Once again I fail at blogging within a reasonable interval of time. I’ll get the hang of it again. Someday.
I got flown out to Urbana-Champaign early this month to interview for the University of Illinois’ Medical Scholars Program. Like many of the others I’ve applied to, it combines two doctoral degrees, the MD and the PhD, into a 7-year program. About a week ago, they let me know that I was accepted. They pay for all the tuition and give me a living stipend— it’s really a very good deal. I’m not completely sure that it’s what I want to do, but it’s definitely at the top of my list. I’ll keep praying about it for sure. Alternatively, I could work here for a year before heading off to school, if they’ll let me defer admission. Or, maybe I’ll find work doing something else entirely. I just am not completely convinced that going to school for another seven years is exactly what I want to do at this point. I’m a little tired of it all.
Caitlin and I went on an adventure today after I read on FatWallet that Walgreens had Energizer rechargeables on sale. Usually they’re about $12 for 4. We drove to 5 Walgreens until we found packs on sale for $8 that had $2 coupons on them, then stacked that with the $5 rebate from Walgreens. We got 12 packs for the price of 1. Yay FatWallet ^_^
Lots of batteries
My eVGA 680i motherboard that I bought in May of 07 is starting to act flaky. For a long time (since last spring) it would sometimes fail to boot (POST), instead throwing a C1 memory error and beeping. I RMA’d all the memory, but it kept happening. Now it’s not even booting with 4 sticks of memory installed. I set up an advance-exchange RMA tonight with eVGA; thankfully I’ll have time over break to get everything back and working again. Very happy I sprung the extra $30 or so for the lifetime warranty board. If I hadn’t've, I would be springing $200+ for a new board of comparable features.
I introduced Mom, Dad, and Nate to Wii Sports today. As luck would have it, they all had a blast. Dad especially enjoyed punching people in the face in Boxing 
Mom suggested I leave the Wii here “to keep it safe”. I think that means “so I can get better at Bowling and beat you”, but I’m not judging.
Time on my hands to fix computers and play Wii… it’s good to be home.
When I came to college in 2004, I noticed how much advertising was targeted towards freshmen. From tanning packages to bank accounts to apartment leases and beyond, marketers increasingly focused their efforts on gullible students freshly liberated from Mom and Dad. It seemed to work… I saw all my friends signing up for things just so they could get free t-shirts and the like. The worst offender, however, was definitely the credit cards. “Get a free pizza for applying!” “Sign up now and get an OU hat!” I saw all of the incentives, and all of the people who were drawn like moths to flame.
I also saw everyone around me fall victim to the siren song of being able to buy things without having to actually fork over cash, and subsequently go into debt. (Okay, not everyone, but you’d be surprised how many people I know here that are in significant credit card debt. I differentiate this from other debt such as student loans.) I’ve never believed in the concept of spending more than you have, and through high school had just used a debit card so that any money I spent was immediately removed from my account. I always knew exactly how much I had, and budgeted accordingly.
In May of 2007, however, I finally sat down and started looking for a credit card. I knew I needed to start building a credit history, and I thought that I could successfully work the system to earn some money rather than going into debt.
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You know you've finally grown up when you can take a spoonful of chocolate frosting, put a giant marshmallow on top, and stick the entire thing in your mouth. And no one tells you not to. Yum.
Tonight Caitlin and I made nummy Christmas cookies together. We got two giant cans of frosting, four tubes of glitter gel decorating stuff, and two tubes of sprinkles. I took the opportunity to put as much frosting on my cookies as I wanted, and no one told me that I couldn’t eat spoonfuls of frosting out of the tub. So I did.
We made a lot of cookies.
