Happy Turkey Day

So here's my attempt to get back in the groove of updating.

The rest of Wednesday was spent staying up late, packing, and watching the rest of the entire first season of Glee.

Woke up somewhat early on Thursday (~9am), finished packing, and went in to work for about 45 minutes. Then went home, put all the stuff in my car, put the rats in the passenger seat, and headed down to Rochester. Got home a little after 11 am and sat around with the family and had fun reintroducing the rats to Belle. Had the delicious Thanksgiving turkey meal around 1pm and then I can't even remember what we did the rest of the night.

Megan and I stayed up late, then all the girls woke up at 4:30 am on Friday. We headed over to Menards and waited outside in line in the freezing cold. It opened at 6 and a bit before then mom chatted up the security and found out where they were keeping the TVs (22" flatscreen for $100). As soon as the doors opened Sara and I rushed in to the spot while mom and Megan grabbed a car and we managed to get 4 TVs, 2 DVD players, 2 PUR water filters, and 1 bathroom scale. I got one of everything except the DVD player. We piled all the purchases into my car and then I drove home while the other 3 went on to more shopping. I got home and slowly brought in all the purchases. It wasn't until I brought in the last load however that dad woke up and came down to see what all the ruckus was about. Convenient timing I say. Went back to bed then for 4-5 hours. Later on Friday (~4pm) mom took us girls out to see Burlesque. I really liked it! It was a very basic plot, no real new excitement there, but man Christina Aguilera can SING!

I just took a 5 hour break here and completely lost track of what I was doing.

Okay so after the movie I don't remember at all what happened other than probably watching Animal Planet (Life) with Megan and Sara and making more Sneak-a-bite cookie dough. It didn't turn out very well though because I melted the butter a little too much. Then Belle stuck her nose in the bowl and we were done with it.

On Saturday I got up and called Jackie and she came over. We played with Belle and decided to go eat at Green Mill. Spent a long time there chatting about our lives and eating calzones (pretty good) but eventually she had to head out to go to the Holidazzle parade. Saturday evening Sara, Megan, and I met dad at BWW's but it was too busy so we went over to Culver's to eat instead. Ah my old Culver's, how I miss the people but not the actual job. I miss the discount too, but oh well. Don't remember Saturday night but probably more of the same.

Sunday I got up and went off to Noodles to have lunch with Hannah. We sat there and talked all through the lunch hour and beyond and probably could have kept going if I hadn't needed to get on the road. Went home, picked up Sara and packed all my stuff in the car, and headed back to Minneapolis. I discovered immediately that my cruise control wasn't working so I'm going to need to talk to Jordan about that. Got home, unpacked, and then Nathan came over for a bit and we watched Star Trek on my new TV - it was awesome.

Monday I got up, went to work, and had very little to do. After work I bummed around for a bit and then went over and hung out at Nathan's for awhile - watched some Big Bang Theory. Then Nathan, Chris, and I went over to the Cub Foods near their house and went grocery shopping! Although as soon as we got through the door those two took off and left me to my lonely self. It was fine though - I finally have food now and I don't know what to do with myself! Drove home in the rain, started unloading my car and one of the cheap paper bags broke on me. Was a very stressful end to the day.

Today (Tuesday) I got up, went to work, actually spent the whole day working, came home, and did nothing. While I'm often a fan of nothing, today it feels pretty lame. Played some games, watched some TV (Happy Feet!!), ate good food, and otherwise accomplished nothing. Although earlier today I did finally file a claim against the Half.com seller that never sent me the textbook I paid for (I also ordered another textbook from someone else - someone with 100% positive reviews). So I'm hoping that gets resolved.

Well I think that's it for now. My rats are being adorable and clamoring for my attention so I'm going to go give them some love and then shower and hit the sack.

Goodnight and good luck!

and during the last 6 weeks...

And so the bad habits return.

Have I been too busy to post?

Not at all.

I've definitely thought about posting here and there but just somehow never felt motivated enough to actually do it. Now it's the day before Thanksgiving and I have 6 weeks to catch up on - a daunting task indeed.

So here goes nothing!

