Kelly's Blog

Goodbye...

2010-04-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, it's good to know that you haven't given up on me. Yes, I am still alive, and I have to be honest with you, I haven't even been overly busy as the reason for my neglect of this blog. Actually, I've just been overly distracted/unmotivated/senioritis-affected. In fact, either I'm just super slacking here all of a sudden and forgetting about a million and one homework assignments, or by the grace of God, after four years of barely ever a free moment from studying and homework, I'm suddenly overwhelmed by them. Funny thing is, I spend most of my time wondering what I'm missing rather than enjoyng them. I forgot how to relax...and I think I'm also temporarily forgetting how to study, so come Friday when my first final hits, I might be in sorry shape.

Without the heavy burden of homework, I should be finishing my brother's scrapbook and figuring out my summer living and working situations and my Omaha housing situation for the fall. I have a ton of stuff to do, just not the motivation or heart to tackle it right now. Jeff (my brother) graduates from High School the day after I graduate from Mount Marty, which gives me less than 2 weeks to put together 2.5 years of his life (pressure's on...). I sometime need to let reality sink in and accept the fact that in less than two weeks I will be saying goodbye to my dorm room forever. I need to pack up and move out! I also need to sign my apartment lease, and figure out a way to find another part time job to work with my pharmacy hours for the summer (or keep praying that some random Omaha place will read my job application and call me...).

None of it seems relevant at the moment though. I feel delirious. I can't accept that my friends and I are really graduating...and then scattering. One of my closest friends is moving to North Carolina for grad school. It's going to be painful to say the least to part ways after spending every day with her for the past few years. And the rest of us might be in the area, but we'll be all over the place. And then there's my young MMC friends who will remain in Yankton, but who I'll miss terribly. I might just be a mess of tears on graduation day if I actually let it hit me by then. Life is an adventure and this is definitely a bittersweet time - definitely exciting, but also a bit scary and sad.

On a completely different note, on a whim, I decided to tackle the half marathon I had registered for and given up on on Saturday morning. I had doctor's orders not to do it due to high risk for a stress fracture in my foot, but my friends from home came up to run it anyway, and I couldn't sit by and watch them complete one of my dreams without me. So, I let my stubbornness and determination shine, and without training (the most I had run in the 3 weeks prior was 3 miles), I stood on the starting line and gave it a go. I RAN THE 13.1 MILES!!!! I let my rhythm take over and found some crazy inner drive to carry me through. It was soooo amazing to cross the finish line. My legs started cramping immediately and my lower back was throbbing, but I felt wonderful - exhilarated by my accomplishment! I finished in 2 hours and 16 minutes - just over 10 minute mile splits. It may not be a great 1/2 marathon time, but I was proud of myself for making that without training for the feat. It was a great time with special friends. :)

Alright everyone, come finals week, I'm sure to be all over the place physically and emotionally, so I'm predicting that this blog slips my mind. This could very well be my last ever MMC blog. Thank you to all of you who have been so dedicated to reading my exciting life story. :P I hope you all have a blessed summer and that you find another to keep you updated on the life and times of MMC (or perhaps you yourself will become a student and take over this very role!!!). It's been a pleasure to be your faithful informant. :)

Un-title Worthy.

2010-04-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

Uh-oh. Here I am again way behind on what used to be consistent blogging. My apologies...

Easter break, though it now seems like forever ago, was wonderful. When I spend long periods of time away from home and then have the chance to go for such a wonderful span of time, it's always incredibly refreshing. I got to spend time with my grandparents on both sides of the family and show them my Mexico pictures. On Easter Sunday, my Grandma Starman even shared childhood stories with me that were quite fascinating. :) I also had a date with my mom in the theater to see The Last Song. I would give it very high ratings - both my mom and me left the theater after having had tears literally rolling down our cheeks. Both of my brothers were around and about, but they actually had to work a lot, so I had the house to myself during the days.

I was also lucky enough to spend some time with some very close high school friends. One of them had told me she wouldn't be making it home for Easter and then walked into church on Sunday morning and surprised me. It was WONDERFUL! :) I went on a six mile walk with two of these girls Sunday afternoon....and I should have stuck to the walking on Monday morning. Jackie, my friend who is registered to run the half-marathon with me here in Yankton on the 24th came to my house for a good seven mile run in the country. I was so excited to get to run with her and excited that the big day is getting so close. Well, if I haven't already mentioned it, I did something scary to my foot and have been having severe arch pain for some time now (not to mention weird grinding sensations, a bit of swelling....) Anywho, I had taken a week off, so this run was my big come back. I took ibuprofen before we left and felt great during the jog. We went a good 7 miles before turning into massive (and cold) wind gusts. We started walking and decided to resume running at about mile 9 (a mile from my house). Well, that didn't last long. To add to my problems, I had a blister develop on my poor little toe that enveloped the entire toe. Mid stride, I FELT the thing pop. It was sooo incredibly gross...and painful. I screamed as a mix of both feelings and we ended up walking/limping the rest of the way home. And now, well, my foot still hurts and I have doctor's orders not to run the marathon. It is very depressing. I was so excited and felt so close to accomplishing this goal. And I'm getting depressed talking about it so moving on....

Senioritis is hitting full force. It was my weekend to work, so that alone took a huge chunk of homework time away. But, that's no excuse for the pile I have waiting for me tonight. I just emailed my sociology assignment before started this blog. That's pathetic in that up until now I have always had these things done by Wednesday at the latest. I still have to read for three of my other classes. And the biggest strain? I have to fill out a study guide for a genetics test this week. That's super scary in that I have not been paying the slighest attention in class, so I have not the slightest idea of what's going on. When I say fill out the study guide, I mean attempt to learn four chapters of material here before the big test.

OHHHH and to top of the homework craziness, CHOIR TOUR IS THIS WEEK. We will be gone singing at high school on Wednesday and Thursday. I'm excited that we're heading south towards my home territory to sing this year. We're spending Wednesday night in Norfolk, finishing the tour on Thursday, and returning for our home concert in Marion Auditorium on Friday at 7:30. It should be full of lovely sounds, so if you're not busy, make the trip down!! :)

I can't believe it is April 11th already. I still do not have definite plans for this summer. Time left and I'm running in cirlces trying to catch up, but I've fallen pretty far behind. I'll just blame it on my foot crisis and my inability to run lately (the weather has been glorious for bike rides though!!).

OK. On that way behinded-ness note, I need to end this thing and start reading. Have a great week! Check out Mount Marty's website for choir tour show times and see if you can come on down for some lovely sounds. :)

Here Comes the Bunny....

2010-03-29T16:37:00.001-07:00

It is an absolutely gorgeous spring day and I resent being trapped indoors working and doing homework. But, on a brighter note to match the bright sunshine, perhaps it's a blessing that I am in fact trapped. I ran a good 7 or 8 plus miles on Thursday afternoon, and since that time, I have been hobbling around as though my foot were broken. I believe I strained my poor arch and I have some creepy and painful sensations coming from my left foot all weekend. What's more troublesome to me though is actually not the pain, but the fact that it's prohibiting me from running on this gorgeous day. I'm hoping another good night's sleep will do it wonders and it will be strong enough to go tomorrow. I hear it's suppose to top today in sunshine! This is really very frustrating, because, you see, it's not like I just randomly decided to run 8 miles. I'm actually in the process of training for the Yankton half-marathon on April 24th. I was/am getting very excited about this challenge. One of my good friends from high school is coming up and running with me! :) ...I'm just nervous about this foot thing and my determination....sometimes it's a bad combination as far as allowing joints to heal....

Warm weather also means the return of the possibility of biking. My parents made a special trip up to Yankton on Friday afternoon to bring my bike back to me. I had sent it home for safe protection from the snow. Beings I was incapable of running this afternoon, I ventured out on my long-lost friend and got pretty excited for the coming of summer. I was also reminded of how much of a struggle Summit Hill is for me to pedal up.

As for classes, well, it's almost time to say goodbye to those disgusting creatures we call fruit flies in genetics. We are almost done counting the babies and my big task of the week is to put together a scientific report from the data. There is no paper I hate writing more than a scientific research one. They are so dry and numerical and excessively boring and complicated (a normal book research paper comes in a close second).

Wednesday also marks the deadline for literary submissions to Paddlefish, Mount Marty's literary journal. I'm submitting a couple of poems for publication consideration this year, so I need to find some time to put together a final revision. I need some creative power to come up with witty titles; I'm a terrible title-giver. :P

And WEDNESDAY is the start of EASTER VACATION!!! I am super excited to go home for a few days and to see my family and celebrate. I haven't been home since late January because of work and Canada and Mexico, so the trek to Elgin is long overdue. I'm actually hoping to motivate myself, even if it's from my favorite spot to curl up on the corner of the living room couch, to write my 10 page sociology research paper. That way when I come back for my final month of classes at Mount Marty, I'll only have one 10 page research paper to go (for Gospel of John) and a bit more time to appreciate friends....hahaha....we'll see how that plan goes. I've been rather lazy lately.

I'm also hoping to hit up the movie, The Last Song on my way home Wednesday night. Yes, I'll admit that I'm a Nicholas Sparks lover. The book made me sob, so I'll actually be disappointed if the movie's not a tear jerker. I'm working on coordinating Nebraska natives to stop in Norfolk on their ways home to watch it with me before we depart our ways for the holiday. :)

My normally enjoyable Tuesday will not be so carefree this week. I'm picking up what seems a very long 2-9 shift, which leaves me with virtually no free time for the day...very sad beings it's supposed to be so lovely out. I'm just thinking Wednesday. If tomorrow is not up there on my list of great days, the excitement/relaxation of the remainder of the week has promise to make up for it.

That's all for now. I've got a Moderator article to write this evening on top of a bunch of reading and reporting for classes. The article reminds me, I went to two of the three performances of the Spring Play, Rabbit Hole, this past weekend. It was a drama that followed the story of dealing with loss. It contained a whole lot of emotion and was quite gripping. I teared up during the performance and even let a couple of tears slip. So, kudos to the cast and crew for an excellent performance!!! I'll do my best to write a fitting review.

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you have a blessed, relaxing, and enjoyable holiday with family and friends.

Oh, and I hope the Easter Bunny finds his way to your homes as well. mmmmmm...chocolate! :)

Post-Spring Break

2010-03-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Hmmm....I've decided to stay up to date on my blog...but I'm sitting here thinking and nothing really significant has happened this past week. I think I've been moving in some sort of auto-pilate mode since Mexico, still not ready to accept the fact that my vacation world is over and the reality of homework is back. Luckily, I had tests in most of my classes before Spring Break, so this past week was mostly just lectures over new material. I'm anticipating a pretty intense week coming up though. I guess after a week of virtually wasting a lot of time, I should expect it. :)

I do sometime this weekend between work (and hopefully some relaxation) have to find the time and motivation to write a five page case study report for my symbol and sacrament class. Maybe after work tonight I'll give it a go (at least for the early evening hours). Speaking of that class though, it never fails to keep my attention and often blow my mind. On Friday S. Marielle gave us a tour of Bishop Marty Chapel. Now, I've lived in Yankton for four years and been to Mass in that chapel more times than I can count, but I was amazed at both the symbolism behind the structure and art of the place and the accomplishment that it was to build such a magnificent structure at that time. What's more, there's a little museum behind a wall in the Peace Chapel that I had no idea existed! Bishop Marty's actual crozier is in there!! (not to mention many other ornate and beautiful and wow-ing things)

You know, now that I think about it, I actually have way more homework than I want to think about or admit. I was just trying to think of any other exciting tidbits of information from class this week and I felt overwhelmed by everything I've been putting off this past week. Haha...I guess maybe it's a good thing I sat down to blog and had this sad revelation.

Ohhhh, this week on our gorgeous 59 degree Thursday afternoon I ran outside in shorts and a t-shirt down by the river (Midway Beach). It was absolutely gorgeous, maybe still a bit chilly for shorts and a t-shirt only (probably why my room was pretty stiff) but nevertheless, it boosted my spirits and made me hopeful for summer. I love running on the bike trails down there!

Last night after work I went with friends to the movie Alice in Wonderland. It was an interesting show. I had a few good laughs and it kept my attention. Afterwards we had a random discussion night over while sharing whole wheat goldfish crackers. It might sound lame, but it was nice.

But, before that, I spent some time online apartment searching for a place to live in August when I move down to Omaha (or for the summer...I still have to figure out where this summer will take me) and when I was done I felt no farther ahead than when I started with the added benefit of being scared to my wits about the whole thing. I was looking at the information on one of the cheaper rental units I had stumbled across and there happened to be a few reviews on the place. After the first review that said the place was wonderful and so-and-so would happily live there all of his life, every single review was horrendous. There was even one in all capital letters that said DO NOT LIVE HERE! IT IS NOT SAFE. I FELT LIKE I WOULD BE SHOT EVERY NIGHT AT DARK! ....ummm....how's that for making me feel safe about this big city transition? ...

.....TOMORROW will be excting (well after work anyway). My little brother Jeffrey is making his first TEC retreat at Crofton so I will get to see him and my parents and many of my other worderful friends in the early evening hours. I'm excited for him and just plain excited in general!! :)

Ok. That's all for now folks. Radio says tomorrow is supposed to be a gorgeous early Spring Day, so make sure you all get out and enjoy it. I will be stuck indoors working yet again. So, if you're feeling ambiotious, run a few miles for me. :)

MEXICO!!!!

2010-03-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

Alright, so despite the fact that it all feels like a beautiful, wonderful, peaceful dream, in reality, I really did spend all of my Spring Break on a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico with the Mount Marty Choir. We returned to Mount Marty on Saturday night, and I felt like I had been gone for years because I though nothing of schoolwork and life back here while sailing away. As soon as we set foot on campus though, ironically I also felt like I had never left but instead fallen asleep on that dreadfull bus and dreamed everything that happened during the past week....let me try to make a weak attempt to take you into a corner of that dream.

The 50 choir members and our chaperones left campus at 2:00 on Friday March 5 to drive the 20+ hours down to Galveston, TX where our cruise ship, the Carnival Ecstasy, was awaiting our arrival and happily begging us to board so that it could take us far away to lands of sea and sky and food and Mexican shopping during our Spring Break. The plan was to drive straight through the night, and with such a tiresome task, it was necessary to stop in Oklahoma for a round of midnight bowling while the bus drivers rested their eyes. After us eager college kids used our energy to knock down a few pins, we boarded the bus to complete our southerly journey and our desire to flee the country. It's kind of a gross, groggy thing to drive through the night on a bus. I spread a blanket on the floor and slept (perhaps a better description would be "fitfully snoozed and rolled around forever conscious of a bruised hip bone) for some time. I remember waking up at some point, having spent the journey tangled in a mess of hopeful sleep, mp3 player cords, blankets and food crumbs from my friends in the seats above me. I had slept throught Houston and Dallas and tried to get up but was stuck because Cody in front of me had taken the opportunity to lay his seat back and thus trap me in my lowly position. So it is that you now have an image of the battered shap I was in as we boarded our wonderful ship on Saturday morning.

The ship itself....I don't know where to begin. It was a city of itself - a floating city of the sea with a theatre, a pool, a gym, a spa, multiple restaurants and bars, live music forever and always, 12 floors, a top deck jogging course, a put put golf course, and a water slide just to give you a broad picture. There were lights and sparkles and color everywhere, and there was never an shortage of things to do. Each day we were given a schedule of events and there were dance class, towel animal folding classes, ab blast workout classes, discounts for massages, a hairy chest contest (MMC's Leonard won that one!), trivia games, movies on a big screen projector, a talent show (the Mount Marty Smoothies performed along with Mitch and his paper plate animal cutting), comedians, karaoke, seminars on shopping and diamond buying....there was everything you could think of. The food deserves special note. Despite free frozen yogurt, ice cream and pizza 24 hours a day, every night we had fancy dining meals with the best, most cheerful waiter ever: Bobby Brown. Each night we were given freshly baked bread followed by an appetizer and a mail course which we selected off of a menu that changed each night and all of this was followed by an equally exquisite dessert menu. The menus were anything but processed and were definitely high class. I ate lobster, duck, shrimp, escargot, marinated fresh fruit, souffle....I felt distinguished...and disgustingly full. But, as Bobby said when I felt like I could no longer eat another bite, "You're on Vacation!!!" :)

Our first day we spent exploring the ship, the second day was a fun day at sea, the third and fourth were spent on Mexican islands (Progresso and Cozumel) and the last was another fun day at sea ....and the one after that. What you ask? Yes, that's right, we spent an entire extra day at sea because on the day we were scheduled to get off, the heaviest fog I have ever seen in my life closed the port of Galveston and we were thus succombed to spinning circles in the Gulf of Mexico. You couldn't even see the end of the ship if you stood outside on a deck in the middle of the ship. It was crazy. I really didn't mind the extra day at sea (even though you couldn't see the sea). I spent a good portion of it relaxing on the decks and reading and writing letters. However, the delay stopped us from making it to Dallas where we were supposed to perform for two schools in the city. And then, when we docked a day late, we were not far enough into our trip back north to make it to Kansas City to sing as was planned. So, essentially, due to fog, the only singing that the MMC choir did on the spring break choir tour was a short performance by the smoothies for the talent show, a very rough rehearsal Friday morning while waiting for word on the fog, and a poor rendition of a song for our bus driver upon crossing the South Dakota border. I guess we're just saving it all for the Spring Break local choir tour when we'll be truly prepared for it. :)

Ok. anyway. Let's back track because I would love, love, love to go back to Mexico right now. Let me tell you a little about my island excursions. When we stopped in Progresso, a group of us (Briana, Gina, Steph, Jordan, Becca, Dr. Vogt, and Bill Stahl) found a local guide who offered to take us to a place of Mayan ruins (the name started with a D and was something complicated I couldn't pronounce but sounded something like "chicken pizza"). It was mind-blowing, a great deal money wise, and totally worth the adventure (even though the bus driver scared us with the crazy "don't worry about stop signs just gun it down the streets" driving style of the area). Once there we actually got to climb on these fortresses. I couldn't believe it. I was standing on amazing structures that were built thousands of years ago. If those had been in America, I have a feeling there's no way we would have been allowed to get near enough to touch them much less climb them and take pictures. One of the temples was actually built so that it's two windows would reflect the summer and winter solstice sun perfectly. I think maybe those Mayan people were smarter way back in the day than we are today!!!!

And then there was Cozumel - land of great shopping (especially if you are in the hunt for quality, authentic jewels). A good majority of us girls took advantage of the Caribbean jewel business and bought real pearls for a bargain price of only $1.50 an inch!!! But, the most exciting part of the whole trip had to be my shore excursion on this island. Briana, Jordan, Becca, Bill, Dr. Vogt and myself joined a few random others and ventured out for a three reef snorkeling adventure. After an initial panic in the first reef of not knowing what the heck I was supposed to do and fearing that my ginormous flippers (the word for those things is slipping my mind right now) would weigh me down and drown me, I had a marvelous, heavenly time. I was like a little kid in a candy store once I discovered that the flippers were more of a floatation aid than a drowning doom. Then came the struggle of figuring out that I needed to take slow deep breaths instead of panic breathing. I swallowed a bucket of nasty sea water before I figured that one out...oh but when I did I saw schools of fish and bright colorful fish and coral reef and bright blue water. It was the most wonderful, enlightening, beautiful thing ever! And then in the very last reef, we saw a barricuda, or guide saw a shark down in the reefs and a few of us got stung by tiny jellyfish. Needless to say, we didn't stay for our full alloted time in that reef. As for the jellyfish sting, well, I think it's pretty cool to have the claim that I was stung by a poisonous creature. It just felt like a vaccination of some sort and afterwards, it didn't matter in the midst of my salt-coated, exhausted, but truly content self.

So there ya have it, Mexico in a nut shell....Mexico with so many, countless wonderful stories I have left out and not sufficiently given appropriate status too. It was a spring break for the records!! :D

O Canada

2010-03-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

Oops. Somewhere during my two week trek across the continent I made a mental note to remember to keep you home bodies posted on my adventures, but there was so much excitement in the lands I travelled to and so little internet connection that the mental note must have crumpled and disintegrated.

Here I sit, back in America, back in Yankton, South Dakota, and back at Mount Marty for my final two months of undergraduate college....whoah. We're stopping that thought right there. That's too much to think about. Instead, let me take you back two weeks and a bit North. Let's talk Canada and then Mexico!!!! :)

Canada....let me think. I feel like that journey, though only two weeks ago, was a lifetime past. I remember a bus ride that at the time seemed quite lengthy, but in relation to a recent Mexico adventure was just a quick jaunt into town. If I remember correctly, we piled 11 people into a school van and headed straight north to Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada. The journey took approximately 8 hours (it was broken up by a rousing game of Catch Phrase and multiple homages to Canada as a few of the students took it upon themselves to learn and sing "O Canada" for the rest of the party) and us brave souls ventured up there for only 3 days time, but they were days packed full of culture and adventure.

When we arrived in Cananda on Friday night, we headed downtown to a historial area known as The Forks and ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory. The restaurant was really very quaint and if I remember correctly I ate more than my fair share of some scrumptous pasta.

Saturday was a very busy day. We woke up bright and early to head to a well-known art Museum (the name is slipping my memory right now, but grab the next edition of the Moderator for full details!). We browsed the exquisite selections for a couple of hours and then mafe our way to a museum (whose name has also been buried in the packed travel files). The museum was very interesting and offered a bit of interactive learning. We even got to pretend to be pirates for a few minutes on a full size replica of a ship (yep, you guessed it, I forgot the name of it as well....the Nonsuch perhaps....).

Late Saturday afternoon, we headed to the theatre for the first of two plays - the highlight of our English Club trip up there. I guess I failed to mention that the whole Canada trip was through the English Club at Mount Marty and all expenses, save a few of our meals and souvenirs, were supplied by the club. You can't beat that! Anywho, the first play was entitled Looking Back West and had a cast of one man. It was quite intriguing, unlike anything I've ever seen performed before. The single actor told his story of a troubled childhood and life on the streets, but the play was written in a picturesque manner and I was surprised at how well one actor could bring a very colorful story to life. After a quick lunch, we returned to the theatre for a production of Mother Courage. This 3 hour show proved to be very dramatic. It included some musical selections and lots of piano music (!!). It followed the story of a canteen woman and the devastation the Thirty Years' War reaked on her and her children. After a long, fun and adventure filled day, combined with drowsiness brought on by cold medication (the weather is rather brisk up north and my immune system didn't appreciate it) I hope no one will judge me too harshly when I admit that I dozed off a time or two during the productions. As a tribute to the performances though, even in my groggy state, I still managed to enjoy them and leave with an intact story line. :)

On Sunday morning we got up and attended a mass at the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church in Winnepeg. This was a beautiful ceremony although I spent the entire hour completely baffled and dumbfounded. They chant their entire Mass in Ukrainian and make the sign of the cross about 16 times more than we do at a regular Catholic Mass.

