New Obsession

OK.  I have become obsessed with looking up med schools and summer internships.  Sounds normal for a pre-med college student, but this is new to me.  Med school always seemed so far away, and mind you after 3 years of school, it's still 2 years away but now it feels closer.  Now all my friends are applying and getting interviews and waiting to hear back.  And now I'm obsessed with rankings.  Rankings of med schools, admission requirements and tuition.  Did you know it costs more to go to Creighton than Harvard!?  Insane, and I think you'd be insane to pay that much for an education that's pretty far down in the rankings.  Also, Baylor tuition is less than UNMC and UT Southwestern's tuition is almost half the price (out-of-state at UTS is only $1000 more than instate at UNMC).  Both of which are ranked higher.  UT Southwestern is my dream school.  Ranked number 20 in the nation and number 1 for TX schools, and to me, mildly attainable.  Mind you their incoming class from this year had more than 3 students (each) from schools like Rice, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, and Yale.  But, they also have students from UTA of all places (hello bad education!) so I figure there's gotta be hope for me.  My second choice would have to be Baylor, ranked just below UTS, and then probably UNT, while lower in rankings it's VERY attainable and it offers a D.O. program which I may be leaning towards.  Can I please start med school in January?
Also, my seester got a job! Now I suppose I'll have to get it together and make a trip to the post office.

South and Central America are calling my name!  They want me there!
They want me to help, and to fall in love, and show God's love.
They want to break my heart.
They want me!

Pray that God's will be done in my life and I find a way to serve him this summer.

I am so thankful for the man Kyle is and what he does on a daily basis.   Volunteer firefighters ARE real firefighters, and they don't just fight fires.  They get emergency medical calls, calls for car wrecks, floods, and just about everything imaginable.  The only difference is that they put their life on the line for FREE.  Warning, I 'm about to describe some of the things Kyle has experienced as a firefighter and they might upset you.  Hearing them sometimes upsets me, but I listen because sometimes Kyle needs to vent and I'm sharing it with you so that you can appreciate what a service to our communities these men are.  Sometimes Kyle just needs to talk about the horrible things he's had to deal with that day.  He's dealt with walking in on a 4 day old suicide with Johnny Cash playing on repeat in the background.  Tried relentlessly to save a man in cardiac arrest, doing CPR with his fellow firemen for over 30 minutes while his 3 daughters were screaming in the background.  He's come to a 75 year old woman unconscious on the kitchen floor because her husband purposefully knocked her down and left her there.   He's been woken up at 2am to a flooded fire station only to be called out to an electrical fire at 3am only to head off to do PT (physical training) at fire school at 6am and do search and rescue drills all day.  He's seen more dead bodies than he can count.  Seen drug addicts.  Rescued puppies from a fire (and I told him if he ever ran into a burning building and risked his life again for a stupid dog, I'd personally kick his ass).  Casey has driven up on a fire so devastating that all they found was a mother and her toddler burned and melted together.  I appreciate Kyle more than I can even say.  I love that we share the same passion for helping, SAVING, people.  I love that every single day he's doing what he loves, and making a difference.  He hasn't been home in over 2 weeks.  He literally lives at the fire station.  He sleeps on a cot, lives out of a duffel bag, goes on calls every hour of the day or night, and he still loves it.  It's hard, but it's worth it.

One of my favorite pictures.

Kyle, Hawkins, and Shawn at late night fire January 2010

Casey

Rookie of the Year and Saved a Life award.
I love my boys, and they make me so proud!

Thanks to Monica Williams a fellow fire fighter's girlfriend who is a photographer and takes photos of the boys on calls, and in action when she can and to all the other station photographers!  

Abbreviations and sayings that drive me INSANE!!

Adorbs.
Obvi.
Totes.
sorry 'bout it.
Def.
and the worst one of allll time.
NOM NOM NOM.
Nom is not a cute word for eating.  It's annoying and gross.  The next time someone talks to me in "abrevs" I'm going to abbreviate every other world I say and see if they can understand me and if they get as annoyed as I do.

