The Best is Yet to Come...

Roommate's right, I tend to only blog when I'm at work.
I think it's because it's one of the very few times per month that I have to be in one place for several consecutive hours. I can't study, get on Facebook, or call anyone outside of the hospital, but I have a computer, the Internet, and about 8.5 hours of nothing to do (weekends are slow at the blood bank).

Today I ended up on one of my old blogs. I think I've mentioned on here before that I used to blog a LOT back in the day. I had a public Xanga from 2002-2008, and a semi-private blog on another site from 2005-2008ish. I'd write at least once or twice a week, sometimes multiple times a day.
Now I'm so glad to have those little recordings of my past because I can go back and read through the memories and how I felt about them as they happened.

So, like I said, today I ended up going through one of them that I hadn't seen for a while. It was from my sophomore and junior years at Purdue, a time that I now look back on as being the "good old days".

Lately, with this new batch of stress I've been under (does that EVER really change? I hope so...), I've been getting really nostalgic about the good old days. I've missed the times at Purdue, that I now look back and think how safe and predictable it all was. How easy it was then, compared to now. But was it really?
Reading through the old entries, it was so interesting to see all the struggles I had back then. I was trying to figure out how to have a normal adult relationship, dealing with roommate issues, studying my ass off, and wondering if med school was the right choice for me. It seemed I'd usually write when I was either really happy or really frustrated, but it was an eye-opener for me to see how much it wasn't really the "good old days." It was just growing up. Figuring out the world and how to deal with the people in it.

So maybe the good old days are yet to come. I'll always get a little nostalgic about my Purdue days, but now I think it's because I learned and grew so much while I was there. And clearly I still have some things to figure out. But I feel somewhat better now about looking into the past, because I know that the future is going to be so much more exciting in many ways.

Mini-Vacation!

Well, as of right now, the weather forecast in Miami has cleared up considerably! It's still supposed to be insanely hot and humid, but that's better than rain!!

Woke up a couple of hours later than planned this morning. I'm trying to balance rest with all of the things I have to do before early EARLY tomorrow morning when we leave for the airport!

Still have all of the packing to do, plus some shopping...time to start the day!

I'm Still Crazy...

...but at least I'm flying out to Miami instead of driving!

Everything for this trip has worked out beautifully:

• * I just happened to have Thursday and Friday off since it just happened to be the one week between oncology and peds clinicals where we have nothing scheduled...
• * Monica just happened to also be free at that time, too...
• * We found a flight that got us out to Miami on Friday in plenty of time to see quals and somehow got a direct flight back on Sunday...
• * ...direct flight back just happens to be one of the IRL charters, so Roommate and an assortment of other IRL homies will be on it too!
• * Renting a car was cheap as hell.
• * Hotel stay worked out because Roommate has a 2-bed room all to himself!
• * Got the pit passes once again from my favorite team

It's all working out so perfectly, right?!

Wrong.

Let's hope the forecast changes!! Let's REALLY hope!!! Really.

btw, what's the difference between 'isolated' and 'scattered' storms? Which is better if you're, say, trying to avoid them?

New Show

I started out watching FlashForward the other day because I think Joseph Fiennes is hot (I could watch Shakespeare In Love all day). To my surprise, though, it turned out to be a really awesome show. Nice combo of an intriguing plotline, action shots, and interesting characters. I hope it continues to be as good throughout the season!

Everyone should go watch it.

Am I Crazy?

Really, am I??

Back From A Little Break...

I used to be so good at blogging. Seriously.

First of all, so much has gone on that I can't possibly catch up with it all on here! I spent a wonderful week on vacation in San Fransisco and Sonoma...

Went to the race in Sonoma and watched my KV Racing buddies get P4 (and of course reprising my umbrella girl role)...

(me, looking like a huge dork on the starting grid...unfortunately probably the best pic of me from the weekend)

Went to the race in Chicagoland with my dad and got to be there for the exciting P3 finish (no umbrella girl this time, since it was a night race...)

Evidence of night race

Evidence of P3 (!)

After that was the start of a new semester (#3 out of 5...10 months to go!) and getting into the swing of my awesome new job as a student nurse in the OR. This was all followed by a great Labor Day weekend with a trip to Purdue with the roommate for a football game and some nostalgia, a fun BBQ, and dinner with awesome new friends.

SO, as you can see, I haven't had much time for the ol' blog. And when I have, I'm usually just too tired to try.

There have been quite a few times that I've started blog posts only to end up leaving them unfinished. Tonight is no exception; this is actually the second one I've started (though it looks more promising that I'll actually finish it - I went to the trouble of actually adding a few pictures).

