Birthday blues...

Well, everyone, yesterday was my birthday. At 7:37 am I officially turned 24 years old. Now, normally my birthday is an exciting occasion with family and friends, dinner out, and maybe another fun outing or two. This year, however, was the worst year ever I think. First of all, I had to go to work (as usual) from 8 to 5. While at my law office job, I had to read like crazy for my class that night - a huge book that I hadn't even started on!!! Not a good combo.

At 5:00 I had a meeting with a professor about my ongoing independent study on my Mexico research (yeah, I actually have to do something with the stuff I got from the archives there, dang it!). By the time I fought traffic and got home, it was after 5:30 pm. My lovely husband was already home making me dinner. He gave me the mail, which included several birthday cards, and some flowers that he had picked up for me. What a charmer! However, this was short-lived as I quickly scarfed down my food and had to leave again for class back up at school at 7:00 pm (you have to get there at like 6:30 to get a decent parking spot).

After two and a half hours of class (so....long....), I yawned my way back to my car in the parking lot and drove home. With a growing headache from all the stress of the day now growing, I barely had time to glance at a few posts on my facebook wall and some e-cards sent to me from loved ones before popping a few ibuprofen and hitting the sack.

Now, I know that not every year can my actually birthday be spectacular. Let me say this, though: the weekend better make up for yesterday, because it was pretty awful. Oh wait, I'm going to the library all day tomorrow to do research...ah, the life of a grad student is never over!!!

Labor Day rocks

Hello everyone and welcome to the first day of a lovely long weekend! I am especially excited today because I got off work at noon and my parents are coming to visit me. In fact, they should be arriving in the next 30-45 minutes - yea! I haven't seen them since...well, about a month ago. I miss them. Yes, I know, I should grow up. After all, I am a married woman now and I live in another city and have my own life. But I love getting to see them! So I'm excited. I've been cleaning all afternoon, and Derek has been cleaning all week! Not that our house is a mess or anything, but we kind of let it go unless someone is coming over, you know? C'mon, you know what I mean!

I have a lot of homework to do, though. I have three books to read for next week - big ones too! I know that I have had similar workloads in the past, but I often would slack off and not read the whole thing, and later felt bad about that afterwards. Well, this semester, I really want to try and read the whole thing and learn as much as I can from these books. I mean, I'm sure our professors assign them for a reason, right? Just keep telling yourself that, Mare...but seriously, I do want to do a good job this semester and learn as much as I can. I'm getting near to the end already - after this semester, I'll only have like one more semester of real classwork, and then just comps after that. I can't believe it's already over halfway over! Grad school is a lot quicker than undergrad! But honestly, I'm ready to be done with it already, so I'm glad it's going fast.

Those are my thoughts at the moment. I'm going to go make one last run-through before the 'rents get here. Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!