After all of that culture, it was time to head back to South Dakota. Afterall, we had only 5 days to prepare ourselves for our choir journey down to Mexico.... !!!!! :)

Around and About

2010-02-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

Wow. Another week has passed since I last posted, and I failed to deliver the pictures I have promised you. I am very sorry. I think I spent a good majority of this week attempting to catch up (maybe hang on is a better phrase...) on homework after last week's adventurous happenings. Yep, that must definitely be it. I feel sleep deprived as ususal and to be quite honest with you, Monday seems way too long ago to think about.

So, I'll begin with Friday. Yesterday was my fourth and final Honors Convocation here at MMC. I now have four certificates and four believer pins to signify my scholastic achievements here at MMC. To be quite honest, I got so caught up in my studies and in chatting with friends this week, that I completely forgot about the ceremony until about 5:00 on Thursday night when I decided to go pick up a robe for it (all the sholarship recipients were graduation robes). Rather than being all proud of myself and excited about the event, it actually just made me feel very tired and nostalgic. I had 30 minutes to wait around for the thing to start dressed in my robe and I couldn't help but think about graduation and how many people had worn that very gown in their own graduations from MMC. The big day is approaching almost too rapidly for me to comprehend right now.

So...let's switch to a much lighter anticipatory event - the spring break choir tour! Right after Honors Convocation yesterday afternoon we had our cruise orientation meeting. I am sooo very ready to leave for Mexico and the ocean and feel sun - bright, warm, sun-burning capable sun. The thought makes me giddy. The actual departure date seems unreal. We leave for Mexico in less than 2 weeks!!!!! The only part I am even remotely dreading is the drive across the country. We are driving straight through the night, which is great for people fortunate enough to be able to sleep on buses, but gross for tall people like me who sit miserably and fitfully doze off and on. It will be so very worth it though!!!! It makes me smile to think about over a week of sunshiney vacation with my wonderful friends.

Ok. Back to Friday night (I'm sure I'll have many future blogs about Mexico). After the cruise meeting, I headed over to Bishop Marty Chapel to watch the SD Symphony Orchestra perform. It was riveting, even if it was long. I felt very cultured. A few of the movements made me feel very emotional, and at other times I was really kind of creeped out by the sounds they were able to create. It's amazing what music can simulate! It was a very relaxing and beautiful (accoustics in the chapel are phenomenal) way to spend a good portion of my night.

And at peace from the music perhaps or just in a mood to be mellow, I returned to my room deteremined to not only work on homework, but to be productive about it. I put in the movie, UP and it made me super happy. I didn't really even watch most of it, but I'd look up and smile every time. It's darn near my favorite movie of all time. Disney made a classic out of it. Anyway, I had it on for background cheeriness, and I managed to whittle out a four page paper in two hours. I was so proud of myself that I climbed up into my loft at 12:30 (that's super early, especially for a weekend) and slept peacefully. :)

And that's such a happy note that I want to end in telling you that I will be in Canada in less than a week's time. Yep, that's right. On Friday morning I'm leaving for Canada with the English club to attend two plays over the coming week and experience a bit of culture. And yep, that's right. I will be in Canada next weekend, return Sunday night, and depart for Mexico that Friday. Try that one on for excitement!!!

I have to go. I'm spending this entire weekend at work, so hopefully I'll have time this week to gie you another brief post before my travels begin.

Homecoming

2010-02-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

Hellooooooo!

I have about an hour of time here that is unscheduled for the day, and beings I've heard wind of disappointment in my lack of dedication to my blog lately, I figured I would give you all something to excite you. :P

Today is the conclusion of homecoming week, and so the last few hours of my claim to royalty. Despite all the fun and excitement of such a status, I decided when I woke up this morning I was ready to give this whole celebration a grand finale and bid it farewell. My bore feet ache from my bout in heels last night and I feel incredibly sleep deprived...

I'll give you a brief re-cap of the week. On Sunday night, I joined fellow Mt. Martians at the Family Fun Center for a couple of games of bowling. I think I bowled a 135 one game and was (sadly) super excited about it. Because of my uncoordination and uncanny ability to make things difficult, my bowling balls often see more of the gutter than the pins. So began a great week. :)

Monday night was ice skating night - always a painful experience. If uncooridnation at the bowling alley is a problem, at the ice skating rink, it's quite a dilemna. To begin with, I have this ridiculous fear of putting my feet into ice skates because I think they'll get stuck and someone will have to come and saw them off (go ahead and laugh, I already admitted this is ridiculous). My only attempt at a legitimate argument is that I've badly sprained both ankles, so they are permanently partially swollen and don't bend well, so it's a challenge to force them into those stiff skates. Ok. This next piece is super exciting: I MADE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT WITHOUT FALLING ONCE!!! How I managed this I have not the slightest idea, maybe I dreamed it.... haha. The royalty court also took part in a frozen t-shirt contest on the ice. I partnered myself with Cody Juffer (who was crowned Lord last night!!!!), equally uncoordinated. Our battle cry was, "We will suck together!" Needless to say, we didn't really master the challenge of unthawing our t-shirt. It was a very unique contest and quite entertaining. (My first picture is from ice skating this week)

Tuesday night offered a plethera of random activities set up in the gym. I took part in my first ever game of laser tag. It was really odd actually, beings it was set up in a ginat blow-up maze thing. More than laser-ing around, I think I got more out of running around like a little kid through tiny tunnels and random blow-up poles in my path. I also opted to see what the cartoon creating man perceived me as. I had a cartoon drawing done with Briana and Tiffany (friends here) and apparently I resemble a grandma with a tight, Laura Ingalls bun in my hair - I hope I don't really look like a grandma cartoon.... :0

On Wednesday night, the homecoming activity was to attend the basketball games and cheer on the Lancers. I failed to show my support here, however, because I had a big genetics test bright and early on Thursday morning. As a tribute to my lack of motivation this semester, I had the challenge of essentially teaching myself 5 chapeters of materials in one night. At around 2 a.m. I decided my genes didn't care about discerning the workings of DNA and I called it a night. At test time, I felt surprisingly alert, however, and I think I pieced together the mysteries of brown and white chickens and the results of their mating superbly. :)

After studying all night Wednesday (well and Tuesday as well for a symbol and sacrament test...) I was all about avoiding homework in general on Thursday afternoon and night, disregarding the fact that post-studying I had a lot to do. I went to the dodgeball tournament and later to the movie, The Book of Eli, as part of the homecoming festivities. When the movie ended at 1:30 a.m. I think my poor brain was screaming in retaliation of lack of sleep (poor thing).

And that bring me to the big night of the week - Coronation last night. Tiffany styled my hair very elegantly and I put on my black dress and sparkly jewelry and felt like I was going to prom again. It was fun to get all dressed up and feel like royalty for a while. However, the heels could have definitely been left out of the story. I walked down the stairs without falling and stood without collapsing. Congratulations to Kelly Schilling and Cody Juffer for their new status as Lord and Lady Marben!!!! I on the other hand....welll I kicked off my heels as soon as possible and walked around bare-foot chatting with all of my wonderful friends and my parents. :) After the coronation ceremony, I stuck around to watch comedian/magician Joel Meyers. He was really pretty good and I had a few good laughs over the deal. I left to chat with all of my alumni friends who came back (YAY!!!!) and an exciting and glamerous night ended wonderfully with long-overdue relaxing time with very good friends here at Mount Marty. I love all of my friends here and feel compelled to urge you all to count your own as blessings every chance you get.

Ok. I need to head down to the gym to cheer on the Lancers in basketball action. Tonight's going to be a great night. I'll put my dress back on, get all fancy, and dance the night away. :)

I'll work on posting pictures later. :)

Blog About Nothing

2010-02-06T15:15:00.000-08:00

I have given up yet another of my prized Saturdays for the cause of work. You know, today it is really making me sad because I'm thinking of all of the sleep, personal endeavors, cleaning, and homework time that I have lost. :( So, I could make up for lost time by studying all night, but there's a very slim chance of that happening. You see, if I did such a thing, I feel as though I would suffer from a serious case of burnout. I need some play time. Therefore, I'll see what sort of adventure I can find this evening.

Meanwhile, it really wasn't a very exciting week. I spent both Monday and Wednesday night at work. I somehow managed to plug away at homework for the majority of the rest of the evenings...well minus Thursday night which I spent tutoring, and then watching ridiculous youtube videos for a purely "lack of motivation factor." Oh and Friday night which I spent at our choir potlock social and the Dear John Movie. That didn't really get me very far in the studying department, however. I have two pretty big tests coming up this week, smack in the middle of all of the homecoming mayhem. Speaking of homecoming, the festivities begin tomorrow afternoon at the 4:00 student mass. What better way to begin the celebration than with prayer?

That's about all the news my tired mind can conjure right now. I must be off for a long overdue nap before I seek out any adventures.

Happy Super Bowl watching!
P.S. I heard on Good Morning America that the Super Bowl Night is pretty much the Thanksgiving of junk food, so go ahead, indulge! :)

Catching Up/Chasing Time...

2010-02-01T12:17:00.000-08:00

Wow...February 1st!!!!

I feel as though I've left you with a two week or more lapse on the happenings of my life. And you know, I'm sitting here now not sure where to go with this post. It has been the most unusual beginning of a semester for me yet at Mount Marty. I spent the majority of the days following my brief post about my grandpa attempting to give my life back some semblance of my crazy normalcy. Essentially, I spent the entire week and following weekend catching up on old and managing new homework. That in turn made the last week of January quite long beings I felt like I never had a weekend because I home-worked straight through it.

The past week seemed doubly long acutally because, once caught up on homework, I still locked myself in my room for nearly the entire week, still working on homework, this time trying to get ahead. You see, I found out I have been nominated as a homecoming royalty candidate for the festivities next week, so I needed to go somewhere this past weekend to find a black dress. It all worked out rather nicely actually. Though exhausting, I worked on homework double time during the week so that I was finished with everything I needed done for Monday before Friday at 2:00 rolled around. At this wondrous time, I departed for Lincoln, NE for a weekend of friends and shopping!!!

It was a super refreshing and much needed weekend in many ways. I saw some great and dearly missed high school friends on Friday night. Saturday morning, we got up and headed to the state capital building to participate in a short pro-life march. I met up with some of my favorite TEC friends there and it was very humbling to see the large crowd and participate in such a powerful and needed and moving event. Many of the state representatives gave brief talks on their support for our cause and they even played the tunnel walk before we took off! :)

All of that marching made me quite hungry, so my friend Jackie and I departed to the mall for some food and shopping. I was fortunate enough to find a dress I am pleased with, so I could relax in the afternoon and browse around for whatever my heart fancied. Surprisingly, we only shopped for a few hours until we were satisfied. I guess we just made quick business of the ordeal.

Saturday night I headed home for perhaps the greatest part of my weekend. I hadn't planned on making the loop through Elgin, but my heart pulled me that way in the end. The ache from the loss of my Grandpa is still pretty raw in my family, so home is where I wanted to be. My parents arrived home from Michigan at roughly the same time as me on Saturday night, so I chatted with them and then curled up on our coach to give myself a headache spawned by complicated genetics problems. On Sunday morning, I drove to my Grandma's very new home in the assisted living center and picked her up for a church and lunch date (Mom made chicken and rice at my special request!!). Later in the afternoon, I brought Grandma back on my way back to Yankton, but before hugging the wonderful lady goodbye, we went shopping together for a bird feeder to liven up the cute little tree outside her new window. We braved the cold together to securely hang it out there. Hopefully a few songbirds come home for spring soon...or perhaps a squirrel or two will find pleasure in the bird seed.

Hmmm....aside from my weekend what's college life like? Well, I will admit without hesitation that I despise my online introduction to sociology course. It's that one general education credit I've put off until the last minute (mostly because it would never fit into my schedule mind you), and now that I'm taking it, it seems like nothing more than a nuisance in my life. Who wants to write a 4 page research-ish paper every week. "NOT ME!!" says Kelly the senior with a slowly developing case of senioritis. Genetics....well, just appreciate that you are your own unique person because of the miracle of genetic diversity. It's probably not worth your brain's relaxation to attempt to decipher the reasons (although it is rather interesting....). Symbol and Sacrament continues to awe and ispire me and it is quickly become one of my favorite classes in all my years here at the Mount. That's enough for class run-down (mostly because I'm sure I've already sufficiently bored you).

On out and about area of my life, I have work at the Clinic tonight and Wednesday on the agenda with intramural basketball immediately following pill counting tonight. WHOOO! I love playing basketball. I miss it quite a lot even after a four year lull actually. AND, the new girl at the pharmacy is currently undergoing her first day of training. It will be fun to meet a new face when I walk through the doors tonight and it also makes me smile because a new body will lighten my workload for the remainder of the school year.

I should be off now. I'm thinking that a game-plan of: weekday afternoons and evenings (early anyway) = homework crunch time is a nice philosophy to keep for a while anyway. Having free weekends is quite lovely, especially if the days are half-stolen by work anyway.

Stay tuned next week for what I'm sure will be a full and lively (as always) recap/run-down of the homecoming festivities.

Happy February!!
(If you made any New Year's resolutions in January that have yet to be put into practice, now's a good time to start...new month! ....Actually, on that note, while in Lincoln, I was informed of a half-marathon run to go down in Lincoln on May 2. Now's a great year to check a top ten item off my bucket list...... :) )

Grandpa

2010-01-18T21:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a very long and difficult past 5 days. My Grandpa Starman passed away on Thursday evening. He was out for his daily walk and slipped on the ice and hit his head...causing bleeding on the brain. My dad and his family had to take him off of life support later that night. It was all very sudden and very much a shock. He was well-loved, the father of my Dad's farm, our family's faith, an incredibly talented wood worker, a passionate accordian player and singer, and a dearly loved Grandpa and father and husband and brother and friend....I'm too tired and overwhelmed to blog anything other than the only thing that has mattered to me in the past few days, so I'm sharing with you the poem I wrote in his memory. Please keep him and my Grandma and family in your prayers...and have a blessed week.

The Carpenter

You say my Grandpa was a carpenter

who crafted perfection from wood,

but my Grandpa was an artist

who created beauty lik no one else could.

With music in his heart,

Grandpa was a carpenter who could sing.

His life and creations were a song

whose lyrics will forever ring.

A carpenter can construct a house,

not a home like Grandpa would build

as he tirelessly toiled for his family

who grew strong on the land he had tilled.

And as a carpenter forms wood,

Grandpa built a faith he held dear,

carrying it and sharing it with determination

to remind all that God is always near.

Carpenters need nails to close

the places Grandpa simply used his heart to fill.

He was building memories and lessons

that will remain inour hearts forever - building still.

You say my Grandpa was a carpenter,

but he's an artist, singing now above,

for God build a house in Heaven

where the carpenter can rest forever in love.

Annnnnddd We're Back.

2010-01-13T16:55:00.001-08:00

My 8th and final semester at MMC is officially under way. I have successfully lived through my LAST first Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of a semester at Mount Marty. :P Haha. I'm going to be dramatic about this 1) because I can be, 2) because I've spent a lot of time in dear old Yankton and I cannot fathom leaving, 3) graduating and leaving my friends is a very depressing thought (despite the excitement of the graduation itself). I gave that LAST first line to a friend who's in grad school right now and he laughed at me and said that another girl from Omaha said the same thing to him that day. He attributes the sentimental value of it to "a girl thing." So, if you're male and think I'm crazy, know that other females are as well.

I'll give you a run-down of my classes this semester even if it is a boring thing to discuss because it's very probable you'll hear me comment on one or two of them before the year's over. I am currently registered for 19 credits (no rest for the weary) - Chamber choir, mixed choir, genetics, writing and publishing, chemistry seminar, symbol and sacrament, sociology, and the Gospel of John. After three days of classes, I'm still excited about the learning opportunities in this random array of classes. It's fun to be a senior and have the opportunity to fill your schedule in with random things that have no value to your graduation status other than general credits - credits that I'm taking for the general excitement of learning. Take Symbol and Sacrament and The Gospel of John for instance. Neither of these classes are doing a thing to fill requirements for graduation, but I'm ready to be enlightened by S. Marielle's impressive knowledge of the subjects. I'm taking the Gospel of John class as an independent study course with another friend and under the instruction of S. Marielle. We met for the first time yesterday to plan out an initial course of action and I'm already fascinated. Choir is always a fun adventure - in particular this semester as we will be going on a recruitment tour over spring break involving a cruise in Mexico!!! WOOOHOOO!! Writing...always a stress relief and challenge to my imagination. And Genetics, well what's a semester without a class of scientific fact and wild attempts to study late into the night in hopes of grasping the absurdity of the workings of life on earth. Oh, and sociology, well, that's my one lone general education requirement still waiting to be fulfilled. I'm taking it as an ONLINE course so it might pose a challenge in the motivational/procrastination department.

In the mean time, we are awaiting a new employee to arrive and tackle her first day of work here at the Clinic Pharmacy, which means that until that happens we remain short staffed and poor Kelly, originally contracted for 8-18 hours a week, is putting in a full 30 hours of work during this first week of class. My only comment for the time is that we need to train the new gal and train quickly because when homework starts raelly piling in, my brain will be too crammed to remember drug names for such hours. I'm counting on her to be my life support. :P

I also hopped back into the tutoring mode last night in attempting to help my outside MMC weekly tutee, a 7th grader, learn how to solve an algebra problem. All of you who understand letters mixed in with your numbers in math books, don't take it for granted. It's a devil to teach a new-be such a concept.

And what remains? I have somewhat of a rambunctious spirit right now - getting up at 6 a.m. to fit in a refreshing morning workout. We'll see how long that lasts. I had a little Christmas in my mail box here at school when I received 5 hand-written snail mail letters/cards. I was so incredibly excited that I kicked friends out of my room so I could savor reading my mail. I'm contemplating the best course of action for summer living/employment (to be or not to be in Yankton - other option = move to Omaha and figure out life there before I try to be a pharmacy student in the big, bad city....feel free to express your opinions on the matter). And my last comment, I haven't practiced the piano once since I've returned to school. :( There's simply not enough hours in my days. It's one of my life's biggest goals to learn to play - like really learn to play - and I'm failing for the time being. My lessons are on hold. Do I let it go for now and pray I can resume later/post-graduation? Ohhh such trying decisions!!!

Ohh, and my spirits have been soaring in the presence of all of my friends returned from break and with this warm weather...I even ran outside in the wet slush, muddy, remaining snow banks and mountains obstacle course. It was a wondrous adventure!

Enjoy the warm-ish weather, the mid-January air, and time with all of your family and friends. Goodbye for now. :)

Let the Year Begin (Blizzard #2...)

2010-01-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

Well hello there! How exciting that this is the first time I have the pleasure of speaking to you this year! I hope all of your new year's were safe and fun and filled with love of family and friends. I'm writing to you in the middle of blizzard number two of the winter. This time, I happen to be stranded in Yankton rather than at home, so it makes for a new adventure I suppose. I should actually be at work right now (the reason I'm here in Yankton). But, I bundled myself up so thoroughly that I resembled a toddler (you know, that little two-year old child who is such a ball of winter layers that he can hardly walk and splats in a new snow bank every two steps) to walk across the MMC campus and over to the Yankton Medical Clinic to begin my long shift. Low and behold, I look up, nearly frozen and crying of no accord of my own, to discover a single vehicle in the parking lot. I think, "could it be?!" So, beings I am already frozen to the core, I continue on my trek across the street and find locked doors. Apparently even doctors take time off during blizzards. So, despite the fact that I nearly froze for nothing, I am pretty excited to have a day without plans to do whatever I please.

I have a few updates on recent adventures (pre-blizzard) for you. The TEC Christmas Party was refreshing and wonderful. It's always a surprise to go back and find people you haven't seen in months or even years show up. I was on a high from good conversation and hugs afterwards. :) And, that high carried me all the way down to Kearney, NE for New Year's Eve. I was beside myself with excitement at the opportunity to go there. My best friend from high school goes to school down there and I am only lucky enough to see her a couple of times a year. On top of that, one of my very good TEC friends goes to school there and so does Emmy, a former MMC volleyball player who transferred two yeas ago. I took Briana (my MMC buddy) with me and I was all smiles and excitement to spend the first hours of the new year with these long-lost friends. Never mind the fact that I drove four hours to stay less than a full day. I'd do it again!

The reason I had to rush away so quickly was that I had to be back in Wisner, NE by 4:00 on Jan 1st to finish final preparations for the Core Team (leaders of the whole TEC movement) TEC retreat that I had agreed to put together with four other wonderful people. The five of us put together a special day for these Core members who have done so much for the TEC movement. I gave a talk (super nerve racking) and one of the guys even wrote a song for them that we all sang. What a great 1st weekend of the year!

And then from Wisner I back-tracked back to Elgin where I spent the next day with my sister and her husband who were home again from Michigan. And my last adventure of break? Well, I then left with Worthington, MN as my destination for the second time in a month. I spent two days up there with Jessica and Brett (more MMC friends). We had intended to go sledding in Adrian on some hill notoriously referred to as "Killer Hill," but the plan was scratched due to freezing temperatures and icy conditions. I guess we decided we didn't actually want to die. But, I had a wonderful time all the same. Jessica and I rode to Redwood Falls with her dad and tried our luck at the penny slot machines for a while, we visited her friends in the area, and attended a couple of Adrian high school basketball games. It was a relaxing and enjoyable end to my break.

And now I'm back at school, supposed to be working, but instead enjoying my snow day from work. We'll see if the next three days make me as lucky. In the mean time, I'm ready for all of my friends to return and for the year of my graduation to begin...AHHHH!

I'm going to be crazy now and rebundle up to walk (my car is buried and I don't want to get stuck again) over to a friend's apartment to bake muffins and be cozy indoors. If I fail to post again, know that I froze to death on the way.

Stay warm. Enjoy your days off if you were so lucky, and Mount Marty students, come back soon!!

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

2009-12-28T17:35:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T13:43:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-15T13:54:00.001-08:00

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!

...

2009-11-09T20:52:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-11-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

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..

2009-10-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-18T21:41:00.001-07:00

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! :)

2009-10-12T09:04:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-09-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-10T18:04:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-08-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-29T07:44:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-20T12:23:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-07-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-06-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

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!!

