I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Hi everyone!

Wow, it's been forever since I've posted here. But being as the umpteen life changes are currently past (moved to Cleveland, finished my CFY, found an awesome roommate, in the process of building a social network here, etc.), I finally actually have a summer and can actually post again!

First thing: fellow August grads, was it not awesome to send that paperwork off?! :) We're gonna be CCC's! Finally! A long and crazy road it's been to this point...but we're here and from now on we're even more awesome. Congrats to all EMU speech path grads who are reading this - we did it!!!! Let me know what you're up to, leave comments or whatever - I know several of you have traversed back to MI after moving away, so what are you doing now? happy to be back? :)

For my part, I'll be here in Cleveland for a year or two or three more, then who knows where - that's where the Scrabble tourism comes in (see scrabblecouple.blogspot.com if you have no clue what I'm talking about and are actually curious). I want a warm big city. I'm so over the season of winter. :-P lol I do not plan to move back to Michigan - visit, yes (I'll be in town next week for a bit to see people! leave comments or email me if you wanna meet up) - but nothing permanent. I like Ann Arbor, but I'm done there.

Cleveland is a very neat city. I've met a lot of neat people and I thoroughly adore my apartment. I'm right next door to a cleaners, a grocery store, a hair salon, and a coffee shop - what more could you want in life?! Oh, yes - Scrabble clubs. We have a ton of those, too. Michael and I have counted four in the area - which means that three to four nights per week, we could be playing Scrabble if we so chose. Rocky River and Independence are our favorites even just for sheer turn-out, but the other two are cool too.

A lot of my life lately has been hanging out with Michael and studying or playing Scrabble. I won't go into Scrabble babble here - we'll save that for my blog post on the other blog - but it's been incredibly fun. We have a tourney tomorrow in Rocky River, a tourney next weekend in Toronto, and then it's time for NATIONALS in Dayton where the top prize for my division (D3) is looking like $2,500 - not a bad chunk of change for playing an awesome game!!! Studying is therefore necessary, and on-going, and will continue. I'm hoping I can seriously kick some butt these next couple weeks on the studying front. ADEILRST - DILATERS, REDTAILS, LARDIEST.....come on, brain, you need to retain this stuff!

Cooking has also become another big thing for Michael and me. Anyone have any really good recipes you want to share, especially those of the healthy variety? We totally have several that have become staples for us...beer cheese soup, pesto pasta with goat cheese, goat cheese stuffed chicken in white wine sauce, cedar plank salmon, olive-orange chicken scallopine...etc.

Also have been visiting people and having people visit! Went to see Cassandra in May and she's coming here in August, went to Snu & Greg's wedding a few weeks ago, Soumya came to visit Cleveland, Apryl's coming at the end of July....good times!

We're also in the very early stages of planning for a 30th birthday party for Michael in December - he's a Christmas baby, of course, so this is gonna be a little bit of a tough one to schedule. We're thinking it'll be in Toledo, since that's a good sort of halfway point for everyone from Ann Arbor, Port Clinton, and Cleveland. On the lookout for cool things in Toledo to do...chill bars and whatnot...and always trying to think of more ideas for what to do!

Okay, back to studying, but I'll be posting here more often now that it's truly summer for me! Hope everyone is doing well and I'll talk to you all sometime soon!

DC awesomeness!!! :)

Charleston, WV: ....THAT'S a place to visit?!?! wouldn't want to live there.

Washington, DC: very cool place to visit!!!! no one would ever see me again if I lived there!!!! because I'd get lost and die!!!!!! :-P

Philadelphia, PA: go to Damon's Seafood Grill if you visit, cuz that's about everything cool we found to do. um, I think I'd die if I lived there, too. Like, from getting shot.

Michael and I have caught a bit of the travel bug of late. Weekend before last we went to Charleston, WV for a Scrabble tournament, and were somewhat disappointed by the city. Lesson learned: we are not meant to be West Virginians!!! :-P lol Found one pretty cool restaurant - and - well - nothing cool to DO in the city, except a mall which advertised via many signs its methods to try to get rid of its gang problems. Er.....right.

