Skool

I'm already finished with my first day of class, woohoo! One more day knocked off the calendar of pharmacy school. This semester I'll be taking:

• Microbiology and Immunology
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Pharmacokinetics
• Pharmacology I
• Integrated Lab 3
• Opthalmic Products (elective)

.... to make up 16 credits. Today I had Microbiology and Immunology for two hours, and the professor surprised us with a 100 question exam over "things we already know" !! Apparently, this does not encompass a whole lot! X-D No worries, it wasn't for a grade, and now I at least have a good idea about how the tests will be in that class.

This past weekend was a busy one, with moving in, unpacking, grocery shopping, and a whole lot of more unpacking. I still miss home a ton, but it's starting to feel more like home here. It's great living on the water. I love waking up and looking out at it, or taking my dinner out to the patio to watch the ducks swim by. Beth is finally back too, and I'm so excited!! I missed her and forgot how much fun it is to joke around with her. Mike and I went to Traverse City for our friends' Dave and Adrienne's wedding this weekend! It was very beautiful and I was happy to finally get to see them again. We couldn't stay for the whole reception unfortunately, because Mike had a four hour drive back home. :(

Oh, I have a new screen name, but my old buddy list is gone! If you, my beloved readers, would be so kind as to send me a message if you see me online (or leave a comment to this post), even if I'm not available to chat, so that I may add you as a buddy, I would be o so happy!! My new name is:

DrugDealinGRL

That's a classic one right there. Yessire. Um, Mike chose it. >_< Just in case some undercover cop comes across me, let it be known that this is in sick reference to the pharmacy thing.... not... actual drug dealing. o_O

At the Lakehouse

Well, I've moved back to school. Leaving home again was sad and daunting, and as usual, no matter how much I prepare myself for it, I'm never fully ready to do it. I said goodbye to Dad and Chris, tried not to cry as I drove to my Mom's work, and then had lunch with Mom before saying goodbye and finally leaving. Now it's back to pharmacy school, back to business, and back to missing not only Mike anymore, but family as well. :(

The Lakehouse is great. I sat off the dock with my feet in the water, and a family of swans swam past. Really. Then Nick and Colleen called me (Nick is best friends with Mike, Colleen is his girlfriend, and this is her first year of pharmacy school) and wanted to have dinner, so that was really nice. I spent a crap ton of money on groceries, then spent the remainder of the evening putting those away, my clothes away, and hooking up my wireless internet (thanks to the all-knowing Jeeber ;) ). Today I have to completely finish putting my room away, because Mike is coming tonight! :D We have a wedding to go to this weekend in Traverse City, and Big Rapids is a good halfway point for him. After that, it's school on Monday morning.

I'm eating strawberry Wheaties. Omg. So good.

OMG!

Phoney

New phone beetches! UPGRADE!
*in love*

Moving

Apparently my model of cell phone battery is not being made anymore, which is a great reason for me to get a new phone! Yays!! I'll be doing that tomorrow, in the first of my two remaining days at home. Friday Mike and I drove up to Big Rapids to move most of my stuff into the house, and man, does it look great up there! The water was really nice, and when it's a little warmer I'll have to tube down the river (which is the "thing" to do in Big Rapids). I put most of my room together, and Mike had done a ton of work on my desk top (we added up how much it would've cost me to take it somewhere and have it done professionally, and concluded over $1200), so he set that all up for me and put my desk together. I don't have a closet in my room, so I bought this 60-inch "pop-up" closet that's working out pretty well so far. And I bought a bunch of other stuff from Meijer. A bunch. To go with the bunch of stuff I already have.

I'm really excited to move into the lakehouse; I think I'll really love it there, and it's certainly an upgrade from my dorm room. At the same time, I'm feeling the same anxiousness that usually accompanies the pre-semester times of the year. I'm worried how rough the classes will be, what the professors will be like, and if I'll end up failing everything. Usually this passes after the first week of class, although last year it took an entire semester before I was confident I wasn't going to bomb out. I'm kinda hoping that doesn't happen again. O_o At least I know now, at the beginning of the year, that notecards aren't for sissies--this will definitely help.


