Every now and then I wonder what would happen if I just STOPPED POSTING A DAILY UPDATE (gasp) and just went with it when I forgot my camera. Probably nothing, but there is a slim chance it would result in the end of the world, and that is not a chance I am willing to take.

So here are the two songs I've been listening to obsessively for the past three days.

Blow, by Kesha:


Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones:



They go together quite nicely I think.

Hmm... Lets see if I have a picture today...
Nope.
I don't.

So let's go back through space and time, to a simpler time, an easier time, an I'm-dressed-up-for-80's-Day-during-Homecoming-Week-in-2007 time:



Hmm.. yup. :D
Oh the pre-birthcontrol-boobs, how I miss you, you wonderfully perky B-cups you.

Fun Fact: I much preferred my very androgenous small breasted, straight hipped, square shouldered pre-puberty body to the one I have know, even though how I look know would be considered much more aesthetically pleasing by society's standards.
My dad used to tell me I was nothing but muscle and tough as nails.

Although, while I was taping a boy's wrist at Homestead High School today I did cause an examination of surprise. To tape a wrist, it is easiest for the athlete to spread their fingers out at wide as they can, and then press their fingers into your stomach to help hold it steady. I got the response (from a rather tall, heavy, teddy-bear/big spoon looking black kid), "Holy crap girl, you've got some abs in there!" He then told his buddy my abs were better than those of said buddy.
I think working at Homestead will be enjoyable. Not as much as I enjoyed working with soccer or track at Marquette, but I really like working with Molly (who also went to Marquette and is the head athletic trainer there) and I really enjoy the ability to educate the kids about how their body works.
There was a surprise soccer game today, as in Molly had been told earlier in the week it would be canceled and it was not, so she let me be Totally In Charge of the training room for about and hour and a half while she went out to the soccer field. It's really nice knowing that how I behaved for the previous hour led her to believe I was competent enough to prevent disaster. I ended up outside for the last 15 minutes of the game and to help clean up, and Molly let me drive Bert, which is one of those diesel-run golf carts with the bed on the back for putting things, such as water coolers, on and hauling them around. It was fun, he was all VROOMVROOMBRAPBRAPVROOM I HAVE NO MUFFLER VROOM.

End.

Dear Neighbors,
Go pick up your goddamn packages so I can stop being reminded that I am not getting mail every time I walk into the building.

No love,
Me.

Seriously, no mail for me. Not even Netflix, because I am too busy to watch either Coraline or The Notebook. Not even that fake busy I try to pass off when I'm being lazy or don't feel like doing something. Legitimate busy, where the most time I've had for the past two weeks when I'm not actively doing something that needs to get done is maybe an hour or so. (This does count sleep, however, we all know how worthless I am when I get tired.)
Ten minutes from now, I would like to be napping, but instead I will be working the corner of 16th and Wells (alllriiiiggggghhhtttt....) passing out fliers for the fund raising event at Q'doba. 10% of what they make during dinner will be given to the ATSA, so cool for us. (Think Chipolte but better.)

I also re-remembered at some point today that I am a Big Deal, and what I am learning in school/what I know makes me Pretty Freaking Cool, and you better not fucking forget it. I've been walking around like a BAMF since, listening to Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones and thinking about playing Guitar Hero in Drew's room when we first started dating.

I wore a turtleneck today. For a while there I really liked them, but it would seem I am starting to fall back into the mindset that I lived in for the first 17 years of my life, which is I HATE TURTLENECKS. However, with today's weather it is dreadfully practical, and that little triangle of neck isn't going to get cold while I'm passing out fliers.


For about 2 days I thought Inside Michelle left again. She came back in full fit-throwing rage force yesterday though, and now all I want to do is motherfucking RAVE and DRINK and have the guys upstairs tell me I look fabulous.
I worry that if I don't let her out soon, even if it is just in the confines of my own apartment, I will lose it. Perhaps that is the cause of my headaches lately, my alter-ego pounding away at my skull trying to escape.
Who knows. Either way, I have to go convince people to buy burritos.

