Texas Lou

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. 

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

This year, I am blogging about my friend Nita Collier.  Nita is one of the strongest, smartest, and most amazing women I know and she is one of the people who inspired me to further my career in technology.

I first met Nita when I was 22 and right out of college.  I was working my first real job as the Help Desk Associate for Albemarle County Schools and Nita was one of the Technology Support Specialists.  She was only 4 years older than me, but she had a husband, 2 beautiful children, a house, and a successful career supporting technology in education.  At first, the Help Desk work satisfied me, but soon I found myself wanting to learn and do more.  I saw what Nita and my other co-workers were doing and I wanted to do the same thing.  I wanted that challenge and even though it was scary to think of jumping into something that I was not confident about doing, I knew that I could do it because Nita did and I knew she could teach me alot.

Over the 3 years that I worked forAlbemarle County, I became good friends with Nita and learned sooooo much from her.  She taught me everything she could about the profession.  Now a mother of three beautiful little ones, Nita supports the entire division, consisting of more than 26 schools and sites, by helping teachers to integrate technology into education and providing a more engaging learning environment for the students of the 21st century.  She continues to inspire me to be all that I can be in technology.

It’s because of strong and intellegent women like Ada Lovelace and my friend, Nita Collier, that women like myself continue to enter and succeed in the technology field!

I love you Nita and thank you for everything!

My sister wanted to add this photo as a comment on my previous rodeo post, but it would not let her.

So in honor of my sister, Carrie Elsaifi, and the rodeo, I present two of the former stars of the Katy ISD FFA and the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo!

Back in November, a good friend convinced me to run the Yuengling Shamrock Half Marathon.  At first, I didn’t even give it a thought as I had no desire or faith in my ability to run 13 miles.  I can’t remember why, but I did give it a second thought.  I’m not sure what made me change my mind…maybe the realization that all runners were greeted at the finish line with free beer.  I decided to go for it and that began the 5 months of training and injuries I endured to get to where I am now.  It was also the start of my new love for outdoor running.

Before beginning to train for the half marathon, I preferred running inside on the treadmill where air conditioning and television were my good friends.  The farthest I had ever run outside had been the Charlottesville Women’s 4 Miler, which both times I had to walk a great deal of .   But now I find running inside pretty boring without the constantly changing scenery, and I can run 4 miles without stopping or walking pretty easily.

Yesterday, I ran my first half marathon and am so proud of myself today!  The day couldn’t have been more perfect!  The race was in beautiful Virginia beach.  It was a glorious, sunny day with temperatures in the 60s to 70s.  I ran most of the 13.1 miles with my friend Dana, but had to slow down a bit during the last 4 miles of the race due to an increasing need to go to the bathroom.  The race ended on the Virgina Beach Boardwalk where I crossed the finish line as they called out my name.  As I slowly wandered past the crowds of people, volunteers showered me with gifts:  a medal, a t-shirt, a hat, water, and snacks.  The rest of the day was filled with friends, FREE BEER, food, fun, and the sun on the beach.  I met old friends and new friends and had a blast!  Yuengling sure does know how to put on an after-party!

Even though everything about the day was wonderful, the best thing was knowing that I had accomplished my goal!

Here are my stats:

I definitely plan on running it again next year!

I remember the first time that my young mind comprehended the depth and permanence of death.

It was summer time.  I was 9 or 10 years old.  I was in the midst of two weeks at summer camp.  I sat on the dock alone dangling my feet in the warm water of Inks Lake while I soaked up the hot Texas sun.

I don’t know what thoughts I had or emotions I felt that lead me to this frightening conclusion.  I don’t remember what path my mind was following.  As soon as the thought struck me, I was paralyzed in fear.  When you die, that’s it.  When you die, you are gone and life is over.  When you die, you have no idea what happens next.  I don’t want to die, but I have to.  I was only a child, but these very disturbing adult ideas took over my body and mind.

That was the moment that I realized that death was permanent and real.  That is when I understood that the ones I loved could be taken away from me forever and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.  That is when I think I stopped being a child, and started my journey toward adulthood.  That moment was the barrier between my innocent, ignorant, happy childhood and my stressful, fearful, incessantly analyzing struggle to become an adult.

I used to yearn for that blissful ignorance.  I used to swear I’d give anything just to turn my mind off when I wanted.  But now, I embrace adulthood and all of the fear, uncertainty, and pain that accompanies it.  I used to wonder why such a terrible feeling would have overtaken me as I enjoyed a peaceful, warm, summer day when I shouldn’t have had a care in the world.  Now I feel that the beautiful moment accompanied by its conflicting, painful memory is the perfect metaphor for life.  It’s full of good and bad, happy and sad, but they come together in life so I’ll take them both if that’s all I can have.