It feels weird that the summer is over. Last school year went by in a flash, and so did this summer. The end of this road, which has always seemed so incredibly far away, is growing much, much closer now. It seems impossible to imagine a time when I won't be in school, but I can finally see it coming. For me (and Mike), I can imagine it to be one of the most rewarding times we've yet to see. A time when our incredible patience will have paid off--when our future will truly arrive. Or, at the very least, a time when I can finally join him in his! ^_^

On a less severely-sappy note, I randomly found my missing digital camera! :-O I bought it in the summer of 2004, and lost it a few weeks before my birthday this year. I looked everywhere for it (or what I thought was everywhere), but eventually took it to be gone forever. Mike had given me a new digital camera (yet another UPGRADE!) for our anniversary/birthday, so I was not completely torn over this. But hark! I was packing today and there it was, tucked inside a mysterious tote bag that I had no idea even existed. How did this happen??

Mailbox snatcher.

So a guy in a van just drove up and started messing with our Flint Journal box that sits right next to the mailbox. I, of course, get all alarmed and consider him to be stealing, so I run in my parents' room where my dad is and start demanding that he do something because a bad man is messin' with our stuff. The Dad promptly says, "don't worry about it," and goes back to what he's doing.

Wha??

Apparently, we don't want the paper anymore. Not only that, but we haven't gotten it all summer and Dad only picks up a Sunday paper at work. The rest of the news we read online. How did it escape my attention all summer that we weren't getting a paper?? Why didn't I notice a stack of paper underneath the usual table in the living room where we keep paper??

Geez. I suck at life.

The other day while sitting at another infamous Mt. Morris 45-minute long train, eating french fries and reading the various swear words spray painted across the train cars, it occurred to me quite suddenly...

I'm going to miss this dumb-ass town.

Hooligans

Sooooooo earlier this summer a couple of hooligans egged my parents' house all over the front picture window (which is about eight feet wide or so) and down the siding of the front half of the house. Now, these hooligans were of course kids, and of course they know my brother, because it's only fun to do that crap to people you know. This was exceptionally annoying, because not only was it a mess to clean up, it could've caused a great deal of damage if we hadn't cleaned it up as quickly as we did.

Last night, the hooligans visited again. It was 3 am, and I was sleeping (hark!), and I woke up suddenly to the dog barking. Mom told him to shut up, because he frequently barks at nothing, but he was relentless. Then the phone rang, and one of my brother's friends was on the line. My brother got up to go get it (he was still awake, playing his X Box or something...), and Mom stopped to use the bathroom. Before she turned the light on however, she heard something outside like whooshing air, and was worried it was the pool. But when she looked, she saw instead some tall, shaggy-haired kid spraying some kind of stuff into my brother's bedroom window. Let me tell you, I've never heard my mom's voice like that when she screamed at that kid to get out. I didn't see, but according to her, he tore out of the yard like a bat out of hell.

It was a good thing too, because the whole ordeal scared me, and I ran to the back door to see if I could catch him. He was gone, and lucky for him, because I had enough adrenaline pumping through my veins I'm more than sure I could've taken him down.

We discovered that the kid had sprayed doe urine into my brother's window, and now the whole house reeked of it. Oh, lovely. Chris thinks he knows who did it, and I told him he better let this "friend" of his know that if I ever catch him in my yard again, I'll beat his ass to the ground and hold him until the cops can get there.

Don't laugh--I will. Then he can ride home in the police car for trespassing and destruction of property. Friggin' hooligan.

*shakes cane*

Charming

Mike (text message): I'm gonna go poo, then I'll call you!

