It has been an interesting week. Gratefully, it started off good last Thursday, with a Washington Nationals baseball game provided by work that Derek was able to come to (in the middle of the day!), where we actually WON! By the second inning, we were down 0-6. Yeah, I didn't have high hopes. However, as soon as Derek arrived at the bottom of the second, things turned around and the home runs started churning. We saw a ton of them, and we ended up winning 12-8, I think, was the final score.
We made it home and I left to go to class. It only took me about 55 minutes to get there, and that was with stopping for gas and stopping at Wendy's for food. It was incredible! Traffic was a beautiful thing that night, and the stars were out for me that evening. I finally passed my last 200 Jury Charge, which puts me at 3 tests left!! Cross your fingers for me, I'm going to try my hardest to get out within 6 weeks. Maybe I just won't sleep anymore...then maybe I will practice my fingers enough so that they'll move as fast as I need them to. The past month I've been practicing at 240-250 wpm, a painful thing for Little Ms. Perfectionist, but on my internship this week the court reporter told me that was too slow. I needed to go EVEN FASTER - closer to 300 wpm. I explained that I would bawl my eyes out every night if I was forced to practice those high speeds, and she told me it was necessary. I don't have practice dictation that goes up that fast, but I do have Literary at 220, Jury Charge at 230, and Q&A at 280, which I have practiced for the past 2 nights. The first night I cried at the 220 Literary (these things are so hard, they might as well be 300 wpm!), but then I stopped wimping out. I'm proud to report there were no tears last night, but already my ears are adjusting to those high speeds. I can't get close to that speed, but I'm working my hardest at it and know that the effort will pay off, eventually. And if it doesn't, I have the email address of the court reporter who recommended it and I will let her know that she cost me great heartache. Or, I could get out as fast as possible and then I will email her my heartfelt thanks. Here's to hoping for the latter.
Friday was the beginning of the end of the goodness of the week (with a few bright moments poking through the downpour of badness). Derek saw some commercial about a great deal on a brand new car, so we called the dealership and decided to head out there to check it out. As soon as we got there, we explained to the guy helping us that we didn't NEED a new car, but if the deal was as good as it said on TV, we would buy on the spot. We should have left as soon as we found out that that good deal was only possible if you qualified for cash for clunkers. He somehow convinced us that there were other things we qualified for, so we proceeded to go through 2 hours of looking at cars, test-driving a car, and negotiations. He kept us waiting for 20 minutes while he was "talking his boss down" so he could "get us a good deal." He comes back in, and you know what he does? Points at a piece of paper and says, "These are your monthly payment options. Which payment would best suit your monthly budget?" Derek and I looked at each, there was a long pregnant pause, and we both looked at the guy and blurted, "Are you kidding? What is the price of the car?!" He didn't even tell us the price! Turns out it was definitely wasted time (always a bummer in the life of busy bees), and he didn't talk his boss down at all, didn't "work his magic" with getting us a good deal for our Toyota on trade-in, and we didn't qualify for the other things he was talking up. My take on it? BOO! We were completely up front with you the whole time and you completely tried to scam us. He apparently didn't understand that our desire to get a car that was $8,000 was the TOTAL PRICE. He tried to justify it by saying that we would only have to finance about $8,000 after the trade-in and downpayment. The downpayment was going to be $4,000! Hello! Funny how we spent the evening trying to explain this to the man, who apparently never got it, and I explained it once to my mom over the phone (not face to face with hand gestures and fingers to visually describe how much money we wanted to spend) and she laughed out loud at the man's gall. I guess he did his job well. The monthly payments really didn't look that bad - but when you account for the fact that you will be making that same payment every month for three, four, or even five years, you pay thousands more for a car than the original price. If we weren't such sticklers (read: cheap-os), we might have been convinced. But, we really don't need a new car. So, our trusty Toyota will continue to reign as chief vehicle in the Scheer family until we leave DC and need another car, or until it dies (crosses fingers that this will be after living in DC).
