Thursday, May 30, 2013

Memorial Day Weekend Recap

How was everyone's Memorial Day? Mine was pretty busy, but it was good. We stayed with my parents. Copper had a blast running around like a mad dog in their back yard. Saturday night we went to Gettemeier's with my sister for a few beers since we hadn't done that since she turned 21. We had a good time.

Sunday breakfast was delicious, as expected. Biscuits and gravy and fried eggs and some fruit salad. I was going to try to go for a run on Sunday but I was exhausted, so we were lazy and napped for a while before we got ready to go to a graduation party. I got to see my best friend, Dani, who I haven't seen in far too long. We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time together, but it was fun. After that we went back to my parents' to watch a movie.

I finally went for a run on Monday. It wasn't a great run, but I got out there and did it (or tried anyway). And, I even read a little more in American Psycho! Not much, but I'm getting there. I'll finish it eventually. :)

We had ribs for dinner that night and they were delicious. Someone fell asleep on the way home:

Copper was a sleepy puppy after a nice long weekend
of running free in a nice big backyard :)

We got home (a little earlier than we expected!) and it seems like it took forever to unpack. I hate packing/unpacking. Once we were finally finished with that we sat down to relax and watch a movie. Copper passed out on the couch. I kept hearing a noise, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Eventually, I realized it was the cat scratching at the door--she wanted to come out! So I cracked the door open for her and she came out to explore. She even walked right up to Copper since she was asleep and all, but she moved and scared Cocoa off.

Look who came out to explore!

Copper has gotten a little braver every day and the other day they were growling/hissing/barking at each other from opposite ends of the hallway:


Demon kitty trying to scare Copper. 

Cocoa is slowly becoming more tolerable of Copper. Today she let Copper in the room (I was holding Cocoa though) and she didn't growl or hiss at her--until Copper started eating the cat's food. Kitty didn't like that. 

Friday night we're going to dinner and then the Cards game with my parents. And it's a fireworks night after the game--my favorite! :)

Friday, May 24, 2013

MIA

I've been MIA for a while...sorry about that. I've been enjoying summer (or whatever this season is supposed to be) and trying to relax before my summer class starts.

I've also been trying to run as often as possible. My frequent stomach aches make that kind of difficult sometimes (like at least once or twice a week), but somehow I managed to run 25 total miles  from April 23 to May 23. I'm pretty proud of that, although I'm sure at some point in the last few years I've done at least that much, but given that it's been a long time since I've really run, I'd call that a fairly big accomplishment. 

In other news, look who came home with us last weekend: 

Meet Cocoa. I've missed her so much and now she's home with me! :)

The second bedroom is "hers" for the time being. When she came out of the carrier she went straight for the recliner and crawled up inside it and stayed there for two days. Eventually I tipped the chair over and forced her out. 

She's starting to be nicer to me and Chris--she even purrs now--but she doesn't want to be friends with Copper. Poor Copper is scared of her. A day or two ago, if she even heard Copper coming down the hall she would hiss and growl. Now it doesn't bother her as long as the door is closed. I tried leaving the door open just a crack and she just hissed at Copper and then Copper started whining. Hopefully they'll become friends soon. Or at least tolerate each other enough to be in the same room together. 

We're spending this weekend at my parents house, which means: delicious food (I can't wait for Sunday breakfast--always my favorite), Copper gets to run around in a nice, big, fenced back yard, and ya know, I get to see my family and whatnot ;) 

I'm pretty excited about having Monday off. That means I only have to go into work Tuesday-Thursday! I'm really enjoying working from home on Fridays. Except that when I try to take my "lunch" break to work out like I normally would at work, Copper just thinks I want to play with her. So I'm not really accomplishing a whole lot with my workouts. 

Still trying to eat healthy. So far it's going fairly well. Oh, and the Sensodyne totally works. I believe this is week 3 now? They're still a little sensitive, but much better than they were before! 

Anyhoo, have a nice long weekend everyone! 


Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Enjoying My Break

I have been enjoying my time away from school. A lot. I'm a lot more relaxed and less stressed. It's a nice feeling. And working from home on Fridays is awesome. :)

I don't have my "official" grades yet, but I'm pretty sure I got As in both classes. I still haven't finished American Psycho yet. I needed a few days to just be lazy and watch tv and not use my brain more than I had to. Seriously, I watched movies on tv all day on Saturday. And I enjoyed every terrible second of it (most of the movies totally sucked, but there was nothing else on lol).

On Sunday we went to my aunt and uncle's house for breakfast to celebrate Mother's Day. We'll be taking my mom to the Cards game on May 31. After breakfast, we went to the Cards game with Chris's parents. Unfortunately they lost, but we had really good seats.

I couldn't get any better pics, but we were about 15 rows or so
behind the Cardinals dugout. 
Chris got a new car! Which I didn't take pictures of because I never took any of my new car so that would just be unfair. Haha. Now that he has a fancy new car that isn't falling apart, he gets to drive me around everywhere! Starting with last night when we went to the Cards game and they WON! First game we've gone to all season that they've won. Finally.

And here's a picture of Copper with one of Chris's socks that I took the other night:



She likes to steal his dirty socks and throw them around
like she's playing catch with herself. It's adorable, which makes
it hard to tell her not to do that lol. 

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Last Day! (officially)

My last class of the semester/year is tonight. We don't even have a real final in that class. On the one hand, that's nice. On the other hand, we have to sit through lectures on the rare book room and Faulkner center at the library, which most of us have heard before, so I feel like it's a huge waste of my time. I'd much rather just turn in the rest of my stuff and go home. But, like I said, it's the last day, so I suppose I'll just be happy about that.

I finally started running outside again last week. The weather has been great (mostly) and my runs have been average-ish. I kind of thought I would be doing a little better given all the cardio I had been doing all semester. I guess nothing ever really prepares you for the hills of Cape Girardeau. I ran 6 miles over the course of two days and was in major pain for the next four or five days. Not my brightest idea.

The past three runs I've done have been pretty difficult, and two days ago I pulled a muscle in my hamstring (maybe? I don't know anything about all these muscles...whatever), so that's been bothering me quite a bit too. I'm hoping if I rest for a day or two, it will feel better and I can get some more miles in next week.

I've been doing fairly well about eating healthy (surprisingly), except eating healthy every day (or five days a week at least) has had some not-so-great side effects. My teeth have been extremely sensitive lately. Not because I drink too much soda or wine or juice, but because I eat acidic fruits almost every day. If this sensitivity had been caused by soda or something, I would have just cut back or cut it out completely, at least for a while. But fruit? I can't really cut that out of my diet. Sure, there are less-acidic ones out there, but I happen to like the acidic ones lol.

So Sunday when we did our grocery shopping I bought some Sensodyne Pronamel toothpaste and mouthwash. I haven't noticed huge differences yet, but my teeth are slightly less sensitive when I'm not eating fruit or drinking Sprite. So that's a plus. It says it will take about 4 weeks before I'll notice any major difference. So far so good though. You know what else I learned about eating/drinking acidic foods? Not only do they break down your enamel, but they also make your teeth look much less white. So not only is the fruit I eat every day tearing my enamel to pieces, but it's making my teeth look way more yellow than they already did. Wtf.

Personally I think it's kind of cruel that these healthy foods would do such horrible things. Definitely not fair. At least when I was eating more junk my teeth didn't hurt as bad lol.

Anyhoo. Tomorrow I get to work from home (YAY), and possibly every Friday for the rest of the summer (BIGGER YAY!).

Sometime next week-ish I'll probably do a "first year of grad school recap" thingy. But right now I just want to forget it all for a few days. :) I'm sure once I find out my grades I'll have more motivation to write about it.

Have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there--and someone please tell my boyfriend that having a puppy does NOT mean he should buy me something for Mother's Day. No thank you. ;)

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

(un)Officially DONE!

I'm back!!

I hope you all are as excited as I am.

I'm technically not done with this stupid semester because I still have to go to my class this Thursday night. But I do have all of my assignments finished and printed and ready to turn in on Thursday. So pretty damn close.

I really, really want A's in both of these classes. I'm 99% sure I've got an A in my poetry class (speaking of, the book review I wrote is going to be published! more on that later). I'm fairly certain I'll get an A in my research class (a well-deserved one if I say so myself), but at this point, I'm not sure I even care anymore, just as long as I get a B so 70% of my tuition is covered ;)

The unorganization of that class is pretty much what made it the worst class ever. Oh, and the fact that half of what we did was totally irrelevant. To anything. Ever. I definitely plan on celebrating when I get home Thursday night ;)

My summer class starts in June (I think?). I'm not sure what to expect as I've never taken a summer class before and I've never had this teacher before. But it's only a month-ish long (pretty sure it starts in June and will be over before my vacation in July). Next semester is gonna be pretty great. I'll be taking Advanced Publishing (which I took as an undergrad, so I know I'll love it) and Contemporary Poetry. It's going to be a million times better than this semester. Plus, the poetry class is an afternoon class, so I only have 1 night class!

As you can imagine, my 100 Book Challenge is not going so well. I officially have 4 books read. I still haven't finished Book 4 yet (American Psycho). For my poetry class we had to write a review on a book of poetry. Thanks to all the books I bought at AWP last year and still haven't read, I had plenty to choose from. I did my review on A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World by Adam Clay. I got an A on the review and it will be published! So that book is technically Book 5. I plan to finish American Psycho within the next two weeks so I can move on to whatever's next on my list.

                       

Copper has pretty much been the pain in the ass she always is. But a cute one :) She's getting really good at sitting and giving high-fives. Yes, we taught our dog to give high-fives instead of shake. We're cool. One of these days I'll get a picture of it.


Have a great Tuesday!