Driver's License

I got my new Driver's License today (after an epic month long battle with the DMV. I hate that place). Thought I would share my pretty dorky pic. For a DL pic, it isn't that bad. But I wouldn't classify it as one of my better shots. ;)

Later, I might put on my new outfits and take some pics. I have an entirely thrifted outfit i'm quite proud of. We'll see how ambitious I get. If I do it, those pics should be up tomorrow, or maybe this evening.

Ramblings

Hello!

Still haven't done much lately. I feel like I'm always saying that. I guess my life is a little boring these days. I feel like all I ever do is sleep in, get up, waste time in cyberspace, go running, lunch, shower, watch TV episodes or read, cook dinner, watch more TV or read more, go to bed. Rinse, repeat. It sounds kind of lame, probably because it is! Haha.

I did have a job interview on Monday for a receptionist position for the hospital in town. The job is actually in an imaging and lab facility. The hours are kind of poopy- 11:00 am until 7:30pm and then every third Saturday (which keeps changing, by the way. It was originally posted for every fifth saturday, then it changed to every fourth, and now every third!) from 7:00am until 1:30pm. The position actually works half in one office and then half in another. Anyway, I'm not really convinced this job is the right job for me. It seemed pretty unorganized. Plus, the whole interview was less than ten minutes long and consisted of approximately three or four questions. I don't really think she liked me much, and she's interviewing a ton of people (apparently). I don't feel like I stood out or anything, so maybe they won't offer me the job. But we'll see, she said she was going to try to make a decision by Friday.

I'm in the middle of all the applications and such for being a substitute teacher. It's kind of a lot (and a lot of money too!) each school district requires a CPS background check, which is a fee every time. It's kind of stupid; why can't they just use the same background check? I also had to go get a TB test done. I've had them done in the past and have forgotten to go get them read... I CANNOT FORGET THIS TIME. I even have a post it note to remind me. I'm applying to three school districts, maybe four. Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, and maybe Newport News. Newport News is kind of far away, but if Brad is driving there everyday, it wouldn't be that big of a deal to just go with him and coordinate schedules for that day.

I went thrifting yesterday evening at good will. I found a silk skirt for two and a half bucks and a pair of Forever 21 jeans for seven bucks. I was pleased with my choices. Got two nice things for 9.50. Good deal! I'm thinking about going to Salvation Army later this evening to check out their clothes. I'm getting kind of bored being cooped up in my apartment all the time.

Louisanna hasn't barked while I've been gone for two days so I'm hoping that's a permanent development, because I definitely feel more free to leave knowing my neighbors aren't going to hate me. She also didn't have any accidents in the apartment at all yesterday. So I guess the key is to not let her have so much water! That sounds mean, but if she's drinking so much that she's peeing every hour and half, that's too much. In my opinion anyway.

The heatwave finally left us! It's been in the mid eighties for two days now (Praise the Lord!). It's supposed to be back up in the 90s by next week, but that's still cooler than 115 degree heat index! Just saying. I'm thinking this weekend Brad and I might head to the beach on Saturday. We haven't been there since 4th of July weekend, so it might be fun to go this week. It'll be cooler, so hopefully we won't burn our feet off on the sand. Let me tell you what, that sand gets really really hot sometimes.

Time to go running, for sure! It's almost noon. Time to stop being lazy!

Louisianna!

Not much has been happening since I last posted. I'm just kind of waiting to hear back from some places about a job (nothing new on that front). I officially got accepted into Asbury Theological seminary, so as soon as I get all of my ducks in a row I will be starting an MDiv program in the Fall. I am rather excited about it, for sure! I'm not sure how the job situation is going to pan out with that. I'm kind of hoping to just do substitute teaching for awhile. It's something flexible that I can turn down if I'm swamped with school or something, but I think it's also something that I would be able to do almost full time if I played my cards right.

We got a dog, as most of you know, I'm sure. She's a beagle mix, and she's SO CUTE. She's mostly well behaved, but she does bark while we're gone. So I'm not sure how to eliminate that. A friend of mine suggested that we get a DAP diffuser. DAP is Dog Appeasement Pheromone. Apparently it's the synthetic form of some hormone that mother dogs make in their milk for their puppies and it helps them calm down. I'm hoping this works, if not I guess our last resort is a bark collar. I'm not sure a bark collar will work if she's barking because she's anxious that we're gone. I'm afraid she would just bark and shock herself continuously.  We're working on it though. She had to go into the vet's to get her next heartworm treatment, I get to pick her up this afternoon. She went in on Tuesday morning because she was making this weird snorting sound, but it turned out to be nothing. Instead of making me drive to Norfolk again to pick her up, and then out again on Thursday for the heartworm treatment, they just kept her Tuesday night. Then they did the treatment on Wednesday morning and observed her for the rest of the day/this morning. It's funny how she's only been here for about a week and it already felt weird to have her gone!

