Green Bay

Last Sunday I was woken up by a phone call from none other than Nathan, and we decided to meet at a park (with Jackie) to chat. Had another nice long 3 hour chat (after getting rained on) and decided to remain friends. So hooray!

The rest of the week passed by with little excitement other than getting to do 2 days of cell injection surgeries and one day of dissections - which are the most interesting parts of this job! So work was exciting.

Friday I woke up at 6am and was in to work by 6:30am in order to do the cell injections with Katie and be done in time to then drive all the way over to Green Bay, WI. Surgeries went well (finished earlier than expected) and then I drove first to Eau Claire and had lunch at Culver's with Megan (delicious). Spent some time there, helped her get motivated to pack up some clothes, and then headed out again to get to Green Bay.

I finally arrived at my destination (Kristin's house!) and had a happy reunion with her. Her mom made a delicious dinner, then we talked and played MarioKart on her Wii before heading off to bed.

The next morning I overslept and barely saw Kristin before she had to head out to her graduation ceremony. Had a good breakfast (waffles), then the rest of the family (mom, dad, brother, brother's girlfriend) left to attend the ceremony. I then showered and read pretty much the entire time until they got back. We ate lunch (subs) and then Kristin and I played Tangled (the game) on the Wii until it was time to get ready to go out to dinner. Her aunt and uncle and grandmother joined us at dinner and for a bit afterwards. Then the "kids" (brother, girlfriend, Kristin, and I) drove their grandmother home and then headed to the bowling alley where we played 3 games. The first game I played terribly but the second two I managed to break 100! Back to Kristin's and we played a quick round of MarioParty on the Wii and then back to bed.

Overslept again, but managed to eat breakfast with everyone (some sort of egg bake). Packed up my things, acquired some new books and food from the generous Nick family, and headed out. Stopped in Eau Claire again for a break and hung out with Megan for a bit before resuming the drive home.

Got home yesterday (Sunday) and managed to wash my new sheets from Target (the old ones became holey somehow) and that was about all I did that was moderately productive.

Now I'm at work, and it's going to be a slow day. But I had an exciting weekend!

It's a quarter after one and I need you now...

Ironic that the "I Need You Now" song is playing at 1:15 am and all I can think about is calling Nathan. Sigh.

It's just hard going from being with someone to being alone. Or "single" I guess. It just feels so lonely, calling friends just isn't the same because you can't just pop by at 1am or whatever.

This week I have done a lot and accomplished nothing.

Monday, I got home from work at 7pm because our coworkers in Arizona refused to tell us what they wanted us to do with work, got home, played WoW, and that's about it.

Tuesday, I got my oil changed (stupid people didn't believe me when I told them how to shut off the alarm so it almost became a 2 hour waste of time), played WoW, and that's about it.

Wednesday I drove down to Rochester straight from work, spent the evening at the Green Mill and DQ with Jackie and then home to surprise mom for an early Mother's Day. Drove back up to the cities around 10:30pm and went to bed.

Thursday I got home, played WoW (are we sensing a theme yet?), went to my kickball game where we lost terribly (yet I scored 2 runs, go me!?), came home, went to bed.

Friday (today) I went to work, then met Sybylla and went to go see Thor (good movie, extremely hot attractive manflesh in the form of Chris Hemsworth, yummy), went to the DQ at Southdale after the movie, then home again for many more hours of WoW.

Now I'm updating my blog instead of going to take a shower and head to bed.

I've also wasted the entire week accomplishing nothing, meanwhile my second genetics test is looming on the horizon. I really should be working on that... but I just have zero motivation.

Well I'm going to head to bed and hopefully wake up to a better, brighter, happier, sunnier day.

Firefly says it all...

So with all the buzz about Osama bin Laden's death, I've decided to post about entirely personal matters having nothing at all to do with the world at large.

Since that's all I ever post about anyways, I'm sure you'll understand.

Well it's happened again. I can't say I didn't see it coming but I certainly didn't see it coming quite so soon and from the direction it came from.

What I'm referring to is the end of my relationship with one Nathan D.

I honestly thought things were going well. We'd had lots of rough patches but lately things had sort of evened out. This past week had been stressful, what with me studying for my biochemistry final (pretty sure I did well on it), not to mention the weekend before we had our Easter's at our respective families' homes meaning not much time spent together, but all in all I thought we were okay.