Where I come from sunny = warm. Sunny in late March = 50* and a light sweater is all you need to stay at a comfortable temperature while outside.
If you look at weather.com Draper, UT is currently 37* and CLOUDY, hence the cool temperature. On Friday Draper, UT is "mostly sunny" and slated to be 62*. Bastards.
Milwaukee is currently SUNNY and 31*. That is still below freezing. You would think that after three years here I would have figured out that I can't just look out the window and go "Hurray the sun is out!!! *twirl*" and leave in just a sweatshirt. But 18 years of that has ingrained into me pretty deep.



Also, here is the awesomeness that I created for dinner last night:
It's a Crunchy Taco Hamburger Helper, but it looks like a real mother fucking meal.
I substituted ground beef with shredded chicken, added black olives, corn, and that purple stuff you see? Cabbage. Oh yeah. For you see, one of these days I'm going to be in charge of feeding Drew, and I might as well get a head start on figuring out how to hide nutrition in his meals.

Also, I now have dinner for over a week, for about $5 total. Nice.



What you've got boy is hard to find
Think about it all about it all the time
I'm all strung up my heart is fried
I just cant get you off my mind

Because your love, your love, your love, is my drug
Your love your love your love
I said your love, your love, your love, is my drug
Your love your love your love

Yep, I secretly listen to Ke$ha. Deal.


Ummm... and I really like oatmeal; both the foodstuff and the website.

bla bla bla blatty bla bla

In an effort to strive off what, in a tension headache induced panic, I thought was "Teh" Mono[nucliolus] I have spent quite the chunk of the past 36 hours asleep, which I mentioned in my last post. The current count is 12 of 36 hours which is... huh. Which is 1/3 of the time. Which is the amount of sleep I SHOULD BE GETTING, if you look at the 8:24 hour ratio of a normal day.
This goes to show that last week my body adjusted to only getting around 6, possibly 7, hours of extremely low quality sleep a night. Either I was waking up every 45 minutes for no reason, or having such jacked up dreams my REM sleep wasn't actually counting.
Well, either way, it is now currently one hour past the time that I am usually fast asleep, and I am WIDE FUCKING AWAKE. Awesome. It looks like I will be unnaturally tired when my alarm goes off in 7 hours, be fighting to stay awake in Physics class, and crashing for a power nap around 2pm; which will only lead to me not being able to fall asleep tomorrow night. And that Ladies and Gentlemen, is what is known as a Vicious Cycle.

To add to my annoyance of being awake, I am also hungry. However, if there is one thing that will satisfy my craving [of something of substance to fill in for the utter lack of boyfriend and snuggles because I am an emotional eater] it is toast. I fucking love me some mother fucking toast. I'm pretty sure it is a scientific FACT that I cannot live without it, or at least my life would be severely lacking.

Speaking of craving and food, there is a Jello Pudding Temptations in my fridge right now. Chocolate pudding with a chocolate truffle mousse topping. Yup. My original plan when I got two boxes last Saturday was that I would limit myself to the serving size of 1/2 cup of pudding a day. That way, between the two, I would have pudding for over 16 days. It is recommended that the pudding be spooned into individual serving glasses before being chilled in the fridge and served. Well, I don't have small 1/2 cup serving glasses. I have a 8x4x2 casserole dish. Good enough right? On the first batch I made, I even drew little lines in the topping before I put it in the fridge to thicken so I would know how big my serving was.
Instead, I would take the dish out of the fridge, look at a 1/2 cup serving size of pudding think to myself, "Well that's not worth getting a bowl dirty now is it?" and proceed to stand over the counter eating my pudding with a spoon.
Due to this particular tactic, the first box of pudding lasted me 3 days.

