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The TruGreen lawn guy parked his truck in front of my house and is canvassing the neighborhood looking for business. Max has been quietly (and occasionally loudly) barking at him for about an hour. Sigh.

My computer ended up at the Geek Squad for 2 days after freezing during configuring updates. I shut it down manually (oops), because it was frozen, resulting in improperly configured updates which left my poor little laptop stuck in a vicious cycle of restarting and reverting changes. It never stopped...poor thing. I brought it to the geeks and thankfully found out that I had not irreparably damaged the hard drive. Whew. However, $200 later, they had to do the same stupid clean install of Vista Ultimate that I had just done. Internet access is still through the unsecured public wi-fi in my neighborhood so apparently I need to get someone out here to figure out what the h is wrong. It nice to actually be wireless, but I don't like connecting to the internet through a public service when I have paid for it. Not to mention the fact that the connection is sub par at best, it's cutting in and out periodically while I'm writing this post. This whole thing confuses me to no end. I am so technologically-challenged. And if I have to reinstall one more thing I'm going to freak out. Double sigh.

Associated with the internet business, I tried to reconnect to the router I had purchased before I realized that what I was connected to was a router not a modem (this is a long story that is pretty boring so I'll spare you). I found out that whatever security key and/or password that was used to set up the new router network is totally unknown to me. I can see the network that has my name (well not my name per say, but my chosen network name) but I have no idea how to access it. LAME. Honestly...I paid for the damn thing and now I can't use it. I seem to recall at one point that there was a pre-filled password thing that I pressed enter on when I first bought this router so I don't think it's anything that I ever knew. Triple sigh.

I don't understand the point of group assignments. In one of my classes we were put into groups to do a 5 point assignment that will be the basis for an individual paper that's worth 30% of our grade. Not only that, but we were told that if after this group assignment, we disagree with what the consensus was, we can go in a different direction than the group for our paper. Seriously. What's the point of that? And let's be honest...who wrote the assignment for her group? This girl did. There were 3 other people in my group and only one other member gave any input. We got the assignment last Tuesday and met with our group that day in class. We discussed some stuff and then I decided we should work on google docs so that we could all give input. Ha! I put together an outline and let everyone know that I wanted the final draft complete by Monday evening. I'm a procrastinator so I figured I'd start working on it on Friday or Saturday. Enter aforementioned computer issues. The problem started Thursday night, I brought it to the geeks on Friday after work and didn't get it back until after work on Sunday. That's right, not only did I not have a computer, I had to work this weekend. And I STILL was the only one to create an actual paragraph. I don't expect that people should be any less of a procrastinator than I, but come on. Myself and one other group member were on google docs working on it yesterday late afternoon/early evening and I put the final document up and said if I didn't hear anything from the other two by 10 pm that what was written was being turned in. Well, one of them went onto google docs past 10 pm last night and had some questions and concerns (too late bucko) and the other went on this morning and said it looked beautiful and that she had nothing to add (of course not). WHATEVER. I hate group assignments for this very reason. Can I quadruple sigh?

Insert clever title here...

I've decided that I'm going to attempt to write something every day. We'll see...I'm usually all talk in these types of situations.

Recent happenings:

1. Max "injured" a paw, became fearful of several spots in the house, refused to step off of the rug without major coaxing or use of the leash. What a freak. He's better now...mostly. (I only say "injured" because for the life of me I can't find anything wrong)

2. The IRS didn't find my massive clothing donation to be suspicious and gave me a crapload of money back. This is tempered by the fact that it was my money to begin with. I want to use the money to fix up my bathroom, but don't really know where to start. I secretly want to spend it all on clothes, shoes and a vacation. The bathroom must win out.

3. I made it through my first semester of grad school without having a nervous breakdown. Yay. I found out that grad school is kind of easy...which is good seeing as I'm still working full time. I took too heavy of a load that first semester, but I made it! This semester is more chill. I'm taking the summer off of school so I can get a bit of a social life back!

4. On that note...I resubscribed to match.com...for no good reason. It's really not for me. I guess I just figured I'll see who's on there right now. So far I'm not impressed.

5. Deep-cleaned the house yesterday. My whole body hurts but it feels good to be in a clean house. So much fur!!! I'm surprised Max isn't bald.

