"Oh no I di'int!"

Here's one that will go down in Shannon history: Was out to dinner with some girlfriends on Friday night, celebrating the end of the school year. We were at this place in town called Triumph Brewing Company and were seated upstairs. The bar was down below. Well, dinner was good and conversation supreme. We were wrapping up our meal and I was talking about the "SNL Through the 90s" show that I had seen on TV the other night. I mentioned loving Molly Shannon and her funny characters like Mary Katherine Gallager, and the joyologist/"luv it" lady. I was getting revved up in my story-telling and shared about how I often used to do impersonations of these characters. I started doing the classic "luv it" lady move where she crosses and kicks up her leg a lot while she says "I luv it, I luv it, I luv it!" My friends were laughing. "Oh, funny Shannon!", they were probably thinking. They hadn't seen me do this before. Well, all of the sudden, the little navy blue ballet flat I'm wearing comes off my foot as I'm kicking up my leg. It flies high into the air (high ceiling building) and then begins its descent all the way down to the first floor, in the bar. Oops!!!! Double oops when we discover it has hit a lady sitting down there. A manager brings my shoe up to me and I gratefully accept it and apologize. One catch though, there is this other guy with him who is bristling and says that there is going to be a big problem because the shoe hit his wife. He is really angry and looks like he's ready to punch someone's lights out. I apologize, call him sir, explain that it was an accident. He realizes he can't beat me up. He realizes I'm a woman, sitting at a table of women. If I had been a man, I think he would've hit me. But, thankfully the manager was right next to him and explained that he saw what happened and that it was an accident. The man leaves and storms back downstairs. OMG--it was crazy! It went from being incredibly embarassing to nightmarish in a matter of seconds. Thankfully everything ended fine. I was mortified, but my friends were still laughing. They thought the impersonation was even better with the shoe flying off. And apparently the look on my face was something! I just can't believe I did something so stupid (on accident of course!). Yikes! I don't think my friends will let me live this one down anytime soon.

Another one bites the dust....AND Meeting the Indigo Girls!

So, the first year of my Ph.D program is officially done. Yesterday, at approximately 11:55am, I turned in my last paper of the semester. Woohoooooooo!!!! I've been at this "higher education" for some time now, and what never ceases to amaze me is the feelings I go through immediately after turning in my last paper for the academic year. It is usually always the same feeling but somehow I forget what it feels like until it is really upon me again. It is something like surreal. And yet it is also always a bit anticlimatic because I have this moment where I think, "Now what do I do?" That's so funny. It's like, I've been going and going and pushing and pushing and all of the sudden the weight I've been carrying drops off and I'm disoriented. When this happened yesterday I went home and crashed for 3 hours. That was nice. Although I always have to fight the guilt that threatens to ruin it. My brain desparately searches for something else I should be doing with the time (i.e., cleaning my apartment!) until I tell myself to calm down and give it a rest! :-)

Well, the laziness didn't last for long. Last night and today I started putting my together my summer calendar--organizing my independent study, coming up with my reading list for my dissertation topic, figuring out how long I need to learn French on my own , and parceling then it all out on my summer calendar. I'm afraid that maybe I've got too much to do and not enough time. I'm going to have to be very disciplined to stay on top of it all. My hope is that if I can schedule my days well, I'll have time to relax and enjoy summer, exercise AND get all my work done. Thankfully, I've got some summer jobs in the library that will really provide me with study time while I'm on the clock. Thank goodness for that!!!!!

Just as I got through the first year of my Ph.D program, which is a huge accomplishment and one more step toward my goal of being a theology professor, I also accomplished another personal goal last week. Yes, yes, I did. I took a study break and went to an Indigo Girls concert.....AND, I got to meet them afterwards! It was great! They are my FAVORITE band EVER and meeting them was awesome!! They were very chill and down to earth and friendly. Amy even asked me what what my name is. Ha! It was cool!!!! :-)
Here are my pix from the meeting! You can see that I'm very excited!!!

That's Amy Ray and me!


And this is Emily Saliers and me!