Hurry Up & Wait

For those of you who have been following our med-school journey, I'm so excited to announce that my husband just reached another major medical milestone:

He Passed the USMLE Step 1! 

According to the med-school flowchart this means we are halfway through the med-school process. It also means that he gets to start the fun part of medicine: working in hospitals. 

We don't know yet where he will be placed for his 3rd and 4th year. As with everything else, it's not entirely up to him. All prayers and well wishes would be appreciated towards him staying local or at least West Coast. 

Other than that big news I don't really have anything interesting or pressing to report. Most week days you'll find me doing 9-5 at my edtech job and then 5-9 at PDS. I've been soaking up all the attention from my husband who has a lot less on his plate since taking the Step and we've been having fun going on as many dates as our budget will allow.

Have you gone on any cheap but fun date nights recently?

I Have a Confession...

{I've been reading romance novels.}

It's true. It all started about this time last year when Morgan recommended I read 50 Shades of Gray. You can read my review here.

And then this fall Megan from The Book Asylum contacted me to work with her on a new blog design and I started connecting with other book bloggers. {isn't her new design fun?}

After meeting Natasha from Natasha Is a Book Junkie I realized that there is a whole world of book bloggers out there who aren't the least bit ashamed of reading romance. I spent weeks unconsciously soaking up racy reviews while redesigning Natasha's blog. She had a few book recommendations & I'm loving them!

I'm still treading lightly in the world of romance, and will never give up my love of novels, but it's been great to explore a new genre. And to be honest, between working fulltime and designing partime a book has to really grab my attention to beat out the TV or playing a game on my iPad at the end of the day.

Happy Twenty13!

I finally feel like I'm settling in to America. That only took 5 months.

Reverse culture shock is real, yo.

In this post I talked about how I'd order the wrong thing at Starbucks because I felt rushed. It seemed like everywhere I went there were too many choices, and things cost way too much money.

need this 

I don't know how single-income families make it these days! Especially in an expensive state like California. I'm baffled at how quickly my paycheck disappears each month, and the latest tax hike didn't help matters. Even living in a teeny apartment with no car payments we are still scrimping every month. Maybe it has something to do more with being a med-student's wife, but I doubt it.

It's still nice to be back in the U.S. of A.

I must admit that I'm loving the convenience of being in America. A short list of things I appreciate more after living in Dominica:

1. the dishwasher
2. real cat boxes & litter
3. Target
4. reliable internet
5. owning a car
6. Starbucks
7. ziplock bags

If anyone still reads this blog, thanks for hanging in there. There are plenty of adventures left to be had.

How are YOU Doing?

XO and cheers to Twenty13!

Free Holiday Facebook Covers from PDS

Do you ever get the "creation" bug? A need to just sit down and make something just for fun? I do. I recently made myself a new Facebook timeline cover and I had so many ideas that I ended up creating a handful to share.

I've posted them over at Priceless Design Studio along with simple instructions for downloading. There's a sneak peek below!

California Girl

If you've been following this adventure, I'm sure you are curious where exactly it is that I'm living now. Since returning from Dominica I've been in the north-eastern part of Southern California.

SoCal is huge guys and if you aren't from the West Coast you may not realize that when people say they are from "LA" they really mean "Greater Los Angeles," which is made of 3 densely populated counties.

Southern California is geographically larger than England. {Wikipedia said so.}

But in one of those moments when you realize that the world is actually a little smaller than it seems, my dear friend Stacy and I discovered that I'm actually living in her and her husband's first apartment. Like, the actual unit! I knew this was the same complex as I was apartment hunting but with over 200 units what are the chances we'd end up in the same one?

Back in August, this same friend and her husband offered me a room in their home while I job-hunted, found, and saved for said apartment. Their kindness and generosity is a true  blessing, and something that I am incredibly grateful for.

So, for now, California is home once again.