6. Max and I took a walk today and just as we were walking up to the driveway some young teen guy came running at me from across the street. Scared the shit out me as I was deeply into some tunes blasting in my ears. He asks, through crunches of red Funyons (spicy Funyons? interesting), what's your dog's name? what kind of dog is he? and how old is he? I say 5 and he replies "isn't that too old?" I really wanted to say 'too old for what?' but I explained to him that little dogs live a long time. He admits to not knowing this fact and then proceeds to tell me that he has a dog that's "about this high" while his hand never really stops at any one height. I'm really trying very hard not to be like "is there a point to this conversation?" Cause you're not introducing yourself to me or moving this convo towards anything other than "cool dog ma'am." It was strange.

7. Upon opening the front door to go on above-mentioned walk...about 10 minutes after walking in the door from school...I'm greeted by a wasp. Wtf. That's all I have to say about that.

'Til tomorrow. Maybe. If I remember. :)

Beans.

Okay...so a couple of things have happened since I last wrote. There have been some beans. I'm not sure if they are baked beans or green beans, but they are beans nonetheless.

It happened...I turned 30. It turns out that it's not so bad and that I got myself all worked up for nothing. In the end, you turn 30 and then you move on. You can't turn back the clock, you can't take it back. It is what it is. I got to get all dressed up and go to a nice restaurant and have some cocktails with my friends which is all I really wanted.


I think we all look fabulous and my dress was just the right level of obnoxious. We went to Zelo for dinner, which came complete with a good-looking, incredibly charming waiter. Yay. He offered his arm to lead me to the restroom...enough said. After dinner the crew walked a couple of blocks (brrr) to The Local for some drinks. Karoline luckily spotted a booth and that's where we stayed. I knew that I wanted a shot of Patron so Brett and I had one. By the end of the night...he had had FOUR shots!! Yikes Brett...yikes. We had a short visit from The Williamsons, owners of Flat Earth Brewing Co. Drink Flat Earth people!! I really had a great time. Kristy couldn't be there because she's kind of big deal at 3M and had to get back to TX to give reviews of her minions. Hope you were harsh, but fair Kristy! My sister wasn't able to join us because she ended up having to get her wisdom teeth out. On. My. Birthday. Whatever Liz. However, she and my brother-in-law redeemed themselves the night before by taking me out to dinner at Fogo de Chao. Holy crap, that was some good meat! Vegetarians beware, this is a place for meat-eaters only. They do have a fantastic salad bar, but for the price it's the meat that it's all about. Yum. After we had tapped out on the meat we needed to decide what to get for dessert. A guy seated next to us had ordered this massive piece of cheesecake which he proceeded to take down in about 2 minutes. We all ate this one together. Happy Birthday to me!!



Ok. So the other news is that I GOT IN!! I was accepted into the U of MN Master's program for Epidemiology!! In my last blog I had mentioned that I took the GRE, but what I didn't bring up is that I really wasn't happy with my scores. They weren't quite up to par in my eyes, and also according to the preferred requirements of the program. I was seriously considering re-taking the exam and was feeling very pessimistic about the whole thing. Then, I received a letter on Nov 18th stating that my application materials had been sent to the admissions committee, so I decided to just let the chips fall where they may. I've been trying for the past month not to think about it at all. I didn't want to get my hopes up because I was certain that I wouldn't get in. Well...I was wrong. Very wrong. I'm still sort of in shock. I am pretty pumped though. I get to go school shopping!! It's still too early to do much now since the actual early deadline was just on the 15th of Dec and the late deadline isn't until April. So...I just have to wait. I can't believe I'm actually going back to school!! AACK!!!

My love of statistics?

I'm not sure how it happened, but I decided to go back to school to get my Master's of Public Health in Epidemiology. Most likely with a focus on infectious disease. It's like being an investigator and you get to look for patterns and do surveys. OCD Heaven. Not that I think I have full blown OCD...just a touch. Just enough to realize that I have an actual, real and true, interest in finding patterns. I also like math (statistics) and am very interested in infectious diseases (tracking the Ebola virus...fascinating). Okay...so when I say I've decided that's what I'm going to go back for, what I'm actually saying is that I am attempting to get into a program at the U of M...not exactly a sure thing. I'm a bit nervous about that. Also, I have to take the GRE, which I will be taking on November 3rd. And so far...I have come to the realization that my vocabulary is not very...what's the word? Exactly. I have fond memories of Wordmasters (Jessica will remember that one) in 4th grade and being frickin awesome at analogies. I'm still okay at them, but they use some words that I don't know...at all. This goes double for the antonyms. How can I find the opposite of a word that I don't know? Sigh. Must study.