California knows how to party!

In honor of our one year anniversary, Adam and I took the week to go visit my grandpa in (slightly) sunny California!  It. Was. Amazing.  My grandpa loves young love, so he worked really hard to make this a special trip for us.  We took lots of pictures, so I'll start posting them and narrate as I go!

After our close call with getting to the airport for our trip to Utah, we decided to play it safe and give ourselves plenty of time to make our flight.  It worked!  Unfortunately, the plane was almost full by the time it landed in Kansas City that Adam and I got split up and both had a miserable four hour trip trapped by the people next to us.  With that out of the way, we made it safely to the Oakland airport and were soon greeted by Grandpa, who after dropping off our luggage, took us to lunch at the Hickory Pit (where his breakfast club meets).  After a nap and catching up with Grandpa, he heard about Adam's love of seafood and took us to the swankiest place in town.  Adam and G-Pa got some kind of West Coast fish that was apparently really good while I walked on the wild side (for this Kansas girl) and ordered Alaskan halibut.  Not too bad!

My grandpa gave us his condo for the week while he stayed with his lady friend Jackie (no scandals...he slept downstairs, she slept upstairs...he made sure to make that clear!).  I love my grandpa for so many reasons, but especially his sense of humor.  This post-it note above the scale in the bathroom is just one example of it.

The next morning, he dropped us off at the BART station and gave us a map of San Francisco.  We tried not to look like tourists, which meant that we walked a lot in the wrong direction for 20 minutes before stepping into a Starbucks to memorize the map.  Our first stop was Chinatown.  Pretty cool, but it definitely had some interesting smells...I wasn't really excited to go back there for lunch, but Adam got some cool pictures.

While looking over the map, we noticed a few locations we wanted to check out: the "steepest street" and the "crookedest street."  They seemed to be fairly close by, so we began our journey.  And continued our journey.  I definitely was feeling the burn after 10 blocks of straight incline!

However, our detour was definitely a pleasant surprise.  We walked along Hyde Street (pictured below) for another 10 blocks, which was the most picturesque street ever.  We loved the trees lining the street, gorgeous homes, and cable cars still running.

After visiting the steepest street (which was very steep), we visited Lombard Street, the crookedest street.  It was beautiful!  We loved the brick road and gorgeous landscaping....we're just glad we didn't have to drive down it!

After our long walk/hike, we were definitely starving and somehow found ourselves in Little Italy (no complaints there!).  We found a cafe and ordered excellent panini sandwiches, then finished our meal with gelato.  Adam definitely picked the best flavors - fresh pear, guava, and pomegranate.  We then took BART back to Walnut Creek (just about three hours before the BART riots took place...talk about timing!).

When we got back, we shared our pictures with G-pa and had time to visit and relax, then back to eating - soup and salad this time...we had been eating a lot of food!  The next morning, Adam and I drove to Oakland and were able to go to the LDS temple there...the same one in which my parents got married!  It was really beautiful and a good reminder of the importance of families.  I love mine!

When we got back, G-pa's friend Jackie made us lunch - clam chowder and tuna/avocado sandwiches on Jewish rye (I'm telling you....this vacation really seemed revolve around food).  Adam definitely enjoyed the chowder while I really loved my sandwich!  Adam, G-pa, and I then took off on a scenic drive to get to an old auto museum.  I tell you what, those two boys went crazy in there!  I have to admit, there were some pretty nice looking cars.  We had just taught Grandpa how to use his new digital camera and he was just snapping away!

That night, we met up at a little Italian place with my uncle and aunt.  Adam had never met my mom's brother, so it was fun for everyone to get to know each other.  My grandpa introduced Adam as "Shorty Buhler" the entire trip...it was great.  We had a good time and good food.

The next morning, my grandpa had arranged for his buddy Skip to give us a limo tour of San Francisco.  What was supposed to be two hours turned into four - but it was great.

