Day 4: Cheesecake & Fireworks

As everyone is aware today is an official holiday and that means no school! Which was defintely a bonus because it's a free day off. I would say "since I got to sleep in" but I didn't. I went with my mom to Orlando so she could take a shelf back at IKEA (my first time there) and go to The Cheesecake Factory! Okay and first off, if you've never eaten at The Cheesecake Factory...I need you to find one and go. OMG the food is divine and the cheesecake and I mean every kind they have, is like a heavenly treat. They have like thirty flavors. No, I haven't had them all (not like I wouldn't if I could) but it's not that close to me. Oh and their martinis are delicious. They even let you keep the shaker and there's like almost 2 whole martinis in that as well. Granted the cost a pretty penny.

**I am not a food photographer or even a very good photographer in general but this is a pretty good picture for me. Could be because I tend to be more excited about eating the food over taking freaking snapshots...My mom had the healthy plate (the one in the distance in case you weren't sure) and that's considered a lunch special. Do you see the amount of food? There's a bowl of some banging Mexican Vegetable Soup, a Almond Chicken Salad sandwich, plus a salad. That's insane. I'm just saying I've never seen that big of a lunch special and I'm a server. Maybe at Olive Garden if you consider the unlimited salad and soup that comes with everything. Oh and people also seem to think we carry refills in our aprons or behind our backs. I know you have been staring at me while I took the table next to you's order, I can see you. So why you insist on asking me where your refill is...is beyond me. Sorry for the slight tangent there. My amazing burger had some cheese sauce, and fried macaroni and cheese on top, plus a grilled sesame seed bun. The fries were good too and I don't normally eat fries. But we had an appetizer too and I was determined to eat some cheesecake.

Yeah, that's the stuff right there. My mom ordered the ultimate oreo cheesecake and I got the Kahlua and cocoa flavor. One quick advisement of mine is you may want to eat this at home where you can whisper sweet nothings to your spoon and no one will think your crazy. If you live with other people like me...they probably know you have moments of delirium. 

Even though I had to get up at 730 like any other day I had a great day. Being the awesome student I am and obsessive studier, I brought the chapter reviews and outlines with me and just talked it all out loud on the way. See there's a bonus for hanging out with my mom, she'll just tune me out like normal. After all, I did learn from the best. I've been called out countless times for accidentally tuning people out-imagine what I can do with some effort.

The thing that makes Life Span a potentially difficult class is since there's eight classes only and we meet on Weds and Friday's, we have an exam every single Friday. Yup, so yesterday was my first day and tomorrow is my first exam. I've had Ms. Redcurl before so I know her test are no joke. You have to know your shit to stand a chance at passing...most of the questions are "application" and she gives you a generic example and you have to know what concept/phase of said concept/who discovered the concept/the year/oh and the experiments they used-in order to find whatever concept is being "displayed" in the example provided! I almost forgot, this time we also need to know the "locomotion of infants" from 3 to 18 months!

On that note, I have to go read through the chapters again. Since I went out all day today and then back out for an hour to see fireworks, now I don't have time to work on my book, read the ARC's waiting for me, finish typing up reviews, and I'm really trying to help Desiree Deorto with a few of her current WIP's (works in progress)...It's almost 1 a.m. here and I can only study till 230/3 or else I will not get up until force is applied.

Day 3: Holding Hearts

Yes! I got up early enough today that I could drink TWO cups of coffee before leaving for school. Ooh and I left early enough to get there like 40 minutes beforehand so I didn't get stuck in a ridiculous awkward seat. You know the one's I'm talking about...I like the back because sometimes I tend to get distracted. Today was the first day of Life Span Development and yeah Ms. RedCurls was everything I remembered BUT not as bad. Thank God we have to cover 16 chapters in only 8 classes or else I'm sure the rambling off topic moments would have been way more and the couple we did have would have gone on even longer!

One thing that's cool about her is that she really knows her stuff and clearly her masters degree (she's working for a doctorate) is well deserved. Her lectures are actually kidn of interesting, they don't put me to sleep. Nor do they make me wish I was deaf. Which is five bonus points!! However, even though she's alright...some of the students in my class make me want to just bang my head against the desk. I got Rhea sitting next to me freaking commenting like every other second, like she's trying to beat the teacher or answer a question that wasn't really asked. Across from me on the opposite side is a smart blonde girl. I say smart because I think she is, she knew a couple answers today in which she cut off Rook who was trying to answer but she talked so fast and didn't enunciate that I'm really not sure what she said. We'll shall see, we shall see.