Nature, Friends, and Fellowship

2009-06-16T06:24:00.001-07:00

It's been over a week since I have last talked to all of you blog fans. Must have been some serious excitement in my life to keep me all from you, huh? .... well.... um.... not exactly. :S Let me enlighten you. :)

For starters, I awoke this morning to clouds, clouds, and more clouds. I think the sun is having a monstrous anxiety attack and has sadly barely shown its face for at least a solid week now. Though the rain is lovely and a blessing, my spirits need the sun! I did have a beautiful afternoon at the beach on Saturday with Briana, my roommate, and a whole plethora of Yankton-staying friends and visiting Mount Marty friends. Amazing how the sun can refuse to shine for over a week and yet provide us with a gorgeous afternoon for a reunion with friends.

Through all the clouds and rain, I've decided to adopt a new temporary motto: If the sun won't shine for you, take the opportunity to run in the rain. I've done that, literally, a couple of times in the past week. If you've never gone for a long jog in the rain, I'm telling you, your missing out. There's something calming and refreshing about pounding out countless steps while watching, and definitely feeling, the steady stream of rain come down.

Oh dear, this is shaping up to sound like a sentimental post. But since I've adopted that theme, I may as well go with if for at least one more paragraph. Because the beach was out yesterday, I decided to go for a long bike ride down to the trails at Midway beach in the afternoon. I have done it before and I believe the round trip is somewhere around 10-15 miles (I could be completely wrong...). Anyway, yesterday with the wind at my back and the cool breeze working in my favor, I decided that when I reached the end of the bike trail I would venture on and see if it picked back up farther down the road. I took a left and followed these cute signs with pictures of bikes on them. Low and behold I end up in a forest on some muddy horse trails. Ummm...I walked my bike up the first muddy hill to scout it out and decided if I continued on that path I would either a) get lost in the forest and never return, b) return splattered in mud from head to foot and thus find myself fending off concerned questions and looks all the way back into Yankton, c) get eaten by a bear, d) swerve around out of control in the mud and either get stuck or fly out of control over my handlebars and die. Sooo, after weighing my options, I turned around and headed down a neighboring gravel road assuming that it would lead me back to the highway and the resuming of the bike trails. I wound around, pedaled incredibly slowly up a couple of muddy hills, found myself surrounded by trees....I kept going, enjoying the quiet and the adventure until I came to a plethora of signs screaming, "NO TRESPASSING. PRIVATE PROPERTY." Painted in bright red, and plastered all around, they were rather intimidating, so I decided I should turn around yet again before I got shot.

Once back to the end of the bike trail for the second time, I ran into a middle-aged man on a BIG bike with 3 bright yellow duffel bags and a cooler strapped to various points on the machine and another of the yellow bags on the man's back. I was a little leery as to why he would be perched there loaded down with so many bags and blocking my path, but curiosity fought my fear and I skidded to a stop. The man, Jimmy was his name, simply wanted to know the answer to the question that I had spent the last fifteen minutes or so seeking myself. Where did the trail resume? Rule of thumb: never ask Kelly Starman for directions! I am direction stupid, and don't even trust my own judgment much of the time. I was able to offer suggestions as to where not to go unless he was seeking a mud shower. Turns out Jimmy had come all the way from New Mexico with his bags. He took a train to Illinois and then proceeded to hop on the beginnings of the Lewis and Clark trail out there. He had been riding since May 24 and had trekked all the way across Illinois and up the Nebraska border and was headed all the way to the west coast and the end of the trail at the Ocean in Washington. I was in complete awe. I had no idea the Lewis and Clark trail even existed outside of Yankton. It was utterly fascinating to hear the man's story and we had a nice little chat before I bid him good luck and farewell and tried one final divergence in the road, this time finding the highway I had been seeking, but then turning around and heading home for time's sake. I was a bit upset to discover that the entire ride home was directly into the wind. By the time I finally reached home, I had let out a couple of angry words, screamed a song or two in an attempt to motivate myself (no one could hear it over the wind anyway), and was completely exhausted, muddy, and REFRESHED. :)

Other than bike rides and beach experiences, what's there to tell. Those are, after all, the essentials of summer. :) Ok, well friends are way up there too!! It's been a great week of socializing. I've received two random phone calls from friends I rarely get to talk to but always find I have missed more than I ever dreamed. I watched three movies in one week, all with different people, and all opportunities for catching up. I couldn't help but smile all afternoon on Sunday in the presence of 30 of my TEC friends (I am working another of these retreats in July and am thus attending meetings). I made a random trip to Sioux Falls, not arriving until 9:00 p.m and needing to leave by 11:00 the following morning just to have some real conversation with Ms. Brittany, my dear friend and go-to girl. We passed the time simply talking and questioning life and we parted only after attending church on Sunday morning in a school gym. Who would have guessed that the Sioux Falls Cathedral was closed for renovations? And now I hear a rumor it may be closed for two years?!? And, last but not least, Briana and I made a real meal last night, and our good friend Jordan came over for the festivities. We shared some fine salad with vegetables and fancy dressing, spaghetti with whole grain noodles (a special gift from Jordan's cupboards of fine foods), garlic bread, and chocolate pudding with bananas for desert. We even sat at the kitchen table to share our food and fellowship. It was in fact, the first time all summer that table has been used for actual dining and not just junk collection.

Oh, and in the meantime, I've been working in the mornings and have twelve hour day shifts again this weekend. But who wants to hear about monotony such as that?

Happy Father's Day (a few days early) to all of you fathers out there. Kids, don't forget your fathers. Breakfast in bed?? hmmm....my poor dad is going to have to wait for the gift of my presence until approximately 8:00 p.m. (after work and two hours to drive home) on Sunday night :(. But, I'll be spending next Monday and Tuesday at home as well because my sister and her husband are going to be home from Michigan!!! :) That means a professional family picture is in the works...

ATP, where art thou?

2009-06-03T10:57:00.001-07:00

Hmmm...I open up a new blank page to write to you about the trivial adventures of my life, and I've decided that it doesn't matter what I've done recently. Currently, I want only to take a nice loooooong nap curled up in a blanket with the fans in our apartment turned off. That's right, it's actually kind of chilly outside today, so no beach for me. :(

I tackled those double night shifts what seems like a century ago. The happenings of those odd hours are all simply kind of a blur. With a bit of a push, the busy work of the job is completed at about 11 p.m., so the remaining 7 hours of the shift are spent doing minor cleaning things and quick bed checks, but mostly just sitting there, attempting to stay awake. I decided I would make use of the forced awake and quiet time by getting in some quality MCAT study time....yeah right! Are you kidding me? Do you think I was actually alert enough to read such dry information at 2:00 in the morning? Not so much. So what to do? Make use of my first ever five hour energy shot of course. I waited a couple of minutes like the bottle said was needed for the chemicals to take effect and felt as though nothing happened. I angrily shut my book thinking, what a waste, and traipsed off to check on some sleeping residents. Low and behold, I returned to my table a mere 15 minutes later and without hardly realizing it, was alert and focused for the next four hours. Six a.m. rolled around and though disoriented and in a frenzy to go home, I was feeling quite accomplished. I even stopped at walmart and did some early morning grocery shopping on the way. Once home, I crawled into bed, though it was already bright outside, and attempted to do the whole sleep during the day thing. I was largely unsuccessful. It was simply too bright and it was a restless/agitated sleep. I got up a mere five hours later to head to the beach with my roommates, but as luck would have it, I found that I felt sick to my stomach and was incredibly shaky....left over energy shot fragments? I ate some food and dragged myself out of the house anyway. Then, rather than taking a nap before round number two, I freshened up and headed to church right before...

Round two: I assisted a few residents with showers, went around with the juice and snack cart, did some cleaning, threw in some laundry....things were running smoothly. I decided another energy shot would not be the best thing for my body, so I tackled the night on my own dwindled supply of ATP. The hours of 4 and 5 a.m. were COMPLETELY MISERABLE! I actually got up and paced around the halls. I drank an excessive amount of water. I attempted to make a mental to-do list for that day, but my eyes mechanically fell shut and I nearly fell off my chair. I got back up for some more pacing. I went outside to sweep the porch. I sat down and fidgeted painfully because every thirty seconds my eyes would flutter uncontrollably shut. How I made it through, I have not the slightest idea. I just know that I nearly cried tears of elation when I was finally back in my apartment curled up in my bed - 6:30 a.m. My messed up time schedules were the death of me though. I got up at 12:30 and snapped on the phone to my poor innocent mother. I was crabby and restless and so proceeded to clean the entire apartment to divert my frustrations and exhaustion.

I spent yesterday and this morning at a "job skills readiness class" for my job at Avera. I think the night shifts and resultant sleep debt are catching up. It was a miserable day and a half. As if the class was not boring enough the way it was, I once again found myself fidgeting uncontrollably in a vain attempt to keep my eyes open. I mean seriously, we had to watch cheesy videos about proper grooming and stress management and communication. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. Oh well, class mastered, I now finally meet with my supervisor at the hospital this afternoon to set up a work schedule. I don't know what I'll do with myself once I have an actual set schedule again...

Oh, and Pine Lake Estates? It's day shifts for me this weekend! Perhaps my brain and body will be a bit less angry with me for a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. adventure.

Until next time, tackle those shifts, have fun, fun, fun, exercise, clean, and SLEEP in the spare moments!

Circadian Rhythm?

2009-05-29T08:11:00.001-07:00

4.5 blog worthy sentences:

I have to work not one, but 2 night shifts this weekend - both tonight and Saturday night, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Holy schlooigans!! Goodbye weekend, goodbye sanity, hello whacked up Circadian rhythm! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Happy Weekend to you all! :)

Employment

2009-05-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

Despite your likely fears, I am here to tell you that no I have not died at the hands of sand bullets or due to frustration in the job hunt (see my previous post). I have just been out and about for the past week.

The good news is, I now have a job - two of them actually. I am still waiting for my drug test results to clear me for a start date at the hospital, but I worked my first day of the summer yesterday at Pine Lake Estates. Nothing like going at it with a 12 hour shift to start things off all happy. Yep, that's right, 12 hours. Those killer shifts are Pine Lake's forte. You either work a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift or the dreaded 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. night shift. Despite the incredibly long day, it's actually kind of nice to think that a 36 hour work week is then only three work days long. My job consists of serving meals, cleaning rooms, filling out charts and paperwork, some random cleaning, and of course visiting with the residents. The residents, I feel, will make the job worth while - most are incredibly grateful for the company and services of the employees. I even had a 93 year old man flirt with me somewhere in those first 12 hours. I pick up my second shift tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. once again and rumor has it I may have to tackle a dark and scary night shift as early as this Friday. AHHH! I declined the work study position here at school due to conflicts in schedules.

Hmm...in the mean time, I was sufficiently drawn in and won over by Dan Brown's Deception Point, the novel I had been reading. In fact I finished it over the weekend and am now begging my friends to read it as well so that I can discuss it with them. I strongly recommend it as a thrilling read!

My bike is still one of my best friends. Feeling adventurous on Memorial Day, I rode it down to Midway beach and around the trails down there. About 14 miles of riding later, I was nearly back to school when I hit the last stretch - a 2 mile straight shot along the highway ending in a monstrous hill. My prize was continuous blasts of hot wind gusts in the face. My glorious bike ride turned sucky when I had to battle the wind and the hill all at once. I attempted to lean over my handlebars to minimize the wind's effects, but I think it was worthless. I wanted more than anything to walk my bike up the hill, but I decided I had made it that far and would not back down at the end. And made it I did...... although, once at the top, I was only a fraction from standstill speed and an elderly couple rode by me on their way down the hill and definitely smirked at what must have appeared to be my sorry shape. I think I just stared straight ahead, refusing to let them break my determination and thought: you just wait. Try coming back UP that thing!

New to my ramblings: we celebrated my dear roommate Briana's 21st birthday this weekend by kicking it off with a scavenger hunt leading her to a friend and his family who had come down to Yankton to surprise her. I was reunited with some of my favorite people who came down for birthday wishes, so it was a refreshing and fun weekend.

Ok. I arrived at school at 11:00 this morning, and two tours, a phone call, email checks, and this blog later, I am ready to go home and have some lunch followed by a long nap. You see, a 6 a.m. shift requires getting up rather early in the morning and if you don't go to bed then until 2:00 p.m., it leaves you with a pretty intense sleep debt headache.....I might have a solid example....

:)

The Basking and the Pelting

2009-05-20T12:27:00.001-07:00

Good WINDY afternoon to all of you. Still without an employment schedule, I have had the freedom to travel to the beach whenever my heart has desired. Despite warnings last night of picture frames toppling over due to rude wind gusts coming in through our open windows, Briana (roommate) and I decided to venture out to bask in the sun on this rather warm day. The result: "bask" is entirely too friendly of a term for the conditions that awaited us. It was so windy that we were PELTED with blowing bits of sand and water. If it wasn't painful, it may have actually been quite humorous. As it was though, the sand scratched every inch of me and burrowed its way into my hair, ears, eyes, nose...EVERYWHERE! I smell like a sandy fish at the moment.

The job hunt has taken an interesting twist. Yesterday afternoon, I agreed to accept the part-time position promoting the tobacco awareness project at the hospital. In return for my acceptance, I had to agree to succumb to a drug test in the hospital lab and sign release papers for a criminal background check. The staff took it as very serious business, and despite my innocence, I felt rather intimidated. I am not allowed to start working until my drug tests results return, and their arrival is not anticipated for at least five more days. I guess that equals more beach time for me! :)

Despite the drug test proving to be an interesting obstacle in itself, I am now faced with the dilemma of finding a second part-time job that successfully fits into my schedule with the tobacco thing. It's quite complicated actually. I could accept a biology and chemistry department work study position here at school, but I may very well run into snags with scheduling as I may not be available during class time when the summer professors may need me. I could turn in an application to a nursing home here in town and let them train me as a CNA, but the hours there are off the wall, including a 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. night shift every Wednesday. Though it sounds adventurous, I don't know if my brain could handle such a crazy schedule. To complicate things further, there is a possibility that a position could open up at the medical clinic here in town, but I will not even receive word of that until Monday. That "possible" job would be ideal, but to wait could be a gamble as these other possibilities would likely pass. I would have never guessed the job hunt would be such tricky business. It's wearing me out!

On the plus side, in addition to bike rides and beach time, I'm 300 pages into my first novel of the summer of 2009. It's incredibly refreshing to read a novel that I won't be tested over - one that I have hand-picked and can simply enjoy for entertainment value. Deception Point by Dan Brown is so far proving to be quite the suspense. It's one of those books that has so many cliff hangers that I feel like I'm holding my breath the entire time I'm reading and feel as though if the secret isn't spilled soon, I'll suffocate from the suspense....dramatic, I know, but it's what happens when you have the serious book worm genes.

I think I'm going to attempt a bike ride in this awful wind. If my blogs are discontinued, know that I have been blown to Africa and I'll resume my life story from there at an undisclosed date. :P

Traipsing and Trekking

2009-05-17T13:01:00.001-07:00

So the first week of summer vacation has come and gone and I am still unemployed, the weather is still not sufficiently beach-worthy (I'm sitting here in a hoody with no socks and thus my toes are quite chilly), and boxes are still not unpacked...

This seemingly unpreparedness for the sure-to-fly coming three months of bliss is coming to you once again from my home on the farm in Elgin, NE. In a rare move (actually, in my three years of college I don't believe it has ever happened until now), I made the trek home two weekends in a row! My appearance at home this weekend is for good reason, however. My sister, who ran off to optometry school in Michigan, and her husband decided to make a random trip home for the weekend. Well, I suppose it's not entirely random beings the goal of the weekend for my brother-in-law has been a whole lot of turkey hunting because "in Nebraska, there's real turkey hunting." As a non-hunter, I haven't the slightest idea what he is implying; I only know that it works for me because it means that I've spent the past three days bonding with my dear sister. On Friday night, we had a little sibling bonding party on the living room floor. Sometimes I get odd ideas in my head (haha) and on this particular evening I thought it would be wondrous to return to the days of our youth and see if our tumbling skills were still intact. It was quite the entertaining extravaganza. :) (see above pictures) Age brings competitiveness however, and so of course the innocent gymnastics show turned into a "who can hold the pillar position longest" (pillars being a stability stance that target the abdominal muscles). I of course won. :)

Anywho, the weekend is going to commence at the Neligh park with a mini-potluck meal to celebrate the homecoming of the happy couple. I'm only hoping we don't blow away!!

I am planning a return trip to Yankton this evening as I have to be present tomorrow morning to scout out the job situation. I think I am on the verge of desperation, so employment options could turn rather interesting. I'll keep you posted on that....

Meanwhile, back at the apartment, the number of boxes has dwindled significantly. My roommate, Briana, and I have managed to put together a cute and orderly room, and Sarah, our fellow apartment friend has managed a notable semblance of order in her tiny room as well. I took the initiative to store the vacuum in the closet before I left for home; therefore, there are only a few small boxes littering the living room floor and kitchen table and walls begging to be decorated. All in all, it's beginning to feel like a summer home. :)

One question remains: what the heck did I do with my life for an entire week without school or work. I SLEPT (more so than I ever thought I was capable of), trekked all over and around Yankton on my sweet new bike, and climbed mountains with Briana......huh? Okay, so maybe not mountains if you want to be literal about it, but we did hike through a forest on the South Shore hiking trail and traipse down a dirt road marked "no trespassing" at an undisclosed hiking locale. :P

The potluck awaits. Keep your eyes alert for notices of my upcoming employment.

Rewind

2009-05-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

I promised to return with a year wrap-up after I caught some sleep. So after a night of a solid 12.5 hours of shut-eye followed by a couple of hours of laundry and a pathetic attempt at a run (it ended early due to a malfunctioning left earphone, an aching hip, and an apparently far from healed ankle), in turn followed by an hour long nap, here I am.

The year was one for the record books. I tackled a total of 43 credits in two semesters, went on an "I'm going to be a pharmacist kick" but turned down an acceptance letter to the University of Creighton Med Center, said goodbye to my volleyball career (my poor left hip is simply not up to the challenge anymore...), keyed out a few tunes on the piano, meandered my way into the ranks of the MMC choir, decided pop was not all that evil, but instead a lifesaver with its caffeine every now and then, learned more about organic compounds than I ever wanted to know, turned the old age of 21, and made many new friends.

My reminiscing is blurring my mind with a whirlwind of exciting, challenging, tearful, hilarious, and unforgettable events. So, let me give you a list of a few MMC moments that standout right now.

1. CALIFORNIA!!! - jumping in the wave/being mauled by them/drawing in the sand, walking along the beach of the ocean with my volleyball sisters way back in August was amazing!

2. MISSISSIPPI - oh my goodness....everything about the Spring Break trip was refreshing/eye-opening/joyful/great

* singing in the van, leaving goofy posts on the Graceland wall, playing "zombies" with the orphans, being told to "hush yo' mouth" by those same adorable kids, finding pen pals in the grade school 6th grade math classrooms, and bonding with the Mississippi crew at night (0h and of course the Sioux Falls all night event the evening before the trip)

3. MUSIC - I can play "Jingle Bells" and "Happy Birthday to You" from memory on the piano! :) Hopefully when I am officially employed by some random place I can arrange to take piano lessons this summer. AND, choir tour and singing the same four songs over and over but loving them more every time was marvelous as well.

4. Back to VOLLEYBALL - The game that sticks out most to me as one of those where I played absolutely loving the game was Nebraska Wesleyan. Pushing the game to five sets after being down two games to none was definitely an adrenaline rush. Our blocking was definitely on and it was awesome!

5. Walking around BAREFOOT at the BEACH in the middle of WINTER - after a refreshing run with Ms. Brittany Sehr on the bike paths that run along the river, we took off our shoes and hopped in the puddles formed from melting snow - this of course on an unusually warm day in February.

6. Homework nights that turned into KARAOKE parties - this was a pretty regular occurrence, usually taking place in 3rd floor Bede classrooms with the occasional dance party in the Bede quad. Moral of the story: if you feel stressed, sing a song or dance!

7. PHILOSOPHIZING about life with friends - most notably in the RA's room (hehe) or the Learning Center (my place of employment)

8. THE DRUM-OFF! - On a night with an exceptionally long to-do list, I stopped in a dear friend's room to chat and ended up staying awhile until another friend wandered in and we decided to go ghost hunting in the Music Hall - an escapade that ended in Marion Auditorium, which was set up for the upcoming Band Concert. Our party grew to five and we held our own mini-concert/interpretive dance show. Words of wisdom: if you enter a drum-off with a nearly-professional drummer, you may sound like an idiot.

9. HOMECOMING - only taking two intense dives into the ice while attempting to skate and making it back in time to dance the night away at the formal with friends after a nerve-racking pharmacy school interview

10. And of course who could forget those many pressured moments of STRESS, though negative full of memories - Completing my research paper at 4:00 a.m., organic chemistry study parties with the guys in the nursing lab, starting a four essay (each requiring research and citations) take-home test at 11:00 p.m. (due in less than 12 hours) after arriving home from the TEC retreat and sleeping less than 10 hours in three nights (ended up having to re-do that one...), starting a paper towel on fire in physics and quenching my lab partners and the lab in general with ethanol in organic chemistry to avoid someone or something erupting in flames....the list goes on

....11. AND THOSE NOT-MOUNT MARTY EVENTS (all with Mount Marty People or alumni :)) - driving to Brookings on a Tuesday night, spur of the moment, to go to an Augustana concert, Saturday night trips to Dairy Queen, TEC, visiting my graduated (MMC '08) sister in Michigan... :)

It was one heck of a year, and all I can think presently is that it is really odd to be without a schedule right now. I think I'll be hitting my bed early again tonight as I'm still exhausted from the wonders of the year. I have a job interview on Wednesday, so I will be returning to Yankton very soon....SUMMER AWAITS!!!!!

Nostalgia...

2009-05-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Good Evening and Happy Summer!

...It is kind of bittersweet to be sitting here blogging tonight. Finals week is over, my dorm room is a barren rectangle resembling a prison cell, my apartment is a literal category 5 disaster zone, my friends are scattered about the country many miles away, and I am exhausted. So, despite the relief that is coursing through my veins after survivng the most hectic semester of my college career and the contentment of knowing I have no papers or studying or chemistry assignments to do for a good while, I am suffering from nostalgia.

