can't wait to see what the next five years hold for me.

SaranoH

I love my name. Don't get me wrong. But it's given me more than a few headaches in my life. Who knew a 4 letter word could do so wrong. My parents obviously picked my name. I'm named after my grandma, whose name was Phyllis. She told my mom to never name a daughter Phyllis, but she loved the name Sara. So, here I am. My parents thought they made life easy for me when they named me Sara. My dad likes to tell the story that he contemplated naming me Sandy, if you know my last name, well then you know why that's funny.

Why, is a name such as Sara, so hard? Because of the other spelling of Sara, the one with the H - you know what I'm talking about..

For as long as I can remember, I have received the following responses (true stories) when I tell someone my name -

"Is that Sara with an H or without?"

"Oh, your name is Sara(h), how do you spell that?" Me: "No H", "Oh, well my aunts second cousin's mom's name has an H on the end...and she's kind of weird, so its a good thing you have no H" or "Oh my boyfriend's mom's sister has no H and she's awesome". Me: "well thanks?"

"So, your name is Saranoh"...? Me: "Sure" ... ten seconds later receive a piece of paper with my name spelled as "Saranoh", go figure.

In any case, I love my name. Like I said. But I'll forever be "Sara - no - H", and well I guess I'm fine with that, because I am named after Phyllis, who I've been told was an amazing person. And, well atleast it gave me an inspiration for a title for my blog..

Random Wednesday

The past few weeks I haven't blogged, but I have been doing things. Here's a random assortment of what I did and what's going on now in my life:

• I'm moving! Now, before you get your panties in a wad thinkin I'm moving out of Houston, let me clarify - I'm moving 5 minutes from my current abode. I've resided in a 700 sq. ft. apartment for the last 4 years of my life. An apartment with a closet and a half of storage. That's not much. I'm growing out of my apt. And yes, I do realize I live by myself, and I shouldn't take up that much space, but I do. Deal. I have a lot of crap - I blame my mom. And, then there is the 3rd floor thing. While I appreciate the safe-ness of being on a third floor, my arms do not appreciate it when I have to carry things from my car in the parking lot to the third floor. Maybe I'm just lazy. In any case, I'm moving to a duplex, a top floor of a duplex. That is, drumroll please, 1400 sq ft! That's double what I have right now. So much closet space I will not know what to do with myself. I'm pretty stoked. Its 2 bedrooms, 1 bath (so, please come visit!), hardwoods, big kitchen. And only on the second floor! Fab. I'll be moving this fall and I cannot wait! I'm not sure my cat will know what to do with all that space.

• PT and I went to Boerne for the 4th of July. It was a lot of fun. I spent an entire day swimming, laying by a pool, and reading an entire book. Its a hard life.

• I cleaned my office - which means my friends you'll get to see what it looks like for the very first time. When my assistant offered to come in and pick it up everday at the end of the day, I decided it was time to act 27 and keep it tidy. It also helps that I am not tremendously busy at the moment, leaves more time to organize. Did I mention I love the feeling of throwing things away?

• Random thought - sometimes when I"m in a meeting and its really quiet, and i'm bored, I wonder what it would be like if I just let out a huge scream. Seriously. I imagine myself doing it. It will never happen, of course, but the thought entertains me.

• It's been raining everyday in Houston. Mostly around 4 pm. Although today it did rain in the morning. The palm tree outside my window appreciates it I'm sure.

• I'm up to 6 miles in my half marathon training program! I haven't yet run the 6 miles, but I plan to this weekend.

• I'll be seeing WICKED for the first time this weekend! I'm stoked. First year of law school, on a whim I downloaded the soundtrack and now know it by heart. I haven't ever seen it, but who cares. Atleast I'll be able to sing along.

• I'm finallllyyy getting my hair cut on Saturday. If you've seen me in the last month, its freakin long. I'm not doing anything drastic, but I do plan to cut a few inches off.

This is where I sit for 50 hours a week (give or take 10 hours):

My Office

Yes - that's a birthday balloon. That balloon has been alive for almost 3 months. Pretty impressive.

You thought I was lying - there is in fact a palm tree outside my window. I'm on the 12th floor...go figure.

"Please silence cell phones now."

Last night I went and saw Eclipse. I'm a fan, what can I say? I've read all of the books, and enjoy the movies (yes, with all the cheesiness that they entail). In any case, thats neither here nor there. I had a thought as they flashed the "please turn off cell phone" message - what would life be like without cell phones? Then I remembered, I spent a good part of my youth without a cell phone and I managed just fine.