Washington, DC was next for us! Just got back last night from a truly awesome trip. I honestly do not believe I could ever live in a city where "we're on Connecticut Avenue! except --- now Connecticut's over there! keep walking straight...and now you're on 28th Street! There's 1799 right there, there's 1801, there's 1802...but WHERE THE CRAP is 1800?!?!!?"

To visit, though, DC was wonderful! We got in on Friday and hung out with Soumya, which was fun - haha, always amusing to cross paths with a friend in a place that is native to neither one of you ;-) We saw Michael's favorite political singing-comedy group, the Capitol Steps, in a completely random fortunate alignment of events. (Michael, I just realized we never ended up getting you that sandwich you wanted from Quick Pita :-P)

Saturday involved walking, walking, more walking, seeing monuments, hanging out with Michael's friend from undergrad, visiting American University (where Michael went to undergrad), and having a very good and very humorous pizza dinner at a place on campus. It was so much fun finally meeting Patricia! After a day of walks-that-were-two-miles-longer-than-necessary-because-DC-is-confusing-and-even-people-who've-lived-there-for-four-years-get-confused-which-reinforces-the-fact-that-I-WOULD-DIE-if-I-were-to, my feet were about to fall off, and we completely conked out when we got back to our hotel (the Renaissance Mayflower). Felt a tad irreverent earlier in the day noting that one of the Vietnam War veterans had a full name consisting of two valid but unusual Scrabble words. Ah, well, the brain of a Scrabble nerd never quite does turn off... ;-)

Sunday I got to see where Michael lived during his senior year in college - Friendship Heights: hokey name for cute little random suburb of DC. Had lunch with his landlady, who apparently felt it her duty to inform me what a nice person Michael is (really?!?!?! okay, good, cuz after dating him for nearly two years I hadn't figured that one out yet)....lol lol j/k We saw the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and had dinner with Patricia at Cheesecake Factory (LOVELOVELOVELOVECHEESECAKEFACTORY :) Then Michael and I went around to the Lincoln and WWII monuments at night - so pretty!!!

Monday was definitely up there in favorite days of them all, though. Michael and I went over to Mt. Rainier, MD and saw Nate! It was an intricate maneuver of bus and Metro to get there, one that I am forever grateful to Michael for figuring out :) We took Nate to lunch at Maggiano's in Friendship Heights, and ordered family style so that once we'd eaten we could send Nate back to his novitiate house with a ton of leftovers. Four-plus hours flew by for us all - it was just great hanging out with Nate, seeing that he was okay and liking what he was doing, etc.

I must admit I had been worried - I know he followed his calling, but hearing that my friend was going off to a place where they beg for food on the streets of DC and that some priests get sent off to Africa missionary work kinda freaked me out. I've never had siblings but have always felt kind of big-sister-protective when it comes to Nate, so it was just good to see that my "little brother" is doing okay. Same old Nate, same sense of humor. :-D He looks healthy and actually said that his inability to eat sugar somehow corrected itself over this past summer, which is good - so it's not like he's at a place where he can't eat the food that they obtain through donations and begging! He feels like he's really where he's been called to be, too, which is important.

Got back from DC last night - but the events and busy-ness do not stop! The EMU Spring Party for April and August graduates is this Friday, as is Grand Rounds, and I take my Praxis the weekend after next. Really have to start studying for that, lol!!! Not terribly worried - but I know I do actually need to refresh my memory on things like voice and anatomy.

And with that - time to keep going on this week's busy-ness! Hope all is well for everyone!

