A Year [2012] In Review

This past year I slacked a lot in the blog department. We were busy having fun, but it was mostly the same so I didn't really feel I had a lot to blog about. In no particular order we did the following:

• I started training Percy in agility and obedience. This consumed most of the first half of the year.
• We made numerous trips to Disneyland and the beach.
• I had a girls day at Glen Ivy and then another at Wrightwood.
• We traveled to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam with Spencer's mom and brother.
• Spencer finished up his intern year and started the anesthesia part of his training. He also got his medical license.
• We took a cruise down the coast of Alaska and finished it up by visiting Canada for a little under a couple of hours.
• We visited family in Utah and Portland, OR for the holidays.
• I got a new job.
• We had numerous house guests including friends, family, and several hopeful LLU residents.

We also spent time working on our new home. We are slowly getting it organized and just starting to decorate. Maybe it will be done by 2014, but maybe not. In observing my parent's and Spencer's parents more closely, it appears that a home is never "done," but rather a continuous work in progress.

In looking back a my goals for 2012 I can say I can close to meeting most of them but fell short on a few. I tripled the number of books I read and almost doubled the number of knitting projects I completed. I keep the house reasonably clean and I tried to be a little nicer and more forgiving. I'm not sure if I actually succeeded in that, but I tried to be more cognizant of it so I'm counting it. 

 

In looking forward to 2013 I'm hoping to accomplish many of the same goals from last year and few new ones as well. They say that setting really broad goals ensures that won't reach them, so I have tried to make them as specific as possible. This year I'd like to:

• Paint my kitchen, living room, guest room, and master bedroom
• Finish the backyard (this will mostly be Spencer's project)
• Read even more books--4 per month would put me up to 48 next year
• Finish all my pending knitting projects and also make a few more--20 seems like a good goal
• Lose the weight I gained last year and then some
• Train for and run a half marathon by June or July

Resolution!

When I typed the title of this post, I couldn't help but think of the line from "Pippin" where they say, 'Revolution,' and imagine the kid that said it from my high school. In my head, that line is extremely, extremely funny. But you aren't in my head--at least I hope not--so you get the explanation. Now, we return you to your regularly scheduled programing.

I do not make the typical New Year's Resolutions. It's just not my style. Change is a process, and I strongly believe that the more you try to force that process the less it works. People tend to choose large, lofty goals like "lose 50 pounds" or "run a marathon" in a moment where they are still stuffing their faces with Christmas cookies and lounging in their pajamas on the couch. For me, that type of thing just doesn't work. Instead, I prefer to evaluate how my life is going on a much more frequent basis. But, being that it's New Year's and everyone else is sharing their resolutions for the upcoming year, I thought I would share a few of my current projects and a little of how my last year went.

Highlights from last year included reading the Book of Mormon, reading several issues of the Ensign, and reading several books (10 total that I remember). I exercised more or less consistently with the two exceptions of when I had surgery and when I moved cross country. I worked on knitting projects and even finished a few--around 7 if memory serves. I tried to consistently read something spiritual each day and while I didn't do it perfectly, I did much better than I had in the past. I attempted to be more forgiving and give up old grudges. I think that for the most part I did. I worked hard at keeping my house in order and at doing my job well. I think I did an adequate job at both.

I did fall short on a few "resolutions" from last year. I didn't finish two knitting projects per month like I planned, but I did finish up 7 projects and have several more starting. If I just seamed a few things, felted one, and got the dang pattern figured out on another I'd have 4 more projects done just like that. I did not remember to pray morning and night for most of the year. I am just not that good at it, but I am also not that good at calling or texting other people so I'm taking that in stride. My house was never perfectly clean, but I started to learn how to take it in stride and just enjoy life instead of stressing about the mess all the time. I probably ate too much and exercised to little, but I feel like I did a good job overall so not accomplishing everything perfectly doesn't really bother me. I'm human after all, and humans aren't going to do everything perfectly the first time, the second time, or even the hundredth time. Life, like any other skill, is a learning process that we have to take one day at a time.

