Amazon, I Love You

Just in case you didn't believe me when I said that college bookstores are a bunch of crooks, here's my textbook list for this upcoming semester. What the bookstore wanted is in black, and what I got it for on Amazon is in red.

Statistics for Research (3rd ed.) 93.15 - 66.64
Food Safety (12th ed.) 99.30 - 37.43
Jossey Bass Handbook of Non-profit Leadership Management 100.20 - 57.35
Starting and Managing a Non-profit Organization 60.00 - 16.44

USE AMAZON.
If you're a broke grad school/undergrad student (like me), this is the way to go. I've easily saved at least $2000 over the course of my school career by ordering all of my textbooks off Amazon.

This is What Retired People Feel Like

School is out, and it feels weird.

No papers, no textbooks, no case studies, no emails, no anything.

I have free time for the first time since before kindergarten. Literally.

I've spent it making this.

It cracked pretty badly (stupid oak), but it's coming along pretty nicely, I think. It was a nice way to just kind of relax and be productive at the same time. Here's some of the other things that I've been up to the past few weeks (during school).

I've gotten the chance to hike some pretty awesome mountains over the past couple of weekends...

I've tested my balance when my hiking trips led me to the wrong side of the stream...

I rediscovered the bench where I dropped the "L" word (love) on Yellowhed...

Annnnnd, I've learned how to make some pretty awesome homemade granola bars, if I do say so myself. 

Two More to Go

And so ends another semester. I've spent the past 4 months in journal articles and exams up to my eyeballs, consistently staying up late to finish yet another paper due by midnight. It's been a blast learning what I'm learning, I like studying exercise physiology and all that, but it's definitely time for a break. And thankfully, this is the first real break I've had yet with the whole grad school experience. No winter intensives, no prepping for next semester's biostatistics class, none of that.

It's my temporary mental vacation.

And so, I've spent the past two days sleeping in, going on walks downtown with Yellowhed, and working on turning an oak stump into a chess board.

I'm starting to like this whole semester break thing.

Time for Bed

Grad school. Where your 'reference' section of your paper is just about as long as the paper itself.

Holy smokes. My "let-me-just-spit-that-out-tonight" eezy peezy paper ended up being 7 pages of case studies on an 56 year old hypertensive woman.

Why do my evenings keep ending up like this?

Random Happenings

A lot's been going on the past few weeks. Aside from trying to not completely destroy my bank account with grad school, I've been working a lot of 10-12 hour days training people. Holy smokes. Talk about living for the weekend.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love training, and it's fantastic, but when you barely have time to lift for yourself, are spending your evenings studying healthcare insurance, and are living out of a lunchbox, you really reeeeeeeally look forward to Saturday.

In the meantime though, I've also learned how to make a pretty schweet loaf of cinnamon raisin bread...

Have been praying the frost doesn't kill my green pepper...

I've learned that you have to wear shoes inside a Yellowhed house...

"Oops."

"I thought I picked all of those up!"

I've had the opportunity to read some awesome books in between shifts...

Annnnd, I've been spied on by the neighborhood's crazy cat...

So, life's been good. I'm working my tail off, but I honestly love what I'm doing, and still think that I've got the most awesome job in the world. I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening though. Jes' sayin'.

Tailgate Me. I Dare You.

I Can COOK!

One of the things I've realized over the past few months is that it's finally time for me to learn how to cook.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I'm pathetic. The summer before I married Yellowhed I lost 10 pounds just trying to live off of my own cooking.

Seriously. I can't even seem to learn how to microwave a microwave burrito.

And now, with Yellowhed working past dinner time as she goes through nursing school, I've finally decided that it's time for me to cook.

I've been making progress. I started with learning how to microwave eggs.

It's ok, but nothing spectacular.  Plus the mug gets heated to close to the temperature of Hades in the process. I've since learned that Walmart sells rotisserie chickens. I combined this new knowledge with Youtube's videos of how to cook rice and beans, and voila!

My very first REAL meal! Was it good? Nope! It was super dry, but I made it, and that's good enough for me!