Good Times

So it's been a week since I last posted, and it would be crazy of me to try to go through all that has happened in those past 7 days, because it's a lot. The short version is that life is good and I really need to start bringing my camera to things. The longer version is:

I've spent most of the past week at work. 6-8 hours a day on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Since I have to get up so early to get there, I'm always tired early, too. This is a strange feeling, and must be what being a grown up feels like.

To combat this, I spent the rest of the weekend (while I wasn't at work) partying. On Friday night, I got about two hours of sleep, and on Saturday about four. Both parties, one of which was my housewarming party, were a great success (high five!). I was ridiculously tired at work, but I survived.

Friday was the housewarming-type party for Jon, who I work with, and his roommate. My housewarming party on Saturday was great - lots of fun with great people. We spent a while at my place, with some beer, food, and the Olympics, then went to Tiki Bob's on S. Meridian for dancing and a few more drinks.

Monday night I went to another housewarming party (it must be moving season) out on the eastside suburbs where some of Jon's friends live. Then last night a few of us went out to see Tropic Thunder.

Today I got to sleep in, then drove up to Carmel for some quality time with my dear Vickilea. We walked the Monon for a while, stopping at random places along the way (random mystery bookstore, chocolate shop, museum of something, Bub's where we spent about 5 hours while waiting for change), then we went to the pool, which is something I seriously haven't done in years. I've discovered that I like going to the pool. To top off the quality time, Vicki read my tarot cards, which was awesome.

Tomorrow I start my 8,527th semester. It's such a habit now that if I wasn't going to school, I would feel weird. I suppose one day I won't be in school, but who knows when that will be. Maybe like 5 years from now? I just need some more letters after my name.

Friday I finally get my first grown up paycheck! I'll be straight up ballin'. (I live in a city now, so I can say "ballin'".)

This weekend is going to be awesome because not only is Crystal coming to visit, but I get to go to the Colts game on Sunday!!! I am SO excited and you'd better believe I'll finally bring a camera.

After that, it's back to work and school.

I can't complain though; life is good.

Day Off?

Today is supposedly my day off, although it doesn't really feel like it because I have to do everything that I can't do while I'm at work every other day of the week.

I started off this past weekend house/pet sitting for one of my parents' neighbors here in Carmel, which means I have to commute to and from work during rush hour. Yesterday while trying to get back I-465 was completely stopped both ways for about half a mile, all because of one guy getting pulled over by four cop cars. Seriously? I'm not a fan of commuting.

This week, I'm working every day except today, including the weekend. I don't mind it because not only am I making good money, but I actually really like the job too. But with the hours, I basically can't do much else with the rest of my day. My free time is mostly spent taking care of the plants and animals here, and sleeping.

Friday I have to get everything together here before work, and then that evening Jason is coming to visit! I'm so excited! :) It kind of sucks that I have to work all day and then go to work early the next morning, but I'm sure we'll still have fun.
Then Saturday is my housewarming party! I'm going to try to get out of work around 2 so that I can actually get set up for that and all. Then work at 7am on Sunday. :'( I really hope it all works out OK this weekend, because it's a lot of stuff to cram into 48 hours.

Anyway, that's what's been going on here lately. Insanely busy!

More Awesomeness!

This past 24 hours has been great!

Crystal, my dear friend since the days of yore (May 7, when anatomy started and we happened to sit next to each other....) needed a place to stay for the night since her apartment lease is up, so I told her she could stay at mine. We went to Bourbon Street Distillery for dinner and had some delicious salads while being extremely nerdy and whipping out study guides in the middle of the loud restaurant.

After dinner, we resisted the extremely strong urge to drive to Cheesecake Factory ($1.50/slice cheesecake yesterday!!! wtf?!?!), and instead opted for Dunkin' Donuts down the street (closer, and also delicious). We brought our donuts back to my place and started the marathon studying...of course taking a break somewhere around 11pm to watch some Grey's Anatomy DVD and eat the donuts. We got up pretty early this morning for even more studying (in between dozing off and getting ready to leave). So much learning.