Scrabble babble

By now, if you read my blog, you know the nerdy habit I am extremely proud of and will boast to the world if not stopped: I play competitive Scrabble. Michael does too. This is a crazily fun pastime, both because it unleashes the competitive bug in me that hasn't seen the light of day since middle school spelling bees, and because I'm actually okay at it. Middle-of-last-division okay, but the people in the last division and a few from the one above it know who I am. Some even think I'm pretty cool - the grad student who just got into Scrabble and is sort of slowly rising through the standings at the pace of a snail who accidentally digested half a dose of speed.

This is okay with me. I like being known. I like name notoriety. I like knowing that I'm the young kid - often among the three or four youngest at a tournament - who is doing comparatively well with some of these middle-aged men and women who have been playing Scrabble competitively for years. I like when my rating slowly, steadily rises so that I see happy numbers every time but also I'm not expected to do THAT well because my rating still is not stellar. The last tournament wasn't my greatest - I won half my games but my rating dropped by 2 points - but that's okay; I've risen by 45 and 23 points after my second and third tournaments, respectively, so I'm not terribly sad.

The problem is this: some tournaments are big. Yay, more players! I like having a big field of nice people who actually become acquaintances and sometimes friends, at least in the Scrabble world. I enjoyed talking to a 15-year old I met in a past tournament. A woman I met last time who'd been to tournaments before but who had this one as her first in many years was incredibly friendly to me. Others are smiley, happy, and welcoming (with the occasional one who's not terribly pleased after you unexpectedly beat them, but you'll have that...)

But in any case: some tournaments are big. This means that there are a lot of players; this also means that there are numerous divisions. Say you have twenty players signed up for a tournament. There might be three divisions: top six players in Division 1, next seven in Division 2, next seven in Division 3. If you have thirty two players, there might need to be another division - so there'd be eight players each in Divisions 1-4.

But the Farmington tournament tomorrow?! That, my readers (whoever and how many ever you may be), has 40 registered players. Which means there are FIVE divisions - eight people per division. Because I have risen somewhat in ranking over the course of four tournaments, that puts me - the rookie, the newbie, the wouldn't-know-a-strategy-if-it-ran-me-over-with-a-semi one, as fourth seed in the last division.

On one hand: I'm fourth from the bottom, ranked 36 out of 40 here. What sort of pressure does that put on me for ANYTHING in the least?! On the other hand: I'm competing against only the other seven in Division 5, and against that field, I am expected to win four games out of my seven. I have never gone 4-3 (four wins, 3 losses) at a tournament in my life. But I have to tomorrow, to keep my rating where it is. I know I can beat a lot of the people here - because I HAVE beaten three, have never played two, and have narrowly lost to two - but there are two I'm especially nervous about. One woman I have never beat although I've played her twice, and one woman who will certainly be out for my blood tomorrow since I unexpectedly pulled one out against her at the last tournament (she had no losses up until that point - I was kind of proud of myself, lol)
Granted, that puts me still hypothetically at 5-2 even if I do lose to those two. Which would place me quite happily somewhere near the top of this division and would ensure my rating would go up. But I'd only have a grace of one game of the remaining five that I could unexpectedly falter on and still have a good performance at the tournament.

This puts me in study mode today. When in doubt today, I am studying my Scrabble words. There is so much I don't know, and so much I am determined to learn before tomorrow, so that I can take the field by storm and maybe, maybe, maybe, even win it all?! It's possible, but only if I severely buckle down today. So - I shall.

I do, however, understand that my life does not depend on this Scrabble tournament. I am not irrationally stressed about it, nor am I obsessing about the different outcomes possible for tomorrow. I am just a competitive little bugger who will wake up at 7 to spend her Saturday looking at tiles with people mostly 20-40 years older than she is....but who also thrives on these sort of within-my-reach stakes! And I shall put my best effort forth at this tournament tomorrow. Wish me luck!

To make use of some of my newfound vocabulary:

PAX (Latin form of the word peace) and XU (Vietnamese money) to all in this holiday season ;-)

Life's Insanity, and Other Musings

Turns out there is very little time that goes by without things going on. Not that this is bad - I really enjoy having a busy and eventful life!! - but it's just interesting to see the different times where I start thinking "Well, this week should be really calm!" and then find out that things still hop along and there are still not enough hours in the day during even those times.

