Love the Life you Live, Live the Life you Love

Whew! I survived first semester junior year! And oh how fast it went... As I look back on the past 5 months, the hilights are more bad than good. However, I feel surprisingly upbeat about it all. It went from bad to worse but whatever goes down, must come up (or something like that...) And up it went! Just in the nick of time. So now I'm in my wonderful Missourian humble abode eating homemade butternut squash soup, drinking tea, and having absolutely nothing to do. For the first time all semester. I don't even know what it feels like to be bored. I'm sure I'll get used to it. Last night when I got here I ate a ton of food, made 2 batches of cookies with Joe, took a bubble bath, and read 5 chapters in my book. I was asleep by ten. This morning I woke up to Jack literally attacking me in my bed at 8 am. He was leaping all over me, licking my face, pushing me off the bed, and stealing my covers. Not the time, pup, not the time. I went back to sleep until ten when I heard h...

"Ships in harbors are safe, but that's not what ships are built for."

Something that never fails to amaze me is the effect we can have on another person - whether it's good or bad. And most of the time we don't even realize when we really touch someone's heart. The smallest action can be the catalyst for big changes. For some reason today I was thinking about a blog post I wrote a couple months ago about how much it meant to me when my older brother reached out to me. Not because he means more to me than my other siblings or I don't absolutely love that my older sister calls me daily, but because it doesn't happen very often. So when I get a call or a text from him just to see how my day is treating me, it makes me, well, giddy. Sometimes I forget to remember how much he loves me. It's amazing what we can forget if we aren't reminded every day. And when I wrote about him it came from the heart, which made it better than just another blog post. A girl on my triathlon team I didn't even know read my blog came up to me a few ...

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how things look in retrospect. Anything: relationships, friends, exams, races, clothing, decisions... What seems acceptable, normal, and even a good idea almost always changes form when flipped on its belly and looked at from a different light - like say, the future. Don't you wish we could live life backwards? Take, for instance, my Intro to Biostats exams. Prior to, and even during them, they were unsurpassable mountains. Huge. I had no idea how to get over them. I cried, gave up, sat in my chair confused, gave up, blanked, had moments of clarity, forgot again, gave up, blanked, doodled, walked out early with half my exam unfinished...you get the picture. It was an uphill battle. And a class that's "introductory" suddenly became harder than my main classes in SAR. But now, as I'm studying for my cumulative final and redoing my exams, I realized these exams aren't hard at all. And I'm flying through t...

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I know I've said this before about Boston...but it is a cruel cruel place when it comes to weather. My face is wind burnt. Actually wind burnt. And raw - lovely. This is a great new look, especially when it comes hand in hand with my breakouts, which are caused by - what? Wind burn. And dry skin....from the wind. Oh and I have scaly lizard lips. Such attractiveness going on here. I was going to go for a run this morning but the second I stepped outside that plan was caput. My legs instantly turned bright red and when all burning. You know the drill: first it burns, then it tingles, then it goes numb. When you go back inside to thaw it tingles then burns again. That was basically my face today. On the upside- SAINT NICK CAME LAST NIGHT! I woke up to a boot filled with a stuffed reindeer, peppermints, a giant candycane, chocolate coins, gum, and my beloved Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Did you know St. Nick's day is pretty much only celebrated in St. Louis, Chicago, and Cincinatti? ...

GUESS WHAT. GUESS FREAKING WHAT. I'm 99.9% sure I'm moving to MONTANA this summer! Random. I know. Whenever I tell anyone, the usual response is along the lines of "...Montana. Why." I'm not exactly sure why I picked Montana. First I wanted to move to CO...and then everyone I talked to said Montana was like CO but better. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. So I did a lot of researching, talked to a few of my friends who live/lived in Montana and it just seems...right. Like the perfect fit. Did you know Montana has produced some of the fastest triathletes in the world? Like Matt Shryock, Adam Jensen, and Linsey Corbin. There are TONS of triathlons in the summer and a huge triathlete population. Maybe it's just what I need to get me inspired again. Long, flat roads with huge climbs and amazing views. I'm so, so, so excited. I just want to be out of the dirty, stuffy, rude city and back somewhere where I can actually take a breath and just ...