das Beaglehaus

Almost over

2009-08-05T19:25:00.001-07:00

Hard to believe, but I will be done with school in a mere two days. That's right, Friday is my official last day as a student intern. I've already sent in all of my final documents so the next two days should be just clear sailing. Then I can start to study for taking my OB registry exam :-)

The Perinatal Clinic where I am interning now has posted a per diem job which I've applied for. At least, it was posted two days ago. When I checked on it today, the job was no longer there, so I have no idea what's going on with that. My application went through okay, and nobody said anything to me today about there being a problem, so I'm wondering if they took it off the external site and only put it on the internal site for now. I guess usually they have to do that in case there are any internal candidates that are interested. From what I hear, that shouldn't be a problem. I hope that's right, because I would really like to work there, and per diem is just fine for now.

Tomorrow I attend a fetal autopsy conference which should be interesting. Then more scanning. I have to admit, my mind has mostly been on Hawaii this week. We leave on Sunday and I am just so looking forward to going on vacation and seeing all of my family members and relaxing at the pool and on the beach, and well.....just everything. Two weeks of just breathing :-)

Oooh, shiny

2009-07-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

I am making the jump into the 3G world with my new phone, the MyTouch, reviewed here. That's even the color I got, "merlot" :-) I'm very excited, way more than I should be about a phone...it comes next week, so I'll be busy learning how to use it just in time to go to Hawaii where the 3G stuff won't work because they don't have a network there yet.

Mom and Aunt Mare left yesterday morning. We had a very busy trip. Highlights included a Ride the Duck trip around the city; Pike's Place Market with drinks at Kell's bar but no mini donuts; U Village shopping with dinner at the Ram; a day at Greenlake people watching; Mom and Aunt Mare's solo trip to the Space Needle; my graduation ceremony followed by a lovely picnic at Jay's office; and a brunch cruise on the Argosy around the Sound. Whew! I think everybody was pretty warn out by the end of the visit. Luckily the weather cooperated and it was pretty nice the whole time they were here. It continues to be warm and sunny, and there are actually supposed to be a wave of 95 degree days at the end of the week and through the weekend. I think I'm going to stay in and sit in front of a fan.

Visitors

2009-07-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

Mom and Aunt Mare arrived almost on time, at 10:10 yesterday morning. We picked them up from the airport, went home so they could drop their stuff off, and then went to BlueWater Bistro for brunch. It was a gorgeous day yesterday so after eating we headed for downtown and some touristy fun. We went on the Ride the Duck tour which was a really good time. We had a one hour tour of the city followed by about half an hour in the water on Lake Union. The tour guide was very upbeat and kept everyone laughing. By the time we were done though, the visitors were worn out so we came back home so that they could nap. After a light dinner, everyone enjoyed the Harper's Island finale and then bed.

This morning I woke up before everyone, which was a surprise because I definitely expected Aunt Mare and Mom to be up way before me due to the time change. Turns out they didn't get up until about 8:30. It was pretty gray and overcast today so we did Pike Place Market since you can stay undercover if it rains. Then I took them to mass afterwards and made some good chicken corn soup.

Tomorrow I'm back to work and I think their plan is just to stay home and rest :-)

Update as requested.

2009-07-09T18:11:00.001-07:00

I apologize, I've been remiss. Seems since more and more people are using facebook, I've been mostly updating that and not beaglehaus. However, I have been asked for a blog update and I am nothing if not accomodating.

Let's see...it's been since San Diego and my birthday weekend since I updated. I started a new clinical site since then. I'm at Swedish Hospital in the Perinatal clinic, so I do OB all day long. And I love it! I thought maybe it would get boring after a while but so far it is not at all boring. I really like the sonographers that I work with, and the doctors are fantastic. It's cool because the docs are also these ladies obstetricians most times so they are pretty familiar with the cases and why the scans are being done. It's a high risk site, so we get a lot of older women or women with physical or chromosomnal problems with their babies. It's very interesting.

Mom and Aunt Mare are coming tomorrow for 10 days. I graduate on July 18 so they're coming in for that. The weather is supposed to be okay while they're here...mostly in the 70s with a showery day here and there. We pick them up at the airport at 9:40 tomorrow morning. I rented two single rollaways for while they are here, but in typical Weiler luck, when Meg went to pick them up they only had a single and a double. That won't work of course, because there is not enough room in the back bedroom for those two beds. We have to take the double back tomorrow and pick up another single. Like I told Jay, at this point I just heave a big sigh because I'm getting so used to things not going right. He says everytime I sigh it's the sound of my soul dying just a little more :-)

Our friend Simon is staying with us for a few days while he sorts some things out in his life, but unfortunately he'll have to vacate the spot by tomorrow so we can get ready for Mom.

And it's countdown to Kauai time - 30 more days!

San Diego trip

2009-06-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

We're in the San Diego airport waiting to depart for Seattle. We had a wonderful weekend at Kirk and Krispy's place and saw a lot of the city, although I'm sure there was a ton that we did not get to see.

Friday night Krispy and Rip picked us up at the airport. Rip was pretty shy but when we got back to his home base he perked up and started talking. It was a fairly early night, and then up early the next morning. On Saturday morning we went to the San Diego Zoo for a bit, then some quick lunch and then we headed to Coronado to the beach and to see the Hotel Del Coronado which was totally awesome. The morning was cloudy but by the time we got to the beach it was sunny and warm. The resort is fantastic and I sure wish we could afford to actually stay there :-). Disaster on the way home after Riley consumed an entire bag of gummy bears (Thanks Aunt Kelly and Jason!) and chased it down with a big glass of lemonade. Some dramatic drooling preceded a veritable gusher of liquid and half digested gummy bears making a quick exit from Riley's tummy. Ummmm, yuck. Good thing it was me sitting next to her and not Jason. Surprisingly, she managed not to actually hit anything but her own carseat.

Saturday night we took Kirk and Krispy out to dinner at the Prado restaurant in Balboa Park. It was about perfect as a place to eat. The food was fantastic, the service was fantastic, and the ambiance was totally 5 star....outside on the patio, overlooking a beautiful courtyard, with lights strung up all over, it just could not have been nicer. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Sunday we got up early and Jason, Krispy and I climbed Cowles Mountain (along with Camden) while Kirk stayed back with the kids. Then while Kirk went to play softball, Jay and I took a trip to Old Town San Diego and walked around there for a bit enjoying the touristy and arty theme. We came home and joined up with everyone else for some more sightseeing, including Seaport Village and the Sunset Cliffs. Everybody was totally exhausted by the time we got home and it was an early bed night for all.

This morning Ripken started his new preschool and the nanny came over to watch Riley so the four adults went to breakfast at Pipes, then took a nice drive back down the coast stopping at the gliderport and the Soledad mountain monument before heading back to the airport. The trip was tiring but way too quick and we really enjoyed ourselves and our hosts :-) Can't wait to come back again! I'll try to post some picture after we get home and download them off the camera.

Hey! It's hot.

2009-06-04T22:40:00.001-07:00

Seattle's been going through a little bit of a heat wave the last few days, and in fact we have had record temps yesterday and today. Actually hit 91 degrees officially today, 1 degree higher than the previous June 4 record. I think our bedroom was quite a few degrees higher than that though. It has already cooled down substantially though, and is supposed to be back in the high 70's by tomorrow. I'm not complaining, it's wonderful to have such summery weather so early here and once Jay had put the AC unit in the bedroom I was able to sleep just fine :-)

I ran another two miles yesterday so it wasn't just a fluke people...yay for me.

Jason has an appointment with a podiatrist on Monday to find out why his foot still hurts. Good thing too, because we have the Furry 5K on Sunday so his foot will probably really be hurting on Monday.

Kelsey is winding down her junior year, knockin' out the finals, and finishing up her first college class. Meg is almost done with this quarter too. I know they're both ready for a break.

I have two more weeks to go at the clinic and then I switch back to Swedish for my perinatal rotation. I'm going to miss the girls at the clinic, but I'm also looking forward to driving into work with Jay again in the morning - I miss that little bit of time. I'll have to take the bus home though, our leaving schedules don't match up. But it'll still be better than driving every day.

One more week until we leave for San Diego for my birthday weekend!

I RAN TWO MILES!!!!!!

2009-05-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Let me say that again:

I RAN TWO MILES!!!!
I RAN TWO MILES!!!!

HOLY F*&^#NG SHIT I RAN TWO MILES!!!

In case you're not getting the drift...today was Week 5 Day 3, so the first day where it was just 20 minutes of running and no walking intervals in between. I'd been dreading it, but I got dressed and headed for the track this morning to take advantage of the beautiful weather before it gets too hot. I had the track all to myself, which was very nice, and off I went.

My podcast got screwed up though, so I couldn't quite time myself. Actually I had decided to just use music instead of an interval podcast today so I could have my own music. I put a playlist together with 5 minutes of walking songs, and then 20 minutes of running songs, but my shuffle apparently shuffles playlists too so my plan was foiled almost immediately. And of course I forgot to wear my watch. So I walked through two songs and then I started running on the track and after 1.75 miles thought I was probably done with the 20 minutes (because the songs started repeating, and also because of my previous slow times) but I ran another quarter mile just to be safe, so two miles altogether!

People, you don't know how momentous this is....I have never in my life run even 1 mile before. 2 miles is crazy talk! I'm sweaty but happy right now, and am ready to shower and party tonight at a friend's house. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Surprise

2009-05-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

I had a fetal survey to do tonight at 5..well technically it was another sonographer's patient but she asked me to start it since the woman was early. It didn't take too long before I realized that there were actually two babies in there. I told the couple they were having twins, but it took them a little while until they believed me, and then I think they were just in shock for the rest of the exam. That was kind of fun, but also tiring, because I did the whole survey on both twins, and it took almost two hours total.

Ran yesterday, Week 5 Day 2. This was 8 minutes running, 5 minutes walking, 8 minutes running. I got through it just fine with my usual slow pace. Turns out I can run 5/8 of a mile in 8 minutes....yeah, I'm zooming! I did see one woman the other day who ran slower than me, but that's a rarity. Most of the time the runners are whizzing by me. But that's okay, I'm still running and that's what counts. Saturday is the big day, when I do 20 minutes of running straight through. I'm a little scarred and I'm trying not to think about it.

Let the sun shine

2009-05-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

What a gorgeous three day weekend we've had! Saturday I got up early and did my run, then I cut the grass and depooped the back yard. When Jason got up we took the dogs for a walk at Golden Gardens beach, and then took the kids to Agua Verde for late lunch/early dinner. We sat by the water and enjoyed the warmth.

Yesterday we went back to Golden Gardens for a picnic. It was so nice out, and so relaxing to just lay on the beach by the water enjoying hot dogs and burgers and all the stuff that goes with it. Megan came for a while as did Kelsey and Ayla and Natan, and Simon showed up too so we had a nice little group. We stayed about 5 hours, and the sun had really wiped us out by then. We went to bed rather early which was a good thing because the guy I had hired to edge the sidewalks showed up at 7:45 this morning! That got me out of bed, so I went for my Week 5 Day 1 run today. This was run 5 minutes, walk 3, run 5, walk 3, and run 5. I made it through that just fine, and came home in time to find the edging done and the guy trying to get me to pay him $300 to weed the front flower beds. I decided I could save $300 and not be so freakin' lazy and do it myself.

So Jay and I weeded and trimmed hedges and got the yard looking all purdy and now we're going to shower and head down to the nursery on 85th street to look for yard ornaments. I'm partial to the big iron rooster, but I think that will take some persuasion on Jason's part :-)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend and let's all take a moment to think about all of those that have served our country.

Good news, not broken

2009-05-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

Jay's foot hurt even more this morning so after I went for my run at Greenlake we went to the doctor and then for an x-ray. Turns out it doesn't look like there's a fracture but they'll have the radiologist look more closely at it later and let us know if they find anything. In the meantime, he's to stay off it if he can and elevate it when he can. So no cast, which is good, but he's not sure he'll be able to drive himself to work tomorrow.

Today I'm working on cleaning the house since we didn't get to it this past weekend. My run today was good...Week 4 Day 1, which is run 3 minutes/walk 90 sec/run 5 minutes/walk 2.5 minutes/repeat. As much as I was not looking forward to the 5 minute runs, I'm happy to report that there was not so much as a fleeting moment when I thought I couldn't do it, and completed both sets with comparative ease. So, the dreaded week 4 has begun and so far has been fine. Day 2 looms on Wednesday though, and Day 2 is always my hardest. I'll keep you updated!

Owww, my foot!

2009-05-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend was picture perfect, weather wise. It was sunny and warm on Saturday, so Jay and I walked down to Greenlake for Week 3 Day 3 of the C25K, where we competed with about 1000 other people for space on the jogging path. Then we decided to take advantage of the nice weather to work on the backyard. Off to Home Depot, where we got bags and bags of sand and stones and yard stuff, home to weed and spread paper and tarp and sand and stones, clip hedges, cut grass, and all other manner of yard maintenance. We were totally wiped by the time we finished, and both fell asleep on the couch by 9:30.