Recently saw Chaim and Sunali when they came into town - coincidentally on the same day, but they didn't end up seeing each other, although I saw both of them. That was lots of fun! Went to Ashley's with Sunali and Michael, and met Chaim at the South U Starbucks.

Am headed to Chicago during the November 16 weekend, and have been invited by Nate to go to DC on the November 10 weekend when he and his fellow novices at the IVEs get their habits - I doubt I'll be able to go, but am going to run it by the Parental Forces That Be and just see if there's a shot I could make it.

Seven to eight more Tuesdays left in the semester - that is unbelievably exciting. I am NOT a huge fan of Tuesdays - and that's not a reflection of any one particular thing I do on Tuesdays, it's just a reflection of the fact that it seems that EVERYTHING I DO IS ON TUESDAYS. Literally, I'm at EMU from 8:30am-8:30pm. I am so ready to not have a 12-hr day anymore! One client's session may change from 9:30-10:30am to 10:30-11:30am, though, so that could give me - well, just an 11-hr day, lol - but I think it would be better. We will see what happens with that - client's family must talk to supervisor and arrange and then I will get the word as to if that will officially be changed.

Other than that - Michael and I went to our second ever Scrabble tournament this past weekend in Elyria, OH. It was two full days of Scrabble - fifteen games total - and was a total blast! I won five of the fifteen against a pretty darn good field (there were only four players, including Michael and me, whose ratings were under 900 - my rating was 740), so since my rating only put me in line to win 3 of the 15, my rating will go up by about 43 points. Yay! Michael saw one of the competitors I lost to some days later (who finished, like, third in the competition) and the guy said I'd really scared him; he thought I was going to win! I didn't, but I kept it really close, so I was proud. Another game that I lost was only by 4 points, and I kept it really really close against the guy who eventually won the tournament, too. Very proud of my performance - but I know I still have a ton of work to do on my game! I can do all the two-letter words in my sleep, but I need to be slightly more solid on the threes, and my fours and bingos need a bunch of solidifying, too. It'll be a fun process learning all these new words, though.

And we went to Cheesecake Factory after the tournament was over! I had Kahlua Cocoa Coffee cheesecake - it was reeeeeeeeeally good. :-D I loooooove Cheesecake Factory.

This weekend should be a lot of fun, too. I'm meeting Apryl for coffee tomorrow night, then on Friday Michael's coming and we're going grocery shopping and cooking together. We're hopefully meeting David for lunch on Saturday. For dinner Saturday night Michael and I are going to Gratzi because that's where we go every 10 weeks - and it has been 70 weeks since we met :-D Wow, how time flies! Saturday's also Sweetest Day - so it'll be cute and I'm excited. I wonder if there's anyone good at the comedy club below Seva on Saturday? We went to the comedy club and Gratzi on our first date, and we keep talking about re-creating that sometime..... Then on Sunday Michael and I are going to Wiard's Orchard to do the pumpkin picking, cider mill, hayride, corn maze, other-cool-stuff-to-do-right-before-Halloween thing. I'm excited about that too because I haven't been to Wiard's in eons!!!

I have a new background on my computer: an adorable picture of Lucy, the auction puppy most of you have heard me rave about, as a little teeny puppy! The family that won her sent Mom the picture, and Mom forwarded it on to me. Lucy is toooooo cuuuuute....makes me want a Golden Retriever puppy when I get older and into an apartment complex or something that will let me have a pet. But of course, who knows what life will hold for me - I can't start planning for a dog yet. :-P

Lord knows I can't even plan past the next year....who knows where I'll get a CF job?! The hope is Chicago, but life will plant me where it wants me to be. It's kinda scary knowing that I don't know where I'll be - that a little over two years from now I might be far far away in IOWA of all places - lol but Iowa City's awesome - but that's what life is; you can't always plan for it and you don't know what the future's going to hold when transition times like graduations and going into the work force are ahead. We shall see - but I'm going to try to make my life post-master's-program as conducive to making me happy as possible, in whatever form that ends up taking. How on earth did I get to be 23 and on the cusp of making major life decisions?! Time she flies.

