January, February, March!

Soooo this semester was a little hectic, shall we say. And I didn't even blog once. Yikes. Well, I will try and work on that next semester, but I don't promise anything. I will be adding 15 hours a week internship to full time classes and 25-30 hours work weeks. But there's always pictures to tell my thousand words each, yea? This is why I love photoblogging.

Earlier in the semester it was cold. Too cold. And we had too much snow. It really was a fairly mild winter as far as snow goes, though, so that was nice.

Arctic Expedition Corgi

corgi for reference

My work has been kinda horrible. PSR and case management is very stressful and very unrewarding. I don't pretend to like it. It's just what one does to pay ones dues if they can't land themselves something better. Hence, grad school. But yea, it's been stressful at work with the clients, with growing pains of the now year-old agency as we gain lots more employees, and with a -shall we say- "A-type" personality as the new PSR supervisor. I am trying my best to not just go through the motions and become complacent as many PSRs do but really do my best for my clients.

I also got this beaut to help with lognotes while with clients and taking notes in classes 

(it's a Microsoft Surface)

My school was very stressful this semester. I only took 9 credits but that was good enough for me since my Research class was so much work. I wrote my thesis lit review, which was awesome fun researching, but a lot of work. My thesis question is "How does mobile technology increase the efficiency and productivity of mental health professionals?" I am learning so much and loving it so much. I am so glad that I chose this topic and didn't cave to my trepidations. When everyone else was choosing topics they were all person-oriented like "how does X therapy model benefit clients with Y mental illness?" but mine is more system-oriented. So I was different. But that's okay. I love my topic and I'm planning on completing a full thesis with study and perusing getting it published. :D

how I got through much of the semester: Dayquil and Amp

Jed's semester was (and still is for 2 more weeks) pretty challenging. He took AAF preparing for an advertising competition, his senior project, and several classes (13 credits, the beast). He only has a couple more classes but one class that he needs to graduate isn't being offered (again) next semester so he needs to petition that. Also, he landed himself a sweet internship in SLC that he would do remotely from here (or anywhere, they don't need him in the office) and the school is being lame about letting him do it remotely. He has another internship offer that would be here that he is considering as well. He has had a rough time with groups not pulling their weight and with keeping the motivation to finish up his degree. But he's so stinkin close!!

We went to the gym a few times and started circuit training which was fun. But then we decided to up our game and bought Insanity and a heart rate monitor. Right at the start I got some Achilles tendinitis that slowed me down a little. Then I got whiplash, so I took a break, then finals came around. So I will be starting back up this week. I did lose a couple pounds in that week and a half though!

patented torture

heart rate monitor!

We're trying to eat better. I've successfully cut out several things from my diet that aren't the best and added in some good ones. See #6 of my goals for the year. I had a hummus addiction for several weeks. That was amusing. Also, we have started putting snacks into single-serving bags so that we can't over eat mindlessly.

look closely, which of these things doesn't belong?

new awesome containers for packed lunches

individual baggies and bar code to scan for calorie counting

We missed Daniel and Maddy a lot this semester and have been hanging out with Mike and Janay and Eddy as much as possible. Many Costa Vida consolation dinners were shared and many doggie play dates too.

Adelbertos in IF

besties!

Jed bought his first pair of jeans since middle school. And he looks gooooood.

am I right??

I had issues with my eyes for months and months and finally dropped the money to fix em up. $150 on 2 weeks of steroid eye drops and several hundred more on daily wear contacts than on monthly ones. My eyes become allergic to contacts if they're worn for too long and frequently "too long" is a couple days because of the build-up that contacts acquire throughout the day. Then I get these awesome little essentially hives in my eyelids. Yup. So after trying many different types of contacts over the years, I finally took the plunge and moved to daily contacts and my eyes have been feeling better.

$150 for 5ml. yup.

So there I was driving to work and school on a Friday several weeks ago and some dude slows down dramatically on the highway for some unknown reason. I avoid hitting him, swerved, lost control, hit a concrete barrier, and wrecked our Envoy. Unlike the last time I wrecked a vehicle on a concrete barrier in 2005, I got all the troops out to see me (ambulance, fire truck, police) (last time a single cop showed up, gave me a ticket, and dropped me off at a nearby gas station an hour away from my destination after I was knocked unconscious for at least several minutes). Paramedics checked me out, I declined transport (no health insurance), and Jed came to get me. I had a headache that night. And then the whiplash came on and I was practically immobile for several days. Crap that stuff hurts. We don't have collision coverage because it's too expensive, so the Envoy was sold for scrap for $1000. Poor thing. Jed also named it post-mortem: Clyde.

The night before the Envoy accident I was driving home from work and the Neon's tire blew out. I had AAA come and put the spare on and drove the rest of the way home. Jed had to drive down to pick me up with the spare on. We then dropped the Neon off to get 2 new front tires. Apparently there's a possibility that the ball joint is off and had been wearing on them as they were both beyond bald on the inner half. Need to have that looked at.

Jed's parents had been trying to get rid of their Volvo for a while and so after I wrecked the Envoy, they sent us this guy this week. It was way cheaper to send (on one of those trucks that carries a bunch of cars) rather than go get its so Rexburg got that novelty when it got here. It's the same thing Jed had for years and sold off when we got the Envoy (1997 Volvo 960) but in much better condition - it has 100k miles less than my Neon (68k!). So now Jed doesn't have to walk to school and I can get my Neon in the shop for a couple issues so it can make it to 200k+.

We had 2 planned trips to SLC this semester so that we could get out of the state we hate and go to one we hate a little less (hey, at least there's a city in that one). Unfortunately, both were canceled due to school work. So we stayed here the entire semester. In fact, other than 1-2 day trips for businessy type reasons, we haven't left since last April. I know, gag me.

had to resell my Lindsey Stirling concert tickets :(

Also not of much interest but somethings that have taken my time this semester: I started using Pinterest, which is lots of fun now that I "get" it, and I am newly addicted to the show How I Met Your Mother.

Well, that was easy to recap since we honestly didn't do much. It was a pretty tame (lame?) semester and we will try and have more fun in the future. ;)