Then on Sunday I got a phone call informing me that "we needed to talk, about our relationship." And of course my first thought is Holy shit, he's going to break up with me!?

So he came over and told me all the reasons why we should break up and how I'd been unhappy lately (news to me) and how that made him unhappy and so on and so forth. So when I informed him that I'd had no idea, that I hadn't expected this at all, he looked surprised and told me that he thought I'd been feeling the same way and that this discussion would end with a "mutual decision to break up."

The talks continued and then his statements started turning into reasons why we shouldn't break up and it was like he changed his mind after realizing I wasn't prepared for this discussion.

Almost like he was chickening out of a decision he'd already come to terms with (oh yeah and apparently he'd been planning this chat for the past two days, at least he waited until after my exam to drop the bomb).

So now he's talking about continuing on, without actually addressing any of the issues he'd brought up for why we should break up.

I wasn't having it, I was tired, cramping, sad, confused, surprised, angry, and upset and he just wanted to get home so he could let his dog out (we'd been talking for around 3 hours at this point). So I hugged him, said goodbye, and went to my computer to play World of Warcraft for a few hours. Therapeutic.

He starts an MSN chat conversation with me, and asks if I've decided yet. Of course he's referring to if I've decided if we're staying together or breaking up. So this whole discussion which he initiated is now my responsibility. So I have to be the bad guy. Well I replied as though he had asked me about my WoW character, and he told me to not skirt around the issue because Chris was waiting for him to watch an episode of Dr. Who! Yea, thanks a whole FREAKING lot, because you should rush the person who's deciding whether or not she wants to do what you told her you were going to do (break up) or if she's going to keep wasting your time on her instead of being on the market looking for your soulmate (his words, harshly paraphrased from our earlier discussion about why we should break up).

So I was more than a little upset that he would be so callous about it, not to mention already emotionally raw from the afternoon's events, and so I replied "you wanted a mutual break up, you got it"

And that was it.

So I guess I broke up with him, but it left me feeling very very dumped.

I can't help but be reminded that it was so very close to a year ago that I was also very very dumped.

And so dumped little ol' me is now whining about it on the internet, instead of doing something productive like folding the mountain of (newly washed) laundry.

Our first date, ironically enough, was exactly one month after buttface dumped me, on May 14th. Of course we had a period in the middle of the summer where we broke up again but from mid-August until now we were very much together. And now I have to figure out how to live my new life without him in it, no puppy, no kittens, no driving to New Hope, no watching Dexter together, it's all going to change and I just wasn't ready for it.

It almost feels like when I procrastinated so badly on my 3rd biochemistry exam and now it's test time and my unpreparedness has left me stressed, confused, and terrified. Eventually I guess I'll get over it and accept it but right now? Well, right now I'm upset. Accept it.

Here kitty kitty...

Sigh, when did my blogging skills take a nosedive down the toilet?

Let's briefly recap what's happened in April:

On Saturday the 9th I took my 3rd Biochemistry Exam and after not having adequately prepared for this most strenuous of exams (glycolysis, Krebs, lipid biosynthesis, etc and so on to be fully memorized) I came out of it convinced I had failed. To top it off I actually got charged for parking for the first time. I headed straight from there to Luggage World, getting slightly lost at one point, but eventually making it in. I had purchased a Groupon for there and at the store ended up getting myself a duffel/backpack hybrid (Eagle Creek's Hybrid Hauler) that I'm hoping will be perfect for my upcoming (read Summer 2012) European excursion. Later that day I met up with Vicki and Sybylla at the Cardinal (where I had a $10 for $20 worth of food Groupon) and surprisingly the bartender (the one that made me cry oh so long ago) still recognized me. Afterwards we came to my place and watched The Princess and the Frog and Tangled. All in all, the day went from bad to excellent.

Tuesday the 12th Nathan and I went to the Twins game vs. the KC Royals. It was the first year anniversary of the first game at Target Field and the Twins won in the 10th inning. Of course Span played amazingly and the rest of the team did well as well. We took the lightrail there and back and I was fully decked out in a new TC cap (from Target) and of course one of my Twins tshirts from last summer. No idea why I had to add that other than because I was very excited about my new hat.... During the game on the big screen at one point they found this old guy in a plaid shirt who was dancing hilarious/awesomely and the crowd proceeded to go wild whenever they panned back to him (and he threw in some new dance moves each time as well). It was pretty funny.

