Today we gave our Tai Chi poster presentation. Our research mentors kindly tore it apart – emphasizing that it wasn’t bad, but it could be fine-tuned immensely. They had some good ideas and we also got a crash course on body language while standing at the poster! This was our third draft of the poster, I think. Now we have to redo it completely before next Wednesday when we do the symposium. We start doing Tai Chi assessments this Friday. The research has been somewhat interesting and I like the subject matter, but I and everyone else in this project are bitter at the gas money and time our groups have put in compared to all other groups. The gas money especially has become an issue, with every single trip out there now costing me at least $4 and for others, more like 7 or 8. That adds up really quick as a student, especially when you consider we’ve easily been there 15 times apiece, and that’s a low estimate. Ugh.

ANYWAY enough ranting. Just had to say it since I can’t sleep so I figured I’d throw out what I could. Brooke and I then had lunch before working on our PDEs at school together, which went pretty quickly. Then we went to the gym where we took PiYo, ran into low vision occupational therapist Orli, who is ballroom dancing with her husband! That’s so cool! Then we went out east so Brooke could feed some cute doggies she is house-sitting! Then we went to a barbecue place outside and met my our other friend Christa! Then we went to her house and watched American Idol! And I had fun and refused to think about the PDEs, the Diversity paper, the special blog project , the stacking up e-mails, and the other ten thousand things I have going on! Sometimes you just have to go with the flow yo! For sanity! And I sang most of the day, poorly, because for some reason I always feel like singing random songs these days like “Go the frikken speed limit you stupid blue car… la la la”. Everything sounds so much better by song. And my blogging always seems like it makes sense late at night but when I wake up in the morning I’m always like, why did I think talking about crackers and chain saws was a good idea? Hmm.

Brooke also made me the happiest person in the ENTIRE WORLD today by sharing with me a ton of free books she got from book reps…of course not to keep, but since I read fast and do a lot of skimming, she’s letting me be the supervisor of them….on some of the yuckier times in life, having a book to look forward to reading is the only thing that motivates me to get out of bed! I like immersion in the words of others as a reprieve from my own dangledoodle thoughts!

I’m happy that our semesters of schooling are almost over in the sense that no matter how interesting something is, sitting in a classroom gets tedious pretty quickly. But I’m sad because I truly enjoy (usually) my classmates and I’m going to miss the camaraderie and fun we’ve had together. In June I’ll be out of town for almost three weeks…and I start my first level II fieldwork, 3 months full-time, at a local rehab hospital, inpatient, on June 30th….so probably my June updates will be a combination of “I’m off-topic enjoying my last student vacation ever so in your face” and “I mean to write this down seven months ago and just remembered…” and “Oh my gosh I’m so scared of fieldwork” and “I just tried to transfer my friend from a chair to the bed and I’m pretty sure I broke the spinous processes off half my vertebral column”. La Occupationalie Therapistia opera: MY SPINE!! MUST PINE! FOR IT HAS LOST!! ITS BONY THOUGHTS! FOR I! DO NOT KNOW HOW TO TRANSFER! AND FOR THAT! IM SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARED!

Delirium strikes. I should stop. I still need to write about Terri Schiavo and the beautiful little girl I met recently with haloproencephaly and spina bifida. And um, yeah. Lots coming up…I have the tendency to always be waiting for the next big event to occur, instead of just like living in the NOW..and appreciating how lucky I am to be in school….I keep thinking I need to start up a blessings journal where I try to work on my negativity by counteracting it with positive thoughts…but then I also want to become a female, less cowboy-ish version of Chuck Norris…and…and…ummm.

Tomorrow is a full day between volunteering at a Rehab dept for WEE-FIM stuff (I kept putting it off) and then spending the afternoon and evening out at an assisted living facility doing Tai Chi related things, plus Bingo! (Sarah, you are welcome to come..)