1st of the Month

My plan, on the 1st of every month, was to revisit my New Year's Resolutions to see how I'm doing! I was hoping it would be more of an encouragement to keep on track. :) The first of February had me sniffly and miserable, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to catch back up and visit them now. :)

Ok, so below are the resolutions I came up with for 2010!

• Be more on time: I am not ALWAYS late or INCREDIBLY late, but I need to work on it in general. I'm known for breezing in just a few minutes late :\
  
• Shrug it off: As EVERYONE knows, I worry about everything-all the time-all day. I plan on letting the small things go. It'll help me so much to not worry so much!
• Swear less: I don't cuss like a sailor, but I do need to work on my language a little!
• Say no: I'm not sure how successful this one will be, but sometimes I get so stressed out because I cannot learn how to say no to people. This is my attempt to look out for myself a little more!

And here are my assessments as of February 1st of how I am doing!

• Be more on time: I am doing really well with this one!! I haven't been late to class at all yet! And, on top of that, I have only been late to 1 meeting. And that was because I lost track of time at work. I need to keep a better eye on the time. Now, I hope I can start showing up EARLY instead of just "on time"
• Shrug it off: Hmmm, I think improvement on this one is a little (a lot) less than being more on time. There have been quite a few little things that have gone on this semester that have bothered me... but on the upside of things - there have been a few that I HAVE shrugged off. I need to a lot more work on this one!
• Swear less: Haha, I almost forgot I had this resolution. In every day business, I have done a little better. But when I am frustrated or pressed for time, I tend to drop a few unlady-like words. Need to keep this one in mind
• Say no: Fail. F. A. I. L. fail. FAIL. failfail. I am doing horribly with this one. Since January 11th, I have joined 3 new committees and picked up a second job. I need to figure out a new way to say no and work towards a little free time. :P Haha ohhhh boy!

This has been good! Now, my resolutions are in the front of my mind... let's hope March 1st brings some new improvements. :)

Getting Dirty

Oh, get your mind out of the gutter!!! I am referring to my new job, a greenhouse assistant. :)

At the beginning of the semester, my horticulture mentor, Don, told me had a position open for me if I was interested. Boy was I ever! I worked as his undergraduate teaching assistant last semester, and I had a blast, along with learning even more than I did when I took the class myself. Not only that, but I got to interact with students who were starting out in the horticulture major and help mentor them. Quite a few of them still send me messages this semester and ask me questions. I absolutely loved the experience and would have remained as their TA this semester (Don teaches a 2 semester class), but I had my own class conflict. :(

So in order to keep learning from Don outside of the classroom, I agreed to take a job as his greenhouse assistant. He oversees 2 of the 3 greenhouses on campus, and I was excited to get to work in them as opposed to tour them! I started my first shift on Jan 29th.... and it was amazing! Don had a tour group coming in the late afternoon and needed the Felmley greenhouse (see pictures below) cleaned up and some plants transplanted. For 3 hours, I got elbow deep in soil, water, and leaves. Talk about a stress reliever! I LOVE plants!

Here are some pictures I took this weekend just to show you what the Felmley greenhouse looks like. Hopefully I'll get a few shots of the Science Lab Greenhouse next week!

The outside of the greenhouse!

This greenhouse has 4 aisles of plants just like this! It feels like a rain forest when you walk inside :)

Everywhere you look, there are tropical and native plants!

There is a cacti experiment going on for a bio class, and Don asked me to move them from the floor to the table. Let's just say I had a few pricks afterward :P

There even are a few trees inside of the greenhouse

I love the orchids, too! So pretty

Don likes to display plants that are "fun." So needless to say, the venus fly traps always attract the attention of new greenhouse visitors. I love playing with them :P

After a few weeks, Don said I could even help with some experiments and give tours!!!!

That, in a nutshell, is what my second job entails. I can hardly call it a job because it's so fun! :) However, this past Friday, the 5th, I was still a little sick, but I was feeling better enough to go in to work. Little did I know that Don was preparing for a plant sale, and needed me to relocated plants from the Science Lab to Felmley. Typically, this wouldn't bother me too much, but it was blizzard-ing outside!

Yes! There were even deer on campus, it was so crazy.

Just kidding. :) But I had to trek from greenhouse to greenhouse with three full carts of plants in the snow, wind, and cold. By the time it was the end of my shift, I was completely exhausted! Don noticed how tired I was and goes, "Yeah, this time of year, there's a LOT of relocating!"

Oh boy! I may create some rippling muscles from this job by May. :)

My Amazing Cousin!