Thursday the 14th was supposed to be our first Thirsty Camels kickball practice of the year but it was rainy and cold so it was postponed. Thursday the 21st was also rainy and cold but practice was not cancelled, however I was not in the mood to attend a cold and rainy practice so I skipped. Bad me.

Bear with me by the way, I know my events are kind of random and not very detailed but I'm going off my Hotmail calendar so if I didn't put it in there it's not making it into this update due to my terrible memory.

Wait! I just remembered something not on my calendar! On Sunday the 17th I got together with Vicki and Sybylla again and gave them awesome crazy straw cups (from Target) filled with Reese's peanut butter eggs and Cadbury eggs for Easter. We went to the Riverview and saw Gnomeo & Juliet - nothing too special but lighthearted entertainment. A short meet up but still good to keep in touch.

This Friday the 22nd (Earth Day) I went and picked up Sara from the U and then drove us down to Rochester for Easter. We were enthusiastically greeted by Belle, who got so excited she actually squatted and peed a little on the front hall rug! She hadn't done that in well over a year so she was clearly thrilled to see us. Spent the night hanging with the fam, taking Belle to the dog park (and getting rained on), watching Harry Potter 7.1, dyeing Easter eggs (my gay pride egg was the best in my opinion), and making sneak-a-bite cookie dough with 2x the amount of chocolate chips.

Saturday was spent sleeping in until noon, finishing reading The Companions by Sheri Tepper, playing fetch with Belle, and watching a lot of TV (a lot of Food Network). Stayed up late reading and finishing the aforementioned book and then off to bed. Oh also mom made us make another half batch of the plain dough to lessen the super chocolate effect of the doubled chocolate chips in the sneak-a-bite.

Sunday I got up early (like 8:30am) and took a shower, then put on my dress and headed to church with the family. Had to sit through a baptism for people who don't know how to schedule events properly and watched my dad's friend Steve present the gifts to the priest while chomping on a huge wad of gum and then headed home for Easter candy eating and more TV watching while waiting for mom's delicious Easter lunch to cook. Ate ham, cheesy potatoes, and rolls and then dad went golfing and the rest of us went to go see African Cats. It was actually really well done, I enjoyed it a lot. Afterwards, dad tried to fix Megan's lack of car antenna with an aluminum arrow shaft (it did increase radio quality but was deemed too unsafe to actually remain on the car) and eventually the girls got on the road (Megan to Eau Claire and Sara and I back to the Cities). Dropped Sara off (hate driving on campus), headed home, and saw an adorable stray kitten wandering around outside meowing. It was very friendly so I pet it and gave it a dog treat I found in my pocket. I hope it found its way home...

Today (Monday the 25th) I went to work, came home, watched a biochemistry lecture, went to the Caribou coffee next to the Anytime fitness (that I am temporarily a member at, another Groupon!) and started watching another lecture there. I was planning to work out directly after but I foolishly forgot the key to the gym and so had to go straight home when I finished at Caribou. So instead of working out I finished the lecture I started at Caribou (leaving only one left to watch FOREVER!!). Now I've just spent the last hour surfing the internet and updating this blog (finally right?) so I'm going to head to bed and hope I get back into the groove. If not, oh well!

April Fools!

While it may be April Fool's Day, I won't be attempting to fool any of my potential readers in this post. This is mostly just a catching up post, because yet again I have let quite a bit of time pass since my last post.

As far as my classes go, I have gotten A's on both of the Biochemistry exams I've taken and I miraculously got a 99% on the Genetics exam I took while I was sick and dogsitting. No idea how I managed to pull that one off but I'll take it!

On the 19th I took my second Biochemistry exam, after a week of furious last minute studying. I ended up finishing the exam (slotted to take 2 hours) in under 40 minutes which was at the same time both a relief and somewhat nerve wracking. As already stated however, I did manage to pull off an A so that's good.

I also saw Rango later that day, it was pretty fun but nothing super-fantastically amazing.

The next week passed by without much incident. My coworker had jury duty so it was a very quiet boring week at work. On Friday however I got out of work early and after a lunch of Culvers, Nathan and I drove to Fargo to his older brother (Kevin)'s house for Kevin's birthday. We met Kevin and his girlfriend Holly at Mexican Village and had dinner. Then we went to a bar/club that both of them work at and had drinks and played pool for awhile. Then back to Kevin's apartment for more drinks and movie watching. Holly's cousin Brandy also came over and we had a good night.

