Posts from: December 6, 2011

Published on December 31, 2011 by Stephen

2011 – A Year in Review

I was reading Jenn’s blog tonight and she had this meme up so I figured I would borrow it. The meme consists of some questions about things that happened to me in 2011. It’s been one hell of a year, filled with emotions both good and bad. As you read through this, try to think about what your own answers to these questions would be. Enjoy. 1.What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before? I married my husband Levi, biked over 100 miles, and applied to nursing school. (Not sure if this is worthy of making it into this question, but I also blogged at least once every month this year. Go me?) 2.Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don’t know. I don’t really remember what my new years resolution was. I’ve never been big on new years resolutions, but I’m pretty sure now is the best time of year to sell bathroom scales and crappy exercise equipment. (I wonder how many shake weights Walmart will sell tomorrow!) I guess my 2012 resolution is going to be “Survive the end of the world.” (Just kidding..) 3.Did anyone close to you give birth? Nope, but my niece turned one year old! 4.Did anyone close to you die? Yes, my grandma. We all still miss her. 5.What countries did you visit? None at all. 6.What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011? More financial stability – 2011 proved that having money saved up is more important than material possessions. 7.What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? There isn’t one single date that will remain etched upon my memory. The whole year was a landslide of emotions and events, and no one day corresponds with any of that. If I had to choose one date, I would probably have to choose December 7th. Not because it is Pearl Harbor day, but because that is the day my domestic partnership was officially registered. 8.What was your biggest achievement of the year? Finishing my nursing school prerequisites. 2012 will hopefully bring news of what this means for me! 9.What was your biggest failure? I was too negative. I find that I am predisposed to being negative, and I work hard to prevent it from happening but sometimes I let negativity slip out, and it pushes away people and opportunities. Also, I was too hard on myself and was hesitant to let myself enjoy new things. 10.Did you suffer illness or injury? Perfectly healthy here! 11.What was the best thing you bought? My camera. My camera was the best thing I bought because it allows me to create art in a way that I have never been able to do before. When it comes to other forms of art, I tend to get impatient with the process – photography allows me to take my time and think about my composition in a way that is both technical and artistic and blends my love of technology and art together into one craft. 12.Whose behavior merited celebration? My mom – She lost her mom, my grandma, this year and was very brave and held it together through all of the pain. I am proud of her, and appreciative of everything she did for us this year. 13.Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Congress. 14.Where did most of your money go? Bills. So many dammed bills. 15.What events did you get really, really, really excited about? Moving into my new apartment home! I got to help pick it out this time. 16.What song will always remind you of 2011? Eh. 17.Compared to this time last year, are you: i.happier or sadder? Happier. ii.thinner or fatter? 60-70 pounds thinner. iii.richer or poorer? About the same. 18.What do you wish you’d done more of? Enjoyed the time I had. The year flew by, and I will never get the time back. 19.What do you wish you’d done less of? I wish I had stressed out less. Too much stress this year. Next year, I would like to enjoy life more. 20.How will you be spending Christmas? I don’t know, that is 12 months from now. 21.Who did you spend the most time on the phone with? Various customer support call centers. I don’t call people that often, in fact.. I don’t like talking to most people on the phone. 22.Did you fall in love in 2011? Not so much. 23. How many one-night stands? 13. I’m skanky. 24. What was your favorite TV program? I’m digging New Girl. I don’t watch a lot of television because I don’t have many channels, but I am a Hulu Plus subscriber, so I get to watch some shows that way. 25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? I don’t tend to hate people, so no. 26. What was the best book you read? The Road by Cormac McCarthy - This book still has me concerned for the characters that were in it! 27. What was your greatest musical discovery or rediscovery? Florence + the Machine, or maybe Young the Giant – I can’t really get enough of either of these artists. Both of them released fabulous albums this year that get played all of the time on my iTunes. 28. What did you want and get? I wanted and got so many things this year! Including, but not limited to: my camera, new apartment, my mom’s old bike, an iPhone, a nook, and a domestic partnership. 29. What did you want and not get? Nothing. If I want something, I tend to find a way to get it. (I have very bad spending habits.) 30. What were your favorite films of this year? Nothing really sticks out to me. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was pretty good.. 31.What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 21 this year, and I didn’t really do much at all. 32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Less stress for sure. 33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011? Two sizes to small, and then two sizes to big. 34. What kept you sane? My husband Levi. 35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most/least? I tend not to get caught up in the lives of others. 36. What political issue stirred you the most? The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” 37. Whom did you miss? My grandma, and my sister, brother-in-law and niece. 38. Who was the best new person you met? Didn’t meet any new people, I don’t think. 39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011: Don’t spend your savings account on useless crap that you have to sell later on for 30% of what you bought it for to pay a bill you knew was coming. 40. Do you have any lost feelings of others. What? 41.Quote a song that sums up your year: Nope. If I quote a song, SOPA will get approved tomorrow and my blog will be taken down within a few days. Screw that. Also, I don’t think one song could possibly sum up my year. Thank you for reading, and just in case I don’t get around to blogging again tonight – I hope you all have a safe and happy new year!