Woke up fairly early today and actually didn't feel that badly. Just a bit of a headache but that was it. Jason had a soccer game at 2 so I grabbed my physics book and some trashy magazines and we headed back to Greenlake for the game. He played great! I was really impressed with his skill considering it's been a while since he played...but then he twisted his foot in the second half and had to be benched.

I drove him home, since his foot was hurting so bad. We are debating whether or not to go to the doctor tomorrow to see if it's broken. We don't THINK it's broken because it's not really swollen or discolored, but he can't put a lot weight on it. I propped him up on the couch with some frozen veggies on the foot while I went to the grocery store, and then fired up the grill for the first time this season for hot dogs and brats. He's playing Fallout right now, and we're hoping that by tomorrow he's feeling much better :-). Too bad, he was doing really well at the game. Final score: 1-1.

Abdomens and such

2009-05-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

I've been working on abdomens the last week. The plan at work was to get proficient in abdomens by doing all the abdomens I can do in one week, then the next week I'll move on to pelvic exams, and then for the last 5 weeks at the clinic I'll do as many OBs as I can to prepare for my next rotation.

I think this was a good plan. I have probably done about 6 - 8 abdomen or renal exams a day for the last week, and I even went in this morning on my "day off" to do 5 of them that were scheduled today. I felt pretty good about my progress by the time I left today.

Came home and went for my Week 3 Day 1 run. Today was two repetitions of run 90 secs/walk 90 secs/run 3 minutes/walk 3 minutes. I didn't think I was going to have any problems with it because I knew I could run 3 minutes (did it on Saturday) but I didn't go to Greenlake and I didn't go to the Roosevelt track, I just ran around the neighborhood. My biggest worry was that I would wind up running in a pretty small circle but it actually worked out very well, and I finished up with no problem. I have no worries that this week will go just fine. Apparently it's week 4 that people have the most problems with, as it is alternating 5 minute and 8 minute runs with 90 second walking breaks in between. It seems like a pretty big jump to go from 3 minutes this week to 8 minutes next week. Seems like there should just be alternating 5 minute runs - but I didn't design this program, somebody else did, and if it takes me a few weeks to get through it, so be it.

Came home and had a lovely bath, and then made dinner which I don't do nearly enough of since clinicals. I also worked on my presentation for CCD day on Friday. It was a fairly productive day overall, and that's a good thing.

It's the same old, same old....

2009-05-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

Not much new to report. Things here are just chugging along like always. I'm still in clinicals (although the end is definitely in sight now!) and busy as anything. The clinic is so much different than the hospital and both have pros and cons. The clinic gets only relatively healthy people who can mostly walk in on their own, but boy are they busy! It's all about time constraints and getting things done and there's barely time to go to the bathroom most days. I can't decide which I like better right now. I'm glad to be going to neonatal next month so I'll have another experience (all babies with this one) to help me decide where I would really like to work. Of course, I'll be lucky to get any job offer so I can't be too picky.

Megan is working her butt off recently at Zeek's and making tons of dough. Both kinds (pizza shop pun). We barely see her anymore especially since the weather is starting to get nice. When she's not working she's out with her social crew.

Kelsey is doing pretty well with her college course at North Seattle Community College. There is a lot of writing involved in this course which was never her favorite thing to do but she's holding her own with the older kids and we're proud of her.

Jason and I went to Greenlake today and completed Week 2 Day 3 of the Couch to 5k program I'm working on. The idea is that you are supposed to be able to run a 5k in 9 weeks by doing a combination of running/walking and gradually working your way up to running the whole way. I started 2 weeks ago, and I'll be on day 1 of Week 3 next week. I run pretty slow though....I think the C25k people call it "wogging". Not quite walking, not quite jogging. But for those that know me and know how much I HATE to run, know this is terribly hard for me. Doing the Greenlake circle is actually over 5 miles when you add in the walk there and back from our house, but it's nice for a sunny Saturday. I try to do Greenlake once a week, and then run around the track at Kelsey's school the rest of the time.

We're off now to the UVillage to do some shopping. Tomorrow we are going to see Star Trek at the IMAX theater, very excited!

And his accomplice is named Fusilli Jerry

2009-04-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

From today's Seattle Times:

"Man Hands Bandit" strikes in Seattle

The "Man Hands Bandit" has struck again — and this time in Seattle.

According to FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs, the robber who disguises himself by dressing as a woman and wearing a black wig entered a Wells Fargo Bank in the 14500 block of Greenwood Avenue North at 9:48 a.m. today.

He used a note and did not make threats or display a gun, Burroughs said.

The robbery is thought to be the man's third.

The first was at the Kitsap County Credit Union in Poulsbo April 13; the second at the 1st Security Bank in Edmonds April 20.

He is described as a white man, about 6 feet tall and 200 pounds.

Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at 206-622-0460.

The nickname comes from an episode of the comedy series "Seinfeld," in which the character played by Jerry Seinfeld displays dismay about dating an otherwise attractive woman who has big "man hands."

Thievery!

2009-04-23T21:17:00.001-07:00

So last night I was checking out our credit card statement online, as I am wont to do each evening, lest the budget go awry. Imagine my surprise to see a $1398 pending charge from some company called Reliable Solar K. This was following a $1 pending charge from Apple iTunes. After checking with Jay to make sure he didn't make some weird large purchase, I called the card company. Turns out that it is quite common to see a fraudulent charge from Apple for $1 or $2 just to make sure the card number is valid, and then the large charge.

Luckily, I caught it before it was put through, and the card company cancelled my account and reissued new cards right away. Now I just have to go through the hassle of changing all of my automatic bill payments (we put everything on the credit card to get the miles, and then pay it off weekly). What a bummer.

I post this as a cautionary tale for any of you using credit cards to keep an eye out for some very small charges that you don't remember making - it could be a harbinger of bad tidings!

Birfday and stuff

2009-04-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Megan's 24th birthday. Wow....right? She requested tuna noodle casserole for dinner, so that's what we had along with teriyaki chicken salad and warm bread. I made a fairy castle cake for dessert. Ayla came for dinner and Carmel came for cake and then we all played games afterwards for a few hours. It was a fun evening, very low key.

Tonight Jason and I are going to Unwigged & Unplugged, kind of a Spinal Tap reunion tour with some Folksmen stuff thrown in. We're going to meet downtown for dinner at the Dragonfish Cafe first and then on to the show. I'm watching A Mighty Wind right now in preparation :-).

The weekend here was beautiful so we took advantage to do some yard work and clean the house and do a little shopping. I'm hoping that this change in the weather is somewhat permanent now and that we will really start to warm up a bit. If not, I still have San Diego in June to look forward to! I talked to Krispy yesterday and they are happy to be back and looking for someplace to settle in. I can't wait to go and visit and check the city out.

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

Oooof. We just got done with Easter dinner and I am so full. We had pineapple and ham, scalloped potatoes, corn, peas, and rolls with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Last year at this time I was in Austin and Jay and the girls had an Easter meal courtesy of QFC. This year I got to cook, but it was pretty easy and I haven't been cooking much so I didn't mind.

Kelsey is now working on her first English 101 college paper, Jason is working on his laptop, Megan is getting ready for work, and I'm just chillaxing. It's rainy out and we did all of our walking and running around yesterday so today is for inside stuff. I think I might eventually get up and do some cleaning, but maybe I'll save that for tomorrow. I like having Mondays off, because then Sunday doesn't have that sad back to work feeling.

We're in the process of looking for new dining room chairs, but holy cow! I can't believe how expensive the ones we've seen so far are! It's just totally insane how much manufacturers want for one freakin' dining room chair! I think it's a big rip off industry, that's what I think. I'm turning to the internets to find something cheaper. It'll be a while I think until we get some new ones. We're also on the lookout for some new stand lights for the living room. I'll keep everyone posted :-)

Sunny Day...Chasing the Blues Away

2009-04-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

What an awesome weekend we've had in Seattle. The weather was fantastic, around 69 and beautifully sunny. On Saturday we picked the girls up at the airport and then Jay and I went to Blu Water Cafe to have some brunch. We had invited the girls but they were tired and didn't want to go.

The Blu Water is one of those reasons why I love living here. It's just a funky little restaurant right on Green Lake, and like most restaurants here they throw open all of the windows and doors on sunny days and they put lots of tables outside and everyone just enjoys being outside and getting some fresh air. Plus, they had sent us a $20 gift card to come and eat there, so our delicious brunch, including mimosas, cost us only $13 plus tip. We got home early enough to do some yard work so we got the grass cut for the first time this season.

Today we got up really early, thanks to the beagles of course. Decided to stay up and take advantage of the great weather. So we headed to the grocery store, and then we walked the dogs down to and around Green Lake. Boy, was that place crowded! So many people and dogs everywhere! But it was a great walk and the dogs were tired out. I made some wonderfully delicious french toast ala' Alton Brown for dinner to wind up our weekend. I have another day tomorrow to enjoy the sun because it's supposed to be even nicer then. Too bad Jason has to go back to work. I think I'll head to Green Lake again for another nice walk.

1st Week Done

2009-04-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

My first week at my new site is over. Boy is it ever different than the last place I was. They are so busy....there are patients scheduled literally every 45 minutes from 7 am until 7 pm. They bring someone in around 12 to cover while people grab a quick something to eat, but many times the sonographers only get a break for a few minutes. Nothing like working at the hospital, where there was often lots of waiting time for your next patient.

So far they're not really letting me scan whole exams because I'm still too slow. They give me like 20 minutes to get as much done as I can and then they take over. I did manage to do a renal exam in my allotted time, and last night for my last patient of the week I did a whole abdomen in 30 minutes which was amazingly zippy for me. The patient scanned like a dream which made it fast, but there was also some pathology to note so it's not like it was totally easy.

Anyway, I'm trying to get used to this new pace and new environment. They were nice enough to change my hours so I work now 8:30 - 7 instead of 7 - 5:30. That lets me sleep in a little more in the morning which is awesome and the traffic is not bad either coming or going. Still takes me about 25 minutes to drive it, but it's not horrible.

The girls are coming home today! Yay for that, because I've really missed them this last week. It'll be good to have everyone home again.

I can haz pet feeder?

2009-03-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

I am lusting over this product I saw today, called the Perfect Pet Feeder. It's a pet feeder that dispenses dry food on a schedule in preprogrammed amounts. Apparently, it's top of the line, and much better than similar models because it's designed that pets can't get into it and it feeds one or two pets. Here's a beagle enjoying it:

The motivation is mostly so we can maybe sleep in on the weekends once in a while instead of being a slave to Zac's stomach, which insists on being fed at 6:30 on the dot.

But $500? Criminy. They got me all excited, and then they knocked me down.

It's Alive!

2009-03-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time dear readers. I apologize for the lack of updates, and I have no excuse for it really. I just have not felt the motivation lately to write, and I haven't had anything really interesting to write about either.

I still don't have anything interesting, but I'm going to update anyway. I just returned from a week in PA visiting my family. It was nice to go back but it's always so tiring, and I'm happy to be back home in Seattle and sleeping in my own bed surrounded by beagle love. I did get to spend some good quality time with mom, and my brother and sister (Kirk was visiting from Austin) so that was nice. The weather was pretty good too.

The girls are getting ready to fly there late tonight. Their flight actually leaves a little after midnight, and they have a long traveling day ahead of them because they have a sucky flight with two plane changes before they get to Harrisburg. At the time I made the reservations it was the cheapest available way to get there, and now there's no backing out or changing. On the way back they only change planes once though so that's not so bad.

I start my new clinical site on Tuesday so I have a couple of days to take advantage of my break before I start in again. I also really have to start studying physics hard core because I have to take the Physics exam soon as part of graduation. I have all of the study materials, it's just a matter of ...um....motivation. I see a theme here.

Well, this hasn't been much of an update, but at least it's a start.

I heart the fetus

2009-02-19T22:37:00.001-08:00

I've been doing lots of OB work lately and I'm really liking it more and more. It's a challenge because there's lots of stuff to get, but it's also interesting because every one of them is different in some respect and it's like a new box of Whitman's chocolates with each scan. What's inside this one? Will it be head down or head up, a clear picture or a fuzzy hot mess? Even going out to the waiting room to get the patient is filled with anticipation. How many people will the new mom be bringing with her? Because it's rarely just her. There is almost always at least one, two, and I've had as many as 6(!) extra people show up to watch the big event. It's like they're going to the movies, but for free.

Also, 99% of the time, people are happy to be there. Unless it's an emergency appointment where there has been bleeding or cramping or God forbid a non-existent heart rate at the doctor's office, most patients like getting their fetal ultrasounds. Unlike the other patients who are mostly there because something is wrong and their doctor is trying to figure out what. Then they're more nervous or scared and you have to be sure not to hang around in one spot too long or they'll start shouting out stuff like "What's that? Why are you measuring it? Is that normal?"

Except for the testicle exams. Most men don't even watch the screen. Some fall asleep and others (the younger ones) lie on the table with their arm thrown across their face or their eyes shut so they don't have to actually see what's going on down there. I'm actually starting to like the testicle exams too because they're usually pretty easy. In fact, I like to do them better than thyroids....but the other student is starting to call me a ball hog because I sign my name next to most of them and she doesn't get any testicle experience.

