Life Update

Well this past week was fall break, but there was certainly no break in there! First thing Thursday morning we were up and at the world's most photographed event, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta! Let me tell you it was an absolute blast! I took a little over 350 pictures and could not of had more fun. The rest of the weekend was filled with errands, homework and a LOT of relaxing! I apologize for being so missing lately, but we are gearing up for a state outreach day on October 19th. So if you live in New Mexico be on the lookout for shot clinics, health fairs, generation rx events, and spike presentations in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces by the UNM College of Pharmacy! Whoop whoop! And without further adieu here are some of my favorite pictures for the Balloon Fest!

We made it on the news with Steve Stucker at our FIRST balloon fiesta! Pretty cool!

Umm... Guys a little help here! 

Push ladies!

Miss Artesia!

Laker Lover!

It's ok bro, we got your back!

Yippee! :)

God Bless America!

The biggest balloon at the fiesta!

Jumpppp!

COP Crew!

I got the whole world in my hands... Well mostly :)

Two of my favorite ballons!

Hope y'all enjoyed the pictures! Have a great week loves!

Weekend Update

Friday
Man I sure did start out with a busy one on Friday. I was at the school on Friday from 8-5 with meetings and class all day long. I came up with a great idea that all students that stay to suffer through therapeutics until 5pm on a Friday, when the entire campus is empty, should receive some sort of extra credit. Now if only I could find a way to propose this to the professors and get them to listen. Any Ideas?

After class I ran home for a quick power nap before our Kappa Psi pinning ceremony. So welcome to the family my long-time friend who we will call her My Little B. Lucky for me I have know her my entire life since we grew up 40 miles apart and participated in 4H and FFA together since we were about 9 years old! My Little B is a first year pharmacy student and my new Little for KY. She is from the country and says y'all just like me, you will absolutely love her! If I had a few words to describe her I would say she is: hilarious, laid back, sweet, and one of my favorite people in this crazy town we live in! Y'all get ready to start hearing some more My Little B stories.

After the pinning, a group of us went out to eat at Chili's and for some country dancing at the Dirty Bourbon! This was of course my first time out dancing since my Egypt trip and I absolutely had a ball! Thank God for country music!

Saturday

First thing in the morning, we had a short 15 minute Generation Rx presentation to some high school students. It went great and we even stuck around for a little game with them! After that it was off to Hobby Lobby to buy supplies for My Little B costume she has to wear during pledge week. Now y'all know I enjoy crafts and feathers so I decided to make her big feather hair clip to wear. I think it worked out pretty cute myself!!

There will be some pictures of her all decked out in her apparel coming soon! After craft time was over, I did a little studying and hit up the gym. I know shocker I haven't been to the gym in a week, but hey my routine is starting ASAP! After the gym I went to eat dinner with one of my high school girlfriends who we will call Bob. It was a much needed Saturday night with her! Oh and on my way to Bob's house I took some pictures of the beautiful sky art!

Sunburst outside my house!

Driving to Bob's house!

Beautiful sunset at Bob's house!

Sunday

Ok, sunday was pretty laid back. I did some computer work in the morning then spent most of the afternoon waiting for the TV people to show up. Yes you heard me right, our TV is not working. It messed up on Thursday and the dad gum people couldn't show up to fix it until Sunday afternoon. Laker Lover and I were not the least bit impressed with them!

Sunday evening we met up with one of our old organic chemistry friends from state, Dr. L! Dr. L is one of our friends from NMSU that moved up here for med school. It was so nice seeing her again and catching up.

I had an absolutely wonderful weekend! It could not of been any better!!

I hope everybody else's weekend was equally as great!

Hello Weekend Loves

It is official! School has officially started back to take over my life! We had our first therapeutics (main class) test yesterday! Yuck! Y'all are more than welcome to start praying for a good semester that hopefully flies by! So along with all those study sessions, tests, organization meetings, and generation rx events, also comes.... football season, social events, Kappa Psi pledge process, state fair and family visiting! I could not be more excited for this month to take off.

My exact thought about school starting! :/
I may or may not have been taking pictures instead of listening in class!

You haven't really missed out on anything too major since school started. The only thing hardly worth mentioning, if you haven't already seen me, is Laker Lover dyed my hair. Our conversation went something along the lines of this:

Me- I want to dye my hair!! Ideas?

LL- Oh yes let's do it! I want to dye mine too. We can do it this weekend.

Me- Ok sounds good, what should I do with it?

LL- How about really red!

Me- Um.... I don't think so! I am too chicken for that.

LL- Oh come on, you know it will always fade out eventually.

Me- Ok fine you talked me into it! Haha

As you can see it didn't take a lot of convincing since she is usually the one that tells me what to do with my hair. Well it was pretty red red when I dyed it, but I really like it now. After showing my parents the picture, their response was: I like it. It's about time your redheaded attitude matched your hair color. Um... I am going to assume you meant that in the best way possible.

Dye on hair looked purple (insert slight panic attack) and started threatening LL that it better look good!
Glove had a hole in it and LL's hand got dyed! The joke is on you!

The finished product! Yay for being a redhead :)

The weekend is going to be a fairly calm one and I am pretty stinking happy about that!

I hope y'all have a terrific weekend dolls!

Generation Rx

Have I ever told y’all I was a statistics junkie? Well if you didn’t know, now ya do and since you know my secrets I figured I would get on my soap box for a bit so hang in there! :)

Did you know that the United States represents 4.2% of the world’s population?

--The US consumes 80% of the world’s opioids &

99% of the world’s Lortab (hydrocodone/APAP).

75% of heroin addicts say they started on pain pills.

Most addicts start their addictions on pain pills. Pills can become too expensive and hard to locate, so most switch to heroin since it binds to the same receptors on the brain, is cheaper, and readily available.

3 out of 5 teens have more of a chance of becoming addicted to prescription medications when compared to adults.

You may think that you have control of an addiction, but you DON’T! There are 2 different kinds of addictions, and they can develop quicker than you think.

I am sure some of y’all are wondering where the heck I am going with this one. If you are just joining my blog [WELCOME], and FYI I am in pharmacy school so the rest of this should make sense now. So as you can imagine drug abuse is a H-O-T, hot topic! So what’s next, what do you do as a future health care professional to help spread awareness, well let me tell you!

The UNM APhA chapter has adopted a program called, the

Generation Rx Initiative

The Ohio State University in partnership with Cardinal Health developed this program. Now that I have this out of the way let me tell y’all the goods.

When most people think about drug abuse, prescription medications do not usually come to mind. Did you know that prescription medications can be just as dangerous, if not more deadly than street drugs? Did you know that the number one cause of accidental deaths in New Mexico is prescription drug overdose? An epidemic is among us friends, and CHANGE needs to start now!

GenRx is developed to target all age levels from Pre-K to Senior Citizens. In the past month and a half I have given 20 presentations to various age groups all over the state of New Mexico. Why am I mentioning this you might ask? If you are interested in anything I have mentioned I encourage you to shoot me an email or add a comment. I would love to have the chance to talk to any of y’all about this information or potentially set up a presentation for y’all to check out. Let me know what ya think :)