Saturday we got up late, went to Taco Bell for lunch, and then drove the hour to Valley City, ND (Nathan's hometown). Went to his parents house and hung out there for awhile. Eventually Kevin and Holly showed up as well and we went out to eat at a dinner club. We met Brian there as well, who's 21st birthday was that day. After dinner we (Kevin, Nathan, Brian, Holly, and I) went out to a bar at a hotel for Brian's 21st. Had some delicious raspberry margaritas, sang karaoke (with the other 4), and played more pool. We took Brian back to his dorm and then headed back to the parent's house for bed.

Got up around 10am on Sunday, ate cheese and an English muffin quickly and then got back on the road. On the way home, in Buffalo, MN we stopped at an indoor dog agility course and met Jackie, a 10 month old border collie that Nathan was thinking of adopting from Border Collie Rescue Minnesota. Well she was so adorable and sounded like exactly what he was looking for that he ended up taking her home right then and there. Well to be fair we first went to Arby's for dinner and then Petco for some necessary dog items but then it was back to Nathan's. Jackie was amazing in the car, she got in and sat down and curled up right away. Makes me wish Belle was more like that!

This week passed by with not much exciting happening. Went to Nathan's on Wednesday, hung out with them all evening. Ate Papa Murphy's pizza, watched a few episodes of Dexter and played with Jackie a lot.

Today I should be studying for my next Biochemistry exam (speaking of which I still need to schedule it...) but instead I'm updating this, watching TV (so much for Lent) and waiting to see if I'm doing anything tonight.

So very far behind...

I can't even begin to give a thorough update it's been so ridiculously long... however I will attempt a brief overview:

Had the Coughlin Christmas - went ice fishing in the pond, Megan caught a tiny fish with the scooper and proceeded to eat it raw, I won an Iowa Hawkeyes Snuggie for my gag gift, got in a fight with Megan about the drive back, drove back, all was good.

At the end of January I helped Nathan move into his house, along with Chris his roommate and Chris' family. It took quite a few trips and his cats were hilarious but we got it all moved.

Packers won the Superbowl, not much to update there other than I made some delicious foods for Nathan and myself (chip dip, crescent roll pizza things).

Muse won a Grammy for Best Rock Album - that was pretty cool.

Is it sad that I'm filling this in based on my Facebook status updates??

Anyway, Valentine's Day rolled around and Nathan and I (and Chris) had dinner at his house. Nothing too fancy.

At some point I went to a Pure Romance party with my ex-coworker Amanda, that was pretty fun but neither of us purchased anything.

Nathan fixed the broken sound on my desktop, which was a relief after ~2 months of enforced silence (using my laptop for sound and desktop for video was really quite annoying).

I finally took my first exam on the 24th of February. It was my first Biochemistry exam and it was very nerve wracking but it ended up going very well, and I got an A so that's always good. Took my first Genetics exam last Saturday (March 5) but still no news as to how that one went. Have another Biochemistry one coming up next Saturday (19th) and I should be studying for it now but instead... well I'll get back to today once I finish filling in what I remember from the past few months.

At the end of February/beginning of March my parents took a week off to go down to Florida. Unfortunately the Friday morning before my mom was the victim of a car accident, which meant her 2nd VW Beetle was totaled. She also banged up her foot and wrist pretty bad. Their flight was on Sunday morning, so they ended up coming up Saturday night (with Belle). They, I, Nathan, and Sara and her friend Avery all went out to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings and played the trivia games (did pretty well, go team Gimp - named after my mom's poor foot). Had the DELICIOUS chocolate cake there, it was really excellent. Parents and I went back to my house where they went to bed in my room and I hung out with Belle in the spare room.

That Sunday morning I got up and drove the parents to the airport, came home and slept some more. Later on Sunday I drove Belle over to Nathan's where we discovered his cats are not big fans of canines, Belle in particular.

On Monday after work I took Belle to the Minnehaha dog park for about an hour and a half. It was great, but I didn't realize until we got home how windburn my face felt.

On Tuesday I repeated Monday and again came home feeling not too great.

On Wednesday I realized I was getting sick with chills and a nasty cough/sore throat. I did not take her back to the park but played fetch with her in the backyard a few times.

Thursday I felt even worse, with a fever and a headache added to the previous symptoms. So I went into work just for a few hours in the morning to do what I needed to do and then came home and slept more. Luckily Nathan came over Thursday evening and took Belle for a walk and played fetch with her because I was really not up to it.

