Hello, again.
Wow, you haven't heard from me for a month or so, and now I can't stop e-mailing everyone. Anyways, I just had my interview with the hospital in St Louis, and it's now confirmed. I'll be working at St Joseph Hospital in St Charles, MO for 3 months. Contract starts on May 7 and ends on Aug 5.
Philip and Lora get ready, cuz here I come to cause havoc in yet another state. I haven't left San Diego for 35 years, and now in one year span, I'll have lived in 5 states (including Missouri). Totally cool. Well, 6 if you count the 2 week break I had in Las Vegas at my parents' place.
Leona
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Preparing for my next assignment
Hello, all.
Yes, I have been touring Austin and the adjacent areas. I've been checking out the local BBQ places, and I think I have enough red meat in my system to last me a lifetime (though it might have been shortened with all that fat). Well worth it. I'm starting to acquire a taste for Austin. It took a while. There's a lot of places to hike here, and a lot of hills overlooking different lakes and rivers. I figured I'll just wait until I collected enough pictures to share the scenery of Austin before sending them to you.
Austin is THE place to be if you love live music. Austin is filled with a lot of live music. Crazy. I went hiking around Town Lake (portion of the river running through downtown), and I heard live music playing at a Little League Baseball game. Austin also has a yearly festival of live music in Downtown area called "South by Southwest". They had different musicians playing at different nightclubs and bars for a full week. Different artists playing every hour each night for a week. The tickets (or ID bands) cost as low as $150. So, I didn't go to that area where you need ID bands, however there were plenty of places that you could hear those same artists play for free. Direct TV taped a few of the artists during the weekend, and we could go in for free. My friends and I went to that and heard 3 bands there on Thursday night (3/9). The artists were locals and even popular ones like Smash Mouth. The next night I went to Dominican Joe (my fav coffee shop), and a few of the artists came over for Open-Mic night and played for the crowd. I took some pics, but they didn't come out as well as I hoped. I'll send the pics, but I apologize for some of them that are blurry.
I had a lot of "first" opportunities in Austin: Fried Ocra, popular local places (Austin Java, Amy's Ice Cream, Waterloo Records, Chuy's, Salt Licks BBQ, Poke-E-Joe's BBQ, etc), Tornado warnings, and ice storms. My friends and I will go Kayaking this Wednesday on Town Lake. Can't wait.
I have one more month here in Austin, then I'm headed off to St Louis. I don't have an assignment yet, but I working with my recruiter to sign with a hospital in St Charles, 30 minutes away from St Louis. The hospital is 9 miles away from my sister and her family. I figured that though I may be farther from St Louis than I expected, at least I'm still in close vicinity to Lora and fam. When it's confirmed, I'll e-mail you an update.
I was hoping to return to San Diego for a fall assignment, but my uncle Denny brought up something that is very true: if I return to San Diego for an assignment, I may not want leave San Diego again. I miss San Diego, and after traveling around the US, I've come to appreciate San Diego even more. San Diego is protected from a lot of the severe weather the Midwest and east coast has to endure. We may have "severe" weather in San Diego, but it's NOTHING compared to what the rest of the country has to deal with. I will no longer complain about the weather when I'm back in San Diego. It's perfect in it's mild weather issues. (Of course, I don't add L.A. to this because of the smog they have that's drastically compromised their environmental haven.)
I think I've written quite a lot. I promise to e-mail everyone before I leave Austin.
Love,
Leona
Yes, I have been touring Austin and the adjacent areas. I've been checking out the local BBQ places, and I think I have enough red meat in my system to last me a lifetime (though it might have been shortened with all that fat). Well worth it. I'm starting to acquire a taste for Austin. It took a while. There's a lot of places to hike here, and a lot of hills overlooking different lakes and rivers. I figured I'll just wait until I collected enough pictures to share the scenery of Austin before sending them to you.
Austin is THE place to be if you love live music. Austin is filled with a lot of live music. Crazy. I went hiking around Town Lake (portion of the river running through downtown), and I heard live music playing at a Little League Baseball game. Austin also has a yearly festival of live music in Downtown area called "South by Southwest". They had different musicians playing at different nightclubs and bars for a full week. Different artists playing every hour each night for a week. The tickets (or ID bands) cost as low as $150. So, I didn't go to that area where you need ID bands, however there were plenty of places that you could hear those same artists play for free. Direct TV taped a few of the artists during the weekend, and we could go in for free. My friends and I went to that and heard 3 bands there on Thursday night (3/9). The artists were locals and even popular ones like Smash Mouth. The next night I went to Dominican Joe (my fav coffee shop), and a few of the artists came over for Open-Mic night and played for the crowd. I took some pics, but they didn't come out as well as I hoped. I'll send the pics, but I apologize for some of them that are blurry.