So back to OB. I got my new rotation assigment and I'm going to be going to two different sites, one in the spring quarter and one in the summer quarter. My summer quarter rotation is at Swedish again, same hospital I'm at now, but in the perinatal group which is for more high risk OB patients and is in a separate location from our department. I'm very excited about that one because it's the one I really wanted. The spring quarter however I'm assigned to a clinic in Everett which is about 30 miles or so north of where I live and in Seattle traffic terms that's about an hour away. I'm considering the bus, even though I have to transfer 3 times and it will take about an hour and half each way. I'd do almost anything to avoid driving that much though, even though it would technically be against the flow since I'd be heading North in the morning and South at night. Oh well, it's only for about 2.5 months. I just hope I get some good OB experience there so I'm ready for perinatal in the summer!

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-15T18:17:00.000-08:00

We had a nice Valentine weekend. We took the beagles to "Beagle my Valentine", the most recent Beaglefest held in Bothell yesterday. I am pleased to report that we now have two award winning beagles! The first Beaglefest we went to, Zac won for Biggest Beagle. Yesterday, Trixie won for "Ability to sit the longest". How about that, huh? She got a certificate and a big box of dog biscuits to share with Zac.

Afterwards we came home and all had naps and then Jason and I went to dinner at the Pink Door were we shared a bottle of champagne and a delicious dinner that put no fewer than 3 pounds on me overnight.

Today we met Darci and Simon for brunch at this cute little restaurant called The Wild Mountain Cafe, which is actually a house that somebody turned into a restaurant without actually doing too much to change the house, so it's small and tables are spread out amongst several rooms but the food was great and it was a pretty cool space. Then Darci took us to see her new office and Simon took us to see his new office.

When we came home I put lots of purple streaks in Kelsey's hair and just a few purple highlights in Jason's hair and now Jason and Simon are playing video games while I am patiently waiting for the Amazing Race to start. All in all, a pretty good weekend.

No real updates on the work front. I still don't know where my second rotation will be, although I hope that it's someplace that does lots of OB, as that's what I'm really interested in. Things at my current rotation are going well and I got a really good review last week from my clinical coordinator and my instructor at Swedish so that was cool. I'm just really worried that they're going to put me in the VA hospital or someplace else that doesn't do any OB and I'll lose all my skills in that area, poor though they may be. I wish they would tell us already....I heard a rumor that we might find out within a week or two. I figure it has to be sometime soon because there's only about a month left for this rotation and people have to start making plans, especially if they have to move. I'll try to keep everyone updated as I find out more.

Happy Birthday to Jay

2009-02-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

Officially it's not until tomorrow, but we celebrated today. We actually started last night with dinner, where we met Heidi and Ray and they insisted on paying. Nice generous friends :-). We came home relatively early to a houseful, as Kelsey had another of her 4 person sleepovers again yesterday.

This morning we slept in way too late, and hit the grocery store which was positively PACKED! I guess everybody waited until the last minute to pick up their Super Bowl snacks and the lines were actually down the aisles. Crazy!

I spent most of the day yesterday cooking chimichangas for Kelsey's sleepover and making Jason's birthday treat which was a turtle cheescake. Today I spent more time cooking, making ribs, cornbread, fried potatoes and peas for dinner. The turtle cheesecake was absolutely fantastic, and I am making him take the rest of it to work tomorrow so I'm not tempted to eat the rest of it by myself. I had purchased Kelsey a piece of chocolate cake since she doesn't like cheesecake, but Trixie helped herself to most of it while we were getting the rest of the plates and coffee ready. She's such a bad dog.

Then we went down to the U Village to the bookstore and Jason got to pick himself up a new book for his birthday present. Back home in time to see the Steelers win the Super Bowl and then a new episode of The Office. All in all, a pretty good day.

Earthquake!

2009-01-30T14:48:00.000-08:00

This morning, we experienced our first earthquake (and by we, I mean our little family, not Seattle in general). It turned out to be just a very small 4.6 one and the epicenter was a bit north of here. I woke up with the bed shaking..just a little bit but enough to notice. I was half asleep, and I thought it was from Zac, that maybe he was kicking the bedpost while scratching or something. Then I went back to sleep and didn't even remember it. I read about the earthquake this morning on the Seattle Times news site, and thought wow we didn't feel it here.

Then Kelsey came home from school and asked if I felt the earthquake this morning. I said no, and she said it woke her up and her bed was shaking. Then I remembered that my bed was shaking too! So yes, I did feel the earthquake! No damage, no lasting effects, but definitely felt by at least me and Kelsey. Jason slept through it, and I haven't talked to Megan to see if she felt it or not.

So we've lived through our first earthquake. I hope it's the last :-)

Tales from the bus

2009-01-23T17:35:00.001-08:00

I've been riding the bus a little more often recently because Jason has been working late. The bus home isn't too bad, it takes about 30 minutes, and since I get a bus pass from the hospital it is also free. When I take the bus, I really try to get the 73 instead of the 71. They're almost at the same stop except the 73 stops at the underground tunnel at 6:42 and the 71 stops at street level at 6:47. The 71 however makes a lot more stops on the way home and for some reason is usually filled withmuch louder and rowdier passengers.

I've been managing to skip out of work around 6:20 so that I can get to the tunnel in time to grab the 73. The bus stop is 2 blocks over and then 8 blocks down from the hospital. And I mean down. It is a fairly steep downhill grade on James St. and I wind up almost trotting the last couple of blocks because of it. On Wednesday though I didn't leave until amost 6:30 and I was pretty resigned to taking the 71 but somehow decided to run and try to get the 73 if I could. I ran almost the entire way to the tunnel, and ran down the 4 flights of stairs and got to the bus stop exactly as the same time as the bus. One more light on the way and I definitely would not have made it.

This was an interesting ride home because I learned of a new phenomenon taking place when the bus is crowded. And this one was very crowded for some reason tonight. Apparently it is now alright to enter a crowded bus and start bleating "Seat please, seat please" until somebody stands up and lets you sit down. I witnessed this with no less than 3 people in the space of 2 blocks. And it worked for each one of them, even more surprising. The first one I could understand, she was older and definitely in need of a seat since she could barely walk. The next guy was "special" if you catch my drift, so he got a seat. The third guy was maybe 50, but looked pretty spry and healthy to me, but he got a seat too, right next to me. Hey....my feet hurt and I just ran 8 blocks and I wasn't about to get up. I still don't think I would have been able to chase someone else away from their seat if I was the one that had to stand.

The "special" guy sat down across from me and immediately pulled two small green rubber balls from his pocket which he then proceeded to sniff repeatedly the entire way home. He would bring one of the balls up to his nose and just move it back and forth while he sniff, sniff, sniffed at it. Then he would switch hands and sniff at the other one for awhile. He was still sniffing when I got off the bus at my house.

Oh, and the other interesting thing which I don't remember happening before is that when the bus is that crowded, the driver just opens the back door as well as the front door, and if you use the back door, you don't have to pay. I wonder how many free rides the metro service is giving out each day because of that plan.

Clickety-Click

2009-01-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

So it occurred to me today, well into January and the second quarter of my clinical rotation, that I think things have finally really clicked for me when scanning. These past couple of days I've been rocking the transducer and really starting to feel confident in what I'm doing. I will admit, sometimes during an OB exam, I still feel like I just "lucked into" a good shot of something, but more and more I'm really getting them on purpose. I did 7 sets of kidneys today, and I'll tell ya...by the last one, I was almost on autopilot with the images.

The most challenging to me are still the 1-2 year olds. They sure are squirmy, and I'm chasing them all over the exam table to get the shot I need. We bought a TV/DVD monitor for the young ones and sometimes Barney will get them to settle down but usually they're more interested in what I'm doing and they keep trying to grab the transducer from me. So I still have to work on that, and I still have to work on my trans-vaginal images, but I'm feeling pretty good about everything else. I hope I didn't just jinx myself.

Happy (5 days after) New Year!

2009-01-05T21:41:00.001-08:00

Whoa...you'd think with all the free time we had over this Christmas/New Year holiday that I would have posted a lot more. I have been remiss. And by free time, belive me, I mean free time. First, since we did not go back East this year, we had an abundance of couch sitting opportunity which was only compounded by the snow that literally shut down our city. Oh, it snowed...and snowed...and then snowed some more. The likes of which natives say hasn't happened for decades. And Seattle being "green" and all, the mayor chose to plow only main roads with some kind of rubber scraper thing while putting down some sand, creating some hardpack icy nightmare. No nasty salt for us! And real plows hurt the road!

We did venture out for a lovely Christmas Eve dinner at Six Seven, which is downtown right on the water. It was nice, we all dressed up and pretended we were at the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh. It didn't quite measure up, but it was nice to have a special dinner on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day was very quiet, and I don't think I actually even changed out of my pajamas all day. We got up and opened gifts while we drank mimosas, then we played some games, and then we had Christmas dinner early afternoon. We had invited Darci and Simon over for dinner but they, like most Seattleites, chose to stay indoors and off the roads until the white stuff was all gone.

Pajamas were the order of the day, as we may have bathed, but only to put on fresh PJs for the next few days. Saturday night Jason and I went out to the movies to see Gran Torino, then met up with Darci and Simon afterwards. We wound up at a country bar by Greenlake, then after that closed we tried to get some Dick's hamburgers but we didn't make it to the window in time, and they put the closed sign right in front of us when we got to the front of the line. Bummer. So we headed to the grocery store and loaded up on oven baked snacks and then back to the house where I can't quite remember what we did. Darci and Simon stayed overnight and the next morning we watched a lot of trash TV.

Monday was back to work for Jay and me. He only had to work Monday and Tuesday, but went in on Wednesday just to drive me (how sweet). New Year's Eve was incredibly quiet. Megan was out with friends, Kelsey went to the Space Needle for the fireworks, and we stayed home with the beagles. Of course, I fell asleep at about 8 and woke up at 11:15 in time for the celebration. Kelsey got home shortly afterwards with her friends. They decided they were bored downtown and came home to watch the fireworks on TV and drink sparkling apple cider. We had some champagne at midnight, gawked at what's become of Dick Clark and went to bed.

And so ended our Christmas in Seattle. The tree is down, everyone is back to work and back to school, it snowed again last night, and we're ready now for the summer. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday!

Candy Cane Tree

2008-12-20T16:52:00.000-08:00

Last night Jay and I were walking to Safeway to get a few things to tide us over for the weekend (since we're getting a big storm tonight!). We were about a block from the house when we passed somebody's tree in their front yard that had candy canes hanging all over the bare branches. Among the candy canes was a small laminated sign that said Help Yourself to 1 or 2! You know, that little gesture really made me feel good. It was just so nice to be walking in the dark and the snow and come across a Candy Cane Tree, ripe for the picking. We did indeed help ourselves to a cane apiece. The girls also took advantage while walking to the store this afternoon.

The snow is really coming down here now. They actually forecasted about 8 inches of snow tonight here in Seattle. If 2 inches was enough to make this city crazy, I cannot imagine what 8 inches will do to it. With a well stocked fridge and freezer, and a stack of dry firewood next to the fireplace - we my friends, are in for the duration. Wish us luck!

Winter in Seattle

2008-12-19T18:22:00.000-08:00

Oh the joys of snow in the city.

And I should clarify...this happened this afternoon after about a 2 inch drop of snow on the city streets. Unfortunately, due to no salting and little plowing and dropping temps, most of that snow is now ice on the steep and narrow city roads. There were two charter busses that tried to detour around a closed road, wound up careening down an icy patch and almost flying through the guardrail onto I-5 below. Luckily, nobody was hurt. The passengers all escaped out a back window and the busses are still hanging over the highway tonight while workers try to pull them back.

Curry Potato Soup

2008-12-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

It's a rainy icky day here in Seattle. Jason is home sick and I'm still in pajamas at 1:00. Perfect day for some homemade soup.

I usually just make noodle soup when I make soup. Today I tried something different, it was totally yummy, and I'm in the mood to share. Enjoy!

3 tblsp butter
1 - 1.5 cups onion, diced into little pieces
1 tblsp mild curry powder
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 - 4 cups potatoes, peeled and diced into small pieces (I used about 6 small potatoes)
1.5 tsp kosher salt
14 oz can chicken broth
1 cup water
2.5 cups milk *
Optional: Hot curry powder or ground cayenne pepper, sprinkle of garam masala

Melt the butter over medium high heat in a large saucepan. Add curry powder and onions and saute until onions are soft. Add garlic and saute until soft. Then add potatoes, salt, a sprinkle of garam masala if you want, chicken broth, and water. Heat to boiling, turn down heat, cover and cook until potatoes are very tender. There should be little liquid left when the potatoes are cooked. Mash the potatoes (I used just a hand held potato masher and got a mostly smooth consistency, but if you absolutely can't stand lumps, use a mixer or puree in blender). Stir in milk, and add hot spices if you want some kick to the soup. Heat through until it just starts to bubble, remove from heat and serve.

