All things considered

I finally have a chance to take a deep breath and compose a proper post on my blog. A great deal has happened since my last real post over a week ago. We will take it from the top...

It was really hard to go to class on Thursday like nothing had happened. But it was definitely fun to show the ring to people. I walked into the room and sat next to Elise, my physiology friend, and said "well, you know how my boyfriend was coming into town last night..." and she said yes, and then I just held out my left hand and sat back for her to ooo and ahhh. Dr. Hunter was sitting right by us, so he got to hear all about it too. He was quite interested, actually - I think he's a romantic at heart. When he began class, he asked if anyone had questions before we started, as usual. When no one had any, he then asked, "so, anyone get engaged last night?" I got to raise my hand. Now that I think about it, I should've raised my left hand so that everyone could have appreciated the ring. Oh well. And later, when lecturing about the sympathetic nervous system (responsible for "fight or flight"), he gave the example that it causes dry mouth - he said you might experience such effects when you are doing something like speaking in public...taking a test...asking someone to marry you... :) What a goofball. After Thursday's class, Matt picked me up and we ate lunch at NY Sub. Then we went to the mall to ask about ring resizing and to get my left ring finger sized. Matt had used my ring size from the Aggie Ring office to decide what ring size to get, but your dominate hand is always bigger, it turns out. My left ring finger is 0.75 sizes smaller than my right. But we're going to wait to get the ring resized, so we just got some plastic spacers that go around the band. This way I don't get paranoid about the ring falling off every second of the day - a good thing. I had to go back to campus for lab, but it was a quick one - only about an hour! Thursday night I got to have the pizza rolls I thought I was getting on Wednesday.

On Friday, we left for the miniranch. We spend the weekend, we playing in the lake a lot, floating and riding the Pous awesome Sea-Dos, hanging out with all the people there, playing ping pong, feeding the cows, watching all the munchkins run around (there were 4 kids there under the age of 3), setting off fireworks and watching fireworks on Saturday and Sunday night. On Saturday night, everyone was at our place for a big pot-luck dinner and Dad got everyone's attention so that Matt could announce our engagement. No one was shocked, but they were all very happy (which made us happy). You can look at a few pictures at Mom and Dad's place on overt. My favorite pic is the black widow - Matt put his hand in its web retrieving the ping pong ball...and we just learned a few days ago in physiology how its toxin works. :) The fireworks were really awesome. Everyone at Cedar Creek was setting them off - you always could look out and see them somewhere - and some of them were of professional quality. Plus, it was fun to set them off, since Matt and I haven't had many opportunities to do so before. One of the best parts of the weekend was getting to spend time with Robin & Karen and Lathram & Carmen Pou. Lathram and Carmen just got married about 2 months ago, and all four of them were great to observe and talk to about the whole marriage (and wedding) thing. It isn't surprising that the sons and daughters-in-law of people as generous and loving as Robert and Cindy are just as great, and I think Matt and I can learn a lot about having a strong relationship/marriage from those two couples.

The only downside from the Fourth of July weekend was that I had to study A LOT. My health midterm was on Monday and my physiology test was yesterday, and both classes had suffered a bit immediately after the proposal. So at night or random times during the days, I was reading health notes, making physiology flash cards, highlighting my book, etc. On Monday, Matt and I headed out from the miniranch in the morning because I had to go to work (and study and take my midterm at 5) and Matt had to drive from College Station to Dallas (he bowled in between his two drives, though, with his new bowling ball and shoes!). So Matt left :( and I went to work because labs started the next day (Tuesday). My schedule is fine - 10 hours a week spread over M-T-W - but it is just rough going from no work, where I was spending my free time studying physiology and watching health lectures, to having afternoons consumed by work. Now I'll essentially be occupied 9:30-6:00 Mondays-Wednesdays (hey, it's summer! that's significant!) with my full Thursday of physiology. *sigh* At least I'll having money going into my bank account again!

Anyway, I took my health final at 6 pm on Monday and it was horrible! Of the 77 questions, roughly 20 were recalling statistics (and considering that about half of all lectures were numbers, remembering specifics like that was a little tough). I knew all the trends, but the test didn't ask that...instead it ask questions like "how many people in the US are uninsured: 15, 20, 33, 39, or 44 million?" or "how much money the US government give the survivors of the Tuskegee syphilis study: 5, 8, 10, 12, or 14 million dollars?" or "how many people die from smoking each year: 125,000, 218,000, 324,000, 456,000, 512,000?") I was SO irritated. The test didn't even ask questions from some material, like the lectures on breast cancer or AIDS, and then rather than testing our knowledge of health disparities, it was testing whether we remembered every number we'd been presented with! And this test was half my grade! Grrrr! And then I got to go home and study physiology.

I went to class and worked on Tuesday. I also did my best to study for my next test. I was let off work on Wednesday, so I just went to class, and then came home to study. My phys test was at 5 yesterday. I was pretty convinced that the excitement of the previous week coupled with a busy weekend, a health midterm, and the difficulty of the material would cause me to do pretty horribly. However, when I got the test, I went through methodically and didn't find any question that left me stumped. When I got my grade back today, it turns out I made a 95%, which is awesome, all things considered! It wasn't enough for a lunch invite, but it was the highest grade in the class and one of only three A's! In fact, I'm the only one who has an A in the class right now!!! :) :) It feels really good to have my hard work pay off, and I am happy to be at the top of a class again. That hasn't happened too frequently since I graduated high school. So, yeah, I was thrilled. Yay! And more happiness: Jeff, Taylor, and Brittany are supposed to come down to visit Em and me this weekend. And so, I think I'll wrap up this never-ending blog entry on that happy note.