Published on December 27, 2011 by Stephen

“Things People Search For – Pine Needles!” or “How to clean pine needles out of your carpets.”

When I published this blog post I never expected it to bring so much traffic. (Now, to be fair, my blog doesn’t get much traffic – so even 3 views is a lot for me.) You can imagine my surprise this morning, when I logged into WordPress to see the search terms “can you vacuum up pine needles dyson” and “dyson not picking up after i vacuumed pine needles”. The article itself was never intended to be about sucking up pine needles, and only talks about how my last vacuum didn’t work because someone had tried. With that in mind, let’s talk about pine needles! Pine needles are probably the worst thing you could try to vacuum up. For one, they get lodged in your carpet. Those needles are very difficult to vacuum up because they tend to get stuck in your carpets’ fibers. Depending on the type of carpet you have, this could be quite bad. If you try to vacuum them out, your vacuum will probably not get them all and the ones it does manage to pick up will probably get lodged into the hoses of your vacuum. Because of this, it is best not to try to vacuum up pine needles. Now, if you already did try to vacuum up your pine needles here is how your fix it: Get a screw driver! Depending on your vacuum, you will need to take out some screws so you can get to the hoses easily. On my old Dirt Devil, this involved disassembling the “brush housing” and removing some screws that mounted the hose to the back of it. Your mileage will vary. Now that you have gained access to your hose, let’s hope you have either a long screw driver or a wire hanger you don’t need anymore. (If you’re a ninja, your wire hanger can be reused as a hanger afterwards..) Unbend the wire hangar and start ramming it up the hose to dislodge all of the funk that has wrapped itself around those pine needles that you carelessly tried to vacuum out of your carpet. This part will be nasty, dusty, and you will probably want to kill your pet cat and/or dog. Be careful not to jab any holes in your hose with your wire hanger (or long screwdriver.) After some crazy twisting, jamming, ramming, and other vacuum hose acrobatics the funk and pine needles should come clear. What you do next is very important to the health of your vacuum. Gather up all of the funk with your hand, and throw it in the trash. Some people might try to vacuum it up again, that would be a mistake. Why? Because you just spent the last hour familiarizing yourself with the innards of your vacuum cleaner and getting up close and personal with that pine needle and cat/dog funk infested hose – if you vacuum it up, you will have to do it all again! If you enjoyed cleaning the filthy cat/dog funk and pine needle mesh out of the hose, then by all means vacuum it up again. Once the mess is off of your carpet, and safely in the trash, reassemble your vacuum. Make sure there are no extra screws. If there are extra screws, make sure that they don’t belong to your vacuum. If they DO belong to your vacuum, disassemble and reassemble the vacuum (except this time, do it correctly…moron.) If you are unsure if it belongs to your vacuum, then place it in your junk/random screw/dead battery/extension cord/old glasses/crap drawer with all of the other screws you have found on your floor. (One day, you will find the thing that the screw came from. If you throw that screw away, you will find that thing if belongs to the day after the trash gets picked up.) Once this step is finished, turn your vacuum on to make sure everything is still functioning. If it is, you’re not an idiot. If it isn’t, then I am not responsible for the damage – you are. Now that you have de-pined your vacuum cleaner, you’re probably asking yourself – “How am I supposed to get these pine needles out of my carpet?!!” The solution to this is simple: Replace your carpet. You will never get all of the needles out of your carpet. If replacing your carpet isn’t an option, then next time buy yourself an area rug specifically for your Christmas tree. (Or buy yourself a fake reusable tree. Deforestation and pine needles in carpets are real issues that can be alleviated with fake trees that don’t have needles.) If either of those solutions isn’t