Blizzard Survival (read only if you are not sick of hearing about it...if so skip to the last paragraph)

Hmmm....here I am back in Yankton, at work once again. Yes, I have survived the memorable blizzard of Christmas 2009. If it wasn't for it's awful timing, I might have actually really enjoyed it to be honest with you. I don't know if I've ever seen 18 inches of snow all at once in my life and it's really kind of pretty outside. (haha. all of you fellow blizzard blasted people are probably laughing with disapproval right now.) BUT, it so happened that it was also the first time in my 22 years of life that I didn't spend Christmas Eve at my Grandma's house with all of my cousins. By that night, we were already stranded out in never never land (gravel roads...yikes) and the rest of the family didn't think it wise to risk blizzard blinded roads. I also missed midnight mass and was nearly devastated over the deal. The only way my family got into town to go to church at all was because of my dear old Dad and his trusty loader bucket tractor. He scooped us out before 5:30 p.m. mass Christmas Eve and then we all prayed the drifts wouldn't blow shut and leave us stranded in town that night. So when Christmas day rolled around, it didn't feel much like Christmas at all because there was no prelude. I spent the day watching movies, playing card games and preparing some things for a TEC retreat I'm working at on January 2. It was nice to have both of my brothers trapped there too, but after so much time together, we needed our space.

Now, I was supposed to be present back in Yankton the day after Christmas to work...hahahaha! yeah right. We couldn't even get out of our driveway due to the massive drifting of snow. I didn't feel too bad because the clinic turned out to not even be open due to the blast in Yankton as well. My brother Andy instead tied a sled to the back of the four wheeler and tried his hand in killing me as he burned around the cornfield with me in tow. I was quite the acrobat as I did some interesting somersaults and leg kicks when I was thrown off the thing. (My neck is really very sore still today....and my Mom wasn't slow to scorn at us and point out that dumb playing around like that is how kids break there necks...oh well...I survived and it was fun!)

Ok. So Sunday. I was supposed to work again. But, it so happened that highway 81 was closed. My other possible route was listed as blizzard. I had to call in once again and let my fellow employees know that I was in fact still stranded. Bless their souls for understanding (they even let me skip work on Wednesday in anticipation of the storm so that I wasn't stranded up here alone for Christmas). Turns out that 81 opened back up at about 1:30 yesterday afternoon and beings I had to work again today, I decided to make a go of it and finally come back and be responsible. BAD IDEA!! I thought I would die on the way back. I was super tense and at one point in time I even started singing the Hail Mary to the tune of the song on my CD. I have never seen such massive drifts!! I had to sit and wait for plows to blow us a path three different times and I pummeled through one lane passages on the highways way too many times. I just went through clenching the wheel chanting, "Oh God, oh God, oh God...please don't let anyone be coming through from the other direction and please, please, please don't let me get stuck in this thing. AND, I made it (it took an extra hour longer than usual)!! My only battlewound was a frazzled mind.

Ok. now that I bored you with yet another blizzard story to go with the hundreds I'm sure you've already heard...well....I really have nothing else to talk about. Except that I'm going sledding tomorrow!!! Woohoo!! I've arranged a group of my Mount Marty friends to come up here and make use of this ridiculous snow. Hopefully it's not freezing out. And then tomorrow evening I'm going to try and face my new fear of highway 81 and head back to Nebraska for a TEC reunion Christmas party, afterwhich I'll continue my bravery and head back home (this time hopefully with the freedom to leave when I feel that I've had enough :P). Wednesday I'll have the chance to watch my brother Jeff play basketball in holiday tournament action and then GOOOO HUSKERS!!!!!! And after that...well things are not planned...not well at all. I may be in Yankton and then back down to Lincoln, maybe even Omaha. We'll see where the New Year takes me. :) And the last week of break...well I'm heading back to Worthington and Adrian, MN to sled and spend time with more Mount Marty friends before heading back to Yankton to work. And then my last ever Mount Marty College break is over and my last semester here begins! ...and that's too much for me to wrap my head around right now...

Happy new year everyone!! Have fun, be safe, and watch out for blizzards!!!

P.S. The wedding that I mentioned in my last post - the former MMC volleyball player - it turned out to be a heck of a good time and a great reunion. The picture in this post is of the volleyball group that came for the celebration (mius the bride?? oops...). I love weddings!!! :)

Displaced Personhood

WHOA!!! To all of my dedicated blog readers (if there's any of you still out there..) I am very sorry for my absence. Things kind of got out of hand after Thanksgiving break. AND...here I sit at the beginning of Christmas break, post-finals, post-graduation, post two snow days during finals, heck, post-everything. :P

Where to begin? I finished the semester with stellar grades. My name will once again appear on the Dean's List for what it's worth. Right in the middle of finals week, some sort of arctic blast came through and we had two snow days. The yucky thing about snow days during finals week is that they have to be made up, though. Anywho, beings my actual finals week wasn't very demanding at all (mostly because I chose to make it that way by putting in a VERY minimal studying effort) I sat around and simply had a jolly old time for two days. It was absolutely fantastic!! The great thing was that I had a couple of nursing friends and student teacher friends who had no finals, so I got to spend my time being unproductive with them. I watched more movies than I have all semester. I participated in the making of a documentary for my friend who graduated on Saturday. I joined my Bede floor family for a mini-photo shoot to make Christmas postcards (I have included a couple of smile-worthy snapshots for your enjoyment. As our card said, "Merry Christmas...from our Bede family to your!!). I practiced my piano skills (I have a Christmas song book to celebrate the season) I played a bored game. I made candy cane reindeer. I even colored a few pictures! I LOVED it all! :) I was disappointed all of my friends couldn't have joined in the relaxation. Sadly, I even know a couple that were pulling all-nighters studying and writing papers. :( (BUT they're done now too and survived!!!)

So now I should be home eating a lot of wonderful food, cooking with my mom, watching my little brother play basketball, cleaning, shopping, wrapping presents.... but I'm not. I'm still in Yankton. You see, we are down an employee at the pharmacy so I am working nearly my entire break (convenient for my co-workers that they are short at the exact time of my break). I'm staying in an apartment with a friend now, on the days that she's here anyway. I visit my dorm room (we're not allowed to stay over break) during lunch breaks. I feel very much like a displaced person. Who knows where I'll be staying tomorrow night. AHHHHH!!! It makes me sad to think about having to work so much, but the income will be nice. I just have to keep telling myself that. Oh, and I was lucky enough to be able to make a quick trip home on Saturday night to watch my brother play. He's very impressive really...dominating force under the hoop! :)

AND on Thursday my parents are driving to Omaha to pick my sister up from the airport. She's flying home from Michigan for the weekend so that we can attend a former MMC volleyball player's wedding together. It will just be a grand ol' reunion all around. It's the excitement that's helping through this week. I miss my dear sister quite a LOT not to mention former volleyball friends as well. My break is going to be like that...I strategically plan my days off. I don't believe I'll be able to go home again until the evening of December 23rd. :( It could be more hectic than school. The next month will tell I suppose.

Anyway, I need to get back to work. These past 20 minutes have been the first time I've had a chance to even sit at work the past two days and 16 hours of being here. It's not a good time for people to be getting sick, but goodness gracious, they are. SO, I wish you and your families health and happiness and relaxation and love for the holidays.

Holiday Season

And I'm back! After spending four nights at home in Elgin, NE, I feel kind of refreshed. It's amazing how quickly I grow to miss all of my friends here even in being away such a short amount of time.



Thanksgiving in Elgin (well if you belong to the Catholic Church anyway) is not your typical holiday family-eat-lots-of-food celebration. You see, St. Boniface Parish puts on this huge Thanksgiving bazaar so if you are from the parish (like the Starman family) you have to work at it on Thanksgiving day and in the days leading up to the big event. My mom actually hates it because she grew up with the family feasts and get-togethers on the day. She always says that it's too bad us kids don't get to see what a "real" Thanksgiving celebration is. My dad on the other hand doesn't know any different. The bazaar has been going on for 80 some years, so for him, the bazaar is the excitement! It's an all out feast, just like at Grandma's house. As for me, I don't mind it because it's all I've ever known as well. It's kind of nice I suppose to get to share the holiday with not only your family, but also your friends and community as well. And what better than to serve others on a day for giving thanks?



On Friday morning, I convinced my mom to get up at 2:45 a.m. with me to brave the black Friday shopping crowds. We browsed through JC Penneys and Herbergers between 4 and 5 and I was shocked that the crowds really weren't that bad. But, I believe the reason was that all the people happened to be dispersed in ridiculously long lines outside of Shopko, Target and Walmart waiting to storm these stores when they opened at 5. Mom and I chose to check out Walmart's deals shortly after five. Perhaps the overflowing parking lot (people in the grass and nearby gas stations) should have been a far enough warning that Walmart was not the place to be, but we entered anyway. HOKEY PETE!! IT WAS MADNESS!!! The DVD bins were located right up front, which was the first fatal mistake as swarms of people blocked easy passage to anywhere else in the storm. I was scared I might be trampled and then I looked up to see a blind lady coming at me in the swarm. Now, I don't want to be prejudiced by any means, but I was scared for her. She couldn't see the masses shoving her and I could and I was scared. Long story short, Mom and I decided the lines weren't worth the wait and we exited Walmart and a few other stores as well. We went grocery shopping instead at Hy-Vee - might I add that people actually did the whole running bit here as well when the doors opened at six!!