I've been keeping up on my running, but I've also started doing Jillian Michael's or Biggest Loser once a week. I kind of want to tone up a little bit. I've also stopped trying to actively lose weight, but to maintain where I'm at now. It's been going pretty well, just gotta keep working out. Speaking of which, it's about that time!

Fourth of July

Here is the official Fourth of July post, haha.

For the weekend of the Fourth Brad's family came up to visit us and see our new home. Saturday we spent a good portion of the day at the beach, and it was a lot of fun! Except a wave took off my sun glasses and I lost them forever. Oh well, they were only five dollars at Walmart.

Sunday we went to Colonial Williamsburg. It was SO MUCH FUN. I love that place. Brad's mom and dad helped us buy season passes, so we'll be able to go back whenever we want to. We toured all of the little buildings, did some shopping, and stayed for the fireworks. Here are some pics:

                  This was in the Governor's Palace. I definitely remember this from last time we went!

This was the guy who gave us some info about the Courthouse. His costume looked so hot. As it temperature wise... It was about 100 degrees that day!

                                                             In front of the Courthouse.

                                                          Inside the Courthouse.

                                               The Armory. Brad really liked this building.

                                                           In the Stocks. Misbehaving, again.

                        And, of course, a family weekend isn't complete without a Mario Kart tournament! I think this was Monday night. :)

Monday we spent time driving around to see the area, and then we just kind of hung out and had a nice supper together. Tuesday, Bree and I spent the day shopping and getting our nails done. That was a fun day. Then we wrapped up the weekend by going out for some Ice Cream. Overall, it was a fun weekend and fairly relaxed.

Since then I've just been hanging out around here looking for a job, cleaning, and scrapbooking. I'm currently out of pictures to scrapbook, so i need to print some more off.  My life is a bit boring at the moment, haha. But i'm sure it will pick up here soon, especially if I get a job. I have a lead on two jobs, but they're just minor leads. Not sure how either of them are going to pan out.

Time to go for my run!

Tour of the Apartment: In Pictures

Well hello there! I know I promised pictures like a week ago, but there is a reason for the delay. I had taken all the pictures of the apartment and was ready to go, and when I put the card from the camera in my computer, something happened and my computer ate all of the pictures on the card. Including all of the pictures of the moving process. I no longer have any pictures of packing up the old apartment or moving into the new apartment; as you could imagine I was very sad about this. I decided not to take new pictures right then because I was so mad/sad. Then Brad's parents came in for the weekend and things just got a little crazy! But here I am now, with pictures of lots of stuff. This is going to be a very picture heavy post. I think later on this week I will make a fourth of July post and show you what we were up to on the holiday. For now, you need to sit back, relax and enjoy the tour of the apartment!

First, this is our entry way:

If you walk through the door and keep going you'll get to the living room/dining room/kitchen area. If you were to walk straight in and turn to your right you would see this:

We acquired the coffee table from Brad's parents and they took the other blue chair back home with them. The thing on the coffee table is a candle holder thing, but I haven't gotten candles for it yet. We also bought that bookshelf (along with another smaller one! so we have a grand total of FIVE book shelves). The little table with the lamp on is also new, and it houses my Shrine to Australia (a photo album, the akubra, a boomer ring, and a little picture book of Brisbane). I think the TV fits much better in this space, don't you? The big window is the door to our small balcony.

If you were to stand in the middle of the living room with you back to the book shelf and balcony you would see this:

It's obviously our dining area, with our little dining table and new china cabinet. The cupboards in our apartment are too small to store food AND dishes, so we had to get something to put all of our dishes in. We discovered this china cabinet at Goodwill for 25 bucks. Steal of the century!

If you sat in that chair in front of the china cabinet you would see into the kitchen: 

 

Behind those doors is the washer and dryer.

If you left the kitchen and continued back through the main walkway you would find our office to your right: If you looked out the window you would see the fountain. This view costs us 20 bucks a month.