But I am ok with this really.
When I got back to school from Spring Break, I once again, went into Loosing Weight Mode! and decided, once again, that I would like to get back down to a weight/size/body composition that I would feel comfortable strutting around in a bikini with. That's the real motivation here, not some arbitrary number, but just feeling confident with myself.
So bam! Food Log! Exercise Log! Self Control Sort Of!
After one week I find myself lacking vegetables, but more concerning, calcium. I've upped my daily vitamin to 1/2 a pill every day. After one week I'm in a caloric deficit equivalent to exactly 1 pound of fat. I'm weighing myself and taking measurements of different body parts on Wednesdays, although I wish I could get to a scale first thing in the morning, rather than whenever I can get to the gym. But I'm also keeping track of workouts Nichole and I do, especially my Max lifts, which we will be doing twice more before summer. Currently I am at:
Bench - 120 (only down 5 lb from high school)
Back Squat - 170 (woo! best ever!)
Dead Lift - 225 (also woo!)
Push Ups - 25/min
Sit Ups - 47/min
Inverted Row - 13
Pull Up - 3
Plank - 2:13
I definitely need to work on push ups and pull ups.
But what makes me most... not concerned... is that when we did Fitness Testing and Measurement in lab last Monday, I am still sitting at 21.4% body fat. This is very low average for women of my age, who tend to sit at about 20-30%. We measured by a skin-fold test, which is not always perfectly accurate, but it is good enough for what I need.

And I'm sure all you are reading is Bla, bla, bla.

The moral of the story is I can't sleep and I needed something to do. So I talked about me. On my blog. Which is the goddamn point of this blog so stop giving me that look.

Best thing though: Massage-A-Thon goes for another two weeks. Remind me to go see my fellow DPT-5 students and get my freaking back worked on for half an hour.

Last summer, Miss Sarah and I went to IKEA and wandered around looking at all the things we wanted to buy, but could not afford to, and talkd about how great it will be when we are both doctors and can walk through almost any store and just say, "I want this, and this, and that, and four of those," and just BUY THEM. She ended up getting a coffee table for her house and I bought two wonderful smelling candles, which you can see displayed above.

Last night I got home from grocery shopping, looked at my bed, and thought that I should take a short nap before going to te gym, for I could tell I was quickly sinking into IF YOU DO NOT SLEEP YOU WILL DIE mode, which is my body's way of telling me it is tired. The time was about 6pm.
At 8:30pm, I woke up briefly, looked at the clock, and decided that I would just try to go back to sleep until morning. A noble quest, I thought.
At 9:30pm I woke up again, this time not so drunk with sleep that I knew staying in bed any longer would lead me to waking up the next morning around 4am, ready to start my day. Thought about how I REALLY need to wash my hair, studied for a bit, talked to Drew, then crawled back into bed around 12:30am-1:00am.
When I woke up at 9:00am this morning, I felt wonderful. The tension headache is gone, the shoulder pain is gone, the stomachache is gone.
If only I could stop my brain from having crazydreams every night, I would feel this good all the time.

The average temperature for Milwaukee this time of year is 46*. It is currently 31*. I am fully aware the average temperature is the temperature is NEVER REALLY IS, but I'm tired of the cold. I would go for a run outside if it wasn't so damn windy.

Look at me! I can juggle.

Today is the Marquette University Athletic Training Student Association's (MU ATSA) annual conference. This year we have presentations on the four main causes of Sudden Death in athletes: Cardiopulmonary distress, head injury, heat illness, and heart abnormalities; as well as having an appropriate Emergency Action Plan. We have a two hour break until noon, so I am currently enjoying a Vanilla-Hazelnut-French Roast coffee (cause I couldn't decide so I picked ALL FLAVORS!) and a blueberry muffin from the Broken Yolk, which is the most amazing, tiny, family run, breakfast/lunch place I have ever been to. Not only are the portions HUGE, but everything is so cheap I am enjoying said large coffee and muffin for under $4.

I hung out with the three girls I am going to be living with next year until about 12:30 in the morning, despite all of us having somewhere to be by 8am. I love them all. Next year is going to be SO FUN!

Drew has mentioned coming out over Easter, how nice!

Went to dinner at Alterra last night with Lita. It amazes me how different the city is just two miles from where I am. It's trendy and hip and not a TOTAL SHIT HOLE.
When we left the coffee shop we saw this funny old bike. I know the picture is dark, but I'm pointing at a loaf of bread in the back basket. It was funny, we pretended we were in France.

Puddin'

Apparently I poured the topping on too soon and it just kind of sank into the pudding. So I swirled it up like marble cake and now I have hard chocolate swirls in my pudding.
Be. Jealous.