I had a lot of "first" opportunities in Austin: Fried Ocra, popular local places (Austin Java, Amy's Ice Cream, Waterloo Records, Chuy's, Salt Licks BBQ, Poke-E-Joe's BBQ, etc), Tornado warnings, and ice storms. My friends and I will go Kayaking this Wednesday on Town Lake. Can't wait.
I have one more month here in Austin, then I'm headed off to St Louis. I don't have an assignment yet, but I working with my recruiter to sign with a hospital in St Charles, 30 minutes away from St Louis. The hospital is 9 miles away from my sister and her family. I figured that though I may be farther from St Louis than I expected, at least I'm still in close vicinity to Lora and fam. When it's confirmed, I'll e-mail you an update.
I was hoping to return to San Diego for a fall assignment, but my uncle Denny brought up something that is very true: if I return to San Diego for an assignment, I may not want leave San Diego again. I miss San Diego, and after traveling around the US, I've come to appreciate San Diego even more. San Diego is protected from a lot of the severe weather the Midwest and east coast has to endure. We may have "severe" weather in San Diego, but it's NOTHING compared to what the rest of the country has to deal with. I will no longer complain about the weather when I'm back in San Diego. It's perfect in it's mild weather issues. (Of course, I don't add L.A. to this because of the smog they have that's drastically compromised their environmental haven.)
I think I've written quite a lot. I promise to e-mail everyone before I leave Austin.
Love,
Leona
Texas Indepence Weekend pics
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| | I finally downloaded my pics to share. I have more, but I won't clog your computers withh all of them. Sorry I haven't written for a while Leona - Leona  | | ||||||||||||||||
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| If you can't see the link, copy and paste the following directly into your browser: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=arh5lzo3.5car13l3&x=1&y=-jdsh10 Questions? Visit http://www.kodakgallery.com/Help.jsp. |
| © 2007 Kodak Imaging Network, Inc. All rights reserved. KODAK EASYSHARE Gallery is trademark of Eastman Kodak Company. |
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Finally, I get to see Austin, TX.
Hello, everyone.
Sorry I haven't written for a while. Has it been an unusual winter, or what? Austin is not as warm as I thought it would be in the winter season, but I'm not going to complain. It's been better here than other parts of the midwest (sorry, Lora and Denny. You're in my prayers). It's finally warmed up enough for me to sightsee a bit. I haven't been able to do touristy stuff here, since I came here at the wrong time (from what I've been told). When it IS warm I'm at the hospital working, and it's gloomy cold when I'm off. However, today I had a 3 day weekend off on a cool, sunny day so I took advantage of it. I haven't found anything here that would bring me back to Austin, and not as many things to do like I did in Seattle, but there's still some things to see when March and April comes around.
I found a couple coffee shops that have live music every weekend. I like their open-mic nights the most. You get to hear from a lot of "almost famous" musicians with talent (and some with not much). I also found out that March 2 was Texas Independence Day, and they're doing a weekend celebration. Yesterday, there was a ceremony at the Capitol building (I missed it), and today was an Independence Day parade. Most of the spectators were at the area that the parade stops to perform, so I sat 2 blocks down from that area where the spectators were sparse and had a better view point. Still, there were not that many that showed up. When I heard about it earlier in the week, I asked a lot of people that live here where and when it started. Most of them didn't even know that a parade was occurring this Saturday. One of the spectators I was talking with said that there's a bigger celebration for Cinco de Mayo, than there is for Texas Independence. Wow, and this is the capitol of Texas. Anyways, I got a chance to take a lot of pics of the parade.
I went to the Capitol building as well, and got a chance to learn Texas history. Did you know that 6 countries owned Texas? France, Spain, Mexico, Texas, Confederacy, and United States. No wonder Texans are proud to be Texans. They were their own country and had their own Presidents and military for a few years, before they decided to join the US to avoid bankruptcy. It's one thing to hear history in school, but it's another thing to visit the places. I love history.
