(#@*$&@#*&

Nine days left of the semester.
I have tons of work left to do, but I cannot wait for it to be over.
Mainly, I just can't wait to retire my Nutrition textbook, forever.

Things Could Be Worse

On days like today, where absolutely nothing has gone right so far, and I'm being Ms. Grumpy, I have to take a moment to stop and remind myself that I really don't have it bad at all.

Sure, I might be suuuuuper frustrated with 37 different factors of my job right now. But hey, at least I have a job in this economy. What's even better, I have a job where I get paid way more than minimum wage to sit at a desk and do my homework.

Erich might really push my buttons at times (and yell at me when I personally don't think it's necessary), but he has put up with me and my craziness for nearly two years now. And he's only human. He treats me like a princess (99% of the time), I just have to remind myself I'm lucky to have a guy as awesome as him.

And sure, Erich used up all the milk last night for his 7th bowl of cereal that day (he LOVES cereal), which meant I didn't know there'd be no milk for my coffee this morning, considering he forgot to go get more, but I drink too much coffee anyways.

And I might be up to my eyeballs in homework, but at least I have the opportunity to go to college and kick butt.

I guess having a car that works and a nice warm house to sleep in at night, plus my awesome cats and dogs, friends and family aren't terrible either :)

Good news OVERLOAD!

So, I've been having difficulties with my boss lately. My company recently adopted this new "points system" to keep track of tardies, calling in sick, etc. As a part-time employee, I have a very small number of points I'm allowed to accumulate before I go into disciplinary action.
She had told me that basically, occurences (calling in sick) are 3 points, tardies are 2 points, and missed punches are 1 point...and they made this policy retroactive so everything that's happened since LAST January suddenly counts towards it. So, suddenly I'm getting in trouble for stuff that happened a long time ago and my previous boss had said wasn't an issue at all.
When I was working my other job with IHC, my then boss was really nice about excusing "tardies" if it was weather or traffic related. As in, stuff that was completely beyond our control that made us late, she'd excuse it, no problem.
My current boss on the other hand, is not so nice. I dunno if it's just that my old boss was too lenient, or current boss is too strict, but SOMETHING isn't adding up. Last week I was fifteen minutes late one day (the first time in four months that I have ever been late) due to a horrible traffic jam on I-15. There was an accident in Kaysville that had traffic completely stopped clear up through North Ogden. Not to mention when I finally did make it into SLC, I had to park in a garage on the U's campus and wait for TRAX to take me up to Primary Children's (there is a number of hospital employees that are forced to park off-site because there is hardly any parking at the hospital). I had left my house at about 6:45 that day cause I had wanted to stop by Einstein's on the way and get some breakfast. So much for that. All things combined, it took me about two full hours to get into work.
Now, I don't see how any of this is possibly my fault...but of course, my boss told me "this is why we give you so many points before you reach disciplinary level, we understand some things are out of your control." Huh.  Anyways. At this point she had informed me that if I accumulated more than ten points, I would be written up. Because of the traffic this day, and a bunch of stupid crap that happened in May (I got super sick, but apparently doctor's notes don't count as excuses..), suddenly I'm at 12 points.
My boss tried to get me to sign a thing saying I understood I was in disciplinary action, but I just thought something was really off about the whole thing. So I had a friend that works in a different department email me the actual new policy...and go figure, as a part-time employee, I don't get written up at ten points, I get written up at twenty points. Hallelujah. According to our HR department, my boss has been enforcing the policy incorrectly. Good news for me!

And the other bright side of life, my midterm for my psych class was this brutal essay-- ten questions, all essay answers...mine ended up being like fifteen pages long. I found out last night that I got 98.9% on it, the highest grade in the class. YAAAY!

Anyways, sorry this was so long. I needed to rant. Thanks for wading through all that! :)

Hibernation

Well, sadly, it's that time of year.
The air is getting colder, my slippers have been dug out of a box, my feet are constantly freezing thanks to our wood floors, another blanket has been added to the bed....

and midterm exams/papers/everything horrible and time-consuming, is due by this Thursday at 11:59 pm.

In other words, don't expect to hear from me, let alone see me, for the next week.
Bleeeeergh. Erich is actually excited about this, cause it means I won't be harassing him for staying up till 2 am playing video games for a week. Because sadly, I will most likely be staying up even later every night trying to get all my studying/writing/memorizing done.

