-Ate plenty of good food (Sonic--although it was weird to eat it and not be in Oklahoma, tomato soup with grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches, Max & Erma's, lasagna, and an amazing brownie a la mode with Graeter's ice cream)
-Held my friend's now five day old baby girl
-Played Wii for the first time, which was quite fun especially since I only played for about a minute
-Took cookies to police and fire stations as part of a churchwide service project
-Saw one of my roommates from Ohio State with her cute pregnant belly (as well as her husband and their two dogs)
-Got a start on my dishes for once I get out on my own thanks to the fantastic mustafear; I now have mugs in cobalt, turquoise, peacock and plum with the promise of rounding out those place settings
-Nearly won a nerf bocce ball tournament
-Got plenty of cuddle time with my favorite four year old and miniature schnauzer
-Thankfully avoided having one of the numerous lectures on pollution the very smart seven year old gave directed at me
-Played video games with the boys
-Had an awesome time that was totally worth the better part of a gas tank with prices as high as they are right now

-lunch and dessert at the Cheesecake Factory (but not nearly as great as it used to be back in the day of date nights with Emily)
-sending off one job application and getting started on two others
-downloading the new version of Office for Mac for free from IU (and by free, I mean by paying thousands of dollars in tuition); it's got all the cool new features with it, too... now if only I knew how to use them all
-talking to a member of a family I've known all my life but haven't seen in a long time
-getting invited to a women's ministry planning retreat next month


What five good things happened to you today?

It's 1am and I'm not tired even though I was up at 5:30 this morning for a thing downtown.  I had my training today to be a substitute teacher for my home school system.  It was tips on what to do in the classroom (which I don't really feel like I need) that went on longer than was supposed to because of the dreaded Mr. I-Have-To-Ask-Every-Question-That-Comes-To-Mind.  After 4.5 hours of it, I was about ready to sit on my hands for his own safety.  It was seriously out of hand.  "What if they have to go to the bathroom?  Do I sign a pass?  What does a real pass look like?  How do I know it's not a fake?  What do I do if it's a fake?  What do I do if they wear something against dress code?  When I get there, when will the principal show me around?"  Seriously?  It's called a handbook.  Read it.

I sent off my first application for a real job over the weekend.  That scary fact hasn't settled in yet.  Just looked for some more openings.  There's one high school biology position up around here, as well as two middle school science positions (one on the north side and one in the Greater Cincy area).  So we'll see how that goes.

Easter was good, hope yours was too.  Got to see my cousin's engagement ring, which is gorgeous.  We continued our new tradition where the guest list is a mix of family members (mostly from my mom's side of the family) and church staff members.  We used the youth ministry center to hold the shindig.  Nothing like celebrating the resurrection of Jesus with a little March Madness on the big screen used to put up song lyrics for worship and borrowing the youth ministry's Play Station for some Guitar Hero action.

I watched a disc of Firefly episodes today, and my crush for Adam Baldwin increased all the more.  The last episode I watched was the one with Jayne the Hero--hilarious.  It's not the greatest show I've ever seen, but it is witty and does succeed in meshing the Old West with futuristic space stuff, so kudos on that.

Well, my hiccups have finally ceased.  I guess I should try and get some sleep. 

I'm still here, just alternating between keeping busy and wanting to crash on the couch.

The past weekend was great despite getting sick, which was only a matter of time since student teaching. Went down to visit mustafear and hang out with her super cool friends for a couple of days.  Also got to meet her new cow masquerading as a Great Dane, who is as sweet as she is huge.  The first night I got to fall asleep with both dogs (the other is a miniature schnauzer, and they make quite the pair) cuddled around my legs, but made the mistake of disturbing them to get under the covers and was quickly abandoned.

Jessica introduced me to everyone at church on Sunday in the following manner: "This is my friend, Sara.  We want her to move down here, so keep your ear to the ground about a high school biology teaching position opening up."  I don't know why, but I'm always surprised that people would want me to be around them that much.  It's humbling, flattering, and exciting all at once.

On the student teaching front, we added two large rats to the petting zoo that lives in my classroom.  They're so gross, but thankfully they're being kept in the backroom at the moment.