Giant plus is I finished both study guides for two chapters for this Friday's test today, so now all I have to do is remember the seven or eight pages of notes. Aside from the literary world, Psychology is so my thing.

I have so much to do tonight that I'm keeping this short and will blog some more tomorrow! I'll tell you about the cute guy, jeopardy in which I rocked at and being the awesome captain I was-we won by like 4,000 points!! <3 and a little more back story. Right now though I have to edit a friends novel that's going to be published in a couple weeks, read a few books for reviews, set up blog posts for later this week on Cover Bound and I need to send my developmental edits back to my friend Desiree for one of her newest works in progress (WIP's) and make some marketing plans and tools for her! So alas I'll leave you with a cool picture from disection day last month...well my dissection day, our A&P professor let me have the keys to the medical lab and literally told me to "cut my heart out" and "have at it!" Which is exactly what happened! Oh and I'm so nice I invited Sandra and Rhea to my cutting fest.

*A pig heart. You can see the pigs lungs as well as the heart. Along with the aorta and superior vena cava<- the wholes on top*

                                                                                                                                                                                                  

See the pig's liver, stomach, small intestines, colon, kidneys, bile sac being held up in Sandra's hands. In the second picture, that's her holding the intestines like a necklace and Rhea is trying to show us the spine...I was working on getting the brain out. I'm sorry animal lovers, I love them too but I also like science...

Me holding a cow's heart and Sandra is holding the pig ears up by my head.

Day Two: It Never Happened

So today was the second day of Contemporary World Lit (CWL) and I overslept. Like I woke up two minutes before class started and if you get there over 15minutes late, they take off a whole hour anyway. So at that point I had till 10 to get to class. Coffee was my first destination. Oh, while I was making coffee I saw what you ask...Oh I saw my step mom playing facebook games. Like every morning. Had it been a Saturday (or any day she wakes up with what I can only consider a "bone to pick") she'd have banged on the door letting me know I've gotten my "days and nights" confused and sleeping past 930 isn't an option. I mean she usually loves to wake me from slumber. But not today. Nope. Today I missed my quiz because I overslept. I know it's my fault but to then hear a stupid comment like "aren't you going to be late?" makes me want to flip my psycho switch...So after smoking a cigarette, drinking some coffee and listening to faint whistling, I did something I haven't done in 7 months or 140 days of classes...I didn't go. I just went to my friends house and hung out there until class was "over" and went home.

**This was me. You all know when you reach that  point...I mean the comment, gaming and whistling makes me want to gouge my eyes out or crush my eardrums**

I was frustrated and tired. I had no desire to force myself to stay quiet for four hours or try to hide my "are you kidding me" facial expressions. Plus I justified skipping because it's CWL and being the biggest freaking book geek ever-this class is going to be cake. Not even taking into account that Mrs.Stevens our professor is the slackest grader ever. And it helps that I won her over when I had her for Language. I just emailed in my paper I had to write last night for today and started in on my homework for Life Span Development.

How do you have homework for a class you haven't attended (because weds is my first day)? Ha ha easy. She freaking mailed me homework. Yes, the USPS brought me an envelope packed with study guides and reading assignments and more. That's the worst thing I've ever gotten in the mail. Ever. Worse than bills or a letter letting you know the douche you had arrested is out of jail. *rolls eyes* There's no way I can be late to her class because she would be a bitch and try to use me as an example all day. I can't handle that, I'd say something snide. We learned the whole "approach with caution" concept when I had her six months ago for psychology. She never let Rook or I answer questions until she was positive no one else in class knew the correct one. Oh geez and it dawned on me that Ashley is in this class as well and I recall she "took psych before and knew everything" but managed to barely pull a B. Shut the hell up. Clearly retaining what you learned was a problem.