--------------------

Last night I spent about an hour craning my neck up to watch the sky for meteors, because Shruti said the biggest meteor shower of the year took place last night. I didn't even see one, but Dad and Chris were out in the pool while I was inside, and said they saw one so big it lit up the sky! Chris was even facing away from it, and told me he could see the light from it reflected in the water. Holy crap, I would've loved to have seen that!

So I painted this yesterday. The entire thing, while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And I was even done far enough before the end that I could just sit back and watch Cedric get snuffed out. I've never painted anything that fast--in fact, it usually takes me at least several days or up to weeks to finish a painting--but certainly I've never painted anything that fast that looked even remotely acceptable. I feel very happy with it.

I'm moving back up to school at the end of this week, and I'll be there permanently a week from Wednesday. I'm a little excited, a little anxious, but mostly ready. For now though, I have two more days left of work.

Remodel '07

Whew! After two and a half months of work, Mom and I have finally finished remodeling the living room and dining room of the house. We pretty much changed everything in both cases, to the point that if you've set foot in my house before, you wouldn't recognize it now. We tore down wallpaper, re-painted walls and trim, took down curtains, refinished cupboard doors, pulled up carpeting, cleaned and varnished the hardwood floors underneath, and replaced all the outlet covers. Literally, this has been a solid project since May. Mom and I would work all day and come home and work on the house until we went to bed. On weekends I would visit Mike, and this is all I've done this summer. And with a week left before I move, we've finished in the nick of time.

Please, check out the finished project for yourself! I took shots of the dining room, as well as before and after shots of the living room throughout the remodel. I've uploaded them to Flickr and created a folder especially for it, which you can view here. I would recommend clicking on the thumbnails as well, because I spent quite a bit of time editing them to describe what's going on in each picture and identifying it as before, during, or after. Tell me what you think! Believe me when I say, Mom and I are really happy to sit down and relax! :)

It adds character

EDIT: You know you've talked to your man on the phone a lot when you can guess what he's eating just by the sound of his chewing.

I think I saw a meteor or something fall across the sky tonight. Can any astronomy enthusiast confirm this to be possible? It definitely wasn't lightning or a firework... I wouldn't have mistaken it for one of those. Still, I've never seen a meteor shower before, so I can't be entirely sure that's what I saw either.

I have a ton of stuff to do before going back to school. I mean, whoa. Holy crap. The usual stuff is included in this, such as worrying whether I have enough money. But there's new stuff too! Like getting a parking permit. >_< A week from today (Wednesday) is my last day of work, and I'm moving most of my stuff up next Friday.

Mom and I have almost finished the living room, and we're on the last legs of varnishing the floor. Colby has walked in it a few times, and there's even a little doggy print near the front door that's visible through the varnish when the light hits it just right. Mom and I have taken this in stride, however, and have taken to calling such minor imperfections "character." ;)

I'm going to update Flickr with a complete collection of before/after pics of the job, and once I'm at school I fully intend to add massive photos to Facebook as well. Um, if I have time. O_o

August. Pooey.

Well, today is the first of August I guess, and for the past eighteen or so years of my life August has only meant one thing -- back to school. I've got one more full week of work, three days (my last day is the fifteenth), and then a little over a week of chaos while I move back to the stimulating Big Rapids! I'm very eager of course to see all my friends, live in the Lakehouse, and get through another year of pharm school (to be that much closer to the end!). I will, however, be sad to see the summer end. I really enjoyed living at home these past few months.

All in all, I'd say I had a fulfilling summer vacation:

• I conquered my crippling fear of driving
• I was Mom's exercise buddy
• I helped remodel over half the house
• I helped convince Mom to go back to school
• I worked a full-time internship position
• I turned 22
• I celebrated three wonderful years with Mike

On the horizon is my last intense academic year in school. The end of this year will mark my halfway point through graduate school, and the remaining two years will be busy but more practical and hands-on. I think about it with a building anxiety, but there's a part of me that misses it. There's a part of me that, despite this siesta, continues to sprint passionately towards that finish line.