St Louis

My roommates and I drove up to St. Louis this weekend to see all the seminary friends. It was brilliant, I loved it. Kind of a long trip though, like 7 hours. Rachel and April did all the driving, and I rolled around in the backseat giving orders, eating doritos, offering my opinions on various topics, and singing along with the radio.

We neglected to bring the CDs with us, so all we had were what we could find in my car, which included Roberto Torres, Lauryn Hill, and the Andrew Lloyd Weber premiere collection. So, yeah, it was mostly radio for us.
April has struggles with XM radio....she seems to enjoy all the options, but when it comes to listening to a song all the way through... she actually can't, most of the time. This is how I listen to music too, skipping around a lot, but I never realized how jarring it is when someone else is controlling the skippage.

Sometimes April makes these mixed CDs, and I appreciate her song choices, but the order she puts them in is completely confusing to me. She'll go from Michael Bolton to Black-Eyed Peas to Coldplay to Dixie Chicks to Kanye West, and then she'll throw in an instrumental from the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. We talked about it once, and she told me that she does that intentionally because she gets bored with the same musical style over and over. When I make CDs, they are usually about sameness. Same sound, or same time in life that I was listening to them, or same amount of energy required to listen to them, or something.

I told all this to Zach and he said he was on April's team and then he told me to go watch High Fidelity.
But I'm not going to because right now I'm busy having a cold.
I think I'm going to the Gulf Islands for Spring Break. Are you still allowed to do SB when you're out of school?

Last night I didn't fall asleep until 3a.
I tried all the usual tricks...
watching tv
eating cookies
asking God to make me fall asleep
reading something really hard
staring out the window
telling my brain that I was through for the day and nothing else was going to be accomplished
trying to hold very still

But after a couple of hours, I was so frustrated that I just gave up and took a sleeping pill.
Now it's ten-thirty and I just woke up, because the sun was blazing through my cheap white curtains.

Sometime this am, I got up and went to the bathroom and Rachel said something to the effect of, "you probably don't want a shower this morning....call Glen....drain...Laura Star's fault...ha ha."
Now I don't know if it was a joke or if I really shouldn't take a shower. Or if I should pour a bunch of baking soda and boiling water down the drain and then take a shower? Or if I should just ignore it and go hang out at a coffee shop with other unemployed unwashed folk? Or maybe do that disgusting coat hanger thing where you fish for hair?

The good thing is, the sun has finally come out again. It's rained so much lately.

The newlywed

Nathan's

It's really dark and rainy outside. A good day to stay busy.

I went to the grocery yesterday and bought pickles, salmon, cream cheese, potato chips, hummus, tortilla chips, alcohol, minestrone, and brie. Then I came home and sampled a little of everything.

Then I started envisioning myself turning into a pillar of salt with a face like the smoked salmon guy...so I started drinking tons of water.
Then I decided that I was thinking too hard about idiot things, so I did yoga for awhile and then walked down the street looking for someone to tune my guitar for me.

I love this neighborhood. Guess how long it was before I found someone? Probably less than a minute. I'm trying to save up things that I love about this place, because I doubt that I'll find a job here. Which is okay. It would be nice to learn a new city...hopefully one with less dark and rainy January days.

CNM

***I passed my exam!!!!!!!***

Now I'm allowed to put Certified Nurse-Midwife after my name. AND, I'm officially supposed to know what people are talking about when they come up to me and tell me weirdo stories that they saw on "Amazing Births" on the Discovery Channel. And if someone asks me a question about their birth control, Celiac disease, acne, ear infection, or diabetes, I should probably be able to answer them. And I'm eligible to prescribe now, I just have to get my DEA number first.

The test was harder than I was expecting.
However, I was the only one in the closet-sized, flourescent-lit testing room, so I could talk to myself and pace (a little) and stretch and bang my head against the table whenever necessary.

It was a 4 hour test. When I came out, all crazy faced and used up, the guy said, "I was about to come back there and get you, I thought you had fallen asleep or something!"
I tried not to be offended that he hadn't been as entertained by my theatrics as I had expected. (There were at least 2 cameras on me the whole time)

Anyways. Enough about that. Now I guess I have to look for a job or something. That feels pretty weird... Or maybe I'll take the day off and do a book tour of all the fabulous bookstores I've missed while I've been doing this other stuff.

I think I was expecting that nagging, "I should be doing something more profitable" feeling to go away once I was completely finished jumping through school hoops.
I'm kind of disappointed that it isn't gone. Maybe that's just how you have to feel your whole life, like there's always something crappy that you should take care of before you can relax.

I guess I probably should have anticipated that.

Hey if you know Ken, you should probably tell him Happy Birthday because now he is 25! In lieu of gifts, please send him your ideas for his paper on the relationship between Christianity and psychology.

My certification exam is in 4 days

Hey, during my study break this am I was looking at the MoMA website and I found so many interesting things. They have this exhibit called SAFE: design takes on.....something I can't remember right now, but it is really good way to waste a couple of hours because afterwards you can rationalize the whole thing by telling yourself, well, I'm just so artsy and cool and my soul probably needed that.

These are stuffed animals that represent different microbes. The grey one is a dust mite, the fringey one has something to do with GI distress, etc.
My first thought was "wow how cool" and my second one was, "what kind of people buy stuff like this?" and then I became embarrassed and looked at something else.

I didn't look at the whole website but my favorite stuff was by a guy named Matthiew Lehaunner. He's in the Objets Therapeutiques section...he has these ideas about the experience of taking antibiotics that are really fascinating. If you look at it, also check out the urban shelters section. I'd post the link but I'm too lazy and I'm sick of this for now.

One other thing I'm trying not to waste time on right now: the Ricky Gervais podcasts.