I want to thank my friend Heather from college for writing about a new social networking site out there on her blog.

Heather wrote about a website called foursquare where you can check-in to different places with your cell phone and earn badges and achievements for trying out new venues in the city where you reside.  I had no idea these types of social networking sites existed and now that I do, I am totally addicted.  I absolutely love this site and its agenda because I am always looking out for new places to visit and new restaurants or breweries to try!  Even though I’ve been living in Charlottesville for over four years now, it still seems that there are so many places I’ve never been to and never even heard about, and foursquare is opening my eyes to many of these locations.

The ease of checking-in with a smartphone or mobile web device is also motivating me to finally trade in my three and a half year old flip phone for something a little more technologically advanced especially since I’ve been craving a data plan and GPS but have been putting off the upgrade because of the extra money it costs.

A similar website, Gowalla, was also brought to my attention by my friend Danielle.  I haven’t played with this site as much yet, but I definitely plan on doing so, especially because the site is designed and developed in my own home sweet home, Texas!  Once I get a newer phone, being active on both of these sites will be alot easier and much more fun!

I definitely recommend giving both websites a try and make sure to add me as your friend!

In honor of the Annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, check out this cowgirl!

Too bad I can’t still fit into this outfit!  I need to get those boots in my size!

This Texas Towel!

The San Antonio River Walk, the Astrodome, Tubing on the Guadalupe, Dell Computers, Dr. Pepper, the Dallas Cowboys, the Houston Comets, the rodeo, jalapeño pepper jelly, Whataburger, Howard Hughes, Buddy Holly, Tommy Lee Jones, Patrick Swayze, Texas Instruments, Steve Martin, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Luke and Owen Wilson, Forest Whitaker, Renee Zellweger, the Texas Longhorns, Fritos, Shiner Bock, the annual Fiesta festival in San Antonio, Space Center Houston, Janis Joplin, Destiny’s Child, Pat Green, Southwest Airlines, Pizza Hut, Valero, USAA,  Taco Cabana, Blue Bell Ice Cream, Austin City Limits, the Fort Worth Stockyards and Billy Bob’s, the University of Texas, the Houston Rockets, George Strait, NASA Mission Control, Six Flags Over Texas, Sea World San Antonio, Barton Springs, Sixth Street, South by Southwest, Lone Star Beer, Saint Arnold’s Brewery, the Kolache Factory, the Galleria, my family, AND ME!

If it weren’t for the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836, none of the above would exist and the world would be a much less exciting place.

I’m proud to be a Texan!  What’s your favorite thing about Texas?

I just took the Myers-Briggs Personality test (for the umpteenth time) and this is how I scored:

I am:

• slightly expressed extrovert
• slightly expressed intuitive personality
• moderately expressed feeling personality
• moderately expressed judging personality

This score apparently makes me an idealist who would most likely be successful at teaching.  I’m not worried about not being a teacher though since my score has been a bit different every time I’ve taken the test.  One interesting thing to note is the older I get, the farther away from introverted and closer to extroverted I move.  I think that has to do with the fact that I’m getting older and becoming more comfortable in my own skin as well as the fact that my boyfriend is extremely introverted so I automatically tend to move toward extroverted to balance out the relationship (or so I learned this is usually the case in a Myers-Briggs course I once took).

Curious about your personality type?  Take the test!  I’d be interested to know people’s scores.

Alot of people think it’s strange that I played bar as an adolescent.  I never thought it was out of the ordinary until I received this feedback from my peers.

There was this one specific instance that I remember when I was about 12 or 13.  We had cousins and friends spending the night and the seven of us decided to play bar.  I must have been the ringleader since I was the oldest. We took turns as both the bartender and the customers.  We served grape juice as red wine and lit the ends of pretzel sticks with a book of matches that we had somehow gotten our hands on.  We had a blast and it was all good, clean fun.  I guess we had outgrown playing house or school and needed something a little more grown-up to occupy our imaginations!

Years later, when reminiscing with friends about our childhoods, I asked surprised, “Yall never played bar?”  I had always assumed that was one of those games that all kids played at some point during their childhood.  Now it doesn’t surprise me that all seven of us turned out to be drinkers (not alcoholics, but ones who enjoy a few beers every now and then).

So what I took away from this discovery that playing bar was not a run-of-the-mill game played by all children is that it was really harmless and probably resulted from the fact that the fairly new house we had moved into had a sunken bar that had to be incorporated into our make-believe games.  And it could have been worse…we could have been playing bar with real wine and real cigarettes instead of grape juice and pretzels.  Or even worse, we could have been playing doctor!

So what I want to know is did any of you (all three of you out there reading this) ever play bar or anything else unconventional?