Now that I am back at school, I tend to devote one day to reading/updating/commenting on fellow blogs. (Ok, I know there's not many right now, but I am always looking for new reads!) Today, I caught up on Erin's blog from a few weeks of not reading. I stumbled upon this comment on her blog:

"Congratulations! You've been nominated for The Best Morocco Blog of 2010
in the category of personal blogs.
We encourage you to have your readers and friends vote for your blog at
http://www.moroccoblogs.com"

I thought it was so sweet that someone saw her blog and thought it was worthy to nominate for an award! I went to the website and came across many other Morocco themed blogs, it was fun to read a few of them! I encourage you to visit this website: http://moroccoblogs.com/ for a few reasons. First: Check out other people's stories about Morocco and see how they compare to Erin's. Second: If you haven't yet, go to Erin's blog and read about her journey with the Peace Corps. Third: If you feel so inclined, vote for Erin's blog in the "Personal Blogs" category. :)

I'm so proud of her!

Basement Saga Pt. 2

I bet you were wondering about how the basement has been doing since the Christmas Flood of 2009. Things are certainly coming along! Granted, I have not been home much to help with getting everything back down there, but my wonderful brother helped from what I heard. :)

I went home a few weekends ago for bridesmaid dress fitting, and my dad was very giddy to show off the new carpet. Now, all I had in mind was this image:

So whatever was added was going to be a huge improvement in my mind! For the past 25 years, our basement had a ocean blue carpet color. Actually, that's a great description because Doug and I would pretend we were scuba divers, Olympic ice skaters, and astronauts due to that carpet color! :) Doug was already at school when I had come home, so he had already been exposed to the new color. I held my breath and opened the door to the basement....

Once I got to the bottom of the steps, I got to see the new color in our basement!

The basement was installed with our teal carpet!!!! What do you think of the color?!

A shot of the basement from the stairs. The color isn't too dramatically different from the original, but I like it!

In this post, I showed all of the damage to our bookshelves from the water. But my parents went to the store to find some replacements!

They picked out a beautiful cherry colored type of bookshelf! This is just one of the many they purchased to replace all of the ones we lost. I have not been home to see how they look all put together with Peanuts collectibles displayed, but I am excited to!

This afternoon, my dad said to me, "the basement is basically 90% restored as of today." I cannot wait to come home and see how it looks! It looks like our basement saga is almost coming to an end!

No, no. I sound like a sick, pubescent duck!

A pubescent duck? You got it!

So I have not updated in about... forever. My goodness! Getting back into the swing of things here at school was REALLY tough for some reason. I was adjusting to new work hours, and then starting a brand new job on top of that. Then, my class schedule is very monotonous, starting at 10am, ending at 2pm every day. Oh I know! Sounds like a dream, right? Haha, well that means all of my meetings (average 10 hours a week), office hours (average 8 hours a week), office assistant job (6 hours a week), and greenhouse job (3 hours a week) all have to take place after 2pm! My days may start at a nice 8am, but they do not end typically until 9pm!

Now, into the fourth week of the semester, I have finally got the hang of it. :) I really enjoy my new classes, and I just LOVE my second job! It's good to be busy and back into a crazy schedule again. :) Just as I was getting into the swing of things again, I came down with the craziest illness I have ever had!

It started out with a really sore throat after a meeting on Sunday night. I thought maybe my throat was just dry because of how much I talk. :P However, that was hardly the case... I woke up at 4am on Monday morning with a feeling comparable to swallowing needles. It was absolutely horrible! I blindly felt around for some cough drops and stayed up for an hour, trying to beat it. When I woke up again around 8am, I knew that this was bad. I booked an appointment for the health services.

Can I just say something? That strep throat test is just CRUEL! The nurse was so nice! But when she started to shove that cotton swab down my throat, I actually pushed her hand away. :\ Ooops. She went try again, and I backed my head away from her. She ended up having to hold my head in place and threaten me... hahaha. It was funny but awful. THEN after all of that, she told me that it was too early to have the results back any earlier than 24 hours. With that, I bought some throat lozenges and some juice and went to class.

Throughout the day, it went from bad to worse. I ended up canceling my meetings and office hours to try to rest up. My head started to throb. I felt nauseous all day. Then my nose started to get plugged up. Then extreme pressure in my sinuses. Then non stop sneezing. Then a runny nose. Then a wicked, phlemy cough. Then more extreme sinus pressure. Then pain and popping in my ears. Then no voice.

That brings us to today, Saturday, February 6th. Talk about a LONG week! I missed 3 classes, 3 meetings, 6 hours of work, and 6 hours in my office! I could have used more time to recover on Thursday, but I needed to get back into the game! Thank goodness for my midnight trip to Walgreens on Wednesday night.

Midnight trip to Walgreens? Oh yes. Shannon and I were watching TV Land (because we're so cool!) and there was a commercial for a certain over the counter medicine. I decided it was too good not to try and she convinced me to go out and try it!

This. Is. The. Greatest. Ever. I highly recommend it if you come down with the plague that I did! By Thursday, I could actually hear myself think, and breathing... OH breathing was so much easier!

I spent Friday catching up on sleep, and today catching up on errands. Tomorrow is catching up on school and ARH, and then enjoying some Super Bowl! Oh, and of course some more blogging! I have so many things to update in the past few weeks since classes started again! Thanks for reading :)