God's got a plan for all of us and I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet.

The view from my apartment.  Don't mind the boat in the front.

To the left now y'all.

We have a cute little yellow tree!  I don't know what kind it is...

Leo got to venture outside.  He kind of snuck out, but he didn't try to escape until a couple minutes after this picture, so he was ok.

He says, "I'm the definition of handsome."

One of PD Pie's favorite things to do...be a watch dog.

Watch cat.

And here's me and my baby at the beach!  He likes the beach much more when I don't throw him in the water.

Got a couple bottles, but a couple ain't enough

I'm officially going on to third semester!  I ended up doing pretty well in all of my classes and I DO NOT have to retake second semester, so I'm pleased.  However, that semester kind of kicked my ass, hence the title of this post.  We did some pretty serious drinking the night that we finished our last final, which included falling face first into a puddle after tumbling down an inflatable slide.  Yikes.


Anyway, I've been too busy recuperating to post lately, but now I've had a couple days of rest and my brain is kind of working again.  Break has been pretty amazing so far and honestly, I've barely done anything.  This is exactly how I like to spend my breaks though.  I get so stressed out and busy during school that I don't even bother making plans when I have some time off because I know that all I want to do it lounge around.  So that is exactly what I've been doing.  I've been hanging out with PD and Leo, checking on the new baby chicks in the yard behind mine, enjoying my new front porch, and watching all kinds of TV shows online (I'm writing this post while I'm waiting for "House" to load).  I went to the beach a couple times, which I do totally love, but it's honestly not very restful for me.  I can't sleep on the beach, so it's basically me squinting under my sunglasses, reapplying my sunscreen and running into the water so my feet don't get burned on the sand.  However, I try to go when I can.  I ran out of sunscreen on our recent catamaran trip and my face got way too sunburned, so there will be no further outdoor activities until I get me some SPF 800.  My face seriously blistered.  Not cool, sun.  Not cool.


I moved into my new apartment, which I absolutely love.  We get a great breeze (amazing how you get some air in your apartment when you have windows that actually open...), we have a gorgeous view of the island (and nearby islands as well), we have a huge yard for PD and the other dogs that live here, chickens and ducks in the yard behind me, and since it's at the top of a huge hill, it's super quiet because nobody comes up here unless they have a reason to.  I'll post some pictures soon.  It's awesome.


To go along with our huge yard, we also have huge fire ant hills, which is fantastic (it's kind of hard to convey sarcasm through typed words, but imagine...would lots of fire ants be awesome?  No sir).  PD has gotten a couple fire ant bites recently :(  My poor little guy has been pretty itchy, but it seems to bother me more than him.  Add his fire ant bites to my horribly burned face and I think you'll get a lot of indoor Mommy-Puppy bonding time.  Either way, I hope they go away soon.  I hate taking PD out to go potty and then finding bites on him :(


My birthday came and went.  It was the week before finals, so there wasn't really any celebrating, at least until after finals were over, then we had some fun.  It was just kind of a weird birthday because I had to study all day.  But I'm 24 now.  It feels like 22.


So now I'm just sitting here bonding with my dog and my cat, both of them sleeping next to me.  Well, my cat must have known that I was enjoying his presence because he just got up and left.  Faithful little PD is still by my side though.  It's kind of weird how as soon as I get on a break, I start immediately dreading the start of the next semester.  This happened in undergrad too.  I seriously starting getting bummed out about having to go back to school like 2 days after we were done.  This break is going to end entirely too soon :(  Enjoy these pictures of a baby elephant playing at the beach!  I, however, do not look this cute at the beach.

What do you get when you cross a rhinoceros and an elephant?

Elephino!

(Get it?  Like, "Hell if I know")

I've got headaches and bad luck that they couldn't touch

This semester has been frustrating, to say the least.  I'm not even going to try to update anyone on what has been happening unless it's relevant to my life now.  It's been freaking crazy.


