Let The Jokes Begin

Well, today was an interesting end to a good start. I started school on Tuesday. I’m so stoked, my last semester of school. The semester just started and I’m already excited about graduating. I even have a cap and gown already. My mom’s friend Tribbie is letting me borrow her cap and gown from her master’s graduation at A&M this past December. All I have to do is buy a tassel. I tried it on Tuesday night and it’s perfect. That will save me some money. Thanks Trib. We know the graduation will be either May 9th or May 10th. Once the university goes through all the graduation applications they receive by the end of this month, they will know how many students are graduating from each department of each college and will create a schedule to make it all fit into four ceremonies, two on each day.

As for school, my class, Introduction to Biblical Archaeology, so far has been interesting. I’m not as impressed with the professor as I hoped to be. He doesn’t use any of the available resources or technology the university has created to make his life or the students’ life easier, except for electronic course reserves at the library. Those are old hat if you ask me. The class is packed and you have to be in the room at least 15 minutes before to get a decent seat. You know I like to sit in the front and so far I’ve had to sit about half way up. It’s hard to hear him even with a lapel microphone. I’m going to have to start getting there earlier. Even though we got the “this isn’t a Bible study” lecture the first day of class, he mentions specific scripture and stories from the Bible often. He’s even mentioned Jesus a few times. So for me, it is a Bible study because I’m learning things about the Bible I didn’t know previously. For the next four weeks, we are covering the introduction to Biblical archaeology before we get to specific times periods. We will cover 10,000-8,500 BC to the first century AD. So far we’ve been given a 45 page reading assignment. But of course, the textbook for the class isn’t in the bookstore yet, so the prof (actually his teaching assistant) had to scan the pages in for us and post them on the library electronic course reserves. I don’t think it will be in when the bookstore says, (not surprised) so I ordered mine from Amazon.com (saved $7) and it is already on its way to me. I bet I get my book before the bookstore gets them in.

As for swimming, Thursday was my first day to actually swim. It was great. Everything came back to me, breathing, head placement, arm and leg movement, torso twisting, a few strokes. But I’ve decided to take a stroke clinic or two depending on the cost so I can get further instruction and correction. I was tempted to attempt a flip turn on Thursday, but decided to wait a few weeks. I did a workout I found online. It’s part of an eight week program, but I plan to spread it out since it’s been two and a half years since I’ve swam regularly. The pool was set up for 25 meter lanes. I swam for a total of 45 minutes to one hour with a short 15 minute break in between for a fire drill that required the entire rec center to be evacuated. Turns out workers in one area of the rec center smelled gas so the staff decided to be better safe than sorry. I can appreciate that since I was in an area closer to the boilers and natural gas and heat don’t mix well. It was disturbing to my workout and the cold outside didn’t help. We weren’t allowed to go into the locker rooms to grab more clothes or anything, just evacuate.

So there we were soaking wet only in bathing suits and they are telling us we have to go outside where it is 41 degrees. Yeah, we were happy about that. I had one towel already and they gave us as many towels as we needed plus these huge insulated parkas the swim team uses. I was happy to see those. They helped a lot but it was still cold. We finally went back in and I resumed my workout with a short warm-up. I wish I had some kind of abacus or counting frame to keep up with my laps. I swam about 200 meters before we had to evacuate. That was a 9 minute warm-up and the start of a 9 minute skill refresher. Then I did a 22 minute main set plus a 5 minute cool down. I think in total I swam 700 meters which is about 0.44 of a mile, almost half a mile. Not bad for my first swim in two and a half years. I was starving after that and my legs were slow. My right hip hurt a little also, but I have been doing some yoga hip openers to help with that. I’ll be doing yoga everyday to combat the pain I’ll feel from all this swimming. The time of day I swim isn’t busy at all. I plan to continue swimming at that time. It also gets me in a locker room shower before a swimming conditioning kinesiology class gets out filling up the locker room.

As for the title of this post, two weeks ago I started having pain in my left lower jaw. It has progressively gotten worse, but slowly. I have no idea what I did to my jaw. (Here’s where the jokes begin.) There has not been any popping, grinding, ear pain or headache, just pain near the joint when I chew (more jokes), but not any when I talk (even more jokes). Around Tuesday of this week it actually started getting a little stiff and was tough for me to open. So on Wednesday night I decided I better go to the doctor before it gets worse and I can’t open my mouth at all. (Insert more jokes here.) How would I eat? I’d starve! I did some research online about jaw pain because I wasn’t sure if I should go to the dentist or my PCM. The census online was to go to a TMJ specialist, but I am not comfortable with my dentist at all and on Thursday morning I made an appointment with my PCM. By Thursday evening, thank goodness after dinner, the pain started moving up the side of my face and giving me a headache. I did not feel well. I had previously tried Tylenol and Advil but neither helped. At my appointment, my doctor examined the area externally and internally (which wasn't pleasant) and decided to send me for x-rays. She also gave me prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I went straight to the lab for the x-rays hoping they’d be able to get the results to her the same day. After a 30 minute wait in the lobby and ten x-rays in different positions, I was informed the results wouldn’t get to her until Monday. So I have to wait to see what’s going on.