Adam and I fell more and more in love with San Francisco as we drove around its neighborhoods, parks, and sites.  There is so much to do and see!  We got some great pictures and did lots of brainstorming on how we could eventually move out here (you know...setting goals and making plans!).  We love it.

That night, my grandpa had made reservations for us at the Hilton right by the airport since we had an early flight.  We had some high hopes for the hotel, but were pretty disappointed when a day's worth of internet cost more than our monthly service at home.  Good thing we were close enough to get some from the unsuspecting Econolodge across the street!  We arrived the next morning safely in Kansas City, but were a little bummed our vacation is over.  Only three degrees, five years, and a whole lot of money to be saved until we can move there permanently!

Long Overdue

So this is a long overdue blog post.  It has been my turn for quite some time now and I used to think there wasn't that much to write about but the more I think about what has happened since December 1st, the more comfortable you should find your seating arrangement because this is going to be a long one.

First off, School happily ended for both of us.  I love long breaks from school!  For most of our break we have watched movies/seasons of TV shows and we love it.  We watched Seasons 4 and 5 of Alias and were still convinced that the first two seasons were the best.  The show recycled too many story lines and it wasn't even interesting anymore.  We also watched Season 1 of Chuck.  It was a gift from our totally cool and awesome Sister Amelia and Brother-In-Law Joel.  Thanks guys!  We love it.  It's a perfect mix of the "24" excitement with the "Get Smart" humor.  Two thumbs way up!

In celebration of school being out and to get us in the Christmas spirit we went to Kansas City and saw "The Nutcracker" ballet.  It was very nice.  We really liked the music and the adult dancers but could have done without the little kids.  They weren't as fun to watch.  For several days afterward, Karen could be seen ballet dancing just about everywhere.

Christmas finally came.  We spent Christmas Eve with the Buhlers and started the evening with dinner at my Grandmothers and invited Lance One Horn along too.  We then followed tradition and went to the Plymouth Congregational Church's Christmas Eve program.  Afterwards we opened presents at my parents' house and enjoyed reminiscing about our favorite Christmas memories.  Christmas morning was all to ourselves.  I was awakened by a giddy wife around 9am and was told that Santa had come and left us presents.  We each opened our presents and stockings and had a good laugh.  We kept things very low budget and decided on $10 for the main gift and $5 for stocking stuffers purchased at The Dollar Tree.  I received, among other things, a 30in "chain" with a "Bling Bling" medallion on it while Karen was flipping out over the High School Musical wall decals with none other than Troy Bolton and the quote "Getcha Head In The Game!".  We then packed up and went over to the Christensens in Topeka for the rest of the day.  We watched "Elf" with them and I was reminded of how much I love that movie.  We also played two very heated games of ERS (Karen refers to it as Egyptian Rat Killer but still uses the acronym ERS.  Hmmm...) with the remaining members of the family.  The other half of the family members were in either Utah or Texas visiting other members of extended family.

The following Sunday we went to the annual Buhler Family Reunion.  It's a wonderful tradition in my family where all of my Granddad's siblings and their families gather every year to give reports of where everyone is and what everyone is doing.  I love our family!

The next week both Karen and I came down with a fierce cold that we couldn't shake.  We were bed ridden for almost the entire week.  The two of us have gone through 5 Kleenex boxes and counting.  We're hopeful that all of the congestion will be gone in time for our flight to California next week.  My Mom gave Karen the fear that our ear drums will burst because of the airplane cabin pressure while flying.  I hope nothing of the sort happens.

New Years day we had the missionaries over for dinner and Karen went all out with our fine china and actual silver silverware.  We even had some sparkling grape juice to top things off.  That sparkling grape juice inspired me to make a picture with a creative light setup I've seen some other photographers do on Flickr.

