Finally…A College Graduate!

Well, I’m finally a college graduate. I know, it’s about time. My oldest nephew William asked me Friday night how long I had been in college and my response was, “Forever.” I made an A in my class but I haven’t found out yet what I made on the final exam. I could email the professor, but I guess it doesn’t really matter now. Thursday night Roger, my mom and I went to an Association of Former Students event called the Next Tradition. It’s where you learn about being a former student at Texas A&M. The 2007-2008 Texas A&M parents of the year, Roger & Teresa Lane, were there with their Bus 12. I became a member and got my former student association vehicle decal. It’s the only sticker I will put on my car. Roger put it on for me the same night.

Graduation the next morning was interesting. I was excited and a little nervous but at the same time a little annoyed. I wore the dress I made in January and heels, wore my gown down stairs to line up and was carrying my cap, lipstick and a breakfast bar and as I walked into the room I was handed a survey to fill out including a pencil, a program and instructions to read for lining up, walking the stage, smiling at the stage photographer and another reminder to stay during the whole ceremony. I was like do I really need more stuff to carry. We stood for one hour in somewhat alphabetical order waiting to go in. There were no chairs or anything. Some people just sat down on the floor. I was like, I’m in my dress and heels, there’s no way I’m getting on the floor. So I stood and chatted with my fellow classmates griping about the whole ordeal we were about to have to sit through for another 2-3 hours. As we were all talking, complaining and laughing about it all, I joked about how ungrateful we all were for all our complaining. I had already talked to my parents about staying through the whole ceremony to the end to which we decided since I was probably going to be close to the end, we might as well stay for the whole thing. At 9:15 a.m. we saw the line start moving across the gym we were waiting in and we finally started to make our way onto the floor.

As I approached the entrance to the floor, it was getting louder and louder in the arena. And when I entered the arena, I saw why. The family and friends gathered to watch the ceremony were going wild. It felt like we were the home team entering the arena for a major sporting event. I was shocked, but it did feel us up with excitement. That helped make the situation a lot better. Once we were seated and all the introductions were done, the speaker began and I honestly tuned him out. He was some political science professor and I really didn’t care what he had to say. It was all about political regimes and presidents and the war. I was dreading his speech once I found out who our speaker was going to be a few weeks ago. So I read the program and that’s when I realized I wasn’t near the end but almost exactly in the middle. It was finally my row’s time to stand and cross the stage. It was exciting, but nerve racking as we got closer and started to ascend the stairs. I pronounced my name and it was recited almost immediately. I stepped toward President Murano and said thank you to her congratulations, shook her hand with my right hand, accepted my diploma with my left hand, smiled at the stage photographer and walked on. It was over. There were four history professors near the end of the stage shaking hands and congratulating, but it went by so fast. It was like, all that preparation and waiting for what seemed like four maybe five seconds. As I approached my seat I saw everyone else opening the tubes to read their diplomas or check that it was the real thing. So I did the same even though I knew it was going to be there and not some piece of paper that said sorry you didn’t graduate. I sat there for about ten minutes as people around me were getting up and walking out. It didn’t matter to me that they were leaving. I wasn’t offended or anything. When everyone in line around me was discussing whether they were going to leave or not, I mentioned that my family had already decided to stay. There was the whole other side of the arena to go, maybe about 500 more students. So I looked back to see what my family was doing and my mom and sister were looking right at me. They started motioning for me to leave. I was like, for real? I mouthed, “Did you ask Dad? Did you check with everyone else?” But they couldn’t understand me. When they waved good bye at me, I realized they really wanted to leave. So I mustered up some courage to stand up and walk down the row and out. I felt weird at first, but after I opened the door from the stairwell into the concourse, there were gowns everywhere so I didn’t feel bad anymore. We took some pictures with my family and headed over to the Memorial Student Center to drop off my diploma for framing. We were there about three and a half hours total with waiting before hand and my family waiting to get good seats, but it would have probably been four to five if we had stayed for the whole thing. Then we headed home to change clothes and get ready for the party the next day.

The party was a lot of fun. Stressful and exhausting from all the work, but lots of fun and everyone really had a great time. Seeing family and friends who I haven’t seen in a long time was great. The food was good. The music was great. The cake was delicious. We all had a lot of fun. Everyone there was instrumental in me obtaining my degree over all these years. There are lots of pictures on our Flickr site from the whole weekend. After cleaning up a little more Sunday morning, we headed home to Austin to unload and unpack so we could get ready to pack again to leave Tuesday morning for O´ahu. We are excited about this trip. Roger and I were talking last night during dinner and he told me again how proud he was of me. I told him thanks but that it didn’t feel like that big a deal to me. I think I feel this way because it’s taken me so long to graduate because of my own stubbornness and stupidity. I am glad to have my degree and look forward to what doors it opens up for me. As I was telling my sister-in-law Cathy, I hope to find a job that will allow me to be creative and not stagnate my intellect. I’m excited to see what I can find in the Austin area. I will let you know what the search turns up. Okay, I need to cut Roger’s hair so we can finish packing and try to get to bed early tonight. We have a long day of flying tomorrow. I want to thank everyone for praying for me over these years and especially the last year of school while being separated from Roger. I really appreciate all the support and prayer. Now it’s Roger’s turn to finish school. :)

Final Exam Tomorrow!

