so much free time, what to do with it?

have you ever found yourself with a nice chunk of free time (like 2 weeks) after being ridiculously busy for a whole semester (silly master's degree!) and you don't know what to do with yourself??? that's me right now. i forgot what it was like to relax and to only do something because you choose to, not because you have to.

so here are some of the things i've been doing/plan on doing...

• mowed and weed-eated the yard so it looks nice when janna comes home
• added new mulch to the crep myrtle (sp?) flower bed, same reason as above
• with alan's help, filled in big ruts in our driveway caused by rain. yay for brothers!
• went to a wedding last weekend, have another one this coming weekend
• been keeping up (sort of) with working out... still try to do my ab work every day, running has been iffy... but i'm not sitting in class all day, so i don't need the release of all the pent-up ADD-ness from sitting all day!
• started reading a book for fun again... hooray for fun reading!
• today i just bought a new DVD player (one of the $30 walmart ones) because my old walmart DVD/VCR combo had died, and then hooked it all up and moved the old one out of my room. i also bought two new swimsuits even though i won't be returning to the beach anytime soon... i'm ready for the next time!
• alan cooked dinner for us after the garden last sunday... yay for homemade mandarin chicken and sweet-n-sour pork with veggies! so delicious! and we had a couple friends over and made it into a game night... hooray for apples to apples, and again hooray for brothers (who like to cook)
• i ordered some lingerie online for one of my good friends who is getting married in a month or so... yay for the semi-annual sale!
• i am probably also going to order a chalk bag and maybe a backpack from REI, thanks to some awesome summer sale deals they have going right now!
• tomorrow i am going to my favorite 9 year old's piano recital
• tonight i am finally making it to b-dub's for my traditional celebration meal... so what if it's a week after the end of the semester, it still counts :) and with a certain someone that i happen to be excited to spend time with ;)
  
• next tuesday i get to go fill out paperwork to be on payroll for my new job as a GA... super excited about this, because it will be an easy job and i get paid really well for it!
• next tuesday i also will be helping with orientation for the new PT kids... which means that tuesday morning shauna and i get to put goody bags together for them, fun!

well that's about all i can think of to say for now... julie, i hope you enjoyed the update, and sorry again that we couldn't get together while you are in texas! again, silly master's degree!

I am procrastinating and waiting for the Masters to come on for the day, and figured I'd write a little blog update in case anyone still reads this. So here are a few random things.

1. I'm at home for Easter weekend and enjoying being around the family for a bit. Haven't seen everyone at the same time since Christmas, so it's nice to just chill out. And while I did bring notes for one class home, and am about to try to finish a busy work assignment for another, I'm pretty much going on strike against homework for the weekend to just enjoy spending family time.

2. I have had stomach bug stuff for the past week, off and on. Not cool, especially since this is my 3rd time to have it in the past 4 months. I didn't get that kind of sick that often even when I was a small child! But I was thinking about this while driving home and have decided to blame it on having friends with small children (who I often watch) and working with the kids on Wednesday nights, so I'm around a lot more germs than usual.

3. This weekend is one of the first times since I got my new car that I've had a chance to go on a bit of a road trip with it. I like this one, but it's still not Marlene. Just a few random things here and there, it's not the same.

4. There are 30 something days left in this semester. Highly exciting! Then I have about a week and a half before summer I starts, then 5 weeks of that (with Denae's wedding in the middle of it!) and then I will head up to Denver, hopefully with the brother along for the ride, for my first clinical rotation. 2 months in Colorado, in the middle of the summer when the weather is amazing for things like hiking, whitewater rafting, camping, climbing, etc, plus all that time with Denae... can't wait!

well, time for the Masters, so enough of the blog...

i suck at keeping up with this...

so i survived semester one of school, and now we're a couple weeks in to semester two. it's tough, a lot more work than i ever did in undergrad (except for maybe genetics), but at the same time i really enjoy it and so i don't mind (most days) busting my rear. now that we're not in class from 9-4 every day and then straight home to study, i'm actually getting to hang out with people a little bit, sometimes even not in a studying situation :) we've played basketball a couple of times, and flag football starts next week, so that should be fun and hey maybe we'll even win a couple games... here's a pretty awesome bruise i got today playing basketball, after running into one of the guy's knee brace, and the knee brace won (the picture doesn't really do it justice)...


today i built a shelf for my closet (which is actually a clothes rack in our laundry room... whoever built this house evidently decided that only 2 of the 3 bedrooms needed closets, and i'm the lucky winner). it was a little bootleg... i cut up a scrap of OSB plywood (which is the stuff that's a bunch of chips of wood pressed into a board) from our garage for the shelf part, put in the L-shaped things that it actually sits on (dunno what they're called), and the decided to cover the plywood with some scraps of fabric we had so that it doesn't scratch up my stuff or drop wood chips into my clothing... here's the finished product:


let's see, not much else i can think to say... i hate windows vista with an intense passion and have named my computer hal after 2001: a space odyssey. it has not tried to kill me yet, to my knowledge, but it definitely has a mind of its own and tries to make my life difficult as often as possible. and if you're younger (or maybe even a few years older) than me, you're probably not gonna have a clue what that movie is unless you have old parents who made you watch it once, like my dad did to my brother and i. anyways, my brother is working on remedying this issue that he had a hand in causing in the first place by urging me to not get xp on the new laptop but go with vista (BAD choice), so he is finding me a cheap copy of xp and going to redo my computer, hopefully...

that's enough of this for one night... oh and julie these pictures are especially for you... i figured you'd like the bruise and the whole story of being resourceful to build a ghetto shelf :)

Jesus shine your light...

