From December to Now

Lets start with Christmas and New Years. Gib's unit (in typical form) denied his leave, so our first Christmas together has been postponed to Dec 2011. Southwest Airlines was a God send, as they transfered his tickets to me and then cancelled my NY to AZ flight...all without any charge! So after spending 2 weeks with my family, I flew to WA for 8 days to see Gib. We opened presents and I made Christmas quiche for breakfast. Gib bought me some books and a Kindle!! I am soooo enjoying it! And he got mostly clothes, I also bought him a Carhart coat because he didn't own a winter coat that wasn't Army issued.

After returning to Tucson, I got back on the boat and started my last semester of graduate classes. With my thesis in full swing I have been running subjects like crazy. We also received our comprehensive exam case questions. While my case presentation went well, the other half did not go as planned for me, so I am getting a second chance. I will basically present cases and what I would do and why. The redo will happen sometime in April. I am also working on papers and readings for all of my other classes. Clinic is going well....for the most part. I have my good days where things go well and then there are days where I feel like a complete idiot, but overall, I think I am doing alright.

For Gib, he has been put on light duty, meaning mainly custodial work and long hours doing watches. He has worked on and off through the weekends for the past few months. His knee keeps him in constant pain. He is now having back and hip problems because he is favoring one knee over the other. Gib has officially finished all of his appointments with the VA so we are playing the waiting game, waiting for the VA to make their official decision on how much disability he gets. Once they make their decision he will have a date that he will be officially out of the Army....which means he will finally be able to start interviewing for jobs. We are kinda hoping for a job at SeaTac (Seattle-Tacoma International Airport), but we will see.

With everything that has been going on, running has taken the back burner....well less of a back burner and more of in the dishwasher position. Since my 10k in December, I did a 5k in Tempe....Skirt Sports Skirt Chaser 5k! While it was fun, I was sick, I hadn't been running like I should have, and it was quite warm...so overall it was a really bad run for me. I walked the Midtown Sertoma 5k For Better Hearing yesterday with a group of people, it got my legs itching for a run. So today after I do some work at school I am going to go for a nice relaxed jog around Reid Park. We will see how it goes, but I am ready to bring running back out and put it on the front burners again.

Externship wise, I secured an externship at Evergreen Speech and Hearing in Seattle, WA. I am scheduled to start the beginning of July. I was able to visit the Redmond office in January and was able to meet the office manager and one of the audiologists. I am really excited to begin this externship and I feel really lucky that I was able to find a site in the area where me and Gib really love to be. I am hoping to move up there the 2nd week of May. We are planning a trip to NY sometime in June before my externship starts. It will only be for a week or so but Gib hasn't been back to NY since we were married and I really want to see everyone prior to Christmas.

Hopefully, it won't be another 5 months before another update, but such is life.