I had my midterm review today and got all 3s and 4s (4 is the highest), so that was nice.  At the end of the week, I'll be halfway done with things.  It's going by fast, but I'm started to get excited and not completely nervous about going out and finding a job and finally and officially getting to be an adult.

Ugh to NBC and the weather.  This is the second week in a row that Biggest Loser has been interrupted due to weather coverage.  And they keep cutting into to cover Super Tuesday, too.  I just want to see who lost the most weight; is that too much to ask?

I've been doing a lot of reading so far this year thanks to my new library card.   The three books I've finished were Star Trek books.  Two being related to Section 31 and the third being Imzadi.  The Section 31 books were ok.  The DS9 was enjoyable because it had Ro and I could mentally throw in a little Admiral Cain in there, too.  There was a lot of talk about Bashir and his genetic enhancements, which were somewhat interesting.  The other Section 31 book involved Voyager and Seven of Nine.  Again, it was just okay.  Imzadi was pretty good.  I read the last half in one evening without staying up really late, so that was fun.  Although I'm pretty sure Picard doesn't call Riker "Number One" as much as they put it into the book.  I swear they made him say it at least five times per page and it just made me want to chuck the book against a wall.

I've now started Allegiance.  As long as I can ignore Mara's horrible hair on the back cover (it's entirely too uniform being blown in the wind), I'll be fine.  Hopefully.

I got kicked out of greyslims  tonight.  It's the furthest I've ever made it in a lims contest - top 4.

That's all from me.  Hope everything is going well for you.

Tonight at church was the first meeting for the twentysomething ladies and it was a blast.  There were ten of us there and only two of them weren't related to a staff member or worked in the school at church.  But even the other seven people (since I'm one of the eight) were people I hadn't seen in a long time or hadn't met before.  We sat and ate too much pizza and desserts, talked, did a lot of laughing, and watched Return to Me.  It was just a great night and made me realize how mcuh I missed being part of a small group of girls that got together at church.

A new layout for the new year/my sister's birthday.  I'll do a post recapping the past week when I get a chance, but for now I need to get dressed, eat, and dry my hair so I'm not late (again) for church.

It's my last day of break before classes start tomorrow.  And I'm doing a phenomenal job of just laying around and being lazy.  Too good of a job in fact. 

Since I last updated I've...
...helped get my cousin moved into her new apartment, which is quite nice.
...gotten access to wireless high speed back. 
...fallen in love with the music of Imogen Heap.
...been introduced to The Frames, who are also good to listen to.
...updated my icon journal with stuff from Grey's, Star Wars, BSG, The Office, and flowers: iconic_lydia
...dropped a class and added two more, which brought my total for book costs this semester to around $115, but not nearly as bad as others.
...heard one of the more interesting and thought-provoking sermons on the church being the body of Christ.

I think that's about it for now.  Good luck on your first week of classes all my fellow Hoosiers.

I've had about four different updates I've thought about blogging, but I'm just lazy.  And since it's Tuesday (class day), I finally found the motivation to update: don't want to do my reading for my legal issues class.  So here are some random thoughts broken up into sections in case you don't want to read everything:

Well, okay, yesterday:

-Went to church where the service was a presentation by the middle school choir comprising of leading some songs in worship and a few skits that were all well done and had a good message.  It reminded me that tonight was the In His Image (high school choir at my home church) concert.  I can't wait to details from Kate about the whole production, because that's really the best word to use when Donna is involved.
-Got my book to help me study for the PRAXIS II, which I'm taking the first weekend in August.  I got a little over 70% of the questions in the test in the book right without studying.  I missed a whole string of them in a row, but forgot to look at which section they were over.  Probably my arch-nemesis of biochemistry.
-Went back on my word about not making any more icons for TF.N and did eleven of them.  But it doesn't really count if they were icons I made for lj, right?
-Saw the America's Next Top Model finale and thought the results should have been reversed.  I think the judges are just picking whoever they want now regardless of pictures and performances.
-Found a new musical boyfriend: Jon McLaughlin.  I'd heard something about because he was the free track download on iTunes one weekend when Kate was home and we were interested because his album's name is "Indiana".  Lyrics for the album's title song can be found under the cut.  (Stephanie, you especially have to check him out since he's touring with Jonny Lang)
-Finished off the rough draft of the interview I did for the fanfic authors thread on TF.N.  Just have to wait and see if there are more questions to be asked before I know if it's done or not.
-Got a response in the J/J challenge thread I'm running this time around.  Hopefully it will inspire more and we can get some judges.
-Read spoilers for the next Star Wars book, even though logically it makes sense when you look at things.  And it will save me twenty-some bucks for when I don't go out now and buy the book.
-Started on the last bit of drabbles for the current theme at pintsizedsagas.  In celebration of Thursday night, they'll all be Jim and Pam.