The best part of break though was definitely seeing friends from home who I haven't been able to hang out with in far too long. Those nights and long overdue chats were a blessing.



Okay, now the exciting part of this post (hopefully you're still reading so you don't miss this): VESPERS!!! WOOHOOOO!! The official performance went down at 4:30 and 7:30 yesterday and it was simply beautiful (I hope the crowd enjoyed it as much as the choir did)!!!! For those of you who don't know, Vespers is the Mount Marty Choir Christmas Concert, held in the chapel with gospel readings between songs. This year we had an orchestra from Sioux Falls and it just made the music glorious. :) If I had to chose, I'd definitely say that the Chapel is one of the best places possible to sing with an orchestra - amazing acoustics. We also had a tenor soloist from California come down for the performance and he melted many hearts with his gorgeous voice! It was definitely one of my coolest memories here to have stood less than a foot behind the orchestra and sing Christmas music with them next to people I love. I could feel the risers we were standing on vibrating with the noise of the french horns!!! My only complaint was that my shoulders and back ached after standing for a good six hours (including a 2.5 hour afternoon rehearsal). Thanks to all of you who came down to support us and to enjoy the show. I'm sad that it is over and that was my last ever Vespers performance.

And that brings me to now - and now equals the last week of classes of the semester before finals. It's crunch time apparently and I'm still trying to figure out where time went.

Happy December everyone!!!

Eating Snails

Thanksgiving break begins for me in exactly 4 hours!!! WOoOOO!!!! :D I am very excited to go home to just be home for a few days. I can't even remember the last time I did that. And it make it even better, I have plans to see many, many friends who I love dearly and have not had the pleasure of seeing in quite some time - I am already thankful!!

I'm going to attempt to give you a brief synopses (while I'm in the process of rounding up my belongings to take home) of what has been going down here in and around my Bede dorm room.

1. Busy Person's Retreat.

I mentioned in my last post that this little thing was beginning. We had an opening prayer service on that Sunday night to kick it off and then met with individual spiritual advisors for 30 minutes every day for 4 days. Each of those nights there was an optional group prayer excerise as well. The outcome? It was definitely a wake-up call. Faith is one of those things that is easy to let slip through the cracks when life gets busy. It was kind of frustrating because I felt so busy that week that the relaxing time with my advisor and the group prayer things almost felt like a burden. Now the challenge is where to go from here? I Need to control this business thing!

2. Poetry.

I realized this past week that the semester is nearly over and that's bad news for my independent study Creative Writing class - it's really easy to let such a thing slip through the cracks as well. When there are no set class meeting times, it's almost as if the class doesn't exist until you check your syllabus and realize you have three weeks of class left and about half the books left to read. Oops! ... I did feel rather poetic this past week, but the busyness factor kind of kept that urge surpressed. If only there were more time to just read and write for the pure enjoyment of doing it!

3. New Moon

Have you gotten got up in all the hype over the new Twilight movie? Have you dressed like a vampire and gone to see it? I have - well I went to see it on opening day, NOT dressed like a vampire. I'm not really even a fan of the books. I thought the first movie was kind of not very good really at all, but I still drove to Sioux Falls (because Yankton was sold out) to watch it with friends. It turned out to be significantly better than the first movie in my opinion. Apparently the lady next to me thought so as well. A friend back at MMC sent me a text asking where I had run off to and I responded during the movie - I used my hand as a shield to block the light up factor of my phone, mind you, and it was on silent as well. The lady turned to me and harshly spit at me, "Um, EXCUSE ME, DO YOU MIND?" She then glared at me and turned her attention back to Edward. :S I didn't say anything. I was kind of intimidated. Naturally, I wanted to be angry, but I suppose I would have been irritated if my neighbor was texting during a movie I had been dying to see....who knows.

4. Fall Formal

Saturday night everyone dressed up all classy-like and headed to Hillcrest for the MMC Fall Formal. It was a great time with great friends!! See photos above! :) OH, it was also the source for the title of this blog. Before the dance, a group of us ate at a Cute Seafood Place here in Yankton (I honestly can't remember the name...it used to be the Lighthouse....) and I tried a snail and loved it! WOO! I felt very distinguished. :P

5. Omaha.

I spent my entire Sunday in the big city of Omaha. I had to go down there to a planning meeting for a Core Team TEC retreat I am helping with in January. Long day, but good works.

6. The End. Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!!!

Blue and Gold Days

It is currently 4:00 on a dreary Sunday afternoon mid-way through November and I am working and hoping that I restrain myself from any irritation when customers come in to pick up their medications while I am in the middle of a sentence. :) The afternoon is seeming to drag on forever because I am dreaming about taking a nap or talking to friends that I miss, or even of doing homework because Lord knows working here is not allowing me to get a whole lot of that done.

My fourth and final Blue and Gold Days (well as a Mount Marty student anyway...) has come and gone. It was another busy and very enjoyable weekend. As luck would have it, my Thursday night class was cancelled this past week, so I was able to switch my night at work from Friday to Thursday so that I could travel to the Dome in Vermillion with my good friend Briana on Friday night to watch her little brother and his Dell Rapids St. Mary's football team play for the state championship. Holy Toledo was it an exciting game!!!! The second half was by far one of the best halves of high school football I have ever watched. Dell Rapids staged a two touchdown come-from-behind run to take the lead. The exciting turnaround was highlighted by the coolest on-side kick I have ever witnessed (and it went off perfectly!) and of course stellar play by Briana's brother, Andrew (the only kid on either team I even remotely knew). But, despite the excitement, with two minutes left in the game, the opposing team staged a ridiculous drive and scored with somewhere around 30 seconds left to win the game. It was heartbreaking and I almost cried for the Dell Rapids players (remember, I didn't even know them!). I think I made a pretty decent stand-in fan though - I rounded up a T-shirt, cheek tattoos, tattoos on my hands (courtesy of Briana's mom), and even yelled and screamed and jumped up and down like I had been a cardinal all my life. :P

My Saturday began here at the pharmacy at 8:30 a.m. I worked until 1:00 and then left to actually join in the Blue and Gold Days festivities. I watched the Lancer women defeat Jamestown (I've heard they were before we defeated them, the #6 team in the nation???) in a rather impressive performance on the basketball court, headed straight over to Gregory Hall to sing with the choir for our Vespers Sneak Peak performance, trekked to the other side of Yankton to enjoy a supper at Arby's, came back and enjoyed the production of the Fall Play, and then bowled with a group of great friends and even the family of the year. :)

The Fall play was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was definitely worth a few laughs. It made me want to bust out my Clue board game and solve some mysteries. The whole cast and crew did a great job of putting together a fun play for family weekend. And bowling....well....I don't believe I ever broke 100. I through a few too many gutter balls and had sketchy form. BUT, I was able to somehow through the ball so that it jumped out of the gutter and back onto the lane to knock over a pin or two at the last minute (this happened to me twice!). The Stahl family (family of the year :) !!!!) made for a great cheering squad and threw a few classy strikes as well. All in all, it was great afternoon and evening and nice to have all of our wonderful families here to enjoy it with us.

And that brings me to today. I sang again this morning with the Chamber Choir at a beautiful mass in the Chapel and then headed straight over here. I am super ready to leave and head back to Mount Marty. Tonight's agenda = homework, food, laundry, beginning of the Busy Person's retreat (I'll have to remember to elaborate on that one in my next post) and SLEEP!!!! Have a great week!!

P.S. Less than a month left of 1st semester of my senior year!!!!! AHHHHH!!
P.P.S. I have a new piano book - a Christmas song one!!! YAY!!! I played Silent Night before Church this morning and it made my morning!

...

Great news: my phone decided to fall in sync with the rest of the world a couple of days after my last blog, I finished out my hectic spurt of working every day and I only have to work one night this week!

More great news: I have a test and a quiz tomorrow and I have decided I am definitely done studying for this Monday after putting in a good two hours earlier this evening...I'll just resume inbetween classes in the morning. That's not all, in fact, both of my Thursday classes are cancelled this week so I need only be present for choir at noon and work that evening.

....So, I present all of that great news to you to make myself feel better about my weighted planner. These final four weeks of the semester are shaping up to be pretty darn jam packed. For instance, this weekend = Blue and Gold Days = lots of happenings on campus = entertainment and fun (basketball games, tailgate, choir singing shenanigans, cosmic bowling, fall play....). On the downside, that also = little time for homework, and no time for final projects that need to be started here very soon.

