It's over

The semester is finally over. I turned in my last assignment for parasitology at 4pm today. Finished all my micro specimens in lab this morning. Cleaned out the pockets of my lab coat and put it in a biohazard bag to be autoclaved and thrown out. There was a cute stain on it with Gram Stain that was purple and in the shape of a fish too. I liked that spot. It feels kind of weird now because all I have left to take are the CLS management classes and sim lab. I've learned what Ferris has needed to teach me about clinical specimens, that I should be able to recognize important things out in the cinical lab. Kinda scary. In one year I've learned most of what I'm going to need to know for the rest of my life. Even if I don't work in a hospital the rest of my life, which I don't plan on doing. Maybe I'll get some work experience and then check out working for the CDC. And I know that I'm going to get my Masters of Science degree someday. Just seems weird to be so close to being finished with my undergrad. But it is going to be nice having a summer vacation since I've been in school since August 02 without a decent break. Not that it's going to help the senioritis much, probably just make it worse.

Now, to start studying for finals. Ugh.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I just got back from the RA/Housing Services Banquet and one of the HDs read that poem by Rbert Frost. It really sums up my 2 years as an RA. Being an RA is not easy, and it's not always fun. It takes a special type of person to be an RA and I'm glad that the housing department at Ferris has given me the chance to be that kind of person and to develop the potential that they saw in me. I remember that when I came into this job, I was quiet and shy. Then last year began. oh what a year that it was. I came back expecting this year to be just as bad, but it wasn't. And now I feel like listing some things that I've learned as an RA.

1. If you're sleeping and not the duty RA, don't answer the phone. The university gives you voicemail for a reason, use it, otherwise you'll end up having to get up when you don't want to.
2. When you're in the middle of studying for a big test, the fire alarm will go off.
3. The fire alarm will go off. A lot.
4. Banana's can break windows.
5. Drunk college students do really stupid things.
6. The night that you have a really bad cold and want to go to bed at 10pm you will catch someone smoking pot on your last round of the evening.
7. You will get to know DPS very well.
8. Professors usually do understand when you say that you missed class because you're an RA
9. Sleep is precious
10. You don't get enough recognition
11. Whether you realize it or not, you do make a difference in someone's life.
12. You are appreciated

It's kind of hard to believe that I only have 2 weeks left as an RA. I'm going to miss travelling the road not taken.

*Dreamy sigh*

Enrique Iglesias says it best

Over and over I look in your eyes
You are all I desire
You have captured me
I want to hold you I want to be close to you
I never want to let go
I wish that this night would never end
I need to know
Could I hold you for a lifetime
Could I look into your eyes
Could I have this night to share this night together
Could I hold you close beside me
Could I hold you for all time
Could I could I have this kiss forever
Could I could I have this kiss forever, forever

Over and over I`ve dreamed of this night
Now you`re here by my side
You are next to me
I want to hold you and touch you and taste you
And make you want no one but me
I wish that this kiss could never end
Oh baby please

Could I hold you for a lifetime
Could I look into your eyes
Could I have this night to share this night together
Could I hold you close beside me
Could I hold you for all time
Could I could I have this kiss forever
Could I could I have this kiss forever, forever

I don`t want any night to go by
Without you by my side
I just want all my days
Spent being next to you
Lived for just loving you
And baby, oh by the way

Could I hold you for a lifetime
Could I look into your eyes
Could I have this night to share this night together
Could I hold you close beside me
Could I hold you for all time
Could I could I have this kiss forever
Could I could I have this kiss forever, forever

Saying goodbye

I forgot to mention this but my Aunt that's been ill died last Thursday night. My dad told me right as I was leaving with some friends to go out. He said that it was real peaceful for her and I'm glad of that, that her breathing just slowed down and then stopped. It was time for her to move on, life was becoming too much of a battle for her poor body.

The funeral was today and I feel bad that I couldn't go. It seems weird that when someone that I consider part of my family, even though she wasn't a blood relative, died, I couldn't go to the funeral. So I'm saying goodbye here because I feel bad for not being able to attend the funeral.

Be happy in heaven Aunt Grace. Be happy up there with Uncle Ott and be at peace, life is no longer a struggle for you. Enjoy your eternal rewards.