The order may be a little screwy but I'll start with the jist of what happened the rest of October:

We played in the kickball finals and played great but lost by one run in the first round and then won our second round putting us in 7th place (out of 8). Not great but tons of fun. So that was the end of the fall kickball season.

The Saturday before Halloween I bought a couple of pumpkins and made Nathan carve one while I did the other one. It was the first one he ever carved and they turned out great! His is the kitty and mine is the scary face.

We spent Halloween at my house handing out candy and watching GATTACA and a couple of the Shrek movies.

Moving onto November then, a lot has happened!

On November 1st I signed up to take an online class through the University of Minnesota. It's a genetics class, extended term, and fully online (except for 3 exams), and is basically required for any vet school applications (which I'm now seriously considering). Paid my tuition and ordered the textbook on Half.com on that day and my textbook STILL hasn't arrived... that's been an ongoing frustration. Excited to start moving forward with my life though! I also bought GRE prep books and am planning on taking that at some point.

The first weekend in November Sara and I drove down to Rochester to go to Catherine's (our neighbor growing up, a grade above me) wedding reception. It was very fun and nice to go home. I also gave Belle a bath that weekend which mom really appreciated.

The second weekend in November Sara and I drove over to Eau Claire to visit Megan on Friday night. Emily (Sara's friend) also came and we spent a nice chill night watching movies, bowling, and eating cookie dough. Saturday we all went to Perkins for a late breakfast/early lunch and played a card game that I just don't remember the name of at the moment. Then Sara and I headed back to the Cities in crappy snowy weather. Arrived home to find a package fro m Denmark on my doorstep! Now that was certainly a pleasant surprise - especially once I opened it and found the chocolate, candy, and other random things inside it (including a kickass mustache!).

Had to work that Sunday - about 5 hours of animal behavior and extremely painful. Afterwards I went with Nathan house shopping with his realtor. She had scheduled 10 houses to visit, and since I went directly from work and with a headache that was also extremely painful. But Nathan bought me Taco Bell afterwards so it was all worth it :P

Finally this past Thursday night (Nov 17) was the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. I went to it with Sybylla at the Mall of America theater. We got there around 10:40 pm and the line zigzagged from the theater at the south end all the way to the entrance for the east side parking. And kept growing after we got there! We didn't have to wait too long until the line started moving, but it moved painfully slow. Finally got seated (decent seats) and fully enjoyed the movie. This is probably the best movie as far as accuracy alongside the book is concerned. They did give Hedwig a more heroic role as well as a little speech for Dobby but those were good adds instead of the crappy singing toad crap they added to the third movie. It was a little slow but so is the first half of the book so it was pretty good overall. Really looking forward to the second part though! Didn't get home until ~3:30 so it was a slightly painful day at work on Friday - but well worth it!

This past weekend I worked again on Saturday followed by more houses (only 5 this time) with Nathan and then Dairy Queen as my reward :) Saturday night I went to see Unstoppable with a friend and it was actually better than I expected. Not fantastic, nor worth the exorbitant ticket price, but still not terrible. The terrible ice storm hit Saturday night while we were in the movie so I ended up spending the night (scary roads - passed 2 cars in the ditch on the 5 minute drive). Sunday morning I got up early and drove down to go in to work again just for about an hour to dose animals.

This week has been lame. Worked until about 6pm yesterday and 5:30pm today because we're writing a grant (money is good for lab morale) and it's just really annoying. Tomorrow (Thanksgiving) I actually have to go in for a little while to change tissue and then drive home to Rochester to see my awesome family.

In general, I have been watching a lot of Glee lately (almost done with the first season), am reading the fourth in the Sword of Truth series (on my Kindle - I'm an idiot for forgetting I had the ebook versions), finished watching the Legend of the Seeker as well as the first season of Battlestar Galactica, at some point got a frantic call from my mom about taking Sara to the ER but she turned out just feverish and okay (still went over and took care of her til mom got there), playing some WoW, waiting for my textbook to arrive (finally got to contact the seller since the shipping window expired yesterday), and hoping to start getting re-motivated as far as exercise, GRE, and future is concerned.

Thanks for catching up with me!

Also, I can kill you with my brain.