Sometimes, I need some good trashy reality TV

After my awful midterm today, it is certainly one of those nights.  I'm working on a take home exam while getting caught up on Teen Mom, Dance Moms and other guilty pleasures.  Hey, sometimes I like to not think about what I'm watching.  A good trashy TV show does wonders for the fried student brain.

I meant to blog this weekend, but a little distraction arrived thanks to a 4 day weekend!  Boyfriend managed to squirrel away for a few days and help me to relax.  He was only in town Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, but we definitely made good use of our time! Friday we just had a chill evening in with a Redbox and a surprise for his place.  I was planning on sending a care package, but he told me he was going to come to visit, so I elected to wait until he came to give it to him.  So he got some cute new photo frames and pictures to go in his new place.

Saturday, we did it all. We woke up early-ish, went for a 2 mile run and had fun looking at all the changing leaves.  He kept remarking how much he missed the fall leaves last year.  It's funny to keep hearing him say. "I haven't done that in so long" and realize it really has been a long time since he's gotten to do a lot of things.  Poor guy also had a firecracker incident that showed the effect of a deployment.  Needless to say, I think my neighbors are royal jerks for lighting them off at 1:30am.

We went for a picnic on Saturday at a lake outside of town to get away from campus for a bit.  We went hiking, walked around the park and just cuddled up on a blanket and talked for a few hours.  It was a nice few hours to get away from it all.  We also made the journey to the local apple orchard, which was crazy crowded! Needless to say we high tailed it out of there after picking up our treats and picking the perfect little pumpkin. Later we did date night at a fabulous little Italian place and Lion King 3D!  Perfect date night for sure :)

Sunday was just lazy and spent sleeping in and making apple pancakes from the apples we bought.  Fabulous weekend before the reality of midterms came crashing back.  One down, 3 to go! I should be typing away at my two take homes but bed is calling me after my shows are finished up.
Some photos from the weekend!  I really need to start asking people to take photos of the two of us or start making boyfriend use his long arms, I promise I was there all weekend!

Beautiful day for a picnic, eh Boo Boo?

Someone was being dramatic about the little pumpkin.  I believe the was the face made after saying "it's just a little fella!"

Why you should never mention punkin' chunkin' in front of a soldier, they will want to try it.

Pumpkin was not chunked, and is now two face! His creation.

And hers!

I elected not to carve my pumpkin because I have a feeling it would get smashed pretty quickly if left alone on a college campus.  I elected to color it instead with paint markers :)

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.