Take for example High School, I did just fine without a cell phone freshman year, and that's because I had a pager. A green one to be exact that fit snuggly in my right jean pocket. My best friend Cindy got one, and so that meant that I of course needed one. Pagers are an interesting device. Especially without a cell phone to call anyone back on. We devised a code system to alert the other what was needed of them and whether to in fact locate the nearest phone to call them back. This became a precarious situation when a phone was unable to be located, but we managed.

The other styles of communication we had in high school were of course the regular land line phone apparatus (which was used a lot in high school for late night convos) and of course the note passing in high school. Ah, the note passing. I would spend a good amount of class time (sh don't tell my parents) devising perfectly scripted notes to be passed during period. Sometimes they were in color, sometimes in code, and sometimes included games. But they always contained the most important information regarding who was dating who, what the latest crush did, and what the weekend plans entailed. They were a staple of high school life. So much so that we created "note" books. We in fact simply passed spiral notebooks back and forth. And if we didn't cover the neccesities during the school day, we simply used the land line to call one another that night.

Senior year I was given a hand me down cell phone from my mom. And I received my first ever own cell phone number (which is the same one I have today). I'm trying to recall how often I used that phone, but to be honest, I cannot recall using it very often. There just weren't a lot of people to call on that cell phone, and I had limited minutes, if at all any, and texting just wasn't in the picture then.

(Caveat: My cousins are 12 and 14. I remember when they were 7 and 9 and both had cell phones. And texted. All. the. time. I'm not sure what they were texting. Because at 7 I don't remember there being anything interesting that I had to say, other than what bow I would wear in my hair that day.)

So, I managed to survive high school without a cell phone. But I think it was because I didn't understand how useful the cell phone would become. Let me correct that, how essential the cell phone would become. I can't imagine not having a cell phone now. As I looked around the movie theater last night, I realized that potentially every single person in that theater had a cell phone, and it also appeared that most were looking at something on it at that precise moment, including myself.

There is some criticism of always being accessible, however. It is nice some days to place the cell phone in a corner of my apartment, and not think about answering it. It is, almost, freeing. Take for example the "Chicago incident". Last fall I went to Chicago for the first time ever with a debate - like team I coached at my law school. Imagine me, as the coach, the one who was to be the responsible one, standing in line waiting to board the plane to Chicago realizing that my phone was, in fact, still sitting in my car, in the airport parking lot. Begin freakout. As I weighed the options of how fast I could run to my car, and get back through security to make it to the flight which was already boarding, I realized that I was going to be without a cell phone, in Chicago. At first, I freaked out. How was I going to call my boyfriend? How was I going to stay in touch with all the people I talk to in Houston (keeping in mind that I'm not really a phone talker so that probably wouldn't be an issue)? More importantly, how was I going to be able to check my email 30 times a day, and stay on top of what everyone was doing via facebook? My life was coming to a hault. But then, I got to Chicago, and spent 4 days without my cell phone, and realized that it was in a way freeing. That not having the ability to check my email or stay connected via the internet, was peaceful. And, guess what, I survived. My life did not crumble into a million pieces, I did not cease functioning, and I managed to make my way around Chicago without the help of the handy gps feature on my iPhone. That's not to say that everytime I park to go the airport I don't spend a few minutes making sure that my phone is safely located in my purse, because while it was a freeing experience to be sans phone for a few days, its not one I'd like to repeat any time soon, how's that for dependence?

So, I guess the point of this story is, life would be entirely too difficult to manage without a cell phone now. But I suppose that's because we are used to having a life with a cell phone, and not because life is actually easier with one. Or, maybe it is?

RIP Chelsea Earle

On Wednesday, November 4, 2009, this world lost an amazing woman. Chelsea Earle passed away to go and be with her savior. I received the news Thursday morning as I was packing for Chicago. I am saddened at the loss of this wonderful person. Chelsea was 26 years old. She was a woman filled with God's love. She was a happy person and a genuine friend. She had a loving spirit and was a beautiful person inside and out. I could go on and on for paragraphs about her, but if you knew her you already know all those things. Chelsea and I met when I was in seventh grade. We both attended Camp Crucis together and were fast friends. Throughout the following 5 years we attended church youth events together, as well as more camp sessions, and were never at a loss for conversations or laughter (I have photo albums filled with these exact moments). I'm sad to admit that over the past eight years we lost touch. Her death brings life into focus. And makes me wish that we had stayed in touch. Life tears people in so many different directions and I hope that I am able to not lose touch of those people, like Chelsea, who made an impact on my life in the best of ways. I will miss you Chelsea and I know you are at peace and in the loving arms of Jesus Christ.