You know, I'm beginning to feel like a space cadet, which is probably a sign that I should quit trying to discern my November plans for you on here and go to bed...I'll just give you a few tidbits. I have only tests and choir tomorrow, but I will follow that up with an afternoon full of tutoring and an evening of calling prospective students for ADMIT club. Wednesday evening I am pretty darn pumped about because as of 11:06 p.m. on this Monday night, I am not obligated to be anywhere that evening (that is if I manage to tackle my full two hours of ADMIT duty tomorrow night)! And then, at 10:00 p.m., SGA is sponsoring a $3.00 showing of "The Box" at the theatre here - you should check out the movie trailer on that one. Thursday is my evening at the pharmacy this week and Friday night I may perhaps travel to the Dome to cheer on some pretty cool high school football kids as they play for the state championship. And then....BLUE AND GOLD AND WORK AND BLUE AND GOLD.. bring it on week....

Oh Time...Whatever Time it May be...

Happy November 2nd, All Soul's Day, and Monday morning! I feel very energized this a.m. - it's one of those weird paradoxes that don't make sense: how does one run off of very little sleep but bound around as though completely rested? Why does being overtired make me feel giddy and carefree momentarily? Strange, but I'm definitely appreciating it on this Monday morning! I'm letting you know right now though that I'll be more than ready for a power nap this afternoon before heading off to work.

So how is life here at good 'ol MMC? Well, my phone is playing with the idea of "falling back" an hour. It decided not to conform for the majority of yesterday, tried out the whole time change thing for a couple of hours early last night, and then decided it preferred the old time early this a.m. Maybe it thought it was funny to play with my tired mind - when it's 2 a.m and your phone says it's 3 a.m., it gives you a bit of a panicky feeling. And now? My stubborn phone is still adamantly holding on to the old time. It's probably trying to pull me forward and push me along in this crazy thing we call life. :)

I decided to get up and run at 7 a.m. this morning. It was brisk out, but not freezing at all..beautiful actually. The sunrise is definitely timeless and the whole time change thing allowed me to run into it before heading off to microbiology class.

And in microbiology, I learned oodles of fascinating and somewhat disturbing information about the power of microbes. For your information, all of you cheese eaters are consuming blocks of living bacteria. In fact, food is bacteria, bacteria makes life possible and kills us, the concept of waste water treatment and bacteria involvement is really kind of involved (and just gross), and even that purified drinking water you are holding in your hand is a container full of bacteria. So, have a love, hate relationship with the little guys. Some are your friends, others are just random, harmless acquaintances, and there are those evil ones too....

So, here at the start of November, I am a bit sleepy, but energized by endorphins and sunsets, swimming in bacteria but kind of okay with it (ehhh....??? that one is questionable still), stressed that I work at the pharmacy both tonight and tomorrow (you know, there are some rude people you sometimes encounter in this world...I encountered a few yesterday afternoon at work..), but ready for the end of Tuesday night when I can say I survived six successive days of work without neglecting schoolwork too horribly, and marveling at life in general - forever amazed by great friends.

Count your blessings this week, sing a November song, chase a sunset and play off of endorphins. OH!!! AND CHEER FOR THE ELGIN POPE JOHN CRUSADERS as they take on Bloomfield in the 2nd round of Nebraska high school football state playoffs Wednesday night!!! If I can manage to get away, I'll be there cheering for my little brother Jeffrey (it's in Elgin, so my blogging fan faithful...if there are any of you...are more than welcome to come on down to cheer in person). He's pretty much a football stud and making the most of his senior season. There's nothing like the intensity of a good eight-man football game. :) See you there! :P

Just another Blog..

First thing's first, I am recovered from my not so terrible illness. I did end up going to the doctor four days after my previous post because I was beginning to have breathing issues due to excessive chest congestion and I was forever crying due to uncontrollable sinus pressure in my head. I am starting to feel normal again though. In fact, I ran for the first time in over a week (10 days to be exact) this afternoon. I can't even honestly remember the last time I took that many consecutive days off from working out! I crave the endorphin kick and the feeling of accomplishment from it, so it's no wonder that the past week was pretty thoroughly unproductive as far as studies go. In fact, I even missed one of my deadlines for the Moderator, something I don't think I had ever done in the 3 and 1/2 years I've been writing for it. The sad thing was that I wasn't smart enough to figure out that if I was doomed to be unproductive, it would be best to spend the majority of my free time sleeping....so not only was I slacking, I was lacking (in the rest department that is).

New Subject. On Friday night I travelled to Sioux Falls with a group of 8 friends. Our initial plan (something that we had had planned for over a week) was to go out for dinner and then head to Harrisburg for the haunted corn maze. About five minutes before leaving, one of the girls decided to look up directions so we knew for sure where we were going and instead found out that the maze doesn't open until this coming weekend. Haaaa. So much for efficient planning! Undeterred, we made some phone calls and found out about a haunted house at the fairgrounds in Sioux Falls. So, after a scrumptious dinner at a Johnny something (Carina's??) Italian place we headed out to the fairground to pay to have people scare the wits out of us. Ok. Imagine this. Here we are, a group of 8 college kids, at about 9:00 standing in a ridiculously long line of people, 80% of them appearing to be Junior High aged kids and younger. We stood in line for a good hour and 20 minutes to have the privilege of entering and exiting the haunted house, a house "made by volunteers not engineers," in a total of about 8 minutes. Though we did get our share of screaming in, I ended up giggling most of the time. I was towards the back of our group so my biggest scares actually came from the guys in our group behind me jumping at me from behind.

On the return trip home, I drove a good 20 + miles with my low fuel light on, also a new adventure. I thought for sure we would end up stranded on the side of the road and the real scare factor would kick in. Instead, I just kind of ran a red light in fear of having to stop and pulled into a ghetto gas station on Broadway that I didn't even know existed. Despite the obstacles, it was an adventurous and memorable night.

In the meantime, I have passed two choir midterms (one while in a sorry sickly state), aced a medical terminology test, and put off two papers, two poems, and two reading reflections all due on Friday (not to mention the reading itself..I've kind of put that off as well). But, I can't complain. The sun is shining, friends are abundant, and life is good. In fact, I am heading out to the damn to watch the sunset with some friends tonight before this nicer weather hibernates for good. Perhaps when I get back I'll start Operation Productivity! :)

Sickness....yuck!

As yet another weekend is coming to an end, I am graciously chosing to spend the final 18 minutes writing to you! I have done very little homework at all in the last two and a half days, and I'm going to be so kind as to explain to you why that is so.

The highlight of my weekend was getting to spend last night with Lindsay and Raz (Emily), two of my best friends who graduated last year and are busy figuring out how to survive in the real world as teachers. They came up to Yankton to visit and watch the volleyball games on Saturday and we had some much needed catching up and memory sharing time.

The majority of my weekend however was spent at work. Before I explain further, let me throw in here that before the weekend, I had been supressing a bizarre chest congestion sickness symptom. I didn't understand because I felt fine otherwise and sinus pressure always starts in my head. Keeping that in mind, Saturday morning I woke up with a mildly sore throat but a busy, busy morning at the pharmacy put that in the back of my mind. With three of us working though, we handled the rush in style and sent people off with medications and well-wishes. I had restocked shelves and vials and cleaned and put in the OTC order by 4:00 and the final hour on the job was somewhat relaxing, but still - an unusually busy Saturday. Usually I have time to sit down and study by 1:00.

And then today rolls aroound. I knew it was going to be a long day before I had even crossed the street to open the clinic door. There was a mob of people lined up outside waiting to enter. At noon when the doors opened, no less than 40 people swamped the place. I had no time to even walk to the back of the pharmacy and grab my lab coat all day. We (two people - might I point out the newest employee and the slowest pharmacist who's past retirement age but still very competant, bless his soul) filled the same amount of prescriptions in five hours as an average eight hour day with five people working. I didn't leave work until 40 minutes past closing time. The poor little waiting area was forever packed with screaming babies, wild children, frustrated parents, and miserable people. There is a shortage of Tamiflu in the market so the liquid version is not available and had to be made up from the powder of broken capsules (a very time consuming thing I might add). I feel like I witnessed every sickness imaginable and breathed in toxic chemicals. If I wasn't sick before, I'm bound to come down with something now! Anyway, when I finally made it back up to my room and sat down to try and do some homework, the congestion that has now manifested itself in my head - the congestion I didn't have time to process all day finally hit me full force - and I ended up sitting in misery while my eyes watered from sneezes that wouldn't come and I tried and failed to breathe through my nose. I dug out my winter med kit and found some Tylenol mult-symptom cold wonder medication, which I took with a one of those baking tablespoon measurement devices (college innovation) and headed off to a refreshing W.O.W. meeting (women's spirituality group at MMC).