To begin, let me pick up where I left off. I managed to control my fingers well enough (I had a few "ummm...I'm going to start that one over" moments) to earn an 'A' on my piano final. I got a 64% on my organic chemistry final....let that sink in. Okay, now that you're sufficiently concerned about the damage that caused my GPA, I'll explain. The final was a standardized devil and I answered 44 out of 70 questions correctly, which was actually not too bad. Dr. Wu curves the grades, so in the end, my transcript grade was very pleasing. And as for the rest of the finals, they are done, mastered, completed, dominated - all of the above. To celebrate, I initiated a little hands on learning on Thursday night. A couple of my favorite organic chemistry classmates/friends assisted me in my studies of combustion. The lesson involved a campfire and my weathered organic chemistry lab book - the one with missing and detached pages rejected by the man buying back books.....I'll let you fill in the details. :) I'm missing many things right now, but chemistry isn't very high up there on my list.

Finals completed, my next demanding task was moving. OH MY STARS, it was definitely a DEMANDING task. You see, I have this problem of getting all emotional/reminiscent when I try to pack and it adds hours of time to the task. I've moved out of the dorms and back in three times now, and I still forget how crappy of a job it really is. I am always amazed by how much stuff I have in such a small space and somehow acquire a ton of junk every year. I always start off my packing with good intentions of being organized and neatly packing my boxes. I end in a terrible and exhausted state, simply grabbing armfuls of random, unrelated items and chucking them freely into all odd corners of my car. And then of course, exhausted and irritated after the packing of car, my mood gets a good kick in the face when I go to unpack the car in the transfer to the apartment. This year, my roomies and I all managed to find absolutely no time for any sort of pre-packing/moving. The result: our apartment is a literal disaster zone. There is a futon in the living room that is unreachable because of all of the boxes and totes and bags littering every inch of the ground from the door to its position. There are clothing explosions coming out of the closets and piles of "what the heck is this and why do I even own it" blocking accessibility to every other desired location in the place. My shoes are claiming a section of the bed that I can't even walk to. If you aren't picturing this yet, take the following into consideration: we had pizza on Friday night, and I suggested taking the empty pizza boxes and throwing them into the mess because they would be appropriate decoration....in layman's terms: IT'S A DISASTER!

Graduations! AHHHHH! I was an emotionally unstable basket case yesterday. Though I am very excited for, and proud of, all of the seniors, their big milestone day was bittersweet. I love a big handful of them dearly and am sad to see them leave me. :( And as if that weren't enough to process, I was saying goodbye to dozens of other friends I won't see for three months. It's just so strange to see and live with people every day and then all at once be gone. Add to the mix the fact that I am still hanging on the verge of unemployment and it makes for a lot of emotional turmoil.

So I am sitting at home right now, too exhausted to process that this isn't just another weekend. I went from a crazy/hectic/frantic schedule to a virtually directionless state in a matter of hours. I am now going to take advantage of the relaxation that I feel is well over-due and SLEEP. Perhaps when I wake at some odd hour tomorrow, my mind will be willing to catch up with time and desire to blog a "highlights" post and then celebrate SUMMER!! :)

Goodnight!

FINALS WEEK!!!

2009-05-04T22:13:00.000-07:00

Hello dear blog fans!

Day one of Finals week is officially over and I have survived. :) I had only one final to take on today - Physics at 8:00 a.m. I am happy to report that there is a good chance that I did not fail the exam like I had feared I was going to. Despite feeling as though I had no idea what sorts of crazy things light rays were capable of, I think I managed to throw some numbers into complicated equations and develop some legitimate answers.

One would think I would have spent the rest of my day studying for my remaining finals so that I could actually get a good night's sleep and feel rested. My mind has been doing funny things all semester though, and such was not the case. I spent the remainder of my morning running errands, and opted for an exciting adventure this afternoon. Perhaps some of you have been following my life story since last summer when I believe I talked about dangerous bike rides in the middle of the night and such? Well, summer is knocking on the door, and I regret to inform you that I am bike-less at the moment (which is definitely a sin for a summer spent in Yankton). Okay, so technically, I'm not bike-less, but my bike is definitely too ill to venture out. I laughed when I found it still chained to the bike rack at my apartment building from last summer a couple of weeks ago. The thing is in sorry shape just like I remembered - two flat tires, defective/nonexistent breaks, and a broken chain. Something needed to be done to fix this terrible predicament of mine! So of course, I opted to not spend my afternoon studying but instead browsing the pricey bike selection at Ace Hardware Bike Shop. If I were not a poor college student, I would have walked out of there with a fricken sweet $1000 machine. I mustn't dream during this stressful time though, so I instead sought information on the cheapest bikes the store had to offer, $330 TREK 820's. The fee seemed a bit outlandish to me, but the salespeople were incredibly friendly and offered me a trial run on one of the glistening machines. So, I came back to Mount Marty to pick up a friend and together we took those expensive machines around the town of Yankton and down the big hill leading out to the lake. It was smooth riding and I'm fairly certain I fell in love. Though the wind was a devil on the way back up that dreadful hill, I didn't even have to get off and walk the bike up (I did come rather close to a complete standstill and developed quite the burn in the thighs though). It was incredibly refreshing and we regretfully returned the bikes an hour after we had ventured off (we figured any longer and they may have sent the search squad after us). Whether or not my summer will include such a lovely commodity is yet to be decided. I may want to actually be employed before I make any rash purchases...

Ahhhh...finals week! My lack of focus here is apparent. I have two tests to worry me tomorrow along with my final three chemistry lab reports due. I'm a bit paranoid for my piano final (hence the picture of me rocking out in the Antebellum Mississippi home....it's got to be good luck) for a few reasons: 1) it is at 8:00 a.m. and I don't know how my fingers will feel about being coordinated then as opposed to my usual 1:00 a.m. piano adventures, 2) I have to play "Jingle Bells" and "Happy Birthday to You" from memory and I'm scared I'll get nervous or hit one ugly note and forget the whole thing (stop laughing all of you expert piano players....remember I'm definitely an amateur), and 3) though Dr. Vogt, my professor is a great man and pianist, having anyone stare at my poor fingers with the intent of capturing an erroneous wiggle is just a bit much to deal with when I'm trying to relax and focus. I'm hoping to be able to take piano lessons this summer, so it would be incredibly sad if I had a nervous breakdown during my piano final in eight hours and tainted my love.

After piano, I will get to say goodbye to Biochemistry!! Life will surely look up (perhaps I'll buy my bike in celebration....). The final may not be so much fun though as it is a standardized one and I've successfully fallen asleep twice while attempting to study, both times in an upright position. In fact, I snapped to attention after my first short doze only because the hand that I had been resting my chin on slipped in its relaxed state and whacked the binder in my lap. That was a sign that I should stop trying so hard, at least until after the midnight breakfast (at 10:00 p.m.), at which I ate some amazing cinnamon rolls and a plateful of other calorie-loaded goodies. Well nourished, you would think I'd be ready to study glycolysis and remind myself about what was happening to all of that food, but I fell asleep yet again.....so here I am.

It's time I say goodbye to this day and rest up in the little time that's left before tomorrow's challenges. Stay tuned, if time, procrastination, and lack of motivation allows, I'll throw highlights from this eventful year your way. :)

Summer Countdown: t minus 3 finals, 3 lab reports, 3 short stories, one lengthy editorial, one research paper, and a short presentation.....It's Go Time!

Final Countdown

2009-04-27T00:30:00.001-07:00

Well, well, well, where has the semester gone? It has sufficiently wound down to the beginning of the final week of classes and I'm fairly certain that my health has wound down with the semester. This lack of sleep thing I've been testing out this semester is bound to catch up to me in my old age. But why worry when I'm still young, right? It is presently 2:34 a.m. and I should by all means be sleeping or studying for one of my two chemistry tests that will be upon me in 6.5 short hours. However, as another health killer, I had my mom by me some vanilla coke to push me through these final weeks. I've gone and decided that pop, one of the very things I used to avoid at all costs in the past because "it is bad for my health," is going to be my life saver for two weeks. It does have caffeine after all, and it is doing a good job of keeping me very much awake right now.

So, with my ridiculous alertness for the hour, I'm sitting in my room wishing that Papa Murphy's Pizza was open because I have a serious craving for some of that delightfully delicious pizza! It would make me feel more at home in my now bare and carpet-less dorm room. I'm kind of scared to go to bed because my parents came up to take my loft down today (despite my protesting due to my need to study!) and my bed now sits on the floor and everything looks different and big and sad. I might wake up in the middle of a chemistry nightmare and have no idea where I'm at.

I re-read my last blog before I started this one, and I've decided that I gave myself bad karma. All that stuff about being excited to hang out with the alumni volleyball players back for the game and having a good time at the spring formal....yeah....none of that happened. What really went down was that I managed to sprain my ankle such that it swelled, and remains swollen, to epic proportions during the alumni game. I spent that night with a very cold foot (ice), elevation, and ibuprofen. Despite walking almost normally, my ankle, foot, and toes are still interesting shades of greens and purples and I have an ankle that is literally doubled in normal size. Hopefully it catches a bad case of ankle anorexia this week and slims down significantly.

As far as summer plans...well, I finally signed my apartment lease, but I am still unemployed. I'm waiting on an internship thing to go through/be found/cooperate, and in the meantime pushing off signing a work study contract. It's quite the stressful balancing act.

My seminar presentation went pretty well. After about 4 hours with Dr. Wu going over questions and learning about intricate details that I wish I had never known the existence of, I felt reasonably confident in my knowledge of the most common form of parasitic infections in the U.S. - giardiasis (a form of non bacterial diarrhea...). I answered the professors' questions afterwards without being completely butchered and I spent a good chuck of this weekend revising my 20 page research paper.

Ok...I'm definitely hearing happy bird chirping....you know, the kind that signifies the arrival of morning. That's just wrong on various levels right now. I think it's a good sign that I should probably hit the lights for the night and bring on the chemistry nightmares. Good night/morning!

Daunting Prelude...

2009-04-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

This is going to be relatively short compared to most of my other posts, but there are a few things that I need to tell you all about before I hide away in my studies.

First of all, the choir tour and our home concert last night was great!! We had a ton of fun performing and I think we sounded pretty great while doing it. We sang at five high schools in the surrounding South Dakota area and then gave one final show for our friends and family here at Mount Marty. Check out spotted on the Press and Dakotan website for pictures of last night's performance! My only negative is that I am drained from the big week.

Secondly, I am heading down to get ready for our Alumni Volleyball tournament this evening very soon. It should be a good time seeing all of the old people ( :P ) again. Ok, so most of them aren't that old at all, and I am very excited to hang out with some of my graduated teammates and friends this evening.

Thirdly, the spring formal is this evening. I will probably make an appearance despite my crammed planner telling me that might be an unwise decision. Oh well, one final night of fun before I hit the books HARD for the remaining 2 weeks of classes and finals. :)

Finally, um....this coming week is overwhelming me at the thought of it (hence this brief prelude post). I have to prepare a 20 minute presentation for senior seminar over my entirely too confusing research with Dr. Wu this summer. I am very daunted by the thought of it. The big presentation day is Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday's homework projects might be pushed aside to half-hearted attempts. I have interviews and summer plan finalization and papers due as well. Oh mylanta....

And I'm off until next time.... (unless I am eternally buried in the hugeness of this coming week!). :)

Back at It

2009-04-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

Oh my...it has been a while. I think the deal about that issue is that I was going to post last week, but last week was the beginning of Easter break, so I was extremely unfocused and just antsy to go home. I hadn't been home for over two months and burn out symptoms from this semester and exhaustion and monotony combined to make me homesick. In fact, I had full intentions of jetting out of Yankton for Elgin, NE at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon after my last class and the campus tour I had agreed to give. But, the time finally came, and then I decided it was beautiful outside so I would run first and take care of some errands on campus. I finally left at about 4:30 and spent a very refreshing four and one half days at home.

What did I do with my much anticipated break? Well, I had full intentions of getting caught up on homework and maybe even ahead, of sleeping a lot, and maybe even watching a few movies with the family. Key word in that sentence: "intentions." Actually, I did hardly any homework at all. I wrote one physics lab report and a couple of articles for the Moderator. I slept in on Thursday morning and had lunch with a couple of good friends from home, I went to church three out of the four nights because the Easter season is a very holy one, I took zero naps, I went shopping with my Mom, and I spent Easter Sunday at my Grandma's. All in all, I did my darnedest to believe that I could relax and not worry about school, I slept not nearly enough for the sleep debt I have accumulated, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I woke up and realized break was already over and I had only begun to fully settle my mind.

I stayed up rather late last night (as seems to be my habit here at Mount Marty); but I wasn't even doing homework like usual. I was talking with friends and celebrating a good friend's birthday. So this morning I am feeling groggy but happy, and somewhere in that mix, incredibly stressed. I am still unemployed for this summer and without living arrangements -- school is out in less than a month just to but that into perspective for you...yikes! I just spent a good 20 minutes hounding our career guidance counselor about internship possibilities. Despite ill-fated plans in opposition to it, it looks very likely that I will be residing in Yankton yet again this summer. I'll keep you posted on details of that...

In the meantime, it is gorgeous outside, organic chemistry lab is cancelled this afternoon, and life is great! Enjoy your week (short because of Monday being part of Easter vacation!! :)) and the weather. Perhaps I will see some of you tomorrow or Thursday as I travel with the wonderful MMC choir to local schools on the annual choir tour. If not, you should travel randomly to Yankton on Friday night and watch the home choir/jazz band concert in Marion Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. It will be a stellar performance!!! Sing whatever song is in your heart..SING, SING, SING!!! :)

There's No Such Thing...

2009-04-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

So I crawled up into my loft at 12:35 a.m. this morning and set my phone alarm like I always do, and before I secured my phone on the ledge of my loft and allowed myself to drift off into a much needed dream world, I happened to catch a glimpse of it's digital flashing of the date. We are officially in the month of April! My goodness.....where on God's green earth has the time gone? I'm not feeling very creative or ornery right now, so I have nothing to offer in the way of April Fool's Day jokes. Maybe that's only fitting because I sit here on April 1 without a job for the summer and no official plans. I don't know where I'm going to be living or what I'm going to be doing. I still don't know what graduate college entrance exam(s) I need to prepare for now that I've shoved pharmacy school to my list of "no's." Frankly, I think I'm stuck in this mound of homework that never goes away. I can't see over it, so I have no plans. What shall become of me???

Hmmm....Okay, now that I have my mini-anxiety attack out of my system, let's get on with this re-cap of my ever-exciting and eventful life. :) For some inexplicable reason, God decided it would be cool to send us a blizzard on the last day of March. Here at Mount Marty, the campus was very much alive in the morning. There were a lot of bitter comments floating around about the fact that classes had not been cancelled, because, it seemed that we were perhaps the only academic institution still plugging away in the state of South Dakota (I'm guessing many of you reaped the benefits of school closings of your own...). Downtrodden faces would soon be lifted, however, as it was announced that the campus would be closing at noon due to this anticipated blizzard. Lucky for me, I then had an afternoon free of organic chemistry lab and an evening without a Christianity in the Modern World lecture. Much relieved for the extra time, I spent a solid three hours in the afternoon attempting to memorize and draw out the entire glycolysis and citric acid cycles for my Biochemistry test on Friday, afterwhich my exhausted brain was pleading for recess. So I put it to work writing the beginning chapters of a book for Advanced Fiction and Nonfiction.

The time was exactly what I needed. I even rewarded myself and played basketball for over an hour last night. I hadn't played in a long time - too long I think - and it was great fun. BUT, then this first day of April rolled around and low and behold, I come to realize that there really is no such thing as a free lunch (or in my case, free time....). Dr. Wu graciously informed us that we needn't worry about what we missed out on in lab as we can just perform a double experiment next Tuesday and write two lab reports. Oh and Christianity? Class is moved to tomorrow night to so kindly infringe on my Biochemistry study time.

AND SO IT GOES.....

This weekend = relief that biochemistry and physics tests are over, summer job search (hopefully), Spring Formal, TEC reunion, and studying for the organic chemistry test on Monday....

TEC

2009-03-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I feel like it has been ages since I've posted on here. Since coming back from Mississippi, I have had little time for sleep as I spent a good portion of last week preparing to be gone from Friday night through Monday night on a Teens Encounter Christ retreat at Glad Tidings Bible Camp outside of Crofton, NE.

The weekend there was awesome. Despite the fact that it only increased my sleep debt and to-do list back here at school (with missing an entire day of classes and an entire weekend of study time), I feel refreshed and peaceful in my exhaustion.

Let me explain a little bit. First of all, I didn't actually make this retreat. I was working at it. I went on the TEC retreat when I was a senior in high school and have since worked 4 of them. This past weekend was the first time I worked as a table leader though, meaning that I was directly interacting with the candidates (those making the retreat) for the entire weekend. Basically, it is a three day weekend centered on God and growing and sharing faith. Words simply do not do it justice. There are speakers on the weekend, and many powerful surprises. I always find it difficult to actually explain the weekend because so many amazing things happen and so much of it can't be put into words, it just has to be experienced. I came back Monday night completely exhausted, overwhelmed, awed, inspired, humbled, and wowed. I still have a lot to process. There are some amazing young high school students in the area; five of them were members of my small group for the weekend (a.k.a. my family). They are the people in the picture I've posted. In the back row are Josh, Nicolette, and Haley. In the front are Roger, Me, Megan and Miles. We were creatively known as Shiny Puffs and Butterscotch for three days and we pretty much made all of the other groups jealous of our artwork and our discussions and closenss. :) It is always sad to leave after a TEC weekend and say goodbye to all of the wonderful friends you make.

So with my peace and exhaustion, my task for this week is to stay awake in classes, get what needs to be done done, and worry about actually catching up this weekend. Had it not been for a great weekend, I would probably be a stressed monkey right now as I have an overwhelming load to accomplish and an insufficient energy level to do so. Ohhh, and volleyball! We have our first spring ball tournament this Friday at Briar Cliff, so that means will be having a few extra practices to work out the kinks and get rid of winter rustiness.

I won't be feeling bored anytime soon. :)

The end of the year is quickly approaching. Best of luck with focusing and finishing!!

Mississippi

2009-03-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

The above pictures are from my Spring Break Mission trip to Mississippi. The top one is of me and Brittany supporting Stephanie, one of the kids at the orphanage, in a cheerleading move. The middle picture is of Brittany and I again, this time posing in front of our creative posts on Elvis's wall at Graceland ("Dear Elivs, you should have met Celine Dion." and "Elvis, my grandma has a crush on you"). The bottom picture is of our group outside the civil rights museum (Erin, Ben, Alicia, Amy, Me, Megan, Brittany, Chris, and S. Maribeth)

*************************************************************************************

Spring Break is now officially over and I am very sad that the time is gone. I think I mentioned that I was going to Mississippi on a mission trip with a group from MMC, and it was great in sooo many ways. We had to each pay $400 dollars to make the trip, but it was more than worth it. Let me give you a little synopsis.

We left (9 of us - 7 students and 2 faculty members) in a big clunky school van on Saturday morning at 5 a.m. (the first day of break). Brittany (my wonderful friend and travel companion) and I decided it would be wise to not even bother going to bed beforehand. Instead, we went to Augustana College in Sioux Falls to watch a very impressive performance of the play Eating Through the Fabric, a tragedy set during World War II. Perhaps more impressively, we didn't even have time to start packing until about 2:00 a.m., three hours before departure time. Now, you have to admit, that's pretty impressive for two girls going on a week long vacation.

We traveled 14 hours on Saturday and stayed over night in Sikeston, Missouri. On Sunday morning, we hit the road again, stopping in Memphis to write on the Graceland Wall, take a walk down Beale Street, and explore the National Civil Rights Museum. I was very impressed by the museum. It is definitely something everyone should see - incredibly eye-opening and powerful.

We arrived at the Dwelling Place Retreat Center in Brooksville, Mississippi, our final destination, on Sunday night. We spent Monday touring the three small towns in Noxubee County, MS, getting a feel for the culture. In a nutshell: racism in the area is still alive and well, and there is plenty of poverty to supplement it. I was shocked by the reality of it. I had no idea racism was still so prevalent in the U.S. Case in point: at the Brooksville Cemetery, there is a gravestone memorializing the closing of the white school, a gravestone that was decorated with fresh flowers. It was an overwhelming and powerful day.

On Tuesday, we were finally given the opportunity to serve. We spent the morning performing cleaning and maintenance tasks at the Dwelling Place and then took the afternoon to tutor at the county grade school and middle school and play with the children at the Palmer Home Orphanage.

Wednesday was spent helping Clare and Mary of the Dwelling Place move into their new administrative building. It was such an exciting thing for them, and all of us were happy to help them take that big step in continuing and expanding their ministry. We celebrated by spending a second afternoon with the kids at the orphanage.

Thursday was our last day of service, and we made the most of it, spending all day at the schools and the orphanage. I fell in love with the kids. I felt tears wanting to come when we had to say goodbye. It's very humbling to know that you can do such a big service simply by loving someone. Heck, I played zombies with a little girl at the orphanage, and I felt more purposeful than I have in a very long time. The joy that I think all nine of us felt during the trip was surreal.

Friday and Saturday were spent in the van, about 19 hours on the road to home, refreshed and changed and reluctant to begin school again.

2009-03-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

Word of the day = frantic.

Well, on this Monday afternoon I find myself one week away from Spring break. Oooh the peace that that realization breaks...after the waves of frantic-ness...

It was another busy weekend that left little time for homework, so here I sit on Monday afternoon, exhausted from 6:00 a.m. practice and lack of sleep in general, contemplating the cramming of my planner for the week. I have a piano midterm at 3:00 to officially set the week spiraling. I'm planning on doing a bit of last minute practicing as soon as I fill you in on my adventures.

Tuesdays are just evil days in general. I essentially have class from 8:00 a.m. until 8:45 p.m., with work study and volleyball squeezed into my breaks. Sooo, I have to complete homework for that craziness tonight and in addition squeeze in Wednesday's homework tonight so that I can spend all of Tuesday night studying for my biochemistry midterm. I....well um....let's just say we had a review quiz today and it really didn't go so well at all. I have quite a bit of studying on my hands.

But after Wednesday morning, I'll breathe again. Our physics final has been moved to Friday, which was my blessing of the morning and I have a conference on Friday for my English class, neither of which weighs as heavily on my mind as biochem.

And then spring break...a week in which I will likely do little if any catching up on my sleep. I'll be spending the week in Mississippi as part of the group heading down there for a mission trip. We leave at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning and return the next Saturday evening. I'll follow up that experience with a road trip back to Humphrey, NE on Sunday for the final TEC meeting before the big weekend. AND then....well school again of course. I'm sure I'll fill you in on the trip in a furture post.

And so, I'm taking a deep breath and hitting the books and piano notes and trudging along. Best of luck to all of you in your endeavors.

An analogy

2009-02-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit lacking in multiple areas this morning including: comprehension, sleep, motivation, sleep, focus, sleep... The result? Why an analogy of course! Brace yourself.