Psalm 23 It just seems automatic to turn there when someone dies, and I turned there Thursday night, with no hesitation.

Goodbye Aunt Grace...

Thinking about the future

Ok so Thursday night we went bowling and Heather was talking that she knows that her boyfriend is going to ask her to marry him over the summer and she picked out the ring.

I don't want that for myself.

It's probably the romantic in me, but I don't want to know when I'm going to be proposed to and I don't want to pick out my ring. I want it to be surprised. I mean sure, my boyfriend and I will have talked about marriage, but I don't want to know exactly what day or what time of the year that the question is going to be asked. All I'll say is that I want a ring that I can safely wear under latex gloves, so something with a flatish diamond. Nothing huge and spectacular. Something simple and romantic.

Yeah, I'm a romantic deep at heart.

Celebrating a bit too early

So I got up this morning and went to clean out my car and take the lisence plate off of it so that I could turn it over to the lady that was buying it. I called her when it was all ready and she was like "Well I talked to the guy that changed your oil after you left and he said that there was several things broken on your car and that he wouldn't pay more than $500 for it. So I found something else."

Bitch.

I mean, I was kinda feeling like I was losing my freedom when I was getting it ready to sell, but still, that car has a lot of new parts and runs great. It's worth what I was asking for it.

And I found my dream car too in the classifieds. I guess it's just going to have to wait

Funny how things happen

Weird. I went to WalMart today to get my oil changed. No biggie. Had my car up for sale, but it's been up for sale since Sunday. Well when I went to pick up my car, I was told that the mechanic wanted to talk to me, so I was thinking, Oh great, what's wrong with this car now? Well, as it turned out, he wanted to buy it. Apparently his woman's car had died yesterday (the engine blew) so she offered me $900 for it. I told her $1000 cash. She said deal. Now I just gotta get my car cleaned out and then call the chick and get the money and sign the car over to her.

Now, to find a car for me

My immortal

i'm so tired of being here
suppressed by all of my childish fears
and if you have to leave
i wish that you would just leave
because your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now i'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

i've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
and though you're still with me
i've been alone all along

Random thought

I just realized that I haven't heard from a friend in almost 3 weeks. Odd, I know that he's busy but 3 weeks is a nice chunk of time and I miss talking to him.

I've also had it with my suitemate, I'm not going to make any extra effort to be friendly for these last 3 weeks of the semester. She only talks to me when she wants something or when I iniitiate contact and I'm sick of it. It just pushed me over the edge last night when she went to go to Center Ice with Jon and didn't ask me if I was even hungry. What kind of BS is that? This is our 3rd year living together, you think that she'd talk to me once in a while

Blech

I need to clean, I need to work on projects, and all I want to do is sleep. I've been having so much trouble dragging myself out of bed in the mornings and I haven't even been napping during the day (except for today because I just needed a nap, but I think that that was my first nap since advanced micro started), so that I'll sleep good at night. Why oh why am I so tired?


Oh and Nicky, you were my patient today for a vag culture. You can be happy now :p

Sweating the small stuff...

Hi, my name is Amanda and I sweat the small stuff.

I don't really know why, but I realized today that I let the little things get to me. Someone said something to me earlier this morning and it bugged me. And now not only am I bugged, but I'm kind of pissed about it. I don't know why I let the little things get to me, but I do, and that bugs me too. I know that I should be able to let it roll off my back, but it doesn't. It boils under the surface like a festering wound. I let lots and lots of little things build up until I explode at someone who doesn't deserve it.

I gotta work on this.

Oh and the Ferris network sucks ass. Beating with a stick will commence in 5 minutes.

Where's Amanda been?

I'd forgotten that there was such a time as 5:30am. Yeah, that's what time I got up Wednesday morning. Was on the road by 7am and in Lansing around 9am. Unfortunately I missed a turn in Lansing and so I didn't get to the Lansing Center until about 9:30am. First session that I went to was a bloodbank session and then we hit up lunch at the deli and then checked into the hotel. We were at the Radisson about 2 blocks down the road from the Capitol Building. Afternoon brought forth antimicrobial resistance and more bloodbanking. Unfortunately, out of the 4 of us that went, none of us went to the bloodbank case studies and our teacher did so she got test questions for our next test. Joy.

