The New Year

So...I haven't posted in a while. My life has been insane and I've been lazy, what a bad combination.

Anyway, this shall be a summary of the last month.

21st birthday: I woke up and worked on homework (final projects and papers), went to dinner at Olive Garden with the fam around 6 pm, came home and opened presents and had a FAB tart, went and did homework till 4 am. That was my 21st birthday!

Christmas: I promptly got sick on Dec 23rd (the day after I finished school...go figure), and went through work feeling semi-okay. I worked for 3 (or was it 4?) hours on Christmas Eve, went to the Aquarium for a half-shift, went to Christmas eve service (feeling worse than the day before), and went to bed. Woke up for Christmas just dead...We spent about 2.5 hours opening presents amongst the entire family (all 3 brothers and their wives, the niece and nephews, parents, Kristi, and I), went back to bed, got up for Christmas dinner, and went back to bed.

The rest of that week: I called out of work on the 26th (the first time I've EVER called out from work in 2.5 years of working at Borders). I went in for a half-shift on the 27th because I had to work on Bargains and whatnot. I had the rest of the week off and the Friday before New Years my parents and I drove down south to my oldest brother's. About midway down (Santa Maria), my nose started to bleed. Making a long story short...2.5 hours later it's still bleeding and I'm in the Santa Barbara ER. To make an even longer story shorter...I got my nose packed with, what the medical community terms as, a nasal tampon. It expands when water is placed on it. It was packed after they tried to catarize the blood vessel about 4-5 times with silver nitrate. When they packed my nose...the pack went WAY up into the nasal cavity (actually into my head...it wasn't in anywhere I could "point" to). It BURNED! My left eye kept watering and I was done for. I found out that Vicodin is NOT my drug of choice. It makes me ill -- no happy drug there! I also impressed the doctor that was seeing me. It always makes you feel slightly better when an ER doctor is impressed about things. He told a student doctor that the vessel that was bleeding was like a little artery that just kept pumping blood. The nose pack also put me out of commission the rest of the weekend. I slept through New Year's, suffered through a small fever, migraine, blah, blah, blah. I also lost about 5 pounds that weekend from not eating. You never realize how important it is for your nose to be able to move until you can't move it...On top of that...I also learned how to sneeze out of my mouth. Since I was still sick from before (sick with a terrible cold), I was sneezing and coughing. Of course with the nose pack, I couldn't do either well and DEFINITELY not out of my nose! I'm still sneezing out of my mouth out of habit...It's much messier than from the nose...

After we came home So. Cal...I went to my primary doctor to get the pack removed. They spent aeons trying to get it out and when they did...my nose started to bleed from the same spot again! I was sent to an E.N.T (ears, nose, and throat doctor). He checked me out, almost made me scream when he stuck that dumb thing up your nose to contract the vessels and "open your nose up." He actually looked at me concerned...I still don't like messing with my nose. It scares me. After having 3 doctors mess with the inside of my nose, having it packed, attempted at catarized, and finally catarized...I'm NEVER having someone mess with my nose again! Anyway...the E.N.T catarized the blood vessel and told me I couldn't lift anything heavy or do any exercising or anything like that for at least 3 days. Of course, I was supposed to work the next 3 days. I told him where I worked and he told I couldn't work and gave me a note to get out of work.

Once I was well...I went back to work. Was a bit slow, but moving. It felt NICE! I worked the 2 weeks left of my vacation (some vacation it was) and went back to school last Monday (Jan 22nd).

I'm taking 3 classes = 13 units.
Bio 340 aka Ecology
ESSP 384s aka environmental justice service learning (lots of self-reflections, critical thinkings, and it's a service learning class -- 30 hours of community service at a designated place)
ESSP 350 aka Quantitative Field Methods (QFM -- basically doing a monitoring project and using statistics and such to determine the outcomes or answer your question)

I'm also working once a week and still volunteering every other Sunday. I reached my 1,000 hour mark back in December at the aquarium. My shift and the aquarium made a big deal about it. I got my 1,000 hour pin and a really nice pen by Leed's that says "Monterey Bay Aquarium" with the logo on one side and "Volunteer" on the other. My shift made cupcakes with "1,000" written on them and they wrote a "filk" about me to the tune of "Down by the bay." I also got my certificate and a letter (few days later) from Julie Packard "on behalf of the board of trustees."

With that...I am off to go do some homework reading and some other stuff!

Laters

ETA: I almost forgot to post semester grades.

CST 201 (digital design): A+
Bio 241 (bio II): B+
Bio 241L (bio II lab): A
ESSP 332 (GIS/GPS): A
ESSP 332L (GIS/GPS lab): A
ESSP 300 (critical thinking/writing/career): A

I made the Dean's List and that GPA is a 3.86. My cum is the same (down a hundreth of a point from last semester...*sigh*)