Laura's Thoughts

My last summer as a student is practically half over. It's going so fast! But as Kourtney pointed out, next summer will be pretty much the same. We'll be working full time and not going to school. The only difference will be that we're making more money and getting benefits. Hell yes. So I'm actually not too sad about this final summer as a student. In fact, I'm excited. I won't have to worry about the upcoming semester of more classes. Hurray.

So my family was here this weekend - well, the family minus Ryan. He's working at Camp Bartle this summer as a lifeguard, or something to do with the pool. They flew in late Saturday afternoon and stayed until Tuesday morning. I had Monday off since it was the Fourth of July. Sunday we drove down to New Braufels and tubed along the Guadalupe River. Kourtney came along as well. None of us had ever done it, and we had so much fun! It's like one big party floating down the river. It was mostly college-aged kids drinking and having a good time. But we had fun in our sober state as well.

Kourtney and I had fun checking out all the hard-bodied, tan, drunk-friendly guys on the river; and they had fun checking us out too. One group of people (slightly older, most of them were married) had rigged up a stereo system adapted for tube travel. I was extremely impressed with their "redneck engineering" as they called it. They had these huge speakers hooked up to a CD player in this tube. At first they were playing country, but they eventually busted out the hip-hop, and everyone on the river was bouncing to the music. It was a blast.

The pictures below are of me and Kourtney on the river, the awesome sound system, and our kick ass tans the next day.



We plan to go down again in late August for Kourtney's 21st. We want to party on 6th Street in Austin (lots of free drinks for the birthday girl), then tube the river during the day. This time we'll fill the cooler with alcohol instead of soda and water, though. We'll take a few girls down and have one last summer party, even though school starts the Wednesday before. I'm looking forward to it.

Oh, we stopped at Texas Roadhouse in Austin for dinner on our drive back up. It was soooo good. The service, the food, the atmosphere - it was all excellent. I highly recommend it if you're on I-35 in Austin and looking for a place to eat.

Ok, now for the "cubing" part of my post. Last week at work, John (supervisor of the Accrual group) asked if I'd be interested in switching over to his group as they need some help with their work load. He said that at their supervisors' meeting, I came highly recommended as an excellent candidate for the job (the only candidate suggested, in fact). They told him I was a very hard worker, smart, and everyone liked me. So that made me feel pretty damn good, as you can imagine. He told me to think about and get back to him. I really like the group I'm in right now, but I'm pretty sure it's not what I want to be doing when I graduate. John said that this new position would give me an opportunity to see if I like the accrual side of things more. He said we'd be able to give it a test run from now until I graduate in December. If it's working out for both of us, it's highly likely it will turn into a full-time position. So, that's pretty awesome.

The girls I work with now were extremely upset when they found out I was switching groups. I've been helping them out a lot lately with getting the backlogged receivables booked. They griped to John for stealing me from them. They came back and told me that John was thinking pretty long term for me, and was basically planning on me staying on after I graduate. Hopefully I'll like the position and it will work out, but I'm not making any committments yet.

When I told John I'd like to join his group, I figured I'd just stay where I was as far as location and switch what I was doing work-wise since his group is on the same floor. But yesterday, I found out I was moving to a much larger cubicle. Now, this may not sound like a big deal, but my old cube was pretty small. I had enough room to work, but certainly not ample space. Now I have more room than I know what to do with. It sounds so silly - I plan to have an entire office of my own eventually, but for now I can be excited about my big cube.

Making the job switch has got me thinking about my future plans again. It's time to start figuring all that stuff out. December will be here before I know it. If I do stay with XTO, they'll probably pay for the classes I need to take to sit for the CPA. I think they'll pay for me to take the CPA, too. That may be something to consider when deciding on a job. They can help me get my CPA, then I'll go off and be self-employed! Milk it while you can, right?

There's much more to say, but this post is entirely too long as it is. I haven't been updating very well this summer. Hopefully I'll post again soon. Until then, enjoy your summer - don't drink and drive. : )