Instead of looking out the window, if you turned around you would see our bookshelf with our movie collection in it as well as our storage closet (which you can't really see in this pic. But it isn't anything exciting):

Right across the way from the office is the my/the guest bathroom: 

Now you're about to leave the apartment, but wait! You haven't seen our bedroom! Instead of walking out the front door, you need to take a left into the Master Suite:

I painted the dresser (which we got at a thrift store for 10 bucks) and the bedside table (that was ours) to match our color scheme. You'll see a door in the last picture off to the left of the bed. That is the Man bathroom. It's really small so I didn't post any pictures of it, but it's just a bathroom. The shower curtain is red, the bath mat is brown, and the "sink accessories" (soap pump and such) are also brown. In that last picture you also see a door off to the right of the bed, but it's kind of cut off. That goes into our HUGE WALK-IN CLOSET:

So there you have it, there is the apartment in pictures. :0)

Internet!

We have the internet in our apartment, finally! Those stupid honey bees sure did put a damper on our internet connecting. But they are all taken care of for now.

We got our apartment completely unpacked by Saturday morning. I'll definitely post some pictures later, probably tomorrow. Our apartment shaped up to be pretty nice. It's a bit bigger than our last apartment, and it has a washer/dryer and a dishwasher. That right there makes it awesome, haha. Virginia Beach is much bigger than anywhere I have ever lived and it's very trafficky. Thankfully, our apartment is in an awesome location and I don't have to drive too far to get to anywhere I want to go. It was an adventure trying to find places because I don't think the road systems make much sense. They just kind of loop around one another. There are basically three main roads that once you're on them you can get pretty much anywhere you need to be.

I've been doing a fair amount of scrapbooking. Monday I spent a good part of the day scrapping with Jessie (she's engaged to Brad's friend Jonathan who helped Brad get the job). She has a cricut and I am IN LOVE WITH THAT THING. I NEED ONE BAD. Just saying. :0)

Well I have some other stuff I need to attend to, like the kitchen and the laundry. Pics to come tomorrow!

Back to real life, I guess.

I've been back in the States since Wednesday afternoon, so only a couple of days. And what a couple of days that has been! The first two nights back I didn't sleep well at all. The first night I got four hours of sleep before I woke up at 3 and stayed up until 5. Then I slept again for a while. The second night I slept for only three hours! But last night, oh it was glorious, I SLEPT THE WHOLE NIGHT FROM 11 UNTIL 10 IN THE MORNING. I feel like a new woman! Yesterday I was just so exhausted I started crying. For no reason other than being so ridiculously tired.

When I got to my apartment for the first time, I was actually kind of sad. It wasn't at all how I left it. Brad has been wonderful and began packing it all up, so there are boxes and packing stuff everywhere. I was just kind of sad because it made moving much more real. Before I came back, our move to Virginia seemed so far off, so I just didn't worry about it. Now I'm confronted with the reality that yes, I am moving in about a two and a half weeks. Our plan is to be out on June 17th. It's pretty close! I have a lot more packing to do, but it's going to be do able. 

We also found out on Thursday afternoon that Brad needed to get his wisdom teeth removed. And then they did it Friday. Yesterday he was feeling a bit icky, with having the surgery and everything, but today he seems almost back to his old self. With the exception of only being able to eat soft foods. He keeps complaining of being hungry, but there isn't much I can do about that other than feed him lots of soup. And we all know how filling that is. Haha. But he'll get through this, and feel better after. His teeth were infected, so he had been feeling a lot of pain before they came out. But it sure was a whirlwind adventure getting his teeth out yesterday. Then I had to brave Walmart and get his drugs for him. That was a joke. They told me they'd be done in 45 minutes when I dropped them off at ten. So then I brought Brad back home and helped him change his gauze and all that jazz and left to get his meds at around 11. When I got there the meds still weren't done. I didn't get them until 12! And I only got them when I did when I complained a lot about the wait. I wasn't mean about it, but I did say "When I dropped these off two hours ago I was told they would be done in forty five minutes. I realize that you're swamped today, but if you weren't going to be able to get them done in forty five minutes you shouldn't have said they would be done yet. I've been waiting to get these for an hour and I really need to get home." Needless today, I had the drugs in my hands ten minutes later.

Today the plan is to organize a bit, do some laundry, fold said laundry, and work out on the wii fit. After being gone for three and a half weeks and not being able to run, it feels so great working out again. Unfortunately Solheim is closed on the weekends during the summer, so I'm going to substitute Wii fit for a run. It will be fun!