My fate

It has all been determined. Today, I got all my rotation assignments for next year and I am super excited about them. I thought I would just share them cause people always ask about them. So, here they are:

08/18/08-09/26/08: Fallon Clinic Drug Management Services
*Fallon is a big insurance company in MA and runs clinics and hospitals (kinda like IHC in UT) and this rotation will deal a lot with the process of Drug Utilization Review and Managed Care issues. It's right near my school and should be a good learning experience.
09/29/08-11/07/08: East Boston Neighborhood Health Center
*This is obviously in East Boston which happens to be nearly 70 miles away from my house so I am trying to see if there is another option. Otherwise I will have to find a place to stay in Boston for 6 weeks cause I refuse to commute for an hour and a half every day into a crazy city such as Boston. If I end up there, it is a big community health center and I would be focusing on things such as diabetic and coagulation clinics. Most of it would involve geriatrics.
11/10/08-12/19/08: Walgreen's
*This is a Walgreens out in the country by my house and it will be the same old retail thing that I am quite used to. It may be a slight break and should be pretty relaxing compared to the others.
01/05/09-02/13/09: Westborough State Hospital
*This is a psych hospital and I am so excited for this opportunity. I will have a preceptor that teaches at my school who is a great teacher. Mostly I am fascinated with Psych and I am really excited to see everything I've learned actually work or not work in the real clinical world.
02/16/09-03/27/09: MCPHS/CVS
*This is another one that I am really excited about. I will again be with a professor from school who specializes in community pharmacy. I have her for an OTC class right now and I love it. I will spend half of my time at CVS doing various things and the other half will be on campus. Hopefully I will get some teaching opportunity cause that would be really cool.
03/30/09-05/08/09: St. Vincents
*This is the hospital that is just across the street from my school. I will again be with a professor from school. Probably I will learn a lot of the logistics of hospital pharmacy on this rotation.

I think these are gonna be really fun and very beneficial for me as I try to prepare for my career as a pharmacist. All that is missing is the chance to see some surgeries and cool stuff like that. I really hope I get to see some of that!

Stupor of thought

Lately either I don't have time to blog or else I have nothing to blog about. Actually I must admit that at times when I would generally blog, I have found a new activity. I am addicted to Lost. Yep, for some reason I started to watch season 1 and I just keep watching. I told myself that at the end of season 1 I would take a break until the semester was over, but that hasn't worked so far. I can't keep thinking about what is going on and not watch the next episode. I hope that there's an episode coming up that won't leave me hanging so I will no longer be attached... Is there any chance? I don't think so.

Here is a good story I've been meaning to blog about for quite some time. For Easter I was invited to dinner at the house of friends of my Aunt and Uncle. There were several families present and Trish went with me. I believe we started talking about desserts or something of the sort, when Trisha sort of made an unpleasant response to something most would think was fantastic. My aunt realizing the reason behind the response proceeds to tell everyone at the table that Trisha is LACTATING! How's that for Easter dinner. Interesting table talk. Trish was a little bit terrified and tried to quickly correct her, because in fact she is only lactose-intolerant. The damage was already done and we all laughed about the implications of such a comment. Pretty funny!!

I only have about 4 weeks left of this dreaded semester and I could not be more thrilled. It's been the longest 10 weeks of my life and I'm afraid that with all the upcoming tests, etc... this semester may kill me by the end. Other than school, I am training to run a half marathon in May (thats only five weeks away). My brother is gonna come out and run it with me and my mom is coming out to visit as well. We're gonna go to NYC and have a great time! So, lots of work and then I'm gonna have a great break! Can't wait for some summer sun and good times!

Shout out!

Apparently from what I hear my blog is getting national attention! So, I just want to give a shout out to my newest readers in North Carolina (Hi Cheneys). Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my blog. Also, here are some pictures of playing settlers with my cousins the other night, they are crazy but really fun. Lately Bentley keeps beating me everytime I play with them. Either I'm gonna have to come up with a new strategy or start cheating or just stop playing with her, she's too smart now.

SPRING BREAK!!!!