satisfactory, your next bet is to go back to your junk/random screw/dead battery/extension cord/old glasses/crap drawer and get some tape. Duct tape would be best but, if you don’t have any, packing tape should suffice. If you don’t have packing or duct tape, just take the wire hanger that you used to unclog your hose and choke yourself with it because you aren’t prepared for the things real life can throw at you. If you’re still alive at this point, get on your bike and ride it to the nearest convenience store and buy yourself some duct tape. I prefer the zebra kind but, if they don’t have it, any of the assorted neon colors will work – my second choice would be hot pink. (I say get on your bike because the store is probably less than 2 miles away, and almost anybody can bike 2 miles easily. If it is less than two miles and you do take your car, I hope you have a good reason – jerk.) After you get home with your zebra and/or hot pink roll of duct tape, wrap it around your hand. I probably shouldn’t have to tell you to wrap it around your hand so the sticky side is out, but if you had to go to the store to get duct tape because you aren’t prepared for life then you probably wouldn’t realize to put it on sticky side out because you aren’t that bright. Go ahead and remove the duct tape from your hand if you did it wrong, and be happy to know that I am happy you’re in pain. You can also send me $10 for the hair removal that just happened. If you didn’t put the duct tape on wrong, you probably know what I am about to tell you to do. Take the tape and roll it over the area of carpet that the pine needles are living in (use your hand and zebra/hot pink duct tape like a lint roller, which would also have worked for pine needle removal. I didn’t tell you this because your hand and zebra/hot pink duct tape makes you much more of a badass.) This will get most of the needles, but there will still be some that you won’t be able to get out. For those pesky needles that refuse to stop occupying your carpet – we will call them the 99%, even though they are really closer to 1% than 99% – pick them out with your fingers, one by one. Don’t be afraid to be forceful and, if you have a can of pepper spray, you had better use it before they have a chance to get up and leave after you so rudely told them to vacate the premises. Like previously stated, you will never be able to get all of the needles. You might as well just accept that some will be permanently violating your carpet, just like you permanently violated the earth by cutting down your Christmas tree when there are perfectly viable fake alternatives. (I know, I know, fake trees don’t smell the same – but that can be solved by using Pine-Sol to clean your house for the month of December..or you can use pine scented Raid if you have an ant/roach problem. Even better, spray that bastard cat/dog with the pine scented Raid – that will teach it to shed that disgusting hair all over your carpet. If it lives, it will smell like pine for at least a month – or until it dies because you’re an idiot and Raid-ed your cat/dog.) Once most of the needles are gone, it is safe to vacuum your carpets again. Remember, no matter how good you think your vacuum is the pine needles are better. Also remember, that right now is the best time of year to go to your local thrift store and buy yourself that $500 vacuum you’ve always wanted for only $8.99 – judging from the visits on my blog, there should be plenty of Dysons. (Remember, if you do buy a vacuum at your local thrift store, that you will have to do these cleaning steps to it as soon as you get it home. The only reason why your new vacuum is even at the thrift store is because some idiot couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working after they sucked up pine needles so they gave it to the thrift store so that some poorer idiot could waste their money on a seemingly functioning vacuum only to find out they wasted $8.99 that could have gone to feeding their family if they didn’t buy that clogged up vacuum. Also remember, that it won’t be your cat/dog funk and pine needle mesh you’ll be cleaning out of the hose…it will be somebody else’s – which is freaking disgusting.) After all of this, I hope you have learned your lesson. Don’t vacuum up pine needles.

