Goals

So if I haven't mentioned this before, Andrew and I are moving to a different apartment this August.  Currently we live in a small 2 bedroom apartment and it isn't too bad.  The new place is the upstairs apartment of a duplex, a bit larger and with tons of personality.  More storage and counter space in the kitchen, tons of windows that have views that do not include the neighbor's windows (including an incredible view of the campus and some of downtown pullman), huuuge closets, a teensy little "reading room" with a built in book case that will become my office, a front yard and a backyard (which includes dog runs), storage in the basement, and on-site laundry that is not coin operated.  
So my goals for this new apartment are thusly:

1. Start a potted herb garden (including mint, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lavendar, sage, basil, and others)
   
2. Clean up the dog runs
3. Get a dog and train it extensively in both obedience and in preperation for back packing trips
4. Paint!  I am thinking a red or green for the kitchen, green for the living room, blue or purple or green for the bedroom, maybe a yellow or orange for Andrew's office, yellow with blue accents for the bathroom....yeah.  I am excited about painting.
5. Andrew wants a barbeque
6. Get a portable dishwasher and convince the owners to split the cost with us in order to "improve the apartment" after our departure
7. Organize our closets from the get-go.  Clothes in the bedroom, hiking crap in the office, misc in the living room...
8. Possible curtains, especially on the wall of windows in the bedroom.
9. Andrew wants to make a new entertainment center to be less ugly and more portable than our current entertainment center and less flimsy than the cheap ones we can buy.
10. Figure out bus routes/bike routes to school.
11. Continue my quest to become a decent cook (taking advantage of the extra counter space)
12. Buy a set of nice, matching canisters for grains and pasta and flour and sugar etc (currently have flour, white sugar, and brown sugar in tupperware containers, and powdered sugar and half a bag of cornmeal in glas canisters, several bags including wheat germ and the rest of the cornmeal just clipped shut, and several glass containers holding leftover uncooked pasta.  I just want something more cohesive.)
13. Maybe become friends with our downstairs neighbors and have bbqs and game nights.
14. Explore the nearby park with our dog (see goal #3)
15. Get/make an awesome cat tower for Talen.
16. Do laundry in loads as needed (as opposed to our current stratedy of filling up the jumbo washers and dryers with unsorted clothes at a laundromat in Moscow...that's right.  We do our laundry in another state.)

Anatomy Test III

Well, all I really need to say about this test is that it sucked with the force of a thousand black holes.
And then I need to add this: at least one girl was seen running out of the test crying, and at least one other girl was seen crying.  We don't normally cry during tests.  I think this says something about this particular test.
Also, I was walking out of the test with a classmate I don't normally talk to (there are 103 of us...I honestly still don't know everyone's name.  Yes, I am terrible) and I was like "Well, that was ugly."  There was a pause and then she said "It was, wasn't it??  I mean...it wasn't just me?"

Down with anatomy.

In other news, I am continuing my work out routine and it is going well.  Talen is donating blood this next Thursday.  And I have another test later today.

Mission: stop being fat

So after watching the numbers on my scale creep slowly up and realizing that I have gone up a cup size, I decided it was time to stop this whole "getting fat" trend before it reeally gets moving and becomes even harder to stop (like a freight train- fat has a lot of momentum). The rec center has personal trainers available so I decided to take advantage of one (sadly, although I have a mandatory fee with tuition that pays for access to the rec center, the personal trainers and classes all cost extra. I think that is lame, but whatever. I went for it anyway). So I had my first training appointment last night. Now...I hurt. The goal is to get me in shape and start working off the pounds while at the same time toning the few muscles I have. So my routine is to do 20 minutes on one of the elliptical (apparently when I was doing this on my own I wasn't doing it right cause I was a LOT more tired after those 20 minutes than I usually am after 35). Then I did 10 sets of lunges while holding a medicine ball, then 10 sets of heel raises on a weight machine (so I was raising more than just my own body weight), then repeated each of those. Then I did two different machines to work my back muscles, 10 reps x2 yet again (this is a magic number I see). Then I did bicep curls and triceps...also curls? I don't know- it is all behind my head. Then I did "twists" where I sat on the mat with my knees up and my feet off the floor holding a medicine ball and twisting back and forth, interspersed with squats while holding some weights. Then I did a whole big sit up routine.
So now I am sore. Not HUGELY sore...I mean, I don't cry when I walk up or down stairs or anything...but I am definitely considering taking advantage of another service the rec center supplies: massage.