Unfortunately, along with all of the good stuff that's been going on, there's been some bad stuff too, and some really bad stuff. Today I found out that my Nana probably doesn't have much longer to live. Hours, maybe days left. I got a chance to go down and visit with her and my family today, which is priceless. I'm so glad I got a chance to see her and talk with her one more time. It's hard - one of the hardest things I've ever done - and I don't really feel like writing too coherently or being eloquent about it at the moment.

So, for now, that's all. More to come, seriously.

Favorite Thing of the Day

It's barely 8:00am, and I already have my favorite thing of the day!

If you haven't already, check out Capture Indy, a project put on by the Indy Star that works with local photographers toward making a coffee-table book about the Indianapolis area.

The site itself allows you to browse and vote on the pictures uploaded by the various photographers. I really like the Scapes of All Sorts section...truly stunning stuff in there.

Some of my favorites:
Reflections
Good Memories from May
Circle of Lights
Downtown Library
Fireworks (this is what I could see from the townhouse!)
Skyline

Enjoy! We live in a very pretty city :)

Everybody's Working for (during) the Weekend...

...or maybe it's just me. Sort of feels like it. Well, Brian's working this weekend at Mid-Ohio, but at least he gets to stay in a nice hotel and eat good food. So he wins.

Everyone else I know is probably still sleeping right now. I, however, am giving out blood products like it's trick or treat on Halloween. It's been a surprisingly busy day at the ol' blood bank, yet the time has not passed any faster. I'm not quite to the point of being completely bored, but I feel like it should be at least 12:30 by now.

Wednesday marked the END of my psych rotation!!! Honestly, by the end it wasn't as bad as it was in the beginning, but we were ALL still so glad when it was over.

We went to Brugge to celebrate, because having fries has sort of become a nursing school thing. The fries were as good as I remembered with their amazing dipping sauces (even though, between 5 of us, we couldn't even finish half of the l'enorme size!), but I ordered a sandwich as well and I really didn't like it. There was way too much salt! Added onto the salt on the fries and it basically just tasted like eating a salt shaker. Not particularly pleasant. I guess some people (like Belgians...) really like the taste of salt, but I'm not one of them!
Another thing: if you call ahead to reserve a table, they tell you they don't do that. Yet on their website it gives a number for call head seating!
So yeah, I'd say that time at Brugge was a 2-star experience, but I'd consider going back for fries sometime.

Last night I went out with the Jew Crew, who I haven't seen in months. It was great to catch up with them. We hung out at Adam's for a bit, then walked over to Bourbon Street Distillery and sat out on the upper level patio with a pitcher of Blue Moon. Good times.

And now...I'm at work....only 3.5 hours left!

10 Down, 2 To Go

Another day down in my psych clinical rotation. Today a patient taught me how to play Michigan City Dominoes, a game they play in the Indiana State Prison apparently. I may or may not have some more street cred just for knowing how to play it.



In continuing with my Etsy obsession, here's another use for dominoes that is way cuter...

These little koi from 215Design are so adorable! They're made with Japanese paper attached to mini dominoes. Too cute.

That's all for now!

Favorite Thing of the Day

I signed up with Etsy a while ago and started browsing around, but the amount of stuff got a little overwhelming and it seemed hard to navigate around long enough find the good stuff with my short attention span.

Well, apparently all I need is a few (or about 6) hours of nothing else to do but stare at a computer screen and try not to fall asleep when no one needs any blood (a.k.a. work on the weekends), because I am now pretty much obsessed with Etsy.

It's great! I'm trying to be financially responsible and save up my money for the Cali vacation, but even just the "window shopping" is nice. And it's great inspiration for ideas for my bedroom at the townhouse. Plus, it gets me pumped for the Renegade Craft Fair in September!

I love craft-y things and attempt to make some myself at times. I even signed up to start a store, which is currently completely empty but I hope to be able to sell some of my creations somewhere down the line.

So that makes two websites (Twitter and Etsy) that I used to think I'd never use but, thanks to work, are now part of my daily internet rounds.

And now I follow Etsy on Twitter.

Favorite Thing (Movie) of the Day

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun...."

Yesssss.

How I love this movie.

Random

So I had a really good hair day today. Despite what it might sound like, I'm not actually bragging about that because I have pretty much zero control over whether my hair looks good or not on any given day. I do the exact same thing to it each day and it seems to just decide for itself after that if it wants to cooperate or not. I usually end up being either relatively ok with it or I feel like I need another shower to just start all over, but when I got home tonight after visiting my parents and happened to look in the mirror, I was actually surprised. It looked GOOD. Good like how I always try to make it look but never quite succeed.