My projects for this upcoming year are an echo of past projects. I plan to:

1. Finish at least 14 knitting projects (doubled from last year!)
2. Read 20 books (doubled from last year)
3. Stop swearing (a nasty habit I picked up from working with surgeons, and I already failed at this one once. I believe there is some story about a prophet talking about giving up swearing and swearing in the same sentence--can't remember who and can't seem to find it on the web, but that's kind of how that slip up went. )
4. Walk the dog, play with him, or train him for at least 20 minutes a day
5. Clean up the house a little each day (once we are totally unpacked)
6. Try to be nicer to Spencer
7. Forgive old grudges
8. Only weigh myself once a month

Here's hoping we all made a few resolutions this year that we can keep and actually work on!

A Year of Firsts

The year is almost over. December snuck up on me and I'm left wondering how so much time passed without me noticing. It seems like just yesterday Spencer was starting medical school and we were hunkering down in Wisconsin for the second snowiest winter there in recorded history. Now, we've yet to see a flake (which is good) and we're living in hot and sunny California. The weather is messing with my sense of the seasons since I'm not used to it. Everything is turning green and rainy--it's the complete opposite of what I'm used to. Instead of getting blisteringly cold in the winter and hot and green in the summer, we get blisteringly hot in the summer and warm and green in the winter. Weird.

This past year has held a lot of firsts for us. First mean change and change is hard. There's a saying that goes something like "nobody like change except wet babies." I think that's pretty accurate, but it's hard to grow without change. The last year or so has resulted in a lot of growth because of all the changes we made. Though it's been hard a times, I think we are in a better place now than we ever were before.Some of the major firsts/changes we experienced over the past year are the first time neither one of us has been in school, the first time we bought a house, the first time I've been in a non-musical calling at church, and the first time Spencer will have to work on Christmas day.We adopted our first dog. It's our first time living within driving distance of the beach, the mountains, and the desert, and it's the first time I've lived in a community with a pool. The list could go on and on, but you get the point. We experienced a lot in 2011 and you probably did, too.

May we always remember the firsts brought on by 2011, and here's hoping for many more firsts in 2012!

Christmas 2011

 This year for Christmas was didn't do too much. Spencer was scheduled to work for most of the month (including Christmas Day and Christmas Eve) so we couldn't travel to visit family, so we decided to have people over instead. Miraculously, his scheduled ended up switching around so that he got both days off and we were able to spend the holiday together. On Christmas Eve we went with a couple of Spencer's work friends to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Seeing movies on Christmas is a tradition that my family had growing up starting when Beauty and the Beast came out. It's about the only time each year that we would go to a movie. On Christmas day I spent most of the day cooking a traditional Thanksgiving-type meal complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, apple pie, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and my Granny's spiced carrot recipe. We had some of Spencer's friends from work over that didn't have family in the area and couldn't go home because of their schedules. We rounded the night out with the Packers and a quick game of Apples to Apples. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food and most hadn't ever had homemade before! All in all I think it was a great success.

House Hunting (Take 3)

Soooo I think I might have mentioned this before, but if I haven't, we *were* in the process of buying our first home. Everything was set to go and then due to reasons beyond any one's control, the property we wanted could basically only be purchased with cash. We do not have that much cash (relatively speaking in comparison to how much the property cost). So, we did could not buy the place we wanted. LAME.

Therefore, I (we, but let's face it: he works 60+ hours a week and I work maybe 25) am about to embark on house hunting take 3. Take 1 had us with a seller that declined our rather generous offer. Take 2 left you just read the conclusion to. Take 3 is off to a rocky start, but at least this time I've narrowed down where I want to live. Now I just have to find a place that fits our ever-so-strict requirements.