Spring Break

So there has been sooo much going on this spring break.  Andrew and I decided to stay home over break for the purpose of laziness.  I must say that it has been enjoyable.  For instance, I am swiftly working my way through Gilmore Girls...although this has been difficult due to the fact that Andrew has been insisting that I wait for him to watch the show.  He is now off gallivanting in the woods by himself which means I get to sit in the apartment and watch Gilmore Girls allll day long.  
In other news:

• I got a public library card and an armful of books in my mother's fond tradition.  
  
• Talen is well on his way to becoming a full blown blood donor.  I am VERY excited.
• I planned on being a very good girl over break and writing all my thank you notes.
• I have studied some immunology but not all the test material yet and nothing beyond immunology.
• I have written ZERO thank you notes.  
• I have also done only one set of dishes and took out one bag of garbage and done NO laundry.
• I ventured into the world of pie making.  Talen ate part of the crust, so two planned pies became one pie alone.  Although I still have a stick and half of crisco left so the chocolate cream pie may not be just a dream...but the apple pie turned out incredibly ugly but delicious.  I only broke down into violent swearing and dough pounding once and managed to not huck the jar of cinnamon at the wall.  And I only cried when Andrew came home and beheld the extremely ugly pie (don't worry, the man who calmly tucked the hideous and freakishly misshapen scarf I made him for Christmas around his neck certainly did not say anything inconsiderate about the pie.  ...I cried about the scarf too).  And the amount of pie crust dough (read: flour + crisco) I ate combined with the banana schnapps taken after the pie became very ugly made for an unpleasant night.  BUT: the pie tasted wonderful and I have been told that anyone who can make pie crust like I did can do anything.  
• Holy crap!  Rory just agreed to sit for an oil painting at her rich grandmother's house!  This will be high drama!  Must stop blog writing and get back to Gilmore Girls!

The dance of love...

No, don't be frightened by the title.  This is PG.  Okay, maybe PG-13.  
    So, to follow up on last night's drama, not too long after I posted Andrew and I decided to let Talen out of his carrier and let him use his (freshly changed) litter box and eat dinner and drink some water.  He acted like an abused kitten, shying away from us.  But he spent the night in our bed and the couch remains pristine, so...for now he is tentatively back in our good graces.
    Now, tonight, Andrew and I started something new.  Something a little out of our comfort zone.  We stepped out on a limb and signed up for beginner's Argentine Tango.  It is through the Rec center so it is fairly inexpensive and I think it will be fun!  Tonight we learned that Andrew has big feet and I apparently can't walk backwards.  This should be a thrilling learning experience all around!  In all seriousness, we learned the basic walking pattern of Tango.  As well as the practice embrace, the open embrace, and the close embrace.  That one was particularly awkward given the size of our boobs/feet (you can figure out which one applies to each of us).  But methinks this will be fun!

Considering Felicide

So I am a terrible cat owner in that I only do the litter box about once a week.  But this does not give Talen the right to be an asshole.  Especially since I did the littler box 2-3 days ago.  And I realized at that time that I needed to change the litter box completely and mentally put kitty litter on the grocery list.  Well Andrew and I went grocery shopping today and forgot the litter.  Apparently Talen was a bit put out by this because we were putting the groceries away and he went and pissed on our brand new futon.   Andrew caught him in the act so we were able to get our super-brand new futon cover off and the cover on the memory foam pad off.  So the cat pee got a bit on the memory foam and (thank God) not at all on the futon mattress.  Andrew Resolved the bejeezus out of the memory foam pad and we put off our dinner plans and dashed off to the laundromat with the covers (can anyone say "McDonalds?"  We can).  Needless to say, Talen also got a pretty firm spanking followed by an unceremonious shoving into his carrier.  He will be spending the night there, in the office, without the privilege of dinner.  Talen is definitely in the cat-house right now.