Aqua Regia

Ever since I've been done with school and studying for my boards, I've been buying toys and dolls like crazy. I don't know if it's three years of pent up stress or what, but I've been doing serious retail therapy lately.

( The hoard...it GROWS )

I'm leaving at 6 am tomorrow morning for Seattle and the San Juan Islands for about a week. It's seriously been three years since I had a real vacation. Note: I consider a real vacation to be longer than a week.

Also, I was supposed to take the first part of my board examinations today, but ended up paying a fee to postpone it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't ready to take it, and really didn't want to have to wait the three month penalty period if I didn't pass.

Anyway, I will see you all in a week!

I'm so sad that this rotation is coming to an end! Psychiatric Pharmacy has been such an enjoyable rotation both in knowledge gained and people met (not to mention the great hours!) that I'm really depressed to see it go. It's highly unlikely that any of my other sites will top this one. I think I need to buy these people Starbucks tomorrow to thank them for such a nice time.

In other news, I turned 24. I had a nice dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with some friends last Thursday night, then celebrated with family by taking Saturday and going to the ocean. Definitely a nice time. :)

But for my birthday I treated myself to a huge Amazon order that included Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure. It's such a good movie! I just watched it back to back with the first one, and was a little sad to see that America Fererra no longer voices Fawn. But this was made up for by all of Terence's awesome screen time! I was blown away by how much they used him compared to the first movie. But poor Vidia didn't even have one line! Thankfully, it looks like that will be remedied in The Great Fairy Rescue due out next year.

Also, I was given the wonderful gift of illness all of last week. My head cold definitely kept the Kleenex industry in business. The only good to come of the illness was that I got sent home from work one day and then burned through three discs of the very addictive Peach Girl anime. Boy, I forgot how addictive those shoujo dramas can get! I ended up finishing the rest of the series that week. XD

Writing has been going well. I've added about 3000+ words to my Jewel Riders fic by doing 250-350 words a day (to equal out to about 1000 per week). I find that it's the only way I'll actually sit down an work on it, but writing in such small segments means sometimes things get forgotten that shouldn't, so some heavy editing will have to happen before posting the chapter on FF.net.

And I realized I haven't take any toy pictures in a long time! Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend and can snap shots of the Star Trek Dolls, Disney Fairies, and finally take pictures of my Jewel Riders collection.S

It always feels good to be done with finals, even if I'm usually near death by the end. :) I've gotten grades back from (and passed) three of the five classes - still waiting on the last two, which I don't think will be a problem, but one never knows. I really studied hard for these finals - harder and more in depth than I think I've ever studied for finals before. I have to say I felt better prepared going into this round than I have previously. Now, if only I could motivate myself to really stay on top of all the studying throughout the year - that would be an accomplishment!

As usual, my diet has been hell in the last couple of weeks (too many energy drinks and coffee), along with most of the rest of my life outside of school. Time to try and eat healthy again!

Also the computer is dead again. I dropped it off at the tech office to try and get it updated and have them run the usual tests for corruption and viruses. However, when I went to pick it up after the final, they said it would be ready in about another hour. So, I took off to Borders where I picked up some books (looking for Silvermist and the Ladybug Curse but they only had a beat up copy, so I bought the easy-reader books The Great Fairy Race and The Fairy Berry Bake-off as well as The Rose Bride from the "Once Upon a Time" series).

So when I got back to the tech office, the computer had basically gone into meltdown after they tried to install Service Pack 1. So I am now writing to you from the family computer (joy - no privacy! XD) It should be ready to be picked up on Monday again, and may actually be totally replaced, but that remains to be seen.

But it doesn't really matter because the family and I are gone this weekend to visit my brother anyway. We're going to spend the night tomorrow in San Jose/Santa Cruz and enjoy the ocean and some nice dining and shopping. Should be a fun way to unwind (I of course will take a few books that have lain unfinished these last several weeks!)

I hope to just really relax over this 1.5 week break before the next semester begins (yes, another semester over the summer...x_x). I'd like to write the Fallon/Tamara origin fic for Jewel Riders (unfortunately, the notes are on the dead comp, so I won't be getting them back until Monday afternoon), catch up on my piano, read at least two books, and watch a ton of stuff (both movies and series). I also downloaded the old DOS game "The Legend of Kyrandia." Did any of you ever play that? It was my favorite computer game when I was a kid, and I'm really excited to get to play it again!

Oh, and I'm crossing my fingers that my number doesn't get called in this week for Jury Duty.

I'm on a quest to finish several things before I go back to school:
1. Finish reading Tamora Pierce's Immortals Quartet. I just finished Wolf Speaker today, leaving Emperor Mage and The Realms of the Gods. Not sure if I like this series as much as the The Song of the Lioness Quartet yet. Sometimes the animals tend to distract rather than help the action.
2. Read Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand. With any luck I should be able to polish this off in a solid afternoon of reading. And since I just got much Disney Fairies books in the mail today (not to mention the new ones coming out on Tuesday), that backlog is growing rapidly.
3. Finish watching Irresponsible Captain Tylor. I love old anime, and started watching this with my brother back in June, yet somehow it got derailed by Batman The Animated Series boxes one and two (a worthy foe to say the least). XD
4. Go see Stardust in theaters. Neil Gaiman + fairy-tale elements = LOVE. This will probably be the last movie I see in theaters this summer (and probably until the Golden Compass or Enchanted). I've been bankrupted by all the great movies that came out this summer.
5. Take a day trip into San Francisco. I need to get out of this town for a day or two before I start back in order to preserve my sanity.

My last day of work is now Thursday instead of Friday, so that means I'll probably go get coffee and a scone with Mom before heading out with my brother to hit up some garage sales in an attempt to furnish his new apartment.

And I'm still sore from sleeping on the ground this last weekend while camping, although I had a wonderful time. ^_^