Now I must take another round of medication and catch some sleep. I'm hoping all of you are staying healthy!!!

Home! :)

Woohoo for Columbus Day and South Dakota!! Yep, that's right, because Mount Marty is in SD, we find that it is only fair to honor this day of the year with no school. AND, that fairness means that I have had the pleasure of spending this three day weekend at home in Elgin, NE.

Though my time here at home has been relatively uneventful as far as excitement goes, I can't begin to describe how nice it has been to slow down a bit. I had fully intended to spend both Saturday and Sunday afternoons doing homework, but instead I wound up reading Nicholas Sparks' newest novel, The Last Song. I read the entire book and was predictably sobbing at the end. It was a great book and I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a bit of light reading! Once I finished that book, I did actually sit down and get some things accomplished. I made a massively intimidating stack of flash cards for the upcoming chapters of medical terminology, wrote three reading reflections and two poems for creative writing, and skimmed part of the chapter on DNA transcription and translation for microbiology. I even downloaded our choir music on this old computer here at home and attempted to tune my voice this a.m. Now I'm worn out!

What about non-school related activities here in Elgin, you ask? Well, for starters I went to bed at 10:30 on both Saturday and Sunday nights. Though an extremely unusual thing for me to do, it was amazing. I feel partially refreshed now that I have a few decent hours of sleep under my belt again! :) Since I've been home, I've also gone to Norfolk with my mom so that we could get an oil change and new windshield wipers for my car and groceries to feed Dad and the boys here at home, attended church in my beautiful home parish with my family, helped my little brother apply for college (he even applied to MMC!) and scholarships, and eaten a whole lot of good home cooking - probably too much of it...

And (this one is good), I even got a head start on my final project for Writing and the Visual Arts. On Saturday afternoon when I arrived home, I visited the nuns here in Elgin and interviewed Sr. Pat Hoffman. She's going to be the "person of interest" you could say for my final project. She has a very interesting story to tell - not only has she been a sister since the age of 13, she's been teaching at Pope John (my high school) for 37 years! Once I was done drilling her with questions, I stayed to chat with those two wonderful ladies over juice and cookies. :)

I must be off now to take pictures of Sr. Pat teaching before I hit the roads and return to Mount Marty to kick off another night of homework...hopefully some piano practice as well!

Energy Outage...the aftermath of the power outage

It is 8:24 p.m. kids and I just dozed off mid-sentence while attempting to read for my short story class. Beings I have forgotten how to completely relax and not have an agenda, when the noise of my TV startled me awake, I hopped up to grab my laptop and begin writing to you to keep me awake! My early evening exhaustion has a very logical explanation. You see, I am currently operating off of approximately 3.5 hours of sleep. I for some reason thought it would be wise to save studying for both a microbiology exam and a short story test all for last night. Granted, I did work at the pharmacy all weekend and Monday night as well, but still, one would think I would have had sense enough to sneak in a bit of studying in the meantime as something of a "mind prep." BUT, such was not the case and true studying didn't commence until about 4:12 p.m. last night. Granted, that studying was broken up by an hour of tutoring, a couple of phone calls, a supper break, an 8:00 snack break, and an hour and a half long power outage. That last one could use a bit of an explanation...

At 9:00 last night, I was in the music hall with three other choir kids preparing to practice our music for Vespers. Right before beginning, the lights flicked off, returned for a brief instant, and then flashed off for good. This sudden darkness was met by a five second delay when none of the four of us moved or said anything. That was enough time to send our blood into a frenzy. Someone let out a blood-curdling scream, and the rest of us joined and sprinted out of the hall in a clump. Of all places to be during a power outage, the Music Hall is waaaay up there on my list of "OH GOSH, I WOULDN'T WANT TO BE CAUGHT DEAD IN THERE." Who wants to be caught in the pitch dark in a place that is presumably haunted, with multiple legitimate stories to lay credit to the claim? Anywho, for the next hour and a half, we wandered through the halls of Whitby and Bede, all the kids trying to scare each other, so that there was periodic screaming and the darkness was broken by flashlights and emergency exit lights. It was creepy but also incredibly exciting! :P But...also very detrimental to my studying focus. :P When the lights finally returned at 10:30, I sat down in an exhausted and stressed and frantic state where I remained until about 2:30 a.m. studying. Having not covered a couple of chapters in microbiology, I set my alarm for 6:02 a.m. to get up and complete the last of my studies. What a painful challenge trying to stay awake and focus! The extra effort paid off though as I left both exams with a "that wasn't too bad" mindset.

Tests down, I am now impatiently awaiting the upcoming three day weekend. WOOHOO for Columbus day! As of right now I am planning on heading home Saturday morning and staying for the long weekend curled on the corner of my couch with no obligations or places to be. I might even spend an entire afternoon doing homework. Time will tell. :) For now though I must sign off. I'm heading down to the Music Hall once again to try this whole singing practice thing again. If the lights falter, I'll just take it as a sign that the ghosts in the room are offended by my singing....

Someone Should Punch This Chilly Air!

Good riddance! I nearly forgot about leaving you a post this week. I'm blaming this near crisis on the new H1N1 blurb that has shunted my blogging shortcut off of Mount Marty's homepage. H1N1...yikes. I'm hoping none of us will have to really concern ourselves with that new little shortcut in the next few months.

School is trudging on. I think I'm already suffering from the changing weather. I could probably correctly diagnose myself with a mild form of seasonal depressive disorder. I have yet to find a winter exercise method that is as refreshing and exhilarating as summer adventures under the sun. Odd that I've lived in this area my whole life and I still find the need to get sad about the coming of cold weather. Maybe I'll have to head south one of these days...

When I say I'm suffering, I mean that I feel as though my energy level is down and I'm not quite as apt to be unusually chipper in the mornings. I am completely unmotivated in the homework area, but I have very few legitimate excuses to explain why it's not getting done. Yes, I do work a couple of nights a week and have work study and tutoring besides and other random time commitments, but I have been spending my precious free hours during the mornings and afternoons between classes contemplating taking naps but never doing it, staring at my planner with all sorts of good intentions at plugging away on the lists, but not starting anything, and opening textbooks simply to read a page or two only to nod off and get up to eat food or consume caffeine in a last ditch effort to fire up some motivation. .....you know, on second thought, beings it is midterm week in two weeks, this apathetic attitude could be in fact attributed to that slump time of year as I'm seeing similar symptoms from my peers. HAVE NO FEAR, however. I will push through this lackadaisical attitude with the help of my piano playing practice (I am now halfway through level 1B) and other sorts of whimsical adventures. :)

AHHHH! I almost forgot to mention that this past weekend I did zero homework because I was in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, NE watching the good 'ol Huskers dominate in a 55-0 homecoming victory. It also happened to be the 300th consecutive sellout in that divine stadium and throughout the game, they played clips on Husker vision (the big screen) from other coaches in the conference, from Husker past coaches and players, and from NCAA officials congratulating us on the record. We are such a great, loyal crowd and I had goosebumps multiple times. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE NEBRASKA!

And that my friends, is a good note to leave you with. Bundle up and prep for the frosty air. It's creeping up.... :)

Random Weekend Adventures

I am writing to you this evening in hopes of dispelling this rather annoying headache I managed to contract about three hours ago and not get rid of...perhaps a replay of my weekend will do the trick?

After leaving you with a remarkably dull post last week, I had a unique and therefore exciting weekend despite it being my weekend to work. I kicked it off on Friday night with a whole lot of indecisiveness. Friday morning I had planned to take a friend up on her offer to go to her hometown with her that evening to watch her little brother play football. Later in the afternoon, I decided that was a big stretch of time I didn't know if I could afford to give up beings I had to work from 9-5 on Saturday. So, instead I opted to join a few other friends in making a taco supper. On my way over to the cooking locale, I ran into Jordan and Joey, yet another couple of MMC kids. The two of them informed me they were going to tackle a run, so of course I changed plans on the spot to join them. After running somewhere around three miles give or take a bit of distance, we returned feeling accomplished and full of energy from released endorphins, to eat the tacos I was supposed to let cook. :) I then attended the MMC volleyball game versus Buena Vista which turned out to be a 5 set thriller, with the Lancers pulling out the victory, before retreating to my room with no further plans. Those "non-plans" turned into a night of super nintendo. I hadn't played that thing since I was in like 8th grade or something and one of the cool freshman kids happened to have one and even had the Lion King game, the one that used to be my favorite!! It took me a while to get going, but then I found I was a natural. Nintendo dominated, we then finished the evening with a star gazing adventure at the damn. It was the most random group of people, which made for a very memorable experience. Oh, and the stars were abundant and beautiful!!

