lauren has nothing to say about everything.: Coldest Day So Far: 22 Below

Well we have been here in Bemidji now for 3 months and so far it is going well, I don't dislike it, I just miss being in a bigger city & having more options. Bemidji is just a middle of nowhere town in a middle of nowhere state. But my job is going great, i love my boss, the money & the flexible schedule. Nicholi & I just started classes today at BSU & it went surprisingly well! I'm excited to finally be engaged in school & work towards my major, Bachelors in Fine Arts with a minor in Communications. Nicholi will be majoring in Psychology while taking the Pre-Med requirements, and then applying for med-schools here in Minnesota, as well as back in CA. That's where the instate tuition lies...

We've made our apartment quite cozy, i really love being home because it's rare that I am. If we aren't working or at school, we are usually at Nicholi's parents house, mostly to eat meals. We've also made some great friends, Jason & Cassie Clark. They go to our church & Jason is one of the main Art teachers at BSU, they also have 4 teenagers who we like to hang out with as well ha. They are the sweetest people & the most normal people we've met out here. Minnesota definitely has a breed of humans not like anywhere else. It's really hard to relate to them, but once I start taking my art classes, I will meet more people like myself, and the Clarks & feel less alone.

The best pizza either one of us has ever tasted lives here in Bemidji at a small independently owned pizza shop called Dave's Pizza. Indescribably good. We also found a great Italian place just at the end of our block & right next door is a bar & grill that serves some DE-licious 50 cent wings. Other than that, not very impressive food choices but what we found is above average so we'll just frequent those spots. Movie theatre is cheap but the movies change in & out so fast I rarely get to see one I want. As far as other things to do here go, I've become a roller derby lover & go to all their bouts. I'd join the team in a heartbeat if I didn't think I would be killed instantly, they are some vicious & violent girls. We've found out about Buena Vista, the fun little ski resort 15 minutes north of town, so by the time we leave here i will be a pro-snowboarder, no joke.

Some super devastating news, our little Molly died December 17th completely out of the blue. She was puking a lot one day so i brought her to the vet, who wasn't sure what was wrong with her without doing a bunch of expensive tests. He just recommended I feed her some organic yogurt to help heel her stomach. She was on a mostly yogurt diet for a few days, stopped throwing up & returned to her normal energetic self. Then about a week after that, Molly was acting very lethargic and wouldn't eat anything I put in front of her. The next day she wouldn't even move, she was having bloody stools & throwing up to the point of dry heaving, so I brought her back to the vet that morning. He said she was extremely sick & but couldn't tell me what was causing it without running very pricey blood work & other tests. He gave me some medicine for her but by the end of that night she wouldn't even hold her own head up. She passed away that night at midnight. I was a wreck, she was my little companion, I never loved anything so much, & the quickness of it all made me even more depressed. Nicholi & I did some research online to try & figure out what the cause of her death might have been. We think it was 1 of 3 things: food poisoning, particularly botchalism- a fatal mold that is found in spoiled yogurt, parvo- since she wasn't yet a year old, or cancer. The symptoms for those 3 diseases are all the same so we aren't positive, but the food poisoning seems the most likely, because she had never had any other problems or ever showed signs of sickness. Anyway, it was really hard to say goodbye, but I did & someday I'm sure we'll get another dog.

On a much happier note we also have some really amazing news, after spring semester, our jobs are allowing us a leave of absence to go back to PORTLAND for the summer so Nicholi can do Barrier Pest Control, his summer sales job again! Heck-freaking-yes! We didn't want to do it without the job security here but once we got the "okay" it was an easy decision to make. Reasons why:

Paid for apartment in Portland by the sales company

Huge signing bonus just for coming back

Another huge bonus if our MN friend, Enowah Clark, joins the sales team

Another fantastic summer in the city

I will have a job with Barrier as well, more secretarial rather than selling

& not to mention the $$$$$!

So can't wait till beginning of May for THAT!

Here is what we've been up to: