Rachel, oh Rachel!

This weekend was superbly lazy and relaxing.  I almost think that the stresses of tests are worth it just so you can enjoy the calm afterwards!  Seriously, it is the best feeling in the world.  Anyways, I managed to get reacquainted with my Xbox360 for many hours, which was awesome.  I also watched Stardust, which is one of those movies I love, even though it is probably one of the cheesiest movies ever.  On Sunday I had a lovely visit from one of my good friends, Rachel.  Sadly, no Cafe Rio was involved.  The reasons for this are twofold: because it was Sunday, and in memory of Catherine's illness.  (She is my usual Cafe Rio buddy, but she had the flu.)  

Back to my story.  Well Rach lived with me for over a year, and we had a blast.  Here are some photos to illustrate my point!

I would like to thank my awesome MacBook computer for making this party possible, and also all of Rachel's quarks that comes out when cameras are involved!  

Swimmer pictures

Okay, I finally found my camera cord (it was in the most obvious place ever).  So, as promised, here are the awesome pictures of my brother's swim meet!

This first picture has a good story behind it.  The high school's mascot is the Cedar Redmen, so we got all decked out in feathers and such.  This particular headdress is actually the school's, and Blake had to do some serious detective work to find it.  Apparently the football team had hijacked it, and it was just chilling out in the locker room.  (Bleh, stinky.)  Oh well, it was totally worth it, 'cause look how cool it is!  Oh yeah, and he's wearing a "loincloth" that my mom made for the team.

Here Blake is after his 50 free event.  He won 3rd place!  I especially love that none of the guys are wearing speedos - those are nasty.  

Me and my two brothers cheering on the Redmen!  Check out our festive feathers.  The little one is Carson, and the other one is Mitchell.

Eating some celebratory pizza.  Yum yum.  That's me, Blake, and our cousin Aubrey.

My Blonde Wednesday

Okay, so this last Wednesday I had a moderately rough day.  After waking up late, and barely making it to class on time (8-o-clock classes are not my friend) I had quite the adventurous day!  The first thing I did involves the public transit system.  So I had driven up to class that morning and parked at the hospital.  After a brutal 3 1/2 hour exam on preventive dentistry, I very obliviously hopped onto trax to take me home.  You see where this is going?  Yes, I had quite the adventure riding trax back and forth to the hospital to get back to my car.  Ha ha, I knew something like this would happen someday!  Oh well, I had a good time laughing at myself!

Second thing.  So the dental students have formed an intramural Dodgeball team which we have fondly named "The Dry Sockets."  Wednesday we competed against the medical school, so I headed on over the north hyper to play with them.  Dodgeball is actually really fun, if you've never played!  Anyways, while attempting to find an unlocked entrance previous to arriving, I managed to trip over a bench in the dark.  If you've never done that, it really hurts, and I have several large bruises to prove it!  However, it was another instance where I just had to laugh!  I once saw a girl do this, but she had no excuse (like the dark).  I was actually sitting on the bench when this girl fell over it.  Ha ha.  See, I'm not the only one with blonde moments!  Well I hope you have gotten a good laugh out of this, and I also hope that your Wednesdays were a little bit better than mine!

Thursday showed a drastic improvement.  My morning class got cancelled, so I got to catch up on some sleep.  Also, I went to Chuck-a-Rama with my roommate's family.  We actually snuck cake out in our purses and pockets.  How's that for living life on the edge!

The coolest brother in the world!

Okay, this is not my brother!  (In case you were wondering...)  This is because I couldn't find the little cable to upload my pictures to my computer, so this will have to suffice until I can find it.  I did actually find a cable, but it's for my old camera.  Lame, huh?

Well I just spent the better part of my weekend down in Provo watching my little brother, Blake, swimming at the high school state swim meet.  He was the region nine winner for his event 50 freestyle, and he placed 3rd in this event at state with his best time ever this Friday.  I was so proud of him!  He competed in three other events, and he placed 4th in his single event (100 free), and his relay team got 3rd and 4th in their two events (50 free, and 100 free).  I think he is one of the best swimmers that I've known in real life!

In all honesty, swim meets are rather dull (I dozed off a couple times between Blake's events), so I had to do something to liven it up a little bit.  So the meet was at the school down south (BYU, for those of you who don't speak utah "ute"), and I decided I needed to wear some of the Utah gear on campus - just for kicks!  However, I didn't wear just any Utah gear.  I wore my "Perfection Achieved" shirt!  The story behind this involves BYU's notorious printing of blue "Aim for Perfection" T-shirts in the middle of the season, right before loosing, most especially to the Utes, 48 to 24!  Well I'm not that die-hard of a football fan, but I did get a kick out of some of the crusties I got from the BYU-ites, and even more, the several complements I got from other people!

