Never fear!

I am still alive, just getting swallowed by midterms this week and next. I'll be back next week, so please forgive my absence.  I have a paper calling my name, so here is to hoping I can crank out another 6 pages and get to bed by midnight tonight.  Here goes nothing!
But before I take off, a photo to share:

A photo from a recent football game.  My mom drove down and we had a blast!

Big thanks to my Dad's coworker for the amazing free seats :)

I-L-L-I-N-I!

I guess I’ll be switching to Thursday and Sunday updates.  Yay school for crapping on my life.  At least on Thursdays I’m at placement.  Unfortunately it’s been really slow with doctors out and some of the Audiologists as well.  There is also a student from another local-ish school so we spend a lot of time fighting over patients and getting hours.  Needless to say, it’s been interesting.  She’s a 3^rd year so she’s seen pretty much everything so I get the leftovers during the day.  It’s been a slow few weeks, but I’m learning a lot and seeing a lot of different things.  At least I’m using the extra time to get going on homework and get caught up on reading.  I’m going to start bringing my computer so I don’t have to fight the hospital firewall all the time. 

I’ve delayed on posting because a certain boyfriend was being a fun distraction early this week.  He was in town for about 5 days and we had a blast being together.  I think he was tired of spending time with his parents after a week and a half.  While he was home he did get his fancy new truck and some kitchen stuff, you know- those adult things haha.  He was also a nice subject for some cerumen management and enjoyed watching me geek out when we ran him as a subject in our evoked potentials lab.  He survived the mild abrasions (skin scraping with very fine sandpaper to get rid of dead skin) we had to do for the electrode placement- and still had some hair left, ha!

While he was in town we did dinner and a movie night out, went to a football game and walked around campus quite a bit.  We also tailgated before the game at a local bar and had a really good time with my classmates.  It was loads of fun and I had entirely too much to drink.  But, fun fact… my friends think boyfriend is a keeper.  Gee, so do I! We also had dinner with my cousin one day when she was driving through town on her way home.  It was good to catch up with her after staying with her all summer.  I also got to take a ride in her fancy new car.  There must be something in the water with all these new car purchases going on! Better than babies, haha.

But here are some photos to check out- Go Illini!! We won and beat a ranked team! I guess this is the first time in 10 years that U of I has started out 3-0 on the season.  Let’s hope they can keep this up when the start playing other Big 10 teams, that’ll be the big test.   My Dad actually called tonight and managed to score seats for this weekend's game as well!  Guess I'm going to yet another game! 

Oh hey Memorial Stadium! 3rd row end zone seats :)

Once a band nerd, always a band nerd.

Football under the lights!

Block I!

Halftime show.

Taken via the monitor.

Huddled up.

Final knee before the clock ran out.

Illini win!

Sometimes he's super adorable.

Audiology Brain

I've decided, I have this condition called "Audiology Brain".  Now whenever someone says an acronym or condition my brain automatically flashes to hearing loss and how it relates to Audiology.  I also seem to have lost all sorts of common sense.  I can rattle off otosclerosis or any other disease etiology, pathology, and prognosis, yet I'm stumped by the word 'purpose'.  I actually had to look it up in a dictionary the other day.... pathetic I tell you!

In other Audiology related news- I am LOVING my placement yet again this semester.  I'm at a local hospital so I can take the bus in 15 minutes rather than drive 1.5 hours each way :) It's a great place and I love getting to do all the special balance testing and newborn hearing tests but I just wish there was more stuff going on!  One of the ENTs that is attached to the office is off on vacation this week so the patients are rather sparse.  I only got 4 hours of work in today when I was there a full 8 hours.  At least I am getting some experience in balance testing, which is hard to come by (fingers crossed no 'splashers', that's the code name for someone who gets so dizzy from the testing they vomit- gross). 

And today I got to play with some pretty cute babies.  Thankfully they were all normal hearing so I didn't have to tell any parents bad news.  I did have my first profound hearing loss evaluation yesterday, and man was it rough.  Long day for both me and the patient.  What was supposed to be a 2 hour appointment turned into 3... man was I stressed.  Here is to hoping the most powerful hearing aids on the market will help this poor woman regain some contact with the world.

I'm currently coming down with something- dang sick people from the hospital! But, I need to get over it quickly, because boyfriend is coming into town for the last long weekend of block leave!
Football tickets and Illini apparel have been purchased, and there is rumor of a date night out on the town.  Go away sinus crap, I have some soldier spoiling to do.  I'll be sure to post photos, I'm very excited to go to my first football game at my grad school.