Sunday Dinner

My roomies and I made dinner together on Sunday. It was great fun. We had an amazing meal. Steak, homemade biscuits, spinach and strawberry salad, couscous, and sparkling cider. It was a fantastic meal and we even set the table nicely. We were pretty much amazing. Below is Megan cooking steak, Kate cooking couscous, and Megan trying to open the sparkling cider. I love my roommates. They are wonderful!

More monuments

Friday night after my dinner was ruined and before PF Chang's, my roomies and I went into the city and walked around some of the monuments. We went and saw Jefferson, George Mason, and Lincoln. Good times. This really is a beautiful and interesting place. I especially loved watching the sunset over the Potomac. I love to see the reflection of light across the water. 'Twas lovely.

Food for the week

This is the pepperoni pizza that I bought and pulled out of the freezer to cook last week. You'll notice the two quarters of a pepperoni. That makes 1/2 pepperoni on my whole pepperoni pizza. As I paid $6 for it and it is a Freshetta pizza, I was less than impressed. Fortunately, I emailed them and they are sending me a coupon for another.

Minor mishap: Friday afternoon- it's been a very long week. Seems like everything I have tried to do has gone a little bit wrong. Riding home on the bus and thinking about dinner and a hopefully relaxing evening. In the morning I had put some chicken, potatoes, and onions in the crockpot to cook. A little bit of fresh garlic, brown sugar, and BBQ sauce made the dish sound rather appetizing. I walked into the house and it smelled delicious. I went upstairs to examine my wonderful smelling dinner and found a note from my roommate. In case you can't read it, it says "That smells freaking amazing! Nice work Nicki. Nice Work." Ah yes, it does smell amazing. I open the lid to look at it and alas. Burned to a crisp. I honestly was expecting that because how could I make it through the rest of the day without something else going wrong. I walked downstairs to find my roommate walking in the door from work. I sat down on the stairs and asked "Megan, what are you doing for dinner?" Answer: "Taking you to PF Changs." Good answer. I just had to laugh though- it just had to happen this week, I had no doubt that it would and the note from my roommate right next to my char broiled dinner just cracked me up!

Maryland

Last weekend, my ward went up to Maryland for the weekend and stayed at a "campground" aka cabins at a National Park. Interestingly, our camp was the camp right next to camp David, which I was told not to take pictures of. The advice came from a girl who did take pictures last year and was tracked down by the authorities who deleted all the pictures off of her camera. So, no pictures were taken. However, I did have an enjoyable time and loved being in the wilderness. There are just so many people in DC and Northern VA that I appreciate being able to get away more than I ever did in the west. I guess that I just like my personal space. These are the few pictures I took. One of a waterfall that we went to, the next with me by the entrance to the camp and the other with my friend Joe who went hiking with me all Saturday afternoon. We got to be in three different states in one day because we also drove up to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. It still baffles me how small the states are out here.

Ah yes, school really did start.

Oh dear. Last year was such an easy year in school for me (I only took 8 credit hours this last semester) that I forgot what it is like to have a full schedule. Really, since I am not working, I am pretty sure that things will turn out just fine for me this semester, but I am still kind of adjusting to a new city, new program, new teachers, and I had one of "those" weeks- one that goes on and on and feels like it will never end. As such, I haven't found the time to blog during the week. However, my plan is kind of exciting! I did manage to take quite a few photos and have had a lot of stories to tell in the last two weeks (which has honestly felt like two months rather than two weeks). Today I am blogging all my photos, but setting each post to be released on a different day this week, so check my blog a lot this week! There is much to come. Life is really a sort of adventure right now. There is so much to see and do that there is a lot to tell.

Today's blog: the virtual tour of my home. I realized that I never took the pictures of my place that I promised long ago. I took some today, but my room is kind of a wreck (a nice reflection of the stress of this week) so don't judge. Just look and enjoy the spaciousness and beauty of my cute town home.

This is my front door. I live in a whole complex of town homes. They are pretty cute- there's just a whole lot of them crammed into a not so huge area. Housing here is up and down more than side to side, so we have a tall skinny home.

This is one side of my room- the side where all of my homework tends to reside. Like I said, it is kind of a mess at the moment, but it isn't always this cluttered!

This is the other half of my room- I am standing in front of the desk to take this picture. My room is huge. It is actually supposed to be a living room, so there is a fire place right by the desk. We just have it converted to a bedroom so we can have four people living here. It's kind of cool, except I would prefer a closet over the wardrobe.

This is the coolest wall in our house. It resides in the front room. My roommate collected pictures from all four of us and printed them to make this collage of our own photography. It is a great addition to the house. Love it.

This is the front room (my back is facing the cool wall). This is such a huge room. You can see one of our really tall windows. There are two other just like it along the same wall and the dining room is up a half level and open to this, so the room is huge, tall and very open. It's not super decorated, but still fulfills our needs.

This is the dining room. Simple and good. Over the railing is the front room and you can see and appreciate the huge windows.

This is the kitchen. We have even more cupboards on the wall that was behind me and a second fridge. AND there is a dishwasher and garbage disposal- both of which were not a part of my life the last two years. Yeah for modern conveniences!

Hope you enjoyed the brief tour. It's even better in real life if you ever care to see!!

Hurricane Hannah and the first week

One week of PT school down....only about 100 or so left to go! :) It's been a fun week. Not too surprisingly, the first week of school hasn't been too difficult. I expect that after this week, the pace will pick up and I will have a lot more studying to do, but it has been really nice to slowly ease into things. My favorite experience so far this week: Wednesday, second day of school. Setting: bus ride in the morning to school. Nicki is sitting on the bus reading The Physical Therapist Guide to Practice which is published by the APTA (American Physical Therapy Association, (of which I am a member of, by the way). Woman gets onto the bus and sits by Nicki- she is slightly older and walks with an assistive device (a term I learned in school this week), namely a cane.

Woman: (after looking at the book) Oh, it looks like I sat by the right person!
Nicki: Yes, I can tell you everything I know. I have now been in school for one day! :)
Woman: Oh....silence, a slight roll of the eyes and looks away.

Ah yes! This is my future! For a year now I have had similar conversations. If you say that you are going into any kind of health care profession, it seems that people think you know everything. It makes me laugh. I really will have a future of service to the community, which I like- but right now, I don't think I have a lot to offer. I can drape a patient correctly with sheets, do proper squats and lifting techniques, and take a patient history. Very helpful right?

So now it's the weekend and we are under a flash flood warning, and a tropical storm watch thanks to our friend, Hannah. And on a nice rainy morning like this, what is it that my roommates and I decide to do? Go running. Yes, three of the four of us went out this morning. We got drenched (surprise surprise) but the rain is so warm that it was actually quite nice. Brilliant, I know, but we were safe about it. People probably thought we were crazy, but we blame all our silliness these days from being the new girls in town.

The evidence...

The end...

The time has finally come for summer to be an end for me. Really it is the end of all summer vacations. I don't think that my future career choice will include summer break and from here on out, I go straight through school. Alas, it is a bit sad to be at that point in my life. BUT since summer is going down, I thought it should go down with a bang. I went to Virginia Beach today with my roommate and a couple of people from my ward. I literally sat on the beach and played in the water all afternoon. I think we were actually driving for longer than we were on the beach, but it was so worth it for those hours in the sun and the time in the ocean. It was beautiful, relaxing, and almost too good to be true. I really enjoyed my break from classes up until the very end.