Hmmm..I suppose I should give you a bit of prelude before I launch into the analogy. I'll spare you the details and just say that I had multiple bits of agenda and meetings to attend to this weekend, so I was not nearly as productive in the homework area as I should have been. In fact, I simply took a few entirely random guesses on a biochemistry quiz at about 12:30 this morning because it was far less painful than trying to make my brain function and find the answer. I called it a night at approximately 1:32 a.m. and sprung into action again at 5:36 a.m. for volleyball conditioning. Therefore, I blame the following on exhaustion.

My analogy. Let's begin with biochemistry. Hmmm... a brief scan of the pages of notes I should have been taking for the past month tell me that I should have a plethora of knowledge involving the minutest details of amino acids and proteins and enzymes shoved into my brain, including of course, memorization of all 20 amino acid structures and their codes names and polarities and pKa's and 7 different purification methods and energy diagrams, and binding modes...and...well, about all I know is that I should have that stuff in my head. But hey, I thought it was no big deal that I was falling farther and farther and farther behind because the test wasn't supposed to be until after break. But, guess what....yep, we're ahead of schedule, which lucky for me (note the sarcasm) means the test is next week. I was informed of this incredible news upon entering the classroom.

For the following 50 min, I was supposed to be learning about enzyme nomenclature, another area of memorization that seems too impossible to fathom right now. But, instead I stared blankly ahead, not even bothering to turn the pages of my notes to keep up. You see, I was sitting there imagining a floor length closet, with one of those tall doors that has a magnetic sticky thing in the corner and an old fashioned handle, so that you have to yank on the door to get it open and when if finally springs, the door is all wobbly (some doors stick worse than others). You know the kind (well at least I hope so, because frankly, I realize that that was a terrible description, and I have not the slightest idea of how to improve it...if you are lost, just use your imagination). So anyway, during biochem, I'm sitting there imagining myself trying to open this closet door to cram this explosion of new, impossible information in for storage. But, I can't even get the door open. The closet is already so full of chemistry bologna that there are pieces stuck in the door, causing it to jam and the sticking to be even worse. I yank and yank to no avail and all the while, enzyme names and functions are simply smacking the door with barely audible thuds and shattering on the ground. I'm stomping on them in my frantic attempt at opening the door, listening to there pleading cries for memorization, but none of them are saved and they sure as heck don't make it into the closet.

And then a 10 minute break before organic chemistry. I get up and walk around, gathering my strength to open that stupid door. I return and low and behold, one final yank and the door flies open! But, it was tragic you see as, WHOOSH...chemistry bogus flew everywhere! Compare it to word vomit, you can't stop it and it's just messy and senseless...yeah, this was chemistry vomit. A bunch of random facts and structures and names and properties just crumpled in disarray on the floor. As if that weren't problem enough, the sprung free door exploded open with such force that I allowed it to deck me in the face and nearly knock me senseless. In such a state, I stared at the disorganized disaster of my exploded closet and made a very weak attempt to find the pieces of information Dr. Wu was talking about (we were reviewing, so the stuff had probably been in the closet vomit somewhere). About midway through class, I dropped my pencil and simply stared. Sadly, I now have to pick up that disaster and organize it before Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., when in reality I have only this really strong urge to simply pack it all up and ship it to good will. It could make for an interesting exam...

If you are confused, please do not ask questions as I am buried in a pile of chemistry rubbish. If you are seeking to help me in my predicament, send sleep donations my way. If you are wise, you will say a prayer or two for me as I also need to write a story for my Advanced Fiction and Nonfiction class....and well, you've just read my analogy. The story might be rather frightening and ridiculous.

The end.

A Calendar of Homework...

2009-02-16T21:48:00.000-08:00

Here I sit at 11:48 p.m, entirely too awake beings I have to be up in less than six hours so that I can be at volleyball conditioning at 6:00 a.m. ughh.

I should go to bed, but my week is already messed up because we DIDN'T HAVE SCHOOL TODAY!! WOOHOO!! While nearly the entire campus went home for the 3-day weekend, I hung around here in hopes of putting a serious dent in my pile of homework and scholarship and summer job applications. What is incredibly sad is that I left campus only twice in these 3 days off from school (well if you don't count my daily jog), once to eat at Mexico Veijo on Saturday night with Brittany, my valentine (:P) and last night to go to HyVee for a box of graham crackers and a movie. I spent entirely too much time working on homework, and I am still up at this hour trying to get stuff done. I think it's safe to say I might be a little in over my head this semester. Oh well, I guess I'll just test this whole sleep debt theory and see if I can't in fact hit bankrupt.

So, beings I'm a bum and sit around and do waaaaaay too much homework, that's pretty much all I have to talk about tonight. I spent the ENTIRE, yes, ENTIRE afternoon Sunday working on chemistry. yuck!!! In somewhere around 5 hours, I wrote two lab reports and literally suffered through two weekly quizzes (they are more intense than they sound). And, what's really sad is that I relied completely on my notes and couldn't tell you how to do any of those problems if I looked at them again....should make for some stressful studying next week when test time rolls around.

Tonight, I have to keep reminding myself that it is Monday night (I don't do well with these schedule changes) I prepared for an essay test in Christianity in the Modern World. We have the essay questions and are allowed one 3 by 5 index card, one side only, full of as many notes as we can cram, for each essay. I sort of wrote out my entire essays and then decided to see what they would look like in size 4 font. I can read them, but a magnifying glass probably wouldn't be a bad idea. Depending on how brave I am feeling tomorrow, I might actually bring in my size 4 font cards. There are no rules against it. I'll have my entire essays and probably a nice headache to go along with it.... we shall see. :P

Time is simply flying and I'm so busy with homework this semester that I barely have time to comprehend that it is doing so. It's February something and I'm lost in my own calendar of 22 credit hours and volleyball....speaking of which, the time for practice is growing ominously close and I need to end this piece and go to bed. Good night!!!

Another Week has Slipped Away

2009-02-08T13:46:00.001-08:00

My prediction proved accurate, as this past week was truly hectic indeed. It is now Sunday afternoon and my week of grad school interviews, homecoming, and the beginning of spring volleyball is officially over. ......AND I AM TIRED!

Well, to recap, I'll begin with volleyball. Our spring season officially started last week with 6:00 a.m. practice on Monday morning. I was sufficiently cranky and irritable for the rest of the day beings I am used to staying up late on Sunday nights to finish all of my homework and not having to get up at 5:30 a.m. We did testing all week in sprints, jumps, and lifts. That means that this week the conditioning and pumping iron officially begins. I'm even more tired just thinking about it. On the plus side, we only have to get up at 6:00 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays for conditioning. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Sunday evenings will be dedicated to lifting. And, speaking of Sunday evenings, we are actually playing from 5:30 to 7:00 this evening, so I desperately need to 1) wake up! and 2) get cracking on my to do list to accommodate for that missed homework time.

Homecoming: The week began with a Homecoming mass in the chapel on Sunday. Free ice skating was a big hit on Monday night. I have gone ice skating a total of 3 times in my life (once each year here for homecoming) and every year, I manage to maneuver some pretty intense wipe-outs. This year I somehow pulled a face-first plunge into the ice, allowing my left shoulder to catch the full brunt of the impact. Let's just say I had a slightly dysfunctional shoulder for the next couple of days. It was worth it though. Skating was a blast and a great break from the monotony of homework. On Tuesday night, a serious of inflatable games were brought to the gym. I made a very brief appearance as I was in class until 8:45 and then had a crazy list of to-dos. I was gone for Thursday night and Fridays festivities (dodgeball tournament, $3 movie night at the cinema, homecoming meal, coronation, hypnotist....yep, all of the good stuff) as I went home for my interviews, but I made it back in time for the basketball games and the formal dance last night. The dance was great fun. In fact, I didn't leave the floor once in the three hours I was there and I have painfully blistered feet and achy legs to remind me of that this morning. It was a truly fun time with friends.

Finally, my interviews. Well, for starters, I should say interview. I cancelled my interview at Iowa on Saturday. Why? To make a long story short, 1) had I gone and been accepted, I would have had to take a summer class, which I had no desire to do and 2) I had a mental breakthrough/breakdown/revelation and concluded that my heart is really not into becoming a pharmacist. In fact, I very nearly loathe chemistry. So anyway, so as not to ramble, I did go to my interview at Creighton on Friday and am now directionless and contemplating my future again....and curious as to my possible acceptance. It's rather unsettling, so I will not dwell on the matter.

And that brings me to today, the first day of a new week. Time is simply flying and I am never feeling caught up on homework. Sundays are actually never much fun because procrastination has to end for another week. And so I must go. Have a great week, get plenty of sleep for me, and be happy! :)

And So it Goes and So I Sing...

2009-01-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Hmmm....first off, my apologies. I have been slacking on this here blogging extravaganza. So, the question is, what do you want to know? .... Or better yet, what sort of exciting happenings have I been keeping from you that I should now share?? ....Prepare yourself for rambling. I am now going to attempt to catch you up on my life, hopefully without boring you to death.

So in my last post, I was fretting about early semester procrastination. Eight days later, and I can say that I successfully passed my first organic chemistry test of the second semester. It seems unreal that just over two weeks into the semester I already feel tested out. I have to begin studying for a test in Biochemistry on Friday very, very soon...like right after I'm done with this blog would be good, beings I have a plethera of structures to memorize before then.

What else....Well, the big news on campus (not really, but still) is that KELLY JOINED CHOIR! You may be asking, can you sing? And, the answer to that question: yes and no. I can sing, but I won't promise that it sounds very good. In any case, I was convinced by multiple friends that I should join because it would be tons of fun, and I gave in. After two days of practice, I must admit that my friends were right. It is very refreshing to go to a "class" that only requires that I sing with 80 other people who make me sound amazing. :)

Apparently I have been musically blessed this semester beings I am also in Piano Class. It's just a one-credit hour class on Monday afternoons, but it has quickly earned a place at the top of my favorites list of classes. You may ask again: are you any good? Annndd...that's debateable. I don't know if I'd say I'm "good," but I am addicted. I've been practicing every night, usually for quite some time longer than I schedule, but I just can't tear myself away once I start. I'm "advanced" for my class (I've peeked ahead and can play a decent rendition of Jingle Bells!! :))

There is one more class I must give mention to: Advanced Fiction and Nonfiction. Why am I even in this class should be the question. I'm not an English major, so it's not required by any means. In fact, I simply opted to take it. I enjoy writing, so I thought it would be smart to take on a whole lot of extra work....and that it is. I'm incredibly busy, but I've dedicated Thursdays as my writing days; we'll see how long I can make that last. I mentioned this class because despite the work, I am also thoroughly enjoying the chance to write about basically whatever I want. I wrote a seven page story about my Grandma for my first workshop. My next challenge is to create a fictional character for a short story or a novel. My creativity was soaring in class; somehow I decided I would be writing about a seven-year-old desiring to be an astranaut (long story). Whether I have the time to write it now is very much debateable.

This doesn't do justice at all to all that is going on, but it is a start. Next week will be a very important and hectic week. I have two grad school interviews - one on Friday and one on Saturday. And, it is Homecoming week, so there are events planned every night. I'm making an early prediction that I will be suffering from sleep deprivation and some serious stress....

And so I must begin studying once again and stay as ahead as possible. Have a great weekend!

Weekend Back at the Mount

2009-01-18T10:52:00.000-08:00

Well the first week back at the Mount is officially over and once again I have lived to tell the tale. It being the first weekend back, I have been suffering from some serious procrastination. I have had it in my head that this could be the last weekend in a long time that I will be free to do as I please, which involves a Friday night and an entire Saturday without homework...and that I did. :)

Let's see. Friday night all of my long lost friends and I prettied ourselves up to hang out at a friend's house here in Yankton. It was fun to have everyone together again! Yesterday I slept in until 9:30, which was fabulous beings I have had to be up by 8:20 at the latest for the entire week. The track team had a meet at the dome at USD, so my friend Brittany and I went to watch some of the events. I thought track was one sport from high school I would never ever miss, but sitting there in jeans as nothing but a spectator almost made me want to come back to school and join the team and run the 4x8 relay again. But, today has now rolled around, and that thought sounds utterly absurd as I type it. We returned to Yankton and headed to Charlie's pizza with nearly our entire floor of girls (we're quite a friendly crew in Bede) for some of the best homemade pizza around.

Now at this point, I must remark that I had done phenomenally well at thoroughly avoiding homework for the day. So, I came back to the dorms, and chatted with some friends until 10:00 at which time going to the My Bloody Valentine 3D movie sounded like a good idea. Three of us went, and paid $10 for the ticket and the 3D nerd glasses. I had gone with the sole intention of being scared out of my wits. I left wanting to vomit more than anything. The 3D had it's moments, but it was not nearly as intense as I thought it would be. Though I gasped and hunkered down in my chair, it was more a case of jumpiness than actual fear. I also let out a lot of disgusted noises. It was a gory movie if I've ever seen one. The things our generation does for entertainment....

On our way back into the dorms after this movie adventure, I was shaking uncontrollably from the cold, incredibly stiff, and starting to feel jumpy. Right outside the door, we heard a barking noise, and attributed it to the campus dog, Sugar, initially, but then the bark started yelling at us. We screamed and rushed inside feeling like we were being followed the entire way. It turned out that a friend in the hallway knew the source of the barking. Some kids....trying to scare innocent beings. :)

And now, it is Sunday. I have put off an increasing mound of homework for far too long, and so I must now crack down. It's a new week, so I suppose it's only fitting. I'm on top of things already having cleaned my room, done my dishes and laundry, and gone to church. I'm not OCD except for Sunday mornings....I do those things every Sunday morning when I'm in the dorms. :)

Have a great week everyone!

New Year, New excitement...NEW STRESS!

2009-01-14T16:00:00.000-08:00

Well goodness! My last post is dated last year! That's just sad. I'm not sure where to even start, so bear with me.

Well, first off, I did survive finals week in December, and I did so in stylish fashion, pulling off a stellar GPA for the semester (even in physics :)).

My month vacation was very relaxing and surprisingly fairly busy. I didn't get nearly as bored as I had anticipated, helped a great deal by my surprise plane ticket to MI. I spent a month in Big Rapids, MI visiting and catching up with my sister and her husband. It was much needed, and I miss them again already!

And now the spring semester is officially underway. To sum up my feelings after the first three days of classes: It's a darn good thing I relaxed for a month while I could. I think I must have been slightly insane at registration time last fall, beings I am currently taking on 21 credit hours, with very little fluff involved, not to mention an impending spring volleyball season coming up.

Let's see, my course load for the next 5 months consists of Physics II, Biochemistry, and Organic Chemistry II. With my science courses alone, I think I could keep myself easily occupied. I'll be writing three lab reports a week on top of daily assignments and studying. And then there's the fun classes.... I am finally doing something I've always said I would do, as I'm taking piano class this semester. Though we probably won't learn more than a few simple chords (it's only a 1 credit hour course) I'm more excited about this class than any other. Someday I want to be able to actually play! Hopefully my introduction to my dream doesn't scare me away. :) Hang on, there's more to add to the list: two seminars requiring a major presentation and a major paper, a Christianity in the Modern World Class, and Advanced fiction and nonfiction. The English course there....well....that's another one I'm excited about. This course has nothing to do with my major and is far from a requirement, but I love to write, so I decided it would be "fun" to add it to my load. With all the required reading and writing, I may be regretting that decision later. I've already decided that I'm going to have to reserve special times for that class. If I don't, I'm going to allow myself to become consumed because I'll get so involved in my stories that stringent science facts won't be appealing in the slightest.

I've studied each of my syllabi's and looked up in a state of panic. It's three days into the semester and I'm already feeling overwhelmed. But, if I sit here and force myself to take a chill pill, I can recall first weeks of all past semesters and a somewhat similar feeling of doom. A syllabus is just a scary thing, an entire semester of work crammed onto one paper and presented to you in one day - how could it be anything but overwhelming?

Sooo...that's your introduction to my new life. I'm staring Operation Serious Time Management as soon as I sign off on this here blog. Hang in there and look for my future posts. After all, I may be calling out for help..... :)

The Beginning of the End...

2008-12-01T14:52:00.001-08:00

What have I been up to on this first day of the final two weeks of the semester you ask? One word: daydreaming........to the extreme. My focus did not come back to school with me, and I took minimal notes in all of my classes today. Sadly, the notes I did manage to force out of my rebellious hand were random fragments of words usually meaning nothing to me. I downright gave up in physics this morning and you folks are lucky enough to read the resultant focus of my mind. The following was created at approximately 9:10 this morning:

As I sit here late, but physically present in this room,
I can't help but to feel smothered by feelings of doom.
Why you ask?
Physics is the impossible task.
I should be studying, listening, thinking, reading...
Oh, but such painful thoughts make me feel as though I'm bleeding.
He stands up there babbling about speed and waves and propagation.
I sit here and wonder about my strength of duration.
Densities, velocity, projections, power, and frequencies elude me,
He could calculate the acceleration of my waves of hatred for this subject, but the point I do not see.
Powerful, frequent waves of apathy are my raging storm,
No doubt the ensuing flood will chase me back to the dorm.
My mind is wandering,
but Lord knows I'm still pondering.
For those calculations, I do not care.
Can he tell me who in his right mind would write such a book? Would he dare?
What prize is there in pretending to calculate the powers of the universe?
Can we not simply marvel at the beauty of creation's perfection? Or would that be a curse?

......So if that doesn't scream lack of motivation, let me state my feelings in layman's terms: I am severely lacking in the motivation department!

But in the meantime, I have experienced and thoroughly enjoyed a few non-studying related events. Friday I found myself in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, NE for the 297th consecutive sellout to watch the Huskers gloriously defeat Colorado. In the words of my die-hard Husker father, "Revenge is sweet!" It was an incredibly enjoyable date with my dad made all the more sweeter by a 57-yard game saving field goal in the last two minutes of the game. Perhaps a sign of the soon to return glory days for the Huskers and the red-clan faithful fans?

I spent my last day at home decorating for Christmas. I managed to get myself in charge of putting up the tree and making it absolutely exquisite. My brothers and dad were content to watch me labor over the project as they screamed nonsense at the football players on TV. My mom made "helpful" comments from time to time as she went on an absurd cleaning spree, all the while hating on my piano (no words) Christmas music. We have this thing at my house where we color-coordinate our Christmas tree. This year I used teal and blue lights that are currently two hours away sparkling off of white garland and silver and blue and white bulbs and crystal icicles. Not to brag or anything, but it looks particularly lovely! :)

And yesterday I came back to school early and preceded to spend the majority of my afternoon and evening serving as an ambassador for the Vespers ceremony. The ceremony was beautifully carried out, well worth my time in attendance. I believe this was a common consensus as both shows were fully booked with reservations. Unfortunately, as an ambassador, I found myself in charge of checking people in at the doors. It served to be quite the stressful task as paper reservations are not nearly as reliable as tickets. Let's just say I let quite a few stragglers in. But hey, who really has the heart to turn down Christmas spirit hopefuls? The performance was worth the effort a few of those folks had to make in standing to view it.

Enough rambling however. It is crunch time, and my daydreaming this morning did me no good in the catch-up department. I have 7 tests to be preparing for in these next 12 days. Bring on the exhaustion.......

Thanksgiving break - the much needed refresher!

2008-11-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, everyone!!

It has been quite some time since I have taken a few minutes out of my life to document the insignificant details for you. And, since my last post, I have accomplished...well....hardly anything. Truth be told, staying up until 4 a.m. for homework ruined me. That night, along with sleep, I lost what little motivation I was hoarding. Since turning in that paper, I have accomplished close to nothing of scholarly significance. In place of my motivation, I have acquired somewhat of an apathetic (or perhaps drudgery is a better word) attitude towards anything having to do with my Fall 2008 semester classes. Despite having a relatively non-busy week, I am currently 4 chapters of reading behind in cell and molecular biology, I managed to lose my physics notebook and thus haven't taken notes for an entire week, and I actually subconsciously gave myself permission to shut my brain off during organic chemistry lectures because the reactions of the week just seemed like way too much to handle. But did I just sit around doing nothing all week? No, of course not. No, instead of making it easy on myself and catching up on work for my classes, I daintily pretended I could have a grand old time, and thus read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight and updated my IPOD. I found the book alright, but not nearly as good as all the hype warrants it to be. And, the music? Well, it did make my drive home on Tuesday rather enjoyable.... I'm now banking on the hope that this marvelous Thanksgiving break will put some fire back in my brain so that I can trudge through the last two weeks of the semester in a scholarly manner.

Thanksgiving break thus far has been a wonderfully refreshing event. I had a grand 'ol time on my drive home Tuesday afternoon, singing the entire way. In fact, I think I sang myself to exhaustion. I fell asleep on my bedroom floor at 7:00 and ended up officially curling up in my bed at 8:30 and not waking from my peaceful slumber until 10:00 on Wednesday. That was worth about two entire nights of sleep at the Mount! Yesterday I went shopping and got a new phone to replace my malfunctioning razor. My mom made me homemade mashed potatoes for supper, and I spent the evening at a family friends' house, reminiscing and watching a movie with some of my best and longest-lasting friends.

Currently, I am a bit uncomfortable, as I stuffed in a bit too much of my Thanksgiving feast. Here in my hometown of Elgin, NE, Thanksgiving doesn't mean a home-cooked meal with family, but a trip to town for a homemade parish meal at the St. Boniface Parish Thanksgiving Bazaar. This year marks the 84th annual bazaar. People come from all over and stand in line sometimes for as long as an hour just to eat the scrumptious food. It's great for all of the outsiders, but for families like mine who are members of the parish, Thanksgiving means working at the bazaar and seeing very little of each other. It is a day-long event as there is more food to go along with bingo and a raffle during the evening, followed of course by clean-up. In any case, all the work and sharing that goes into the day is something to marvel at. I guess I have an entire parish family to be thankful for on Thanksgiving day! And I must be off now to go pick up my little brother from his shift of working at the games for kids.

Happy Turkey Day. Don't forget to count your blessings and eat too much food! :)

To sleep or Not to sleep...

2008-11-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

Hello All! Yet another week of the semester has past, and I am living to tell the tale - even if my "living" is rather zombie-like this morning. After giving serious thought to the matter, and even jumping in the water for a test-run, I've discovered this week more than ever, the pure bliss of having a bedtime... or rather the pain of lacking one. As a young, energetic child, I threw the customary tantrums a time or two when the fun-annihilating bedtime rolled around. Now that I have acquired years of irreplaceable wisdom, however, I realize the stupidity of whining about that wonderful gift of required rest. Allow me to explain.