Things I am looking forward to: getting this done with for the next 4 years or so. Potentially having a place to decorate and make my own. Possibly finding a place with a pool.

Things I am not looking forward to: realtors, moving, and making an offer/loans/negotiating/etc.

Good think the ocean is near by and I've found a knitting store. I'm a gonna need me some stress relief and nothing spells stress reliever like ocean breeze and a ball of yarn. :)

Posting Slacker

So it turns out I'm turning back into a posting slacker. Somehow, even though I'm only at work for about 25 hours a week I don't feel any less-busy. I don't even have that many commitments floating around to eat my time. I think I might feel so busy though because of the sheer number of things we cram into each week. For instance, this is how my week went last week:

Monday: Rode my bike to work since Spencer left the house at 6am. I woke up around then, didn't start getting ready soon enough, and it was either wait for the late bus or hit the streets peddling. I chose the later. Then I worked till about 2, got the keys from Spencer, drove home, tore the house apart looking for a missing book, and went to the post office. Then I started to head to the yarn store, but was forced to stop and turn around because Spencer texted me that he was done. He wasn't. I proceeded to wait in the car for him. Then, when he was finally done we got about 2 blocks from the hospital only for him to get paged to go back in again. So I dropped him off, then headed over to the gym and spent an hour playing basketball with a bunch of guys from work. Then it was back to the hospital to wait for him to be done (took about an hour), then home for dinner and TV watching, and nursing my aching body.

Tuesday: Rode to work with Spencer and got there around 7am. Took the keys from him and said hi to my bike, which was still sitting at the bike rack next to my office at work. Worked until about 2, then decided to head to the yarn shop again. Got almost halfway there after stopping for a Slurpee. Spencer called, so I had to turn around a pick him up and drop him off at home. Got another book ready to mail, went to the post office, then went back to the yarn shop. Knitted there for a couple hours, then headed back home for dinner, exercise bike, and more TV watching.

Wednesday: Went to work at 7am. Worked until about 1:30. Drove an hour to get my hair cut by an old friend. Spent about 2.5 hours in the chair catching up and just generally having a great time. Drove back from Orange county in rush hour traffic (1.5 hours of my life that I will never get back). Went to a friend's for dinner at 7pm. Hung out until 9pm when it was time to pick up Spencer. Went home and crashed.

Thursday: Went to work at 7am. Again. Worked until about 1:30, then took the bus home. Took a 2 hour nap on the couch. Went to book club with a friend. Stayed out until about midnight because that's what girls do when they finally get a night to themselves.

Friday: Went to work at 7am again, which was annoying because I don't typically work on Fridays. Worked until about 12 when the once a month meeting ended. Went home and cleaned up around the house a little. Picked up Spencer and we went to dinner. Then we went over to a friend's house for games and stayed until about 11pm.

Saturday: Took Spencer to work around 9am (woohooo! he got to sleep in!), worked on my knitting, cleaned up around the house, picked him up around 12:30. Went to a knitting class from about 2-6pm. Came home and made dinner, watched a movie, and worked on my lesson for sharing time.
Sunday: Took Spencer to work around 9am. Came home and got ready for church. Went to church at 11am. Sat with a friend who has 2 young children and helped her wrangle them since her husband is also a resident and was at work. Went to primary. Wrangled more children, taught sharing time, and held a friend's baby while she did singing time. He was rather tired and grumpy. Went home, did the dishes, made some lunch, ate lunch, then got a call from Spencer. Went out to run some food over to him and his friends at work. Went to a baptism. Had to play the piano and speak as the primary representative. Came home. Ate dinner (a peanut butter and jelly sandwich) and talked to a friend on the phone for a while. Picked up Spencer around 9pm. Crashed and went to bed.

And there you have the story of why I don't really blog anymore...

