School is slow going. This is my second week of classes and I feel like I have been at it forever. Two of my classes seem like they might be interesting and worthwhile this semester so that is exciting. The year has started off fairly well. I have decided to have a positive outlook and stress as little as possible. No more freak outs...or at least keeping the freak outs to a minimum. Steven actually sat me down and gave me a pep talk last week. I must be a real nut when school is in session.
Anyway, Steven has also started his crazy class for his crazy 8 hour engineer exam. And Ava has started tumbling class. It is really cute and she loves it. Who knew you could get so excited about the crab walk and frog pops?
Our community service project for the the Graduate Social Work Association (I'm VP) is to solicit donations from local businesses and private citizens for The Greenhouse, which is the Meadville women's shelter. I am pretty excited about the project eventhough it will entail more work than last semster's kettle ringing and angel tree. Since my thesis is on rural domestic violence, I have more insight into the people we will be helping which makes me want to work harder. I don't hold out any unrealistic hopes about what we will get donated because in this small town as in many small towns gender based abuse is not always considered a problem. My supervisor at United Way is actually told she is not allowed to discuss women's services when she does presentations at some of the local factories. Crazy. Anyway, let's hope we have some good luck with this project.

A New Year

Yeah! A new year! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you out there. We had a good holiday with limited excitement. Ava enjoyed all of her presents this year and was a bit of a maniac. It was really cool though. My cousin dressed up as Santa on Christmas day at my Grandmother's house. Ava and her cousin Angelina went wild. We did nothing exciting for New Year's because Steven was sick. We had a movie night with the most random movies: Scoop, Invincible, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and The Black Dahlia. Dahlia was my fave, Scoop and Invicible were entertaining but not great and Super Ex-Girlfriend was horrible (although we expected it to be horrible).

Plans for the New Year are basically to drive ourselves to the edge with added stress, work and responsibility...at least for the semester. This last semester should be insane and my thesis may kill me. On top of the usual insanity, Steven has decided to take the EIT exam which he really should have taken as soon as he graduated. Anyway he is now taking a refresher cousre every Friday after work in Erie until he takes the exam in May. Therefore, leaving only Monday an d Wednesday evenings open for child free study time and everything else we have to do. It should be interesting. I keep telling myself that it is less that 5 months of our lives and it helps keeps things in perspective.

In other news when I checked my grades (all As and a B+), I realized that my fuck face, sexual harassing, mental case professor from last year had changed my grade from an A to a B for last semester. Now in the grand scheme of things a B or A will not really matter in my life. It is just the principle. I got As on all the exams and only missed the class once. Plus are you allowed to give someone an A and then change your mind? I mean he didn't just tell me I got an A, I looked it up on the "official" site. So do I waste time and energy pursuing this or just let it go? My friend Amy's grade was also changed from a B to a C. And honestly she didn't deserve a B in the first place. I think this school has been one of the worst decisions of my life. It has caused me so much stress I can't take it.