PT school started this week... it's already got me crazy busy with homework and reading (which I am trying to keep up with for only the second time ever in my college career), but so far at least I am enjoying it. Whether I still have that attitude in a couple weeks after having a couple tests and writing assignments due, well, we'll just wait and see. It's good to be taking classes where I'm actually learning useful things though, instead of things like the internal anatomy of a turtle. (Not that the turtle wasn't interesting... just not really useful to me in real life) Anyways, it's going to be an interesting 30 months- there's some cool people in my class but at least so far from who I've been able to talk to, very different from me as far as interests, priorities, etc. It's gonna be good though, but I know I can't do this on my own... Jesus shine your light...

I'm glad I got to do all the camps before school started. I definitely needed that challenge/encouragement going into this. And now I'm also starting to mentor one of my friends from camp, and I'm so pumped about that but also glad to have that challenge to keep myself sharp. It's kind of like built-in self-accountability... can't really mentor someone else if I'm not keeping my own ducks in a row. (wow yay for cliches) Anyways, things are going great, and the Lord is definitely at work all around me!

still blown away

two days, two amazing things happen. sunday, i got a message from my friend meg who lives in san angelo. she's an old fca camp friend, and i had messaged her to ask if she had any christian friends who were looking for a roommate, or just suggestions of places to live. she wrote back and said "crazy enough, we actually have an empty room in my house right now and we'd love for you to come live with us." so after some phone tag we finally talked last night and got everything figured out. she was like "i know pt school is intense, i'm here to make your life easier." plus she has connections where if i decide i want to keep lifeguarding, we should be able to make that happen pretty easily. SUCH A BLESSING!

also yesterday, i got a letter from ASU telling me they are awarding me what is called a category A academic excellence graduate scholarship. translation: my tuition/fees are paid for, except maybe in the semesters where we take 19 or 20 hours. HUGE BLESSING #2!

i'm just completely overwhelmed and blown away by the Lord's favor and blessing in this whole grad school thing... it's just more confirmation to add on, and honestly it's coming on the heels of a rough few months and so it is really helpful to me. i'm so excited for the summer, both for fca camp and to get started with school. i've even ordered most of my books already (i know, nerd) cause i'm so pumped.

smile: kansas beat memphis. props for the big 12.
extra smile: (there are no frowns today!) can i just say once again how brilliant pat summitt was for having candace parker bring the ball the length of the court with 7 seconds left against LSU, then dish to any of 3 other wide open lady vols after the whole LSU team went to guard candace. absolute genius.

go rams

i'm officially going to grad school at angelo state... i accepted their offer for a spot in the pt program today. i ended up getting accepted at texas tech as well, but by the time i heard from them i had already decided on asu. i just feel comfortable at asu and i am excited to move to san angelo and get started with the program. the pt department secretary also gave me contact info for a girl who is already at asu for her undergrad and will be starting pt school with me this summer, and needs a roommate to share rent at the house she lives in. she seems nice and i'm hopeful that it might work out, cause i know no one at asu so finding a roommate was not likely.

this is also exciting because i'll only live a couple hours from my brother instead of several, and this summer i will be able to work fca camps again because my classes won't start until july 8th. now if i can just get through the rest of physics II i'm all set :)


smile: it snowed overnight last night... not enough to stick to the roads, but enough to make it pretty for me to drive to work this morning

frown: i took a 2.5 hour nap today and i'm still feeling tired... blah (julie these are for you as well)

this one's for julie!

10 Years Ago:
i was in 7th grade... we'd be done with basketball season by now so i was just going to school and i don't remember what else

Things on my to do list today:
just relaxing for the rest of tonight... tomorrow we are going to stephenville to see my brother and take him some things he needs for his L.A. mission trip over spring break.

If I suddenly became a billionaire:
i'd pay for my grad school, my brother's school, parents' house... give a lot to carolina creek, fca, and ecf, and i'm sure i'd think of others... move to colorado after grad school is done, buy my 4wd suv, and spend my weekends in the mountains... travel all over the world and the US... be able to visit my friends who live all over whenever i want... not gonna lie it would be nice to have money to do that sort of stuff, but i make it fine.

Three of my bad habits:
1. wasting too much time on the computer, especially facebook
2. procrastinating in general
3. getting ADD when people are talking to me and not totally paying attention to them

Five jobs I have had:
lifeguard at the waco ymca
a little bit of everything at carolina creek
biology lab ta at umhb
sales associate at lifeway
umhb library

Five things people don't know about me:
1. although i played it in college, golf was my least favorite sport... i like playing basketball and softball (especially if it's competitive) a lot more
2. i'm a pyro :)
3. i like doing artsy type stuff- painting, drawing, photography, crafts, etc- but i'm not that great at it
4. i want to learn spanish well enough to be at least semi-fluent... probably won't happen until after grad school, cause i won't have extra time to take classes any time soon
5. i have a list of adventurous outdoor activities i want to accomplish in my lifetime... it includes skydiving, whitewater rafting, real rock climbing, hiking the grand canyon, and ice climbing