It's hard to believe that seven days ago I was preparing for one last trip up to Bellingham.

The last few weeks have been such a whirlwind! I went back up to Bham on Monday for my final stint with Young Writers Studio's Teen Writers Club. We did some workshops and spent the end playing Pictionary Dictionary, which was wonderful. Crashed with a friend in her beautiful apartment (they don't have a TV, and it was so nice being surrounded by art and beautiful furniture and eclectic pieces and plants and books), and then went into turbomode on Tuesday. Spent the day slamming through my homework, and turned in my unit plan at 5.55 that night! Ran to my final, and walked out with three article review/blog posts to go for my IT class, which I finished up Wednesday morning. And, done! The funny thing is that I felt more anticipation about the feeling of relief in that last 24 hours - once I was done, I felt like I was just putting off more work. So now I'm back to convincing myself that I actually can sit around and read all day.

My friends and I are having ladies' night dinners once a week this summer. We had our first one on Wednesday, and ended up sitting and talking for two hours. I'm so thrilled to have the chance to connect with some of my nearest and dearest! :) Between grad school, work, and living in different places, we decided that we more than owed it to ourselves to just focus on our friendship this summer.

More exciting news? I got a summer job at Nordstrom! I had also applied to Teavana, and for awhile I was considering Teavana over Nordy's, simply because they weren't going to be working me full-time. That said, the monies would certainly be lesser. A long chat with my brother brought about a new option: negotiating to work 30 hours instead of 40. My boss called last night to offer me the job, I asked about four shifts a week versus five, and she said it's not a problem! Hooray! So I'll work four shifts a week, either noon to nine or one to close. I'm looking forward to the monies, and, of course, the discount! Whoop! (Goal: Earn Money this Summer. Do Not Spend it All Instantly.)

And, lastly, Mike and I found an apartment! The outside looks a bit shitty, but it's about 1100 square feet, which for us, is massive. We'll have room to make a guest room/office, and we should be able to bring in all of our furniture and not have to downsize too much. The location is a bit meh, but we looked at other apartments yesterday, and this is one that's just giving us the most bang for our buck. I'm getting more and more excited - now it's just a matter of filling out all the paperwork and making it official. Guys, I'm moving in with a boy! Eee!

Life, overall, is going really fucking well. :)