Dear Internet: I'm back from Tampa!

The test went... not quite as expected, because the questions looked almost nothing like my bar prep courses, so I'm not in a mood to really speculate. The best thing I did while in Tampa:

- Went to the aquarium. It's a good aquarium! I recommend going if you're in the area. They had a lot of freshwater/Florida native stuff, which is always of interest to me because freshwater habitats are rarely on display and we've got some really cool ones. Then they had some things I've never heard of, let alone seen, like bonnethead sharks (a Florida native! I've caught some while fishing and thought they were little hammerheads. They have FRECKLES you guys). I also stopped to look at the amphibian tank, where an employee was cleaning it out and asked what the salamander was, since it had gills. "What do you think it is?" "It... looks like a giant axolotl?" "You just renewed my faith in humanity! Most people think it's an eel or a frog. It's a siren." They also had a bigger seahorse collection than I've ever seen, including leafy seadragons which are actually kind of huge. Okay, no kind of about it. These things were like a foot long-- more than twice the size of any seahorse I've seen. I might post pictures later: my mother took pictures of all the neat stuff since my camera couldn't handle it, so all my good pics are of birds.

- I put my smartphone to use. While sitting in the creepy, silent room listening to my neighbors bump around, it occurred to me: "you have a droid. There should be five billion white noise apps!" And yes, yes there were. I downloaded one that offers a lot of little scenes that I couldn't listen to because they don't block out any of the other sounds: I grew up in a deathly silent house and used a birds, crickets, and stream noise machine for years. Then I grew up and graduated to a basic fan like other white noise-needing adults. Kind of ridiculously excited for this little sound app, because it lets me mix and match things too. I get wintery noises with loons! Loons should technically be kind of disturbing but my old machine had loons.

And now I can actually hang out and stuff. I haven't been around at all before the bar, and the past few days I was so tired that when people congratulated me and got all excited I was all "you are way too excited and I am way too undercaffeinated, I'm going to bed." Too exhausted to even contemplate being excited for finishing so I sat around and played some Mass Effect in short spurts, because just running around the Citadel was too much for me. But now after a few days of 12+ hours of sleep and slumping around the apartment I feel better and well enough to realize that, oh hey, I just took a giant exam with 3,800 other people.

So that was a thing!

Now I'm back, and I'm more excited about writing. I haven't had a chance to write anything properly for months. There will be so much writing, you guys!

So feel free to talk to me now and I promise to not be a nervous wreck at you.