Every time I become set in my conclusion to cut off my hair this summer and donate it, I wake up the next day and it is fucking perfect. Apparently last night I fashioned my bun just right before I went to bed, because this morning I had the most perfect, soft, spiral curls falling over my shoulders. So I spent extra time putting on mascara and picking out a nice sweater to wear instead of using the time to make tea.
Right about now, I would rather have the tea. I'm tired.
And I keep having weird dreams. Last night it involved my great grandma's old house (which was recently sold as she moved into an Assisted Living home) and having to make sure we could barricade ourselves in against -something-. At the time, it was much more intricate and dramatic than I'm making it sound.

4 years

Happy Anniversary to us.

I have one of those Fuck You headaches. You know, the ones where it feels like someone screamed "FUCK YOU!" right in your ear and then punched you in the back of the head.
Personally, I blame my sleeping habits of the last three days. I got so used to going to bed at 3am and waking up at 10am to work out, shower, then head to Drew's house and nap until he woke up that now by the time 5pm rolls around I am so exhausted I can't function. So I go flop onto my bed and lay there for a second before my skin seems to ask in a rather upset manor, "Umm... 'Scuse me, but WARE R MA SNUGGLES?!!?" (My internal monologue can't decide if it is from the inner city or is a butterfly with a speech impediment. For example, fo'sho' is a common phrase, but what is pronounced "wut".) And I am very put out for about a minute that there is no lanky, sleep-drunk, warm boy pulling me into his chest and burrowing his face into my neck.
Then I pass out and SLEEP SO HARD for about 45 minutes, wake up, desperately want to go back to sleep, but force myself to get up and continue whatever I was doing before the Tired Demon hit.

Then of course, 11:30pm (bedtime) rolls around and I can't sleep. I think to myself "Well, I don't have class until 9, so I'll just say up and read a bit more Gen. Med." (my internal monologue is also very logical). Then I get into bed around 12:15am. Then I toss and turn and can't get comfortable until 1:30am. Fall Asleep. Wake up at 2:30am to pee. Toss and turn and huff some more. Hear my alarm go off at 7:30am and wonder why in the hell I thought getting up half an hour early to make pancakes for breakfast would be a good idea.

Then it all starts over when I get tired at 3pm cause I didn't get any sleep the night before.

Contamination

Every third week or so it seems I run out of EVERYTHING at the same time. Milk, bread, eggs, ground beef, chicken, rice... Anything that is non-perishable that takes me longer than one week to go through.
Sometimes, I get lucky and whatever I've just run out of is on sale. WooHoo! So I buy a lot of it.
This past Sunday it was chicken breasts. So I bought like 8 pounds of chicken.

Once, I just put the whole package in the freezer, for that is where raw meat should live. Then I got to deal with having a rectangular block of chicken rather than a single chicken breast when dinner rolled around. Like I said, I did that once.
Now, the first thing I do when I get home from the grocery store (after putting the milk in the fridge that is) is to take my lotsofmeat! and divide it up into single servings. For ground beef, this means dividing it up into 1 lb segments, because just about everything calls for a pound of ground beef.
With the chicken though, I trim off all the fat, cut up all the breasts into (what I hope is) a 6oz. piece, put all those segments in plastic baggies, and then all those go back in the freezer.

And the whole time I'm doing this, the only thing I can think to myself is "Man, raw chicken is fucking GROSS."

And then I have to scrub down my entire kitchen three times because I am afraid of getting salmonella. Lucky, my kitchen is a 3 foot by 5 foot rectangle.

Here's a picture of one of the valves inside your heart. I'm doing a project on Mitral Valve Prolapse, so it is fitting, I think.

runner girl

Didn't get around to taking a picture today.
So here is me from 3 years ago running the 300 meter hurdles at an Alta track meet.
Yes, I was in first place.
I miss this so much.

It's trying to snow in Milwaukee. Except it is 34* F and therefore everything is melting.
Fucking everything is wet and sloppy and slushy and melty.

Which only adds to the awesome mood I've been in for the past few days.

