school makes me mad >:(

School's pretty crazy. I was supposed to start at UTD last fall, but due to a lazy academic advisor who wouldn't register me for classes or let me change majors because "it was more paperwork for her to fill out," my enrollment was postponed until January. The semester started out really well. Good classes, good schedule, good teachers. Everything seemed to be falling into place quite nicely. But then a few weeks ago, I found out that even though I already have an Associates degree in science, it will take at least 4 more full years for me to get a bachelors in any science major. Even if I change my major to something I don't like, the soonest I can possibly earn a bachelors is 3 full years, if I'm lucky and none of the classes I need overlap schedules. Surprisingly, UTD did accept all of my credits from the local community college. And, because UTD accepted all of my credits from the community college, they are also planning on doubling my tuition. Crazy. I know. I asked if they could somehow "un-transfer" some of those credits, and they said no. I am really not interested in paying that outrageous tuition rate for 3 years in order to get a bachelors. Right now i am in the process of applying to a surgical technology program at the community college (a surgical tech is the person in the operating room who hands equipment to the doctor and can close the patient when the doctor is done). I think I would do well in the program, and would really enjoy the job. It is a two year program. It is a hard program to get into because they only accept 12 people a year, and a lot of people apply.

RIP Sushi

For the last three and a half years, I've had a beautiful blue/green beta fish named Sushi living in a fish bowl on my desk. Thursday morning, when I was about to feed Sushi, I discovered him pale and belly up at the bottom of his aquarium. After a moment of silence, I gave Sushi a burial at sea (*flush*). Even though I had cleaned the fish bowl less than a week ago, it smelled pretty nasty, so I rinsed it out a few times, scrubbed everything inside of it, and then filled it with bleach water and let it soak for a good 60 hours. Crazy as it may sound, the aquarium still reeked of dead fish. Soaking it in bleach had not made a bit of difference. I rinsed everything off again, and pulled out some lemon scented non-bleach disinfecting wipes. Individually, I wiped off the glass bowl, and the glass rocks from the bottom of the bowl, and finally the pink glow-in-the-dark plastic plant. I discovered that the glass bowl and rocks smelled perfectly fine. The stench was only coming from the plastic plant. Even after soaking it in bleach for 60 hours, and then scrubbing it off with a lemon scented disinfecting wipe. It still smelled. I gave up all hope of ever cleaning the pink plastic glow-in-the-dark plant when the thought occurred to me that I could probably buy a new plant for under $5 at Walmart. Probably even a better looking plant. And maybe a new fish.

3.20.09

grrr... We've had about 4 tournaments so far this year, and I haven't been able to compete at a single one. First I was sick, and then I tore a ligament in my finger, and now my ankle is busted. There is another tournament in about a month. Hopefully I will be able to compete at it. Right now I can barely practice. It makes me sad. I was going to write more, but the computer is starting to have issues...

2.16.09

We finally got our new team uniforms! YAY! We look awesome. Our first tournament is this coming weekend. Unfortunately, I will be missing it. I have been sick for the last few weeks (sinus infections... sore throats... very tired), so I haven't been able to train (but in early January I was doing amazing and running a 15 minute mile and a half!). I am also taking a history class late friday evenings, and that kind of gets in the way a little bit. Normally we leave Friday around noon to travel to the tournament city (like Houston, or Chicago) and then we spend a night in a hotel, and go to the tournament at 8am Saturday morning. Since I have that night class, I have to travel REALLY late at night or REALLY early in the morning in order to make it to the tournament on time. I am looking forward to graduating in May. I haven't decided what I am going to do in the fall. Anyway, for Valentines Day we had our first team fund raiser. We babysat kids from 6-11pm. Somehow I misheard the information, and I was told to come at 5:30 for some pizza. When I got to the karate school, the front door was ajar, the alarm was beeping, and it was totally dark inside. I didn't see any of my friends' cars in the parking lot. I turned off the alarm, and then went back to my car and started calling all the head instructors. No one would pick up their phone! I finally got a hold of the guy who was supposed to have locked the place up, and they said something about the alarm was going off when they left, but they didn't think it was a big deal (?!?!?!). About that time the cop showed up. I hung up the phone and told the cop that I arrived a minute or two before she did, and that I thought the alarm was going off because someone accidentally turned on the alarm while the front door was propped open. Then in the middle of talking to her, the karate school's phone rang, and I picked it up, and it was one of the head instructors (Great... Why couldn't he have answered his phone 2 minutes ago). I had to explain everything to him. So the cop took down my information, and then we searched the karate school to make sure it was safe. Half way through the search, one of the other instructors shows up and I have to explain everything to him. We finished searching the karate school, and nothing was missing, and no one was there, so the cop left and then the parents started coming and dropping off their kids. The rest of the night was a blast! I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures, but it was a lot of fun. We played new games with the kids and ate pizza and watched Kung Fu Panda. There were about 24 kids. We had no injuries, and all the kids reported having fun and not wanting to leave when their parents showed up. Yay! Good times!

Thanksgiving!!!

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I got to sleep in late, and then I had dinner with my family in the early afternoon. It was delicious! Then, I went to the Cowboys football game with my Dad and Bro Terry. It was a great game. I felt sorry for the other team, the Seahawks. They received quite a whipping. We left during the 4th quarter when the score was 31 to 9. The halftime show was pretty awesome. We got to see the Jonas Brothers perform live. Too bad the stadium dropped a background right between us and the stage. We got to see them walk up the stairs onto the stage, but we only saw the performance on the TV's. The acoustics in the stadium are horrible!!! It was like someone was playing their songs on 5 different radios at once, with different time delays on each radio, and all the radios are buried under 10 feet of dirty laundry. I couldn't even recognize the first song. The second song was "Burning Up." I was glad we were able to leave a little bit early so we didn't get stuck in traffic.

