The final exam in my final course has been completed. Now we wait.

I registered for my fall classes a few days back and am now eagerly awaiting the arrival of my textbooks. If only I didn’t have to pay a bazillion $$ extra for them. My thankfully my Adult Dev class only requires 1 text since the Aboriginal History (mandatory course to graduate) class has a 4 text reading list.

I have to admit, I’m really leery and uncomfortable with the idea of completing the Aboriginal History course. Partially because it’s mandated. Mostly because of a horrific experience I had in a similarly themed university course in the early 90s. I’d go into details, but I’m trying hard to keep my blood pressure in check these days. Suffice to say it wasn’t the fascinating introductory class to another culture and way of thinking that the syllabus portrayed it to be.

Four classes until graduation. Guess I better knuckle down and get to work soon!

I was terrified to go on vacation a few weeks back – family cruise to Alaska – because of 1) my food allergies and 2) hub’s family. Amazingly it all worked out wonderfully. Because we’d informed the cruise line that I had food allergies weeks before I got on the boat, they were prepared and let me pre-order all my meals a day in advance (giving the chef/kitchen notice).

Hubs family turned out to be delightful in small doses. His parents usually are. It’s his brothers I was worried about. Guess this means his younger brothers are finally starting to grow up 😉 Now that the youngest is in his 30’s, all I can say on the matter is that “it’s about time!”

I did get a bit of a sticker shock when I stepped on the scale post vacation. Despite chosing healthy options from the menu that were advertized as “low sodium and low sugar” and eating lots of fruits and veggies I discovered that according to my home scale I’d gained 10 lbs since leaving for the cruise. Since all my new clothes still fit I assumed it was mostly due to the extra sodium in my diet while away.

I got back to eating normally – low or no salt options as much as possible – and drinking extra water. Within days I’d dropped 6 lbs. By the end of the week I’d lost the 10 lbs vacation weight and this morning discovered I’d lost another 2.2 lbs. That averages out to a 1.1 lb loss for each week I was on vacation. Which is pretty much what I’ve been averaging lately.

There were some downsides to vacation. I arrived home to discover that my favourite cat had passed away the day before. My pet sitters were really nice and had taken good care of all our fur babies. I guess it was just her time to go.

Downside #2 is that there’s next to no time left for me to finish my latest course at school. 8 days to finish an assignment, 15pg research paper and a final exam. And somewhere in there I have to fit working full-time and pulling off a major charity event next weekend. Ugh!

Feeling very stressed at the moment ;(

Last week I went home to SJ to attend the CNIE conference. It’s been a few years since I’ve been home so I spent an extra few days in the city and crashed at my mum’s place.

CNIE 2010 was special for me this year. It’s not the first time a paper I’ve been associated with has been presented at a conference, but it was the first time that I was involved in the presentation. Needless to say I was a bundle of nerves and Dr. D might have expressed some concern thet I’d become a babbling idiot during the presentation. I may have babbled a bit, but I certainly didn’t go off the rails and both Dr. D and N should have nothing to worry about career wise. Well, at least not due to being associated with me at this time.

Eating and exercising was a real challenge at home. Once the convention was over it wasn’t as difficult since I mostly ate at mum’s. Eating out can be a veritable mine field. Sometimes the healthy options can be filled with hidden fat, calories, sugar, etc. I decided that if I was going to go overboard on a meal or two then I’d best enjoy myself.  And with that decided, all was right with the world. Lobster stuffed cheesy mushroom caps found their way onto my plate.

I think this attitude really helped keep me on track while I was away from home. Rather than going overboard all the time, or denying myself constantly, I had the special splurge meals and the standard lifestyle change type meals. When all was said and done I returned home 0.8lbs lighter. I likely would have lost more weight over the time I was gone if I’d been less indulgent. But I think the important thing is that I continued to lose weight and still managed to do the social eating (lunches, trips to restaurants, etc.) that would have easily derailed me in the past.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. I had a monster research paper to submit over the weekend and have spent all non eating, cooking, exercising, and working hours researching and writing the paper. Now that it’s submitted I can relax a bit. It was the last graded item for my International Relations class so 40% of my final grade is resting on the monstrosity I turned in. I am pretty disappointed in it but am also so brain dead and tired (specifically due to school) that I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have managed any better.

This weekend I’m going to be spending more time studying and writing papers. Oh, what an exiting life I lead.

December can’t come soon enough. I need to graduate so I can have a break!