I just deleted a post I'd started a week ago but never finished. Now it's too irrelevant in my brain, so I don't want to continue it.

Tomorrow I take my last college test ever, Thursday I go to my last college class ever, and next Tuesday I go to my last clinical ever. I still don't know my capstone preceptor's exact schedule yet, but somewhere between April 8 and May 8 I'll have ten 12-hour shifts (day shifts, thank you Jesus) in the New Braunfels (ugh..) hospital on the med-surg (UGH!) floor. My preceptor said there's a lot of variety on the floor - emphasis on the "surg" part of med-surg - ortho patients, CV patients, (sometimes) pediatric patients. Hopefully that'll keep it interesting. Interesting enough to have me excited about adding 1.5 hours of commute time to a 12-hour shift? Pending.

I never thought I'd be the girl saying "I really, really, really can't wait to just graduate already," but after the past few weeks, I've had quite enough. Thanks school, it's been real. But I'm done.

Besides the obvious, the most exciting part about all of this is that I'm baking sugar cookies (sugar cookie people, actually) for the Brack 8th floor nurses as part of our end-of-semester student gift, and I'm going to decorate them to look like they are wearing scrubs. I am also going to put some in casts and break (eat) off some of the cookie people's limbs. Nothing says "thank you!" like a sugar cookie reflective of traumatic injuries and diabetic amputations, eh eh?

Obviously I will be posting pictures.

Other news in quick, bulleted, easy-to-read format:

• My half marathon is this Saturday! Bright and early in the AM. Mom and Kori (possibly David/Dad/Cyndee?) will be in town for it, should be a fun weekend.
• Nail-biting is back and in full force. Worse than ever. Can'tstopwon'tstop.
• Koriente on 7th across the street from the court house. Go. Eat. Thank me later.
• Positive things seem to be happening in the job realm. Stay tuned.
• The entire nursing school abuses Benadryl for clinical days. There's no sense in trying to resist.
  

That's good enough for now. Look at this. A whole post with no pictures.. how boring of me. Next time, however, will be full of amputated cookie people, so that should cover it.

Salsa adventures

I'm not going to say any names here, but the brand of salsa I bought at the store the other night almost ruined the uptown adventure at Kori's new place Saturday night. 

Nevermind. There's the name. 

I hate you Joe T Garcia.

What do you do with a new apartment in uptown with no furniture? You bring over some sleeping bags and go out to the bars. Anticipating our needs like a good sister, I went out and got some chips, salsa, goldfish, and wine to have on hand for the slumber party. So what's the problem?

I'll show you the problem.

TRY. HARDER.

This is starting to get ridiculous. There are 4 or 5 more videos after this, but let's get straight to the point.

Let them eat chips.

For the record, it wasn't even that good. You really dropped the ball on this one, Joe T. That's what I get for trying to buy local.

After all that we slept the slumber of manual laborers, and we rewarded ourselves in the morning with Breadwinners for breakfast and shopping at Northpark. Granted, that was the plan before the distressing salsa incident, but shopping dates are better when they're well-earned, obviously.

On a completely unrelated note, I hate to complain, but I'm going to.

1. I'm in New Braunfels for capstone. Random, right? The syllabus says unit placements are based on GPA, so I thought "well they must be sending me there to do pediatrics like I pref'd because there aren't any preceptors in Austin." Except today I discovered that I'm dumb, and the children's hospital that I thought was in NB is actually in San Antonio. So why am I being sent to random NB for capstone?!

2. I strained something in my leg in the back of my knee. This happened literally the day my foot started feeling better. Typical. 

3. Whine whine whine, complain complain complain.

4. Dell Children's is hiring zero new grads. The two spots I mentioned last time are going to internal hires. And with that, my dreams to stay in Austin after graduation have been shattered. (dramatic, isn't it?)

5. ...So I applied to Cook Children's today since none of the other children's hospitals I've applied to have even started scheduling interviews yet. They've already emailed me to say all their GN (graduate nurse) spots have been filled.

Not to mention that the PICU, according to Kori's manager, would be a no-go regardless. Siblings can't work in the same unit because we would steal narcotics (because, you know, co-workers and friends couldn't do that. Only blood relatives).