I can't believe it's already Monday night before my final. My last final exam at that. And I graduate Friday morning. It's all happening too fast. I don't have time to enjoy it. I want time to slow down. I need more time to spend with Roger before we both go back to work full time. I'm excited about graduating, but the semester flew by so fast. I loved every minute of what I learned. I wish I had another semester of this class again. Our little vacation in Oahu is going to be over before we know it. But of course, I'll try very hard to get on island time once we get there.

We finished the patio electricity project. Don't worry, I studied one to two hours every day while I helped Roger. See pictures here. It is so nice. It's going to make our backyard even more pleasant. Roger did a great job. I knew we could do it by ourselves. And he only got shocked once and at the very end. It was kind of weird. The one time we slipped and didn't cut off the power. But we thought we were okay since we were just straightening an outlet cover. Guess not. We ended up cutting off the power and taking it out to check for nicks or cuts in the wires, but nothing. So we closed it up and it works fine. Roger thinks he might have slid his finger toward the back of the outlet as he was holding the outlet steady it to turn the center screw. But it's all done and done to code and works great. We already sat under the patio and enjoyed the breeze from the ceiling fan while the ceiling fan light was dimmed low enough to keep the bugs away but give us enough light to see. It's really nice. I'm so proud of Roger. It took a little longer than he wanted, but this was our first electrical project completely on our own. And I'm glad we did it right instead of rushed and cutting corners.

Now I just have to get the grass growing in part of my flower bed under control. I finally gave up on pulling it and used Round-up to kill it. It's dying and will make it easier to remove. Then one of these days we'll get around to painting all the pipes and electrical outlets on the house the exterior house color to help it blend into the house. Like I said, one of these days. We'll just add that to our to do list with all the other things we hope to finish one of these days.

Another great accomplishment, Roger has been seizure free for over a year now. Yeah! We went to Brook Army Medical Center (BAMC) last Friday to get him established with doctors and specialists here. You know the military, it wasn't an easy process, but it was easier than WRAMC. And his PCM, LTC G-G, is awesome. She was great. Roger is going to "retire" at the end of May and will be switching to a PCM here in Austin. Hopefully he can get my PCM, Dr. Smith, but right now she's not accepting new Tricare patients. I have no idea why not?! So I've put in the call to beg her to take Roger. Please pray for the Lord's will to be done with that. You know how the Lord works. He might have someone better for Roger to be his PCM, but we'll let him lead us.

Okay, I'm off to bed. Need all the sleep I can get to be ready for my exam. Please pray for me to retain everything I read and study. I'd like to make an A on this exam. Of course, I'll let you know what I make as soon as I find out.

Little Black Dress

Yes, I am a typical female and have already started thinking about what I’m going to wear for graduation. You know how they say all women should have a little black dress that you look fabulous in so in the event something comes up last minute, you have a tried and true dress you can throw on and go. Well, I have a little black dress for dressier functions that I love and purchased on sale last year but haven’t had a reason to wear yet. When I began to think about just what the heck I wanted to wear on graduation, under that lovely, figure flattering graduation gown no doubt, I thought, oh, I can finally wear that little black dress with my killer black pumps and I won’t have to buy anything. Then I started to remember that little black dress was loose on me. Not a bad thing, except I lost ten pounds last semester. When the weather got cooler and I started to wear jeans, none of mine fit and I couldn't figure out why. I eventually weighed myself there was the answer. I couldn't believe ten pounds would make that big of a difference. Now I have been swimming regularly for almost two months (with the plan to continue for the rest of my life) and was kind of hoping to lose ten more pounds by the end of this semester. If it's already loose on me, it's going to be huge on me by May. And if you know me even a little, I don’t like to hide my figure. So now I will not only have to get a new little black dress (more shopping, darn), but I need to hurry up and wear this little black dress before it’s too big. Roger needs to hurry up and get home so he can take me out. That or my girlfriends need to take me out somewhere nice so I can wear it. (Hint, hint.) I’ll lose weight to fit into a dress, but I’m not going to gain weight. Thank goodness I have a back-up for graduation now.

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. :)

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!