You see, on my course schedule this fall there has been this column inhabited by a so-called "research" class - a class consuming 3.0 credit hours of my life, I might add. A quiet class, it seemed to be for the first 3 months of this semester as I daintily gave not so much as a strawberry seed to it's whisper of a demand to receive attention. That is until Monday, November 10, the day I discovered a peculiar marking taking up more than its fair share of space in my planner. The marking, appearing rather smug and ominous said simply, "research paper rough draft due." .......uh-oh......And so the story of the week I completed a 3 credit course research paper in a week's time takes shape.

What I had so blissfully avoided for 3 months came back to release its fury on me. To fight the storm, I put aside thoughts of studying for all other classes this week and proceeded to immerse myself in the ever-confusing, problematic analysis of Class II Giardia Fructose-1, 6 biphosphate, that is, the chosen enzyme as a drug target for killing the little devil of a parasite causing giardiasis, a form of diarrhea. The outcome of such an intense endeavor proved to be a lack of sleep, a couple of significantly lower homework grades in organic chemistry, initiation of auto-retreat of focus to thoughts of days of recess and snowpant-clad, carefree snow angle making during cell and molecular biology to save my brain from incomprehensible knowledge, AND a complete exploit of every pebble of motivation I have. It was like a microeconomics screenplay of diminishing returns coming to life. As the week wore on, I spent more and more time looking up song lyrics, randomly checking facebook updates, eating (it was out of control), and staring blankly at my computer screen. The week culminated in completion of the 19 page (20 with the title page), 1.5 line-spaced, 12-font paper at 4:00 a.m. this morning, Friday, November, 2008, a.k.a. the due date.

So, task complete, I weakly collapsed on my bed at 4:10 a.m. and preceded to dream of a parasite, portrayed as a very ugly, scary looking man, chasing me. The details are a bit hazy, but I recall it being frightfully dark. I sought the help of a couple of friends, who also happened to be up at at odd hours of the morning, crying frantically something about killing the enzyme. Sadly, I don't think they saved me, as I woke up 3 short hours after so gratefully drifting off to sleep to my alarm, creepily coordinated with a scream in my dream.

And so, my 8:00 class was torturous. I made a valiant effort at reading and note-taking in physics to save me from drifting off to sleep, and I listened through a fog to the organic chemistry review for our test on Monday. I think I was caught up in some sort of second-wind at 11:00, that I'm banking will keep me alive and thriving until 2:00 when my classes are complete for the week and I can take a nap, which sounds heavenly right now.

Three cheers for procrastination. Enjoy sleep while you can, and if you chose to skip bed-time, know that you are not alone. :)

It's soo cold!

2008-11-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

Well...a week into November, less than 48 hours after I daintily spent 3 days wandering around campus comfortably and joyfully in shorts and a t-shirt, naively thinking that perhaps we would just skip winter and go straight back to summer, I am sitting here completely chilled to the bone. I normally wake up to see the sunrise outside my window. This morning I woke up to see winter waving frantically in my face. And, as if the light blanket of snow thought I couldn't see it outside of my fourth floor window, it's friend, Ice Wind, made some noise to go with it. Ice Wind is not my friend! I literally gasped when I stepped outside the door this morning to trudge to Physics class - winter is not coming quietly. In fact, I think the cold blast of wind in my face and the slippery sidewalk was a very rude arrival....like someone screaming in the library.

On with my life narrative, however. We played in the first round of the GPAC volleyball tournament last night. It was the first time in 8 years that MMC has been in the tournament. Annnd.... we .....lost. :( So, our season is over. Despite the greatly elevated amount of free time that I now have stretching out before me, it is rather sad to be done. For starters, we lost in 3 sets, and played okay, but not great. And secondly, a couple of the seniors on the team also happen to be some of my best friends, so I will miss them terribly. And, finally, if I am accepted into graduate school, I may be forever done with collegiate sports. My body would probably be incredibly grateful for that, but my heart is rather sad. It is kind of a surreal feeling right now, to be done. I don't think it will fully set in until after a few days of not practicing. As for now, the slow acceptance leaves me in a mellow/contemplative/sad mood, so the evil Ice Wind, though harsh, seems kind of fitting for the day. I should mention though, that this season marks the best for MMC volleyball in 9 years. We finished 14-21, doubling our number of wins from one year ago.

And despite the wind, cold, and ending of volleyball, life is surely moving on. This weekend lays claim to the Blue and Gold Days festivities. It kicks off this afternoon at 3:30 for the Honors Convocation. I will be honored, along with all of the other MMC scholarship recipients. I also have to ambassador at the ceremony (yay black, old lady suit......note the sarcasm :P). Post ceremony I have a couple of hours to lounge in comfy clothes before donning my suit for the second time in one day as I have to ambassador at the fall play tonight as well. I'm planning on staying to watch the show once my job is complete. Andy Hendrickson, the theatre director here always puts together shows well worth seeing! Tomorrow my mom is driving up to visit me and has planned a shopping date with me in Sioux Falls. Homework or not, family just seems more important. And Sunday, the suit comes out yet again....It's like rebelling against hanging in the corner of my closet or something and DEMANDING usage this week. (haha...) Sunday morning is the ambassador commissioning mass where I shall stand in front of the congregation and pledge my allegiance to the school and service...or something like that.

And I'm off and running again. I have to get some lecture notes printed off and make a couple of phone calls before class. Busy, busy, busy......oh Thanksgiving break, where are you? :)

The Joys of Deciding NOT to Study

2008-10-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

YAY Friday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

I simply love Friday afternoons when it doesn't really matter if I waste a few hours of my life doing nothing homework related. It's been quite the week once again, and a little less than 30 minutes ago, it culminated in an organic chemistry test that I am sufficiently relieved to be done with.

BUT, before that test, I pulled a crazy, utterly exciting move (haha...so maybe it wasn't THAT wild). Last night, when the need to study was desperately calling my name, I shut the door in the face of that voice and instead drove the 1 hour and 45 min trip home to Elgin, NE to watch my little brother play in the high school football playoffs. His team won by a sufficiently cushioned margin, and they looked great! I was pumped to make the trip. I didn't call my mom to let her know I was coming, so my arrival was a complete surprise for everyone at home. I hadn't been home since early August, before volleyball and school even started (volleyball every weekend really puts a dent in my time to travel home), so to be there, even for a very brief visit was extremely refreshing. I slept in my own bedroom in the bed I've called my own since I was about 5 years old, and woke up at 6 a.m. to make it back to Yankton in time for my Organic Chemistry test this morning. Though my studying was limited, I think the test went pretty well, and if I could redo last night, I would make the same decision!

Test complete, I am starting to feel rather exhausted, though. It doesn't help matters to walk around and be scared out of my wits by Halloween fanatics dressed up in monster apparel for their classes. And the sugar-saturated goodies around every corner aren't doing much for my fatigued state either; I simply can't resist eating such sweet tasting parcels when they're sitting in the Cyber or outside of the President's office beckoning to be eaten.

Plan for the rest of the day: Avoid over consumption of sugar. Finish my hour of work study. Eat. Go to the Moderator meeting. Attend my last class of the week (WOOHOO!). Pack my volleyball bag. Take a brief nap, and hit the road for Dordt College for one heck of a match-up....and then of course be ready to do it all over again as we leave at 7:45 a.m. for Fremont tomorrow to play Midland in our last regular season game!

Happy Halloween!!

That Time of Year

2008-10-27T09:02:00.000-07:00

So another week has passed since my last post and because the past couple of weeks have just seemed to run together, I had to refer to my previous post to catch myself up on my own life before I could inform all of you. :) I know, pathetic.

Last week consisted of a whole lot of homework and shivering and volleyball. This is the time of year that things start to seem very monotonous and sometimes quite pointless actually. Homework piles up more than usual. I'd like to blame this on professors deciding to make us squirm, but I think it's equally likely (at least in my case) that the growing mound of textbooks to read, papers to write, and tests to study for is due to a lack of motivation. My attention span simply begins to wan with the shorter days, and thinking about doing organic daily assignments or sitting through another 8a.m. microeconomics lecture makes me cringe. So what to do? Stock up on 5 calorie packs of crystal light wild strawberry drink mix (with caffeine :)) take a few deep breaths, adopt a mind over matter philosophy, and plug away. I might be needing a bit more caffeine than usual this week as I just realized this morning that my 13 page summer research paper, the one I have yet to start or really even give serious thought to, ummm, well, I'm going to have to start thinking and thinking quickly because it's due in 2 weeks - 2 weeks full of other classes that surely will not show me any pity for my procrastination.

As if I don't already feel pressed for time, I spent nearly the entire weekend on the road. Saturday we had a volleyball game in York, NE, a 3 hour bus ride. We were victorious in 3 sets, thank goodness, so the 6 hours on the bus were at least not in vain. Sunday did not offer me the ever-eluding time to sleep in either. I was up at 7 so that I could go to church before leaving for another 3 hour bus trip, this time with the Bio-Chem Club, destination: the bodies in motion exhibit in Watertown. The old building housing the exhibit proved to be sufficiently chilly and haunted-house-ish. The full body plastination figures of real humans were completely fascinating. It's so weird to think outside the box and really contemplate the intricacies of the anatomy and physiology of the human body and very surreal to actually see such excellent models of that anatomy. As fascinating as it was though, I also found it to be quite disturbing. You see, these chopped up/sectioned views of these real human bodies had to be created by someone, and the whole time I was there I could not shove that knowledge from my brain. As if it wasn't cold enough in that creepy building, the thought of chopping up someone's face into sections literally chilled me to the bone. Overall, it was a good experience, but the 3 hour bus ride on Sunday, what is usually my quiet homework day, kind of tainted the experience for me and left me wondering where my weekend went.

On a positive note, we had an AGAPE meeting last night. AGAPE is a women's spiritual group here at MMC that meets on certain Sunday nights. Last night's gathering was a "share your favorite Christian song" festivity. It was very refreshing to lay on the floor and simply allow the powerful lyrics to cloud my brain. Music can speak volumes, and it was a great re-focus hour for me before the start of another busy week.

This week is a big one for volleyball. We play our last 3 regular season games, all on the road and all conference matches. The adrenaline will be pumping and come Saturday, I'm predicting a state of mental and physical exhaustion, all very satisfying sleepiness though of course. :)

Though it is still sufficiently chilly in Yankton, the rain has stopped and the sun is again shining. And so the beat goes on... :)

PCAT torture

2008-10-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday Afternoon everyone!!!

Hi. So My insanely busy/stressful week is over and what I thought would be a week with a little breathing room is not looking to shape up to be any such thing. Let's just say my enthusiastic "Yay, Monday afternoon" greeting has quite a bit more spunk to it than I am actually feeling right now.

BUT, I do have to admit that having the PCAT behind me is a ginormous load off of my back!!! I ended up leaving to drive the 30-ish miles to Vermillion on Saturday morning a full hour and 15 minutes before the test was scheduled to start. You may think I'm crazy, but hey, I was nervous, didn't know where the building was located, and was having nightmares of bizarre obstacles stopping me from getting there on time. Luck would have it that I had little trouble finding the location of my prison for the torturous hours of that fateful morning. I made a friend with a fellow paranoid test-taker whose jitters steered him to a ridiculously early arrival as well. At 8:30 a.m., I found myself in a room with only eight other test takers. After the exceedingly boring and formal reading of warnings threatening us not to disclose information or cheat lest we were seeking imprisonment, the clock started ticking. Sub-test #1: Write an essay proposing a solution to a problem....a full blown essay with reliable support for my proposition in 30 minutes! Shoot, if my nerves weren't already shot, the realization that the test started with the time-pressured essay threw me for one heck of a loop. I was naively assuming that both essays would conclude the test. (ahhhhhh) But anyway, I wasted the first couple of minutes having a spaz attack and then proceeded to propose a solution that in hindsight appears completely and utterly absurd. Granted, I can write, but I'm a bit lacking in world-problem solving skills. I did survive that first essay writing frenzy, and the second that timer went off, Ms. Proctor lady, without looking up from her very unstressful reading and without any emotion or pity for us suffering souls, said very bluntly, "turn to test 2 and begin." WHOA! Like not even a minute to take a breather. I was expecting instructions or a simple comment to lighten the mood...anything but an IMMEDIATE ticking clock. But, with no other option, I plunged into the world of verbal analysis which of course included oodles of words I had no idea even existed. What's the point of knowing them when no one in their right minds speaks them anyway? When the stupid timer beeped again, I had to shift my mind to biology knowledge. I spent that 30 minutes wracking my brains trying to recall bits and pieces of anatomy lectures that I had long since shoved to the corners of my brain. And when the buzzer nearly scared me out of my chair, it was reset before I had time to blink to pressure me through a chemistry section that stressed every cell of chemistry knowledge I have inside me....and even some that I'm pretty sure I made up (I have not had the second semester of organic chemistry yet....).

And then....... praise the Lord, a break!! Ten glorious minutes to use the restroom and walk and breathe. I left the room and wandered around the rectangular building, aimlessly taking laps. The 10 minute break ended much too rapidly and I found myself tripping through a shaky solution to a second global problem in essay number two. I should note at this point that I had successfully dulled four #2 pencils. With writing down, it was on to reading comprehension. Now granted, I LOVE to read. I voluntarily read all of the time. I chose to get lost in novels rather than television regularly. But they pose the most horridly boring anecdotes and factual articles in those stupid tests and then ask questions that I swear make you second guess everything you just read. I was sick of testing at this point and spend precious seconds debating which of the four theme choices was actually accurate or if the test takers even gave me a correct option. I beat that rude timer though and mustered every ounce of thinking power I had left to begin the final test: quantitative analysis - no calculators allowed, mind you. I utilized skills I relearned by tutoring middle school kids at the library this summer. I was shocked at how years of geometry, trigonometry, and calculus could diminish my knowledge of how to solve fraction, logarithmic, and multiplication and long division problems by hand. I will admit that I blindly guessed on a calculus question or two (My brain discarded that information 4 years ago after I took it as a senior in high school). I nearly ran out of time and just took wild (we're talking look at the answer sheet and pick my favorite letter) guesses for a couple of questions that required too much computation and time for my exhausted brain cells to handle.

And when that terrible timer went off this time.....FREEDOM!!! Four hours after that test began, it was finally over. I grabbed my bag and booked it out of there. It will be six long weeks of waiting before my scores are mailed to me, but I'm hoping in the meantime, that the stress was worth it and I'll be able to put my PCAT study book away in a closet for good (or possibly sell it to any brave soul who decides to take the test :)). I drove straight back to Yankton and without even returning to my room, went to the gym and got dressed for our afternoon volleyball game. We won the game, but as if a testament to the stress of the day, it took us 5 painful sets of point-for-point competition to do it. Wanting nothing better than to sleep and not think about anything after the game, I instead spent some time with my mom and then got ready for the fall formal. I danced away the evening and had a blast doing it....it was a great ending to a very long stressful day.

And that brings me to Monday afternoon, I am behind in all of my classes because I spent last week studying for the PCAT, so I am playing catch up hardcore right now. As Dr. Wu, my Organic chemistry professor, wisely says, "Falling behind is Death!" I am on the verge of "death"...

Have a great week!

I Need More Time!!

2008-10-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

Hello Again all!!

Well it has been quite some time since I last spilled my life story online. Summer is over and midterm week is already here. So much has happened since my last post of the summer, so it's hard to know where to even begin.

As I write this, I am enjoying a day off from classes. MMC classes were cancelled today to celebrate Native American Day. Woohoo!!!!!! Sadly, though, I am not enjoying my "free" time as much as I had initially hoped. I am currently sitting in the micro lab preparing media tubes for one of Dr. McRoy's labs. You see, I somehow managed to acquire myself this new lab work study position in addition to my normal position as a tutor in the learning center. I received an email from him last night asking me to get a few things ready, and I had no idea when I came in at 9:00 this morning that I would still be here 3 hours later. This is exactly where science and I do not get along. I am entirely too impatient to sit around waiting for such things as an autoclave to sterilize things. Though I wasn't required to get the entire list of things done today, I decided it would be a good idea to do it all and be done with it....bad idea, Kelly. I have never wanted to leave the lab so badly as at this moment. Once I finish my final autoclaving, I am off to run a few errands before volleyball practice at 4.

Volleyball is a whole bright, rollarcoaster ride of a topic that I will spend some time on in a future post, guaranteed. For the sake of time right now, I'll just let you know we are 11-14 - a very respectable season thus far and the most wins MMC's coach of 8 years, Tracey Grotenhuis, has ever had. It has been a very enjoyable and busy season up unitl now and it is winding down faster than I have time to register.....

But, what's really weighing on my mind and on my time is PCAT (pharmacy collage admission test) studying. I take the exam in Vermillion at 8:30 a.m. this coming Saturday....a.k.a. 5 days from now. AHHHHHHHH. I feel so very unprepared. I'm trying to spend all the time I can studying, but also can't focus for long. Honestly, how do you cram everything you've ever learned in school into your brain for the sake of one test? It's overwhelming and stressful. On top of regular class homework and studies, volleyball practices and games, and meetings and college in general, I have very limited time. This could possibly be the most stressful week of my life. So...on that note, I must be off to finish up this smelly (literally) lab work and hit the books. I'll catch you up later on my life and the test. Saturday, October 18th at 1:30 p.m. will be a huge releif!!! Have a great week!

Relaxing Away Relaxation Days

2008-08-22T07:03:00.001-07:00

Good morning everyone! The day has finally arrived! The new freshmen are packed up and unloading their lives into their new homes. I woke up this morning at 8:00 and headed down to the cafeteria at 8:30 for breakfast to find campus already buzzing with activity. The orientation leaders, who I've witnessed working very hard and planning fun and exciting events all week, were swarming around anxiously waiting to greet the young, nervous souls. Though it will be a busy weekend for all of you freshmen, it will surely be fun as well!

Because I play volleyball, I could not be an orientation leader. But, this weekend is a big one for my teammates and I as well. Tomorrow morning at 11:00 is our season kick-off. We are hosting a triangular with Waldorf and DSU. Varsity will play at both 11:00 and 3:00 and JV won't be left out as we play at 3:00. All 25 members of the team have survived the first two weeks of practice. The soreness is wearing away and the rustiness of the summer months has been cleared. We have all been working hard, sweating away gallons of water from our bodies, and I think we're ready to play. It's always a bit nerve-racking for me to step back on the court for the first time without a clue as to where my team stands in relation to opponents. It would be fantastic to start the season off 2-0, and we've been working for it and together believe it is possible! So fans out there, come on down and watch the show!

As I'm writing this, I'm debating how I want to spend all my free time today. Now that two-a-days are done, I have the time to relax, and it's almost a bit overwhelming because I have so much free time to occupy. :) Yesterday morning I drove to Hartington, NE to get my official 21-year-old license. Woohoo! My birthday isn't actually until Sunday, so let me explain for non-Nebraska residents. In good ole NE, our licenses expire on our 21st birthdays, so the state issues new ones up to 10 days prior to your actual birthday. I was pretty pumped about my morning adventure for two reasons: 1) I made it to Hartington without getting lost and then only drove around for about 3 minutes before randomly and luckily stumbling upon the courthouse's whereabouts and 2) I look decent in my picture and mastered that stupid little touch screen signing machine. Once back in Yankton safe and sound, I edited the last of the papers I needed to read as the student editor for Scholastica, an undergraduate research journal of MMC students' papers. Call me what you will, but I actually enjoy editing (maybe a grammar cop? :)). Having enjoyably occupied myself all morning, I decided to make the afternoon just as exciting. I went with a friend and fellow volleyball player, Kate Carda, to her grandma's house here in Yankton to play a rousing card game of hand and foot. I had never even heard of the game, but it turned out to be relatively easy to catch on to and wasn't too challenging but did require strategy. I came in second and was fairly pleased with myself for catching on so quickly. Kate's grandma is an absolute sweetheart! Though getting up there in age, she gets around incredibly well, and I was shocked to learn she even has a three wheeler bike thing. She told the cutest stories and definitely held her own at cards. I really enjoyed visiting with her and was sad to leave when practice time rolled around. I survived practice, though I was far from impressed with my play last night, and came back to my room where I spent a few random hours chatting and wandering and then settled on my futon where I finished Nicholas Sparks' At First Sight. It was a great book and incredibly sad at the end, so I was literally crying on my futon for about 2o minutes before bed (don't judge me, I get really into my books!). That being said, yesterday was a great day. It would be wonderful if all days could be so carefree, but I think my goal for today leans more toward productivity. Right now I'm debating whether to attempt a start on my research paper over my summer research or some studying and application completing for grad school. Icky, I know.

I'm working on enjoying these last days of this week as much as possible. My birthday week is going to be off-the-wall crazy. All the returning students move back in on Sunday - I'm super excited to see my friends again! Classes start on Monday - ugh. I need to dig my motivation back up from somewhere. Tuesday I have my first lab of the year and spend the rest of the day in work study. I'm continuing to volunteer tutor one of the boys I worked with this summer at the library on Tuesday nights, so I am excited about that. And then Wednesday the volleyball team leaves at 6:00 a.m. for San Diego California!!!! WOOOHOOOO!!!! I'll leave the details of that trip for a future post. :) I can say that it is sure to be a great time despite the fact that we will miss and have to make up work for three days of class in this first week.

I'm signing off now to get my productivity on the ball. Happy school days to all of you!

Back at it

2008-08-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hello all! I've been so busy since coming back from that "precious" Iowa town I spoke of in my last post, that I don't even know where to begin. Well I guess first off, I have successfully moved out of the apartment and into my dorm room. Everything is unpacked, I love my carpet, my dad built me a reliable loft (he brags about it every time he puts it up), and my walls are decorated. The decorated wall thing was quite the dilemma. You see, my nails didn't appreciate being hammered into the cement walls, so they bent under the pressure and failed me. I tried these cheap plastic hook things next, only to have pictures and posters dropping from my walls like flies and a series of exasperated, angry words coming from my mouth. So yesterday, I splurged at Walmart and bought expensive hooks that are not failing me thus far (knock on wood!). That being said, my little "hallway" of a room (I live on 4th floor Bede where the rooms are long and narrow) is quite cute and homey. =) And the best part: I'm getting a good breeze coming in my window and amplified by my fan, so it's not even grossly hot up here!