I think that the most exciting moment of the night was meeting the old microbiology teacher from the program, and we heard the story of someone who innoculated herself, on purpose with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. And then we found out that she'd taught Tim's uncle and had poured many beers over his head. Well a little while later Tim got the bright idea of buying her a beer. So he went up to her and offered to buy her a beer and she told him that he needed to kiss her first. So according to him, he tool the "Kissing the mother in law" approach and gave her a quick peck, but apparently that wasn't good enough, so he kissed her again. Still not good enough though, but of course, that gave us enough ammunition for the entire conference.

Afterwards we headed down to the sports bar to catch the Wings game and get some food, and then my age came into play. We were all going to go down to Rum Runners, a pretty interesting bar and we find out that it's 21 and up, so it was back to the hotel for me. This is about 10 or so, so I hung out in the hotel hot tub for a while and then went back to the room and passed out on the cot.

Mind you, I was staying with 3 males, and could have slept on the bed instead of the cot, which was the most uncomfortable bed in the world, nice metal bar in the middle of my back, but the guys had their shit all over the bed and there was no way that I was touching it.

When Eric and Tim got back from the nudie bar, I just about killed them. I'd been sleeping real well and they didn't even try to be quiet when they got in. We had to tell TIm that he couldn't call his wife at 3am. Hell, she'd left him a note at home not to call when he'd been drinking. Oh yeah, and they both snore when they're drunk.

Thursday was more of the same, except I learned about hematology all day, and got REALLY excited because I got a 6th Edition Digg's Manual of the Morphology of Human Blood Cells (brand new) at the exhibitor's exhibit. Got ditched at about 8:30 as everyone went back to Rum Runners and so I watched some TV and used the Spa and Hot Tub. Very nice. Managed to grab a bed that night instead of the cot though, so that was good.

Friday, once again more of the same. It felt kind of weird though because it was Good Friday and it was the first Good Friday in years that I didn't go to church. Left Lansing at about 4:30 and made it home by 6pm. Traffic was flying. Got yelled at a bit by my mom for spending too much money on her for her birthday gift.

Saturday I hung out with my mom and then we went and visited my dad's mom last night. Found out that my Aunt Grace got out of the hospital for a bit and was in a nursing home and then ended up back in the hospital after biting her nurse and her lungs were filling back up with fluid. Oh yeah, and it started snowing today.

We went to church this morning and it made me think that there are so many people that only go to church on holy days. Maybe it makes them feel less guilty, but church should be as full every day as it was today. It made me remember when we were going to Visitation. At holiday's Fr Emmet would have the kids come and sit up around the altar so that there was more room for people to sit. And then he'd threaten to get bleachers installed in the church. Those were the days.

We spent the afternoon at mom's mom's house this afternoon and had our traditional spaghetti dinner. Yes, I said spaghetti. On Easter. We're Italian. It was a nice afternoon though, even chasing around 2 toddlers. I'm surprised that Michael doesn't think that his name is no by now. Camden was such a cutie though, big and strong at 5 months old too. Pictures will go up tomorrow.

Now, to do my homework...

Weird

I was just looking out my window while I was shutting it some and the moon looked like a cross, with the moon at the center and 4 beams sticking out of it. Very interesting.


And now it's time for sleep so that I can leave bright and early. Have a good Easter everyone!

Break

Woo! It's Easter Break for me now. But I won't be going home until Friday afternoon. I'm leaving tomorrow to go to MSCLS Meeting (Michigan Society for Clinical Lab Sciences). I'll be at the Raddison in Lansing, and for those of you that have my cell phone number, that's how you get a hold of me until late Friday, since I won't have computer access

Finally

After 2 weeks of playing phone tag with the professor, I got admittied into History of the 1960s for the fall. And the best part is that it's an internet class, so I can attend it in my bathrobe. I'm so glad that I'm almost done with school, I don't think that I could take much more

Totally Random Day

So yesterday wasn't supposed to be as random as it turned out to be. We left Big Rapids at 11am to go see VACO at 2:30 in Ann Arbor. No biggie right? Just go to Ann Arbor, see the concert, yell, scream, throw random things onto the stage, enjoy the show and eventually head back home. Well, as we decided, nothing can ever be that simple with just the 2 of us.