I turned in my prescriptions and ran all the rest of my errands before picking them up to go home and take them. I was planning to work when I got home, but that was before I found out I was going to be prescribed those meds. I wanted to get them in my system as soon as possible. I ate a small meal as to not have an empty stomach then took a half pill of the muscle relaxer and one Tylenol 3 with codeine as the pharmacist recommended. I waited a while and felt nothing. So I took the other half of the muscle relaxer and that helped. I was actually able to chew with no pain. I started to feel a little woozy when I stood up from the Tylenol 3 with codeine and decided I better stay down for a while and that I didn't need the second one yet. I think it has worn off a little, hence being able to blog, but I can’t take anymore for a bit. Darn.

My plan for tomorrow was to go for a long walk in the late morning as it warmed up to 52 degrees and cut plywood for the attic in the early afternoon. I’m not sure how I will feel tomorrow when I wake up, but I can’t drive or operate machinery on either medication. So I have two options, go with the pain until after I do those two things or take the meds and not do anything at all. I probably shouldn’t go for too long of a walk on muscle relaxers and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I wonder if I could walk at all. I was really hoping to be done with one side of the attic this weekend. Oh well, they say when you own a home you never run out of things to do. So putting that off a little longer won’t make a big difference. It will also give me time to hit my family up for help. :)

Project Gutenburg

I came across this article, "Peruse the world's best public library" and thought I'd share it. It's about Project Gutenburg which you can download 22,000 classic books for free. And they are adding more every day. I recommend reading the article first so you can get an idea of how and why the project began before you jump over to the website. I think it's a really awesome thing they are doing to save great literature, but I also think it's a great way to read books without having to buy them or if you have transportation issues getting to a library to check them out. Also imagine riding the subway and reading a classic on your palm or smartphone or whatever device you have. You wouldn't have to lug a huge book on the subway, save space and stop getting dirty looks from other passengers because you're taking up so much space because you have to turn the pages while you read. Yes, the DC rush hour riders can be that nit-picky. You should see how they act when you're trying to read the Express which is regular newspaper size! I hope many of you partake in this great service.

I had a relaxing but productive weekend. I got a few things done on the house that Roger & I didn't have time to do while he was home. I was able to get all the Christmas decorations down and packed into tubs, hung some decorative metal gates on the front porch, got rid of another box in the garage by putting all our photo albums in a basket under one of the end tables, and started working on the attic flooring by nailing boards across the inside of the exterior walls for the plywood to sit on since the joists are flush with the wall and the plywood doesn't have anything to rest on. It felt good to get those done. Now I start the rest of the list on Wednesday. Wednesday I plan to cut the plywood pieces I need and place them in the attic. I know I will have to cut them in half to get them up there through the attic stairway hole. If I have time, I will also nail them in and move stuff from another area to that area and start working on the flooring in the next area. I borrowed my dad's pneumatic nail gun and man, what a life saver! No pre-drilling or manual hammering. It took me a whole five minutes to get those exterior wall boards put up. Pneumatic tools are a life saver. Thanks dad!

Today is going to be filled with work related tasks and getting ready for school tomorrow. Texas universities officially started today, but my class is on Tuesday/Thursday, so tomorrow will be all about school. I'm also going to start swimming two days a week before class since I'll be there anyway and the Natatorium at A&M is unbelievable. I have to pay the Student Recreation Center fee anyway, so I might as well use it. By the way, my dad helped build the Student Rec Center that holds the Natatorium many, many years ago. I'm hoping to figure out a time when the lap lanes aren't busy so I don't have to circle with anyone. Indoor pools are rare here so they get packed at certain times. Before I moved to Virginia, I used to swim at the downtown Austin YMCA's indoor pool and after work the lap lanes were crazy busy. I usually had to circle with three other people. That's not fun, especially when only one person may be a trained swimmer and the rest of us aren't. Fast swimmers throw my whole workout off. They push me harder, but that tires me out faster. So we'll see how crazy the university pool is and I'll let you know how it goes.

