Resolutions before the New Year & Ramble On!

Well here it is, 12/13/10, we will be ringing in the New Year in about 19 days and I have happily begun my list of New Year’s Resolutions! Even better I have already attempted to put myself in the habit of breaking bad habits! So here's the list:

1.      STOP SMOKING- Probably the hardest thing to do and I’m not there yet but have cut way down!

2.      Start Working out- Oh How I love my Wii especially Wii Fit, Yes it has begun, new routine every morning.

3.      Realize that my MIL doesn't hate me she just fears I will take her place in their lives..... Yeah really hard one!

4.      Blog- I love blogging, it's sharing a part of me with people from every walk of life and even getting feedback sometime so I need to do it more! Working on that NOW!

5.      Appreciate more what I do have and don't wallow in those things I think I am missing out on. Meaning I need to appreciate the family and times I have here with me now and not be so resentful that I am missing out on family and times elsewhere (namely Dallas). Working on this one, it’s not easy even though it’s been better than 7 years since I lived in the area. I just feel like my kids are missing out on getting to know their cousins and other family members. My heart melts and I find a piece of heaven somewhere between the laughs, the cry’s, the loudness and the love of so many people that actually want to be around each other! This can be fixed, I mean really it’s the age of Technology, I can just give my Uncles webcams and when they have a get together he can put the laptop in the living room with the webcam on and I can feel like I am there! No need to supply me with food or drink or even a potty for that matter because I’ll watch it on my Android! Rofl yeah fat chance but I can “lose the attitude” and learn to enjoy what I have rather than resent what I wish I could have!

6.      Budget my money better – This is a big one because these next two years, 2011 & 2012 will be life changing for my family! I will finish my Associates in Applied Science in Medical Assisting in March which might be our ticket out of Livingston! My plan is to budget our funds to where we can pay off our loans first, then put into a savings account the amount we would usually use to pay loans. I am hoping that a year of saving will be enough to move us but I do not like the idea of moving the kids towards the end of the school year so it might be best to wait until the summer of 2012, we will have to see how that goes. Eventually I want to work at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas as a Certified Medical Assistant and take their Physicians Assistant Program once I feel I am ready. I think as long as we budget our money right we will be well on our way!

Okay I am done with rambling, I have so many things to do and if I don’t get it done soon I won’t do anything at all! Have a great week & feel free to share your resolutions I can’t wait to hear them all!

Fitness Coffee (Click Here)

Okay has anyone heard about Fitness Coffee? I have been following them on Twitter and been to the site a few times. Looks like something I wanna try so I'm going to hope to be one of five bloggers to get a free sample! There is a link to their website ^up there. They have an awesome promotion going right now. All you have to do is take a picture of yourself with the Fitness Coffee! The prize is a freaking Apple IPad! Whoa! What are you waiting for if you have it take a pic if you don't, or some and take a pic!
Personally I want to try the weight loss coffee because you know I start everyday with either coffee hot tea or hot cocoa.
Look at all these benefits!

• Gourmet coffee at fitnesscoffeeusa.com

• The most functional all natural fitness beverage on the market
• Natural gourmet coffee rich in antioxidants with over 3.5x the antioxidants of green tea and significantly more than red wine
• This healthy coffee has been known to help consumers lose significant weight by naturally enhancing the body's metabolism

• Known to help consumers lose significant weight by naturally enhancing metabolism
• Gourmet Italian blend for a rich and full taste
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Unit 10

Wow another term gone just as I feel a little bit more confident in so many areas. I am scared to see my grade on my calculations exam in Pharmacology since my grade is only a 94 and I made a yukky 88 on the pharmacology exam. In Comp it just seemed like after Christmas break class went faster. As of now I have a 93.4 in there and I am so worried that it will drop below a 90. I really enjoyed both classes this term and the interactions between students.

        What advice would you now give to someone writing his/her first scientific paper?Know what questions you have about the subject. Research, research and then narrow down your research, make sure you have good research for each main point.

•         What areas do you feel you strengthened in the past 10 weeks?Knowing what kind of research to look for when considering different types of papers.

•         What areas do you feel still need improvement in regards to writing?Comma use and sentence structure (i.e. passive voice)

Thanks for such Great Professors Kaplan!

Unit 9

With your paper done or almost done, how do you feel
• Do you feel nervous, accomplished, or just plain tired?
I fell accomplished! I Aced my paper and as long as I get the rest of my work done I will ACE this class as well!

• How do you feel about writing at this point? Has your idea of writing changed throughout the course?
I am much more comfortable and confident in my writing than I was before this class. I learned so much about the right ways of writing things, mine weren't all wrong just needed some tweeking!

• What other topics would you like to research?
I would love to research Menopause if I were doing a medical research paper.

Week 7

Well it's been one of those weeks where I know things will be better soon but would prefer instant satisfaction! We worked on reviewing other students rough draft and answering questions about them. Pretty interesting, I found a lot of different writing styles. I think the best review I seen was actually on my paper. It was clear and concise without being rude or sounding sarcastic. I am actually excited about incorporating the input from both my professor and classmate into my final draft. 