Beyond moving back to MMC, my life has been volleyball, volleyball, volleyball. The team moved in on Monday and we were supposed to have a camping trip that evening, but an angry storm stopped us in our tracks. SOOO, we "camped" overnight in the gym and had quite the team bonding experience. We played speed ball to loosen us up and then bonded around the campfire in the gym.....I mean just kidding. We bonded in a circle around the imaginary campfire. We then watched a movie and went to bed. Let's just say I'm not as young as I used to be and sleeping on the hard floor didn't make my hips so happy. We woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed and headed out to the beach to start the morning off with a jog along the bike trails by the river. It was beautiful outside and I enjoyed it (do note that I enjoy running - it is my stress reliever - but a majority of the team didn't find the 20 minute run to their liking). We got funny looks from campers along the way. I shouted a few "good mornings" to elderly people staring at us. I can't say I blame them for their curiosity though. I mean, how often do you see a troop of 28 people running along - some giddy and some half dead? Run completed, we then hit the sand for a round robin sand volleyball tournament. It was a relaxing way to introduce practice. We ended our overnight bonding experience with lunch at pizza ranch. We had meetings all afternoon on Tuesday and then our physicals at 6:00. And then ....THE SEASON BEGAN!! We had our first official practice on Tuesday night. It was a short one to basically introduce the freshmen to our offense.

I'm happy to say that I survived the next three days of two-a-day practices. I believe I lost about 10 pounds of sweat, but feel like we have accomplished a lot as a team. Everyone is fitting in nicely. The 11 new freshmen are starting to get the hang of things (and I know all of their names =)). The inevitable soreness hasn't been a lot of fun, but this afternoon I feel like it is starting to go away. Yesterday standing and sitting and walking and just being was an achy experience. My knees exploded with pain with every bend. My right achilles tendon has been a bit under the weather but is hanging in there.

And who makes it through volleyball practice without an injury? Apparently not me. Yesterday afternoon we were doing a conditioning drill called shadow defense. Coach yells "Down" after a while and everyone has to get flat on the ground and back up as fast as possible - it is a race between you and your partner. Well, beings I am clumsy and manage to acquire the dumbest injuries known to man (usually in a very dumb way) I....well...I definitely got down. I whacked my chin on the floor. It wasn't a very hard hit and didn't really hurt that badly, but I have a scar there from when I was 10 and fell on my face ice skating. I hit the scar straight on and split my chin open. I ran to Andy the trainer who informed me I needed stitches. I was so devastated at the news that he agreed to try and sew me up himself with glue and butterfly strips....and he did it! I So I have a big ugly bandage contraption on my chin, but the wound is holding together and I'm living with it. I'd rather live with a split chin than hip surgery like last year any day!

And as if volleyball wasn't enough to keep me busy, the Riverboat Days celebration is going on in Yankton this weekend. I'm off now to walk around by the river, eat, listen to music, and watch some fireworks. I'll be back early so I can get up and be functional for 6:30 a.m. practice tomorrow. ugh. We practice and then get to walk in the parade. :)

Have a great weekend, and fellow MMC students I will see you soon!

Iowa!

2008-08-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

Greetings to all of you lovely people from Larchwood, IA!

Exactly two days before I am expected to move out of my apartment and back into the dorms, I find myself visiting my fabulous friend and roommate Brittany Sehr in her hometown - none other than small town Iowa. I came down with Tiffany Heck and Adrian O'brien, also friends of mine from Mt. Marty, and together we dubbed Larchwood as being "precious." Brittany lives in the perfect little neighborhood with green luscious grass and light brown brick houses (the kind I dream about living in someday). Her neighbor across the street is a hardcore body builder. This morning I looked out her kitchen window to see a young father pulling his three kids down the street in a mini-wagon train thing. It's just the cutest little neighborhood. Good location as well beings that it is only about 30 minutes from Sioux Falls. In fact, we drove to Sioux Falls at 4:00 this morning for some pretty fantastic strawberry banana french toast, and we are getting ready to head back soon for an afternoon of shopping - definitely great memories to end my summer with! As much as I love staying up until 5 in the morning with friends, I doubt I will have the opportunity to pursue such an adventure for quite some time. Goodbye lazy summer days and hello demanding volleyball practices. ugh.

Beyond loving my life in Larchwood, nothing new and revealing has happened in my life since my last post. I'm still making disgusted faces at the thought of having to go back to my apartment tonight and tomorrow to pack for the big move in day Saturday. I still have to-do lists up the wahzoo. BUT...deep breath here, this is big: ........ I did manage to knock off a big chunk of my grad school to-do list in a couple of afternoons I like to think of as "operation get organized." I now have three folders labeled and sorted with notes telling me deadlines and requirements. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of myself for accomplishing that. I also have shadowing experiences lined up (although one's not until a week in mid-December and the other is still in the workings as they had to do the whole background check extravaganza). All in all, it has been a busy but surprisingly productive week. Things are looking .... um..... school-ish and sure to be busier.

To-do Lists - I need to "do!"

2008-08-04T07:47:00.001-07:00

AHHHH!! That's how I'm feeling this morning. I am mortified (good word choice, huh?) that I have only a week left of summer - well kind of not even. You see, beings my parents have to move my brother into the dorms at Northeast Tech in Norfolk, NE on Wednesday and then move my sister 14 hours away to Michigan on Friday, they are coming up a couple of days early and helping me move back into the dorms on Saturday rather than Monday. Holy mound of depressing realizations of sand-less days! a.k.a. Moving into the dorms means the beginning of two-a-day practices and the end of my lazy summer days at the beach. As much as I miss my friends and even kind of miss a normal routine, I'm just not ready for the exhaustion and pain of two-a-days and the endless studying for classes. Don't worry though, I'm sure as acceptance leaks its way into my soul, I'll gradually get excited as my final week of summer vacation slams its door in my face.

But for now, I'm playing the "crap, I need to get 101 things done before I lose this time" card. At the apartment, my roommate Brittany and I have had this summer to-do list hanging up since the beginning of July. How many things have we checked off of the 12 or so tasks? Well.....ummm....like 2, and what's even sadder is that they only count for partial credit as we didn't do them together. But yesterday I was quite alone and feeling the need to accomplish something tangible, so I ventured out to this trail called south shore with full intentions of hiking in the 100 degree heat. I found the trail (an accomplishment in itself as the one and only time Brit and I tried, we ended up completely overlooking it - well looking on the wrong side of the road - and just sitting by the rocks on the river banks and talking) and started off very much alone and very hot. And I walked...and walked...and walked. And it was beautiful and peaceful and refreshing....and well, after about an hour or so, kind of frightening. I had no idea where the path was leading, and I kept coming to forks in the road and having to chose my path (such pressure!). I had about two swallows of disgustingly warm water with me and began to have fleeting images of myself passing out from heat exhaustion in the middle of the forest and no one would have a clue where I was to come and rescue me. I even contemplated just turning around and exiting the trail the way I had come in. But I suppressed the urge and continued on. The trail eventually led up to an area where I could overlook the river! It was beautiful and calming - at least if I was going to die I would be able to yell at the people down below in the boats first. :) About 30 minutes or so later, I wound my way back to my car feeling very accomplished and ready to be a go-getter this week. "Hike at south shore" - checked off the list!

I woke up fully intending to get some summer adventure time in this morning only to find out it's cloudy and stormy looking. So I'm in the library with a second to-do list - this one concerning grad school applications. If I make it through this list, I might be doing cartwheels of jubilation through the hallways of my apartment building this evening! :)

In the meantime, I have a third to-do list forming in my head. I need to get organized back at the apartment and pack, pack, pack. The prospect of moving back to the dorms for the third time in my life without a bit of pre-planning to make the task less crabbiness-inducing is appalling. Lindsay, one of my other roommates, and I need to get some volleyball stuff organized - freshman care packages and a team bonding project. I also need to burn some CD's for my sister to entertain herself with on her 14 hour drive away from me and plan a last visit up to her cabin to see her and her husband. I finally made it up there last Friday and spent a wonderful day simply playing games, talking, and being lazy with my sister.

And with three to-do lists awaitng some "doing," I need to end this brief ramapge and "do." One today is worth two tomorrows and with that being said, I'm off. Have a great week!

I sit here shivering as I watch summer run away...

2008-07-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Well despite the suffocating, horrendous heat, I find myself writing to you with blue lips. I'm shivering away at the library, where I'm pretty sure the AC is working quite well.

It has been a long day. The "Buggin' Around" summer reading program ended at 2:00 this afternoon and beings that I have nothing tying up my early afternoon hours, I came to the library 4 hours early and have been busy ever since. I feel like I've been here for eons. But helping out with the program was worth it. We took the kids on a walk showing them "historical" sights in Yankton. It turned out to be 4 blocks of sweaty, frustrating, ornery kid-chasing frenziness. Lola, my supervisor, basically wasted energy that could have been better used for sweating, talking to kids who cared not the slightest for what she had to say. The kids preferred to run in circles, look at bugs, and pick up garbage instead. I think the most exciting thing most of them learned on our historical tour was that Lola will yell if one attempts to touch a bat floundering around in broad daylight. "Get away!! It might have rabies!!" haha.

When we arrived back at the library all slightly worn out and edgy, Megan (my coworker and fellow Mt. Marty student) and I sneaked away and climbed up onto the roof of the library. (I must point out here that it was a scary climb and I feared for my life on the ladder descent but luckily I live to tell my tale.) On the roof, a basket of water balloons that we spent an entire hour last night blowing up was waiting for us. We got to chuck them down at the conglomeration of kids down below. It was a blast! We were told not to aim, but let's just say I can't be blamed for my balloons' slight inclinations to fly through the air in the general direction of the kids who had been naughty on the walk. :)

After that thrilling escapade, Megan and I spent the next two hours making bulletin boards. And then I tutored, and I am not yet done tutoring. Good news though: the boy I was working with today did soooo well! He was working on math problems that I made especially challenging for him at his request. He was getting all of them correct, admitted that it was fun, and got excited to show his dad what he had accomplished. I was happy for him and it was rewarding to see!

But in the meantime, like before I decided to contract hypothermia in the library on this scorching afternoon, life has gone on. My mom and sister picked me up in Yankton last Friday and we went to Sioux Falls for the day to go shopping. My sister is moving to Michigan on August 16, so it was kind of a last hoorah for the Starman girls together. It was a ton of fun and let's just say I spent way too much money. We got back to Yankton about 8:00 and I then went home for the weekend because it was alumni weekend. I go through Neligh, NE on my way to my Elgin farm, and the town has one of the few remaining drive-in movie theaters. I called my brother on my way home and he told me there was a whole group from TEC that was there, so I stopped. I arrived late for the movie, The Dark Night, but somehow managed to get completely excited (gasps and everything) about the second half of the movie without even really knowing what was going on. I then decided I was too tired to stay for the late movie (began at midnight) so I drove the remaining 10 miles home. Once I got home, I decided I was no longer tired so I put in a load of laundry at 1:00 a.m. and went outside to watch the stars while I waited for my clothes to get clean. The stars are beautiful, especially out in the country!

There is always a softball tournament to celebrate alumni weekend, but I did not participate because 1) my achilles tendon has not yet recovered from it's rather irritating persistence to have tendinitis, 2) I find the game to be incredibly dull, and 3) even if I did like softball, awful is probably an understatement as to my skill level. But, I did meet up with about 6 of the girls from my class, and we spent the evening reminiscing. One of the girls is getting married next summer and has already graduated from a 2-year program and thus has her "real world job." She was talking about having kids and everything. I was a bit shocked. Hello, I still have at least 5 more years of school! I'm like Peter Pan here or something. I'm rather enjoying college and not having a "real" job yet. I don't want to "grow-up" for a few more years. It was strange to think I'm the same age as her, and we had so much in common just two years ago.

I attended my TEC (teens encounter Christ) reunion on Sunday on my way back to Yankton. It was great to see my high school and TEC friends all in the same weekend! I can't believe summer is nearly over and this week will be gone before I know it as well because it is busy, busy, busy. Tomorrow and Thursday I'm off to Vermillion for a research poster presentation, Friday I will be visiting my sister at her Cabin, and this weekend is my roommate/best friend's birthday. I find myself silently begging summer to not leave. ahhhhhhhh. Until next time, stay cool and happy summer!

hmmm...randomness

2008-07-23T11:30:00.001-07:00

Hello all! Well since my last post, my life has been flying steadily by in a somewhat monotonous and seemingly purposeless string of events (suppress your laughs, please). In layman's terms, without my research job demanding set hours out of my day, I have free reign of my daily schedule. It is quite amazing, but I must admit that considering everyone I know is still actually working from 8-5 it has made for some slightly tedious and lonely days - I refrained from using the word "boring" because, Lord help me, I have tons of stuff to keep me busy. My days have consisted of working out, eating, attempting to get grad school and research papers and applications squared away, enjoying the summer sun, tutoring at the library, and going to bed - every day, with very little variation...I need some excitement in my life!

The presentation I was on the verge of being spastic about last week went fairly smoothly after all. I did find myself incapable of pronouncing the word "specificity" and have since been walking around randomly attempting to spit the word out with no luck and a lot of incredulous frustration. Additionally, despite my plea for no questions, I was asked questions I did not know the answers to. Because this wasn't the most formal of affairs, I handled the situation in a moment of panic by handing the microphone to Dr. Wu, my very intelligent mentor who did know the answers. Don't take pointers from this technique, kids! It was very unprofessional (but it did save me in that particular moment :) ).

Sunday night, for the first time this summer, 9 of my volleyball teammates and I finally got together to play. It was so refreshing to get some touches on the ball after about 2 months of very limited playing. But, let's just say I'm a bit rusty and have quite a few kinks to work out before the season begins. We're working on getting together again this Sunday night to play - hopefully a few more girls will be able to make it! In the meantime, I'm hoping to get in the gym to work on some individual hitting and such so that I can retrain my body how to do such things. You see, I am about 6'0 and that makes for some pretty powerful coordination problems that I must continually conquer. I typically end up coming up with bizarre ways of doing things and sometimes look quite ridiculous in the process, but hey, it has never stopped me from giving my best shot!

The volleyball and soccer teams move into the dorms in 2 and 1/2 weeks. Yikes, now that I said that, it makes it seem so real and threatening! My summer is down to the last threads and that is ever so sad! I'm planning on spending the remainder of this week and next focusing my cardio workouts on quickness and jumping drills we do during practice in hopes of alleviating a bit of the pain that comes with two-a-day workouts. You see, I love to run, so for the majority of the summer, I have gone for 2-3 mile runs - not exactly volleyball specific, but enjoyable and stress-relieving all the same. I work out daily, maybe taking a day off once a week. Well, after being nice to my tired body last week and taking an entire weekend off, I went for a refreshing 3 mile jog like I have been doing all summer. I woke up last Monday with an excruciating pain in my right achilles tendon. I convinced myself that it was just tight and would go away - NOT the case. I couldn't help tearing up when I walked down the stairs that morning, and as I was walking with a ridiculous limp, I let go of my stubbornness and walked down to ask Andy the trainer what sort of bizarre injury was suddenly and unexpectedly crippling me. He told me I had tendinitis in my achilles. OWWW! I haven't run since then (about a week and a half now and probably a record for me). I have attempted to do some of the jumping and quickness drills though, and though the pain is not nearly as bad as it was, it's still hanging on. I think I'm going to have give in and do some serious resting before the season starts to hopefully let my poor aching heel recover!

Now that I've spilled all of my tedious life's randomness, I should be taking off. I have a date at the library with some adorable kids and multiplication tables. Keep living it up in the summertime....I read an entire book yesterday, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson (absolutely amazing) and words of advice from that book: ONE TODAY IS WORTH TWO TOMORROWS! :)
p.s. Read the book if you have time. I loved it!

An entire afternoon in the library...in JULY?!?

2008-07-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yes folks, that's right. It is the middle of July - the hottest, most carefree month of the summer. The time when we're feeling the tug of the sweet summer days too quickly slipping by. What to do about it? Well, go to the beach of course! Run! Read a book outdoors! Do anything that involves soaking up the sun and feeling the freedom of summer. ........ hmmmm.....well....what am I doing about it you ask? Ironically, I find myself sitting at the Yankton Public Library two hours before I am scheduled to work with full intentions of staying here all afternoon. I know, I know, it's summer. Gosh, Kelly, get a life! Well you see I have my reasons and I'm pretty disappointed in them myself, but here goes: 1) it is cloudy outside to go along with the smothering humidity, so a day at the beach would most likely be miserable and unproductive, 2) I cannot run because I somehow managed to mysteriously contract tendinitis in my achilles tendon and it hurts so bad that even being OCD about running, I simply can't, 3) Despite it being mid-July, I find myself with the icky assignment of putting together a 20 minute presentation over my research that I must present for a bunch of science goo-roos tomorrow afternoon, and 4) I'm working on applying to grad school and studying for the PCAT, so combined with reasons 1, 2,and 3, today seemed like as good a time as any to delve into that mound of mind-boggling information.

So anyway, I have this presentation prepared in PowerPoint and the slides sitting here staring at me. I'm thinking I deserve somewhat of a pat on the back for getting that far. But my pride ends there. I'm actually incredibly, slightly ridiculously, nervous about giving this presentation tomorrow. I've done okay going over the presentation by means of talking to myself about four times now, but I have this nagging fear that my facts are wrong or that some genius chemist is going to ask me an "easy" question that will make me wither like a dandelion fried by the sun. My only comfort is that in these 80 minutes now that I have talked to myself about what I've done for the last month and a half, I have actually managed to plow through it with an inkling of confidence and "wisdom." The challenge comes tomorrow when I find out how true my explanations are. I'll probably have nightmares of Dr. Wu sitting there shaking her head in the back because what I'm presenting is completely wrong - if that is the case, I just hope to high Heaven that no one else picks up on it, and everyone just sits there lost by the difficulty of the material, oblivious to my made up knowledge. Wow, okay, I think it's time to stop psyching myself out.

My other task of the afternoon is to dive into Pharmacy grad school applications and PCAT information. You see, I am a terrible decision maker. I hate saying yes to one thing when it involves so many "no's" to exciting possibilities. So as you can likely imagine, picking a major and a career was no easy task for me. One evening this summer though (a Tuesday night to be exact) I was sitting in this very building (library) when out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, I starting googling pharmacy grad schools. I'd been thinking about going into pharmacy for quite some time, but was holding off on making the commitment because I want to do so many different things. But on this Tuesday, as I was deeply involved in my research, I decided that pharmacy grad school fit. It just seemed right. For reasons I can't rationally explain, I've just felt sure of this decision since that night, and I'm pretty pumped about it. On top of that huge decision right there, my goal is to apply to grad school a year early, a.k.a. this year! When I started looking into it, I realized that it only requires two years of pre-pharmacy school to get into grad school. I will have 3 years of undergraduate studies after this coming year and all the pre-requisites for grad school. I realized that, and despite the huge challenge and commitment ahead of me, I decided I'm ready to move on and I'm going to take on the challenge! :) YAY!

Okay, but before I get ahead of myself here, I have a LOT of work to do. Number one is the PCAT - pharmacy college admissions test. I will have to take the exam on October 18. That gives me three months to do some crash course studying, reviewing, and even some teaching myself new material (the stuff I'll be taking this coming fall and spring, but won't be covered in class before the test date). I'm excited about it, but also terrified. I've always been up for challenging myself, and this will definitely be one of the biggest challenges I've faced. I have nothing to lose, so I just need to stay focused and study adequately prior to the date. Focusing may be the problem though - there is so much information covered and after all, it's still summer! :S BUT, it has to be a good start to be in the library for an entire afternoon, right?? :)

Alright, while I sit here attempting to meet a challenge (or maybe just completely losing my mind...) you should definitely stop reading my crazy summer melodrama and take advantage of your own summer! Run! Go to the beach! Read a book outside! Soak up the sun and be a kid! :)

TEC - a super great weekend!

2008-07-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!!

First off, WOW! I am sorry for the time lag between now and my last post. I can't believe how ridiculously fast summer seems to be flying by and how busy I seem to manage to be.

I received the most exciting news last Thursday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. After spending yet another miserable day in lab running time consuming, uncooperative computer tests, Dr. Wu decided that our machine was not high-tech enough to get appropriate readings. The result? We had to get our information the "easy" way - "easy" being the shorter, less complicated, and in my opinion, quite marvelous way. So, I ran a seemingly endless serious of micro-pipetting, computer scanning tests, and then Dr. Wu turned to me and said we had completed our summer research goals and that I didn't have to come in anymore....WHAT?!?!? I think I stood there dumbfounded for a full 30 seconds before responding and registering that I had in fact heard correctly. I am free of research for the rest of the summer. I just have to give a presentation on Friday and write a paper. WOOHOOOOO!!!! I'm pretty pumped about it. Don't worry though, I have PLENTY of things to keep me busy for the next month (you'll probably be hearing about them in future posts).

Now to the subject matter of this post. For the 4 Sundays prior to this past weekend, I had been making trips to Norfolk, NE to attend TEC (teens encounter Christ) meetings. TEC is a three day Catholic retreat put on for the group of teens in the range of juniors in High school to 22 years old. This past weekend, the event went down, and it was phenomenal. I was a member of the kitchen crew for rural NE TEC 25. We made a ridiculous amount of food and had enough junk food (a.k.a. cookies and brownies and sugar up the wazoo) to feed an army. And beings I was working to make the food, I believe I ate enough for 20 people. I honestly had more to eat in three days than I normally eat in a week or two. We're talking cheesecake and grilled steaks and hamburgers and tacos and pancakes and all sorts of heavenly food.

But beyond the fact that I think I gained 10 pounds, the food isn't the important thing here. I love working TEC! I made the TEC retreat when I was a senior in high school and since then have worked at three of them. It is a life-changing experience. Candidates come in and experience a serious of talks mingled with awesome surprises and fun and prayer experiences. It's not like anything else I have ever been a part of. It is so hard to explain and is one of those things that just simply needs to be experienced. Everyone leaves with the feeling that they can get through anything. The people I've met there are truly amazing and I get incredibly sad every time I have to leave and say good-bye to them. If you ever have the chance, I would strongly recommend attending TEC!!!

I had a couple of cool personal experiences at the TEC weekend. I got up at 6:00 on Saturday morning and went for a run before having to cook breakfast. It was spectacular. It was cool and sprinkling a little. The retreat was held at Tintern outside of Oakdale, NE (a.k.a. middle of nowhere) so it was super peaceful. As I was running along, 4 dear bounded across the road in front of me. It was sooo cool! :) Saturday night's events took place outside around a bonfire underneath the clear sky and gorgeous stars. I love star-gazing! Sunday I had about an hour of free time, so I ventured off and took a walk. It was good to get away and have time for myself to think about whatever my heart desired - in normal day-to-day happenings, that doesn't happen often. I found some beautiful orange flowers and watched a couple of butterflies (don't judge me, I know it sounds super cheesy but it was nice all the same). On top of all of that, my little 6'9 brother was also working on the weekend. It was great to spend some time with him. He's a super cool guy and I'm super proud of him. :)

Sadly, the weekend ended Monday at 8:00 and it was back to reality. I now have 2 days left to prepare a 15 minute presentation over my research for Friday. ugh.... I'll just have to use my good spirits from the weekend to motivate me to be studious in the summer. Speaking of which, I should work on that now. bye!

