on hating fixing things

+ It's official, I hate anything that has to do with fixing technical problems. Absolutely hate it. Like today, our internet decided that it wasn't going to run at normal speed. Not only that but it decided that instead of just being sorta slow on the pages that have lots of adds/pictures/links/etc, it decided to seriously not work. Like "take-ten-minutes-just-to-open-an-email" slow. Then when I tried to take matters into my own hands and fix the problem by restarting the router, it only made it worse. Now my lovely computer said I was connected to the airport network but would load and load and never get anywhere. I seriously wanted to throw the router at the wall it was so frustrating. And I wasn't going to call the internet company because well 1. I didn't have their number, I'd have to look it up online but funny, I couldn't do that anyways and 2. customer service people just annoy me. If anyone was going to call them it would have to be Jeff, he's much nicer to people in these types of situations. So the more time I sat here trying to get it to work the more pissed frustrated I was getting that I just started to unplug, re-plug, reset, push buttons, anything. I had no idea what I was doing and low and behold, it worked :-) But seriously, moral of the story, don't leave me with a non-functional router again. I'll attribute this time to luck and I doubt it would work for me again.

+ I went to Ikea this afternoon to purchase a cake pan because I want to make a cake but, as you can assume, I didn't have a pan. I have muffin pans and bread pans and brownie pans but nothing to bake a cake in. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed in Ikea's selection of bakeware. Sure its awesome if you want to make a cake in the shape of a horse but I'd rather die first. (In case you didn't know, I'm terrified of horses) I ended up finding a circular pan, one of those spring-form pans that the bottom comes out of and figured I could make it work for a regular cake. Plus it came with an insert if you want to make a cake with a hole in the center, like Angel Food Cake. I'll update if and when I decide to bake and let you know how this pan works or doesn't.

+I also purchased the following 3 jars that just happen to be my picture for my "365 Project". I've always wanted to have a kitchen where everything has it's place with little labels all in coordinating containers. This is my start I guess. This sort of goes along with my cake-aspirations because I hate having flour/sugar in the bags they come in. It makes it really difficult to measure, you always end up spilling and its just not as visually appealing. Someday I hope to have the kitchen of my dreams and not just have 3 jars it taped on labels. Maybe I'll have jars for spices, and cereal, and coffee, and snacks all with vinyl stenciled lettering... the list goes on and on.

003/365

+ Lowe's can be a very frustrating place especially when you go looking for some soil. I purchased some of these white flower pots to put my new cacti in so they weren't so farmers-market-looking in their plastic containers. They are the perfect size to fit on the window sill and I thought I'd give my new green friends a treat to some new soil. But what do you know... Lowe's sells nothing smaller than 1 cubic-foot of soil. Seriously? I don't need 23lbs of soil, I needed like 3 cups of soil. Needless to say, I left Lowe's empty handed and plan on scoping the nearby flower gardens for some extra dirt I can "use." For now my cacti remain in their original soil but in new pots with a little more room to grow. Good thing they're hardy and aren't fussy like some flowers.

on a year's worth of photos

I was inspired by Jaminicole and her 365 Project so I decided to check it out and I really want to try this. The rules are that you have to take at least one picture every day for a whole year. Wow, that's going to be a lot of pictures but I love the challenge and I love pictures so I think I'll give it a shot. I plan on uploading pictures here as well as on my 365 site so please feel free to check that one out as well. I promise that I'll take a picture every day even if I don't get a chance to upload/blog about them every day. Maybe I'll have to feature a "my week in photos" blog at some point if I'm away from my computer for a few days. (I actually like the way that sounds.)

I'll most likely continue to blog like normal, tidbits of my life. The pictures I take may inspire me to write about them, they might just be places I've been/things that I've seen, or they might be completely random if there's nothing exciting going on that day. I hope you enjoy and I hope I can keep up on this. I'm calling yesterday Day#1 because I love the photos I took on our trip. That might be cheating a little, I'm not sure, but frankly I don't really care either :-)

002/365

Today's picture is nothing too exciting because, hey, its my first day so I was sorta limited to make sure I got a picture of something. The weather here is gorgeous, definitely starting to feel like summer and I love it! I decided that after my weeks of grunge while studying for my MCAT that I'd try to put myself together a little more now. I absolutely love this dress. I got it at American Eagle last year and I wish I would wear it more. The fabric is extra soft and it even has pockets! (I'm a sucker for dressed with pockets) My jean jacket is from The Gap, on clearance too which is always a plus.

PS- look how long my hair is getting! After wearing it in a pony tail for about a month straight you tend to not realize that it's grown. I miss my long hair very much so this is awesome for me.

on our weekend get-away

I could not have asked for a better weekend. Our trip to San Clemente was exactly what I needed, and not a moment too soon I might add. I've been more stressed than ever lately and being able to get away, not be studying or working on homework, not even checking my computer or email was exactly what I needed to get through the rest of the semester and all it's work. We headed north around noon on Saturday. The drive was relatively easy, we hit a bit of traffic but what can you expect in southern CA.

We drove around the city for a little while deciding what we wanted to do for lunch, finally parked near the Community Center and walked to a delicious mexican restaurant. The weather was perfect all weekend and we ate every single meal on the patios. We decided to walk down to the pier and the beach to try to burn off some of our mexican-goodness and margaritas. Jeff was very pleased to be witness to an "almost-fight" between a couple homeless guys. They were yelling and getting up in each others' faces. We stopped to look at a sculpture a few yards away so it wouldn't be suspicious that we were watching them fight, I know, we're odd. We happened to look at the date on the sculpture, 1969-2019... Explain that? Our best idea about how the date could be in the future was that they were planning on killing someone.

