Hesitant, Hopeful

I went Tuesday and took my GRE.  I'm so glad to have that done and behind me!  I did about average on the verbal, but failed the quantitative in a major way.  Still not sure how I did on the writing part, since that's not instantly scored.  They say that my scores should come in about 15 days, two weeks, and I'm trying not to worry about them.  I'm sure I did okay on the writing part, or at least, mostly sure, but right now my main concern is getting my scores to my college, because I know that some of my classmates had a hard time getting their scores to Tarleton.  So, I'm crossing my fingers that my scores come in without incident and I can get that hold off my record.  Once the hold is removed, I can register for classes for the summer and fall semesters.  There's also some stuff going on with school right now, but that's a whole entry of it's own, so I'll write about that stuff later.

I was done with my GRE at a little before 4pm and so Matt and I decided to go to the zoo.  I think he would have been just as happy not to go, but I sort of had my heart set on it (I love the lemurs!) so he took me over there.  When we got there they said they closed at 5pm, which would have given us less than an hour to see the whole place, which is just impossible.  While we were trying to decide whether we wanted to pay $9 a person for less than an hours entertainment, the woman behind the glass said that they put the animals up at 4:30pm which pretty much sealed our decision to leave.  On that sort of time schedule, we would have had 20 minutes to see the animals.  I admit, I was a little disappointed.  Going to Cameron Park Zoo is one of my favorite things and having just sat through the GRE, I was looking forward to some lighthearted fun.

When we left there we took the long route through the park, which is absolutely beautiful!  I love Cameron Park!  The roads are long and wining and covered in an amazing green canopy...

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I took all those pictures, plus a few more, from out the window of a moving car!  Anyway, Matt was taking me to Lover's Leap, which is my favorite place in the park because that's where Matt proposed to me.  Unfortunately, when we got there it was under construction.  Seems they're putting in new railings and a covered picnic area -- after looking into it, it appears that there was a rock-slide there in February, so they're securing it.  It's called Lover's Leap because there's a legend that two young lovers who, when they couldn't be together, took one last kiss, held hands, and jumped from the cliff there into the Brazos river so they could be together for eternity, united in death.  Dark and romantic, my favorite kind of story.  The cliff facing is pretty high right there and from the ledge, you can see out for miles!

So, with the zoo closing and Lover's Leap under construction, we headed into town a little bit crestfallen.  We don't make it to Waco nearly enough for our favorite places to be inaccessible to us when we are there.  I suppose we should have planned better, but there was just now way under the time constraints.  We left at 11:30am so I could make it to my test on time and thanks to traffic, the normally 1 1/2 hour drive turned into more like 2 hours.  Stupid trucks going 55 in a 70!

Ultimately, we ended up at Barnes and Noble, which was nice, except that once Matt had found what he wanted he was ready to go.  I probably could have spent another two hours in there.  Living in a tiny little town, we're deprived of real bookstores.  I mean, we have a Hastings, but no one would ever accuse Hastings of being a real bookstore just because they happen to carry books.  Matt got The Alchemist and The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho.  They're tiny little books, so it shouldn't take him long to read them.  If he likes them, I'm going to read them too, as long as they're not sad.  I got The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, which is about a murder's obsession with a woman, which is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to read.  So, I got it.  Anyway, I think part of the reason he was in such a hurry to get out of there was that it was after 5pm and we had plans with Amanda & Karen.  So, we paid and left.  Ironically, the book I was looking for the whole time was on a stand by the door and I didn't see it until we were leaving.  Matt said he'd get it for me, but in a huff because he was making me leave, I rejected it.

After that, we went to Amanda & Karen's house and, after deciding on Red Lobster, we went out to dinner.  It was good, I ate way too much stuff I shouldn't have been eating, but when we got the check I almost choked!  $75 for two people!  Red Lobster has never been that expensive before!  We did get an appetizer and desert, they have the best key lime pie, but geez.  Maybe I'm cheap, or just haven't been out for a nice dinner in a while, but $75 is crazy for two people!  After dinner, where I left my left-overs sitting on the table (bah!!) we went back to Amanda & Karen's and watched "New Moon" on their BlueRay player.  Have you seen BlueRay?  It's amazing and now I want one, but that's off the subject.  I do feel a little bit bad because we were there late and they had to be up at 5am.  So, we got out of there about midnight, and after getting gas, we were home by 2am.

It was a long day, but it was nice, too!  Well, not the GRE part, that was brutal, but the seeing friends and seeing the park parts were nice.  I'm hoping to be able to go to Waco some time soon and stay with Amanda & Karen over a weekend.  Unfortunately, with the amount of school work I have over the next month and a half, I'm not sure when I'll get around to it.  Anyway, now that it's 12:35 and I have to go to Melanie's in a bit, I need to go catch a shower.

Adieu!