Home - (sniff?) - Home...

I made it across the entire country! There were even fireworks in Indianapolis to celebrate my one-night stay there with my former clinical instructor and some of her family. (well, maybe that wasn't the only reason for the fireworks...)

Sunday morning at around 8:30am, after passing a sign in Ohio pronouncing "Columbus 25," I asked my mother at home in Colorado to go online and find me a 9am Mass there. Please realize that this was 6:30am her time! After some searching, she adeptly located a church and gave me precise directions from the highway. As we were saying goodbye, I was exiting I-70. I arrived in front of the church about three minutes later with plenty of time to spare! Definitely a recommended adventure. It turns out that this parish is the oldest one in Ohio, established in 1848, and it is still rather beautiful. Stained glass windows, a beautiful altar, murals behind the altar, and only 250 members in the parish! When I heard that (the priest was giving the annual "Sermon on the Amount" report, as he called it, after Mass!) I realized that everyone in attendance must be certain of my visitor status! They were all very welcoming and friendly later over in the church hall for (free!) coffee and donuts. =)

Saw friends in D.C.--some of whom I haven't seen for almost a year. That was great. I overslept on Labor Day, so I did not leave for Connecticut as early as I had planned. But it gave Katie, Erica, and me some "girl time" on the back porch of their house that morning--complete with cups of coffee and plenty of laughter!

Our new place is live-able. Three of my classmates and I have the upstairs 4 bedrooms of a 7-bedroom house, and then there are people living downstairs. It's not exactly two separate apartments, but we do have our own kitchen upstairs, and we will just hang out in each others' bedrooms for socializing! We each have at least a full-sized bed provided, and we've been settling in as quickly as possible, since classes have already started.

The living room downstairs pretty much belongs to the two guys living down there, and now also to the girl who just moved into the other bedroom down there. The downstairs contigent keeps to themselves for the most part, but their very rich-smelling living room "social smoke" drifts upstairs almost every evening. The first few nights I had what I now call a secondary grass headache, which I never before experienced. In fact, one of the first nights here, I started to smell it while I was on the phone. I asked my friend on the other line, "Hey, can you tell me what weed smells like?"
"Given my limited experience with the odor," he began, involuntarily reassuring me by his uncertainty, "and my dull sense of smell, ...I would describe it to be what burning crab-apples might smell like."
I thought it a thoughtful, perceptive analysis. But being that I have never even tried to imagine what burning crab-apples might smell like, I was still unsure.

So later, after my roommate Marisa had arrived home, and when I was walked through a cloud of nasal ambush at the top of the stairs, I asked her, "Is that what it smells like?" Her emphatic reply in the positive only served to increase my headache that had begun a few hours before. Yes, it is unpleasant, to say the least. If our housemates continue to pollute the entire house with it, despite our gentle protests, we'll have to get the landlord to intervene. Which might be interesting, considering he's about our age, if not a little younger. Who knows whether he cares that it's going on.

As you may guess, there are definite advantages to only living here for the next 3 and 1/2 months. On the other hand, it is also very exciting to be living with classmates again--and such clean, responsible, fun, and studious girls altogether! The "clean" characteristic, in particular, is good, since we do not have a dishwasher--everyone likes to keep the sink empty, so there's no foreseeable conflict there.

Classes are going to be fine this semester. No exams, just projects, which is great. And they are all relevant projects, as well: we'll be working with actual clinical sites to help install programs or solve problems. Class time this semester is really reduced, since we don't have labs, so that gives ample time for projects, career planning, and part-time work!

We also need a lot of money as a program and as a class to fund activities surrounding graduation next May--in particular, the annual Dinner Dance. So I'm going out (as in, on the town!) tonight--something I do more in graduate school than undergrad, as it turns out. As a fundraising tradition, the Student Physical Therapy Association is always bargaining with places to collect their cover charges! And guess who--just today--was semi-appointed, and actually semi-volunteered, as a result of being present at the semi-opportune moment, to spearhead the rest of the fundraising for the semester? Yep, yours truly, the one whom everyone is always surprised and excited to see out at a bar. I guess I don't quite fit the "type."

So, you ask, will I be negotiating with bars and other places of drinking and debauchery? No way; the revenue from such has not been very beneficial, as far as percentage. Not worth it, in my opinion--although it's a good excuse for the entire program to get together and hang out, so I'm sure someone will continue organizing those nights. But as for fundraisers, my first official idea for implementation is a class-wide yard sale, so we can get rid of all of our junk accumulated over the past 2 years. After all, we'll all be leaving in December for our last clinical internships--who wants to deal with all this stuff? Two weeks from tomorrow, then, our backyard will be converted into Tag Sale City--100% of the proceeds going to the SPTA fund. In this case, our junk will also be our treasure!

This weekend being the first in the final semester--not very busy yet, in other words--I am heading down to New York to see the relatives on Saturday.

Then next week, the projects start in full-swing, and although I will attempt to be semi-regular in blogging, I make no promises!

Prayers are appreciated, as always....