Hey guys! It’s been a little while, but this time I have no excuse. I haven’t been terribly busy with life or too bad with school, but I guess I just wasn’t in the mood. Plus, until just now, I haven’t had Wifi on my phone this entire quarter thanks to security kicking me off, so uploading pictures takes a while.
I honestly think I’m just tired. It’s that point in the year, and I also just haven’t felt like I’ve had that much to say. But with today’s catch up, I have baby animal pictures so hopefully that makes up for it! I think we’re best off attaching today in list form.
- I never blogged about Easter which I realize was a full month ago but I still wanted to share pictures. I had 2 friends spend Easter with my family, and we embarked on the world’s most challenging Easter egg hunt, which I fondly call 1000 shades of green. Seriously, we had >5 shades of green, and about 4 shades of yellow. All the eggs were hid artfully, with color-appropriate plants (i.e. pink eggs were hidden under pink flowers). Since there were 5 of us hunting this year, there were also like 13 dozen eggs? I think 180ish?
Other scenes: 
- In frightening news, I had a stomach flare up related to a single malted milk ball, presumably to the gluten. If I am that sensitive, that could be a problem. I’m going to experiment a little bit on myself once school is out. YAY.
- Speaking of self-experimentaion, I had the crazy idea that I might actually not be allergic to cashews. Slash, I love Luna bars but the same 4 nut-free flavors are getting a bit old, and I was wondering if I would *really* react to the small amount of nuts in some of the Luna bars. I’ve been dying to try the chocolate cupcake flavor, which was cashew butter as one of the last ingredients. I pulled up my allergy test results from 3 years ago, and realized that cashews didn’t come up. Since the other allergies were low-grade, I assumed cashews were low enough not to show up. But I just realized I’ve never actually had a distinct reaction to a cashew because it never came up. It’s hard to accidentally eat a cashew. So I decided to try the chocolate cupcake Luna bar and see what happens. (It should be noted that my reaction is skin-related, NOT anaphylactic.) I had half of one tonight, and it was delicious! The hard part is the fact that I have to wait a week for my reaction to come in.
- If you’re curious what happens if you put sparking water into a slightly broken camelbak, the answer is that the water will squirt violently out the spout (which stays open because it’s broken), thus drenching everything in your backpack. Imagine my surprise when I felt my backpack dripping and pulled out a geyser in the middle of the student center.
- This was a fun lunch: Nicoise salad with calamari.
And this dinner: chicken kebabs with babaganoosh. Plus GF chocolate chip cookies. Probably too many of those but SO GOOD.
- So I had a rough Friday. Thursday morning, I did a fun Crossfit workout involving WAY too many Turkish get ups, plus pull ups and other fun things that make you sore. I went to the gym later that day with the intention of doing a few minutes of abs, but the squat racks were free and you can’t pass that up. I did some front squats and hang clean work. Then a little ab circuit and weighted planks. Also that afternoon, I got a rabies vaccine. I need it for my summer job, and you have to get 3 shots. This was my second. I woke up Friday morning knowing I would be sore, but instead feeling like I had been hit by a train. I was sore, plus I had total body aches and a low grade fever thanks to the rabies vaccine (those are fairly common side effects). So that was fun. Thank the lord for Tylenol and modern medicine. I also had volunteered to sub that evening for spin, and thankfully was feeling better by then. Totally not looking forward to the last shot.
- Senior formal is this weekend! I have my dress. Be prepared for pictures, because me being dressy almost never happens.
- I made it to another baseball game Saturday! We lost, but still so happy to be out there.
- I experimented this morning food-wise. I made an old piece of lemon poppyseed bread (the kind that came out with a weird texture) into french toast, and it was delicious. I used a whole egg, and had the leftover as scrambled eggs on the side. Of course, I did it the old college style, in the microwave.
- I had the most amazing run today. There’s a hiking/hill trail nearby and I’ve done the loop 1000x during my time here. A while ago, a friend mentioned that if you take a side trail, you see cows. I recently learned that the side trail is a real thing, and is actually a different entrance, one that I’ve run by 1000s of times as well and always wondered where it led. So I decided to exit through the other entrance and guys. Saying there were cows was an understatement. There were COWS. There were 50+ cows grazing right by the trail. As in, they wee within 5 feet of me, casually walking across the trail. This totally made my day. I hung out with them for a while before continuing my run. I will definitely be back.
- BABY ANIMALS. Seriously, I saw so many ruminants today and it made my heart happy. Since most of my schoolwork this weekend was reading, I decided to head out to a local farm and hang out with animals there. I packed myself a little picnic lunch, and enjoyed my reading with my new sheep friend.
In all seriousness though, this time was much needed. I feel like I’m grinding a bit now, and am at a pretty big crossroads. Sometimes it’s important to have a reminder about why I do what I do, what I’m working towards, and what is important. I don’t know what my plans are for all of my gap year, and seeing these little guys may cause me to shift my plans a little bit. Currently, my heart is torn in 3 different directions, so I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.
- I feel like for a spring quarter, both I and my friends have been busy, so there hasn’t been a lot of socializing going on. I really want to try and make an effort to change that, because there are only 6 weeks left!
- I was going through some pictures of this time 3 years ago, and all I can think about was what a mess I was. I was definitely struggling then, and it’s good to have a reminder about how far I’ve come. Speaking of which, I want to do a little progress post at some point in the nearish future. But for now, enjoy these throwbacks. Selfie game decidedly not on point.