Anyways. See you kids in a week.

Mr. Erich Newey, as much as I love him, is currently on my hit list.

A couple weeks ago, I was pretty sick. Turns out I had bronchitis ( for the second time in three months...way to go, immune system!) and my doctor put me on antibiotics. Within like 3 days I was back to feeling about 95%, with the exception of this dang cough that will just not go away.

Anyways. I ended up buying a humidifier to sleep with, I figured the dry climate wasn't doing my system any good. And on Monday night (the night we bought it) I slept soundly for the first time in three weeks. Amazing difference.

Last night (Tuesday), I fell asleep super early, and was just OUT. That is, until Erich woke me up around 2 am (who knows what he was still doing awake), told me my cough was driving him crazy and literally forced 2 NyQuil gelcaps down my throat.
Fast forward to eleven am, I've been up since 6, been at work since 7:30, and I'm STILL all sorts of out of it from the Nyquil. Thanks Erich.

Now that my complaining about Erich is done, onto the good news. It's midterms week at school (that's not the good part haha), but I am going into midterms with 110% in one class (on our last test, I got every question right plus the two extra credit questions), and 97.2% in the other.

Assuming I don't screw up too badly (and it would be HIGHLY embarrassing if I did screw up considering both my midterms are open book, open note take- home -tests that I have a week to complete), I should be going into finals with all A's. This is by far the best I've ever done in school.
(for the record, I emailed that paragraph to my parents, my father responded almost immediately with ,

PROUD PARENT MOMENT! MY KID ISN'T STUPID!!!)

....thanks Dad. Love you too.

Now if I can just get through the next four years with this good of grades, I'll be set :)

Getting started

Well, considering my soon-to-be sisters-in-law Deb and Liz both have blogs (which, I'll admit, I read a bit obsessively), and everyone keeps telling me to keep them updated on Erich's and my life, I figured I'd start this thing. No promises on how often I'll update though.

Let's see. For those of you who don't know, Erich proposed to me on Thursday night, our eighteen-month anniversary. (10/07/10). It was amazing. I knew he was going ring shopping with my best friend Ariel that day, and we were going out to dinner that night to celebrate 18 months, so I was all sorts of nervous that day. In fact, I'd say neurotic is not an incorrect description. I was ridiculous. I met him for dinner at the Red Iguana on the West side of Salt Lake, and barely said a word out of nerves until he informed me that he had not purchased a ring. I have to admit, I almost cried. I was so disappointed. But it allowed me to calm down enough to enjoy dinner with him.
So, I drove home to Ogden. Erich beat me by literally 10 seconds, if that. We walked around to our back door, he opened it and let me walk in first. That's when I saw the whole house was dark, but the kitchen and living room were filled with probably 50 lit candles. I dropped everything I had been holding and turned around to look at him..but he was already on one knee, holding a little white box up.  He said something along the lines of,
" I had this whole speech planned out but I can't remember a word of it right now...ah, crap. Will you marry me?" His voice was so high-pitched and shaky, and he had tears in his eyes. I will never forget that moment. Or the moment of walking into my candle-filled house.
I of course said yes and started crying. Then (me being typical me), I asked him how long the candles had been lit, and mentioned it was really unsafe to leave lit candles unattended for any period of time. I am all about fire safety. Hah. He informed me that our friend Jesse had actually been in the house lighting the candles for Erich, which was a huge relief. Anyways. He put the ring on my finger (it is gorgeous), and I called my mom to tell her the happy news. I almost wish I hadn't now...she is furious, to the point where we aren't speaking and I'm looking into student loans to pay for school. Argh. My dad and stepmom are thrilled, and Erich's whole family seems to be pretty excited as well. All of our friends are in shock I think (we're the first people to get engaged out of all of our friends), but they all seem excited for us too.

Anyways, it is 9:15 pm and us old fogies who have to be up at 6 am need sleep. Going to bed now.

EDIT: I tried to post a picture of my ring, but apparently my camera has decided to go on the fritz. I think it feels neglected. Erich is messing with it now, hopefully I'll be able to post some soon. I can't get over how pretty it is :)
And because I am lazy, and 99% of the time I decide to get on this thing I'm at work and don't have a way of uploading pictures here, I'm the lame blogger with no pictures. Hopefully I'll remember while at home soon.