rare update moment

Things have been pretty busy around here lately.
Last week, my future brother in law came to town to visit for a week. His flight in was supposed to be on the day before St. Patrick's day. You may remember this as being the big Nor'eastern blizzard that hit New England-day. Naturally, his flight got cancelled, but the airline wouldn't reschedule him a flight until Monday.

Our first St. Patrick's day in Boston wasn't anything for the record books (aside from the blizzard and navy crew member who lost his life in the harbor that night). We decided we didn't feel like paying an $80 cover to be packed like a sardine inside a bar full of people pretending to be irish. Last year's St. Patty's day for me involved heading over to a friend of a friend's house in Iowa to watch Boondock Saints and have a few green jello shots. This year involved getting bundled up like the kid brother in that old movie "A Christmas Story" just to walk across the street to play Cranium with our friends.

When Tj's brother finally got in on Monday, we had a pretty good week with him. We're trying to convince him to move out here, become our roommate, and attend an MBA program in town. He's pretty serious about it and is looking into internships now.

Other than that, I'm in the process of planning a bachelorette shower. Oh boy the possibilities with this one! I had things planned out and pretty well set, then the bridesmaids decided to tell me they couldn't make that weekend. I had asked them before what weekends worked for them, so after throwing a mini-tantrum, things worked out okay in the end. I was able to keep the plans as-are, and just shift everything down one weekend without any penalties for hotel day-swapping or anything.

Oh and in other news, I've decided to apply to dental schools this year. If 3rd time is not the charm, then I'm hanging up my drill for good and leaving it alone. I don't want to get my hopes up like I did last time, even though I probably have a better shot at it this round. One of my professors (a dentist) at school used to be on the admissions committee the entire time he taught at one of the dental schools I'm applying to. He has agreed to help me with my personal statement, and offered to write me a letter of recommendation if I do well in his class (oral pathology). So far I'm getting an A. As long as I do well on the final, which is cumulative and worth 40% of my grade, I'll have a pretty sweet deal.

In that case, with 3 weeks left to the semester, I better go study...

spring I-need-a-break

It's spring break, which means I spend every waking hour that I would've been in class working on everything I couldn't accomplish because of it.

Two days ago we found two dressers on really good sale, so we picked them up. As the daughter of a carpenter, I was nominated to be the one to put in the elbow grease to construct said project. TJ's help involved holding pieces together long enough for me to get the screws in, then sitting on the couch watching TV as my moral support. We got the smaller of the two put together and then the next day, the bigger dresser was put together 100% by yours truly. TJ was at school so I popped in some classic rock and worked away to songs like Hotel California and Freebird. God I love the guitar solo from that song. When I was little my dad would be down at his work bench or out in the garage working on things with the classic rock station blaring. I like to think that when I do that too, he's smiling down on me. That is, until I drive a screw out the other side of the board and have to fix it by hiding it under some black electrical tape... Anyway, now we have 2 cheap, but nice looking, new dressers that I have all the bragging rights to their construction. The former tomboy in me is smiling.

When I'm not doing hard labor, I'm on the phone with various vendors planning our wedding. Ok I'm taking a nap on the couch watching crappy People's Court shows, but I eventually get around to wedding planning. We started our premarital counseling classes recently and our first assignment sounds like it will lead to interesting results. We each have to write a paper. The first paragraph we write about ourselves, the second is about our partner, and the third is how we think our partner sees us. TJ's immediate response to this was "Does 'stubborn' count?" Neither of us has actually started this assignment yet, but I'm extremely intrigued as to what he is going to say.
Our DJ is finally coming around and sounds like he'll actually have the type of music we want to hear, with enough of it to fit a 4 hour dance, and I'm 3/5 of the way done with finding out what my bridesmaids want done with hair/makeup to tell the nice ladies at the salon what to expect for us. My mom is finally ditching her jackass of a boyfriend too. Last I heard he's starting to date a new victim, yet he still continually calls my mother to go do stuff with him. The guy has serious issues. At least I don't have to deal with him at the wedding anymore :o)

That's all for now, I'll try to update this thing a little more here and there.