We got to the exam pretty early, did some more cramming, and then finally took the damn thing. I was sort of nervous because, even though I'd studied a lot and had always done well in the past, sometimes you just never know what's going to be thrown at you and I needed to do well to keep my A in the class.

Well.... I DID!!

Anatomy = *OWNED*, Physiology = *OWNED*, IUPUI GPA so far = 4.0

After the exam, Crystal, Maresa, Heather, and I went to PF Chang's for lunch. Even just walking through the mall to get to the restaurant was fun...we were all in such good moods after finally finishing both classes over the past two months.
The food was delicious, of course, and we even got some of those cute little $2 dessert cups (highly recommended). After lunch, we walked back through the mall and very actively resisted buying things, and then went to check our grades on campus.

After saying goodbye to my three favorite classmates, I met up with Vicki! We hung out at my place, then strolled Mass Ave for a while. I finally went into Silver In The City and Luna Music, two places that I will definitely be returning to. I love that I live just down the street from all that. Then, we went back to my place and listened to a tape (yes, like a cassette tape) of the two of us from freshman year in high school. We're talking 8 years ago. Back then, we went on a kick where we'd take this little tape recorder with us sometimes when we'd hang out at each other's houses or once when we went to school. We were very...um....interesting....young women. We couldn't really understand all of what we were saying, but our lives back then seemed to consist mostly of lauging with a lot of loud, high pitched talking and Offspring/Sublime/random semi-popular music of the day playing in the background.

After we'd exhausted the entertainment we could get from the tape (which, by the way, used to be an educational Spanish tape from elementary school), she went back to the land of Carmel and I ended up here, in the computer room of my apartment complex, finally getting connected to the internet again.

Ya know, even though it's sometimes (OK, usually) annoying that I don't have a regular (not to mention secure) internet connection in my apartment, it's sort of nice to have to do other things instead of being attached to my computer. I think I'll go a little longer without ordering cable and see what happens.

Tomorrow I'm off to WL to clean out my apartment for the last time (not really excited about all of the cleaning), turn in the keys, and then I'm officially moved out of WL and Purdue for good. Sort of a weird feeling since I've lived there for the past four years, but it's the way life goes, I guess.

And life....is awesome. I love it. I have a healthcare job, got A's in both of my summer classes, awesome family and friends, great new apartment in a wonderful city, I've been going out a lot lately, and meeting more new people all of the time.

Awesomeness!!

I GOT A JOB! :D

I'm now a lab assistant at the blood bank, serving three of the biggest and best known hospitals in the state. Good times!!

In related news, I got an email from an awesome professor in nursing who's been helping me out and I might have another job and volunteer opportunity with the nursing school. That will DEFINITELY be awesome, too! The nursing school here is my top priority, so getting a chance to work there would be the best.

Lots of jeorbs!

It's so nice to be able to have an income again!

I'm excited!! :)

In other news, things have been going GREAT here. I love this city and my life here. My apartment is almost all done and, after finally getting my bed and couch last weekend, it's been a lot of fun decorating and getting ideas of what to do.

Indy is such a great city because there are so many places to go and things to do on any given day. If something's not going on, then there's always a new restaurant or something to check out. I have a growing list of places both here and in Broad Ripple that I've heard of and want to try out, and have been checking things off lately. Not to mention how awesome it is that I can walk to so many places.

I've also been meeting and hanging out with so many new people over these past couple of weeks. I'm learning not to pass up any opportunity where I could possibly meet people, even if it doesn't seem logical that I'd talk to or become friends with anyone there, because you can meet people just about anywhere. I've even met people at the Starbucks near campus and the study rooms at my apartment complex. It's great.

School is going well, too. Only one week left of summer classes and I'm hoping to escape the summer sessions with a 4.0. Today's exam didn't go as well as I'd hoped it would, but I still have a pretty good chance for an A in the class so all is not lost.
After classes are over, I've got a couple of weeks without class, so I'll be working and housesitting in Carmel (more money!). Hopefully I'll hear from the nursing school soon and be doing that, too. AND if I have time, some more Red Cross stuff.