Saturday was a very lucky day for me. I was supposed to work from 9-5, but it turned out that the afternoon was looking to be very slow, so the pharmacist on with me allowed me to leave at 2:00 so that I could travel home to Elgin, NE and watch my little brother play his homecoming football game. His team (the Crusaders) won 22-20...it was another thriller. My brother is quite the studly little receiver as well!! He made me proud, but I opted not to hug him afterwards because he was disgustingly smelly and sweaty. :P It turned out that my best friend from high school was also back home to watch her brother in the game. I hadn't seen her since somewhere around Thanksgiving last year because she goes to school in Kearney and our work schedules and everything else just seem to always clash. It was sooo incredibly refreshing and wonderful to see her and catch up. We even went out to supper at the steakhouse we used to waitress at together after the game. My only regret from the evening was not being able to spend more time with my parents. I came back to Yankton after supper because I had to be back for work on Sunday. In fact, I came back in time to head downtown and check out the masses of people and excitement of Ribfest!

And now I'm back in the swing of another week of studies and I must leave this message here before I am late for a choir fundraising team meeting!! Have a great week!

umm...classes.

Oh my goodness. I feel as though the semester has now officially begun. I say officially because I am once again blogging at odd hours of the night like I often did last spring when homework doings took me late into the evening, and I have now officially studied for and comfortably completed my first two exams of my senior year.

That's right, two days into the work week and I've taken a microbiology test and a lab quiz and also worked through a rather long and redundant Medical terminology exam. I feel kind of proud of myself for actually finding it in me to sit down and resume the stellar study habits. :) ...especially amidst the BEAUTIFUL weather we've been having. I mean honestly, I still think we're a bit fresh returned from summer and when it is 80 degrees outside with a gentle breeze and a blue cloudless sky, who wants to sit inside and study? Not I. You see, I even convinced a couple of friends to "multitask" with me on Saturday afternoon and bring out studies to the river!! Why not study where I'm most happy?

I don't think I've really ever mentioned what classes I'm taking this semester and because...well frankly I'm just too tired to think of anything really significant to say, I'm going to tell you now. Besides the two science classes I mentioned above, I have 12 English credits - two writing classes and a literature one (Short Story). To top off my schedule I am enjoying calligraphy and mixed and chamber choirs. That's 19 hours of study, but they may be the most enjoyable 19 I've taken in my four years here. I have found that it is kind of a problem to motivate myself to study for my Creative Writing independent study course though beings I only meet with my professor every other week. When you're on your own with a list of everything you've got to complete for the semester but virtually no set due dates, it's pretty much an open invitation to procrastinate.

Okkkk... I'm going to be honest. I'm going nowhere with this post. I'm ending here and going to bed. I'll do my very best to make up for this poor effort later this week with an exciting story of some sort for all of you disappointed readers. :)

Happy mid-week to you all!!

Adventures

Oops! The three day weekend kind of messed with my head and messed up my blogging schedule. It's been a while since my last post and I apologize to any dedicated followers who've felt lost without stories of my adventures! :)

Where to even begin... I have actually pulled out my planner to see all of the exciting things I have crossed off from the past week (meaning adventures completed!). First off, I must point out that all of the exciting adventures have cute little check marks next to them, but next to Tuesday's "Medical Terminology: Chapter 2 read and exercises," there's no indication of completion...similar story for the entry for that class on Thursday...and oh boy oh boy, same thing on Wednesday's Microbiology entry. Whoops...homework has really not appealed to me lately. In fact, on the eve of the end of a wonderful three day weekend, I must confess that I have a quite incomplete list of accomplishments in the study area....

But, I have logical excuses of course! Let's see, last Tuesday night I traveled to Hawarden, IA to watch Lindsay Beacom, a very good friend of mine who graduated last May, coach her high school volleyball team. It was so weird to see her as a head coach and to think that less than a year ago I was playing on MMC's court right next to her. She's all grown up and responsible and it made me feel OLD! But, it was sooo exciting to watch. Her team is currently undefeated (or they were as of Tuesday anyway) and I was super impressed. Not only that, but I was bursting with excitement over the atmosphere!!! You simply can't beat small town high school sports. The girls were so sincerely excited to play and passionate and running all over and not yelling at each other and there wasn't obvious tension. The crowd was amazingly supportive and it was everything I remembered and reminded me of why I loved playing so much. It was well worth skipping microbiology homework for the evening!

I can't remember what I did on Wednesday and Thursday night to be honest with you. But I'm pretty sure it involved a lot of random visits to my neighbors' rooms and not a whole lot of studious focusing....

Friday night, I had to work from 5-9. BUT, first, and most importantly, I went to my piano lesson. That's right, despite a two week postpone-ment due to the insanity of moving and orientation leader training and school staring, I resumed as planned during the first week of September and it was wondrous. I played the chicken dance as a duet sort of thing with my teacher and I was pumped! Some day I'll move past nursery rhymes and develop magical fingers or something and it will be a sight to see. :)

After work, I fully intended to call it an early night and get some sleep so that I wasn't crabby at work on Saturday and also rested to go out and celebrate another good friend's birthday Saturday night. It was a weekend though, so that was a stupid plan. Instead I ended up eating supper at 9:30 p.m. and then wandering around Walmart at 11:30 to buy a rug for my companion's dorm room and posterboard for wall decorations. I ended up drawing and coloring pictures until 3:00 a.m. while listening to rock music. It was a very odd, but enjoyable night. I'm still a kid a heart. :)

Saturday was adventurous and a birthday celebration and another late night of shenanigans. I took some fun pictures (I posted one at the beginning of this blog...the gorgeous birthday girl, Adrian, in the middle and Christine on the right) and had a great time with the girls.

And for Sunday I had planned to go to Sioux Falls on a much over-due shopping spree, and I did go...but the shopping was pretty much nonexistent. I met up with "Raz" another of my good friends from last year's graduating class. She wasn't in the mood to shop, so it was a definite damper on my enthusiasm and focus in the mall. We met Briana instead and trekked out to Lifelight to watch Tenth Avenue North perform. HOLY GINORMOUS MOB OF PEOPLE!! I had never been there before and I was in total awe and overwhelmed by the masses of people. I felt like a spaz because there was so much going on. The concert was great...and so incredibly different from any other concert I've been to...in a good way. It was peaceful and non-shoving and screaming and people falling over each other!! :)

And today - a rare but beautiful Monday without classes. To celebrate, my brother, Andy, came to visit. I took him out for lunch. We both over-indulged at JoDean's buffet and then decided a kayaking trip would be entertaining. We picked up Brett, another MMC kid who braved the entire weekend on campus, and headed out to pick up the little boats. The rental lady dropped subtle hints that floating down the river would be a stupid idea because of the outrageous wind gusts. In the end, we took her advice and opted for the less wild Lake Yankton. We paddled to the far end of the lake from the boat dock and then things got out of control. First off, I look to my left to see my brother capsized and floating in the water. After my initial shock at his silent flip, I was concerned about his catching hypothermia or drowning. When he told me the water wasn't too bad, I attempted to turn around to help Brett rescue him. Um...easier said than done. I ended up making a HUGE circle of it because of the wind and waves. When we attempted to hold the kayak down for him to launch himself back in, I had quite the laughing fit due to awkward climbing and yelps of pain on his part. Less than five minutes after the rescue, I watched poor Andy capsize again. He wasn't even paddling anywhere. He just sat there, let the wave hit him, and flip! It was hilarious. He blamed it on a fail to dump the water from capsize number one. This time Brett flipped his own kayak while we attempted to rescue him. I floated away while laughing until I cried, to which I was repaid with the boys throwing mud and seaweed at me. I screamed and ducked....and TIPPED! haha. Yep, that's right, there was a good 15 minute span when the three of us were all chilling in the water and deciding how best to get back in the boats. When we finally tackled the mission, we decided to head back because it would take a while with our poor skills. Let's see...WIND GUSTS IN THE FACE! Andy capsized at least twice more and then managed to paddle his way up and out of site. I was bursting through waves and gusts at a respectable pace myself, but was kind enough to look back and see poor Brett floating in the water next to his capsized ship. After another uncontrollable laughing fit in the hazardous attempt to get him back in, I was informed that he didn't capsize, but "sink." Apparently each wave that hit him splashed water inside until he simply went down with it. hahaha. Anyway, we eventually made it back (Andy cheated and paddled to the beach and then chose to drag his kayak the rest of the way to the dock). I'm pretty sure I'll be feeling the ache in my arms in the morning.

And tonight..I did my laundry, chatted with friends, attempted a run, and finished very little homework. And I have a microbiology lab in less than 8 hours. WOOOHOOOO! :) Good night!

p.s. Just so you know, I've decided that I really don't like that profile picture of me right there to the right. Yep, that one. Two much squinting and weird background and no angle or character or classiness at all. If I could change it, I would. :)

A Little Poetry for Your Soul

After surviving the first week of classes, stressed by senior nostalgia (sad that I've already felt such sad things..) way more than the classes themselves, I worked all weekend, had a couple of random dance parties in the halls, and did a bit of reading and writing. I bid farewell to my weekend with a night run with my dear friend, Brittany Sehr tonight. I must say that it was the most emotionally refreshing runs I have had in a long time - so much so that as I was running, I was writing poetry in my head. It may be cheesy, so this is your warning to stop reading now if you don't approve of such things. What follows is the poetry that I spilled out after returning to my room at approximately 10:42 p.m. in no mood to do practical homework.