Published on December 26, 2011 by Stephen

My life in boxes.

Wow it’s been a busy six days since my last entry! On Thursday I left my apartment to head to work, only to find a bunch of apartment propaganda on our door. There where three items total, a message about the Christmas party happening the next day, a note telling us that our lease was up on the first of February and a can hanging from the door knob telling me I can have $100 dollars if I renew today. This note caught me off guard, because I was under the assumption that our lease would be done on the first of March! That night, we went up to an apartment complex we have been looking at since last year and went on a tour of their one bedroom floor plans. Pleased with their selection, we went home that night with applications and got a money order for the fees to reserve one of the units we saw. The next day, on Friday, we went back to turn in our applications and the leasing agent ran our credit and approved us. The next step is just waiting on the renters history to come back, which should be here by Wednesday. If all goes well (and it should,) we will be signing the lease to our new apartment on the second of January. What does that mean exactly? It means that I have a few more weeks to figure out how to get 950 square feet to fit into 555 square feet! I think I have everything figured out for the most part. In terms of furniture, I will be getting rid of the nightstands on our bed. We don’t need them and we don’t really have the space for them. (Plus I feel that they detract from the simplicity of my bed frame.) We will also be getting rid of my kitchen table. (A little fun fact: this is the same kitchen table that I hugged every time I went into Fred Meyer, for a year.) The kitchen table will not fit anywhere in the apartment, on account of the fact that there is no dining area. There is however a breakfast bar, which I will furnish with some cute bar stools so we will still be able to eat. I have decided to give the table to a friend and coworker of mine who doesn’t have one yet for her apartment. I have everything planned out at this point, with only a few exceptions. I am unsure of where I am going to keep my printer. It’s pretty big, and I will need to find a place that can accommodate it without looking tacky. (I’m very particular about how things must look in the apartment. After all, if I have to look at it every day I want it to look nice.) I also need to decide on a bike storage system for the apartment. I think I have made up my mind on a system that leans against the wall and holds two bikes off of the floor. Because the apartment is “cozy”, the bikes are going to be stored in our bedroom next to the bed along a wall. Most people would probably want a dresser in their bedroom, but not me. The closet is more than adequate, no need for a dresser when I can use the space to store our bikes! For the last few days, Levi and I have been packing up our things into boxes for the move. I hope to have everything ready in time to move in to the new apartment completely on the second of the year. Right now most of my belongings are in boxes in our second bedroom, and the rest of them are strewn about my living room awaiting their inevitable boxing. I hate packing and moving so much, that I told Levi I want to stay in this apartment until we eventually buy a house. The rent is so affordable that I can see no reason to not stay there, and the community is in an extremely convenient location and the landscaping is well kept. On top of all of this, Christmas was this weekend too! Christmas turned out great, and I had a lot of fun spending time with my family. Everyone enjoyed the gifts we gave them. My parents bought me a new tripod, and Levi got an ice cream maker. We also received a Keurig Platinum Brewing System. (It is a single cup brewing system, and looks pretty neat!) I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet because I’ve been so busy packing, but as soon as I do I will write a review of it. I am looking forward to trying out both the be wing system and the ice cream maker. I love ice cream! As you can probably tell, life has been quite hectic these last few days. I am already ready for the weekend to get here and I haven’t even started my week of work yet. Sitting down on my couch, writing this entry, all I can think about is all of the things in my living room waiting to be packed up and how long it is going to take to get it all done. I think it is time for me to go to bed, I’ve got a long day of packing ahead of me tomorrow, and an even longer week!

Published on December 20, 2011 by Stephen

Cycling and Holidays

82.01 miles. Thats how far I have traveled on my bike since I fixed it up earlier this month. Today Levi and I rode to Sport Authority which, to our dismay, did not have a bike rack. (What kind of sporting goods store doesn’t have a bike rack?!) After we browsed around there we decided to go to REI to check out some of the bags they have. At first I was opposed to the idea, because I didn’t think I could make it there and back home. I am not very good with directions, or knowing where I am, and I didn’t realize we were actually really close! Round trip I am estimating we biked 12 miles. (I forgot to turn the cyclometer on from Sports Authority to REI.) I feel like I can probably do a bit more, but I’m definitely not going to push it too much at this point. Levi and I are doing pretty well on our goal to start commuting without the car. I think that by the end of February, we should be almost completely car free. This is nice because, not only are we more active, we are saving a ton of money and contributing less carbon emissions. We still aren’t to the point where we can commute easily to work. I am going to try to ride to work starting next week. The problem with my commute to work, is that it is almost entirely uphill – on my test ride yesterday, I was extremely tired when I finished and my heart felt like it would beat itself right out of my chest. This is why I am giving myself a few more days. Hopefully the rest of this week, and this weekend will yield some better results on my uphills. Speaking of this weekend, Christmas is almost here. I am excited for the weekend. Hopefully we can make it over to my mom’s house early on saturday so we can start baking cookies and have them ready by that evening when we open presents with my father. Maybe we will make some sugar cookies as well as our regular chocolate chip. If anyone reading this could recommend a recipe, that would be fantastic. There isn’t much else to say right now except for “I am tired.” I am thinking this might need to be an early night tonight. It’s funny that I can bike everywhere, but I can’t stay up past eleven.

Published on December 19, 2011 by Stephen

Cycling, Your Health, and Your Wallet.