I've been waiting for spring break since January. It's means that I'm half way through this dreaded semester and so much closer to a time when I don't have to take so many tests all the time! So far it's been a great time. I spent pretty much all weekend in Boston for birthday parties and chillin and church and good meals. It was a great time. I've worked a few long days too at the good old CVS. It hasn't felt like I've had a lot of down time so far but it has been great. Yesterday I had the day off from everything, so I went into Boston and asked/told Trisha to run 6 miles with me. I've always wanted to run along the Charles river and it was such a nice day for it. Now i can cross that off my list of things I want to do in Massachusetts. We started running in Cambridge (near Harvard) and ran along the river as it wound to the city. It's such a pretty place and it made the run much more pleasant. The picture above is of Boston from the other side of the river where we ran, so this is what we looked at as we ran. I was a little bit mean and told her it was only 6 miles when in actual fact it was an eight mile run!!! Good for us! We didn't even stop and we made great time. We're almost ready for a half-marathon. Bring it on... Then we drove down to Newport, Rhode Island to see the mansions and walk around a bit. It is incredible to think that one family (the Vanderbuilts) had over 200 million dollars in the 1890's, more than the US treasury. They lived in pure elegance and it is slightly sickening but really great to look at. The picture below is simply the "Summer Cottage" of the Vanderbuilt family called The Breakers. It was such a nice day! Don't worry, today we had some freakish snow storm while I was at work. When is it gonna be summer?! Tomorrow I get another whole day off and I have so much homework to do but it will be nice to sit around all day at home. I'm gonna make manicotti for my family and play games with the kids that I have been promising for weeks and never had time. I can't complain lately, my life is just really great.

What a difference...

What a difference a day can make! For example, Sunday February 24, 2008 was a terrible day. I had a test the next day and absolutely no motivation to study for it. I would rather spend my time doing other great and important things. I was bothered by something and it added to the frustrations. I spent much of the day in the library with a headache. Now, contrast that to Monday February 25, 2008 which was an incredible day! I gave up studying early, so I had lots of sleep and I was feeling good. I love that everytime I take a test I just feel great afterwards. Whether I did poorly or well, it is the best feeling to be done with it and not have to look back. I bought a space heater which is genius, I ate a great meal, had a fun FHE in boston, pondered the craziness of life and opened my soul just a little in the presence of awesome company. Moral of the story: All bad days are followed by great ones! Side note to everyone: When you have a great day like this, try to go to bed early cause I am wicked tired and I am paying a heavy price right now as I can barely open my eyes and I have to go to work for 5 hours...

The wedding

It was my brother's wedding this weekend and I got to go to Utah for all the festivities. It was not all fun, it came with a cost. I missed a test that I have to make up at the end of the semester and I didn't have much time to study for a test that I had this morning. I am a little upset at my performance on today's test and I have been trying to study, but I don't feel like it. So instead, I will post pictures of the wedding. It was a great wedding. I flew in on friday afternoon just in time to pick up my tux and go to the wedding dinner. Saturday was the wedding and the reception and then chillin with the family and playing some wii with my cousins. Then I was back to boston on sunday morning. Probably the shortest cross-country trip of my life, but it was worth it. I am so happy for Tania and CJ. I think they will have a lifetime of great experiences because they are extraordinary people.

CJ and Tania come out of the temple
CJ and Tania pose as a married couple
The boys jump around mad crazy
My niece is pretty cute
Tania and CJ on a bench
At the reception
She is the cutest
another shot of the cutest niece ever
The cake
My family is growing
My siblings
My grandma's and grandpa with CJ and Tania
All of their nieces and nephews
Getting ready to cut the cake
My sister and her family, its nearly impossible to get them all to look the same direction
Tania poses
My brothers and sister and I chillin
My nephew covers his mouth when he laughs
The decorating begins
Clearly decorating the car is the best part
More decorating
Even more of the car (like I said it's the best part)
The finished product
As they are looking into the car filled with baloons and other things that blow up as well as cereal. Maybe they are a little disgusted?! That just makes it even more fun for us...
CJ and Tania drive off to their honeymoon

Is it the weekend again yet?

I have so much homework to do right now and instead I just keep thinking about how much fun I had this weekend. Can it just be the weekend all the time? I went candle pin bowling for my first time ever and it was so fun! For those of you who are not familiar with it, I hear it's a new england thing. You roll a small ball down the lane and you get 3 chances on each frame because it is substantially harder than regular bowling because the pins are skinny (hense the name). That is why I only scored like 50 points and still managed to beat some people:) Don't get mad T, you can beat me at other things. It's so much fun!
Then I played guitar hero on the wii for several hours (I love that game). Then I drove home a little too fast and got pulled over, but alas it was a great weekend and I didn't get a ticket, yahoo!! Sunday I was invited to dinner, which was homemade cafe rio and it was delicious! I made homemade salsa which was also amazing. Then I just chilled with some really great people from my two favorite houses in Brighton, MA. I watched the super bowl and I was voting for the pats, but I guess they didn't really wanna win. It's a good thing I don't really care about sports much so that didn't affect my great weekend. I had trifle (sp?) can't forget about that and I watched 'House' after the super bowl. Just in case you couldn't tell by now, it was an awesome weekend!