Night Run

10:00 p.m.
A cover of darkness
broken only by moonlight, streetlamps, headlights
and the cool breeze
that gives
life
to your steps
and carries you with song to another time, another place.

Music.
A random play list,
each song a new rhythm, voice, mood
strumming out a
memory
that you retreat to
and relive with the music, your steps, and your shallow breathing.

Run.
Pound out each memory,
running not from it, but to it, for it, and through it
until you find yourself
lost
in the realization
that life is a song, a run, a poem - beauty.




If that's not enough poetry for you, take two!!! :P



To it, For it, Through it

Get up and run.
Grab a friend,
don't be shy.
Make her step yours,
and his your guide.
Each pace is different
but fitting,
a story a struggle,
a plea, or praise.
Feel the pull
and reach to push.
Run it out,
finish first.

Breathe each smell,
smell them new.
As you take it in,
appreciate it too.
Keep on going,
you cannot stop.
Feel the energy
and run the dream.
Believe you can,
let each breath sing.

Look around you,
open your eyes.
The lights of a semi
a beautiful surprise.
The river holds the moon
reflected for you,
and the trees,
they are dancing,
celebrating too.

Listen to the sounds,
a song each their own,
playing to your step,
taking you home.
Your music is one
with the sounds of the night.
Run for now, for tomorrow,
and for all that is right.
Cross the threshold
and know that you are done.
Smile and rest
and wake to meet the sun.



OKKKKKK. That's all I've got for tonight (well this morning I guess it is now). I'm off to catch a bit of that rest I mentioned before week two of classes is upon me.

It Has Begun

The first day of classes is officially here!

I somehow managed to lug all of my belongings from the apartment back into my dorm room, sort through the ensuing mayhem of the closet-sized space, put my dorm room together (wall decorations included), and clean the apartment bathroom and kitchen for the moveout inspection all during few and far between spare moments of the beautiful chaos of last week.

And that leaves an orientation explanation to fill the big gaping hole of time you are uninformed of in my life. It's weird to think about because I feel as though I lost a whole week of my life on a retreat of some weird variety. We were so busy and saw the same people every day and I left campus only to go to my apartment so when the rest of Mount Marty moved to campus yesterday I was almost baffled by the fact that life had gone on outside of orientation and Mount Marty and I felt as though I had hundreds of errands to run and people to catch up with.

Despite the confusion, I am very glad I took the opportunity to be an orientation leader (OL). It was great and stressful and frustrationg and a blast all at once. It was great to spend a week with MMC students other than my closest friends and get to know them. I made many more great friends. It's also pretty sweet to walk around campus now and actually know who the majority of the freshmen are - definitely a different and exciting change from my past three years of knowing only the freshman volleyball players.

I only have a few minutes before I have to run off to my second class of my senior year, so I'm going to give you a very brief synopsis of my favorite OL moments.

I sprinted around campus with Becca and Jess (fellow OL leaders) during training to completely dominate a campus wide scavenger hunt, I carried piles and piles of lumber up four flights of staris to make the job of building lofts easier for the new faces, I saw a hypnotized nun and laughed until I cried, we held an OL dance party in Corbey hall before escorting the freshmen to bowling, Jess and I spent the majority of odd down time moments interpretive dancing and earning weird looks from the freshmen, I ate massive amounts of ice cream, I participated in a game of street ball basketball that lasted until midnight, and I had a great time with my OL partner, Heidi, even if we did have to do a bit of door-to-door knocking to track kids down.

Ohhhh, and on Saturday morning, Jordan Foos and I got up bright and early to run in the riverboat days 5K race. It was a beautiful morning to run and I had a great time. I've never run in a big mob of people like that before and it made the race seem so much shorter and manageable. It was a great time...very refreshing! I finished 93rd out of 269 (Jordan ran away and managed to finish 70th) and had a runner's high for the rest of the morning. I worked it off by joining the other OL's and the freshmen in walking the parade route (Jess and I threw in a few dance moves as well...)

I best be off so I'm not late for a class on the first day. Hold tight for more exciting details of the Fall 2009 semester!!

The Grand Finale

Awww... I write to you today on the eve of the first double-digit day of August. When Briana started packing up her belongings from our apartment last night and this morning, I finally agreed to let the realization that summer is officially coming to an end sink in. :( In fact, I travelled to Walmart with her at 10:30 p.m. last night to pick up moving boxes and then talked to the woman in charge at school and requested keys for my room so that I could officially create a mess of it on Friday. I even went so far as to stop in the bookstore and give myself the initial scare on book prices. I wasn't yet brave enough to throw the towel in and buy them though...maybe tomorrow. :)

Despite my promising steps towards preparing myself for the first semester of my senior (OH MY!!!....) year, I did not put any of those boxes together and actually pack up anything yet. I felt that after not working out all weekend I needed to take some precious minutes this morning to run around like a wild child and work up a sweat and a runner's high. Then, feeling very much refreshed I decided the sun and some beach time were in order (because summer is slipping away) so I lounged by the river for a bit over an hour and had a wonderful conversation with my sister who is leaving on a mission trip to South Ameria on Thursday! I'm kind of very much jealous. It was then off to work for me...I guess packing will wait another day...

Before I can pack, I need to order my thoughts. I need to back up and tell the story of my weekend! I traveled across eastern South Dakota with Briana and Sarah (my roommates) and Jordan (our fourth roommate...or something like that..) to Onida to visit Joey Stahl and surprise him and his mom for her 50th birthday! The surprise was a complete success and it was a great weekend. The four hour drive wasn't even bad. Jordan gave me the voice-over commentary on the South Dakota towns I had never seen before, we saw three of his houses (two past and one present), I was mesmorized by pretty sunflower fields and fricken huge wheat fields in central SD, and we had the whole gamout of music genres going on. Onida itself was a cute little town and the Stahls were a gracious and fun host family! We made a brief appearance at the Sulley County rodeo on Friday night and then sang some songs inbetween interesting conversations until about 4:00 a.m. On Saturday we lounged around, tried and failed to appear as good tennis players, and went out to the farm to shoot real guns. I have never shot a gun in my life or even held one, and I WAS SCAAAARRRRREEED!! But, beings Bill Stahl (Joey's dad) is a sheriff, I figured his instructions were probably safer than any I'd receive elsewhere. My first pulled trigger ever was from a 357 handgun (I think that's what I was told it was...forgive me crew if I am wrong..). I definitely gasped at the kick and it took me about 15 shots to hit the target (a Hawaiian punch jug filled with water). By the end of it, I was shaking quite thoroughly and when I finally hit it, I held the gun away from me and announced that I didn't want to hold it anymore! Before the night ended I also shot a rifle of some degree..a 223 maybe? That thing was heavy and intense, and I felt like a rebel shooting the thing. The guys all enjoyed the evening and they made a mess out of some interesting targets including an old fan, weedeater, mailbox, and frying pan. It was fun in a unique sort of way, and a very interesting experience, but I'm pretty positive hunting will not be my forte now or in the future! I was a girlie-girl and too intimidated by the deadly capabilities!

It was a great weekend! After church on Sunday the Stahl's treated us to a scrumptous breakfast and it was back to the highways. We took a much more scenic route back and stopped in Pickstown to drop Jordan off at his lovely home where we had a friendly, though brief, chat with his parents. Briana then thought it would be cool to show me the dam (which was BEAUTIFUL) and then attempt to find our fellow friend and MMC student, Cody, who works at the camp grounds. Long story short, we drove around on random campground roads and left after only catching a glimpse of his arm. :P When we arrived back in Yankton on Sunday I was exhausted and fell into one of those "I don't remember falling asleep and I have no idea where I'm at now that my alarm woke me up" hour naps before driving to Norfolk, NE to attend a wake service for a friend's sister.

And then I came back. And now I'm back to the stories of the beginning of my blog. And then I found $10 (just kidding...but this blog kind of turned into a play-by-play and I fear you may be bored..)

Tomorrow = work in the a.m., hopefully packing at least one box, and then driving home for the grand finale of my presence there before school resumes. Actually I need to drop off some apartment stuff and pick up the dorm room boxes and say farewell to a couple of good friends who are moving across the state for college. Wednesday and Thursday = work. My mom and dad are coming up on Friday to help me move and I work Saturday and Sunday. AND THEN>>> ORIENTATION TRAINING BEGINS!!! oh...and packing....???? um I'll just do it randomly in random moments between running around I guess... :)

Surviving the MCAT...but not the the after-trials...