Here is an interesting info graphic I came across today while browsing some internet message boards. If you find this as striking, go ahead and share this with your friends and family – I know I will. The part that I find most interesting is the portion that displays the obesity problem in relation to the percentage of trips made by bikes in various countries. It is no surprise to me that in Europe, the obesity problem is lower and the cycling rate is higher – Europe is better equipped for road cycling simply because the streets are usually poorly equipped for cars. This, however, doesn’t give Americans an excuse to not ride their bikes often. Just because the roads here are well equipped for cars, doesn’t mean that we need to use them for cars all of the time, or even some of the time. If you have been following me lately, you will know that I am currently training my body for long bike rides to commute to work, get the groceries, and so on. Currently, I am at 10 miles but I could probably push 20 miles before I get too tired. This is just enough for me to get to work from the future apartment we will be living in. You can be sure, that come February, I will be commuting by bike into Parkland from Tacoma. Since I’ve started this adventure, just over 10 days ago, I have even more energy than usual and my leg muscles are rock solid. This is in comparison to me over one year ago at this time, when I was over 280 pounds and could barely make it up the stairs to my apartment without keeling over. Since then, a good healthy diet has helped me shed the excess and now I am hoping cycling and my good diet will help me shed the rest of my extra weight. To say that I have never felt this good about myself is an understatement – I feel freakin’ fantastic, I have energy for days. You can make this change in your life too, it really isn’t difficult. I burn hundreds of calories in just 10 miles of cycling, and I am getting faster and more efficient every day. If you have any questions, or would like some advice, please ask by leaving a comment on this blog entry.

Published on December 12, 2011 by Stephen

Bike trouble, and why I love the good people at REI.

Well, if you have been paying attention to my twitter feed, you probably saw that my bike chain broke. (Well, to be fair I only stated that 35 year old bike chains are kind of fail…so if you didn’t get it I will forgive you this time.) Upon shifting, I found that my bike was struggling a little bit – I kept pedaling, and then I soon found myself with no resistance at all in the pedals. I thought my chain had simply come loose, but upon inspection I discovered that it had broken off completely! You can imagine my disappointment after a night full of headaches with my tires. (Do NOT buy ‘bell’ brand inner tubes, they are kind of terrible..) With this in mind, I went to REI to talk to them about chains and how to get up and running again. The man I spoke to mentioned that bike chains need to be cleaned and re-lubed every few weeks and that they should also be replaced every few years. This was a bit of a surprise to me, because I had always assumed that bike chains last a lot longer than that so I didn’t even think to replace it.

Following his advice, I purchased a new chain and chose to bring my bike in for their basic tune up service. I had planned to have this done later but, because I have no clue how to properly put a chain on a bike, I chose to have it done now. For a total of 100 dollars (70 for the service and 30 for some extra parts they needed) they trued my rims, cleaned up everything, replaced my cables, and made sure everything was functioning correctly. The bike looks, and runs fantastic! (And…the tires don’t wobble anymore!) Overall, I am very happy that I chose to get this bike up and running again – even though it has been a bit more expensive than I initially anticipated.

I still haven’t been able to get much ride time in – hopefully this week will be better for that. So far I have only ridden about 7.5 miles on this bike. I need to work on getting some higher mileage rides in if I want to be able to use this bike as a form of transportation. One problem I am having, is that the bike is just so dammed heavy. It weights over 40 pounds – not light by any means. It isn’t exactly easy to ride a bike at my weight anyway, adding a very heavy bike to that only makes things worse – especially when you consider how out of shape I am at the moment.

Speaking of my weight! I weighed in this morning at 210.6 pounds. I’m not going to get my hopes up, but I might see sub 210 pounds tomorrow morning. I’m going to be pretty happy if I see a 209 instead of a 210 tomorrow. I’ve been working really hard, and I am so close to my goal weight that I feel like I can do anything at this point.

In other news, I got a 4.0 GPA in microbiology this quarter. Nursing school is next, if I can ever get in.. Also, Levi and I are officially domestic partnered. (How did I not mention this yet..?)

Published on December 9, 2011 by Stephen

Cycling.

So Levi and I are preparing to start biking to get groceries and other things, instead of firing up the car every time we need to leave the house. When we move closer to Levi’s work he will even be biking to work which is great.