June Update

Well, things are finally starting to get settled down around here. Most of the boxes are unpacked and all that's left is mostly books or office supplies. We both started working which is providing structure to an otherwise structureless life. We spent most of June splitting our time between trekking back and forth from the beach or Disneyland and our house. Rough life, I know. :) But hey, soon residency will get really busy and I'll never see Spencer again (well, at least that often). I'll get busy with work and we'll have less and less time to run around doing fun things. So even though we've neglected the unpacking/organizing/cleaning in favor of running around and having fun for the past few months, I don't feel too bad about things. There will be time to clean and unpack later. Those things are nice, but not essential.

Speaking of updates, my new job is at Loma Linda University as the research coordinator for the Cardiothoracic Surgery department. I know I swore I'd never work for surgeons again, but the job is great for what I need right now and the people are great as well. The whole feel of the department is much more positive than the other surgery department I worked for and I'm really liking it so far. It's part time, about 15 minutes down the road, and it's nice to be working at the same place that Spencer is again. We can commute together! And have lunch! And...well, you get the picture.

Stay tuned for more to come!

Graduation and Such

Well, it's official. We done gradu-a-mated. The ceremony was last Friday and we had almost all the family in town from brothers and sisters to grandma and grandpa. The weather was lovely for a change. Our families were spoiled! After they left it dropped back down to freezing after having been a pleasant 60-70 degrees all weekend. At some point I may or may not share more pictures, more information, and just more in general about graduation, but for now I'll just sum it up.

Thursday night we had an awards dinner for Spencer's medical class. We went and were sat (assigned seating) at a table with one of his classmates and her parents, grandparents, boyfriend, and boyfriend's parents. They all were meeting for the first time. Fun! The dinner was excellent, but the awards were, well, boring. Maybe because Spencer (or anyone else I knew) didn't win anything. But hey, that's how awards ceremonies are, right?

Friday morning the assorted relatives gathered at our place for breakfast, we took pictures, and my mom, dad, and sister headed out with me for the graduate student lunch. The lunch, again, was excellent. They even had complimentary campagne (they didn't for the medical students the night before). Our table must have looked kind of funny though because half of us don't drink, and a few also didn't like champagne. Wisconsin is a very alcohol-heavy environment though. They even gave my 19 year old sister one! At the lunch we were also put on the spot to say something so I got up and thanked people, and made a joke about not eating cereal anymore. After that, we lined up, marched in, sat for about 2 hours (or rather napped), got the diploma, took pictures, and went out for dinner at Carabbas. Afterwards we treated the non-natives to frozen custard, which was an instant hit. Spencer's dad started out with 2 scoops then went back for 2 more!!

Saturday and Sunday were spent with the family seeing the sights, shopping, and lots and lots of eating. All in all it was great having everyone around. It was crazy, but we had a really good time with everyone and got to do a lot of touristy type things that you don't normally do when you live somewhere.

Phew. And that was the short version. So much for that. :)
Now, it's onward and upward to the next big phase of our doctoring lives: residency!

Moving Cross-Country

If you've never had to move cross-country, consider yourself lucky. It's a lot of work. In an ideal world, you have an infinite amount of money, time, and resources to not only examine each and every possible scenario for what your life will be like once you get there. I don't believe that anyone really has this. If you have the money, you might not have the time. If you have the time, you might not have the money. Or, you might have money and time, but no way of making it out to the new area. It's always something. The greater the geographic distance, the harder it is. For us, it's a combination of all three.

When I found out Spencer's grandma wanted to take everyone on a cruise out of California, Spencer was in the middle of the interview process. Loma Linda was one of the first places he visited and he was absolutely in love with it. In his mind, it had everything a program could ever want and more. I was a bit more skeptical since it was one of the first and we were heading into another dreary Wisconsin winter so the appeal of somewhere warm was highly desirable, but as time went on it remained his top pick. So when it came time to book flights for the cruise, we decided that we would extend the trip by one day just in case we matched there so we could go look at housing. 

