I’m ready for the holidays…I have one final next week, just political science and then I’m done. I can’t wait to go home, but it looks like I won’t be able to until January. Don has to work throughout December and he’ll take off a week or so at the beginning of January so we can go home. I’m excited.
I’m feeling a little better now. I finally put up my portfolio, SA Design. I ended up drawing a picture of Copper and using that as the layout. It only took me about two days to get the illustration and layout done. I’m pretty happy with the results. It looks a lot like Copper. Coloring was hard at first, I’m not very good with illustrator. I’m still not very good at coming up with content ideas for That College Kid or here even. I had to force myself to write this.
Registration is next week for the spring semester. Don and I are taking a lot more hours than we did this semester. Silly me thought college was going to be hard. Freshmen year sure isn’t. I’m still not taking any of my Psychology courses, but that’s okay. I’m still not sure if I want to keep this major. I’m pretty sure though that I don’t want to do computer science…I don’t really want to be a programmer. And I love designing, but I definitely don’t want it to be my career. If I’m not inspired to do my own thing, what could I do for a client? Besides, if I’m a web designer, what would my hobby be?
Don and I went to the beach today. A girl Don works with went with us and she caught all the fish. Don caught a few, I think. Me and Copper played mostly, he’s not big on fishing. I’m a little sunburned, but that’s pretty normal for me. I actually have a pretty decent tan for the first time in my life. It’s nice to finally be a little bit darker even though I really don’t care that much about my skin. It’s skin. Mine’s white. Who cares. It looks good on me. Copper’s sleeping off his long day.
We’re leaving for orientation today. Tonight we’re gonna go see a Hooks game, they’re the minor league baseball team in Corpus. And then tomorrow the apartment search begins. I’ve already looked through rent.com and other apartment listings and have been comparing them. We’re going to go see the ones that I think will be our best bet.
The actual orientation is going to be exciting, but boring, I’m sure. A lot of sitting around listening to people talk. It’s just like the first day of school, way back when. It was exciting because you’re starting something new, but all the teachers go over rules the first day. You hear “You can only go to the bathroom when you get permission!” seven different times.
We’re leaving Copper with one of my friends and I have to say, I’m gonna miss him. He’s like our kid. I don’t like leaving him for four days. I’m worried since he’s such a baby. He whines for everything and he’s such a mama’s boy. He even sleeps with us. I know it’s not ideal for a dog to be that spoiled, but since he’s a puppy, I’m allowing it. I don’t mind it though, even when he’s big. My dogs have always slept with me. And now we have a bigger bed so there’s more room.
Since I’m starting college in the fall, I have to find money to pay for all my expenses, tuition, rent, etc. I got a $2000 academic scholarship and then a $2000 grant for the first year, which is great. But then I have to take out loans for the rest. I qualify for the government loans and the school’s financial aid office has helped with that, but we’ve had to jump through all kinds of hoops and it’s still not quite over yet. First, we had to submit my FAFSA. It asked so many detailed questions about money, it was worse than filing a tax return, I kid you not. Then I didn’t put something right on it so I had to go back, correct and resubmit it, thus waiting even longer. 
So then we were “awarded” the loan packages. I had to accept them, and then go fill out separate applications with the government and then fill out identical forms with the lending institution. And there’s still things I’m leaving out that my mom did. I had no idea how complicated going to college was. It doesn’t seem so bad now that it’s mostly over, but it seemed super difficult during the process.
I also have to find an apartment, which is a task all on its own. I’ve been looking at rent.com and found some good places that let us have Copper. I called around and found out how much rent/utilities and everything is at the different places. Now I’m ready to go look at them in a couple weeks and make a final decision. That is something I’m looking forward to. I can’t wait to move out. Mom also bought us a new mattress. It’s a queen size, which is nice. That reminds me I need to look around and see if anyone has a cheap wooden bed for sale so we don’t just have the metal frame. I’m glad to finally get out of this double bed that is awful. It was a cheap mattress when it was new and now it’s a few years old so it’s worse. When Don sits on it, I roll toward him, which is kind of funny, but not the best way to sleep.
Jem gave me back my old QBee number 43. XD I had that number with my old personal site for a long time. Which reminds me my quilt layout is a little off on some of the pages and I’m not sure why…I need to fix that.
I graduated last Friday night. Had dinner with my family and dinner with Don’s. I’m glad to finally be done with high school. But I am a little scared about college. Being on my own does seem appetizing, but it’s also intimidating. I’m pretty confident that Don and I will be fine. Or we’ll get through it at least.
We went to an exotic zoo yesterday. Rode around in a wagon thing and animals could come up and we’d feed them. There were bison, ostriches, emus, ria birds, some other animals and millions of deer. They had whitetails, red deer and fallow deer. There was also a petting zoo which had goats and deer. We went in there and the deer surrounded us. It was pretty fun. I’ve got pictures since I have a new digital camera. I’ll post them up here when I get around to it.