11-24-08

Last week when I went in to get my allergy shot, I got to talking with the lady at the front counter. She said they might be hiring! I am really hoping they are hiring and I am able to get a job there. They have such good people there. It is a big practice, and I think I would learn a lot, but I probably wouldn't get to spend time with patients like i was able to at Dr. Henry's. The name of the person I need to talk to is Elaine. But she was out last week, and she is out again this week. grrr... it is hard to get a job when the person you need to talk to is out of town. Another interesting thing happened on Saturday. (Saturday was a really boring day, FYI. I spent 12 hours working on a school project! UG!!!) Anyway, Saturday evening I got a call from this guy, John, who says he is my boss. I am like, "um... no... sorry, you are not my boss. I don't have a boss right now..." and then he is like, "I AM your boss. You are on my payroll. That's how I know your name and have your phone number." Then I was like, "You must have the wrong number..." thinking to myself how creepy it was that a guy I don't know would call me up on a Saturday evening and insist I work for him, and it must be some sort of scam. After I hung up the phone, I realized I actually know John. He's not my boss (because I don't have a boss) and I don't know him well, but I do know that his little boy Eric goes to my karate school and that John owns a huge graphic design company. So then I was a little sad. If I had played my cards right, I might have gotten a job this Saturday. He called me and insisted I was on his payroll. I think if this thing at the allergist's office doesn't work out, maybe I will call John back, but I haven't decided yet. This week is really busy, but I have a lot of stuff to look forward to. Yay! Fios internet! Yay! Cowboys Game! I just have to get past the first half of this week. I accidentally skipped a step on this art project that is due on Wednesday, so tomorrow I will have to go back down to Dallas and visit the museum at SMU (the Meadows) again. It is a great little museum, but I have a lot of other things I want to work on instead, and I would prefer going with friends than all by myself. Again.

Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to my blog. For my first blog, I will paste a copy of what I wrote for my Texas Tattler last Sunday... Thursday I went to the museum at SMU for art class. It was a lot better than I thought it would be. It had quite a few famous paintings that I never would have thought a little museum would have. I have to go back later this week. I didn’t finish my project. I got there late because of some traffic (my friends promised me it was a 20 min drive at the most… it took me 50 min to get there). But everyone was late, so no one got in trouble, and everyone is planning on going back. I gave a presentation earlier that day for art class. Something went wrong with my computer, and my powerpoint didn’t save right, and so I had to give my presentation using the rough draft instead of the final copy. That was stressful and not too fun, but I think it turned out okay. I had the final copy printed out with notes, so I was able to describe what was missing, and turn it into the teacher at the end. English we have a group project coming up. I have a good group and I think it will go well. In BCIS I have to give a presentation on identity theft tomorrow. I hope my powerpoint saves this time. That would be sad.

Saturday I taught karate. Normally there are 8 to 15 kids, and I have 2 assistants, and I had a nice game plan of what to do for class, given those numbers. This time, one of my assistants called in sick, and there were 19 people, of all ranks and ages. That makes things really challenging because you have to teach each person to their level. So I had to totally change my plans. I was a little bit sad because my new plan didn’t have much variety to it. But after class several people came up to me and said it was a really fun class. I thought back on the class, and realized that everyone was involved the whole class period, having fun, and really well behaved. Especially this one kid, who normally has a lot of behavior problems, but he was doing so well at staying focused on Saturday. I was proud of him. It made me think that maybe I didn’t do too bad of a job. Yay! The roadshow was pretty good this year.

Earlier this week I had a strange dream. I dreamed we were having a family reunion at my house, but no one had arrived yet except for Bruce, Julie, and Grandma and Grandpa Sant. I was in the upstairs bathroom washing my hands when all of the sudden something flies through the window (there is no window in that bathroom) almost hits me in the head and sticks to the wall. I dry my hands and then go pull it off the wall and see that it is a book. It is a really poorly-made Dr Seuss book. The cover is really thick cardstock that was covered in a layer of thin fake black leather that is just duct-taped to it, and then the picture and title are like iron-on transfers that someone put on the fake leather. It was titled, “Obama’s Plan for America .” I thought that was odd, so I opened it up and read it. It was a shortened version of “Green Eggs and Ham” (REALLY shortened… like only 5 pages long), but all of the pictures were from “There’s a Wocket in my Pocket.” It went something like this, “(Dr Seuss creature): Would you, could you in a box? Would you could you with a fox? (Obama): Yes! We Can!”

At the very end there was a really pixilated picture of a clock so you couldn’t tell what time it was, and a weather map of the US with all of the temperatures left blank. I was really disappointed (I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was disappointed). On the very last page, a puppy popped out! A book was “sent” to every house in America with a free puppy at the end. It was a cute puppy. I took the book and the puppy downstairs and showed everyone. Mom wasn’t going to let me keep the puppy because we already had a golden retriever (we don’t really own a golden retriever) until she realized that every person in America got a puppy, and so the animal shelters were going to already be full. She still wasn’t very happy about the puppy. No one else cared about the puppy because they were too concerned with the book. I thought the book was stupid and disappointing, but it was really worrying everyone else.