So we left the dealership at 8:45pm, starving, and we were heading towards Kohl's so we could take advantage of their sale that coincided with Virginia's tax free holiday. Not five minutes after leaving the dealership, we got pulled over. Yep. Derek was very respectful to the officer, who seemingly was in a good mood because he ended up giving us just a warning. Thanks, Officer! That was the start of the good part of the night. We ate some food and then went shopping. I got 3 shirts and Derek got 5, and we got an electric bread knife. We spent more money than I care to admit to, but I justify it by the fact that Derek really needed button-down short sleeve shirts he could wear to work, and I have slowly been transitioning my wardrobe to court reporting-appropiate attire.
Saturday we went berry picking in Virginia, and ended up with 4 pints of blackberries and about 6 pounds of peaches. It was a lot of fun. Homework/practicing ensued, and then our brother in law came over for dinner. His family is out of town for a few weeks and he had just rode 67 miles in a bike race, so we wanted to treat him, the poor guy! Jake, my almost 19 year old brother, has been preparing for several months to get his papers in to serve a mission for our church, and he received his call letter on Saturday. We set up a time for everyone to meet around the kitchen table at home, including Grandma, and Brian and I were both called. Jake opened the letter and read, word for word without jumping to the good parts, exactly what the letter said. He enters the MTC on November 11, 2009, and will be serving in the Australia Melbourne East Mission for 24 months. He will be speaking Mandarin Chinese. This will be quite a feat for him, but I know that he will be blessed for going on a mission (as will all of his family - thanks, Jake!) and he will bless the lives of many people in Australia. I had trouble keeping my emotions intact on the phone call, my heart was bursting with pride (still is, as I write this all teary-eyed), and was sad I wasn't there with him to give him a big hug. Luckily, I will be blessed to be able to go see him before he leaves.
Is this the longest post ever yet? It has been a week, I tell you.
Saturday night after our BIL left we resumed homework/practicing (our new normal routine) and my head, which had started hurting while I was preparing dinner, proceeded to continuously throb until I couldn't do anything anymore. I went to bed, thinking I could sleep it off. I woke up once and discovered the migraine had progressed to my entire head instead of being concentrated on the right side, but I just tried to go back to sleep. I woke up again a few hours later and it hurt to open my eyes. I walked around my apartment blindly trying to find my purse to get some medicine to take, which I finally did, and it hurt to open my jaw to swallow some water with my pills. Now, it as 4 am, my migraine had fully encompassed my entire head, eyes, jaw, and my neck. I got back in bed and Derek asked the magic words: "Are you okay, babe?" I just broke down crying. I can't remember the last time I had such a horrible migraine. It was the kind that not only does it just hurt everywhere, but you want to puke, too. What a night. Luckily, when I woke up for real in the morning, it was gone. It was a rough night.
Sunday I found out I passed my last jury charge test. That was good news. Church was good, as was class. I was pretty bummed the whole day, though, because our bikes were stolen Saturday night/Sunday morning. That's right, as I was suffering with my migraine, some losers were hopping our 8 foot fence to steal our bikes. We're still pretty upset about it, understandbly so, I think. We're planning on going to a thrift store this weekend to see if we can pick up some cheap bike so we can at least have one around, maybe two if there is a good deal.
Monday was just a hard day for me emotionally for some reason. I've been stressing myself out to the max, and some days just make me sad. The rest of the week has been okay. I'm hoping to do really well at class tonight. I've been working on 225 for 6 weeks now - not quite ready to start passing tests, but I can see that I've made a lot of progress in 6 weeks. Derek is working on his finals this week and then is off for 4ish weeks. We're looking forward to that. Sorry this sort of turned into a huge journal entry. It has been a trying week, but things are looking up, and the weekend is almost here. Let's hope it is better than last weekend (though you can't top having a brother open his mission call!!). Hope everyone is doing well.