We walked down the pier, disappointed that they were doing construction and we couldn't go to the end. We got attacked by some crazy pigeons and watches some people play volleyball. Jeff was very jealous. We walked along the beach skipping rocks and getting sand in our shoes. The whole reason we chose San Clemente for the weekend was to be able to go to the Fisherman's Restaurant on the pier for dinner. And boy was it delicious. A good glass of wine, warm sourdough bread, fresh clam chowder and some Dungenous crab and I was a happy girl.

Wanting to make the most of our little vacation we headed to a local bar for a few drinks after dinner. We wandered up and down the street deciding where to go in. A crazy homeless lady yelled at us just for walking by. We ended up finding a nice little bar that hassled us about not having California IDs but let us in anyways. We were very surprised when the seemingly low-key bar was suddenly packed inside with the whole town deciding to show up around 11:30pm. We played a few rounds of darts, had a couple beers, and made friends with a crazy guy Mike who loved high-fives and smacking people with his Rainbows. Needless to say, it turned into a very interesting night on the town.

We took full advantage of being able to sleep in; we definitely needed it after being out late and then rudely being woken up around 4am to our fire alarm going off. We have no idea why it went off but I definitely woke up with my heart pounding thinking we were going to have to run out of a burning building. Not too fun. We went to lunch at a local pizza place and enjoyed watching everyone walking by with their dogs, strollers, and flowers/produce from the farmer's market, it was definitely a lunch full of people watching. We headed down the street to check out the local fare, purchased some homemade, flavored honey sticks and a few cacti (I think that's the plural of cactus?) for the window-sill and headed back to SD.

Hopefully I can manage to keep my new plant life alive, they are cacti so I don't think it should be too difficult. Does anyone know how often you have to water a cactus? :-)

on being somewhat less stressed but still busy

I have been completely MIA from everything in my life lately but once again, I am back. Finally. And when I say "from everything", I'm being completely honest. Obviously I haven't been blogging but that is just the start of things I gave up while spending my life studying. I finally gave in on Thursday and gave myself a pedicure because I was sick of looking like white-trash with such un-classy chipped pink nail polish. It's also been a good two weeks since I had any form of hair style that didn't involve pulling wet hair into a pony-tail. Similarly, I think I put on mascara, and only mascara, maybe once during my cramming-study-sesh. I've also given up wearing my contacts for the most part; I think my vision might have gotten worse in the last 2 weeks. Maybe it's caused from lack of sleep, tired eyes, a full brain, or just from stress but regardless, I've been seeing much clearer with my glasses.

This is where I've spent my entire life for the last 15 days... Day in, day out, till odd hours of the night this was where you could find me. Or in the RBR, but usually both. Please note the essentials that got me through the week. Plus the other random things that happened to stay on the table because I didn't have time or energy to put them away, like the random spoon? (yeah don't ask) And yes, my Nalgene water bottle has an awesome "sippy-lid" that helps me not look like a fool when trying to drink something quickly. I always manage to spill on myself and it's nice to avoid looking like a toddler, especially when you're drinking yellow Gatorade.

Overall consensus of the test: okay. I know, you can't get much more neutral than that but that's how I'm feeling about it. All I was looking for was walking out of the test and not wanting to break down. (I already did that once this week, thought about giving up and forgetting about being a doctor and I was simply looking to avoid that again.) I'm planning on taking the test a second time to improve my score so while I was definitely going to do the best I could today, I had it in the back of my mind that it was all going to work out eventually. Thank goodness med schools don't care if you take the test a few times as long as you show improvement between them.

After waking up early today I didn't want to do anything productive for the rest of the day. So instead of cleaning the kitchen that desperately needs it, or doing some laundry that's already piling up again, I spent the afternoon catching up on episodes of shows I missed. I watched a total of 2 "16 and Pregnant", 2 "Fringe" and 2 "LOST". And might I add, it was absolutely wonderful to have such a lazy day after the extremely stressful few weeks I've had. If only I had a glass of wine and this headache of mine would go away and it would be a perfect night.

Jeff and I are headed to San Clemente in the morning to get a little bit of a break from our normal lives and relax. I am very excited to say the least. I love that town and I can't wait to spend some time quality time together. I've severely neglected Jeff with all my studying, for good reason, but we both can definitely use this trip.

on busy bees

I am more busy this coming week than I have been in a long long time. So I'm sorry that I'll be MIA for a little while but believe me, I want to be back here and reflecting very much. I just have to be realistic that other things in my life are taking priority of my time as of now. A quick update though is that my spring break was great. I got to spend some quality time with my mom that was much needed and I was still able to get a good amount of studying done for my big test. While I don't think I will ever feel like I've studied enough, I feel like I at least made good progress. This is the latest picture of my wonderful-amazing-sweet-cuddly boy Basil. I absolutely love going home and being around him. He makes me smile :-D

While I was home I even got to color Easter eggs and take no shame in the fact that I'm 21 and still participating in this child's fun. (more pictures to come of my beautiful creations but here's a sneak preview.) And yes, that egg has hair and eyes.

Unfortunately as I sit here, my biochem studying is yelling "come back to me"....but here's a quick update of the things that are keeping me away for the next while:

• Committee interviews today, tomorrow and Wednesday
• Biochem Exam II on Thursday
• E coli mutant genetics lab report due Monday
• Hospice volunteering Thursday
• Essay on the movie Idiocracy dealing with satire
• MCAT in 19 days... and counting

So take care my friends, try not to miss me too much (though I don't know if anyone actually reads this), and I will be back, someday.