* NOTE: I had some heavy cream so I used half a cup of that and then 2 cups of 2% milk.

This makes about 4 good sized servings of a rich potato soup with a hint of Indian flavor. Adjust the curry to your own tastebuds. We found a tablespoon to be a very mild curry flavor, and we added a little less than 1/4 tsp hot curry powder for a hint of heat. We also sprinkled bacon bits on top because everything is better with bacon.

Only how many more shopping days??

2008-12-10T23:38:00.000-08:00

Schnikes, where did the days go? I don't know about your neck of the woods but the malls here are packed, economy recession be damned. Just the thought of having to go out and maneuver through the crowds makes me feel anxious. Oh, how I love the online. But even my beloved interwebs tell me that I only have XXX more days! Hurry!

Actually, I am almost done. I do plan on going out this weekend to finish up, but with small exceptions most of my stuff is in the mail or about to be. Just a few more tidbits to get done. I just hope I can get it all done by Sunday.

Today I had to do a presentation to the other sonographers at work, and the Seattle U student had to do some as well. She did so much better than me, but I don't really mind that much because they're not graded and I'm just glad to get it over with. I did my first pair of testicles yesterday! Wow..they were kinda just like the thyroid. Um, not. They all lied to me. But at least the first is done and now I won't be so nervous.

Also working on perfecting the TV exam this week. No, not television, for I would ace that. I'm talking the Transvaginal pelvic exam. Today when I did the first one on my own, I held the transducer upside down. No wonder the uterus looked backwards! The second one went much better :-)

Good to know you're not alone

2008-12-08T02:44:00.000-08:00

Friday was the first CCD (Clinical Consortium Day) since we started clinical studies, and the first time I've had to reconnect with my classmates. It was so good to see everyone and to hear the stories they had from their clinical assigments. Some people are just flying by and some are struggling, and everyone could relate to the horror stories that each of us told. It was so good to see everyone again, I missed them all a lot. We met at 6:30 for breakfast and talking because we knew we wouldn't have that much time during the actual program to chat.

Friday night we had ice cream cake and pizza and Kelsey had some friends over to celebrate her 17th birthday. She opened presents that night and then on Saturday night we went to the Melting Pot, as per her request. We took Ayla and Chloe with us as well, and had a great time. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I would have liked because I woke up Saturday with a wicked headache that actually made me vomit a couple of times in the morning, and then kept me in bed until after 2:00 that afternoon. I was still fighting it off this morning but if did finally go away mid-morning.

Just in time for us to take a walk down to the fruit stand and pick up our Christmas tree. I think it's a perfect size and the girls decorated it quite nicely while Jay and I were at the grocery store. After we got all the stuff put away, we went out front to string lights around the front trees. It all looks very pretty, and is the first year we have had a tree since the first year we moved to Seattle. We'll miss everybody at Christmas, but I am looking forward to a quiet relaxing Christmas this year instead of the traveling we usually do.

I'm off tomorrow and I have to bake cookies for a cookie exchange at work on Tuesday, and I have to finish some presentations I have to make on Wednesday, and I also have to go to the post office and send some stuff that we sold on Amazon, and here it's almost 3:00 am and I'm not the least bit tired..and I'm quite afraid I'll sleep the day away tomorrow and not get anything done that I wanted to do. So I should probably try to go to sleep now that I've updated :-)

Thanksgiving and stuff

2008-12-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

Lovely Thanksgiving meal. 6 pm, Turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, carrots, broccoli casserole, rolls, stuffing (2 kinds!), gravy, cranberry sauce (2 kinds!), pumpkin pie, apple pie, dessert cheese, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, and much wine. Followed by Rock Band (1 & 2!), Scene It, and Left 4 Dead. No poker, but close :-)

We ate Thanksgiving dinner until Sunday.

It was nice having 5 days off last week, and hard to go back to work on Monday. This week has been pretty good so far though. I did about 5 baby heads almost all the way through on Monday, and today I did a renal and an OB complete exam all by myself, and my CI said I did a really good job. I'm feeling pretty good about scanning these days. My BCC instructor is meeting with my CI next week, and hopefully that will go well.

Megan is anxiously awaiting Friday when her school is done for the quarter, and then she has off almost a whole month! Kelsey is anxiously awaiting her 17th birthday, and dinner at the Melting Pot followed by a sleepover. I'm anxiously awaiting Friday and CCD day at school when I get to see all my classmates for the first time since we split up in September. Jason is anxiously awaiting the return of his XBox, which should be home from the XBox hospital tomorrow.

I made the girls reservations to go back to Harrisburg over Spring Break. They will get to fly right into Harrisburg this time, instead of having to go to Baltimore or Philadelphia, so that's a definite plus. The flights are pretty sucky though, but maybe they'll have a schedule change before then.

Happy Birthday Brittini!

Now I know why the bread is always missing

2008-11-26T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Closest I Ever Want To Be

2008-11-22T23:18:00.000-08:00

Today Jason and Kelsey and I went to the Southcenter Mall to shop for shoes for Jason. We'd never been there before, and it's down near the airport so not close by, but a friend at work said it was pretty nice and had lots of stores, so we decided to try it out.

Jay bought his shoes, we went to Borders and got some books and about 3:00 we were kind of ready to go so we wandered out to the car and took off.

At 3:45, THIS happened.

Holy crap! Turns out the people that were in the mall were like detained and locked down for hours until they were able to leave, not to mention the running and chaos inside.

Thank you Kelsey for being bored and ready to leave, because if you weren't there, I so would have still been in the mall when the shooting happened. Even though it's not like a maniac was loose and shooting up strangers, it's still pretty scary to think about being in a situation like that. I think we'll stick to the malls closer to home from now on!

Sunday eatin'

2008-11-16T20:34:00.000-08:00

Since I've started clinicals, we find that we don't have the opportunity to eat together as a family like we're used to doing. We don't get home until 7 pm if Jay picks me up, and I don't get home until 7:30 if I have to take the bus. By that time, Megan is usually either at work or gone out, and Kelsey is about ready for bed.

So we decided that we would go out on Sundays as a family and have either breakfast, lunch or early dinner. We're not setting a time because that's too much pressure so we just let everybody get up when they want and get ready and then we head out. We're taking turns picking the restaurant, with the one rule being that it has to be someplace we have never been to before. That way we get to spend time together and we also get to try the many restaurants available in Seattle instead of eating at the same place over and over again.

Today was my turn, and I picked Lowell's restaurant, which is in Pike Place Market. They have three stories to choose from and the windows face the sound for a great view. Once we got there though, we wound up sitting on the opposite side, on the second story, which overlooked the market proper. It was actually pretty cool because we got to sit there and watch all the people shopping in the market below. I thought it would be a place that Mom would probably enjoy sitting at all day just to watch the comings and goings below us.

After we ate, we went grocery shopping, which is our other Sunday thing to do. I did great today, spending $70 at Albertsons but saving over $100! That was an awesome percentage, and included 15 pounds of boneless chicken breasts too. Then we went to Safeway and got the .27 per pound turkey for spending over $25, so I picked up a 20 pound bird for a little over $5. Albertson's also had this awesome sale where you buy one Sara Lee pie and you get a second pie and 2 quarts of Breyer's Ice Cream for free, so the turkey and the dessert is all taken care of for Thanksgiving :-) Now I just have to work on the side dishes, and we're all ready to feast!

Doctors for all

2008-11-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

Zac had to go to the vet today because he's been having some moving problems lately. He won't walk up the stairs, he makes us carry him. He won't jump on the couch, but instead kind of pulls himself up with his front legs. When we take him for a walk he both cries and runs at the same time. Kind of pathetic. So I took him in today and he had a physical and some x-rays and they found....nothing. His spine looks great, he's at a good weight, finally. He's actually down to 38.5 pounds, and that's from 54 his last time at the vet, and 62 pounds from when we left PA. He even weighs less now than when we first got him! But the vet says he's at a good weight for his size, and he actually took some "human" years off. He's classified as an adult, and about 51 based on size and age. But anyway, nothing wrong and the vet gave me some muscle relaxers for him to take just in case it's some kind of muscle spasm that's causing him discomfort. I'm relieved it wasn't anything serious but at the same time a little upset that we came away with no answers.

Megan spent some time at the doctor today too. She already had an appointment for a cough she can't get rid of, but before her appointment she fell down the stairs at school and seriously hurt her arm. She went in for x-rays and may have a tiny fracture, so her arm is all wrapped up and her back is all scraped up and bruised, and she's feeling pretty sore.

The rest of my day was my ChaCha day. I usually work the ChaCha thang on Fridays since I don't have to go into the hospital and can pretty much spend all day on the computer. Generally I answer over 300 questions on Fridays and that's with lots of breaks. But today was bad, and I only got in about 150.

Seems like they've initiated a 20 question limit on their users, and it seems to have slowed down the questions considerably. But there were also lots of technical issues with their servers today and I'm hoping it was the technical issues that caused the slowness because that can be fixed. If the traffic is slowed because of the question limit, that doesn't bode well for my future income potential :-(. Oh well. I still made over $480 so far for the last three weeks, and that will at least pay for Zac's vet appointment today!

Sea Change

2008-11-04T19:42:00.001-08:00

The word of the day. Election night, and it's looking blue - Obama blue! The whole family here in Washington has been glued to the results coverage. Except for the CNN coverage and the beaming of the holograms and stuff...WTH? Thank god that 8 years of Bush is almost over, and we're looking to make history. It's almost exciting enough to make a girl want to blog!

So, it's been a while. Needless to say I've been super busy and have neglected my blogging duties. I'll try to be better in the future, but clinicals kind of wipe me out. I've been struggling in the real life scanning arena, but I think I'm turning a corner. At least I feel better about it. I have a really hard site - supposedly with the highest standards of all the sites we use. The girl that was there last year, and graduated in August says that site on my resume will definitely be a plus. But it's tough, and I won't lie - there have been tears. I keep telling Jason to buck up, it'll be fine, but he's so emotional :-) Ha. In truth, Jay has been extremely supportive and even has let me practice my scanning on him after hours.

He's busy too, working on lots of deadlines. Also, Fallout 3 came out last week so that keeps him busy when he's not working. Looks like our XBox isn't up to snuff though and we have to do something to it to keep it from crashing all the time. In the meantime, he's borrowed one from work so he can keep playing. One of the benefits of working for a game company.

Megan is working hard, and doing well in school still. She has a new boyfriend who seems like a really nice guy. They cohosted a Halloween party at his house last weekend. She went as Little Red Riding Hood and looked really cute.

Kelsey had her own little Halloween party with three friends, who all slept over and watched scary movies and ate junk and fed the 6 trick-or-treaters that we got this year. Jay and I went to dinner with Simon and Darci and then to see Zack and Miri at the movies so we would stay out of the way of Kelsey's moviethon.

Oh, and our wine and cheese party was totally awesome and we had a great time. We had plenty of wine, plenty of cheese, lots of good food and a nice little group of guests. It was tons o' fun and we got lots of great compliments on it. But now we've settled in to the start of a Seattle winter, a little cold, a bit wet, and early dark. I should have plenty more time to blog now, though, right?

I'm with Stupid

2008-10-09T22:39:00.001-07:00

Officially the end of the 4th week of my internship and I feel dumber every day. Every single person is different than the last, so it's like getting totally reoriented to something new every hour. The only thing I think I have down pat are the procedures, the paracentesis in particular because we do a lot of them. That's the only thing that I can actually scan by myself because it's just 5 or 6 pictures.

Even today, I scanned a patient to rule out ascites, and I had to scan the patient's bladder. I see this round thing in the middle of the bladder and I'm thinking "holy cow, this guy has a big cyst!" I'm wondering if I should measure it, when my CI comes in and says that's a foley catheter. Duh.

I think I'm getting just a teensy bit better though - I'm certainly scanning a lot more each day. They let me start the exams on my own now, and then they come in after about 10 minutes to finish up. The good thing is they can watch me on the monitors so if I'm really struggling they can come in right away.

So, tonight Jay and I were watching House Hunters because we not only enjoy the show, but tonight's was about Seattle so we were anxious to see what neighborhoods they showed. At the very end of the show the couple who bought the house were having a party and announced they were pregnant, and then the camera shows all of their friends who were there celebrating....and holy crap! It was Darci! A quick stop, rewind, pause...and there she was, no mistaking it. So of course we had to call her right away to tell her we saw her on TV. She's like..oh yeah! House Hunters! She wanted to know if she looked fat :-)

That was cool...a totally unexpected sighting of someone you know on your TV. How often does that happen?

Unexpected Moolah

2008-10-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

So last Friday I was fooling around on Amazon Marketplace, kind of wondering how it worked and what the fees were and stuff for selling books. I put in one of my old textbooks and set up my account and did all the stuff they wanted me to do, but for some reason the credit card I chose to pay the Amazon fees was an old one. It didn't work and they popped up a message saying I needed a valid credit card. Since my wallet was ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM, I just exited out of it and totally forgot about it.

