In the News

First and foremost, Hurricane Season is officially OVER! Finished. Complete. Done. Yesterday's News. And the next season will not start until I'm off of this island. Thank God. This is great news!

[How's this for irony: Hurricane IKE had the highest IKE of any Atlantic storm in history. IKE stands for Integrated Kinetic Energy, and is a measurement of storm surge destructive potential. The highest, and most destructive rating, is a 6. Our precious little friend IKE was rated a 5.6. IKE had the highest IKE. Ironic. Ha]

And today's top 2 headline picks...

ARMLESS WOMAN PILOTS PLANE WITH FEET

AMPUTATION SURGERY VIA TEXT MESSAGE

Weird, huh? Nope, haven't read them. I will do that next. But thank you CNN.com for making me laugh at the headlines.

Off to clinicals. Ready for the weekend!

6th Album, 6th Picture

My friend Alison did this, and tagged me to do the same. What's the challenge? Go to My Pictures on your computer, open the 6th folder, and post the 6th picture. Here is mine!...

Me and one of my most favorite people, miss Katie Green :) Katie is without a doubt one of my best friends. In fact, I think my family sometimes forgets she's not a Frederick, and wish that she was. (my two little cousins named their puppies Jessi and Kate, haha)

This picture was taken just a couple months ago, at our annual McDonald's breakfast. Sounds weird, right? Let me explain...

Every year since 6th grade, a group of 5 of us (Amy, Alison, Katie, Ashley, and me) have gone to McDonald's for breakfast on the last day of school. The same five friends, and we have never missed a year. Even though we all live in different places, we make it a point to come back to Waco, and have our traditional McDonald's breakfast, at the same McDonald's. (Don't be grossed out...its not like we love the food. Tradition people, c'mon!)

It's funny how much things have changed since then, and how some things have stayed the same. We've gone from putting on blue mascara in the bathroom and hoping our moms didn't notice (we had a retro dance for the last day of school in 6th grade haha), to trying on our bridesmaids dresses for Amy's wedding after we left breakfast this past year. It's sad that we don't all get to be together very often, but it's awesome when we do!

I cannot tell you how much I love these girls. Each of them have been such an important part of my life. We are all so incredibly different from eachother, it's ridiculous! We laugh about how opposite we are, but it works. It's us. I'm blessed to have such great friends and to have friendships that truly are lifelong.

And for your viewing pleasure, a couple more McDonald's pics...

THEN....
and NOW

Okay, now it's YOUR TURN! And my people to tag are...(drum roll please)...

Laura, Jen, Nicki, Erin, Courtney, Rachel, and Katie :) [HAVE FUN!]

Just call me BOZO...

...because I look like a clown.

I have my infamous bright red eye look that I've come to despise so much over the years.

Left eye=painful, red, puffy. AKA, left eye is DISGUSTING.

So my question is: Would you still be friends with me if I had it removed? You would still hang out with "that girl one eye" wouldn't you?

Because I'm contemplating orogolomistician surgery. Or in layman's terms, eye surgery. (*Disclaimer: I'm not really sure if orogolomistician is the correct terminology in this situation, but according to my old friend Wikipedia it means eye surgery...and in my opinion it sounds way cooler. And it makes me sound like I actually learned something in nursing school. Nope, wikipedia to the rescue.)

Full removal of my eyeball is actually my preference at this point. I'm going to student wellness shortly, and will discuss my ideas with them to see how they feel about it.

Seeing as the UTMB student wellness center is temporarily relocated to an old office on the 3rd floor of the school of nursing building, which is still covered in butcher paper, tape, and sawdust and smells like formaldehyde from the cadaver lab that got moved to the 2nd floor, I'm not sure this is a perfect idea. I would think orogolomistician surgery needs to be performed in the most sterile of environments. But I'm weighing my options. Painful disgusting eye, or no eye at all. I think the choice is clear. Clean environment or not.

So after today, you might have to forever be friends with the girl with one eye.

50 is the new 20

Think back to when you were a kid. Now try to remember just how OLD you thought some people were...even your parents, who were probably barely even thirty by the time you were old enough to have the "I'm cooler than everyone" attitude. Even at a young age, you realized that past a certain point old=uncool/unfun. (minus the high school and college years of course, which were forever the cool years in your six year old mind).

Right then and there, you tell yourself that you won't let that happen to you. You will forever be fun, and forever be cool. Even when you're old, you'll be the fun one.

Then that dreaded day comes. The day when you're only 23 years old, sitting on the couch in sweat pants, socks, and an old t-shirt, eating honey nut cheerios out of a styrofoam bowl for dinner, complaining about how tired you are and how much your feet hurt...on a Friday night. And that's when it hits you. You're officially lame. And officially BORING.

