gettin' thrifty with it

Goodwill, oh, Goodwill! Why must I always leave thee empty handed?

Ok, let me just go ahead and put this out there.  It's not because I'm snobby or have high standards, it's because there is literally nothing worth taking home at my local thrift stores.  I read all these blogs and magazines and they talk about all their AWESOME finds at thrift stores. All I ever find are ugly Christmas mugs and faded silk floral arrangements. I have better luck with clothes, it's the home goods section that stinks. I know that the nature of thrift stores is hit and miss but I seem to be missing consistently. Then I went to Goodwill yesterday on a whim and my luck changed. Let's just say I did not leave empty handed! Check out my spoils....

 Sorry for the blurry-ness but if you made out that the sticker says $0.95 you would be absolutely correct!!!! Seriously a complete Apples to Apples came for under a buck! Scott and I love this game but never wanted to spend $20+ on it. 

 Then I found these beauties. I think I got all 3 for under $12 bucks. They were marked down at Goodwill. I didn't know they marked stuff down!

I think I want to hang them somewhere. Kind of along the lines of this: 

 Source

   Last but not least, I found these milk glass vases. I think they were $2 a piece. 

I was thinking of using them like this:

Source

 or this:

Source

Do you have good or bad luck at thrift stores?

two more years

It's official. We will be staying in the Blacksburg area another two years! What, you thought that was a given? Well, it wasn't. I assumed it was until somewhat recently. Anyway, because of the school Scott goes to and the area it is located in, all of the third year rotations are not located in the same area. (For those of you who do not know, the first two years of medical school are in the classroom and the last two years are in a clinical setting. During the third and fourth year they rotate through different disciplines of medicine. Thus the name Rotations.)  Scott's school has seven regions you can go to for third year rotations ( and multiple sites within those regions). You are not randomly assigned (which was a relief!) but you do have to rank each region 1-7 and then rank each site within the regions. The school tries to match you to your first region and first site but that doesn't always work out. So that is where the uncertainty came in. Also, for an entire weekend Scott was seriously considering putting Roanoke as his first choice. I tried to be supportive but my heart wasn't in it. The idea of moving 45 minutes up the road for a year wasn't my idea of fun and then there was the issue of my job. I have nothing against Roanoke mind you, it's just everything for us is in Blacksburg and surrounding areas at the moment. My philosophy is, since we will have to uproot in two years anyway let's not do it sooner than we have to. Scott eventually decided to put the Blacksburg area as his first choice but if he hadn't, I would have moved to Roanoke. Really, I would have. I'm just glad our feelings ended up aligning! Long story short, we found out a little over a week ago that we were assigned to our first choice and it looks like most of Scott's classmates were assigned to their first choice as well. I think it's amazing that the school was able to make the vast majority happy. I don't know how they did it! I also realized, after all was said and done, how weird it is to think the next year of our life was in another person's hands.

This is a taste of the future. We will find out where we are going for residency in a similar fashion, except residency is not just a year. It's three to five! I prefer not to think about that now. We will cross that bridge when we get there!

For all you prayer warriors out there, pray for Scott over the next several months. He is taking step one of boards this summer. Scott likes to say, "studying for this isn't a sprint, it is a marathon." Please pray that he has strength and perseverance. And that I have understanding and patience through this process. 

That's it for the life update. I'll leave you with this oldie but goodie.

October 4, 2007 | The night Scott asked me to be his "girlfriend" after one of my dance performances