Until today, when I got an email saying my book had sold. Hmmmm....okay. So I get $50 after Amazon's totally unreasonable fees and after I put in a valid credit card to pay said fees. Still, more than I paid for it so yay. Maybe all those failing banks and mortgage companies should start going through their office and selling stuff. Oh yeah...they're selling themselves.

Hawaii already?

2008-09-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend was taken up by two things for me, and by two things for Jason. For both of us it was Book Sale time again so me, Jay, Kelsey and Ayla worked the Saturday 9-1 shift and Kelsey and Ayla worked again today 11 - 4. This was my first time working strictly as a volunteer and not in charge of the volunteers, so it was fun for me...all I had to do was count books. The hours flew by since when I got my first customer about 20 minutes after the doors opened, I never stopped until I left at 1:00. Jason did his usual bulk counting job (once you do something one time, you really get pigeon-holed at the Book Sale), and moving boxes when there wasn't bulk counting to be done. Kelsey and Ayla counted today, but yesterday spent their time directing the line to the proper check out person.

After the sale, Kelsey's friend Chloe came over to work on their Physics project, and this is where Jason spent the rest of his time. I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to accomplish - I thought they were supposed to make a clock but not use any electricity or batteries to do so. But what they wound up with was some type of water wheel doohickey that pushes a wheel with spokes made of halves of credit cards. The water turns the wheel and then after that, I don't know what it does.

We tried to contact Jonathan for advice yesterday, but he was busy swimming and hiking and biking and generally being much more active than anyone has a right to be on the weekend.

I spent the rest of my weekend working on finding accomodations in Kauai for 16 - 18 people over the course of two weeks next August. Yeah, it's early. But I'm not one for last minute stuff if I can help it, plus I needed to jump on the award tickets through Alaska Air. Hours and hours of searching through rental web pages and craigslist and TripAdvisor and I came up with an awesome house that's fairly close to the beach and has a pool and tons of space for everyone. So I booked it today and now we're all set on housing. I think I'll stop the planning for a while, because frankly it's making me not quite as excited to go anymore :-) Kidding, still excited. Just a little sick of it right now.

Kelsey hits the college fair downtown tomorrow. She likes to prepare early too, bless her little ready for college heart. I'm awfully excited for her, and for Megan to start at UW as a junior hopefully next fall.

Tonight - The Amazing Race!

Good Karma

2008-09-21T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today I was reading about an organization called Modest Needs. This organization takes requests or petitions from people who needs just a little hand up...not huge amounts, but maybe a utility bill paid or a month's rent or new tires for the car or something that they just can't cover. The Modest Needs organization does vetting on each request to make sure it's legit, and then they post it to their website.

When you donate to Modest Needs, you can pick where you'd like your money to go. You get "points" for your donation amount, and you can allocate those points to one or multiple requests. Most of these people are living below poverty level and are one step away from losing their job or their house or their car, and are looking for just a small bridge to get them over the hump.

Anyway, we think it's an awesome organization and we like the idea that our money goes directly to the creditor the person owes, so we know the money is going directly the cause we think it is. You can do a one time donation online, or you can send a check, or you can even sign up for a monthly pledge like we did, and that way they double your points with a matching funds grant - so your money goes twice as far!

I'm particularly impressed with this organization because I know several people who have been in this situation, where they just need a little help until their next paycheck kicks in or until their new job starts. And sometimes just a little help is all that is needed to get somebody back on track for good. So dheck them out - maybe you know somebody who could use this organization, or maybe you might want to make a small donation yourself. Everyone can use some good karma!

First Day is Done

2008-09-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

My first clinical day is officially over and I can stop being nervous. Actually, I think it went really well. I worked with a girl named Leigh who was a real sweetheart and the day was not overwhelming - we only had 5 or 6 exams scheduled, I forget exactly how many. It seemed to go rather smoothly with no big problems coming up. The rest of the girls seem nice and we got to talk a little at the end of the day since the last patient went home by 5:30 and most people were working until 6:30.

I got up early and made dinner in the crockpot for Kelsey and Megan, then Jay and I drove in together which worked out great. I got in at 7:45 so lots of time to spare. I get $6 a day in the cafeteria so I don't have to worry about packing my lunch. Picked up almost right at 6:30 and with the light traffic on the way home we were back by like 6:45.

I saw a couple of renal exams today and also 3 or 4 OB exams at varying stages including some transvaginal exams which were interesting since they were my first. I won't get to scan this week but should be able to scan some kidneys next week. I'm going to read up on the protocol for that but it seems pretty straight forward. The setup at the hospital is pretty cool, and more high tech than where I job shadowed. Where the old place used to record exams on VCRs and take pictures which they would then show the radiologists, at Swedish everything is digital and real time. Images are saved automatically with the patients file, and the radiologists suite has a bank of monitors where they can watch each exam as it is occurring. When the sonographer goes over the exam with the radiologist when it's over, they have two big monitors there will all the exam pictures on them which they can just page through and zoom in on things and really get a good feel for the exam. That's just so cool and so much better than VCR and pictures! There are 6 exam rooms and they use 2 types of machines, neither of which I have used before but I got to practice on both of them a little bit today to get used to where the controls are before I actually start scanning.

I'm just glad the first day is over! Only a year to go!

Unexpected Free Things

2008-09-13T22:21:00.001-07:00

The neighbors across the street were having a yard sale today. Of course, I'm nosey and I see a bunch of people in the driveway so I wandered over to see what goodies they have.

Nothing much caught my eye except for a string of lights with cool little tin shades. I think, "that'll look great on the porch, very festive." So I buy all three of them and take my treasure home. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, one of the strings is missing 3 of the little tins so I took it back over to get my money back on that one. While I'm there, Jay joins me unexpectedly....no doubt to see what kind of crap I'm bringing home this time. Turns out we get into quite a conversation with the two neighbors Wayne and Richard because Richard is from right outside Pittsburgh and we all start talking about "back East" and then about all the other neighbors and the houses and whose house looks good and whose house looks like crap and what happened to that old lady across the street and do the busses make our house shake too? They were super nice, and then it turns out that Wayne sells custom made honeycomb cellular blinds and he has a whole bunch of them that people changed their mind on, so he says whatever we want we can just take. We took two small ones for the side windows in the living room, a bigger one for the other side of the living room and one for the skylight in the upstairs loft.

These blinds are awesome! At the MINIMUM it would have cost us over $50 each just for the small ones. And not only does he give them to us for free, but he came over to install them too!

We put the lights up on the porch and it looks great. We're having a small wine and cheese tasting party next month and the porch will be a nice place to hang out for the smokers, especially once I put a bunch of candles out there.

Lights on the porch. We continue to become Seattle.

The pictures give some idea of what it looks like, but it's not the greatest. Pay no attention to the dead flowers.

The Littlest Weiler

2008-09-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Aidan Nicholas Weiler has appeared. Weighing in at 6 lbs 15 oz and 19 inches long according to his dad. What a cutie! Apparently a long labor, so way to go Susan. The Weiler testosterone fest lives on...much to my surprise because I was almost 100% sure Susan was carrying a girl. I guess I need more practice reading those ultrasounds :-)

Anyway, congratulations Susan and John and we cannot WAIT to meet him!

Shots and Shots

2008-09-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

I thought I was all done with vaccinations, but apparently not. I had to prove MMR vaccinations and all I could get was one from UW that showed a positive titer for mumps from 2005. I have no idea why they didn't test for Measles and Rubella, but no such luck. So I went to my doctor before NZ and got a titer for the three all over again.

Turns out when I get the results that I tested positive for the antibodies for Measles and Rubella, but NOT Mumps. I got an "equivocal" reading, which means I may or may not have the antibody, but the results were too low to say for sure. So now I have to go get the whole bloody series done. Which will interfere with my TB testing too, because I have to wait for 30 days after my second MMR to get the second TB test, and I have to wait for 30 days after the first MMR to get the second MMR, which means the second TB test won't happen for 60 days.

Fortunately, this doesn't mean I can't start on the 15th. I have to have the 1st TB by then (done, got it yesterday) and I have to have the 1st MMR by then, which I scheduled for tomorrow. As long as I remember to follow up with the second MMR and then the second TB, I can still do the internship at Swedish. Cripes. I feel kind of caught off guard by all of this, since I turned all my stuff into the school LAST September, and they never told me I might have a problem with any of this. I assumed I had all the immunization records I would need.

Moral of the story (especially for those with young children), keep those immunization records somewhere safe forever! It's a royal pain to have to prove that you've had them and then have to re-do all this stuff later if needed.

Thank goodness I can still start though. I don't know what I would have done if they would have said I couldn't start until 30 or 50 days!

Kelsey's first day was yesterday and she seemed to do pretty well....at least she didn't complain too much about the classes or the teachers. It's too bad they have to be in school this week when it's so very nice outside. Megan starts in a few weeks, but she's busy with work and stuff right now. Looks like she might get a promotion at work to second shift supervisor, which would be pretty cool with a nice raise. She's a little worried about the classes she has coming up because they look pretty intense, but I have no doubt she'll be able to handle it just fine. By the way, Megan would like to remind everyone that she is updating her blog fairly regularly, so drop by and find out what she's writing about!

Susan is in labor, so we're all anxiously awaiting word about the newest Weiler. Hopefully it will be soon!

We're finally home

2008-08-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

Wow what a long day back. We took a 767 this time instead of a 747 and you can really tell the difference. There was zero leg room between seats, and sleeping was nigh impossible. Then customs in LA, and a 4 hour wait for our next flight to Seattle. How great it is to be home! We had a great trip, and we have lots of fantastic memories, but it's so nice to be back with the girls and the dogs and have coffee again!

I'm working on getting all of our pics into a Picasa web album, but here are some of our favorites, in no particular order -

Caving in Waitomo

The rolling hills of the Hobbiton sheep farm

60 million sheep - no, I'm not making that up

The Hangi with Jonathan as our chief

Tangariro National Park and "Mt. Doom"

The scenery all over the place

And Pippa!

Black Water Rafting and Home

2008-08-30T12:44:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was our Black Water Rafting trip through Waitomo Caves. This was probably the most adventurous thing yet, and getting into a wetsuit was every bit as humiliating as I had imagined it would be.

Waitomo Caves is about an hour southeast of Hamilton. The day started out gray and drizzly, so it was perfect that we had planned an indoor and underground activity for the day. After dropping off Pippa at the neighbors we headed out for Waitomo.

We got there with plenty of time to spare - we had booked the 11 am trip and we arrived shortly after 10. We signed some waiver forms and waited with the rest of the 8 people in our group. Turns out it was good we booked early because they had 5 people that were on the waitlist for this trip. So after everyone was together, the guides took us down to the changing rooms and explained how to get into the wetsuits. When we were all suited up (don't worry, pics are coming), we hopped in a van and rode to the caving site. Here we had a quick lesson in using the rope for our abseil descent into the caves, then it was right to it. First was the abseil, where we used the rope to descend about 100 feet into the cave. We had to squeeze through a kind of tight space right in the middle, but it didn't last long and I got through just fine.

When we got to the bottom we walked for a bit until we got to the flying fox, which was like a zipline except in the pitch dark. That was fun. Then we got our harnesses removed and were given an inner tube which we had to hold onto our butt and jump into the river below. Even though Megan and Kelsey didn't think I'd be able to do that without the tube escaping, I managed quite well. The surprising bit to me was that we went under water when we jumped from the pressure of the drop, and DAMN that water was COLD! Here's someone jumping, and I think it might be Jonathan:

Then we used a rope line to move ourselves through the water and we had various times of swimming, walking, tubing, going down waterfalls, walking up waterfalls and general caving stuff. When we came out we had hot showers, tomato soup and bagels. All in all, we were done in about 5 hours total, about 3 of which we had spent underground. It was lots of fun and a very memorable experience.

We got home last night tired and hungry so we went to Valentine's for our last dinner here...which was not our first choice. We were going to go to this restaurant called Hydro which was recommended in the guidebooks and was said to get very busy Saturday nights. However when we showed up at the ungodly hour of 6:45 pm, the restaurant was closed. It's tough to eat out in Hamilton, choices seem mostly fast food like KFC or McDonalds or other local Takeaway places, but actual sit down restaurants are few. So when we spotted Valentines, open and actually full, we jumped. Turns out it's a pricey buffet restaurant with mediocre food but plenty of it. Although normally they only do two seatings a night, like a cruise, they let us squeeze in the first seating that was halfway over. The only downside to this was that they don't apparently replenish dishes until the next seating so we missed out on some stuff :-)

Today we're up early and heading to Auckland to bum around before our flight. We've had a lovely time and New Zealand is every bit as scenic and beaufiful as promised. The people we've met have been friendly and wonderful to talk to, and it's been great seeing Jonathan. Jay and I are both ready to get home though I think and see the girls and the beagles and our own lovely city for the last of the summer. I'll post lots of pics when we get home, but it takes so long here just to upload one that you're lucky you got that one! Next post from the states.

Tongariro National Park, Hobbiton, and Rotorua

2008-08-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

Wednesday we got up bright and early to make the 3 hour drive to Tongariro National Park. This is supposed to be the best one day trek in New Zealand and in the top 10 of the world. Unfortunately, it's winter here, and the one day trek across the mountain turns into more than one day, and suddenly you need all manner of special equipment and a guide and everything, so we did not do that.

