(1) Jared took his first set of midterms for his FINAL term here in Grenada, and, no surprises, knocked 'em out of the park. He came out of them really worried since they were some of the hardest tests he's taken so far, but the curve saved him. He got straight A's. Thass my guy.
I feel like the only time you hear about Jared on this blog is when I'm like, "Jared took a test today. Aced it." "Jared studied less than usual. We even went outside." "Jared studied more than usual. I got so much work done." That's because med school has taken all of his former hobbies and ground them into our tile floors. There is NOTHING to his life besides medical school. It's fine because studying medicine is the best hobby ever in his mind and I do surprisingly well being left to my own devices all the time. But it still makes me a bit sad for him. It is what it is though, and will continue to be this way for at least six more years.
(2) I made another video for a cute little family. It's not done yet, or else I'd post it. I offered to do a mini photoshoot for them too because I want to get some practice. However, what with med school being the way I described it in the last point, Allie wanted to do the photos and video all at the same time because her husband couldn't afford to take more than one two-hour period off from studying. I love that every time I do one of these shoots I learn so much--like never ever do a photo and video shoot simultaneously. Whoops! It turned out fine, but was crazy stressful.
(3) We submitted our clinical rotation preferences! Much thinking and praying and strategizing went into our decision, but in the end we went with Nevada, California, and Georgia. Obviously we're hoping for our first choice, but we could essentially be put anywhere. Even somewhere not in our top three. Like New Jersey. But honestly, that would be fine. It's only going to be for a year or so. Now I'm spending all my free time looking for housing options in all of the areas we put on our list. It's so fun to imagine what our life will be like six months from now. We won't find out where we're placed until mid-July, and then Jared's rotations start mid-August. THANKS SGU. Fingers crossed we'll be able to find decent housing two weeks in advance of us moving.
(4) I finished putting together my first blog book. It covers my first two years of blog posts and is 250 pages long. Sheesh! It was waaay more of a time investment than I thought it would be. I worked on it several hours a day for two weeks straight to get the formatting right. I used lulu.com because it was the best value and we so poor. It'll be good to have a physical copy of this space in case the Internet ever mysteriously disappears.
(5) We pooled together all the Amazon gift card money we've received for birthdays and Christmas over the past year and bought an expensive camping pad!!!! It's like a cross between an air mattress, a foam pad, and an actual real-life mattress. And it's big enough for the two of us. I've been dreaming of this camping pad for months. I love love love camping. Jared kind of likes the idea of camping, but struggles with the sleeping aspect of it. Hard. Like one time sleeping on the hard ground caused him to throw out his back and he was basically paralyzed and in extreme pain for two solid weeks. I've been making it my mission over the past year to slowly collect all the most unreasonably comfortable camping gear on the market so that camping can be something we both enjoy. For Jared's back and med school schedule we'll probably be confined to car camping, but that doesn't bother me. We'll be sleeping like royalty out there.
Tell me more about printing your blog! This is a back-burner goal for me that I just need to make happen. Best tips? Worst ideas that you ruled out already? Anything else you want to share??
ReplyDeleteMy #1 tip is to just do it! It's so satisfying to have my blog in physical form (I haven't actually held it, but it arrived at my parents house and my mom showed it to me over skype--it's real pretty). I so wish I'd been making these all along so it wouldn't be such a big all-at-once undertaking/expense now. I'm planning to do a post all about this once I get my hands on it in May, but in case that doesn't happen I'll give you the main points here.
DeleteI decided to use lulu.com after reading these posts:
http://jocelynandjason.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-i-decided-to-print-my-blog-with.html
http://jocelynandjason.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-i-made-lulu-blog-book.html
I think you can get a bit better quality with blurb.com, but my #1 priority for my first blog book was getting something affordable. As far as I can tell the book is really sturdy, but the picture quality suffers just a bit because I ordered a normal hard cover book instead of a "photo book." A photo book would've cost me at least twice as much though, and I was already spending $50 as it was (my book ended up being 242 full-color pages and covered my first 2 years of blogging--I did lots of blogging back then).
If you do end up using Lulu.com, I'd just recommend following that post I linked above. Whatever website you end up using, be prepared for a long process. It takes a long time to copy each post into a word doc. It takes a looooong time to format everything just the way you want it. And it takes a medium amount of time to design your cover and get it all put together. That said, although the process took me lots of time, it was kind of fun. I turned on some Netflix in the background because most of blog-book-making is mindless work, and I let myself just have a crafty week. It wasn't too tricky. Let me know if you have any other specific questions!
Oh! And as another hint, make sure to do a google search for coupon codes before you print. I'm sure you'll be able to find a code for just about any website you end up using. The coupon code I found was 15% or 20% off, I believe. If I hadn't found it, my book plus shipping would've been more like $75.
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