-I've been watching Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth" marathon on and off all day long.  It's amazing.  How God came up with ideas for so many creatures is beyond me.  To think that so many different species and so many environments exist on our planet is mind-boggling.  Although part of me finds the whole behind the scenes/little stories about how it was films almost as interesting as the shows itself.
-The church I go to here is trying to start a Sunday evening service for college students.  Tonight was the first test in dipping their toes into the water.  There were about twenty-five of us there and it went well.  The subject of discussion was tattoos.  I won a $5 gift certificate to Starbuck's for having the closest guess to how many strokes a tattoo needle makes in a minute.  I guessed 250, the answer is 300.
-Speaking of Starbucks, I watched "Act of Contrition" tonight in my BSG catch-up marathon.  It's a good thing I already know that Starbuck is alive... well maybe.  Even though Roslin only had one scene, she still rocked it.  "Oh gods, you're one of those."
-My class tomorrow morning was canceled, so I don't have to be anywhere till 5:30 tomorrow night.  This means I'm going to probably end up doing a half-way impression of Sabrina's insomnia and stay up till around 2 or so.  Maybe I'll get some work done, since all I've done today is write a journal.  I have another four pages due tomorrow and a 5-7 page paper due on Tuesday.  But I'm getting to where I could write both of those in one afternoon.  I just have to stay focused, which has always been my enemy.
-As for right now, it looks like my next icon topic for swsaga100 is Revenge of the Sith.  If you want me to do something else, better vote now.
-I got the boot over at officelims.  Oh well, those people are way better than I am and I'm just happy I lasted three rounds.

I went home Saturday afternoon and hung out with my family for a couple of days.  I'm now on spring break (thank goodness) so I didn't get back down here till about an hour ago.  Kate and I immediately caught each other up on our dreams where we're making out with Jim Halpert, watched Office stuff on youtube, and made fun of each other.  We're worried about our cat.  The poor thing is skinnier than ever and I really think she lost weight between now and when I was home two weeks ago.  Granted she's at least fourteen years old and I complain about her more often than not, but still.

The family is good.  Dad preached in CrossEyed yesterday (church service for junior and senior high students).  There weren't any embarrassing stories about me, which always plays a big factor into how well I think he did, but he did fine.  Since a lot of the junior highers were away on a retreat, Dad was asked to talk about the scripture of it would be better to tie a millstone around your neck and be thrown into the sea than to deter a child from the kingdom of God in hopes of motivating the high schoolers to be good role models for their younger fellow youth groupers. 

One of Kate's roommates, Autumn, flew in to Indy Saturday night and went back to school with Kate on Sunday.  She's a sweet girl and it's good to see that my sister is living with a good person.

Spring break will be nice.  I need to spend tomorrow cleaning my room, but at least I won't have to wake up at 6:30 in the morning to go to a class that just leaves me frustrated.  Thursday I'm leaving for Kentucky to hang out with Jessica.  I need to call Emily to see if she'll have some free time in between doing people's taxes to hang out.

Speaking of doing people's taxes, we watched Stranger Than Fiction Saturday night.  It was a really good movie.  I knew despite it starring Will Ferrell that it wasn't a comedy, but it still had its hilarious moments.  For instance, in an effort to woo a baker, Will's character gives the object of his affection flours.  Why no one else had played on those words before is beyond me.  It's the little, clever things like that which make me smile a little wider and think better of the movie.

I think that's about it for now.  I'm almost finished with Exile.  I was about thirteen pages away from finishing this morning and had to put it down when I started reading the same paragraph over and over again.

But the really exciting part of the day?  Driving around Indiana with the sunroof open and wearing a skirt and flip-flops.   I wish we could keep this weather all year long.