Instead, we opted for the one trail that was open - a 2 hour trek to Tanaki Falls and back. Of course, I'm sick now with Jason's cold, so this was going to be rough going, but we put on our winter gear (yay Sorel boots) and off we went. Turns out that the day was absolutely gorgeous, so within 10 minutes I had divested myself of hat, scarf, gloves, and fleece jacket. I pushed ahead of Jonathan and Jason since they were actually enjoying the view and taking pictures while I just wanted to finish. Jason has taken more than 1400 pictures so far! We have to edit, but the scenery here is just so beautiful that it's hard to know what to stop taking pictures of!

Anyway, we had a great day hiking on the mountains over the snow and slush covered trails, and got back after dark to Pippa and thankfully bed (for me anyway) where I tossed and turned all night trying to breath.

This morning we got up early again to start out for Rotorua. On the way we did the Hobbiton Movieset tour. This is the only place left in New Zealand where any of the Lord of the Rings sets still exist. There are 17 of the original 34 Hobbit holes still there, including Bilbo's house, Bag End. The farm that they filmed this on is breathtaking. There is literally nothing around it except rolling hills and valleys and streams and sheep and it looks like a painting from all directions. Another beautiful day too, with a blue sky and shining sun. The movie tour was fun and afterwards we watched a sheep shearing and then took off for Rotorua.

Here we went to the geothermal spa first, where I had a mudbath soak, then a sulphur spring soak, and then a massage while the boys toured the park and made wood carvings. Then we all went to a traditional Hangi concert and dinner by the Maori people (which is kind of like a Hawaiian luau) and that was really fun. They needed one of the tourists to act as the Chief of our "tribe" and that person was Jonathan! So we got the benefit of being the chieftan's family, and we got front row seats to the show to watch Jonathan accept the peace offering from the tribal warriors and then he gave a speech. It was pretty awesome and we all had a great time. Dinner was fantastic, having all been cooked underground in a steaming pit for about 5 hours.

Now we're at the Cactus Jack Backpackers for the night....our first time in a hostel type place. (That's hostel as in youth, not hostile as in takeover). Tomorrow we're gong to try to go to Taupo and kayak through the Maori carvings on the lake. It should be another awesome day. I hope I can breathe a little better by then.

More later, with pictures probably not until we get home. Internet is tough here in En Zed.

Greetings from Waikato University

2008-08-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, we're in New Zealand. I'll update everybody on the events so far.

Our trip to LA was pretty uneventful, and was in fact one of the smoothest flights I've ever taken. Huzzah for Alaska Airlines. We arrived right on time in LAX and began to seek out the International Terminal.

What a process that was. When we got off the plane in LA, there was absolutely not one sign that pointed the way to the International Terminal and we had to ask no less than 3 people how to get there. Eventually found our way to a parking garage where we had to go down to level 3 and then make our way to this cross walk that was kind of tied in with the parking arms to get into the terminal and still no great signage. Once in, we had to go through security again, but there was only like 2 people ahead of us so it went very quickly. The terminal itself was quite empty with only one small cafe open with premade sandwiches and salads, and one small magazine shop to be had. We spent a little over 3 hours there before boarding the gigantic 747-300 series for our 12 hour flight to Auckland.

We were in the way back, row 70 J&K, which was a two person row. The plane was only about 75% full, so as soon as the plane took off and the seatbelt sign was turned off, there was a mad dash for empty rows and prime laying down space. We weren't fast enough, so were stuck in our little two person seats. After a dinner of chicken cacciatore and salmon, we each watched a movie and then fitfully slept for the next 8-9 hours, had breakfast, and endured pretty horrible turbulance for our last hour into Auckland.

Where it was POURING. Like, really bad. So when Jonathan picked us up we went right away to indoor activities. Sky City for breakfast, and a really quick trip to the casino where I won $9! On to the aquarium, and then to the museum. On the way into the museum, Jason and I both had our umbrellas broken by a huge gust of wind that just snapped the things in half. Right inside the museum door was a large container filled with other broken umbrellas so we deposited ours there with the others.

We finished with the museum around 12:30 or so, and rode back to Hamilton to rest up at Jonathan's house. It took about 1.5 hours to get there, and we got a tour of the place, met Pippa the dog, and deposited our bags in the master bedroom. Rested a bit, and then Jonathan and Jason went to the grocery store and then to play soccer while I took a shower and hung out with Pippa at the house. Bed by 10, and a good night's sleep and we were ready to go the next morning.

Today we have spent all day at Waikato University, where Jonathan teaches. He had to be here to teach a lab for 3 hours today so Jay and I explored the university while Jonathan worked, then we all went to lunch at a little cafe nearby and came back so that Jason can help Jonathan work on a computer issue. I can see the twon of Hamilton from where I'm sitting now, tantalizingly close and yet too far to walk to. The skies are gray but it's actually not that cool out and at least it's not raining.

So that's it so far...we haven't seem much of the country except what we passed through to get from Auckland to Hamilton which was mostly full of sheep. Most of our activities will be scheduled for Wed - Sat, when Jonathan has off completely. I will post more later when we have some better pictures to go with it!

Off to Down Under

2008-08-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

We're off in about 3 hours. We fly to LAX and then we have a 3.5 hour layover there, then our big 12 hour flight to Auckland. We're in row 70 on the Qantas flight, which is a two person row so Jay will get the aisle and I'll get to snuggle up to the window where I hope to sleep for most of the flight.

Our bags are all packed, including one that's just chock full of Jonathan's stuff...10 cans of gatorade powder, 6 cannisters of Crystal Light, batteries and barbecue sauce. That bag will be nice and empty for the return trip! Then there's a second bag that's just full of winter stuff and a third gigantic bag with the rest of our clothes that will hopefully cover all manner of weather.

Jonathan will meet us outside customs at Auckland, or else he'll be in the McDonalds. Either way it will be freakin' early! We're sorry that he has to drive up to pick us up at 5 am, but if we have to be tired, so does he. Especially since he and Jason are scheduled to play soccer that very night, and nobody should have the advantage.

So we'll probably post more when we're actually IN New Zealand, which won't be until Sunday their time - which I think is Saturday for us, but I'm still confused about that whole thing.

Pictures and random things

2008-08-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

First some pictures from PA last week.

There are lots more I hope to get on the gallery soon. This week has mostly been spent so far in getting ready to leave again. On Monday I got my emmissions test done for the Mazda so I could register it, then I went to Swedish to turn in all my volunteer stuff. Turns out I didn't have my Measles or Rubella vaccination OR titer, so I am trying to get an appointment at the lab to get that done before I go. So far, no luck in getting a call back after TWO days!

I took care of paying all the bills that will be due while we're gone, put together the start of the trip journal with the information on all the stuff we want to do while we're there, and pulled out a bunch of winter clothes to pack. Jonathan said the Tongariro Crossing got snow last week, so we'll need some good boots and waterproof pants for that day. And no, we don't plan on trekking to the summit, just some good several hours walks around the national park there. I think anything that requires crampons and an ice axe is definitely out. I still have a bunch of gear from when I did the dogsledding trip so I think I'm well outfitted. Jay's taking mostly ski stuff but we'll pick stuff up there if we need it.

Other than that, we'll need swimwear for the black water caving tour and raincoats for the unpredictable showers...the weather doesn't look very cold for when we're there unless we go higher in elevation, mostly just like Seattle in the late fall and we're used to that.

Today I want to finish getting our stuff together and make sure we have the stuff that Jonathan requested we bring along. The girls are going to Oregon today for a Jack Johnson concert so they won't be back until late and I won't have to worry about making dinner so I can get a lot done today.

Last night was a total battle for Trixie - us versus fleas. She was overrun and miserable last night, so we sprayed her nether regions good with the flea spray and then we put the last bottle of flea-be-gone over her back and that just sent her insane. She wouldn't stop running around and rolling over on her back and rubbing herself on anything she could find, in addition to panting like crazy. We tried to go to bed but she just couldn't keep still and so at 12:30 I got up to bathe her, thnking that maybe the medication was irritating her skin. I soaked her good, lathered her up good, and let her sit like that for about 5 minutes while I paid special attention to her legs and feet. Finally rinsed her off, dried her good with a towel, and the difference was immediate. She went up under the bed and was asleep and quiet the rest of the night. She still looks good today, no sign of the fleas returning yet. Whew.

PA Trip

2008-08-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, it's been a while since I updated this. I'm finished with the first year of the program (yay!) and ready to start clinicals on September 15. I'll work 4 days a week, Mon-Thur for 10 hours each day, and it works out great because then Jay and I can drive in together and hopefully drive home together too.

Kelsey and I spent a week in Pennsylvania visiting my family. We kept fairly busy, with trips to Hersheypark, City Island, Memorial Lake, playgrounds, cookouts, shopping, and lots of relatives. We had a great time and got to see everyone, even my cousins Rob and Sue came down from New York, and Kirk and Krispy and family came in from Austin. It was fun but also good to get home again today. We caught a very early flight from Baltimore today, so we were up at 2:30 am to drive down there and I'm feeling pretty tired right now. The first thing I did when I got home was go grocery shopping :-)

I have a couple of days to unpack, do some laundry and repack the winter stuff for New Zealand. I had a moment of panic today when I thought about visas...I KNOW I checked and we didn't need them for New Zealand but for some reason I had this feeling that I read it wrong or something and that we wouldn't have enough time to get them....turns out we don't need them, and everything is cool. Jay said he checked last week too so we must be on the same wavelength about the trip :-). We have our Jonathan bag ready to go with all the stuff he wants from the states that is either too expensive or not available there.

I'll try to post pics tomorrow when I'm more awake. I think I'm probably good for another 45 minutes and then I'm asleep for sure.

Last week!

2008-08-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm going into the final week of school. I had my instrumentation final in lab on Wednesday and my advanced OB final last night. We have three more days of classes when we do Patient Care from 9 - 5 and than that's it! I met with my clinical instructor at Swedish Hospital on Wednesday afternooon. She seems pretty nice and the place seems really busy and overwhelming, but I know I'll start out slow so I'm not particular worried - okay well, just a little bit I guess.

Brianna is back home, safe and sound. We all had a good time while she was here. I don't have pictures to post yet, I'm hoping to get some from Megan because I know she took some. While she was here, we went downtown to the Space Needle and Seattle Center to the Bite of Seattle festival - an orgy of food, drink, and music where we all ate way too much. We also went to Pike Place Market and the waterfront, and introduced her to our favorite little donuts. We all went to the outdoor Cinema on the Lawn to see Bring It On, and that was a lot of fun, everybody there was really into it. They had a photo booth set up where you could dress like the cheerleaders from the movie and get your picture taken, so the girls all did that. Finally we went to a Storm game (they won, yay!) and Brianna really enjoyed that since she's so involved in basketball.

The rest of her visit was kind of lazy - it wasn't really all that warm the week she was here, so the girls just hung out at home watching One Tree Hill on DVD. But that was just as fun for them to just be with their cousin. All in all, a good trip I think and we were all sad to see her go back home.

Tomorrow we're going to drive down to Portland for the day. Kelsey and Ayla are going to a concert, so we're just going to make a day of it since we've never been there, take a look around, have some dinner, and come back after the concert is over. Hopefully it will be a nice day and a nice drive.

Clinical Site!

2008-07-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

Today Katherine gave us our first rotation clinical assignments. I got Swedish Medical Center at First Hill, which is exactly what I was hoping for :-) I wanted to do Swedish for my first rotation because it's one of the busiest imaging centers in the Northwest, so I will learn a LOT. Plus it's right downtown, and depending on what hours I have to be there, Jay and I might be able to carpool in and then I can take the bus home. How awesome is that?

I'm really nervous about starting clinicals, but really excited too. I'm mostly nervous because there will be such a big break this summer before we start on September 15, and I'm afraid I'll forget all I've learned in the month that I won't have held a transducer in my hand. But I am excited to actually get into the "work" environment even though I won't be getting paid :-). Katherine said we should be starting to scan a little bit by the end of the first week, and scanning through our own exams by the end of the Fall quarter. That seems so fast to me - I just hope I'll be ready.

The girls went to a concert last night and got home tired but having had a good time. Kelsey is downstairs resting right now while Megan is reading on the front porch. We bought tickets to go see the Storm (women's basketball) play while Brianna is here. We always like to go see them, it's a lot of fun and I think more fun than men's basketball. And since we won't have the Sonics anymore after this season, the Storm will be our only basketball choice anyway. Frankly, I'm much happier that it's the Sonics leaving and the Storm staying.

Going to start the turkey burgers for dinner. Later!

Finally summer

2008-07-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this blog while sitting on the front porch enjoying an absolutely gorgeous Sunday morning. We've finally hit summer here in Seattle, so each day is blue skies, sunshine, a cool breeze, and a temperate 80 degrees. As I heard someone say yesterday, summer in Seattle is my favorite week of the year.