Match day was about a week or so before we left for the cruise. When we found out that we were indeed headed to Loma Linda, we began immediately making plans for how we would get out there, what we wanted to do, and most importantly which areas we wanted to see. We contacted a realtor, and he set up a time for us to meet him and show us a few places.

Most of the places he showed us needed a lot of work. Many were banked owned properties. It's truly amazing how poorly some people treat their homes. In one house, the people had let their dog urinate all over the room they locked him up in. In another, they had let their cats and/or dogs tear up the carpet. Others were in comparatively better shape, but still had cosmetic defects (which we were OK with) or in some cases more serious defects (like water damage) which we were not OK with.

One house stood out to us though. It was a lovely home, a bit small for what I though it should be, but it had a huge yard with a pool and more space than we've ever had. They had done a lot to build in storage and were the original owners. You could tell that they had worked really hard to keep up with the place and really loved it. So, we made an offer. We low balled a bit, but not much, because the other homes in the area we selling for less. They didn't negotiate. We walked.

At this point we were back in Wisconsin and I was freaking out. We didn't really have the time or money for another trip. We needed a place to live. We didn't know how we could find one without actually being in California to look.Miraculously, I was given the opportunity to be flown out to California for two job interviews. Despite being deathly ill, I was able to make it to both interviews as well as visit a property. It turned out to be just the thing we were looking for. We're still in the process of finalizing things because it's a short sale, but we will be able to rent it on a month to month basis until then.

So, at least that part is taken care of. We have a place to live. I've put my notice in for my last day at my job, and we now have a tentative move date. The pieces are slowly coming together. All that's left is to sort out the details.

April Updates

OK so remember when I said I'd be posting more updates soon? Yeah, I don't either. Well, here's a quick run down of why:

1. I went back to California for a few days.
2. I had some crazy bad virus that laid me up for over a week.
3. We have been trying to find housing from 2,000 miles away.
4. We've had a lot of other random things going on.

So, I promise I will post some pictures and updates soon. But don't hold your breath that they will be up very soon.

Thanks. :)

Adult

You know you're officially an adult when you've put an offer in on a house... :)

I promise! More updates to follow! Life just needs to slow down for a bit. Brief preview of topics: match day, cruising, California, Cabo, Puerta Vallerta, more cruising, house hunting, and hopefully some more definite plans on when we actually move! Phew! I feel tired just typing that.

Until later,
Ciao.

Match Day!

Match day is here!!! We matched at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, CA!!!

More details to follow...

1 Week!

And then there was 1....week!

By this time next week I will know where we are going. I still can't decide where I want us to end up. I have an idea of where I don't want to go, but coming up with a definitive wish for where we do want to go is proving to be much harder. As long as we go somewhere, I'll be happy. :)

Until next week,

Megan

PS: Anyone else worried about the gas prices? All I can say is yikes!

2 Weeks

Just in case you forgot....2 weeks to match day!!

I'm thinking of putting a poll up about where we'll go, what do you think?

And the Year Goes "March"ing On

Since it's March, I thought it would be nice to take a peak back on my New Year's goals and see how they were going. For the most part, I think I'm doing OK, but I'm sure I'm not quite doing everything I had hoped to do. So without further adieu,

Goal #1: Knit more. I am definitely doing this. I've even finished a few things and taught someone to knit. Unfortunately, since I'm also hanging out with more knitters, it means I'm near more yarn. That means that I'm buying more...which means my stash is growing. Also, I didn't finish any projects in February, but I did get closer so I'm going to count that as a win with room for improvement.

Goal #2: Read for fun. I am totally rocking this goal. I've read 3 books since the beginning of the year and have at least 3 more in progress, with more cued up to read. Of course, I'm not really sure if very many people would find The Jungle a "fun" read, but since it wasn't an assignment, it counts.

Goal #3: Bring my lunch to work. This pretty much never happens. I do, however, try to make healthier lunch choices and find ways to eat for free. For instance, we have lots of leftovers from other meetings. I call it the "student meal plan" (as in I plan on mooching off free food whenever possible). When things settle down at work, I will try to re-instate this goal.

Goal #4: Make better use of my YMCA membership. I'm totally rocking this one as well. Since starting my 10k training a few weeks back, I've been going at least 3x per week. Sure, I didn't really get going until February, but I did finally get going and hopefully it will stay that way.

Goal #5: Be more consistent with my scripture study. I'm still trying to be better about this. I was doing better for a little bit, then things got crazy again and I regressed. Oops. I guess it really is a constant struggle to stay on top of it.

Goal #6: Actually clean the house. So I had a job chart going in January and for a while, it worked. When I say it worked I mean that I did pretty much everything by myself. So now we're just back to cleaning when we can and my new mantra is "it's OK if it's messy." Life's a lot more enjoyable that way.

To recap, I'm doing pretty well at keeping up with my goals so far. A few are lacking, but that's to be expected. I think goals are great because they give us things to work towards, but one of the things I've learned by setting goals is that we have to be a little easy on ourselves when we don't quite do everything perfectly. It also helps to evaluate them and see if they are reasonable. For me, a couple are not really reasonable right now if I want to have any semblance of a life outside of work so a few of them are getting neglected. I'm OK with that, but still want to improve. The great news is that I can.

3 Weeks

3 weeks from now, Spencer and I will know where we are headed for residency. We're either staying put or going somewhere, and hopefully if we go it will be somewhere a little bit warmer. I've been so busy the past few weeks that I've hardly had time to think about. But, the next couple of days aren't so busy and I can't help but wonder. Will we like where we end up? Can I really handle 4 more years of Milwaukee winters if I stay here? Will I be able to find a job if we move?

*sigh* Does anyone know of a good way to speed up time?

Just Call Me A Cave Woman

So I haven't been posting very much as of late because my work has been pretty busy. It's the kind of job where when it rains, it pours. Right now it's pouring. Just to recap: we are down 1 full time person in my position, we increased our workload by 3x at the beginning of the year, we got slammed with a surprise audit that's pretty much consumed my life, and we have a site review coming up that was supposed to be at the end of April, but got moved up to the end of March. Needless to say, I am busy. On average, I am getting into work by 8am at the latest and typically heading home around 6pm. The good news is that I am enjoying what I do and being busy helps the days go by faster. The bad news is that there is not too much to post because I pretty much just sleep, eat, and work. As Spencer said to me the other day after asking me what my goals for the day were, "it sounds like you are a cave woman." Yes, dear. I am a cave woman.

Despite this, I have managed to have some fun. Highlights have included rock climbing with Jessica, visiting the Milwaukee Ale House to see Crash County Music (the singer was an American Idol hopeful and the drummer was a grad student that works in my friend's lab), and an awesome hot stone massage that I purchased off of Living Social.

In other news, we are in the throws of taxes. Yay! Match day and Fairbourn cruise, you cannot get here soon enough. I still can't decide if I want to stay in Milwaukee or go to California, but since that fate is pretty much out of my hands right now, I guess there's no point in getting worked up about it.

And Then There Were Two (Months)

I neglected this past week to post that match day is officially less than 2 months from now. Two months is not that much time, especially when you consider that one of those months is February (the shortest month of the year). At the same time, two months is a really long time when you're waiting to find out where you will be spending the next four years of your life.

So what will I be doing for the next 2 months while I patiently (ha!) wait for the news? Art. Knitting. Going to the gym. Attempting to clean more. Reading. Baking. Participating in Soul Restoration. Basically whatever strikes my fancy which is both nice and weird after being in school for most of my life. Spencer will be continuing his rotations most likely with a healthy dose of Starcraft thrown in. 

So, despite the waiting, I anticipate that the next few months will actually go by pretty quickly. Which is awesome, considering how long I've been counting down. :) 

Image from here.

