The Home Stretch

It is the end of 9th week, and I am running low on enthusiasm toward school. Graduation is so close, and I am trying hard to focus on my classes, but it proves more difficult with each passing day. Nick has been incredibly busy with his classes, and I am looking forward to being done so that we can enjoy graduation and the summer! "Senioritus" is what I felt when graduating high school, but the level of apathy I feel right now is beyond what I felt 4 years ago. I will hang in there, but until the end, I will be forcing myself to sit at my desk and read instead of being outside-where, by the way, the weather has been incredible.

Yesterday was my last day as a baby-sitter for the amazing family I have been working for during the last year. Zach is 10 1/2 months old, and I grew very attached to their family. The mom, Kelly, bought me a t-shirt that says "All the cool girls root for Boston," and she gave me the sweetest card to thank me for my help over the last year. Luckily their family is moving to New York, so I will have someone I know on the east coast. I feel like Kelly is a friend I will have for life, and I love their family! I was so fortunate to find a family like that to work for. 

I have continued to run throughout the past week, and I have felt great! It is a great way for me to forget about school and moving, and everything I have to get done in the next couple weeks. There is a half marathon in Boston in October, and I am looking into it, but I think you might have to qualify for it, so I may be out of luck. Maybe if I tell myself I will be running it, it will serve as a great motivating factor! 

There is no news back from the job I applied to, but I am not worrying about it. I am sure I will find somewhere to work in Boston, and it will be temporary until I start nursing school anyway. Nick found out that he doesn't sign up for classes at MIT until right before school starts, but it doesn't sound like getting classes is a big deal there. He is looking forward to studying what he loves there, and is tired of some of his unrelated classes he is taking now. I am sure he will walk away with another round of A+ grades anyway, knowing Nick.  =)

As our time left in LA dwindles, I am hoping to make a few more trips to the beach, and see a few other LA landmarks we have yet to go to. The weather is remarkable, and I am trying to spend as much time outdoors as I can. (That also serves as a great way to avoid studying! and I have gotten very good at it!)

Here are a few pictures of my adventures with Zach over the last few months: (Isn't he adorable??!)

Muscle Memory

I said in my last blog that Nick and I had both been good at working out lately- and I have really been on a running surge.  This morning I got up at 7am, had a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal and then ran  3 miles on the treadmill. I felt great all day! The weather was incredible outside, and I spent the whole day regretting not having run outside. So I got home and felt bad that Trouble had been crated for so long, so he and I went for a great run tonight! 

Trouble and I ran for an hour, and ran the entire perimeter of the UCLA campus at sunset. Trouble could use a little instruction on NOT yanking the leash every two seconds, but otherwise he was well-behaved. It is incredible that after years of not much long-distance running, I am able to jump back into it so quickly. Our cross country coach used to tell us that muscle memory was something we could use to our advantage for years-and I definitely believe her now.  About 3/4 of the way through the run, my legs were killing me and my knees really started to hurt, but I felt so invigorated that I couldn't bring myself to stop. I started singing a song in my head, and just taking in every bit of my environment. It probably sounds really cheesy, but there is something about long-distance running that has always cleared my head. I tried to take-in every inch of the campus that we will be leaving in a month. 

During my run I passed the parking garage where I would park each and every weekend I came to see Nick. I thought back to the excitement I felt when I would see him walking down the hill to greet me after not seeing each other all week. Shortly thereafter, I moved down here and I remember waiting in anticipation to see if I would be apart of this school I had fallen in love with. The morning I woke up and read that e-mail from UCLA was one of the high lights of my life. All of my hard work had paid off and I became a Bruin. Now I am getting ready to graduate from college, and it is starting to sink in. 

These last 4 years have been an unbelievable learning experience for me. I have become so much more tolerant and open-minded, in ways I never imagined possible. I have met people I will never forget and people that I can't forget quick enough-but they have all taught me something. I have fallen even more in love with Nick, and he has become not only my boyfriend, but my best friend. I have become closer to my parents than ever before, and I feel like I can talk to them about anything and everything. We have all had our struggles over the last few years, but tonight during my run I came to the realization that all of those hard-ships have brought us where we are right now. 