Got my physics test back today. I got a 48%. Which, honestly, I kind of expected. But it is still frustrating. I read the chapter, go to lecture about the chapter, go to tutoring to talk about the lecture, read the chapter again, go to lab, do the homework, and yet I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND. Not in a "this class is hard and I have to study a lot for it" kind of way, but in a "I don't even know what you are trying to say to me" kind of way. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. I've even tried talking to my professor, but he is just a huge asshole and just tells me "You just aren't putting enough effort in. You should understand this. It is simple."
How about fuck you Dr. Collins. How does that sound? Him just staring me like I'm going to pull an answer to the questions he's asking in lecture, WHEN I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HE IS ASKING, out of my ass isn't going to help me comprehend the material. It's only going to make me feel like an idiot and start crying when I leave his office.


Lucky for me the class is adjusted. It's not curved depending on how the class does as a whole, but the expectations are lowered. To get an A, you need a 87% instead of a 94%. So I'm still sitting at a C. Which, to keep me from being kicked out of PT school (or at least put on probation until I take the class again) is good enough.
The problem is, for me, good enough isn't actually good enough. I hate seeing C's on my report card/transcript/whatever you want to call it. I hate it. It makes me feel sick to my stomach and anxious.
When it comes to anatomy and physiology, I rock. I do. Last semester I got an A- in the Graduate Level Human Physiology class I took. Which is probably the hardest Anatomy/Physiology class offered at Marquette. AND I ROUND HOUSE KICKED IT IN THE FACE.
But physics?
Fuck physics.

2 days

Cabbage wraps. Seriously.
They have become my favorite lunch lately. They are fun and interactive and delicious and good for you too! All you have to do is boil a few cabbage leave for a few minutes, until they are soft and moldable. Throw whatever you want in there and ta-da! you get to feel like you are at a Chinese Restaurant!
Today, they had rice, broccoli, salsa, and cheese in them. Usually I put some sort of meat in there, usually after Taco Tuesday when I have leftovers, but this week I'm trying to clean out all the leftovers in my fridge before I go home, not create more. I still have half a cabbage to eat, because I know that will not keep much longer... looks like I'll be eating lots of salad for the next two days.
It's always a delicate balance the week before I go home. My grocery shopping usually includes enough fruit and veggies to last through the week and nothing else. So far, I've been really good of cleaning out everything perishable without running out of food. If all else fails though, there is emergency soup in my cupboard.

Diane always has candy on her recptionist desk in the Exercise Science/Athletic Training Department office.
We all love her for it.

I am tired of studying, it's all I've done for the past two days.
Normal Sinus Rhythm
Sinus Bradycardia
Sinus Tachycardia
Sinus Arrythmia
Sinus Arrest
Supraventricula Arrythmias
Premature Atrial Contraction
Supraventricular Tachycardia
Atrial Flutter
Atrial Fibrillation
Premature Junctional Rhythm
Junctional Escape Beat
Accelerated Junctional Rhythem
Premature Ventricular Contraction
Ventricular Escape Rhythm
Accelerated Ventricular Rhythm
Ventricular Tachycardia
Ventricular Fibrillation
Asystole
First Degree AV Block
Second Degree AV Block Type 1(Wenckeback)
Second Degree AV Block Type 2(Mobitz 2)
Third Degree AV Block
Wolff-Parkinson-White Pattern
Long QT Syndrome

Are all the things I need to know for my test on Tuesday. I need to know what they look like on an EKG, and how they differ from what a normal, healthy, regular heart beat would look. I need to know whether or not you should stress test someone with each condition, why you would stress test them, and which ones you pull out the chest paddles for.

In other news, I got a golf ball from Curtis, who is on the golf team here. Now I can roll it around under my foot while I sit here and study and try to break up the scar tissue in my feet that leads to plantar facitis. It feels good in a painful way, in a kind of "I know this will make my feet not hurt as back tomorrow morning," kind of way. But every time I roll over the clump of scar tissue and can HEAR it grating around in there, I kind of want to barf. I can do scar tissue massage on other people all day long (and enjoy it), listen to and feel the "junk" that is scar tissue cracking and grinding and breaking up under my fingers and elbows. But the second it is my own body; just gross.