Life as a Grad

Well, it's been almost 3 weeks since I graduated (!) from my bioethics program. It was a big push at the end and took a ton of effort on my part to get motivated to write those last few papers. I love school, just not the part where you get graded and have to write about what they want you to write about. I guess I thought I'd be bored or something by now, but I can honestly say that I'm not. Here's a quick breakdown of recent happenings:

I turned in my final paper on December 21st, added red highlights to the mix, and started prepping for the trip back home for Christmas. We hoped a plane to DC on Thursday (no connections, wahoo!) for the Christmas/New Year holiday. We spent out time there shopping, going to movies, shopping, seeing the National Christmas Tree, shopping, going to the National Zoo, and did I mention shopping? Of course, there were the traditional Christmas activities as well like Christmas Tree Lane, hot chocolate, presents, and the obligatory post-present fashion show. Spencer's not used to so many girls, but I think he survived because he got to build my parents a brand new computer while he was there and filled the rest of his time with Star Craft.

January brought us back to Wisconsin and back to reality. Spencer started his radiology rotation and I went back to work. Two days later, I was home with the mother of all colds. It first hit in early December, then decided to rear it's ugly head again over the break. I though it had gone away until it knocked me on my back for a few days. Suffice it to say I haven't done too much since we've been home.

Spencer, on the other hand, has had 2 more trips to the far away land of Detroit, MI in the past week. Apparently the gods of match day want us to move to Detroit. Me? Not so much. I'd much rather stay here or go to sunny California instead.

Since I'm done with school now, I finally have time for exciting things like cleaning the bathroom, making dinner, and folding clothes. Hmmm. What does that say about my housekeeping skills for the past few years? Seriously though, I'm enjoying the time I have now to take better care of the house and spend my down time after work doing fun things instead of reading for class or typing up a paper. I'm reading for fun again and knitting more. In fact, I've already finished my first project and book and am hard at work on the second book/project. All in all, I think 2011 is shaping up to be a pretty exciting year. It's the year of change for us and that, for once, is a good thing (to quote Martha).

The 100th Post

It is with great joy that I publish the 100th post to this blog. It's hard to believe that I've been able to keep it up this long. Less hard to believe when you consider the sizable lack of images I've included in my posts. :) At any rate, I thought I would just give a recap of where things stand right now.

I am finishing up my Master's degree next week. I'm still in the process of typing up my final paper, filling out forms, and jumping through other hoops, but come next Tuesday that will all be done. I can't decide if I'm relieved that I made it or sad that it's over. I'm definitely happy that I was able to get it done. So much of my life has revolved around school that sometimes it's hard to exist without it. However, this summer was blissfully free in the evenings so I had a lot more time to pursue hobbies, watch TV, exercise, and get together with friends. I'm looking forward to knitting more, going to the gym more regularly, not stressing about school deadlines, and having more time to focus on taking care of my house. I think Spencer's excited because it might mean that I will start cooking more. Please note the "might." It's still hard to work until 5 and then come home and make dinner. It really just sucks up all your time and energy.

Spencer is finishing up his last month of vacation. He's got a few interviews scheduled down the road and his rotations will start up again next month. From what he tells me though, they will be relatively easy. It's crazy to think that he only has 5 more moths of medical school. It seems like we were just starting not too long ago.

Perhaps the most exciting event in our future though is The Match on March 17th. 3 months exactly from today. I. can't. wait! I've got a lot of mixed feelings about what could happen. We might stay here another 4 years, or we might be moving. We might even be moving to a place I don't want to live in so much. Or we could be moving somewhere that I think I'll like, then hate. It's really up in the air. We have about 0% control over it (besides how we rank things) so it's incredibly frustrating. But I'm still excited to find out.

**Update: the inventory reduction sale is now posted on the page labeled "BeautiControl." Check it out for some great end-of-year discounts!