How this happened is beyond me. I tried to examine it further to see if I could recreate it, but I know that's just futile.

Maybe, hopefully, one day my good hair will decide to show up again. And maybe it'll stick around for a while next time.

Told you this was random.

Time for sleep...gotta be up in 5 hours for work...

Favorite Thing of the Day

Bête noire from Rene's Bakery in Broad Ripple

(a.k.a flourless chocolate cake)

It was first discovered (at The Urban Townhouse, at least) by Brian, who brought some home from The Best Chocolate in Town (which, really, I'm pretty sure it is the best chocolate in town).

Now, I LOVE chocolate. Love is sometimes even an understatement. But in general, I'm not too much of a fan of flourless chocolate cakes. They're usually too much like a chocolate brick on a plate. But when I tried this one... O.M.G.

Then we got about half a cake more from some amazing party guests last weekend, as if they knew!

The cake has the perfect amount of moisture and air (?...I'm no chef) so that it's not too dense, and the ganache is TRULY amazing. It even tastes the same after being in the fridge for a few days :)

Party!

The townhouse was officially broken in last night with the long-awaited housewarming party! Turned out exactly as I hoped it would!! The food, the drinks, the DJ, the guests...all was great! And I think everyone had a great time, too.

The roommate and I spent the entire day getting ready...I was up at 6:30am and Brian had stayed up until 3:30am putting together the furniture from our IKEA trip on Friday. We cleaned, put away all of the stuff we hadn't gotten around to since moving in, hung a whole bunch of wall art, cleaned some more, and set up all of the food and drinks. Alex, one of Brian's friends, was our awesome DJ for the night and came over early to set up. He brought all of his equipment and vinyls and Brian hooked up a bunch of home theatre speakers on the project table in the dining room. It was such a perfect arrangement that people thought we brought in the table just for that!

Throwin' down the hottest tracks.

By the time the party started, I was definitely proud of all of our hard work and planning because the place looked great!
We had the drinks set up in the kitchen....pretty much anything you could ever want, alcoholic or non-alcoholic. A few lovely people brought us wine as a housewarming gift, too, so we definitely didn't run out! We had tons of food set up on tables in the dining room - a bunch of little cakes and cookies, a sushi pyramid, various dips and chips, and some more lovely people brought us all kinds of other goodies. The living room was more chill, with the couch and a lot of chairs, and was where most people went to talk.

As the night progressed, we even busted out the party lights and people got their dance on.

Overall, it was wonderful and I'm so thankful for everyone who came and that it turned out so well!

Needless to say, I have gotten next to no studying done for the exam I have in 24 hours!! Time to get on that...

Guess Where I Am...

...if you guessed work, you'd be right! Ah, work...the only place where I actually have the time and motivation to blog anymore because there is next to nothing going on for 8 hours straight.
I'm not even going to make excuses about why I don't blog as much as I should nowadays, because that seems to always be the case!

One thing I've noticed lately is that I need to start taking pictures more often. I usually only remember my camera for the big events and nights out, which are definitely good memories but not always the things you wish you could revisit the most when looking back.
It might have something to do with the fact that I have an ancient camera. I think it might start to die soon. I'm trying to remember if it's the one I got for my 19th birthday, and I'm pretty sure it is, which is sad. I'm so outdated.
My favorite blogs are also those that have tons of pictures. I definitely get really lazy and distracted when it comes to tons of words on a screen. And anyway, it can get really boring to just plain read about someone's life...

Sooo....more pictures are in order. And if I was on my own computer right now, I'd post some of the new townhouse, which in my opinion is gorgeous! I love it. It's not 100% finished yet, but I'd say about 85%. Still a few improvements, but it has a lot of potential!

After living mostly by myself for the past three years, having a roommate again is new territory for me. The hardest thing for me has been losing that aspect of my life where I could basically do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted in my own little world without having to let anyone know about it. But Brian and I are BFF, so we get along really well and I know we'll have a lot more good times in the future.

Plus I do get the place all to myself to relive my living-alone days when he's off at a race! :P

In other news, I had a big interview on Friday for a job that I am REALLY hoping to get!! Fingers crossed! I should find out later this week....

Anyway, off to go find something else to do until someone asks for blood products....

Blah.

Today started out not so bad and got increasingly stupid.

Had another exam this morning that went OK...not great, but not horrible. I think I'll end up with a B in this class. I've accepted it. The rest of the class was slightly painful with the 145 Powerpoint slides on diabetes that we had to get through, but overall it was less painful than it could have been. Having a lunch break in the middle really helps.

