a toast to the happy couple

so my high school boyfriend got engaged tonight. talk about a text message you never expect to receive!

he texted to tell me... because "he didn't want facebook to tell certain people :)" yet again confirming my deep hatred for all technology.

note: the smiley face was his special touch not mine.

this whole situation is doing nothing to help with my fear of growing up! it is only adding to the uneasiness i get when i think about the responsibilities fast approaching with age.

sometimes life is weirdly unkind.

joanna banana

and now it's my turn to tell a funny story!

as many of you are aware, it is homecoming week here at the university of alabama. it's a week that we all love to hate... a week of delirium where sorority pledges are required to participate is a plethora of "fun" activities, pomping hours are at the top of your to do list, the machine gets to utilize their power, and all school work is ignored. fun for all! right?

well anyways, last night i was at the chi omega house pomping, just as an good chi omega would be. however, let me define pomping for you according to my terms: sitting on the computer in the chi-o kitchen laughing with lizzie and jane. i know, it sucks!

so we get in this conversation about names. we discussed both liz and jane's last names and how they would make such cute names for little boys. brazeal got thrown around, but i made sure to shut that down real fast! then jane decided to share with us what she plans to name her children. being the good friend that i am, i tune her out and begin to read katie k's newest blog post. while in my own little world, i heard jane say something about the name joanna. at this point, i figured it was time for me to say something. why you ask? because i have a big mouth...

i begin with, "have yall ever heard the name johannah? i just really don't like that name. what an awkward combination!" there were minor agreements from liz and jane with my comment, but of course, i didn't take notice. then i continued with, " and because my cousin is named this i feel that i have to right to say it, but i don't like the name joanna either." liz wanted to stop the train wreck, but it was unsalvageable. awkward silence.

yes, jane had definitely just been confessing her love for the name joanna and how she is without a doubt going to name her little girl that. there was no way to backtrack; thankfully, because jane loves me despite my stupidity, we laughed for 30 minutes about the whole situation.

along with a variety of other conversation topics that shall not be mentioned at this time, it was one of the better pomping experiences for me! and then i cleaned my room til 2:30 am. roll tide.

signed,

the girl with nameless children

***special apologies to those of you who are named either johannah or joanna (and to those particularly attached). thanks for taking one for the team!

Somehow I feel like that status was directed at me, Ellen.

I had a wonderful fall break weekend in Oxford. But that is not the purpose of this post.

I have a new most embarrassing/hilarious (because the two go hand in hand) moment.

Today, I was in my English British Literature class (I hate the abbreviation "BritLit" blech.) when I decided I needed a bathroom break. I got up from the riveting discussion of Shakespearean sonnets and trekked down all three flights of Morgan Hall to the bathroom. As I walked back to class, as it always does, my mind wandered and I started thinking about what life must have been like as a college student when my mom was here. Did the buildings look different? How had the carpeting changed? Did the stairs always look like this? Really important stuff. Embarrassingly, my interest in buildings as increased significantly since being on Capstone, evident in the fact that I asked Allie about every building we passed in Ole Miss. Anyway, because I was pondering the evolution of Morgan Hall, I wasn't paying attention to my route back to class and absentmindedly sauntered into room 318. As I walked in, I noticed that there was a powerpoint on the board entitled "short essay assignment." My mind immediately started thinking "Oh, crap, this isn't on the syllabus. And where did that projector come from?" Then I looked at the instructor who was looking rather befuddled at me, mid-sentence, then the class of about 35 students gawking at me and giggling.

You see, my class was in room 319. Yes, I was in the wrong room. The last time I did this was in 4th grade when I walked in Miss Howle's old room when I was in fact in Miss McCraven's class. But there was a subconscious reason. I had English in room 318 last semester. But no one in that class knew it, so I just looked dumb. I locked eyes with a girl in another one of my classes (whom I'm sure I will be mocked by tomorrow), froze on the spot, and laughed as I muttered a "Sorry," and walked out the door.

Of course, I laughed at myself for a good 10 minutes when I got to my rightful spot and have told the story to as many people as possible.

And then I found 5 dollars.