So as you can see, I didn't do a whole lot this weekend, but I am really happy with what I achieved especially all the relaxing. I went to the 5:00 p.m. service at Austin Stone last night since I worked in the morning on the attic. It was a really good message. We're still going through 1 Corinthians and yesterday Pastor Matt covered 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 and his two points were 1) we must remember church leadership does have authority in our lives and we must honor the leaders of the church, but our loyalty is to Jesus Christ and we must never submit to the point that it defames or dishonors Jesus and 2) our hearts need to be in love with the message not the messenger because God moves and works through men. The church in Corinth was doing both of these. His over all point was if there is ever a situation or time where there is a division or argument or quarrel in the church, he hoped we would be the one to stand up for unity. The church was all a buzz because all the new classes, trainings, forums, etc are starting up for this semester. They have a lot of different classes to offer. I read through all of them and there are many I'd like to take, but I've decided to stick with the one day forums this semester. The thought of a 5-10 week study is more than I want to handle right now. But there are some good ones. The message was good and funny, so if you get a chance you should listen to it by clicking on the link above. And of course, the worship was moving, like always.

Turned In Research Paper & Last Day of Class

Well, I just turned in my research paper, again. It's kind of funny now, but of course I was freaking out inside at the time. I submitted my research paper this morning at home. I had gone over it several times to check for, well, everything! I uploaded it to turnitin.com and as I was about to hit the submit button I prayed a little prayer. Actually I prayed a big prayer. I was so nervous about hitting the submit button, but I did anyway. I finished getting ready to leave for campus and thought about something. I ran to the office and grabbed one of the library books I used for a secondary source. I opened my final paper on the computer and found one of the references I used from that book then I checked the end note. My hunch was right. I put the wrong book title and author for it. Yes, my first thought was, "Crap!" I went straight to turnitin.com to see if I could resubmit my paper, but of course, I couldn't. I got the pop-up error stating until the earlier submission is deleted by your instructor resubmission is impossible! So I emailed my professor explaining what I wanted to do and what I needed her to do. I finished eating breakfast and checked my email again before I left. Nothing. I knew she would be in the office today but wasn't sure what time. She has a young child and sometimes gets in later than planned. I had already saved the document to my thumb drive so I would have it with me where ever I happened to be when I was able to upload it. I also emailed it to myself at my school email and my personal email, just in case. So I drove to B-CS and went straight to the library to check my email. The first email listed was from her stating she deleted my first submission. Thank the Lord! I checked it one more time and submitted it. Yes, I said another prayer. Talk about relief. I'm still a little gitty inside but I know this will go away soon enough.

Today is my last day of class. I am really happy about that. I actually only have one class today, anthropology. My history professor gave us the day off to work on our papers. She's wonderful like that. Obviously I needed it. Sometimes I just put my head in my hands and shake it at myself. The rest of this week is work, catching up on reading for anthropology and outlining all the reading for the final next Wednesday. Then Friday I'm picking up my mom on the way to my sister's in Huntington for my niece's 5th birthday party this weekend. My dad will drive up Saturday for the party and my mom will ride back with him. I'm also going to try to test drive a vehicle or two this weekend with my sister and probably some of her kids in tow. Roger & I are trying to figure out what vehicle to buy when he gets home for good, hopefully in January or February. We'll need two vehicles when he returns since I'll have one semester of school left. I'm thinking a compact SUV and Roger wants us to also check out cross-overs. I figured out I don't want a car as I thought I did before. I've been driving our truck for the past four and a half years and have gotten used to the power and being higher off the ground. I've driven a couple of friends' cars in DC the last few times I was there and it drove me crazy. I do not like being that low. I also like the power in our truck but prefer fuel economy. So we've been reading Consumer Reports for recommendations and checking the government crash test ratings. It can be overwhelming. But I've been praying for the Lord to help us make the best decision and I have complete faith He will. If you know anything about Roger's purchasing habits and my research habits, I'm pretty sure the Lord has equipped us with the ability to make a good decision.

It's weird. I've been looking forward to this day the whole semester. But so far it's not the fireworks and champagne popping kind of day I thought it would be. Maybe after this class is over or next week after the final. I kept thinking I should do something to celebrate like indulge in a kolache for breakfast. I know, pretty lame. But I'll control myself and celebrate with birthday cake this weekend. Off to read...

My Crazy Life

This is going to be a rapid fire, all over the place and long (sorry Steph) post. I'm feeling it today. I'm feeling overwhelmed and freaking out a little bit inside. I got back to Austin last night. Thought I'd be fine and be able to get back to the grind with no problems. I had so much to do last night that I went to sleep really late. But couldn't actually fall asleep. I guess my body got used to sleeping next to my husband. I just could not fall asleep until right before my alarm went off. Then I hit off instead of snooze so I overslept. I don't know how or why I woke up when I did on my own, but I'm glad I woke up at all. I usually get up around 6am and head out by 7am or 7:30am. I woke up at 8:30am! I was gone by 8:50am and arrived at school about 10:45am even after stopping at my favorite kolache bakery in Caldwell. And I didn't even speed too bad, only 4-5 mph over the speed limit where I could. I was starving since I didn't have time for breakfast and really needed some comfort food this morning. I know worldly things won't solve the problem, but it sure felt better as I was eating my favorite kolaches, poppy seed. Yes, that was plural. I had two! It's okay since I've lost 10 pounds this semester, probably from stress.