This is my story. How sad, but it's true. I would love to tell you about all of the amazing adventures that have been going on in my life lately. But well, let's be honest, there's not really much to report. All of my days sort of blend together, because pretty much all of my days are the same.

My typical day includes: (in no particular order) Choosing between cereal or a mini jalapeno kolache from Home Cut Donuts for breakfast. Clinicals. Studying. Facebooking for too long. Homework. Noticing a new boat in a random place that we've somehow missed the first hundred times we drove past it. Working on ridiculous care plans. Talking about what we want for dinner for more than an hour, and inevitably settling on Subway or Fema tuna because that's often the only option. Case Studies. Driving down the seawall. Watching the news or some TLC re-run to avoid studying. Being frustrated with UTMB for new reasons. And talking about what fun things we wish we could be doing.

All in a day's work. Exciting huh? No. Not exciting. Lame, and boring. It's okay, I already know.

And tonight, as I sit here on my bed doing homework, there's a big party going on downstairs. Everyone's all dressed up and enjoying dinner, full bar, and DJ. Who's at this party? Old people. What the heck happened? All I know is they are for sure having more fun than me. And are therefore officially more fun than me.

Apparently 50 is the 20. And I just got a little more lame.

Awkward has 2 W's

Everyone goes through their "awkward stage", right? Some are more painful than others, but we've all been there. Glasses, braces, bad clothes choices, bad hair, acne, whatever...all awkward. Well I was fortunate to have it all. And even more lucky to be one of the chosen teenagers whose awkward stage lasted for years! Cool. And there are too many pictures to prove it.

I would show a picture, but now I won't. Why? Because I showed MA one just a minute ago, and she still hasn't stopped laughing. In fact, she's crying. Yes, she's laughing so hard she's crying. At a picture of me from Jr. High.

Her exact comment? "Jessica! It looks like your head got stuck in a three-speed blender!"

Gotta love honest friends? I guess. HA. And gotta love never having to be in jr. high again.
After all, I don't need the braces and blender hair, I'm doing just fine figuring out ways to be awkward enough without them.

Yah, Never Mind.

Everything in the last post is no longer true. Laura is not going to be our senator. Thanks UTMB. Seriously, you suck. In so many ways, you suck.

And I have yet another thing to add to my "WHY I HATE UTMB" list.

April 24=no more UTMB.

The Results are IN! And the WINNER is.....

LAURA WARREN!

Confused? That's understandable. While most of us have been engrossed in the presidential election over the past couple of months, it seems we have all but forgotten about an equally important election. What election could that be you ask? Why that would be the SGA elections for good ol' UTMB. More importantly the neck-to-neck race for the coveted position of Senator of the School of Nursing.

This is how it all went down. Just a couple days ago Mary Alice and I were sitting around "studying." When the all-important e-mail, the life changing e-mail finds its way into our school inbox. The title read something like this..."Just a reminder that TODAY is the deadline to vote for the UTMB SGA Elections." First of all, who knew UTMB even had a student government? I mean, I guess I assumed they did, but who knows, that could have gotten washed away with IKE along with the rest of the school. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me! Anyways, I digress.

Okay, so UTMB student government elections. Being the civic minded people that we are (or the perfecters of the art of procrastination?) we of course had to vote. But when we clicked on the link, much to our dismay, there wasn't a single person running for Senator of the School of Nursing. That's when we got our bright idea! We would nominate Laura. Why not? She wasn't there to stop us. It would be funny. After all, it could never actually happen. Right? And if she did win, she would actually be great at it. (*If you know Laura, you understand. If you don't know Laura, your loss.*)

So we nominated our "write-in candidate"...Laura Warren...and laughed as we did it. We figured we'd get Brittany in on the deal, just for good measure...and so began our role as CAMPAIGN MANAGERS. (Who knew it'd be so easy to be a campaign manager? All we did was send one little text message. And people think it's hard? Psssh.)

After we stopped laughing, we called our candidate to inform her that she in fact was running for student government. "LAAAAUUURRRRAAAA, we nominated you for student senator for the SON!" And in Laura fashion, she responded with a giggle, excited as ever. To be honest, we expected nothing less. That's Laura!

And then it came. Yesterday, Outlook Express had the information that made our dreams come true. And now I'd like to introduce you to UTMB's newest SON Senator...Miss Laura Warren!

And her two awesome campaign managers!

Scary, isn't it? And now, with our powers combined, we might have some say in this school! Or at least have the inside scoop before everyone else, lol.

But obviously, we are very serious nursing students. Very serious.

No, we're not really sure what the senator of the SON is really supposed to do. Not at all actually. But whatever, that's trivial details...LAURA WON! And we're excited! :)

So, this is proof that YOUR VOTE COUNTS! So in light of this inspirational tale, GO VOTE!

(I did, via mail, and I am beyond excited for tonight! In fact, we made red, white, and blue election cookies for the occassion. haha)