2 Weeks Since My Last Post??!!

OK--so if you haven't guessed I have been really busy. I started my Graduate Assistant (GA) position at the beginning of the month and I put in 20+ hours a week there (I am working for the Athletics Department @ PSU in Marketing). Also still working some at the camera store--ideally 1 day a week, but they got in a crunch so I worked 6 days over the last 2 weeks, making it 12 days in a row between the two jobs. I am commuting more than 2 hours a day, but I try to take public transportation as much as I can to save gas and money. We have decided at this point not to move downtown. For a decent apartment, we were looking at $800-$850 a month for a 1 bedroom. We decided that we could save that money, deal with the commute for a year, and be that much closer to buying a house when I graduate. We are living in the addition on my parent's property, but there are still a few things to do to make it work for us. The 2 biggest projects are building the kitchen cabinets and building a mud room outside the front door. Those will both be expensive builds, plus we need to buy a refrigerator, pay for my trip to Ireland (less than 2 weeks now), pay for my school related trip to Asia (going in Feb/March), and did I mention that we just bought a digital camera and a laptop too? We really aren't made of money, but we are good money managers and will MANAGE to afford it all. They are all justifiable/ necessary expenses. We just may be using the TINY fridge for a bit while we pay for these other things. We decided the camera would be a good idea to get now. I have been wanting it for quite a while and wanted to easily document my 85 year-old grandmother's first trip abroad (her grandfather immigrated from Ireland and she has always wanted to go there). I probably won't ever need to buy another digital camera as long as this one lasts. It's a 6.0 megapixel Nikon D70 SLR. Very cool camera. Dad also got a new camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5400. I think he's pretty happy with it so far. We went up to Cascade Locks on the 4th for tamales. The fireworks have almost become secondary. We finally found out where the tamale people work the rest of the year and may even go buy several dozen of the tamales to freeze for later. Erik's Blazer got hit by someone who ran a red light. No one was hurt and I think the impact was fairly low speed. The damage isn't too bad, but most of the front end (exterior--on the body only) and the grill gaurd will have to be replaced. Helped my parent's with minor builds (fencing) up at their house earlier this week. Spent many hours re-organizing, sorting, cleaning up, etc. at our place the last few days. It looks nice, but I get burnt out on doing it. The Men's team lost both of their games on Friday, but won both games the prior week. We have a coed game tonight at Delta Park. Didn't play last week because of the holiday. I guess that's about all now. Been too busy to have many newsworthy things going on. Lets see if I can make the next post in less than 2 weeks... And I'll try to get some pictures posted on my photo site soon, too.