After class was over, I was so excited to be able to get home and finally take a nap! I've woken up at 5am for 6 out of the past 7 days...even on Memorial Day weekend I had to be up early for various reasons. I'm at the PACU this week for clinicals, which = no patients for me this week, which = no clinical paperwork, which made things even more amazing.
I happily went home, took out my contacts, got into my PJs and hopped onto the best couch in the world....

3 hours later....

Somehow I slept for 3 hours. Definitely wasn't expecting that. It automatically put me in a bad mood because I'd been hoping to sit outside and study for a while before working out, dinner, shower, and paperwork. But now my whole schedule was screwed up as it was already 5:30pm and cloudy outside.

I ate dinner and am somehow STILL doing paperwork...it's already 9pm and I don't think I'll be able to make it to the gym before it closes at 10. Extra lame.

Plus I'm in a bad mood overall....just a bad mood.

Anyway, this isn't very fun or entertaining. But that's how it goes tonight.

Hey, everyone.

As in everyone who doesn't read this.

So I apparently joined Twitter. You can follow me if you want. I'd like that. I still don't understand some things about how it works, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of dumb people who use Twitter (I've seen 'em), so I think I'll figure it out.

This makes two blog posts in two days! Surprised? I know. The main reason for this is because I'm at work this weekend and there's pretty much nothing going on. So for some reason I think people need to be updated about that.

I don't have any cool pics to post this time (work computer), but next time I plan on sharing pics of the good times that were the Indy 500 last weekend. You can see how baller I looked holding an umbrella.

In other news, I have a ridiculous amount of studying to do this weekend. We had an exam yesterday and now we have another one on Monday...in the same class. The entire month of June is more or less completely booked, with insane classes and moving. I need a personal day.

Sometimes I really wonder: What have I gotten myself into?? Life is just flying by right now.

Lame.

God, I suck at blogging.

Life has been insanely busy though, so I guess I have good excuses.

Nursing school has been keeping me the busiest, and when I have "free" time, I tend to be out doing things with people.

Just 10 days until the townhouse lease starts!!

More later, most likely over the weekend when I'll be at work and probably bored out of my mind!

Moving Again

Today I filled out the rental application for my next residental adventure: a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom townhouse with my homeboy Brian.

This will be the 7th place I've lived in the past 5 years....in other words, I'm looking forward to a time when I'm not semi-nomadic. I'm also no stranger to moving, which I loathe more than almost anything. But I'm really looking forward to this next place for a lot of reasons.
First of all, Brian and I are good friends. We like to do slightly nerdy things like go to home shows, look at IKEA/Pottery Barn/Crate and Barrel catalogs, and watch Big Love and FOTC. So living together will be fun.
Secondly, the place is pretty cool. The building itself is over 100 years old, but it's been remodeled. Attached garage, alarm system, washer and dryer, etc. I wish I had a good picture of it to post here! I'm really excited to move in and start the redecorating process all over again.
It's also nice that it's not far from where I live now....literally 0.3 miles away, so the location is still great.

Until recently, I honestly thought I'd be living here at my current apartment for at least 2-3 years. I has just about everything I could ask for - very safe, great location, extremely nice people, covered and gated parking, well maintained, nice amenities....I've never once wished I lived somewhere else. So I do feel sort of sad to be leaving.
But at the same time, I don't feel sad in the way that I regret moving out....mostly I've found that the one thing I can't ever replace is the amazing view I have now (and the DVD rental machine in the lobby....)! But the things I will be glad to replace are having to go up and down 23 floors to do laundry (plus paying $2.75 per load), and I won't have to walk across a parking lot to get to my building anymore. I'm also getting cable again and saving about $200/month! It's amazing what you can get when you split the cost with someone.

Anyway, overall I'm excited and looking forward to it! I guess moving so much has made me appreciate all the different places I've lived in the past 5 years in various ways...I have good and bad memories from each place that I hope to keep for a long time.

Sooo....now I should do actual work.....somehow the semester is almost over!

Randoms

Made it through another week! I can't believe this semester is almost over...then I'll be 1/5 of a nurse! I just know the next 4 semesters are going to fly by. It's weird to think about what we'll all be like by graduation.

For now, I'm at home for the evening, which I'm thrilled about. I need some time to myself sometimes! I plan on sitting around in PJs, watching a movie, and writing (which I'm now amped up about after the little writer's meeting with Kate on Wednesday!). Perfect!

Speaking of perfect, the weather today was completely amazing! Melissa, Cerissa and I sat outside of Riley today for an hour and a half before our final assessment check off. It was great and everything smelled like flowers. :)

Pic from my window a few evenings ago....told you this was a random entry.