Austin downtown is a mixture of old and state-of-the-art buildings. Downtown is beautiful at night (from a distance). There's this one building called "Frost Tower" that was recently built. At night, the glass panels of the building are lit up, and it looks like the White Witch's castle in Chronicles of Narnia (I don't have a good enough camera to take a picture of it during the night). They also have a warehouse district like San Diego's downtown with different restaurants and special museums.
There's supposed to be more to see when April comes around: Bats flying at dusk, creek pools with waterfalls, Lake Travis' wildflower beds, riverboats, "South by Southwest", etc. Hopefully, I'll have more pics to share with you in April. I extended my contract here up to beginning of May to get a chance to see what Austin has to offer in April. Of course, after this assignment my next stop is St Louis, where I get to visit my sister (and family) for 3 months. I'll be in St Louis from May through mid-August. After that, I don't know if I'm going back to San Diego for the summer heat and cool ocean water, or go to Connecticut to visit my niece and her family there. That's up to God.
That's pretty much it here. I'll send you the pics as soon as I download them.
;-) lots of love,
Leona
Sorry I haven't written for a while. Has it been an unusual winter, or what? Austin is not as warm as I thought it would be in the winter season, but I'm not going to complain. It's been better here than other parts of the midwest (sorry, Lora and Denny. You're in my prayers). It's finally warmed up enough for me to sightsee a bit. I haven't been able to do touristy stuff here, since I came here at the wrong time (from what I've been told). When it IS warm I'm at the hospital working, and it's gloomy cold when I'm off. However, today I had a 3 day weekend off on a cool, sunny day so I took advantage of it. I haven't found anything here that would bring me back to Austin, and not as many things to do like I did in Seattle, but there's still some things to see when March and April comes around.
I found a couple coffee shops that have live music every weekend. I like their open-mic nights the most. You get to hear from a lot of "almost famous" musicians with talent (and some with not much). I also found out that March 2 was Texas Independence Day, and they're doing a weekend celebration. Yesterday, there was a ceremony at the Capitol building (I missed it), and today was an Independence Day parade. Most of the spectators were at the area that the parade stops to perform, so I sat 2 blocks down from that area where the spectators were sparse and had a better view point. Still, there were not that many that showed up. When I heard about it earlier in the week, I asked a lot of people that live here where and when it started. Most of them didn't even know that a parade was occurring this Saturday. One of the spectators I was talking with said that there's a bigger celebration for Cinco de Mayo, than there is for Texas Independence. Wow, and this is the capitol of Texas. Anyways, I got a chance to take a lot of pics of the parade.
I went to the Capitol building as well, and got a chance to learn Texas history. Did you know that 6 countries owned Texas? France, Spain, Mexico, Texas, Confederacy, and United States. No wonder Texans are proud to be Texans. They were their own country and had their own Presidents and military for a few years, before they decided to join the US to avoid bankruptcy. It's one thing to hear history in school, but it's another thing to visit the places. I love history.
Austin downtown is a mixture of old and state-of-the-art buildings. Downtown is beautiful at night (from a distance). There's this one building called "Frost Tower" that was recently built. At night, the glass panels of the building are lit up, and it looks like the White Witch's castle in Chronicles of Narnia (I don't have a good enough camera to take a picture of it during the night). They also have a warehouse district like San Diego's downtown with different restaurants and special museums.
There's supposed to be more to see when April comes around: Bats flying at dusk, creek pools with waterfalls, Lake Travis' wildflower beds, riverboats, "South by Southwest", etc. Hopefully, I'll have more pics to share with you in April. I extended my contract here up to beginning of May to get a chance to see what Austin has to offer in April. Of course, after this assignment my next stop is St Louis, where I get to visit my sister (and family) for 3 months. I'll be in St Louis from May through mid-August. After that, I don't know if I'm going back to San Diego for the summer heat and cool ocean water, or go to Connecticut to visit my niece and her family there. That's up to God.
That's pretty much it here. I'll send you the pics as soon as I download them.
;-) lots of love,
Leona
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Ice storm pics.
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| | After the news said the ice warning was over everyone in the apartment complex came out to chip the ice off their cars. I had to takes these pics. My first major ice storm, and from what I heard, the worst ice storm in Austin since 1987. - Leona | | ||||||||||||||||
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| If you can't see the link, copy and paste the following directly into your browser: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=arh5lzo3.7b43v4lb&x=1&y=-2kgrdt Questions? Visit http://www.kodakgallery.com/Help.jsp. |
| © 2007 Kodak Imaging Network, Inc. All rights reserved. KODAK EASYSHARE Gallery is trademark of Eastman Kodak Company. |
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