We redid our porch yesterday. Since we don't really have the funds to landscape the backyard the way we would like, we decided to concentrate on the front of our house. So we got some outdoor rugs for the porch floor, some of those cool solar shades to pull down in the afternoon when the western view bakes us, a couple of new chairs and tables and some cushions and pillows and lots of flowers. I feel like a genteel old southern woman now when I sit out here. All I need is a mint julep. It's so pretty. We worked really hard from when we got up until around 9:30 when we finally got to shower and take the beagles for their promised walk. So today we're going to take it somewhat easy. I have some school work to finish and Jason is going to rig up something to attach our portable grill to the back porch, and we have some grocery shopping to do, but other than that it will be an easy day compared to yesterday. We may even take the beagles to the park if they're good :-)

Next Saturday Brianna is coming so this week I have to work on getting the spare room ready for her. We figured she'd probably sleep with Kelsey most of the time, but we want to have a place for her to get away for a little privacy if she needs it. The girls are so excited for her to get here, and we have all kinds of fun outings planned....outdoor movies at the Space Needle, Pike's Place market, Seattle Center, the dogpark, Greenlake where maybe we'll do some paddleboats, Golden Gardens park - which is the closest we have to a beach here - where hopefully we'll be lucky enough to grab one of the firepits and have a cookout on the beach. I think she'll have lots of fun the 10 days she's here, and we're all looking forward to it.

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

Oh my...has it really been almost two weeks since an update? And with so much going on too.

Let's see...I'll just start with random things.

Megan had a baseball fly into her windshield while driving past Greenlake this past Monday. Luckily it didn't come through and she handled it like a champ with no other damages due to her flying off the road in shock. Luckily the Little League coach came out right away and they're going to pay the deductible ($250) and insurance will cover the rest. All Star Auto Glass was already at the house on Tuesday and fixed it right up. Megan is such a magnet for that kind of weird stuff.

I've started my last quarter, and had my first test tonight which went well. It's hard to believe I only have 5 weeks to go, and then I get to actually go and scan on real people. How scary. My carpool friend has volunteered her husband's scrotum for the whole class to practice on. We'll be doing that on Wednesday. It's very kind of him to offer himself up like that, because without him we'd have no practice on testicular scanning, which is apparently something we'll be doing a lot of in the hospital.

Jason and I took a quick ride to Snoqualmie Falls last weekend - it was really hot and quite a hike down to the water. I had no idea that we would actually have to climb over a railing onto the rocks, and I had worn my travel/hiking skirt that day. I wasn't going to do it, but I knew Jay wanted to so I braved it and made it, and it was very cool. The hike back up was a bit rough and I had to stop and rest a couple of times, but it was a nice way to spend the day outside and celebrate summer finally coming to Seattle.

Here's the very clear warning about staying on the boardwalk and off the rocks:

Here's what everybody thought of that:

And here's the falls, with a fisherman:

Jason got a promotion! He'll be leading the new physics team, so he'll be managing about 3 people. I'm very excited for him, and proud that he's doing so well at work. Even though he apparently acts like a big giant grouchy old man, (or crotchety old curmudgeon, take your pick) they do appreciate that he does good work. And he gets a salary bump, which is always welcome, although we have no idea how much. It'll be a grand surprise.

We had our three year anniversary yesterday. We didn't do anything special though, since our trip to New Zealand is like our special birthday, anniversary, Christmas gift to each other for like the next three years. We'll probably go out to dinner at some point but that'll be it.

Speaking of weddings, Jason is headed to Wisconsin on Saturday to go to Ben's wedding. I couldn't go because I have class on Monday and the wedding is on Sunday with no way to get back in time for school. I'm sure he'll have fun though visiting with Ben. It's supposed to be pretty hot in Wisconsin. He'd better pack shorts.

Another random thought, and I know it doesn't matter to any of you...but the car next door has this really annoying car alarm that has been going off EVERY FREAKIN' NIGHT/MORNING for like the last 10 days, and it's driving us crazy. 1:15 am, 4:30 am, 5:45 am, 6:00 am - it's always at least one of those times and most nights/mornings it's two of those times, and why won't the college kid that owns that car disable it or something? I don't know how much longer we can take it. I think we'll have to start leaving passive aggressive notes on his windshield.

Last thing: Jonathan made it to New Zealand and blogging about his year abroad here if anyone is interested. Look for a cameo appearance by us at the end of August!

I Don't Want No Scrubs

2008-06-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Today was the start of summer quarter - last one before clinicals start! It's only 7 weeks, so real short. Lots of lab this quarter so we can get as much scanning time as possible before we have to do it on real patients. Our instructor told us that we have to start wearing scrubs to school, just as if we were in a hospital setting, so Heidi and I went scrub shopping after class. They really do make some cute looking ones! I got two pairs of pants and three tops, and that'll be my outfit three times a week until mid August. Yay, elastic waist pants!

Meg comes home tomorrow - we've missed her. Kelsey was in Aberdeen with her friend most of last week and is enjoying her summer break so far. Jay and I are counting down the days until we go to New Zealand....his boss is actually moving there too, he got a job working for the company that will be doing the new Hobbit movie. Jason is immensely jealous and said we should look into moving there as well. If I didn't have another year of school.......but Kelsey said even though that would be kind of cool, not a lot of bands tour New Zealand so she didn't think she'd be up for that. Looks like we'll stay here a while longer :-)

And to end the day...beagle porn:

Glamping Report

2008-06-17T20:12:00.000-07:00

What a great weekend. The weather was absolutely fantastic - really, the first nice weekend we've had this summer. It was warm and sunny and so relaxing. We left the house right on time at noon and were on the road to Anacortes for our 1.5 hour drive to the ferry terminal. Got to the ferry and got in line with all the other mainland people looking for some island fun.

Loaded up the car on the ferry and had a lovely one hour ride across the strait to Friday Harbor. Then it was a mere 10 minute drive or so to the Lakedale resort. Check out our Glamping Tent!

And the view from the front of the tent across the lake to the lodge!

Lovely, isn't it? We made hamburger foil packets for dinner and smores for dessert, courtesy of our cozy fire, and enjoyed some cosmopolitans courtesy of Smirnoff. By the time we were ready to go to bed it was FREEZING! We utilized both the duvets and some blankets and were soon warm and toasty.

One bad thing about camping is the close proximity of neighbors, especially those with young crying children that like to get up at 6:30. However, we managed to block out the cries and sleep until 10:30. We missed the continental breakfast because we slept so late so we used our shower tokens (2 dollars for 5 minutes of hot water), got dressed and headed to town for breakfast. We ate at this cute restaurant right on the water and celebrated my birthday morning with champagne mimosas and a great breakfast in the sun.

The rest of the day we just explored. Drove around the island and just stopped wherever we felt like it...stops included Lime Kiln point, where we watched for whales and saw a lighthouse (and a dolphin and a sea lion, but no whales), then we stopped at the English Camp, where the British were stationed during the 50 year "Pig War" that decided which country the San Juan Islands would belong to (we won!), and finally Roche Harbor. Roche Harbor is on the opposite end of the Island from Friday Harbor and is a really cute quaint little town. We sat on a deck by the marina and had some beers while listening to some live music and watching the boats.

We came back home fairly early on Sunday, since we managed to wake up early enough to catch the breakfast and the 11:00 ferry service back to Anacortes. It was a wonderful birthday weekend and very relaxing.

Oh, and grades - I'm still waiting on one, but it's two A's and two A-'s so far.

One down, Three to go

2008-06-09T19:31:00.000-07:00

Vascular final today - absolute killer. Probably one of the hardest tests I've ever taken. I have no idea how I did, but not my best work by far. I'm pretty sure I passed though, and therefore passed the class so I'm not super worried. Just glad it's over. Tomorrow is the Echo final, Wednesday my Pathology final, and Thursday OB/GYN final. I sure hope none of them are as tough as the one I took today. The Echo final won't be bad I think - and our teacher is treating us to pizza after the test is done, and we'll eat while we grade it so we'll know our final grades right away. Cool.

Can't wait until Friday, and off to San Juan Islands!

What a week

2008-05-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

The quarter is winding down but the work is definitely getting harder. These past two weeks have been a blur of tests, tests, more tests, and other projects. It was nice having 4 days off for Memorial Day but I spent most of it studying. Okay, we did take Saturday off and enjoyed our super weather, so it wasn't all work. Kelsey got a new mattress set since Memorial Day is apparently the time to buy mattresses. Hers was so old and ripped up I can't believe she was still able to sleep on it. But she says her new one is awesome. Too soft for me though. She just gives me the eye when I ask her if it's too soft for her, so I guess that means it's not.

Meg is doing really well in school still...she got a 96 on her math test the other day! Math! How exciting is that. Both girls are doing so good and we're so proud of them.

So my car went in for the 90k checkup two weeks ago. I specifically asked them to check the struts for me. They did all the stuff that comes with the checkup and tune up and told me that the struts were weak but not leaking and did not need to be done anytime in the near future, but would need done at some point. So we paid around $1200 for the work that they did do, and left. We ordered 4 new tires online because they also told me at the dealership that I needed two new tires, so we decided to replace them all at once. Called after the tires were delivered to the house, and made an appointment to go have them put on. They called later and said that I needed to have my struts replaced immediately, and also a CV boot needed to be replaced right away too because it was cracked. Something they NEVER mentioned when the car was there TWO WEEKS ago!

Total for new struts and new CV boot...$1400. I said to just put the tires on, I was picking up the car. I did some research for a good mechanic in Seattle, and found reviews for this little Japanese man with an auto shop downtown that apparently does everything he can to keep the costs down. So I have an appointment there on June 17. I only have to drive a few more days until then so I'm hoping that nothing major will fall off or fly out of the car before my appointment. I'm crossing my fingers that he'll be able to do the work for less money than the dealer. I really want to keep driving my car for another 7 or 8 years if I can....it's all paid off, and only has 98000 miles on it after 9 years, so I might be able to do it, especially here where the bus is such a great option. I'll keep you all updated, I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their seat to learn the outcome :-)

It's Hot

2008-05-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a strange glowing orb appeared in the Seattle sky...one we had not seen for quite a whle. In one day, the complaints in the house went from "I'm cold" to "It's hot in here".

Temps hit 85 for us yesterday, with more of the same forecast today. That's it though, it'll be back down to the mid 60's by Sunday and next week more rain. But we'll enjoy it while we can...we plan to either go to Golden Gardens beach today, or may head down to the University Street Fair to hang out for a while. Yesterday Megan and I took the dogs to the park. Anyone who's been here over the summer knows that on sunny days, Seattleites head outside to lay around like pale fish and soak up some Vitamin D. Here's a picture of one of the local parks, which looks the same as every stray piece of grass available yesterday.

Last week was rough on all of us I think..I had three tests and they were all pretty hard I think. It's a relief not having to worry about tests today. Meg is having a rough time with the no smoking, but she's hanging in there for now. Jay is back to crunch time at work so he's putting in long hours again. Kelsey is just counting down the days until school is over :-(

Mom is having a carotid-to-carotid bypass on Wednesday. They elected not to do any open chest surgery, which I think is a good thing. So they'll just run a bypass from her left carotid artery, which is still working pretty good, to her right carotid artery, and hopefully that will better perfuse her brain and she'll be good to go again. She said yesterday that she's hoping to go home either today or Sunday and then back on Wednesday for the procedure. We'll all think good thoughts.

Happy Mother's Day!

2008-05-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers (and mothers-to-be) I know! I hope you have a wonderful day today and that you're all spoiled by those around you. I am going to spend my day studying for the three tests I have this week, while my girls have promised to make dinner and (maybe) clean the house. I'm crossing my fingers :-).

Home from Baltimore

2008-05-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

NOTE: I do not have any pictures, because we forgot our camera. I know, we're idiots, so sorry.

It was definitely a whirlwind weekend. We got up super early on Thursday morning (3 am!) to catch our 6 am flight to Atlanta, where we met up with Susan and John. The flight to Atlanta was decent because we got exit row seats, plus a two seat row so we were all by ourselves...and Delta has this cool thing now where you have a personal video player for each seat and you can play trivia with the rest of the plane. Jay and I made a decent showing in trivia, never winning but always in the top 5 or so.

After we got to Baltimore, we hit a grocery store and then made dinner for the Weiler clan (Susan, still need that orzo recipe!) and then we hit the RV to sleep. On Friday, Susan and I went to the bridal tea while the Weiler boys went to a railroad museum. The tea was really nice and I think Kristen appreciated the bead ceremony thing we did.

After tea we dropped some people off at their hotel and then went in search of a mall because I forgot to bring my black dress shoes for the weekend. Once we actually found the mall, after a quick trip to Camden Yards (lost), Susan got a dress and I got a pair of shoes in less than 20 minutes. When we got back to the Weilers, Jason had found my black dress shoes in another bag. Bummer - another pair of shoes for no reason :-).

The rehearsal dinner was at the Holiday Inn at the airport, where just about everyone was staying. There were a lot of people there - almost half of the wedding invitees I think. We finally met up with Hugo and Mary there. Mary got her hair done differently and it looked really cute.

