Take Two

In undergrad, I was always upset when I actually decided to go to class day 1 and all we did was read over the syllabus together. Now, I look forward to it and am increasingly distraught that grad school does not have syllabus day. We literally jumped right in and my stress levels immediately skyrocketed.

This poster was taken down because the posters
retrospectively deemed it potentially offensive. 

The good news is that a new semester means new friends and a whole week of free lunches. We're finding more and more people to supplement our Monday night basketball and we even had some of our classmates show up to Tuesday night volleyball.

Day two, we spent six hours dissecting brains and listening to words that we never knew existed in the English language. (Most probably stemmed recently from Latin.) One of my favorite fun facts was that your pineal gland, which is responsible for regulating melatonin, calcifies before age 50 unless you are an avid meditator. Melatonin helps you sleep and prevents Alzheimer's. Scary.

Me trying to meditate despite constantly increasing stress levels.

I'm the worst suggestive seller at the bookstore because I keep it real for people. Never buy your books at the bookstore unless that is literally the only place they are sold. I've been finding free or cheap PDFs and sharing them amongst friends to further lighten the load. Reading online isn't the best for your eyes, but you can actually afford vision in your health plan by saving all that money, so who's the real winner here?

Mason has always wanted to be promposals.
Out here making dreams come true.

Brandi and I have wanted to start swimming to supplement our other workouts, so we finally kicked that off this week. The first ten minutes were rough, but after we adjusted to having water in our lungs, it was fine. And pretty decent cardio.

The captain of the harem. 

The stress of a new semesters warranted a new rap - and I actually had time to do it. This third song on my DPT mixtape is probably one of my favorites as it highlights both the stress of school and finances in neuro-themed verbiage.

One of Brandi's new year resolutions is to do one scholarship per week, and I'm jumping on the train with her starting with the NATA scholarship. Which I had 7 days to complete with 2 recommendations were were so accommodating and I can't thank them enough.

New movies are airing at the Prochnow, NAU's free theater, and a lot of them look really good. Brandi and I walked approximately 2 miles in the freezing cold to see Venom, which was so good. Love. Even if the villain was a bit obvious.

I'm a fiend for a good dinosaur stop.

Our monthly temple sessions kicked off with a trip to Snowflake Saturday morning. The temple was so packed, there was a line out the door of the dressing room. And half the people there were from Flagstaff. Well, you know what they say, double your attendance and maybe you'll get your own temple. The temple was good and the authentic Mexican cuisine afterwards was too. Also the dinosaurs we stopped at in Holbrook.

Favorite dinosaur bc it's literally eating another dinosaur.

In light of MLK Day and Black History month in February, we celebrated with a themed "party". (Our parties involve light conversation, light conversation, and end promptly at 10.) We played a conglomeration of past versions of "MLK or Black Rapper", ate brownies, and watched Black Panther.