Running centers me and I am determined to keep it up, so I plan to blog about it to motivate myself. I am going to try to find some 5k's to run, so that I have something to strive for. I know it will be harder to keep this up once we move to Boston and it gets cold, but I am going to try and find incentives there. If I can hang onto how good I felt tonight, I know that will be enough to keep me going!

Weekends are amazing-even when you don't do much of anything

 Nick and I went out for a "date night" Friday, since we hadn't had one in a while. We went to one of our favorite Italian restaurants, Magianos, and then we wandered around the Grove. It is such a beautiful shopping center, which sounds strange, but it really is nice. Not surprisingly, I have pictures of our evening. =)  

Saturday I baby-sat Zach all day while Kelly and Mike went golfing. The kid is really getting crazy as far as crawling. He is all over the place and he cannot sit still for more than 2 seconds. We spent some time at the park and he napped in my car, and I cannot imagine how people have kids in a 2-door vehicle. Pulling him in and out of the back seat of the car from his rear-facing car-seat was crazy! 

Nick and I have been really good the last few weeks about working out. Nick has been playing basketball and soccer at the park and I have been using the gym in our apartment building and working out at the UCLA track. We are both feeling great and have a lot more energy because of the consistent work-outs. Hopefully we can keep it up!

Graduation is now less than one month away!!!!!!!! I am thrilled! Nick and I picked up our cap and gowns this week, and it is starting to feel real that we are soon-to-be college grads! My classes are pretty much winding down and with 3 weeks left of class, I can finally see the end. 

I applied for a job in Boston as a research assistant, and I am really hoping I get it. It would relieve so much stress to have a job lined up for August, especially doing something I am slightly familiar with. Our apartment hunt isn't going so well at the moment, and is kind of at a stand-still. I need to contact a few real-estate agents to get their help since we are so far away. I am hoping we can get some help and speed up the process to make our lives easier. 

Onto week 8 of the quarter!

Life in the Fast Lane

Yes, I just stole the Eagle's song to name this blog, but it is so fitting for us. With just under 5 weeks left until graduation, Nick and I are unbelievably busy with school, packing, apartment hunting, and trying to fit in as much fun as possible. (It is exhausting just to write about it!)

This weekend I dog-sat in the Palisades and it was so beautiful there. The coastal weather is wonderful, and the peace and quiet up there is hard to beat, at least in Southern CA.  Nick and I took some boxes down to Irvine Sunday and got to visit Robert and Carole for a bit, but it will be nice to spend time down there with no school-work to do, and no lingering to-do lists in mind. I am definitely ready for UCLA to hand me my diploma and be able to take a mental break! 

Nick and I have finally found a great group of people that we love to hang out with on a regular basis, and we are a little bummed that we found them so late. It is a group of guys he plays video games, watches basketball and even golfs with and they are a blast to be around! It figures that we start hanging out right before our move, but we are happy to finally have friends down here, no matter how late it is. 

Of course, I love my camera and always have to show-case some of the fun things I photograph and I thought these flowers were the perfect pictures of spring. =)

6 Weeks and Counting!

This quarter is going by quicker than Nick and I could have imagined. Nick has his final midterm at UCLA tomorrow, and mine will be done in 9 days. After that will come finals and then graduation! I am so excited at the thought of having our families in one place, and I am really looking forward to a great weekend!

I have slowly been packing and we finally started bringing things down to Robert and Carole's so that we have more room to continue packing. The apartment hunt is at a standstill until I contact an agent in Boston, which I will try to do by the end of the week. I am a little nervous about my school situation in Boston, because the classes are so expensive and I am going to (hopefully) be working full-time while taking them. They making the process very long and drawn out, so I am just hoping they get all my transcripts and let me enroll in the classes I need before they fill up. I am sure everything will work itself out in the long run, but of course I am stressing about it anyway. haha

I really don't have any great pictures to post for the week, other than the ones from Nick and I cracking the geode we bought at the La Brea tar pits. But, they are slightly amusing so I will add them on here. =)

First Nick thought it would be no big deal to crack it open in the apartment...didn't work. 

Onto technique #2....hit it really hard with a hammer. 

Then he decided to get crafty and use a screw driver. 

Our disappointing geode. Bummer.