Today, January 4th, 2009 marks our one year anniversary!  To celebrate the occasion we went out to dinner last night and went to see the movie "Valkyrie" which was a very good history lesson.  Then today we exchanged gifts.  Supposedly, someone has written the rules for the themes of nearly every anniversary you can have and the first anniversary has to do with paper.  Karen decided to buy me a set of small look books that I can leave with people to advertise my wedding photography.  After some of my suggestions they will make a fine gift.  My gift to Karen was clever in nature.  I will admit my guilt in not remembering to purchase the anniversary gift until the last minute.  This last week really threw me a loop because we were both sick and neither of us really left the house.  So, with very little time and a budget of $15 out of pocket, I had very limited time, money, and resources.  I ended up sending her a gift through iTunes for Season 4 of The Office.  The standard definition season costs $27.86 but I still had $20 left on my $25 gift card I'd gotten for Christmas so all was well.  It's not directly a paper product but I figured a mocumentary based on Dunder Mifflin, a paper company, was appropriate.  She gave me points for creativity.  Then, tonight we ate our year old cake with my parents.  The white frosting was still good but the cake was very dry.  We didn't eat more than a few bites.  So, now that we have a year under our belt, it's all a cake walk from here.  Right?

P.S. Karen here.  Adam and I couldn't decide whether to add this in this post or not, but we figured the public can't be kept from this forever.  Even on our deathbeds, we spent four hours outside on a cold winter day to make the following music video with our friends.  It was part of a contest put on by the Flight of the Conchords - remake their video of the Hiphoppopotamus vs. Ryhmnoceras for a chance to appear on HBO!  Who could resist?!  We couldn't.

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

We've had quite the break from the blog.  It's not that nothing has been happening - everything has been happening!  We are right in the middle of crunch time with school...there's just enough time to throw in huge projects, papers, and exams right before finals week.  We'll be happy when this semester is over.  Only about 8 more semesters to go before we can get big kid jobs!

On to the update.  Thanksgiving has become a huge holiday for my family.  All of the siblings come back to Topeka and my grandpa even leaves sunny California to brave the cold.  This year we had the extra bonus of having Adam's sister Kristen and her family come to Kansas as well.  We wanted to spend as much time with our families as possible, so we came up with a great solution - have a combined Thanksgiving dinner!  That's right...the Buhlers and Christensens came together for an amazing feast on Thursday - two grandparents, four parents, four brothers/brothers-in-law, nine sisters/sisters-in-law (including two pregnant ones!), three nephews and one niece.  Though we couldn't have everyone in person, we were excited to have Amelia, Joel, and Finn there too (gotta love Google's new video chat!).  My niece finally warmed up to Adam's nephews and the four little kids had fun playing with all the aunts and uncles!  Here are some highlights:

Hide and go seek...the favorite hiding spot (and of course, they all hide together!).

My parents got a new tv, but it looks like my sisters had more fun with the box.

Adam and Rachel became besties after bonding over fixing a clogged sink....good times.

We're already quite the Apple family, but a lot of time was spent this weekend teaching my grandpa about all the joys of an iPhone.  He got pretty good at playing Connect Four!

Since announcing she is going on a mission, Susan has been bombarded with all kinds of information.  Here, I am showing her examples of cute sister missionary clothing and early 90s sister missionary clothing to avoid.  We also went over hairstyles.

And, before we all went our separate ways, we finally managed to take a family picture.  We still didn't get everyone in it (Jenn wasn't feeling well), but it's pretty darn close!  Thanks to my lovely photographer husband, we actually have some non-ghetto pictures!  

The finished product:

A little more realistic:

No, no announcement.  This just happened to be the hot topic for all of my little sisters.  They're even more baby hungry than I am!

You have to have a jumping picture (I love my niece in this one!):

This was a wonderful weekend to spend time with both of our families.  We are so grateful for them, our friends, the gospel, and each other!  Our favorite quote of the week: My 3 year-old nephew Julian saying what he is thankful for: "MONSTERS!  And baaaaabies..........and flying triceratops!"  Can you beat that?