In more other news, I'll be home in 5 days.

good night

I got bored on Thursday night and gave myself a bit of a hair cut. Nothing drastic, the length didn't change, I just gave myself bangs and took a bit of weight out of the top layer.
It looks very nice when I'm not pretending to be an angsty teenager.

Last night the outrageously gay guys (Kyle, Emanuel, John [only straight male there] and Mohale) who live above the apartment I will be living with next year threw a huge party. Just as Nichole and I were going up, Lindsey brought two guys (Ritzvik who is from India and Chase) down to use their bathroom, cause apparently there was a line upstairs. We talked for a little bit, and they both told me I was "Fabulous!" which made me feel good about myself.
We got to the door just as Mohale was yelling at everyone to get out of his house, because it had gone from a large party to a crazy cluster-fuck of friends of friends of friends showing up and that was not cool. So as we were looking out the window watching people leave (and get into fights in the middle of the street - classy, but better than in the apartment) Marquette's Public Safety shows up. Lindsey screams at the rest of the friends of friends of friends who are resisting leaving, "The fucking cops are here!" And magic could not have cleared the apartment faster.
Nichole, Ritz, and I hung out in Nichole's apartment (as Ritz and I are not yet allowed to be drunk) while Lindsey and Mohale dealt with DPS; who were only there doing their job and only asking if any Marquette students were involved with the party (maybe, but the guys and Lindsey all go to UWM - and are therefore safe from public safety citations) and if anyone was hurt, unconscious, or refusing to leave. Mo and Lindsey are good at PR and thanked DPS for coming cause they had been trying to get everyone to leave for a while at that point.

After that we all hung out upstairs for a good three hours, having drinks and chicken sandwiches cause Kyle walked into the living room around midnight and said, "So I just made about 12 chicken patties, and you bitches are eating them." (Kyle is about 5'10'' Puerto Rican, and has the type of build that could be very muscular and build like a fucking bull but instead is just kind of fluffy on the outside - just so you can picture this). So we ate chicken and after that I sat in the kitchen with Lindsey and Ritz and talked about our relationships for another hour.


The moral of the story is I can't wait to live with Nichole and Lindsey and Marie (who was seen briefly) next year, and live below Mohale, Kyle, Emanuel, and John. They are all very nice people. John was chivalrous enough to walk with Nichole and I as she walked me home, then walk her back to her apartment; we all just think he wanted to spend more time with her though, which was cute.

Now, to be responsible until my birthday. I think I've found a nice balance with this.

Babies

My cousin Nathan and his wife Jen are being induced today! I'm so excited to have a new baby cousin to play with, and specially glad I get to meet him when I go home in two weeks when he's still a tiny newborn.

So I got an honorary niece in January.
A cousin in March.
The girl who was my mentor freshmen year who graduated last may is having a baby in four weeks.
I'll get another future niece at the end of May.

Oh, and Ryan. But no one likes him anymore.

That should set back my internal clock for another, oh I dunno... seven to ten years. :P

At Marquette, all students living in the dorms are required to have a meal plan, but it is also available to all students. In the dining halls, you swipe your card as you enter, so the attendant there knows you have a meal plan and have access to the dining all. With the meal plan, you can swipe into a dining hall whenever you want (while they are open) and have access to everything in them.
However, in the Schroeder Dining Hall, the seating area is also a 24-hour study space. You can either enter one door, get a meal, and then swipe as you enter the seating area, or you can just enter the seating area without going through the serving area. The drink station for this dining hall is in the seating area/24-hour study space. So you can bet your ass I've started doing all of my studying in the dining hall of a sophomore dorm where I have unlimited access you coffee.
Do I feel bad for drinking the dining hall's coffee despite not having a meal plan and therefore not specifically paid for it? Absolutely not. I give Marquette $30,000 a year; they can give me a cup of coffee a few times a week.

There is this couch thing in the women's bathroom on the first floor of the Life Sciences building. I'm not really sure why, personally, whenever I have felt like having a lie-down between classes, I have never thought to do it in a bathroom. I have however, seen girls put their backpacks and coats on it.

And now I'm just realizing this picture kind of looks like it was taken from a movie about a crazy mental hospital or something equally creepy. I promise that is not the case, and it is just the angle of where in the bathroom I am standing.