Katie K.

let it be.

i've gotten myself into this weird pattern where i can't sleep. i don't really know what to blame it on; it just is. i think being at home and off of my normal schedule is logically part of it... but with me, who knows? anyways, thanks to my sleepless night, you get a blog post.

i found today to be one of the more humbling days in my life. it's funny how humility always seems to be a goal, but no one really is constantly humble. it takes an event to bring you to a humbled state. my "event" was filling out job applications.

as mentioned in my previous blog post, i am unemployed which is not making my bank account very happy, soooooo i am simultaneously on a job hunt for a part time job in tuscaloosa and a job in birmingham for the highly anticipated holiday season. so along with "finding myself" aka choosing a major, all the festivities of homecoming week, whipping my body into shape, starting a healthy diet, and saving the world, one could say that my hypothetical plate is pretty full. i'll let you be the judge.

as with any overwhelming situation (and for those that know me, you know that i find most situations to be rather overwhelming... some even ending in panic attacks and such), it must be taken one step at a time. each step completed is a small victory, and i celebrate my small victories with much enthusiasm!

today (with a kick in the butt from the parentals), i decided to face the fact that i needed a job for christmas break. by about 4:30 this afternoon (mid-alabama game, i might add), i worked up enough energy/courage to walk store to store at the summit asking for job applications. with this activity, the boundary of my comfort zone had been crossed, but i did it! small victory. whoop yeah!

once back at home with my treasured job applications, the real work began. i filled out job application after job application as i pretended to watch the lsu/florida game. it was not a fun process, and the worst part about it was filling out my employment history. before actually having to write it out 10 times, i would have been pleased, possibly proud of my previous employment. i lifeguarded for 3 summers in high school... clearly a "cool kid" job. then i stepped it up a notch with a 5-6 month run in retail at anthropologie; however, rounding out my stellar resume is the glorious 2 months of slicing deli meat and cheese at the price chopper, a discount grocery store in the booming metropolis of burlington, vermont. write that out 10 times and then tell me that you haven't begun to question everything in your life. thus the humbling i spoke of before.

realizing that i spent 2 precious months of my life behind a deli counter wearing a black and white checkered apron asking, "now would you like that 1/2 lb of black forest ham sliced thick or thin," brought me to a state of humility. i'm pretty dang sure that bath&body works isn't looking for someone with special training with meat slicer or that vera bradley requires their employees to know the difference between a honey smoked and an oven roasted turkey. even still, the Lord will provide.

so that was my weekend in a nutshell. why didn't i go to oxford again??

roll tide forever,

b

i try to say goodbye and i choke. i try to walk away and i stumble.

hi. my name is katie brazeal, and i am the co-creator of this blog, double bird strike. you, dear reader, may have been under the impression that this beautiful little corner of the internet had died, but oh how wrong you were! welcome back to my life...

today, whilst playing around on my computer (i.e. facebook stalking), i noticed a hypothetically rusty bookmark sitting there on the toolbar of my internet explorer. what was it, you might ask? well it was none other than this wonderful blog. curiosity perked, i clicked on it. once back in the blogging universe, i decided to reread all of "double birk strike's" old blog posts and relive the days of yore. i got approximately one and a half blogs into the stellar sixty-one when i was reminded of why katie and i started this blog in the first place. we needed a cyber-shoebox to collect all of our college memories in, and here i am letting sophomore year go completely undocumented! for shame.

my next move was to stop reading the old blog posts... 61. who was i kidding? ...and start writing what you are reading now; however, it was not quite as simple as that sounds. i first ran into the difficulty of recalling the password i had set so many months before. after many unsuccessful guesses (but creative ones, i might add), i resigned myself to the fact that i would have to set a new one. after forgiving myself for forgetting such valuable information, setting up a snazzy new password, and re-familiarizing myself with the whole blog set up, i began typing.

sophomore year as a whole has been an adjustment. college has lost the mystery it once had. i don't mean that as a complaint; it is simply a fact. some days it is the biggest blessing, while others it is a bit of a drag. even still, i love college, and life is good.

and when i say life is good, i don't truly mean that. i am too much of a pessimist to utter those words in absolute truth. what i am really saying is life is just life. my life has a tendency to forever keep things interesting, and right now is no exception. the biggest news at the moment is that i am no longer in nursing school. my major is officially undecided, and i couldn't be more excited about that! i would just like to thank my anatomy&physiology 215 lab for helping me admit to myself that i don't want to go to nursing school. tuesday at 1:30 pm, amy in the career center is supposed to tell me what to do with my life. can't wait!

some less dramatic but still blog-worthy highlights from the past few weeks include, dropping my anatomy&physiology class (i am rocking a W on my transcript! yippie), celebrating chris and sarah's engagement, walking into the wrong dorm room only to be rudely dismissed, hanging up all of my zaps from freshman year, watching a rather large amount of "friends" episodes, potentially applying to victoria's secret (jury is still out on that one...), rediscovering my love for gorgas & rogers, adopting the most precious little chi-o sister, preparing to celebrate elizabeth price's 21st birthday (15 days!!), and specifically tonight, eating a bag of popcorn for dinner. i love college.

so welcome back! thanks to a lighter class load and the fact that i am unemployed, you will probably be seeing this blog come back to life:)

sincerely,

b