Pre-holiday vacation!? :)

2008-07-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

So, I have no right whatsoever to complain about my research job. Because it is science and science takes time, I bounce back and forth between hardly working and working hard. This week has most definitely been hardly working and I absolutely, positively have loved it!

We finished phase one of our research this summer and officially have "purified protein" amongst our stocks of chemicals. Phase 2 is sure to be incredibly monotonous and lacking in any sort of excitement (my science-loving professor even stated that this will be the case). With this in mind, last Wednesday, I was in a dreadful mood willing myself to acquire a learning attitude to make it through the next few boring days. Low and behold, we searched an entire chem lab top to bottom 4 times over and could not find the little 2 inch tall cuvette that we needed to run our tests in the spectrophotometer. As my mentor stood there completely crestfallen and repeated over and over, "Ah, this is terrible!" I was secretly ecstatic. No cuvette meant that we had to order them, which in turn meant that the experiment could not proceed. So, Thursday and Friday, I came in in the mornings to do some cleaning, work on the poster presentation, and finish up a few tidbits. AND, the super exciting part, I've spent the first three days of this week on vacation from research! WOOHOO! yay summer! :)

Normally I would take advantage of such a thrilling and unexpected "summer vacation" and go home or visit friends, but I have still had to work at the library during my evenings. Therefore, I have spent three amazing afternoons at the beach thoroughly enjoying the sun, water, sand, and everything about summer. Yesterday, Brittany, my roommate, a fellow researcher, also had the afternoon off, and she joined me. We soaked up the sun, jumped in the water, decided to go for a run, didn't make it very far because I was drained from the heat and dehydrated, and then came back, jumped in the water again, and took off for home so I could make it to the library at 5. We hit up the Dairy Dock for ice cream on our way back to our apartment, and I had exactly 28 min to get and eat my cookie monster sundae before work. It was absolutely delicious and I think it may even beat Dairy Queen on my list of ice cream heavens.

In the mean time, I've spent my mornings, working out, reading, running errands, and biking. I haven't had to work, but I certainly haven't gotten bored either. My fun ends today though. I received an email this afternoon stating the following: "Finally we receive all we need. Please come tomorrow at 9:00 am. We meet in my lab." And so my fun ends. I'm not yet sure if I'll have to work on the 4th, but even if I do, it will only be a two day work week, and it's been a very relaxing and enjoyable pre-holiday vacation.

I'm looking forward to seeing two different fireworks shows this weekend and many friends who visits with are long overdo! Enjoy the holiday and try not to work too hard!

Numbers, Words, and the CUTEST kids ever

2008-06-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

So I've posted a couple of times about my research job, and you may have picked up from my tone that lab work is most likely not my life's calling (if it is, Lord save my brain cells!). I've also mentioned that I work at the library in the evenings (Mon and Tues from 5-9 and Wed and Thurs from 3-6). I'd have to say that I love it! Refreshing is the perfect word to describe my nights in the building of books. The summer tutoring program started after the kick-off party (I wrote about that in a previous post), and I enjoy it so much that I actually spend afternoons in the lab looking forward to working with the little kids once I'm free from protein purification.

I have my own tutoring schedule and I help grade school kids with math and or reading. I tutor a total of 8 kids and I love them all. They each have a day of the week when they are scheduled to come in for an hour. My task is to keep them thinking during these summer months and help them get ahead for the upcoming school year, but most importantly, to make learning fun. We have games here at the library that we use to work on math skills. For example, I've played multiplication war and bingo, matching games, and helped kids fix addition, subtraction, and multiplication puzzles. I gave one little boy a fun addition lesson at the chalkboard. He got to be creative and draw butterflies and dinosaurs and other creatures to illustrate the problems. I taught a 3rd grader how to play scrabble. I had her do all the math and keep score, so she was having fun and working on spelling and math at the same time. I even made up nerdy rhymes and used funny voices while enforcing repetition, repetition, repetition to try and make memorizing multiplication tables fun. The little girl I was working with that night hid under the table when her mom came to pick her up because she didn't want to leave - it was an awesome feeling of accomplishment for me!

I let the kids pick out books on whatever topics they want when we work on reading. I try and make it less strenuous for the littler ones by striking a deal with them - I'll read this page if you read the next one.

On Monday nights, I also get to help out with story hour. I read a book called "Messy Molly" to the kids last night, and when I finished, I was in an awesome mood. The little kids get so interested in the simple books and they ask the funniest questions and their innocence is too adorable.

My tip of the day for you: if you're feeling down for any reason, find a little kid and play with him or her. My job here at the library has made me realize that it's nearly impossible to keep a frown on your face when you're around little kids. They're so darn sweet! :)

wedding!

2008-06-24T16:37:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been quite some time since my last post, and I have been busy, busy, busy since then. The highlight of my summer, my sister's wedding, is now over. Laura, my older sister who just graduated from Mount Marty in May, married her high school sweetheart, Skyler, on Saturday in Elgin, NE, my hometown. They have dated without a single breakup for 6 years and they're the perfect couple! :)

I took off Wednesday afternoon last week to head home to help with all of the planning and preparation for the big day, but my personal planning started at the beginning of summer. I had been working on a surprise slide show presentation for the bride and groom, and let's just say that to say it took a lot of time would be an understatement. It was my gift to them (one of those from the heart :)), and I'm a perfectionist, so it got pretty complicated. The theme was "A History of Love." I included pictures of grandparents and parents, pictures of both Laura and Skyler growing up, and pictures of the two of them together. I also included video clips from interviews with Laura and Skyler in a section entitled, "Secrets Revealed" that drew a roaring laugh from the guests. To top it off, I recorded all of the grandparents giving advice to Laura and Skyler as a married couple and wrote a poem that I flashed in pieces throughout the show. It turned out beautiful, and the happy couple and the guests all loved it.

But of course hectic lives forced the project completion to Friday afternoon (pushing it, I know!). I stopped at Skyler's house Wednesday on my way home where I acquired the final video clip. Things were looking amazing until Skyler walked in and spoiled the surprise element and my computer froze after a LONG 63 min of slow preparation for the burning of the DVD. Out of frustration, I boycotted the project for the night, didn't arrive home until 10:30 p.m., and stayed up chatting late into the night while I started the burning process from the beginning.

Thursday consisted of a trip to Norfolk, NE to pick up my dress and my brothers' tuxes, a practice session with my hair stylist, an evening of frustration while trying to fit 400 chairs onto enough tables for 280 people, a mini get together with some of the wedding party, and a manicure.

I didn't think a day could get any busier, but Friday proved otherwise. I woke up and went straight to the reception hall to decorate. Six hours later, it looked gorgeous! However, because time was cramped, I left early to decorate the trolley for the post marriage drive. I got creative and used Christmas decorations to make it festive. Once that was complete, I booked it home to get dressed up for the rehearsal and then met my family in town to decorate the church and work out the kinks at the reception. The night ended with a delicious rehearsal dinner and a combined bride and groom family get together in the parking lot of the little hotel in my town of 700 people.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and got my hair fixed at 7:30 a.m. Pictures were at 11:30, and my sister became a Schindler at 2:00. The ceremony was perfect! We trolly-ed around afterwards. It was quite the experience...groomsmen climbing the water tower, attempting to go cow tipping in broad daylight, ringing an old lady's antique collection of bells, and nearly starting the town on fire were only a few of our interesting experiences. :)

The dance was the most fun I've had all summer. I saw family and friends who I haven't seen in a LONG time, and we danced the night away. I was completely exhausted by the end of the night, but it was so much fun that I wish my sister could get married every weekend! Love is a beautiful thing!

Needless to say, I took 3 naps yesterday in between jobs and on my lunch break. I'll have to look for new adventures for the next month to keep me busy! :) Until next time, I'll do my best to (as should you) keep enjoying the sun!

Catching the Summer Reading Bug..and maybe a couple of stinkbugs :)

2008-06-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

When I'm not trying my best to look the part of the mad scientist, you may very likely find me at the Yankton Public Library. I'm working there in the late afternoons and evenings after research this summer. So far, I love it. My main purpose there is to tutor little kids in reading and math. The tutoring program just started this week. I also help arrange crafts for the kids and get in my own precious moments of reading.

The program I'm working under at the library is funded by work study. The theme at the library this summer is "Catch the Reading Bug." I work with Megan O'Grady, a friend of mine who attends Mount Marty as well. I believe I already mentioned our "worm painting" craft at the park last week. The kids loved getting messy, but I think I probably enjoyed it just as much as they did. I brought some lovely pictures back to hang on our apartment fridge!! :) I've received numerous compliments, too.

On Monday night, we had our summer reading kick-off party. We had about 100 kids come. Our feat of the evening: have them create this craft (the "flat bug") that they decorate, fill-out, and leave with us to mail to a relative in another state without letting them tear the place apart. My supervisor, Lola, explained the project to the 100 kids and sent them off to various craft tables to see how much damage they could do. Within 2 minutes, the tables and floors were a disaster!! We had these cute little foam bugs, feathers, construction paper, crayons, crepe paper, you name it - and about anything you just named probably ended up as a permanent table or clothing decoration or dropped to it's treacherous spot on the floor where it sparked questions of "how the heck did this get here?" Oh but wait! Here's the most humerous part of my evening: Within those first two minutes, as I'm flying around answering questions and trying to keep chaos from destroying us all, I witnessed one little boy choosing to use a gluestick on his friend's forehead rather than his paper. After I suggested to him that that might not be such a good idea, I walked about two steps to watch him out of the corner of my eye while picking out a friendly bug for a little girl to tack on her project. Apparantly he thought his fun-destroyer had left and was about ready to resume his mischieviousness when the to-be-glued friend whispered, "No, wait, she's still standing there." I just chuckled and walked back to the two to ask them how it was going. They hastily glued a couple of computer print-out bugs on there covers and claimed project completion. Before sending the craft-pasted kids home, we ushered them all outside for ice cream cones. There's no better summer treat. :)

Now that the programs have started, my tutoring has as well. I've tutored two little girls so far this week and I have about 10 more little kids scheduled. I get to help them with math and reading and becasue it's summer, I'm supposed to make it as fun as possible. I love the little kids and it gives me something to look forward too. I'm sure I'll have many tutoring stories to share with you later on this summer!

Days Controlled by Timers...

2008-06-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I feel like it's been forever since I've posted...summer is going by too fast and I'm staying incredibly busy...maybe too much for my own good. :) I'm currently at work. My BRIN research task for the day is to let my life be controlled by a timer. Every 3 min I have to get up and go check this machine in the cold room to make sure it hasn't gone berserk and dumped our whole experiment on the floor - it's done it before. In fact, this is the second time through. The first time we ran the experiment, we did it over the weekend and came back to find an entire 2 weeks worth of work on the floor. :S .....so now we monitor it. ...Just back from about my 30th check. I sat in a walk-in-freezer watching this painfully slow collector drop 100 drops into one of 240 tubes. It takes 3 min to fill one tube. I may be here all day!

Having our experiment dump itself all over the floor did have a few benefits. For one, we had to repeat all of the steps that require little work and observation, but loads of time - the ones that take place after a 15 minute task of squirting in chemicals to make e-coli cells grow. In layman's terms, on Monday and Tuesday, my research job consisted of about an hour of work each day. I took my free afternoons to sleep on the beach under the amazing sun. It was Heavenly! A second benefit (this only counts if you have a bit of a nerdy side like me) I got to repeat all of the new procedures I learned and see if I remembered them. I felt like I learned twice as much the second time around and had a small inkling of excitement at the prospect of not only performing the steps, but actually thinking about the magnitude of what I was doing.

But yesterday, the lost experiment began haunting me. I spent four hours in the morning doing the same tedious task. At first I kind of enjoyed it. I was busy and I knew and appreciated what I was doing. But after about 2 hours of doing the same pin-point accuracy task every 10 min, I felt exhausted and repulsed by the remaining bottles to be centrifuged. I did finish in time to grab a running lunch at 1:00 and make it back to scrape out collected cells (they resembled icky brown globs of fat) and proceed to break them with a $20,000 french press. Dr. Wu told me that the task would require strength. I thought she was joking until I got my arm workout in for the day. In the battle of pressure versus Kelly's strength, pressure had the upper hand. I did manage, though weakly and in a very exhausted state, to complete the step. We were able to dump the broken cells into a tube in the cold room and I dashed out of here in just enough time to make it to work at the library.

And that brings me to this morning. I've been sitting here for 2 and a half hours now checking the machine every 2 min. I have a bit of a headache. BUT when we come up with that new drug someday, I may feel less like I'm in way over my head....

My goal for the day is to not let this machine beat my will power or outsmart me. I have my eye on it....every two minutes. 40 tubes down, only 200 more to go....

If you're basking in the sun this beautiful day, enjoy every minute of it and say a prayer for all those mad scientists out there controlled by timers and machines! :)

BRIN

2008-06-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

So I've given you a couple of ramblings about where I'm staying for the summer, but you're probably wondering what the heck I'm doing with my time other than having near death experiences on my bike and contemplating how best to share an apartment. I have two jobs, well maybe 2 and a half (I'm student editor for Scholastica which doesn't really count), for the summer. I work first and foremost here at the Mount doing undergraduate research. I also work part time at the Yankton Public Library (I'll elaborate later on about that).

As a biology major (and I'll add in here that despite the fact that I will be entering into my Junior year in the fall, I'm still skipping around not knowing exactly what I plan to do with my degree) I have to complete research credits before I can graduate. Because I'm usually anal about being ahead of the game, I thought that completing the project now rather than waiting until the summer before my senior year would be very beneficial. In the Spring, I applied to work under the BRIN program. BRIN is an undergraduate research program that offers grants to partner SD colleges to pay students to participate in research projects during the summer. I was super excited when I got the notification in late April that I had been accepted into the program, and thus my summer job! I'm working under Dr. Chun Wu.

Dr. Wu's project for the last few years has been to study giardiasis, a type of diarrhea caused by a parasite. The disease is common in third world countries and thus pharmacuetical companies aren't overly concerned about finding a new drug. The current drug has been found to be carcinogenic in mice. The cool part is that the ultimate goal of the research I am now doing is to actually find a new drug for the disease. We've spent the first two weeks purifying the protein (enzyme) so that we can test different inhibitors on it. I know, I know, sounds like a bunch of alien talk. Don't worry, I still feel clueless a large majority of the time.

The first day was...let's just say...a bit overwhelming. Now granted I've experienced lab with my college courses, but never as in depth as this summer project is taking me. Despite the fact that it is intimidating, it is also exciting and surely stimulating. In the first couple of weeks, I've already developed a headache or two thinking about the implications of what we're trying to do here. I've used more machines and techniques than I ever have in my life. I've also decided that no matter how complicated it gets, research is so much cooler than course lab experiments because what I'm doing actually has a purpose - like thinking in possibly largely exaggerated terms, I could make an impact on the world!

Another benefit: well, if you know anything about science, you know that it often takes time. Certain steps in the experiment take time to develop, react, etc. So, lucky for me, on those days, I get to escape from the lab and frollick around in the sun! :) For instance, today I came in at 9:00 this morning like usual; Dr. Wu explained some procedural steps to me and and then told me I was free to go and didn't have to come back until 3:00 because some cells had to run through a column before we could move on. So, I left the lab and spent the morning and afternoon catching up on a project for my sister's upcoming wedding. I will admit, I feel somewhat like a lazy pile when I think about everyone else out there slaving away, but I love it and besides, not everyday is like that. :)

BRIN is an excellent opportunity. I'm completing a course requirement, learning above and beyond what a textbook could ever teach me, getting priceless hands-on experience, I have my own personal mentor, and I'm getting paid well to do it. Any of you out there that are thinking of becoming science nerds, I'd definitely recommend the program to you in the future. For now, I'm going to give my brain a break and head out for a relaxing weekend. I'm sure you'll hear more from me about BRIN later on!

An Apartment!

2008-06-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

For the past two years, summer for me has meant packing up my stuff from my cute little dorm room and moving it across town to an apartment for three months. This summer, I am living in River Heights in a two bedroom apartment with three of my friends. The complex is located right behind the MMC campus, and I work here at school, so I take advantage and walk to work every morning and back home for lunch. It's fantastic beings I love walking, especially in the beautiful summer weather, and it also saves on gas money (because we all know how ridiculous prices are!).

I must admit that it is somewhat of a hassle to pack up my stuff at the beginning and end of summer to move back and forth from the dorms to my apartment, but I've been super excited both summers of my college experience to move to new locations and new experiences. At the end of this past school year with four girls, only two bedrooms, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a rather small living room, I was a bit nervous for my relocation to our new apartment. The place looked too tiny to pull through, and I felt claustrophobic after examining it post lease-signing. However, I should have known to never underestimate the classiness of women. :) I must say that with our furniture and wall decorations, the place is rather cute with a homey atmosphere, and I'm happy to call it home for the next three months.

I share the small bedroom with my best friend. Beings it is only 5' by 5', we had to be resourceful in moving in to say the least. Luckily, our experiences with college dorm rooms have already taught us the basics. My Dad built me a set of bunk beds that we are using (he is possibly a bit too excited about his handiwork). Boxes of winter clothing and excess books, photographs, and trinkets were left packed up and sent home for the summer. Once the beds were in place, the rest was a matter of creativity - a couple of trips to Walmart later for plastic dressers and hooks, and we were able to treat ourselves to DQ blizzards as a reward for our intelligent designing. :) We were even able to fit a mini fridge and a television comfortably into the room...I know, wow!

The four of us all have different work schedules, so we usually get up at different times and competition for bathroom time hasn't been an issue. If nothing else, living in an apartment or a dorm room re-emphasizes the importance of communication and compromise! My roommates and I know each other's general schedules and discuss possible conflicts about shower time, etc. before they come about. I myself am impressed with how smoothly four girls are functioning with only one bathroom.

Past experience and stories have taught me that food could be our downfall. To avoid squabbles over who's gulping all the milk or eating all the crackers, we each have our own cupboard and buy our own food. We don't hate each other by any means, but it cuts out a lot of possible pointless drama. And because we are friendly people, we do have a community food cupboard. We share bread and milk and occasionally such yummy things as ice cream and cookies!

Thankfully, I live with girls who do not enjoy filth. We each do our share of cleaning and picking up after ourselves. We pay rent on the first day of every month. To make things simple, we just split it four ways and submit four separate checks.

The place is typically locked up and quiet during the day as we are all working or out and about. The evenings are our time to relax and chat about our days and our lives. It's great to go home after a long day at work and have friends to talk to and hang out with. The first couple of weeks of summer have been great with my apartment roommates!

I have to head back to the lab to culture some proteins, so until next time, yay for summer! :)

Nighttime Bike Ride

2008-05-30T18:42:00.001-07:00

I am spending my second summer here in Yankton. I come from a small town in Nebraska, so it's hard to find work at home. I'm living in an apartment with three friends from Mount Marty for the summer and thus far it has been a blast. We're all excited for it to get warm so we can spend a lot of time at the beach.

I'll elaborate more on my apartment experience in a future post. For now, I have a great story I must share with all of you. On Thursday night the weather was severe in and around Yankton. My roommates and I watched the clouds developing on the little porch at the front of our apartment. It was beautiful and frightening at the same time. For a while, we were convinced it was possible we might be killed by a tornado dropping from the sky. But anyway, the storm amounted to nothing more than rain, wind, thunder, lightening, and some awesome clouds. At about 9:30 p.m. the storm had passed and somewhat of a calm had developed. Beings that my friends and I felt like lazy piles after sitting around all day, we decided it would be a great time for a bike ride and run.

Now keep in mind, this is about the time that it starts to get dark outside under normal circumstances. Well on this night, it was definitely lights out in Yankton because the storm clouds were still around. Our plan was to ride all the way to the other side of town and then leave our bikes and run around Memorial Park. Beings Broadway is a very busy highway, we took a long way around to cross in a not so busy area. Lots of rain less than an hour before we left meant lots of puddles. You could call me an idiot as I wore one of my favorite white T-shirts that now looks like someone splattered tar all over me. Splashing through the puddles was a blast though. In fact, had I not decided to avoid one such pudldle and take the street instead of the road, a near death experience could have been avoided. You see, I decided to lead the way and on the busiest road of our journey, I darted out and hugged the curb of the road to avoid a huge puddle on the sidewalk. My roommate Brittany and I were both wearing white tshirts, so the oncoming traffic swerved a bit to give us plenty of room. Lindsay, roommate number three, was wearing black. The car swerved back at her and she opted to slam her bike into the curb and fall off onto the sidewalk to avoid death. I know, I know. Call us idiots for 1) riding our bikes in the dark, 2) not having helmets or reflecters, and 3) riding in the street.

After ensuring Lindsay was ok, we didn't yet have sense knocked into us - we kept going. Low and behold, our businest intersection of the journey was less than a block later. We waited until the cute little flashing man of the crosswalk blinked green and then hightailed it across....only to realize that some traffic violater in a truck decided to make a right-hand turn. YIKES! You see, being a bit financially challenged, I own a WalMart bike that has always had brake problems. I had to swerve around a bit and nearly turned a cookie in the street to avoid crashing out of control into the turning truck.

Continue on we did, and the journey continued uneventfully for a while. We made it to the park, ran, and were feeling more alive than ever by the time we started heading back. The night was perfect....until we made it to the big hill that had to be descended if we were to get home to our apartment. Everyone loves flying down hills on a bike, and the excitement shadowed over my brake problem. Two-thirds of the way down, I noticed a car in the intersection at the bottom of the hill. I gripped my brakes as far as they would go and only slowed a miniscule amount. AHHH...my last resort was to drag my feet along the ground for a good 40 feet and contemplate the option of falling off my bike backwards while I let it pummel into the street. Luckily, I skidded to a stop just in time. My fear gave way to uncontrollable laughter and a resolution to fix my breaks before I venture out again. I have some heavy-duty Adidas shoes whose toes miraculously toughed out the skidding. :)

Moral of the story: Despite the riskiness of the situation, we had a blast!! Yankton is a beautiful town - the perfect size for nighttime bike rides and runs. I can't wait for more adventures to find and experience this summer.

I have much more to talk about, but for now, I'm off to the beach to enjoy the beautiful summer sun! You should all stop reading and do the same. :)