Friday was bad again so I did the same as Thursday. Biggest problem for me was that my Genetics test was coming up on Saturday and I was just in no mood to study but had to try anyway. At one point on Friday I just couldn't do it anymore so gave up and figured I'd just wing it. Nathan came over again because I was feeling so crappy and he played fetch with Belle again and helped me get to sleep (yay for hot Tang).

Saturday morning dawned bright and early and I drove to the Saint Paul UMN campus and parked and took my first Genetics exam. I almost cried with relief when I realized that the majority of the questions pertained to stuff I actually remembered reading about in my half-assed studying. Afterwards I went to Michaels and bought some picture frames, knitting needles, and thread to finally finish binding my t-shirt quilt together. Later on Saturday I went out to dinner at the Chatterbox with Vicki and Sybylla. We played Operation! It was very busy in there and I had a little girl peak at me in the restroom under the stall door... that was awkward. Afterwards we all went back to my place to play with Belle and watched Ice Age on TV. After they left, Belle proceeded to act strange and slow and we went to bed. Around 3am she woke me up with barfing noises. It was nasty stuff that almost looked like animal bones and I have no idea where she would have gotten into it. Belle didn't hardly move and made me really nervous so I cleaned it up as best I could and went back to sleep.

Parents got back on Sunday and I had just enough time to get all Belle's stuff together and downstairs ready for them to pick her up when they arrived (made them take the train). They came, grabbed the pooch, and headed home.

Which brings us to this past week. I'm feeling much better, still a bit of coughing but nothing unmanageable. Tuesday was Fat Tuesday so I bought a giant Oreo cupcake from work and ate it along with Dominos pizza. I decided I would give up my random TV watching for Lent, even though I'm not really religious at all. Times like today make it hard to stick to it because I so badly want to not work on Biochemistry...

On Friday I went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre with Nathan, his parents, his aunt and uncle, and his younger brother Brian. It was a pretty good show with decent food and Nathan and I split a giant piece of chocolate cake (not as good as BWW's but still decent). Afterwards Nathan, Brian, and I went to Nathan's house and watched a couple episodes of "Dexter" before heading to bed.

On Saturday I slept in late then spent nearly the entire day doing laundry and going through Biochemistry lectures. I ended up staying up until the wee hours of the morning (4am - but part of that is due to Daylight Savings) doing that.

Which brings us to today! I slept in ridiculously late, ate a bowl of Cocoa Krispies, and have spent the majority of today continuing the massive amounts of laundry, cleaning out the rat cage, taking out garbage, and updating this blog. I just had a little trip down memory lane with "C'est la vie"

Now I'm going to go back to doing productive things and hopefully finish a few Biochemistry lectures.

This has been fun! Hopefully I'll keep up with it better.

Happy 2011?

Seems to be a theme with me, never really sure if it will be a good new year.

On the other hand, I did wait about 3 weeks to post (okay longer, so sue me) so that must mean something right? Like, my life is so busy and full that I just rarely find the time to post anymore.

While that's part of it, a bigger part is just laziness. But hey, no need to start the broken record on that topic.

On to the main events.

I drove down to Rochester after work on the Thursday after my last post. Jackie came over to my house and we hung out for a bit and played with Belle, then I went out to eat at Culvers with the parents and she had dinner with her family, then we reconvened at her house, drove to the Dairy Queen in Byron, ate blizzards, then went back to her house and hung out until late. I wish we could hang out more often. I drove back up to Minneapolis on Friday (New Years Eve).

I spent New Years Eve at Nathan's place, drinking and playing games and generally hanging out.

The next Friday after work I headed down on I35 to meet my family in Albert Lea and then continue on to Des Moines for the Coughlin family Christmas. What should have been a drive of around an hour and a half became a 2 and a half hour drive. It was horrible, the traffic wasn't moving and the weather wasn't even that bad. That drive was maddening. Finally met up with the family and had some McDonald's and then mom drove my car down to Des Moines. After Albert Lea the traffic cleared up more but the weather got worse. The roads were slick with ice and the wind was blowing snow everywhere.

Okay this is ridiculous, I'm going to post this one now and continue updating on the next one and hopefully I'll eventually catch up. I've probably already forgotten a lot of what I'd planned to jot down here for eternity but alas, it is now lost forever.