Oh my..I feel as though it has been since the ice age since my last post due to all that has happened between then and now.

First things first: the MCAT was disgusting, but I definitely survived. I have to tell you, I left with a very odd feeling. I admit that after sitting there in such deep concentration for a solid five hours I had a massive headache, but for some reason I wasn't nearly as frazzled as I thought I might be. In fact, I think I may have psyched myself out so well and so humbly prepared myself to bomb it that when I actually took the exam it was unfazed and I was simply dazed and therefore left feeling as though perhaps it wasn't as bad as I expected. When I find out my scores in 30 days though, that anticipated frazzled feeling may very well hit me full force. Time will tell.

The MCAT day itself, however, was an utter and complete disaster! I wanted to go to the mall after the exam and purchase birthday gifts for two of my best friends, but found that I was too drained to even know or care what store I was in. I intended on going to a friend's residence for supper, but suddenly felt very angry and lost and so while wandering hopelessly through the stores, I called her and told her I was going home. After surviving the drive back to Yankton, I gathered an armful of belongings from my car and headed into my apartment. I proceeded to dump some water from a cooler into the grass outside the door, but aimed poorly and dumped it into a dirt bed and thus managed to shower myself in mud. I simply stared and then took a step and watched my phone slip from my fingers onto the evil cement below my feet. Of course it hit the horrid material perfectly and snapped literally in two - we're talking a flip phone turned into flip and keypad, two separate beings. I remember picking up the pieces in a daze and walking into my apartment where I sat down two feet inside the door and wiped the mud off of my legs and feet before actually letting the horror of my destroyed phone sink in. Once I realized the magnitude of my problem, I drove around town for an hour attempting to find a friend who was not working or gone for the evening so that I could at least notify my mom of my dilemma. I then decided to go for a long run to clear my head but discovered that my mp3 player too had decided to take a crap and it remained frozen and dead to the world. Completely devastated and overwhelmed, I stole my roommate's music and ran the entire length of the bike trails in town before walking the remaining few blocks back to my apartment exhausted, tearful, and in pain. Needless to say i walked into a low hanging tree branch and got nailed by a couple of sprinklers. I crawled into bed fighting off tears of frustration.

To sum up the remainder of that horrible string of events, I had to make a special trip to Norfolk, NE to get a new phone because when Verizon bought out Alltel, the Yankton Alltel store became useless for 402 numbers such as myself. I had to pay full price for a new phone beings I had no insurance and my contract was not even close to expiration. The lady sold me the wrong car charger (found that out yesterday) but I left feeling reconnected to the world and the owner of a new LG phone.

And this week...work...work...work...angry voicemails from a job that I have shoved to the back corners of my mind since starting my job at the pharmacy... :(

On Monday night after work, a friend and I drove to Hawarden, Iowa to surprise my very good friend Lindsay on her birthday. She has moved there to prepare for her first year head volleyball coach and high school history teacher position beginning this fall.

I returned to Yankton yesterday afternoon and after doing a few miscellaneous work things, joined Briana (my roommate) and Kelly Olmer, another MMC friend, for a completely random and awesome kayaking trip. It was fabulous! I've always wanted to kayak on the Missouri and after three summers in Yankton, I finally did - AND I didn't even flip the thing! :)

The remainder of the week holds more work and then a big weekend...more on that later!

MCAT

Uh-oh....I warned you all it would be a long time before I managed to put up another life update, and despite your premature thrill at seeing a new post, today is not your lucky day. I have only a few minutes to leave you a message, but a couple of sentences of summary of what's going on in my life right now should suffice to fill you in....

I'M TAKING THE MCAT TOMORROW AND I HAVE HARDLY STUDIED DUE TO WORK SCHEDULES...no wait, who am I kidding? Let me try again....and I have hardly studied because IT IS SUMMER and spending countless hours indoors with my nose in a textbook has just not seemed appealing at all.
THEREFORE, THE RESULTS OF THIS KILLER EXAM COULD BE HORRIBLE...... :(

The end. Have a nice day and weekend. :)

Anywhere but Here

Hi. I am feeling completely and utterly frantic, but yet lazy, and TOTALLY RESTLESS today. I have no sufficient explanation. I only know that this bizarre mood is leaving me feeling as though I need to blog now before I have a nervous breakdown this week and forget to get around to it.

This past weekend served to be round number two (back-to-back) in the category of "get no more than 4 hours of sleep in an entire weekend" challenge. On Friday night, some of my best friends from Mount Marty who are located around the state for the summer made the journey to Yankton. Of course, we began the evening at DQ with the most chocolately blizzards ever and ended up at a friend's house in Tyndall where we stayed until 4:30 a.m, at which time I panicked because I had to work at 9:00 in the morning and we still had to drive home, attempt to get some sleep, shower, and show up with somewhat of a functioning brain. Therefore, we left and I crawled into bed at 5:00 a.m. only to be rudely awakened two hours later for my shower. Let's just say Saturday was a LOOONG, miserably boring, slow day at work. So, needing a refreshing evening of sleep, I decided it would be wise to make the two hour trip home and then go to the drive-in movies with my brother and a bunch of friends from TEC. It was incredibly wonderful to see and hug all of those amazing people - so wonderful in fact that one of my newest friends, Anne, spent the evening at my house where we talked until somewhere around 5:00 a.m. before falling into exhausted sleep and waking up 2 hours later for church. Needless to say, I was quite exhausted come yesterday afternoon and my drive back to Yankton was a challenge.

So, today I fear I am suffering the side-effects of minimal sleep. I am irritable and restless and feel as though 87 things are going to plant themselves on my to-do list and I'll never accomplish it all in time. I DESPERATELY NEED to make myself study for the MCAT as I am taking it next Thursday and have barely cracked open the book, but my heart is just not in it. I need to sit down and just sleep, maybe process all of the great and thought-provoking things I experienced at TEC. I need to work on my brother's scrapbook, do some things for my tobacco coalition job, call friends who I have waited far too long to inquire about....I feel as though I should be anywhere but where I am at whatever moment I am thinking it today. And, my most consuming thought is that I just want to take off, on a completely random and spontaneous roadtrip to the east coast. I'd skip work tomorrow and a few random other appointments this week and be back for work on Friday. I just want to go to North Carolina for no reason other than I want to go (and once there jump into the ocean and feel instantly refreshed and alive and young).

But....I cannot find any friends who will share my crazy urge to do something so completely irresponsible. So, instead I am off for a long overdue visit with a friend and then to supper with a group of friends, hopefully some time for piano practice in there... And this week if you don't here for me, pray that I am STUDYING!!

TEC 28 - Take Me...

Hello all! So I sit here at this trusty library computer on a Friday morning, preparing to head into work in about 45 min where I will stay until 9:00 p.m. this evening. I work Saturday from 9-5 as well. And, I must say that the thought of a weekend filled with work and not Tintern and my fabulous wheat crew family is weighing heavily on my heart. :( Let me explain...

In my previous post, I mentioned that I was heading to Tintern retreat center near Oakdale, NE to help with the Teens Encounter Christ retreat last weekend. It was amazing in every way possible!!! My role for this TEC was to serve as the assistant wheat crew director. The wheat crew is the group of 15 individuals (depicted in the awesome mustache picture above)responsible for the behind the scenes work - dishes, cleaning, setting up, games, you name it. But, more importantly, the crew is the prayer group of the weekend. We pray over the speakers and keep adoration in the chapel. I would never be able to do the weekend any justice with any sort of description on here, so I will simply say that 27 young candidates walked away after experiencing Christ's love and a full crew did the same.

I met some amazing people on the weekend who I am now calling my newest friends. We did so many great things like running at the odd hours of 5 and 3 a.m., painting a gorgeous banner to a melodious song and getting a little messy with the paint in the meantime, playing dress-up with random clothes in an old back closet, singing off-beat and off-tune, yet beautifully,behind a campfire, beneath the stars on a very powerful/eye-opening evening, bonding until 4:30 a.m.......sleeping only 4 hours in 3 nights....

Anyway, I returned to Yankton completely exhausted, but absolutely refreshed. I was also a bit confused on time. I had my phone turned off all weekend and so I missed quite a few calls on Tuesday and Wednesday because I had grown accustomed to not worrying about reporting to my phone. I was thrown right back into the chaos of work and life and it was slightly overwhelming. I feel like I need a week of pure summer sun and relaxation to process things and recuperate. But, instead, I've been getting phone calls from my friends asking me what the weekend plans are. It has only resulted in a lot of confusion, as I do not feel like it is the weekend again already and I have not had time to consider plans...nor do I want to. I'm feeling very go-with-the-flow-ish....could be quite a random weekend. I do get to see Brittany, one of my very favorite people in the whole world tonight after work though!! :)

In the meantime, I am taking the MCAT in less than two weeks and I have done MINIMAL studying. I think I should panic now....