I just finished two months of A&P and that was atrocious. Like I never slept, I tweeted anatomical terms. For heaven's sake I remembered purkinjee fibers and how electrical impulses travel through the heart all by @parajunkee's handler. How I connected those I'll never know but I did and it helped. We would spend DAYS UPON DAYS studying and I'd still pull a B on tests. It was so frustrating but trying to learn 200+ pages of lecture notes, do labs, homework and read chapters every single week was insane. Virtually impossible. I think like less than five people even managed to get and A and over eight people failed out after the first month. It was intense, so I deserved to miss today. After all I do know what a metaphor is, similes, antagonist vs. protagonist's. Oh and I think i missed her covering irony, plot, tone, setting, climax and how they work into a story. Thank God I read and am a writer or else missing today wouldn't have been a good idea.

Also I got a couple more ARC's today for review, a couple blog tour invites and I was invited to UtopYA next year. Plus Heather Ostler who wrote The Shapeshifter's Secret and recently released The Siren's Secret has mailed me a SIGNED hardcover copy-I am so excited. I can't believe it. Seriously I squealed and ran around in excitement for a few minutes...total fangirl session. When I think about it now, I still fangirl. Lol

**Side-note: I also managed to write a new scene in my book Hopeful Lies today and I heard back from one of my beta-readers.

But tomorrow is back to the real world and another day of school. I can't miss Life Span even if I'm dying because we meet a total of 8 times. I'll have 7 classes before I take a final exam. I can't think about that too much or my chest gets tight, my anxiety flares and a panic attack starts to set in...why can't there just be more time in a day? I need  be able to never sleep<--my wishful superpower.

Day One: All Over Again

I'm going to start this by reminding everyone that the first day of class is usually always a painful experience. My University is pretty small in comparison to schools like UCF, FSU and BCC, so chances are-you'll always be in a class with someone you know. I'm not claiming you'll be best friends or any of that fake bullshit. You'll recognize them and on the first day (and maybe even longer) they're your allies. This isn't my first class at the school it's like my seventh so I actually "know of" a lot of the students, even if a few are just familiar faces. Lucky for me I clicked with two girls when I was in my first class and coincidentally we all have the exact same schedule. So in a way, thank God we get along or Nursing school would seem even longer. Now we're not like best friends but we check on each other, complain about class, wonder about our future, study, and at the end of every class we go to lunch and have drinks. I can text them to stall if I'm running late, or save me a seat so I'm not stuck in some odd place on the first day (which I was not today, I was actually like 20 minutes early and yet the only reason I had a seat that would appeal to me was because Rook saved me one).

The first day always involves scoping out who is in your class. Believe me when I say you can tell how the class is going to go based on questions people ask on the first day. I mean we had a open syllabus, open neighbor-meaning you could ask anyone quiz on the syllabus. All the information was on the freaking handout and people STILL asked questions. Like for heavens sake, she's not even asking for us to think critically, just READ the information! Seriously one of the questions was "how many times do you turn in journal entries?" People asked the teacher for the answer...

*drops head against desk* Really? Did that just happen? I can't believe it. Well I can, I'm pretty positive it was the same person who said, and I quote "the only thing I read is texts." So now that I'm older I try my damnedest to just keep my mouth shut and my snide remarks to myself. After all, they have to know they're stupid. I mean on something that easy...

Plus the book for Contemporary World Literature was like 140 bucks. Since I love reading, I can swallow that fact a bit better than I did when the math book cost me 200 bucks and I NEVER even had to open it! That's like salt in the open wound. Do they realize how many books I could have bought? Or all the alcoholic beverages I could have consumed instead? The things that would have made suffering through Algebra *almost* bearable.

The worst part is that everyone whose had a class with me (and even the ones who havent) seem to know I'm a book geek. Oh and apparently that means I'm supposed to help do their homework and project outlines? I don't think so. I'm not getting anything out of it and there's enough work shoved into my week, to worry about adding someone else's. It may not seem important to anyone else but I love my blog Cover Bound and corresponding with publishers and authors- I can't stop. On top of that though, I'm planning an official launch and ironing out the details of a business venture with one of my besties, I'm an admin on Paranormal Reads, a reviewer for SupaGurls (in addition to all the publishers under the "about me" tab), I run my own blog Cover Bound and I'm working on finishing my own novel Hopeful Lies. I'm a bit busy. In the next couple weeks I'll also be editing Sweet Escape for Bailey Ardisone. A girls gotta earn some cash somehow after all.

I must go edit my first journal entry...Maybe I'll share it tomorrow. It's not interesting or full of juicy details. But I need edit it, read a few short stories for class, post a review for Blurred by Tara Fuller on Cover Bound for the morning and possibly write some for my own story.