Avoiding Sharing

I've been posting lots of picture posts recently, and I think it's because I don't want to write.  I have lots of things to say, I'm just not sure I'm wanting to share.  Probably a result of too many too personal posts...  Here is my favorite part of my room.

It's the top half of my self... I love it.  I need to fill in a few picture frames, but I'm terrible at getting photos off my camera and onto my computer, and worse at getting them printed.  I love my favorite books, my journals, and my latest top shelf edition, my "Santa Biblia", aka my Spanish Bible!  I love the pictures of me and my sisters and high school best friends.  Roommates to be added soon (ish).  I love my handmade turquoise necklace that K bought me for my birthday this past May.  I love my growing collection of seashell items from Kyle's family vacations.  I love my Chance by Channel perfume.  I love my best friends coin purse Alicia bought me once upon a time.  I love the painting Kyle did in 7th grade (most people don't know he's an amazing, but modest artist!).  I love the ring holder my grandmother gave me.  I am such a home body and I just love where I live.  I like to sit on the couch and do homework, or read and chat with Aimes.  I like to cuddle on the couch and watch sex and the city, or skype with a friend laying on my bed.  I love to clean, and organize, but not making my bed.  Which reminds me...  I don't remember if I told ya'll this or not, but I no longer sleep on my bed.  It's bunked and I hate climbing in and out, and I hate making my bed, and I hate having an unmade bed!  So I've been sleeping on my futon ALL year.  Well I haven't been making that either... so the last 2 nights I've tried to sleep on my futon when it's in couch form so when I wake up it's already made.  It has not worked out.  At 6 am this morning I had to switch it, and lay it out into a double bed even though I was waking up in an hour simply because I couldn't handle it anymore!  OK. Enough pointless jabber.  I'm going to go to bed after I watch a sermon from the Radical series given by Pastor David Platt who preaches at Brook Hill Church in Birmingham Alabama.  the series is AMAZING. And I encourage every single Christian to watch the 8 week series.  I'm only one week in and I can't get enough of it.  It forces you to reevaluate what it means to be a follower of Christ and your priorities.  It's funny how God works.  I was just thinking about Luke 14:26 the week prior to watching my first sermon, and what do you know, it's one of the first verses mentioned!  Watch it.  You won't be disappointed.  Goodnight.

-look at that, I set out to avoid sharing, and I ended up sharing.

Friday Foodday

My and my roomie's creation!  *NOTE* we are not, and do not pretend to be any sort of cooking connoisseurs! We just felt like using our left over wine to cook something easy and delicious.

chicken + mushrooms + garlic + onion + evoo

+ white wine

+ cream

cooking all together

broccoli with evoo and garlic

+ bread + evoo and more garlic

Final Product.  

YES we are drinking milk (and soy milk) out of a mason jar and a wine glass!  We had wine, but no wine bottle opener (our first bottle had a cap, not a cork, classy I know)... so we had to drink milk, and didn't want to use our plastic cups.  But after our dilemma I went out and bought a wine opener.

Ho Hum

My two tests are done!  Quantitative Chemical Analysis and Biochem 432 (gene expression and replication) tests are done!!  Not sure how I did on my chem test seeing as how I didn't study... but at least I don't think I bombed it.  Take a peek at me and my roommate.

I'm sorry for the mirror pic, but it was necessary to get our outfits.  My roommate goes into work at 8 am every morning and I work out at 7am, come back at 8:15 then go to micro at 10:30 am (point being we don't see each other till we get to class).  We sit together.  I walk into micro and sit down and realize we are wearing almost the exact same outfit.  Light blue "boyfriend fit" tees and black skinny jeans.  We are so alike.  And we had to walk around campus (to micro lab, to dinner, to the fiesta on the green) matching and looking like big dorks.  To top it off we said the same thing, at the same time like 3 times yesterday.  I felt like the Olsen twins in one of their cheesy movies.  Our brain waves have finally reached the same frequency and it's weird how alike we are.

Aren't you happy I'm [FINALLY] updating with pictures and not jibber jabber? More picture posts to come!