Why does everything keep breaking?

So this past month, but especially this last week, the Destroying Angel has visited us on a regular basis.  

For starters, our car has had several problems lately.  The most urgent matter is the missing alternator belt.  So last night we were coming home from Topeka and as we were pulling away from the toll booth, we heard the belt squealing and making a really high pitched noise and then a *clump* sound.  I knew immediately that the belt had snapped and the battery charge light flashed red on the dashboard to confirm my fear.  It wasn't that big of a deal because we were already driving but it meant two things were true: 1. If we turned off the car it would not start it again without a jump.  2.  Our headlights were only going to be on as long as the charge remaining in the battery could keep them on.  The drive home was a little more stressful than usual with the speedometer and tachometer jumping around and several flashing lights on the dash.  We had to open the door to pay the toll and we couldn't use our turn signals for fear of a total battery drain.  Fortunately we made it home and now we can add this to our list of things to repair in our car.  I say a list because recently we have had the following problems:  

• A leaking sunroof
  
• Broken volume knob (when turning it down, it actually goes up and there's no rhyme or reason to fixing it)
• Broken radio tune "up" button
• A hole in the exhaust system
• The automatic seat controls for adjusting the height and position of the driver's seat

All of these problems have developed over the last month or week.  Needless to say, we're going to be giving our car the attention it deserves and we will fix all of the pressing matters as funds will allow.

The hot water knob for our shower decided to come loose to the point where turning it doesn't do anything.  Fortunately we have a screw driver that can turn the small screw in the middle to turn it on/off until maintenance comes to fix it.

My 320GB external hard drive that kept a back-up of thousands of my pictures decided to stop working as well.  Fortunately I have DVD backups of the most important things and a majority of the rest are still on my computer.

In other news:

Karen has been accepted to Graduate School for the department of Special Education.  Now she can officially follow through with her plans she has made for the next 2-3 years.  I'm supposed to mention how much of a big deal it is but the people who are in charge of admissions work with Karen and told her that all she had to do was apply and they would accept her immediately.  I'm no diminishing her accomplishment, but I'm just putting it into perspective.

I got a 32GB iPod Touch!  Instead of leaving our Sprint family and jumping ship to AT&T just for the iPhone and it's higher monthly rates, I decided I could benefit from the next best thing.  It's a very handy device with some excellent applications that make it very useful.  It's one of those things that I will look back and think of how I lived my life without it.  Surfing the net on a 3.5in screen is a little ridiculous but it behaves very well as a PDA with the contacts and calendar syncing to my laptop wirelessly, as well as my email accounts.  I live most of my life with wifi close by so it is really very convenient.  I also like the flashy way of deciding which song I should listen to next by flipping through the album art. This is by no means a review, but I really enjoy using it.    The folks at Apple certainly are clever...

As many of you may or may not know, I love Flickr!  It's a wonderful photo sharing website that has some very creative people from all over the world showing off their stuff.  I came across this photo and was inspired by how well it was executed:

So my mind went to work trying to think of how I could do the same thing with a little bit of a twist.   I wanted to use Adam Trunnell's VW GTI because I love that car and I knew he would be game for something cool like this.  We found a field just south of town, right off a gravel road.  It was colder than we would have liked but the results were worth it.  I borrowed some equipment from work and decided to use 6 flashes instead of 3 and also put one on each side of the car (for a total of 8 flashes) to light the sides.  It was a 30sec exposure and we triggered our flashes about every two seconds as I walked around the car.  After a little bit of photoshop work to tweak things, here's what we came up with:

 

As we were packing things up and leaving, a police car pulled up and blinded us with his spotlight.  He asked what we were doing and reminded us that we were on private land.  After checking our driver's licenses he let us go.  So, after a some inspiration, borrowed equipment, police intervention, and photoshop, we have our final product.

Adam and I both want to make a second attempt to straighten the lights and fix the intervals so they're even.  I'll keep you posted on how v2.0 turns out.