My library woes...

I would like to dedicate this post to the fabulous Marriot Library, and their continuing project to build things.  Last semester the library was my best friend because they suddenly opened up this great big study area on the second floor that had personal study rooms, and big giant tables.  Previous to this, most of the library had been closed off due to the construction of said study areas.  Anyways, I loved it because I have this need to spread my books all over the place.  Also because it wasn't uncommon for me to spend upwards of eight hours per day at the library (well,  mainly just the week before a test), I liked to pack half of what I owned.  This included my computer, a Subway Sandwich, my skull (for anatomy), a 42 oz fountain drink, and about 24 text books (hmm, maybe not that many).  

Imagine my dismay this semester when I discovered the entrance I frequented had been closed off by none other than the construction people.  What!  Imagine the fire hazard imposed by only having one exit for the great, sprawling, five-story building the library has become.  Where did this terrible idea come from?  Another bad change.  Remember how the library used to be open till 2 am on week nights?  Well now they are only open till 12 (FYI).  I'm going to miss that...   -sigh-  I mean, it used to be a mark of great skill and dedication to get kicked out of the library at closing time, and now it's easy to get kicked out!  However, I have made my peace with these changes and relocated my study-fests to another area of the library.

My fun-filled weekend

As anyone who has ever lived with me could probably tell you, about every six months I feel this urge to move furniture around.  I don't really know why, but I do.  Anyways, this weekend I was overcome with the need to move all of my stuff around.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that about every six months my room gets so cluttered/disorganized that I just have to start all over again!  Either that, or I'm just trying to find my chi.  I wonder if I lived in a place for long enough I would eventually find the perfect arrangement, and never need to move my stuff again!

Anyways, after moving my bed to a new location, I decided that the five windows in my room looked rather forlorn.  I got lucky in my room selection, because I have the most windows of anybody in my house!  However, I probably have the noisiest room, being that my room is on the corner of the house right next to the front door, and 500 south.  So I set out on an adventure to IKEA on Saturday night.  If you can believe it, that was my first trip to IKEA, and I was way too excited to be there!  As someone said today, IKEA is like "a Disneyland of furniture!"  (Thank you dental guys!)  I found some awesome blue curtains for like six bucks, and I even found a new comforter!  So in keeping with my tropical oriented theme, I have created a beach-house style living space that any surf bum would be proud of!  

Oh yes, this is my bed with my awesome 8-foot surfer poster and new curtains.  I just thought I would share this with everyone!  I also have discovered how to add music.  Hope you enjoy, and please ignore some of them, as I have added them just for kicks!  Well that's about it for today, especially since I am once again procrastinating my homework.

I'm blogging!

Okay, if anyone has actually checked out this lame excuse for a blog, they will quickly realize that I don't ever update it.  Ha ha.  Well here we go, I'll attempt to add some stuff real quick like.  So I managed to survive my first semester of dental school, which I felt was quite an accomplishment!  My class consists of me and nine other guys.  It's really entertaining, because they are all older than me, and all but one of them are married!  It's a little bit intimidating, just because I feel like they all have so much more experience than me.  However, it's interesting to see the strengths we all have.  For instance, I seem to have a lot more clinical experience than any of them.  I've really enjoyed being able to reflect on my dental assisting days because I generally know exactly what my professors are talking about!  It's also really entertaining because my dad actually know some of the guys that are teaching us.  For instance, my dental materials professor was one year ahead of my dad at Creighton.  For those who don't know, my dad is also a dentist, and he did the same program I am doing.  How's that?  Anyways, I'm afraid I already have some biases simply because my dad has told me all about these guys.  

Last semester was quite the adventure because I was basically in medical school.  We took almost all of our classes with the med students, and that included histology, embryology, and my favorite, gross anatomy!  To tell you the truth, I've never enjoyed a class so much, or been so stressed out at the same time!  Anatomy was really cool because we did dissections on human cadavers which was quite the experience.  I just thought it was an amazing opportunity because how many people actually get to have that kind of experience?  Even though it did kinda suck to dissect certain areas that no dentist will ever treat, the rest was pretty cool.  Not to mention our super-cool professor who not only told us ridiculously embarrassing stories about himself, but wrote, sang, and played the guitar for several anatomy-filled songs!  He wrote a song set to "American Pie" about the GI tract (see how it rhymes?), and another to "Free Falling" about sperm!  

So right now we are in almost all dental classes, which is AWESOME!  However, we do have to take a couple classes, such as biochem and physiology.  Next week I have four, possibly five exams, and I'm actually supposed to be studying for that right now.  Until then, enjoy the blog!

Oh yeah, here is a picture of our histology class in the microscope lab.  It's missing a couple of the dental guys (they skipped out that day, can you imagine?), but most of us are there!