I'm glad it's spring break so all I have to do is sit here watching 900 re-runs of J&K+8 and look forward to Thursday when Andrew is coming to visit me in Austin. I'll be driving back tomorrow to clean the apartment and such before that happens. In the meantime I'm trying to warm up to the idea of living in Dallas if I get a job at Children's - Kori has been trying to win me over by pointing out fun facts like the close proximity of not one, but two Whole Foods stores near uptown, and the pizza place down the street apparently will deliver to you if you're at the wine bar a few doors down. 

But really, I just want a job. Whoever keeps saying "they always need nurses" was not referring to pediatric nurses. Or maybe they weren't referring to new grads. Or new grads that want to be pediatric nurses. Bummer. We'll see what happens.

Thursday Thursday Thursday! Get here.

warm fuzzies

STRESS! Everywhere! If it isn't about school, it's about the job search. I hate eating lunch at the nursing school these days because there's always at least three or four conversations going on around each table about applications and interviews. And we're all applying to the same hospitals, it seems. Whoever keeps insisting that nurses are in demand clearly are not talking about children's hospitals, and are DEFINITELY not talking about Dell in Austin. Last I heard there are t.w.o. available spots for new grads in the entire hospital (...and I really, really want one of them.) Anyway, to illustrate what's going on in my brain, we have exhibit (picture) A.

<--- A few nights ago I found my bag with all of my career fair goodies. It's unfortunate that my camera frame isn't wider. 

That orange pen is a monster. Lucky for that hospital that my career decisions are directly related to the size of the pens they offer. 

So. What do we do when we're stressed? We stab ourselves with giant orange pens.

No.

We make a list of warm fuzzy pictures to remind ourselves that life isn't that bad.

Guatemalan Worry People: "There is a story that when the Maya Indians of Guatemala have worries, they tell them to worry people and then put them under their pillows at night. By morning, the worry people have taken their worries away."

A good gift from a good friend on my 21st birthday (which, for the record, was 1.5 years ago exactly, more about that later).

Come to think of it, it's been a while, and I don't remember the exact details of where this little guy came from. What I do know is that he's a goofy, awkward-looking monkey that has belonged to Andrew since 2005-ish, and he's fabulous.

He snuck him into my bag sometime before I came home from Boulder a month ago.

And here he is, sitting on his desk throne, as it should be. Ha.

Obviously there's a baking picture. What do we do when we're stressed? We bake. I saw this recipe last week on this blog and decided there just isn't a better way to use raisins than this. And I believe her about chilling the dough to make the cookies thicker. It works with the chocolate chip cookie recipe I usually use.

I froze the rest of the dough in balls to bake whenever I want them, making me a great candidate to be best friends with your grandmother. 

...and on that note, over on the saltier end of the baking spectrum, I made these fries in the oven last night, and they're my new lovechild. Canola oil, rosemary, black pepper, kosher salt. 40 minutes at 400 degrees. Or was it 425? Might have been 425.

Spray/oil your pan better than I did and give em a shake/stir/flip every once in a while. The stuck ones just don't look as pretty once they are un-stuck :)

I've been biting my nails. FAIL.

I ran 10 miles this morning with the running group. Success! 5 weeks to race day!

And also, I'm now on twitter. Big surprise there. Ha.

Kisses.

Could someone tell me how to post pictures on this thing? The little icon on my toolbar only puts pictures at the top of each post. I want to know how to put one

HERE (**EDIT: I figured it out. turns out you just move it around with your mouse. Doh.)

or maybe HERE.

(I was going to just test adding a picture and then delete it, but why would I deprive you of meeting this kitty with a hitler 'stache?)

etc.

I accomplished a few things this weekend: Finally lounged in Cookie Lounge and caught up with Dani, laid out on main mall, saw The Reader and understood why Kate Winslet won the oscar, ran a ridiculous, hilly, windy long run, made blueberry pancakes, watched Titanic for 4 whole hours on TBS, napped, coffee'd a lot, and boat partied with Iron Spikes. <--- it's after about this point up until a few hours ago that I stopped accomplishing things and started doing the opposite. The most important things in life, however, don't come without the occasional opposite-of-accomplishments - how else would we know how much those things mean to us? 

Also, I really like The Fray's newest CD. It's been nice background noise. Background noise to all the important things I've done today, like surf facebook and strategize the best way to make miniature layer cakes (stay tuned). I did get my easy run in despite my mood, but I miss my ipod that has somehow disappeared since the week after I went to Boulder. I didn't bring it to Boulder, so I'm not sure what happened there.

Alright I'm done. I'd still like to know how to post pictures, however, if someone wants to throw that out there. Gracias.