The next day we went to the KU vs Texas football game.  As an attempt to show priority for academics at the University of Kansas, they paraded their national merit scholars and scholarship recipients out on the field at half time and then rushed them off as fast as they came on.  We got 3 tickets, (Karen, her Husband, and Father), a brunch, and some very helpful funds to cover the cost of education.  Thank you KU.  Oh, and we left at half time.  It was cold and very unlikely that KU would upset one of the top ranked teams in the country.  They lost 35-7.

Then, this morning we had a surprise visit from our friends Tim and Sierra Blackbear from Oklahoma.  They were in town for the weekend and we invited them over for waffles this morning.  It was great to catch up on old times.  It was as if we'd seen each other just last week.  We picked up right where we left off.  No awkward pauses or anything.

So, despite several things breaking, we've had an excellent week full of good news and good times.

October in Pictures.

October was a pretty busy and fun month for the Buhlers.  You've already seen our trip to Utah, so this update will not include anything about said trip.  We have definitely not let school get in the way of our fun!  That being said, we're both cracking out the books and trying to get through this semester and have just enrolled for next semester.  The joys of school.

After three attempts and horrible weather, Nicole, Holly and I were finally able to go to the Renaissance Festival in Kansas City.  Nicole had interviewed a lot of the cast members previously for an article, so we got all the ins and outs from her.  Holly hooked us up with free tickets, so it was a pretty good day!  We bought turkey legs, searched for funnel cakes, watched wrestling, jousting, and lots of "magic tricks."  We actually had pretty good weather that day and enjoyed our time together.  Huzzah for friends!

Our next big adventure was the following Friday.  Adam and I went with a group to the American Royal Rodeo.  I had been a few times while at college and actually loved it!  I had made Adam where his "most cowboyish outfit" and he and Justin turned out to be twins!  I took the opportunity to wear my giant Texas belt buckle.  Despite getting lost in the train yards of Kansas City, we had a good time and enjoyed Perkins afterwards.

The next morning, I was feeling crafty and went with Danielle to the Super Saturday activity.  I actually hadn't signed up for any of the crafts, so Danielle let me tag along with her as she made a snowman family out of tube socks.  Four hours and too much discussion later, we had a finished project!  We wanted to make sure that the entire family matched together, but each individual snowman was unique.  Yeah...it was a bit much, but they turned out pretty cute, eh?

To end the month, we of course had Halloween festivities.  We only had two trick or treaters this year (which is two more than last year!) - my niece and nephew.  Bubba's TMNT outfit made us think of Adam's when he was younger...pretty cute!  Lili made a perfect Cinderella!

After our visitors, we made our way to a costume party.  Adam came as "Three Hole Punch Jim" from The Office (he even let me gel his hair to get that messy Jim look!).  I was representing England as a Royal Mail postman, complete with authentic shirt, jacket, and postbag.  We enjoyed the other costumes, brain cupcakes, bobbing for apples, Wii Sports, and,  of course, the company!  It was a good way to end our busy and fun month!

The Fall Break Report

This is two weeks late but we still need to keep our dedicated readers updated.

Two weeks ago involved a lot of traveling.  I started out the week flying to Tampa, Florida to train a new freelance photographer for my job at University Photography.  I felt rather grown up on my first business trip.  I stayed in a hotel, rented a car, and had everything expensed to University Photography.  It was great.  The only drawback was that I was in Tampa for a total of 24 hours.  That's it.  Oh well.  I still got to eat some great Haitian food while I was there!