Saturday we met picked up Mary and headed to Inner Harbor. It was cloudy and cool when we first got there, and looked like rain - and Kristen had an outdoor wedding planned. After we walked around a bit and had lunch, it turned into a pretty nice day. We dropped Mary off and headed back to the Weiler's to change, and then were ready to go at 3:23 - and then discovered that the wedding was at 4:00. So there was a bit of panic that we were going to be horribly late because we didn't even know how to get to this place. Turns out we got there at 3:45 with plenty of time to spare, as we were actually early compared to most guests. Met up with Grandma Flo, Ron and Gail at the wedding, and that's who we sat with at the reception.

The reception was lots of fun, with tons of swing dancing. We tried, but we were terrible at it so no swing dancing for us. We took advantage of a couple of slow dances but that's about it. There were lots of Kristen and Bob's friends from the dance scene there though, and the band was the Boilermaker Jazz Band, and I guess they're pretty well known in the dance world - so everyone had a great time. We got home around 10:30 or so, chatted with John and Raellen for a few minutes, and went to bed.

Sunday was leavin' day - Susan and John had a pretty early flight, so Mary came by around 9 and we had a huge breakfast at the Weilers. She stayed for a bit then took off to drive back to Pittsburgh. Jay and I enjoyed the sunshine and the quiet for a few hours then Jonathan and some of his friends came to pick us up and take us back to BWI, where we sat with them for awhile and had some lunch. The plane took off at 6, we were back home here at 10:30 and the weekend was over.

Whew, that was a lot to cram into a few days. So glad I don't have school until Wednesday. I'm now going to listen the lecture I missed on Thursday and work on my paper. In my pajamas. Which is how I plan to spend the day.

We're a lot like you

2008-04-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

These ads by local insurance company PEMCO are hysterical, because living in the PNW for about three years now, I can recognize almost every one of these profiles. I think we used to be profile #100 but I might be turning into #23 now. Anway, worth a little time to look at if you're bored, and appreciated even more if you've been here.

Not much going on

2008-04-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

We finally had a nice day yesterday. The sun was shining, it was about 76 degrees, just all around nice to be outside. I took Megan into the lab at school to practice scanning the abdomen. I think she had fun looking at all of her organs...she certainly seemed surprised at where most of them were located! When we got home we did some yard work and walked to Safeway to get some stuff for dinner, then we watched Ocean's Thirteen. Kind of boring, but that's how we roll.

Today was spent mostly studying, with a trip to the grocery store thrown in. We had awesome savings today, spent $87 and saved $123. We stocked up on hamburger this time around too.

Jay went to an office party on Friday night, a kind of going away thing for someone who is leaving the company. Apparently a couple of coworkers insulted his Paradise Air shirt that he got in Hawaii from the hang gliding place. They told him it was ugly. Ugly! What the?.... He was quite understandably a bit ticked off. I personally think he has much uglier shirts than that one.

I have a couple of tests on Wednesday, and we start a new vascular class tomorrow, but then we're taking off on Thursday morning for Baltimore and Bob and Kristen's wedding. We're looking forward to seeing the family, and really hoping that Mary and Hugo can make it so we can see them too. I'm glad my tests are this week so I don't have to worry about them while I'm gone. I do have a midterm in echocardiography that following Tuesday, but I'll have plenty of study time on the plane.

That's it for the update, and don't say you weren't warned by the title that it wouldn't be too exciting :-)

Happy Birthday Megan

2008-04-19T18:48:00.001-07:00

Today is Meg's 23rd birthday....holy cow! I can't believe she's 23! Seems like just yesterday she was a little girl in pigtails and red rhinestone shoes. She wanted me to make her favorite meal for dinner so we had meatloaf and mashed potatoes and rolls and salad, and a birthday cake. Here are some pics of the day to enjoy. First off, Megan and Luke get ready for the salad course:

Kelsey and Ayla goof around:

Seattle hail - in April. Come on!

Meg opens presents after dinner:

Cake time!

All in all, I think it was a pretty good birthday. Even Zac enjoyed it:

Beagles, beagles

2008-04-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes they're just so cute you have to take many pictures. So I'm sharing some of them with you. The quality isn't great because they're all cell phone pics, but you get the gist.

Zac tends to the really cute pictures.....

....while Trixie is more a camera ham.

Sometimes they're worth all the trouble. Sometimes.

And the winner is.....

2008-04-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

I've decided to go into General instead of Echo. What that means is that I will get certified in Abdomen or OB/GYN instead of the heart. My ultimate goal is to work in women's health which I would do with a General tract instead of the cardiac tract. I'm really happy and excited about my decision - it feels great to have finally made up my mind. I've been to three General labs so far and I'm really enjoying it, even if we're just doing liver, pancreas, and aorta right now. But I'm actually finding what I'm looking for, so that's a lot of positive feedback for me.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice while I struggled. I know I made the right decision for me, no regrets. At least not yet :-)

Things are status quo here. Meg is working a lot this week, so isn't around too much. Kelsey had her first match the other day, but it rained the whole time so she came home soaked and cold, and they lost too. Jay got his raise, which was bigger than we expected, so that was cool. Tonight we're having Bengal Tiger takeout, and by Saturday it's supposed to reach 71 degrees. Life is good.

Back to school

2008-04-03T07:48:00.001-07:00

The week is almost over so Megan and I both are into our new quarter. She has a 9:00 class every day which I think is tough for her but so far so good. I'm taking both labs, echo and general, for the next two weeks before I make my final decision as to what I want to specialize in. It's such a difficult choice, because there are advantages and disadvantages to both of them and I want to make sure I make the right choice for the future. I envy my fellow students who are so passionate about one way or the other and don't seem to be waffling like I am. Although the more I talk to different people the more I see that a lot of them are kind of going through the same thing, but they've just been able to make the choice easier than I have.

Jay has been continuing to work absolutely crazy hours, but I got him to promise to come home for dinner tonight....which will be the first time in almost a month I think. It will be nice to have him home, but Megan has to work tonight so we still won't have a full table :-(

We got new dishes last weekend from Pottery Barn - they're awesome. My dishes were getting pretty dinged up...lots of chips on the edges and knife scratches in the middle. The new dishes look so brand new I hate to use them. They're pretty simple looking, all one color (actually 2, because we got 2 different color to mix and match)..putty and cocoa. Anyone that has been in my house can appreciate my continuation of brown and earthy colors for just about everything. Anyway, they're really nice and we like them.

Greetings from Austin

2008-03-25T13:47:00.001-07:00

Even though I'm leaving tomorrow. It's been a great trip though and I've really enjoyed getting to know Ripken more and meeting Riley, who is absolutely adorable. Tonight is our last night, and we're having dinner at some hamburger place by the water. I've eaten so much though since I've been here, I'm not sure I need dinner again for a week.

Ripken is so much fun, and is really good with everyone. It didn't take any time at all for him to warm up to us this time, and he even threw an "I love you" my way every now and then. Oh, and he said to me "you're sunshine". Now how cute is that?

Riley is one of the cutest babies I've ever seen (exceptions are my own girls of course), who dresses entirely in pink, everyday. But she is bubbly and happy and just quite joyful. She prefers an upright position when not napping, so she likes to be walked or to be in her little walker thing and then she's perfectly content.

We've mostly hung around the house, although we did see Jack and Pat and went to dinner with them, as well as visited them in their house in Dripping Springs. I think we've had two trips to Target and one to Costco, and Kristin and I had to hit Walgreens for emergency butter on Easter Sunday. Other than that, we've enjoyed the Austin weather from the backyard, complete with firepit and grown up drinks at night.

Got my grades today, all except for one of them, and I got all A's this quarter. Yay me!

One of the many reasons why I don't shop at Walmart:

Next time I update I'll be back in Seattle, surrounded by beagles and love.

Dinner Date

2008-03-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Jay and I went on a double date tonight with my carpool buddy and her husband. We had dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant down the street and we had a lot of fun. It was nice to socialize with another couple, because we do that so infrequently. I think the only other couple we've done anything with is Simon and Darci and that's usually with a bunch of other people. I'm hoping we'll get to do it again soon.

Kelsey is getting ready for Spring Break, which is the first week in April. She starts practice for the golf team tomorrow. Whoo Hoo. Megan has her Math final on Thursday and turns in her last essay in English this week, then she has break. Not sure what she's planning on doing but I know it will involve marshmallow fluff.

I have a final tomorrow in scanning lab, where I'll have to show the teacher all the views I've learned, and then I have a final in Echo class, which might or might not be hard and then a last test in Pathology Wednesday and then on Thursday I'm off to Austin.

Grocery store today was another big score...spent $112, saved $121. Another Whoo Hoo. Yeah, boring but such is my exciting life.

My name is Kelly, K-E-L-L-Y

2008-03-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

And I am addicted to Guitar Hero. Somebody stop me before I strum again. I can play that game for hours and hours and never get tired of it. I played for about 5 hours tonight. Over 7 hours on Saturday. And the only reason I don't play more is because other people want the TV.

Next week is the final week of the winter quarter. We have a final in Echocardiography class, and a last test (but not a final) in pathology. Then we have a week off for Spring Break (hello Austin!) and then Spring Quarter. It looks like it's gonna be a killer this time. I'm so looking forward to break though, and meeting my new niece, and watching Rip drive his car.

Megan can't take me to the airport on Thursday because she has a Math final. Hmmmm...looks like Jay has to take a long lunch and get me there. That shouldn't be too much of a problem since he's been putting in massive hours these past couple of weeks. I sure hope he gets a break soon too.

POP - all better

2008-03-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

So my foot was still hurting this morning. Actually I slept really well last night and I thought that it was all done with the pain, but as soon as I walked downstairs I knew it wasn't to be.

We took the dogs for a quick walk around the block and then headed to the grocery store, with me limping (not badly) and still in a bit of pain. Then we came home and cleaned the house. Afterwards, Jason was setting up our new receiving and asked me to plug in my iPod to see if the connection worked okay. I sat down in front of the HugeAssBankOfElectronicEquipment and connected the iPod and felt this POP in my ankle. The pain flared for a moment and then it was Gone Baby Gone. I could hop up and down on my foot and turn it all around in all directions and no pain whatsoever. Whoo Hoo! So I'm better, and no doctor needed.

Oh, and a couple of good movies this weekend...Gone Baby Gone (for reals this time) was pretty good, as was Eastern Promises. The latter is definitely not for the squeamish, but if you're a fan of Viggo Mortensen, it's highly recommended.

Calling all armchair doctors

2008-03-01T10:41:00.001-08:00

My ankle's hurtin' mama. Last night Jay and I went out for a couple of drinks and a light dinner. Later that night we were in bed watching TV and I experienced a sudden onset of acute ankle pain in my right lateral ankle...it kind of felt like a tendon or ligament had "locked up" and I couldn't really move my foot without terrible pain. I could keep it flexed upward but if I tried to move to the outside or point my toes flexing my foot downward it hurt really bad. Jason spent some time kind of massaging my ankle to see if something was pinched, but it didn't help. Oh, and pushing on the right side of my calf sent shooting pains down into the ankle.

This morning I wake up and it's just as bad. Doesn't hurt so much when I flex my foot upward, but letting it hang down naturally hurts and walking downstairs is a killer.

It's not swollen, and it's not discolored. I haven't been putting any particular stress on this ankle. I did work out a bit on Wednesday with some higher impact aerobics stuff and on Thursday with much lower impact weight training but took the dogs to the park on Thursday afternoon for a mile and a half walk with no problems.

What have I done to myself? I can't find an answer on the internets and my doctor isn't open until Monday. And if it is still hurting by Monday I am certainly making an appointment.

Lub-Dup

2008-02-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

So we're doing the heart now in lab - echocardiography is the official name for ultrasounds of the heart. We're learning the different views of the heart, and how best to achieve them around the inevitable rib shadowing and lung interference. I'm enjoying it though, because I feel like I can actually see the heart and I'm not searching around in vain (most of the time) for the organ I'm supposed to be examining. It's a quick feedback kind of thing...there's no mistaking the heart for something else, like the liver or kidney.

We've concentrated on two views, the parasternal long axis, which looks something like this:

And the parasternal short axis, one of which looks like this:

I'm pretty good on those. Towards the end of lab today though we tried out the apical views. First of all, as a scan model these hurt. The sonographer had to really push on the rib, and it was not at all pleasant. The image is supposed to look something like this for an apical 4 chamber view:

But mine looked more like this:

It is definitely not easy. I hope with some practice I'll get a little better.

Hey, how'd you all like the Oscars last night? I think the only dress that I hated was that woman that wrote Juno...what was her name? Oh yeah, Diablo Cody. Not feelin' it at all. Her and Tilda Swinton, worst dressed for me. Everyone else looked fabulous I thought. We so like that the Oscars are live on the West Coast, so we get to watch the whole thing and it's over by 8:45. We haven't seen any of the movies that won awards though so we have some catching up to do with Netflix when they all come out.

Organization

2008-02-22T18:05:00.000-08:00

Our closet was a mess. It's a big closet, but filled with junk. