The Sanborns

What? I have a blog? Just kidding.

I haven’t posted all week long because this was my last week of h***. Aka, school week of craziness.

I survived!

I had a Micro lab practical on Wednesday and my Nursing final on Thursday. I’m not sure about the practical yet, but I made a B on the Nursing final and thus, an A in my class. Woohoo! I was joking yesterday about how sad it would be to fail the 1 hour nursing class when we only get one class to fail in nursing school and I still have to go through A LOT.

Anyway, that’s what has consumed my time this past week. Last night Gray and I sat down and watch a MOVIE together. This is not that exciting to anyone else but us because we haven’t done it in forever. At least not at home without each other being on our laptops. Ok, so I used mine for the last fifteen minutes. Really, it’s because I was dead tired and almost fell asleep and there was still about 30 minutes to go in the movie.

I will say that the movie (Up, btw) was really sad and made me cry, but the ending was better than I thought. 5 stars for Pixar!

We’re going to see A Christmas Carol this weekend with our free movie tickets. It’s going to be awesome because Jim Carey is Scrooge.

Let’s see, what else… OH! I am going this afternoon to take a class and get CPR certified, woohoo! All I have left to finalize for nursing school is the following:
- Have final fall transcript sent to school when grades are posted
- get CPR certified
- get titers re-drawn (must be AFTER Dec. 30)
- get physical
- submit results from titers to Accusource.
- purchase malpractice insurance from school

It’s really not as much as it seems because I’ve done so much of it already. We do orientation the day before school starts.

I also finally registered for classes and signed up for hours at work. I will be in class M-W and I work M-Saturday. So, only one full day off, but I will say two of those days only have one hour of work, so I’m not sure how much they truly count. I am signed up for Pathophysiology, Health Assessment (with lab), Health and Gerontology, and Special Topics: Spirituality.

I am pretty excited, but I still need to finish all this paperwork and pass Microbiology, eep!

I’m trying to remember to post more often but usually something gets in the way. I’m at work right now so I’m sure some student will come up to me with a “hard” question and interrupt this entry. Oh well.

School has been going pretty well. I had my first test today and I was stumped. It was an accounting test and my balance sheet wouldn’t balanced even though I check and doubled checked my math. I have no idea what I did wrong so I guess I’ll have to wait until Monday.

School is actually feeling pretty breezy compared to the spring semester. Perhaps because I am actually staying on top of homework and studying. I’ve been pretty consistent at having all homework done before I get home and that makes SUCH a big difference in how I enjoy my night.

Along with school, work hasn’t been too terrible. I’m tired of getting yelled at by students for doing my job, but I’ve come to accept I can’t change the policies or their attitudes.

Remember how I talked about vaccinations? I get my titers tested today and then go from there. The process to get my vaccination records was the most frustrating thing ever. SERIOUSLY.

Secretary: Hello, MTSU Health Services.

Me: Yes, I need your fax number to fax over my vaccination records.

Secretary: Says number slowly to me.

Me:  Ok, do I need to Attention the fax to someone specific?

Secretary: No, that’s it, bye. (basically, not entirely correct)

Me: Ok…

I then dialed up my old doctor’s office and gave them the information. I also asked that they leave a note indicating that the records were for me, under my married name since the records are currently under my maiden name. She was confused but said ok. Well, I called Health Services back to let them know the records were under my maiden name.

Secretary: Hello, Health Services.

Me:  Yes, I just asked my doctor to fax some records over to you guys and they are under my maiden name and I’m doing this for nursing school.

Secretary: Well, if they aren’t Attentioned to Nursing we will throw them out.

Me: Ok.

EGHAD. Seriously, how disorangized is that and it’s a doctor’s office!! Needless to say, we had the doctor mail me a copy as well in case it screwed up somewhere at Health Services, which it probably did.

I am SO ready for this weekend and my plans are the following:

Tonight: watch Friends and Lost. Finish Glee episode I missed… and sew!

Tomorrow: More Lost and maybe some True Blood… sew.. study… sew… study… go to Sophie’s birthday party.

Sunday:  church, relax, study, and sew, and study.

Oh and sleep. <3 <3 <3 weekends

My friends and I like to do murder mystery parties. It all started when I saw pictures of Lory at a murder mystery party and I really wanted to try one. One day wall at Wal-mart, I discovered a box in the board game section, a murder mystery party! I bought it and immediately Trina and I put together the shindig. We liked it a lot but didn’t do another one for over six months. Then this year, a whole year later, Trina put together another party during July. Afterwards I realized how much I really like doing them and decided to throw one this fall.

I’ve decided to host one for Halloween and I’ve picked one that happens to have a lot of “monster” type characters, I figured those would be the easiest to get cheap costumes around Halloween.

So far things are going well, the hardest part is getting people’s schedules lined up, thank goodness I have a lot of friends because I am having to go down a list.

I’m also trying to make my Halloween costume. That’s right, make. I’ve wanted to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz for years but the costume was so expensive! Of course making it will be pretty close, but I think I’ll end up saving some money in the long run. Gray and I went to Hobby Lobby tonight to find a pattern and I got lucky! It actually came in a set of five Halloween costumes for girls, both little and big. I sure hope I have a daughter someday to put some of these others into good use.

This week has been going by fast, probably because it’s only a four day week. Today turned out to be much better than I thought it would be. Although Steve Jobs did not announce a new iPod touch with camera (bummer), I did win a 4GB flash drive and I did my gram +/gram – stains perfectly in lab! Last week’s lab was pretty awful, I sucked at what I was doing, but today I got it right! Yes! I also had to call my old pediatrician today to try and get my immunizations records for nursing school. I can’t believe that in three months I will know whether or not I got in for the spring semester!

On a sad note, a co-worker has the H1N1 virus which means it’s probably a matter of days before I get infected. Maybe there will be mercy on me because I’ve already had the flu once this year… maybe. Of course there was the one time when everyone got sick at Encounter except for Lory and I, basically. I remember that we covered ourselves in hand sanitizer because Gray and Meghan were both sick. haha The good old days.

This weekend I plan on working on my costume and going to the state fair, hooray! We went ahead and bought cheap tickets and the ride wristband from Kroger. Last year we only spent a hour at the fair because we ran out of money… it was a bummer because the rides are so much fun! We’re going either Friday night or Saturday during the day, depending on the weather. We’re also planning on going to the football game… MTSU vs Memphis. Not to mention, we’re signed up for A-Team (sets up church and tears it down) this Sunday.

When did I get such a busy social life? I don’t ever remember being this busy in the spring. Oh well, I like it when the weeks fly by.

Oh my goodness, where do I start?

I’ll start off with school. We’re both back in school and my life is gone. Seriously, it just left and said, “See you for Christmas.”

Anyway, my schedule is pretty packed. I leave for worked around 5:45 a.m. and come back home about 4-5 p.m. everyday. I pretty much don’t want to be social because I need some Becca time these days.

I’m working 18 hours a week and taking 12 hours. Gray is working 20 hours and taking 12 hours as well. However, he only had four classes and I have six. My classes: Intro to Accounting, Pilates, Microbiology, Micro Lab, Into to Women’s Studies, and Professionalism in Nursing. I like my classes so far, but I will be doing a lot of studying, esp. in Micro.

This past week has been quite straining. On Monday the lab closed because the cleaning people had put something in the carpet that was making everyone sick. I was constantly coughing and sneezing. An industrial hygienist came to look and gave us a really weird explanation about it coming from the elevators. It did not. On Tuesday we closed down so that new carpet could be put down in the main lab. This made everything MUCH BETTER. ON Wednesday they finished the offices. Yesterday it was all nice and smelly good. Seriously.

Other than all of that, I’ve had to deal with some pretty horrible people. We’re supposed to enforce student ID swiping to get into the lab. We do this because student fees pay for our lab to run and so only students should be let in. We don’t have access to look up information, so if an ID doesn’t work, we can’t prove they go here. It’s very frustrating to deny someone and have them get upset about something I don’t control. You wouldn’t try to go to a concert without a ticket and expect them to just let you through the gate.

Anyway, for the second time in the past eight months I had someone ask to “See my  manager.” I laughed inside when they were told THE SAME THING I TOLD THEM.

The joys of working in a job immersed in customer service.

So, I know I didn’t post about my weight loss this week. I gained about two pounds, but I just started a weight training challenge, the EA Sports Active 30 day challenge to be exact. It involves a LOT of muscle training so weight gain is inevitable. I am also in a Pilates class so hopefully I will become fit and fierce this semester. I like having a class like pilates because I know fit working out in my schedule on a weekly basis, it’s great!

Let’s see, others news… we got rid of the gigantic TV we got off of freecycle and bought a brand new HD TV from Sams. We also re-arranged the living room and it actually looks nice! We will be adding a small bookshelf to keep school books on, but other than that, our living room looks much less cluttered, yay! The new TV has been great and a nice treat to begin the school year. We also got new health insurance for Gray and myself. I was 0n BCBST and Gray had none, so now we’re both on the school’s plan. Their plan is SO much cheaper. 

It’s been neat to go through and mark off bills as well, we were able to pay off a credit card completely so now we’re working on paying off the other one. I’m not completely against credit cards, but I do think you shouldn’t use them unless you can pay them off immediately. This means, using one to pay for gas and going home and paying it off. Otherwise you can wind up in trouble. We’re also building up a savings account because the main reason we used credit cards in the past was because the car broke down or something similiar and we had no savings or extra money. It’s a nasty blackhole to spiral into and I’m glad we’re that much closer to being out!

I’ll post pictures of the new living room arrangement as soon as I can remember. Right now this semester is already kicking my butt so I have a lot to adjust before I can go crazy.

The good news about this week was I saved almost $400 on school books by renting from chegg.com. I even found a promo code where I got free shipping! It’s even cheaper than buying books used, so I’m pretty happy and so is Gray.

This entry is scattered because I really didn’t want to write up different ones to tell you everything, like how we went to a bajillion stores before we bought the TV. sigh.

Where did the summer go? On Monday Gray and I return to school and work in a new semester. I’m not sure how I feel about returning again. My classes are as follows: Intro to Accounting, Microbiology w/lab, Women’s Studies, Professionalism in Nursing, and Pilates. I will be applying to nursing school at MTSU this fall and I hope to gain admission.

We went to campus today so I could print off my schedules at the lab. I looked at Cummings Hall, the dormitory I first lived in on campus, and found it pretty deserted for opening day. However, it was raining when we went. It’s so weird to think that six years ago I was a freshman on this very campus and I had not yet met the people I consider to my best friends. How far I have come in those six years… I have a degree in Communication and I’m now married. It’s surreal.

I was printing off my schedule when a new student asked how to use the printers. I felt myself smiling as I told him how and realized how often I will hear that question in the coming weeks. I can only hope my patience holds out as I explain again and again how to use the software.

There have been some changes in our lives the past week, changes I won’t talk about until official, but let’s just say that God is in control and he knows where we are meant to serve him and is making possible these changes. We have been asked to serve at church in different way than I ever expected to, more details on that once I’ve experienced the change.

In many ways I feel as though I am a freshman once again because I’m going through school and I don’t really know many people in my classes. I’m not afraid of the new semester, just curious to see how it all works out. I’m a perfectionist and with that comes fear that I can’t make everything perfect.

I look forward to Monday as it brings a new chapter in my life, one that I have been resisting because it didn’t make sense to go in that direction.

Well, that direction, although scary, is precisely where I need to be, right now.

I’m fully OK with being uncertain because I know it’s where I’m supposed to be.

Everytime I think of something to blog about I’m not near a computer. So I think to myself, “Oh, I’ll blog later.” HAHAHA Never happens…
A few things have happened lately that I think are blog worthy. First off, Chile celebrated a year of being with us on the 17th! I totally meant to dedicate an entire entry to him but that went out the window because I forgot!!

Thursday morning I experienced something rather frightening at work. A co-worker was drunk and being unruly. That is pretty much all I can say about it, but for a while I was really scared and at the same time, I wanted to punch him for making sexist remarks. We ended up calling campus security and well, that’s all I know about the situation.

I had to go to class after that incident and I was still a bit shaken up from the experience. Luckily, we are so far ahead in class that she let us go early! Also, I got my lab practical grade back and I got an A! I have my second lecture test on Monday and I’m not feeling good about it yet..

The only other semi-exciting thing in my life right now is my mini herb garden. I recently transported the plants into their own pots (aka empty coffee containers) and now I’m just waiting and watching to see if they’ll survive the move.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and Happy Father’s Day to all you dads.

I know.

I fell off the face of the earth.

Weigh-in blog entries are not that entertaining.

Well, in two weeks I will be done with school.

However, three weeks after that I will be back in school.

I know, I just might die in June, but I kind of hope not because in July I turn 24!

I made an A in my lab part of Anatomy and Physiology! I will be taking part two in June.

Hence, why I just might die.

Gray is still job hunting and we’re hoping he finds something pretty soon. He is doing pretty well in his classes from what he tells me. I mean, who else takes Physics and makes A’s in it? Seriously.

On Friday I begin my final training for the lab. I chose to go to these seminars: Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Networking.

Have I mentioned that I love my job?

I’m having a pretty good week so far. I proved to myself that I can study and make good grades. I’m hoping this pays off for Nursing school.

I’ve lost over an inch off my waist in a week, I love you Jillian Michaels!

I also sprained my calf muscle this week, but it hasn’t slowed me down too much.

Oh and I’m excited about television tonight, three new episodes of Survior, Grey’s Anatomy and Harper’s Island!

Did I mention that I am very into Harper’s Island? It’s one of the few shows Gray actually watches with me, which is good because I’ve gotten scared a few times.

We recently implemented a “no computer time” from dinner time until 9. It’s been working so far.

Oh, and lastly, I did not get one single bite of Easter candy. It wasn’t because I was strong, it’s because I totally forgot about it until there wasn’t any cadbury eggs left. I am still heartbroken.

I really want to go somewhere on vacation at the end of August, before school starts. However, there is the whole money issue. I’m hoping to save up over the next few months because I need to spread these wings!

I’m currently sitting at work (I picked up some extra hours), working on ChaCha (my online job that I do every so often).

So I’m making money in two different way at the same time!

Yeah, I’m a little weird.

This weekend has gone by so fast, probably because Gray and I have both worked and that sucks away our time together. Saturday I had the opportunity to go with my sister and parents to look for wedding gowns for my sister. She got engaged about a week ago. After dress shopping we went out to eat at my favorite new joint, Five Guys Burgers and Fries, delish. Later that night I got to hang with Trina for a little while for some much needed girl time.

This morning at church was a good reminder of setting your priorities straight. I tend to push things like God and my marriage aside because I know they will be there. It’s very hard, but I try my best to make God and Gray a priority in my life. Not so easy when you try, but well worth it.

Did I mention I signed up to teach 3 year olds at church? I start next Sunday and I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve gotten myself into, I guess we’ll find out.

Tonight are the Oscars and I will probably be watching them. It’s amazing how we only have ten channels, but can always find something to watch. I’m certainly glad I am not addicted to television, but it’s a nice time to relax.

Tonight we went to Wal-mart to grab a few items and so I could do my sociology homework. I had to find 5 boy toys and 5 girl toys and document them in a paper. I realized that we pay so much more for girl toys and they are all related to “housewife” activities… cooking toys, baby dolls, and dress up. Boys, on the other hand, play with trucks, spy toys, and random anime cards. It’s amazing how different the two groups are marketed at.