Life's Trials

Well this has been a very long week for me, my heart is broken and there is nothing I can do. To give a little background information my Memaw has been wanting to move back to Texas, closer to my mom. So my mom went hunting for a house for her, she thought she found the perfect one. Yes it needed a lot of work but the payments were perfect since my Memaw is on a fixed income we were worried about cost. Mom put a down payment on the house then with the help of a few family members got my Uncle Chic (yes funny name I know) to move here from Florida to fix up the house before Memaw got here.

My Uncle packed everything he had including his "Patches"(his dog but more like his own son) mama kitty and blue (older cats he has had since kittens) and got here New Years Eve. He and my cousin Jordan have been working on fixing the house everyday since he got here.

The other night my Uncle decided to go to Houston and stay with my Aunt Elizabeth for a couple of days just to visit and relax. He has been having some stomach pain lately but thought it was just nerves because of all the changes. The next night my Aunt rushed my Uncle to the emergency room because he was doubled over in pain. They find out it is a kidney stone and send him to Ben Taub Hospital for surgery because it looks too large to pass. My mom closes her grooming shop for the day (which happens to be right across the street from Memaw's new house) rushing down to make sure her brother is okay because my aunt has to get to work and no one wants to leave Uncle Chic alone.
The next day I hear sirens, as I look across the neighborhood I see 2 ambulances, 3 fire trucks and a few cops racing down the road toward my moms shop. It took me a little bit to get information but when I do I hear that it is not the shop on fire but the house across the street. My heart dropped, see when my uncle left he put Patches, Jojo (a rescue), mama kitty and blue in the house. My mother checks on them throughout the day to potty, feed and water them, everything was fine. 

I told each of the emergency workers that there were animals inside but the house was almost fully involved and they would not let anyone near. Finally, after the fire was completely out I went searching. I know for sure that mama kitty made it, however Patches and Jojo did not. I am not sure about blue I have been searching for her since it happened to no avail. No one has told my uncle yet, we are still waiting to see if he will have to have surgery. If so we will tell him once it's over, no one wants him going into surgery that devastated.

My heart hurts for him, everything he owned was in there except the clothes on his back. I can't bring myself to be there when they tell him, his heart is going to break. I am exhausted, I have let myself fall behind on school work trying to help my mom take care of things while she is down there with him and all I want is a good nights sleep. I'm afraid it will not be anytime soon.

Today

So I am sitting here mulling over my rough draft that is due by the end of the week. I don’t know what to write. Will it be good enough? I know I need to clean the house, I have work in both classes that I need to get done, tired of being home 24/7 and plain exhausted although I know I slept last night. Then looking at the TV I see the devastation in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. My heart cries for the people that have any connection to the area. I wish I were already a physician’s assistant or some other allied healthcare provider who could run to their aid. It’s amazing, I remember getting a CNN breaking news message on the ninth stating that there was a 6.5-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northern California causing damage and power outages. I am not even sure I heard about it on TV, just a brief message on my phone and that’s the last I have heard of it. Three days later a 7.0 hits Haiti completely devastating the area taking away so many lives.

I am amazed that 5 tenths of a point more did so much more damage. Yet I don’t know that it is solely because of the magnitude that it’s so devastating. I don’t know anything about the area but it probably has a lot to do with the quality of living in the area. I know I am seeing buildings completely demolished by this quake but it does not seem like the quality of their structures is all that great. What I mean is that certain areas of the world could probably hold up better to these quakes than others. I don’t know I am just rambling.

I truly believe deep down that there is a reason for everything. I can only hope and pray that this horrific disaster brings money to the area to not only rebuild structures but make them safer as well.

Week/Unit 5

Its been another interesting week both at home and in school. In Pharmacology, I am learning about drugs that are used for circulatory and respiratory disorders, so much to learn in so little time!
In Comp 2 we are working on pre-writing strategies and the writing process in general. My writing process usually starts with a big jumbled mess of information, pretty much free writing. I just put everything down I know or think about the subject without regards as to how it is laid out or grammar. Then I take each sentence or main idea and put it all into different groups kind of like clustering or outlining, whichever I feel more comfortable with at the time. I find doing it this way give me a good base for my rough draft and finally a paper worthy of handing in to my professor.
One thing I would change academically is my tendency to get off track and mess up my own schedule!
School is influencing my life in a lot of ways. Probably the biggest change is the amount of time I spend working on academics. I love my classes and honestly enjoy learning about our amazing bodies so when I find out something new I tend to research it more. This in turn causes me to get off track forcing me to refocus myself!

Unit 4

Does the Internet blur the lines of “legally owned”? Consider sites like YouTube and Wikipedia.


Yes, I believe that the internet blurs the lines of "legally owned". There are many sites that use copyrighted information such as music and allow users to download them. To most it is no big deal but to those who lose money because their albums are being downloaded freely it is a big deal. There are also sites such as Wikipedia that allows the public to contribute information without requirements to identify resources. I personally feel that when it comes to plagiarism everyone should give credit where it is due, someone else worked very hard to obtain the information and deserve the recognition for it.