As I was approaching the parking lot I'm assigned to I could see both buses I can ride driving off. I only had to wait about five minutes for both the #1 Bonfire and #5 Bush School buses to arrive. I jumped on the #5 and arrived on campus with 15 minutes to walk to the building. I got to class on time but didn't have enough time to use the restroom. Thank goodness I didn't have to go too bad, like normal. Sorry. We covered problems people were having with their research paper and got our book reviews back before the professor left so we could do an evaluation. I am not happy with my grade, 79, C+. This is the first C I've made in this class. Of six assignments, I've made 3 A's, 2 B's and now this C. And I thought I did so well on it too. I was actually pretty pissed off about it.

After we finished our evaluations, five of us stayed in the classroom and discussed our disappointment with our grades on the book reviews which led to discussion about our final paper and overall grade in the class. Everyone else is graduating this December so they are freaking out more than me. One girl sat with me and helped me figure out my grade in the class so far. I have an 87.9, B+, which is not bad. I actually had no idea what my grade was because I had not calculated it. So I'm feeling a little better about that since it means if I make an 80 on my final paper, I'll make an 88.1 in the class. If I make a 70 on my final paper, I'll make an 84.8 in the class. AND if I make a 60 on my final paper, I'll make an 81.5 in the class. IF we calculated it all correctly. So I'd have to do really, really bad on my final paper to make below a B in this class. I know I have to make at least a C in the class since it's a class for my major, but I think I only need a C in it to keep my GPA above the minimum for my major.

I'm usually not a person who figures out the minimum I need to make on a test or paper to pass a class, but I do not want to take this class again or pay for it again. My other problem is I'm an overachiever and I care about my grade in this class and what my professor thinks about me. Although I have an "I don't care" attitude, deep, deep, deep down inside, I really do care. I wish I could be like that sometimes, but I can't. I wasn't raised that way. Darn hard-working, respectable parents of mine are to blame for that. SO I made an appointment for tomorrow morning and Sunday afternoon at the University Writing Center for help improving my paper. I'm going to spend tonight fixing all the little problems so I can use all of my 45 minute appointment with a writing expert on the bigger issues.

Once I turn in my final paper for my history class on Tuesday, December 4th by 5:00pm, I will finish reading two weeks worth of assignments for my anthropology class for the final on Wednesday, December 12th. While I was in DC our grades were posted for the third test in that class. I made an 83, B. I'm cool with that. I have an 88 so far in this class and I'm not worried at all about it or my final grade. Plus if I go to the local natural history museum, I can get two bonus points added to my final grade. So you know I'll be going to help my overall grade any way I can.

Now that I got all that off my chest, I feel better. Wow, this blog is good for something. Thanks for reading my ramblings. And thanks for all your prayers. I'll try to post this weekend if I get time about my wonderful time in DC with Roger. It really was a blessing to be with him especially when he received his MEB. I was so happy to be able to be there to see one step of the process and meet so many people that have helped Roger to get to this point and make it through this whole process. It was great to get to celebrate with him. I'll tell you more about it all when I get a chance. Until then...pray for me to make it through this next two weeks and keep praying for Roger to be able to come home to me soon. I love you all and appreciate your love and prayers so much. I hope you all know how much I do. :)

Only One Class Left!!

I'm so excited! I met with the Anthropology advisor in between classes today and they are going to allow an anthropology class I took at junior college to substitute for a 200 level anthropology class at A&M which means I only have to take one class next semester to graduate in May. Yeah!! I have to take one 300-400 level anthropology class. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've decided to take Intro to Biblical Archaeology. I can't wait! Now all I have to do is make it through this semester. There are two and a half weeks left in school. I have an anthropology test next Tuesday, a 3 page scholarly book review due next Wednesday, the final draft of my 20 page research paper due Dec 4th and the final in my anthropology class on Dec 12. I only need C's in both of these classes although I am striving for A's. Please pray for God to give me wisdom, knowledge and understanding from the Holy Spirit.

Please also pray for Roger. He found out all his paperwork was submitted to the Board and there is a possibility he could have a decision from them maybe by the end of the week. If he agrees with their findings and is happy with the percentage of disability they offer, he won't have to go through the formal process and would start working on coming home. Which would be a lot sooner than we have been expecting with other events that happened recently. So please keep that in your prayers. I sure would love for him to be home as soon as possible. It's not fun at Walter Reed at all for him either.

Patience, joy and protection from the father of lies would help too. Thanks you guys. Love ya!