In any case, I'm so totally putting off serious work that it's not even funny. I gotta get going - there's so much I have on my to-do list for today, and I haven't even crossed off one thing on it even though I've been doing stuff since 9:30am! lol

/end procrastination

Bye, everybody - have a great week!

Only about 24 hours of freedom remain....

...and I have enjoyed this freedom way too much to see it go! :( Life has been crazy and busy, but intensely fun. Among the more interesting parts have been the job-that-lasted-a-week,-thankfully, continuing driver's training which is fortunately going well, having two fabulous new roommates move in, and generally getting life in order for the new semester.

Michael spent a week here while I had no roommates, which was awesome :) He's now back in Port Clinton, though :( But I'll see him again on Friday, which is happy! And we'll go with Soumya to the Recent Grad Reunion casino night and all that. While he was here we went to a wedding in Ohio, which was really pretty but which they held outside (not sure why anyone would get married outside - hello, rain? hello, wind and messy hair? dirt to mess up outfits? I could go on and on....hahaha) and at which they played Disney songs...not my cup of tea, but cool if that's what floats your boat! :-P

We also played lots of Scrabble, so much that I literally had to start a Scrabble file in my file cabinet to keep all the score sheets!! hahaha sooooo much fun. I rule the short words and the overlapping/stacking plays that get 25-40 points with just a few letters...Michael's better than me at the 7-letter word (bingo) plays, though. Which probably means he's in better shape than I am to do well at Scrabble tournaments, since you can more easily study a sheet of three-letter words than you can study the millions of seven, eight, and nine letter words that comprise bingos. But I win more games than he does nowadays....so we'll see. :)

Our first tournament is September 22 in Battle Creek. It's one full day and seven games - we've been trying to play several seven-game days over at Starbucks so that we can prepare for not just one or two games like living-room Scrabble, but actually seven full and challenging games against players who have rankings and who may be more prepared than we are (we're studying, but having not been to tournaments yet, we have no idea what we're up against!) I'm just hoping to finish respectably, seriously. I refuse to finish dead last! But anything better than, like, middle-of-the-pack will thrill me. I will make goals for future tournaments after this first one...but I can't say "I want to finish first! or in the top five!" or whatever until I know from one tournament if that sort of goal (even in the bottom division, where we'll be playing) is feasible or if it's just a pipe dream. Again, we shall see :)

We also went to the Lifehouse/Goo Goo Dolls concert at Freedom Hill on August 26. It was so completely awesome!!!! Although I'm biased - Lifehouse is, like, my favorite band EVER EVER EVER - I do think Lifehouse was objectively better than the Goo Goo Dolls because you could actually hear the lyrics Jason Wade was singing, the background beat/accompaniment wasn't so overpowering, Lifehouse had a better set list, and Jason Wade just has a better voice than Johnny Rzeznik (Jason is like my height though - he's really short and it's slightly disturbing!) But don't get me wrong - both were great, and the entire concert was amazing!

Classes start tomorrow for me, meaning that soon I'll find out what this new professor who's taking over the original professor's classes is like...and I'll also find out who my new Clinic 2 clients are! I'm sooooo excited about that. I have a suspicion I know who one of them is...if I'm correct, that'll be really interesting and quite a challenge but an exciting one!!! I love being a speech therapist :-DDDD

In the coming time, Soumya and Tasia will both be visiting me, Soumya this week and Tasia at the end of October. Can't wait to see both girls - haven't seen them in forever!!!

I'd better run so that I can get a few emails done to important people and then start my Scrabble studying - today's free, but after today who knows how much time I'll have, so I should tackle it full throttle when I can!! Hope everyone's having a great summer end/fall beginning!