We get to Ann Arbor and get a little confused as to what our directions say, so we got turned around and stopped at what we thought was a ghetto little party store. No such luck. It was a ghetto little car repair shop. But the guy was nice enough to give us directions as to how to get to the concert.

So we drove by the concert and find out that not only is it outdoors, but it's at a fraternity house. So eventually we find a parking spot on the road and hoofed it back up to the concert and paid to get in. Now something struck me as odd right away. There was no VACO merchandise set up, but I shrugged it off as it looked like a small concert.

So then we found a spot on the lawn and just sat down and relaxed. By now it was 2:15 and I was getting real excited. 2:30 rolls by. Nothing. 3 rolls by. Nothing. 3:30 rolls by. Still nothing. By now I'm wondering what the hell is going on, but I heard this one guy say that they were delaying as long as possible, so that they could have as many people there as possible before the cops shut them down. And there was something else bugging me at this point, the stage wasn't set up quite right. Things weren't really making sense, but I couldn't quite figure it out.

Well it got cloudy out and cold, so Jill and I went back to her car and got our coats and then moved her car because we found out that we were illegally parked. So on our way back to the ATO house, we hear music and I was like "Awww crap, we're missing VACO."

We get back into sight and I realized that that wasn't VACO playing, it was the other band that was supposed to play at 4. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy at this point, but we grabbed a spot on the lawn for a while and listened and they were pretty good. The singer was hot. And other members of the band were drinking and smoking while they played. So we listened to them for about an hour and then decided to leave as people were getting drunker and higher (Hash Bash was also going on in Ann Arbor at the time, in fact, the first song that the band played, these 2 girls just climbed up on stage and started dancing but were quickly removed) and I was almost sat on by another chick. Plus the cops were circling more frequently and the last thing that I needed to do was to call my parents and tell them that they needed to bail me out of jail in Ann Arbor cuz I was at a concert at a fraternity house.

So we got out of town with just a few problems directions wise and headed back to school. We stopped at the Old Navy Outlet in Kensington and I ended up putting $60 worth of clothing and sandals on my Old Navy credit card, but most of the stuff I bought was either clearance or on sale. Happy me.

After our Old Navy trip, we went to Chi Chi's in Lansing and had a really cute waiter who didn't charge us for our drinks. But when we came out of the restaurant, it was snowing outside. Come on! It was warm and I was sitting outside in jeans, a tank top, and sandals earlier. Now I was freezing cuz all that I'd added to that outfit was a sweater. But we made it back to school around 10 and it was just a real interesting day.

Probably the most random thing that I've ever done in my life.

It was fun

Kinda overwhelming really

Hmmm, where to begin.

Ah I know. First off, I'd like to say that I fell victim to the SW.com April Fool's Prank. But most of you probably already know that.

So in about a month from now, the semester will be over. I made a list of all the assignments that I know that I have between now and the end of the school year and it's 3/4 of a page long. Yeesh. The end of the semester is baring down and I don't know if I'm going to survive it. It's tough. But I have to remember that never again will I have a class that meets on Saturday's if I can help it.

Speaking of that class, I'm totally blowing it off tomorrow. Bad me. I know. But if you had the choice between an awesome conference and looking at poop, which would you pick?

Advanced micro has been a ton of work. 3 or 4 specimens a day to set up plus the specimens from the day before to work up. Today I was FINALLY able to finalize the sputum culture from hell that I'd been working on all week. The only thing is that I have to come up with patient names daily so I've resorted to SW or the names of fellow posters. And don't give me a hard time about a lack of creativity, you try coming up with 12 patient names a week. I'm a geek. I know it.

Today was so nice that this afternoon Jill, Jess and I decided to walk to Dairy Queen and back. I think it's about a mile and a half away. And we got there just as school got out across the street, so all the Charter Academy kids and their parents were there, so we waited in line for about 20 minutes or so. Not bad considering I used to shove people through longer lines when I worked for my grandma. That line brough back memories of 90 degree nights with a line out to the road and orders backed up and machines needing ice cream and the joy of scooping ice cream or getting all greasy working the grill. I kinda miss those days.

Oh yeah, and that test that I thought I failed yesterday, I got a 72