Last night I found my first centipede in my apartment :(  It made me want to die. 

It was in my bathroom and when I found it, I was just turning on the water to get in the shower.  I saw it out of the corner of my eye and basically flipped a shit.  Cool thing though:  we've been studying neuroanatomy and I was able to understand why I looked towards something that I saw in my peripheral vision (it's actually a reflex, not a choice!), what part of my brain "terrifying experiences with centipedes" gets seared into, what part of my brain takes that experience and makes sure it stays in my brain for the rest of my life, how people in neighboring apartments could localize the sounds of my screams...it was nice to apply things I'm learning in school to my real life.

Well, when I found it, it looked like the cats (probably Helios, because Leo looked surprised when he saw it later) incapacitated it before I got to it.  It was still twitching and I can only assume that the cats were making it suffer to send a message to its little multi-legged friends that YOU DON'T MESS WITH 28B!  You tell 'em, kitties.  I really overreacted when I first saw it, because my first reaction was, "That's it!  I'm transferring!  I've got to get off this fucking island."  Although I won't be transferring (unless Ross decides to change it's curriculum, which is a post for another time...), I WILL be moving out of this apartment.  I already had it set up, but that's less dramatic if you know it was planned ahead of time.  It is good timing though, since I found a baby cockroach in my shower two nights ago, then I had another "nest" of those unidentifiable critters in my bathroom, and this morning when I went to put peanut butter in PD's bone before I left for class, there were ants crawling EVERYWHERE by it.  I am NOT ok with this.  I can deal with bugs outside, but not where I sleep.

Bugs aside, there is more exciting news!  My animals are finally here with me!  I ended up having to fly home to get them (let's not talk about it), but when we came back, I finally had my babies and my mom stayed for a visit!  It was really fun and awesome to get a reminder of what an amazing island this is (bugs aside).  Although I had to study a TON, I still made sure Mom and I were getting out and having fun.  It was kind of like a forced break from studying.  

Not the best picture of me, but look how green the water is!

We got to Brimstone Hill just in time to see the royals before they left!  And to take this picture :)

She was in the Atlantic...

AND the Caribbean!

I'm really glad she got to come.  I miss my mom too much when I'm not with her.  Hopefully she gets to come back when I DON'T have to study for an exam the following week.

I recently tried sushi for the second time...still don't like it.  But there was a new sushi place that was finished right down the street from me and a few of my friends like sushi, so they wanted to go and I figured I would at least go and be social.  Apparently (from my friends that like sushi), the food was amazing and the prices were much more reasonable than I expect it.  But if you don't like sushi, don't waste your time, because there's like 2 things on the menu that aren't sushi.

Oh my gosh I have to get back to studying.  Neuroanatomy quiz at 1 and (surprise surprise) I am still behind in all of my classes.  Peace.

Anyway you want it, that's the way you need it

February 6th:  Dinner

This is a pretty decent representative of what I eat for dinner every night.  Since I can't cook, I freaking have some form of noodles every night.  The Dr. Pepper is a little treat for Katie though.  I don't usually get sodey-pop with dinner :)

And this is what time I am eating my gourmet meal!  And sadly, this is earlier than most nights.

Look at that adorable puppy!

Immunology has been taking over my life.  I've been playing catch up, since my teacher is awful (I'm sure I've only mentioned that 50 times or so) and I'm basically teaching immuno to myself.  I studied it for 3 hours today with a couple friends and it completely sucked the life out of me.  So no more immuno tonight, but it also drained any will power I had left to study for anatomy...I think I'll call it quits early tonight.  I'll have plenty of time to study anatomy when I'm sitting in immunology not hearing a single word that the professor is saying...