Summer. is. running. away. :(

Another New Job, Another busy weekend

It has been a BUSY, BUSY week! I feel drained, so I'll give you a somewhat brief synopsis....

I started my job at the Yankton Medical Clinic Pharmacy on Monday and have worked the past four days. I never enjoy starting new jobs because there is always so much to learn and it is usually quite overwhelming. I never fail to feel completely stupid the first day on a job. My new pharmacy tech position was a case in point. Thank goodness I have had quite a bit of experience running cash registers, as that part of the job has not been a problem. The challenge has been in locating specific drugs among the shelves of thousands in order to count out prescriptions. It wouldn't be so bad if the drugs were organized alphabetically by whatever name they are, but they happen to be alphabetized by brand name with generics (no matter what their names) stashed on the shelves to the right of their brand name counterparts. When 90% of prescriptions are generic drugs with no indication of what their brand names may be, it makes finding their locations rather difficult. Nevertheless, I think I may actually enjoy this position. I'm excited to be able to get so much hands on experience. Whether I end up in Med School or Pharmacy school (or on the streets....) it is sure to be valuable experience.

Sadly, when working 9-6 though, my summer sun time is significantly destroyed. I do feel that I am suffering some extent of nostalgia on that matter. But, my hours will not be as strenuous in a couple of weeks after my orientation/training period is over. In fact, I will be working mostly nights and weekends which will make the job keep-able for the school year. But for this week, I have only managed to see the sun long enough for a lovely nature hike. I happened to take a picture at the top of a ridiculously steep hill and then texted it to multiple friends telling them that I took the picture and then proceeded to tumble down the hill and break my ankle. As a testament to my extreme clumsiness, all of them believed me. Though probably not a very funny joke at all, I was feeling very ornery and was highly entertained for a while.

So as the weekend approaches, my business status only increases. I am blessed to have the opportunity to work another TEC (teens encounter Christ) weekend. I have to be out at the retreat center at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow and will be there until late Monday evening. The weekends are always amazing and I'm predicting less than 10 hours of sleep for me in the next 3 days. I'll be sure to give you a run-down of the weekend in a future post, but for now, I need to pack and organize a few more things for the weekend and then hit the sack for one final night of sleep before I destroy my body's sleep cycle.

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Many Adventures, So Little Time

Good morning, everyone! I'm contemplating what to tell you about the last few days of my life and the theme that comes to mind is a whole lot of driving! Allow me to explain...

This weekend was quite adventurous. I had two good friends who were celebrating birthdays and so a multitude of other friends also present in Yankton for the festivities. I also had the pleasure of spending some time with a friend who was home from Minnesota. So, if all of these wonderful people were in Yankton, why the heck was I driving? Very good question. You see, in addition to wanting to celebrate the homecoming and birthdays of all of my good friends, a close family friend from home got married on Saturday. This is a girl who I grew up with and I couldn't find it in me to skip witnessing her big day. SO, I stayed in Yankton on Friday night to spend some quality time with friends, that time lasting until approximately 3:30 a.m. Beings I had whittled nearly the entire night away without any sleep, my mind thought it would be wise to keep me awake for another hour or so after returning home and crawling up in my loft. I finally fell asleep only to awake at 8:00 (I slept approximately 3 hours in case you were wondering) and frantically pack a bag for the wedding and home. I then proceeded to drive the nearly 2 hours home in a state of exhausted delirium. After attending the wedding ceremony, I deemed that it would be unwise to drive the extra 30 minutes to the reception locale, so instead I hopped in my brother's car (I left my malfunctiong one home for my parents to fix) and headed right on back to Yankton (a mere 6 hours after returning home). I once again had a great evening with friends, this one lasting until approximately 4:20 a.m.

Now, let's take a breath and think about this. A normal person probably would have spent much of Sunday sleeping to make up for those lost hours over the weekend. I, on the other hand, got up at about 8:00 a.m., went to church, and then hopped in my brother's sweet car to drive one and a half hours to Humphrey, NE for a TEC meeting. After 3 hours of planning and bonding with wonderful people, I drove back to Yankton once again. Now, I shamefully admit that the ride back was quite a few shades less than enjoyable. I found that I had to fidget something fierce, turn the air to uncomfortable settings, and sing loudly to songs I wasn't even feeling just to stay awake. I am gratefully sitting here now though to tell you that despite the danger, I made it back to my apartment safely - with every intention of cleaning and going for a loooooong run. I had a lot of things pressing on my mind and a run would have been ever so calming - yeah, umm, that never happened. I somehow managed to find my way to our unfashionable, though wonderfully comfortable, yellow couch where I fell into a deep sleep somewhere around the time of 7:30 p.m. I did not awake for either of 2 missed calls and 2 text messages on my phone. I did not even awake to the noise of my roommate opening our squeaky apartment door and returning from a long day of work. No, I finally awoke at 10:39 p.m. to some clatter in the kitchen. No wait, I flew up off the couch is a better visual. I found that I was completely disoriented, had a pounding headache, and felt depressed. I got up and ate 2 pieces of ice cream cake with Briana before crawling into bed fully clothed and passing out for the evening - and to think my original plan was to clean and run.... good grief.

And then Monday rolled around. I worked for 2 hours in the morning on the tobacco awareness projects - still tired and frantic and stressed - before Lindsay, another of my very good friends here in Yankton, called to ask if I wanted to go to Sioux Falls to see the movie, My Sister's Keeper, and have dinner with another friend. Feeling wild at hear, I opted that despite my weekend travels, I needed to get away. I joined her and her sister on the journey to Sioux Falls, this time from a back seat rather than a driver's seat position and proceeded to cry (sob might be a more fitting word...) for the entire two hours of the movie. It was a great movie, but incredibly sad. I was however mildly upset that a major part of the book was altered in the movie. The nerve of those producers! :P

Today looks to hold a few more hours of work, working out, and some business at the Yankton Medical Clinic Pharmacy to prepare myself for my new job there, starting next Monday.

Until next time, drive wherever your heart desires and Enjoy this last day of June!

Utilize the SUN!!

I woke up this morning and looked at my phone and discovered something truly frightening. It is JUNE 25th already, people!! Can you believe it? That's like an entire month of summer nearly gone. So, I was thinking that July really needs to pass by a bit more slowly than it's friend June. But, then I was thinking that my thinking was completely unrealistic, so I did some feasible thinking and decided that I need to utilize every available sun and active outdoors minute left in this beautiful summer! :)

I'm working on accomplishing that utilization beginning with those muddy horse trails I mentioned in my last post. A couple of days after my exciting bike ride, I took Briana back out to the beginning of my newly discovered horse trails and we opted to hike them before busting out our bikes. Thank heavens we had sense enough to do that. There are some of the steepest hills I have ever hiked on buried inside those woods. I absolutely LOVE the trails out there. I have this cheesy desire to go on a real hike someday - I'm talking like fallen trees and logs in the path that I have to climb over and under and tree branches I have to shove out of the way - the whole shenanigans. These trails are offering me bits and pieces of my dream come true. :P We definitely found a couple of the best fallen tree logs ever the other day and proceeded to climb across one such tree that stretched across a little stream 10 feet or so below. To pass over the stream, we even had to climb in an upwards direction on this fallen tree. It was the coolest thing ever - like straight out of an adventure movie (well close anyway....). AND, on the way back, we even half scooted for fear of falling to our deaths (or maybe just a couple of broken bones). The climb back was the epitomy of the whole forest scene, including rotten bark sliding off of the tree and landing with the crashes of a fear foreshadowing what would happen if we were to lose our balance. We've been on the trail twice thus far, both times nearly suffocating in the humidity, but it was more than worth it. We have multiple side trails and logs and climbing adventures left to explore on that particular trail.

What else, what else?? Well, I worked 34 hours in 3 days this past weekend and of course felt somewhat comatose after the experience. It's weird to be cooped up inside a building for 12 hours in a day and leaving only to return 12 hours later for round number two. Despite the exhaustion that followed that experience, I had a lot of great moments with the residents at Pine Lane. I brightened one lady's day by offering to fill her bird feeder for her (apparently no one has ever done that before) and then sitting and chatting for a good 20 minutes. I now have a Kentucky Fried Chicken and life discernment date with her on an evening sometime soon. I also continue to receive pick-up lines from a 93-year-old man and have officially memorized coffee and hot water requests for each of the residents for all 3 meals of the day. :)

After emerging from my coma, I headed home to spend a couple of days with my family and especially my sister and her husband, home briefly from Michigan. My mom of course decided to set up a professional family picture which was met with a barrage of groans and disgruntled words and actions most notably from the men in the family. I'm sure it will turn out to be a darling picture, though, beings we were all color-coordinated and everything.

I need to get back to my tobacco awareness project set-ups. I suppose it is necessary to work some before I run outside frolicking in the sun all afternoon. :) Have a great weekend!!