Our next destination was Salt Lake City, Utah.  I was the wedding photographer for a couple in our ward that wanted to be married in the Salt Lake City temple.  This gave us a great excuse to catch up with old mission friends and family members in Utah.  So, after staying up late doing laundry and packing for the trip, Karen and I were scheduled to leave KCI at 6:45am.  With 3 hours of sleep we left Lawrence at 4:45, thinking we would have plenty of time to park our car, take the shuttle, check our bags, and board the plane with relatively little stress.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  For starters, the shuttle to the terminal was late.  When we walked into the terminal we were surprised to see it packed with hundreds of people bustling about and standing in lines that snaked around whatever open space could be filled in the terminal.  It was the busiest either of us have ever seen KCI!  And it was 6:15am on a Thursday morning!  Fall break apparently was a big deal to a lot of other people that day too.  So we waited in line and before checking our bags we noticed that our flight had begun boarding.  We hurried up to the counter and scanned our tickets and a loud sound came from the scanner indicating that we were late arrivals.  The lady at the counter put tags on our bags and explained that she could not guarantee our bags would arrive on the same flight to Salt Lake.  We dropped our checked luggage off to be x-rayed and crossed our fingers, hoping that they would arrive in SLC when we did, and ran to our terminal for the security check in.  We started going through and heard our names being called over the intercom at the gate saying that our flight was in its final boarding call.  We stripped down all of our metal items, emptied all pockets, and I divided up my camera equipment/electronics I was taking as carry-on.  I got through first and Karen was pulled aside for a more thorough inspection because she set off the detector.  I ran, barefoot, to our gate and told them that we were almost there, but that Karen was being held up at security.  I ran back, got dressed again, and fortunately Karen got through the security after a very observant worker spotted her huge metal earrings as the cause for the delay.  We ran down to the plane and took our seats as we were being pushed back from the gate.  We were the last ones ones on the plane.  

We had a lay over in Denver for an hour and a half.  Denver, by the way, is a great airport to be laid over in if you have a laptop.  They are very technologically conscience.  They had these great chairs with power outlets and USB ports to charge/power your many electronic devices that just about everyone has these days.  The cherry on top was the free wifi access.  I think every airport in the world should have free wifi.  With the price we're paying for plane tickets these days, the least you can do is provide stranded travelers with some free internet surfing.  Stepping off the soapbox.  We also thought ahead and brought a movie with us to watch in the airport/on the plane.  I have a paper to write in my sociology class where I have to compare/contrast a pair of movies from a list of selections by my professor.  I chose the James Bond movies and will compare Dr. No, the first of the 007 series, to Casino Royale, the most recent.  We found Casino Royale much easier to come by and brought it along with us.  It was a great "escape" movie for traveling.  Good suspense and a relatively well thought out plot.  Of course we had to start boarding the plane when it got to a good part in the movie.  We watched most of the rest of the movie before we landed in Salt Lake.

When we arrived in Salt Lake, we decided to just go to the baggage claim office and find out what we had to do to get our bags that were most certainly not on the same flight we were.  We were told that we would need to come back to the airport 3 hours later to pick up our bags.  A little bummed, we took a quick bathroom break and were about to find the car rentals when I decided to just go look at our baggage claim for our flight, just to see if we got lucky.  As I was walking up, I spotted Karen's bag and mine was a few bags later.  We felt like we had won the lottery!  There were maybe 15 minutes between when we dropped our luggage off and when our plane pushed off from the gate.  Those late tags saved us a major inconvenience.  Southwest Airlines gets a major thumbs up for that one.  They have a lot more leg room than most airlines and they didn't lose our luggage or even make us wait for the next flight to bring it.  Kudos to Southwest!

The rest of the trip went by very fast.  We started out heading down to Provo.  We took Karen's ring in for repair as one of her small diamonds fell out.  Fortunately it was under warranty and all we had to pay for was the shipping back to Kansas.

Next, we met Kiersten Halladay at Cafe Rio.  Keirsten was Karen's last companion on her mission in London.  Cafe Rio is one of the best places to eat when you go to Utah.  It's like Chipotle but better.

After lunch and a nap in the car, we went to see Karen's sister Susan.  We bought the food and she prepared everything and we had a great time.