Cecelia, you're breaking my heart. You're shaking my confidence daily

February 5th:  10:00 am

I'm changing the title from 10:00 am to 11:00 am, because on Sundays at 11:00 am, I get to do obedience training with this little guy.  His name is Dion and he is one of the colony dogs at Ross.  I worked with him all last semester and he's come SUCH a long way since I first met him.  He went from not knowing his name and gnawing on my hands during play time to doing agility course things and obeying commands done only with hand signals.  I LOVE seeing Dion on Sundays.  I'm supposed to go play with him a few more times during the week, but lately I've been too busy studying during every minute of free time I get.  I'll make it up to him this week by taking him on a walk down to the water.  He loves walking into the "forest" and finding lizards and monkeys. What a guy :)  He's so freakin' adorable.

Also, I skipped February 4th.  The topic for the photo is "a stranger" but I don't have a good picture of a stranger to use.  However, I have seen many people on this island that would make EXCELLENT pictures for that topic, so I'm just postponing that one until I get a good picture.

We've got each other, and that's a lot for love

February 3rd:  Hands

These are some of my friends spelling out "Obama" with their hands.  I don't remember the occasion, but I do remember that I hung out with some very political people back then.

I locked the key to my locker INSIDE my locker the other day and I recruited some men to help me pick the lock, in an attempt to try to save the lock from certain death by cutters.  I wish I would've had my camera then because 4 man hands working on my tiny lock would've made a good picture.  I tried to find a good picture of some hands picking a lock to try to at least capture the essence, but nothing was quite up to my standards.

I actually had a good day today!  First one in a while, so hopefully my bad day streak is over.  Seriously, watching those two awesome movies last night ("Taken" and "Inception") put me in such a good mood today.  I got to play volleyball at the beach and although we didn't win, we had a blast.  We are getting better and better each game and it makes it more fun to play when you aren't worried about looking like a turd in front of everyone there.

Tonight is going to be a quiet night in.  I am still trying to catch up with some studying and just freakin' relax (it's been a while since my tv and I had some quality bonding time) before doing everything I have to do tomorrow and Sunday.  Tomorrow I have my first TA session. I want to look over the first semester anatomy class's material just to make sure I don't look like an idiot, but I'm kind of excited to be helping people with something that I'm good at.  There is also a fundraiser for Elvis' family tomorrow at Timothy Beach (we played volleyball there today and it was really weird being there without Elvis...) and I was considering just spending the non-TA portion of my day just relaxing on the beach, so we'll see how that goes.  Looking forward to it!

I can't wait to see my mom and my animals! :)  Just in case you forgot how adorable they are...