On my last random note, we bought sourdough bread tonight to make croutons with Pioneer Woman style… yummy!

It was a long week of school. I was thinking one of those days about why I wanted to come back to school. Seriously, working full-time is SO MUCH BETTER. However, I want to work full-time in something I love and will be happy at.

We got paid yesterday but I am the genius who forgot to setup my direct deposit. So I went over to Cope to see if I could pick up my check.

“We don’t do that anymore.”

sigh

I was told that is had to sign up for direct deposit. Now, I was planning to do this anyway, but being told to do something makes me not want to do it at all. I’m a stubborn woman.

I did it anyway. When I picked Gray up we headed over to HR on campus. The building we’ve been in a few times, mainly because I had to change my last name with them a month ago. Gray likes to press all the buttons in the elevator to make me mad, it works.

Did I mention that Thursday night I had my first “test?” Yeah, my treat for making it through was going to be a Sonic Valentine’s day treat and Grey’s Anatomy. Sonic didn’t have the treat and may not have it this year. Bummer. Oh and Grey’s was a repeat. Another bummer. I think we watched a movie and I don’t remember which one it was. We watched “Fireproof” this week and I cried. Gray got in “Memento” which I pretty much forced him to watch, but he really enjoyed it. I knew he would.

School and work are going alright. I do like the job and my coworkers so far. It’s nice to make more money than I used to on campus, but not as much as the real world.

We’re waiting on my W-2 to come in so we can file our taxes. I started using Pear Budget in January for our budget and I love it. I can’t wait to use it in the future for seeing what we spend on certain items. Before we were just using an excel file, which worked but didn’t let us know specific categories, just general ones. We had to change the budget around this month and I finally grasped the concept of moving money around to compensate. Yeah, I know.

Oh, we’re thinking about moving in April. We love our apartment complex, but the one Trina lives in has a little more space for less money. They offer a student discount and pay your water bill. We would essentially be saving, on average, around $50 a month! I’m all about that. However, we’re not entirely sure about it. We have to wait to make sure an opening will be there and everything. Who knows, we might stay where we are for one extra month and then move. I’m not sure if we can do that, but who knows. It would be easier to move at the end of May than in April.

So that is the random assortment of stuff going on in our lives right now. We’re looking forward to the Super bowl tomorrow, go Steelers!

So I started back to school on Thursday, along with Gray. My first class was stats, which is a reminder that I do enjoy math, but mostly only when I understand what is happening. Luckily, I am understanding, so far, what is happening.

I worked for four hours Thursday at the computer lab, getting accustomed to what goes on there. I already love the job. It is definitely more interesting than other jobs and I know what I am doing. Plus, we get paid more than I ever got paid at any jobs and there are chances for raises!

I am also taking a religion class this semester, History of Christianity. I always wanted to take one the first time around but it never fit into my schedule. It seems as though I will learn a lot and become well-rounded on the subject, so that is good news.

I love my schedule because I only work one hour on Fridays. Most people would hate that, but it gets me up and about and the I have the whole day to do whatever. I’m sure it will be spent studying later on but right now it was nice to relax and get some chores done.

We’ve had a rather busy weekend so far. Friday I got to go see Kelsey’s new puppy which I instantly fell in love with. I’ve come to realize we won’t be able to have a dog until the day we have a house. It’s just easier to have cats in an apartment, however that won’t be happening any time soon either. Saturday we went to Smyrna to get haircuts/eyebrows waxed for me, and we stopped by the Super Target to look around. We bought a few things and came home so I could plan our meals for the week. It is much harder to plan meals when you know you’re in school so I tried to make the meals very easy to make. I’m sure leftovers will help as well, but it helps to have a plan just the same.

Last night as we watched a scary movie, I was looking through my Anatomy and Physiology book and realizing I chose the right path. I like learning about this kind of material and I’m going to spend a lot of time learning it. I’m really excited about the future with this.