More pics of Nicki

Nicki-Tie

I adopted Nicki-Tie (Nicki for short) in May (?) when she was about 6 months old and very skinny. Nicki was a stray and very cute so I had to have her :)

She's very playful and loves cuddling with me and roommates -- she grew a whole pound in the first month after I adopted her --- and is still growing.




The first pic is when I first brought her home from the clinic after being nutered. She was still drugged. The next pic is of her a few weeks ago -- the same shoe is in both pics to show how she has grown.

Master's Student Summer

This summer was very busy --- I worked full time, took 8 credits plus wrote my master's paper. Looking back, I don't know how I did it all. At times I was very stressed, too stressed. I think that I just need to make sure I don't schedule that much at once.

And, there were times that were trying -- I almost didn't get full credit in my grammar class because the teacher was not satisfied with my work - admittendly that was my lowest priority class and I let it slide. So, clearly I could not totally do all the things I took on.

And, I had to write two more annotations for my master's paper after it was due and my teacher made it clear it wasn't "okay" that I had not turned in those annotations.

But, it also feel kind of good that I wasn't perfect in my coursework and i survived, especially survived teacher criticism. So that was good -- yes, this is a personal blog entry.

Since I am a perfectionist, taking on too much really stresses me because I can't overachieve in everything I take on. I actually had to lower my standards to normal and below normal at times.

Overall though it was just a little too much of a work load. I felt like a master student slave at times. My first draft for my master's paper was about 140 pages. I waded through 200 pages of annotations and edited them down -- it took forever!

Since my roommates are also in the same program, the stress level was pretty high in our house during the last week before our paper was due.

To top it off, the morning my master paper was due, I was braindead and walking out my front door with my 'manuscript' in my hand and found my cat on my roof --- she had spent the night up there and came bounding down the roof looking about as half crazed as i was feeling; when I tried to get her down she just thought I was playing and started nibbling at my hand, then began to play soccor with the old bees hive she had had in her mouth as she came down the side of the roof. I had to get a chair to get her down.

So, that was pretty much my summer -- a lot of hard work.

I did manage to get a vacation in this weekend, which was a lot of fun and I feel more refreshed to begin my student teaching, which begins tomorrow. Jason and I went up to Whistler and mountain biked on some really fun trails -- that was so much fun. We also ate some great food and napped in the afternoons. Some of his friends went in on a townhouse for the weekend up there -- had no idea how big the resort is there.

Will post pics up from Whistler as soon as my cellphone cooperates with me so I can send them to my email --