In preparation for this I asked my mom if I could borrow her bike, a Schwinn Varsity circa 1976. The bike was in pretty rough shape, the tires having not been replaced in what had to have been 30 years. With this in mind, I went to our local REI to get the tools and supplies necessary to get it running again. I even picked up a light set for night riding. My dad and I worked on taking apart the axels and getting everything lubed up and the bike is running great.

One problem I ran into was that not many companies still manufacture a 27 inch tire, so it was difficult to find any in the area. This is why I went to REI, because I knew they had them. After it was all put together, I decided what better way to test it than to drive it home. That was a mistake. I made it a total of 2 miles before I had to stop and hand the bike off to Levi. (He was following me in the car.) The seat that was on the bike had caused me a good deal of pain, and I had forgotten to bring my gloves with me so I couldn’t feel my hands when I got off the bike. All of this, in combination with the fact that I am not really in bike riding shape made it a very difficult walk up the stairs when I did make it home! All of this happened on Thursday night.

This afternoon, Levi and I took my bike and an old mountain bike we have down to Ruston Way in Tacoma. It was a lot more comfortable this time around partially because I think my leg muscles were more ready for the trip, but mostly because of the new seat I bought yesterday. It has a memory foam pad, much better than the 35 year old seat that was on it before. Today, we both biked a total of 5 miles, and had a lot of fun doing it. I think I am going to start biking every weekend to prepare myself for biking more often – I want to start slow.

Published on December 6, 2011 by Stephen

Adventures.

~~I’m such a slacker. Ten days without a blog entry is pretty pathetic!~~ I’m such a slacker. I started writing this entry and then quit writing it soon after! Whoops! The portion you see crossed out is how far I got into the entry before I found something else to do. It’s been a bit longer than 10 days at this point! I’ve been pretty busy lately, hence the silence. Levi and I spent this weekend up in Seattle with friends from college. A friend of mine was having a “small” party. I made mini cupcakes, which everybody loved, and our other friends brought other “small” food items. There were tiny shrimp tacos, tiny cookies, tiny sandwiches, tiny pizzas, and even a tiny keg! It was a ton of fun! Levi had had drill that morning and had woken up at 4:30 in the morning because of it, so we ended up staying the night in Seattle because he had been awake for almost 24 hours by the time everything had settled down. The next morning we did some Christmas shopping at Pike Place Market for Levi’s family. On Monday (yesterday…) we filled out our domestic partnership forms and had them notarized but what can only be described as the most annoying notary I have ever seen. (My judgement might be a bit biased, considering she was also the first notary I have ever seen..) Anyway, I noticed on the first form we brought in that she had mistakenly wrote down December 5th, 2012 instead of 2011. We rushed home to get another form, on which she managed to spell my name incorrectly. Needless to say, I will not be using the UPS Store on 40th and Bridgeport in University Place for notary services again! (This is the one next to Safeway and Trader Joe’s.) I mailed in the forms today after dropping Levi off at work. I did not realize that the nearest post office would be in downtown Tacoma. I figured it out as soon as the streets started meeting up all wonky. Also needless to say, GPS isn’t super useful when there are upwards of three different ways to make a right turn at one intersection! After plenty of recalculations, I finally did make it to some mailboxes that I could drive up to to drop my registration forms into. After the post office I navigated to the nearest Starbucks which, much to my dismay, was also downtown. Considering that parking downtown is a nightmare, I chose to bypass it and navigate to the next nearest Starbucks – this one didn’t even exist! Following that disappointment, I then navigated to the next next nearest Starbucks. This one was at a much more reasonable location on 6th Avenue, and had a much more reasonable parking situation. Also, it was super cute. I have been spoiled by Starbucks locations with drive-thrus apparently, because the closest one with a drive-thru was near my apartment but at a very busy intersection that I just didn’t want to have anything to do with. I honestly feel like my morning was made complete by my ridiculous, accidental, adventure. Fortunately I don’t need to be at work for another few hours, had I needed to be at work sooner I would have most certainly been late. I can’t have that, now can I? I have my last day of class/last final ever until I get into nursing school tonight. I feel like I need to study just a little bit more, but for the most part I think I am ready! I have done so well this quarter, that I could totally bomb this exam and still come out with the grade I need to quality for nursing school. Fortunately for me, my brain likes playing it safe more more than it likes being lazy so I will not be testing out my theory. (Mostly it’s because of the aforementioned reasoning, but partly it’s because of the fact I can’t trust my math/calculator skills..) With that, I think it’s time for breakfast!