So we're sailing through the sea, to an island where we'll meet

I'm watching "Taken" right now and I still can't believe what a bad ass Liam Neeson is.  What is he, 70?  When is he going to stop being so awesome?
Probably never.
I don't know why people make jokes about Chuck Norris being such a super-human.  Really, it should be Liam Neeson.  Those jokes are pretty funny.
So I haven't written much this semester but there haven't been many good things to write about.  To be honest, second semester is sucking so far.  Not everything, but pretty much everything school related.  I love being back on the island, I am so happy to be back with my friends, I really like my roommate and I like where I live, but I have had so little motivation to study.  I know that I NEED to study but I just can't bring myself to study the way I used to.  Also, I can't really use the same study method that I did last semester just because my classes are different.  When I know I need to study but I can't find the motivation, I just get really angry and then it makes me want to study even less.  I basically just have to quit for the night and then hope that the next day goes better.  The studying has gotten a little better in the last week or two (I had two exams this week that I had to study for, so pressure got the best of me) so hopefully it will keep improving.
There have been a lot of other stressful things, but I won't go into those right now.  Long stories short, I passed my parasitology exam (but didn't do very well), I locked the keys to my locker inside my locker, which has the majority of my books in it (also, the "spare" key is on the same keychain...not my proudest moment), I keep agreeing to do things that I don't really want to do and I hate myself a little bit for it, and I have to fly home for a day (yes, a day) to get my animals.  It's been a rough couple weeks.  I'm working on it though.
I heard that I made the President's list last semester, but I think it might have been a mistake.  Although there is nothing on Ross's website about the President's list qualifications or who made it last semester, I checked a bunch of other grad school websites and it seems that most schools require a 4.0 to be on the President's list, which I didn't have.  I did get some pretty awesome grades last semester (I ended up with 3 As and 1 B, because one class had a glitch in their grading system and the wrong grades were recorded), but obviously not 4.0.  When I went to go check the President's list, it was taken down because they were repainting the building it was posted on (nevermind that they apparently only posted it 2 days before and took it down super fast, but it was also in a glass case...AKA protection from potential paint splatters) so I guess we'll never know for sure.  I mean, I'll definitely take it!  If I can throw "President's list" on a resume after vet school, yeah I'll freakin' do it.  I'm pretty damn proud of my work last semester so I think I kind of deserve it.
The police arrested two people that they think were involved in Elvis' murder last week.  I haven't heard anything since then but hopefully they catch those guys.  It's still very weird and the island just feels different without him, even though I haven't been to the strip since then.  Ross students are having a fundraiser this weekend to raise money for his family's medical expenses and the funeral expenses.  During and after volleyball tomorrow, there will be a barbecue and then I think it's the same thing on Saturday.  I'm definitely going to one, if not both.  I think we (the students) owe it to Elvis for always being so nice and welcoming to us and letting us have fundraisers there.
In lighter news, I was chased by a cockroach recently and two of my friends have found three centipedes in or around their apartment in the last two or three weeks.  Another girl in my class has found one to three centipedes in her apartment PER DAY and she woke up one morning with a bite from one on her hand.  That being said, I'll admit that I don't have the nicest apartment and I've found a few apartments in Golfview that are significantly nicer than mine, even though we are paying the same rent.  I've been thinking about looking for a different apartment for next semester, but I think that I'm the only person that hasn't had a terrifying bug in their living space.  The worst I've had is a roly poly.  I may just stay here.


I really like when people do these "photo-a-day" things on facebook, so I'm going to try to do one for February but instead of posting the pictures on facebook, I'll try posting them on here instead!  Maybe it will get me writing more (I've recently found out that people read - and enjoy - what I blog about!  Who knew?).  I already missed yesterday, which feels like I made a New Year's resolution to work out more and then by January 2nd, I'm all excited because I've only missed one day!  So I guess we'll do February 1st and 2nd.


February 1st:  Your view today

This is the view from my balcony.  I don't have an ocean view anymore, but the golf course is surprisingly pretty, especially this part with the pond and palm trees.

February 2nd:  Words

I couldn't decide between two, so this first one is my more serious, general outlook on life.  Especially that last part - "Never regret anything that made you smile."  I believe in that whole-heartedly.

One of the reasons I am so fond of arguing is because I think you should always stand for what you believe in, no matter who you are talking to.  I find that people are afraid to debate things with their friends because they don't want their friendship to change.  Ever think that maybe it could improve? If someone showed me who they really are and let me in on their deepest opinions and told me things that they REALLY care about, I would feel much closer to them.  I know that it can be TERRIFYING to disagree with someone and it takes a lot of balls to actually say it out loud.  So the person who does that, even if you don't agree with what they are saying, deserves a ton of respect.

Also, I think that people are too gentle when they are arguing and debating.  I firmly believe that you should get passionate during an argument.  Yell!  Scream!  Break shit!  If you start crying during an argument, then that just means that whatever you are arguing about is worth being argued over.  Why do we always feel like we need to be so reserved and professional all the time?  Let out the animal in you!  And what better time to do that than when you are talking about something that you care deeply for?

However, Eminem said the quote and I can't stand his face.  Win some, lose some.

Well, there's my rant and rave for the day.  This was going to be the picture I posted for "Words" but then I decided to actually post serious words instead:

It's the album cover for Bo Burnham's "Words Words Words," which I have been listening to in my car all semester.  The radio stations rarely come in and when they do, it's usually religious music (and not super fun gospel music either).  Also, I'm going to marry this guy.