My life is an exciting adventure.

Apartment!

So I finally got the keys to my new apartment!! It's all mine now :) Somehow just knowing that when I went there today automatically made it seem more like home than it ever has before, even though I've been in and around it pretty often during the whole process.
I know it's going to take some getting used to for a little while....things like going to the basement to do laundry again, having 4 new keys and a keycard and remembering which doors they go to, still having to figure out where the nearest grocery store is, and how those first few nights at a new place by yourself always feel as you get used to the different sounds and sights of the place at night.

But I finally once again feel like this is going to be fun. It'll probably be scary sometimes, probably lonely sometimes too, but overall it's going to be a new adventure.

In honor of my new apartment, my mom bought me mace.

In other news, I heard back from my contact last night that she has a lead on the job. I'm still trying (but mostly in vain by now) not to get my hopes up too much, but when I'm honest with myself I think if it doesn't work out I'll feel really sad. The more I think about a chance at having a job like that, the more I feel like it would be extremely great. I know that's probably a dangerous way of feeling, since it sets me up for being disappointed, but I don't think I can help it after a certain point.
So, I hope it's good news!!

In more news, I have this ridiculous exam tomorrow morning. This class is definitely a lot more work than the last one, which was a little shocking at first. At least know I know how much work I have to put into it to do well (a lot).
Time for studying....

First Night Out!

So I spent last night downtown, which I'd been looking forward to ever since my awesome anatomy lab partner Crystal and I had talked last week about hitting some bars and clubs after our exam.

After seeing a show at the IRT with my family. It was a musical, which is something pretty different for my family and I. We like to try some sort of show each year, but usually not a musical....I dunno, maybe I just don't get musicals. When I was younger I always got annoyed that people would interrupt the story to start singing a song.
But anyway, after the show I met up with Crystal and we decided to go check out the places on South Meridian. There are quite a few options all within the same little area, and we really didn't know what most of them were like, so we decided to just go check out whatever sounded interesting. We started out at Subterra Lounge. It's a pretty modern chic place - lots of deep oranges and reds with multicolored lighting under the glass plates that line some of the walls. Our problem there was that it was about 10:30pm, which means the crowds haven't picked up by then. According to the bartender (who was sort of nice), it had been a little slow there over the past couple of weeks on Thursday nights. Not sure why, but Crystal and I didn't have any Thursday night downtown experience yet anyway, so we didn't really know what to expect. After about an hour and a glass of wine later, we decided to go check out some other places.
We stopped by Have A Nice Day Cafe in hopes of dancing, but they had some sort of radio show contest thingy going on, so we decided to come back later and went back across the street to Blu. Of the places we went, I think Blu definitely had the best atmosphere and music. Unfortunately, also no dancing! We each got beers and were there until about midnight, when we figured the whole radio thing might be over and we might get to dance after all. So we went back to Have A Nice Day and, lo and behold, people were dancing! Hooray! Have A Nice Day is '70s themed and reminds me of the Cactus, but smaller and without the giant cups. It has a pretty fun lighted dance floor, which is what we came there for in the first place. The crowd was mostly college-aged people and others in their 20s, with a few older looking people in business suits who probably were a little too old to be there and probably didn't know it. Such is a bar, though. But we danced a lot and made new friends on the dance floor. :)
After a while and getting ridiculously hot from all the dancing, we decided to call it a night and walked the couple of blocks back to the car.

Overall, it was a lot of fun!!! :) Too bad I didn't bring my camera. Drinks were ridiculously expensive (at least where we got them), but we only paid $3 cover all night (@ Have A Nice Day). Crystal said she heard that everyone goes to Broad Ripple on Friday nights and downtown on Saturday nights, so we will definitely be testing out that theory a lot in the weekends to come! :D