We then went to visit my old mission president and his wife, Noel and Sydney Reynolds.

We stayed over night in Salt Lake at one of Karen's Aunt and Uncle's house and the next morning we woke up early to go to the temple for the sealing and then pictures for the rest of the day.  It was beautiful weather and Kevin and Amy were a very fun couple to photograph.  Karen was also a great help too.

After a short luncheon, we went to visit one of my old mission buddies, Trent Guzy.

That evening we went to the reception which was held at a beautiful greenhouse.

After the reception we headed up to Centerville to stay the night at another Aunt and Uncle's house and to meet up with Abigail Cannon, another of Karen's mission companions.  We met in a Wal-Mart parking lot and then she came with us for a sister missionary slumber party.  

The next morning we met up with Kimberly Panchuk, another missionary companion, at IHOP and then headed back to the airport.

We had a great time seeing old friends from our missions and seeing family too.  I took some beautiful pictures and got some more experience with some new photography equipment I bought recently.  What a great fall break.

My weak.

Yes..I misspelled that on purpose.  Weak has been the story of my life since last Wednesday.  As Adam mentioned previously, I have been sick, which is altogether quite new to me.  Last Wednesday I started feeling horrible at work and had a temperature of 101.3 when I got home.  So, maybe that's not a big deal to most people, but my last fever was when I was 3.  I almost cried.  I felt like I was melting, I felt so hot and uncomfortable.  To top that off, I had a pulsing headache and my lower back had been hurting again.  Adam gave me a blessing and I tried to go to sleep.  I no longer felt hot, but I woke up every single hour.  Not a fun way to spend a night, I don't recommend it.  When Adam woke up, we discovered my temperature had passed 102, so I missed school, took Nyquil, and finally got some sleep.  I had a previously scheduled doctor's appointment, so it worked out perfectly....that is until my stomach decided to remove the small amount of food I had been able to eat that day 10 minutes before my appointment.  I didn't make it to the doctor's.  Thursday night was the same - no sleep, until I remembered Nyquil at 1 AM (remember, I'm a novice at this whole sick thing).  Friday I still had a temperature, but I was so bored of being home!  Adam's mom gave me Tylenol, my fever broke and I was a happy 98.3!

Then came Saturday morning....General Conference Saturday....my favorite Saturday.  I wake up with a fever!  And headache.  And back pain.  I waited to go to the doctor because my fever was only 99.5 and I didn't want them to laugh at me.  After a horrible morning, I "Asked A Nurse" who told me to go to the ER.  I cried.  And texted Adam (who I didn't want to know I was crying...then he gets really worried.).  He left work early to pick me up.  I told him I googled how much the emergency room was and told him I wasn't going for a measly fever.  We compromised on Watkins Health Center (I really just wanted to take a Tylenol and call it good).  We got there, they told us there was an after-hours fee and Adam forced me to do it anyway (he told me it isn't always healthy to be a cheapskate...literally).  Well, we're glad we went.  Initally, they just thought I got something from the little two-year olds I work with.  Nope!  Turns out I have a full blown kidney infection!  And all that lower back pain?  That's my kidney!  Who knew?  My doctor gave me some heavy duty antibiotics and some anti-nausea medicine.  I didn't understand why the anti-nausea pills were described until my doctor told me my antibiotics were $20/pill and she didn't want me to throw (up) my money away.  Smart doctor!

So now....I haven't been to school or work since Wednesday and won't be until maybe this Thursday.  I'm quite sick of being sick.  I did arrange to work from home this week (I feel so professional and un-student hourly!), so that gave me something to do this morning.  I still have a paper to write for tomorrow (my teacher hasn't told me if I can email it to her or not, so I might be making one trek on campus tomorrow after all).  I should find ways to stay busy tomorrow - the house is a mess after a week of no cooking or cleaning and we are running out of dishes!  Maybe I'll get a burst of energy and tackle the 350 sq. feet we call home.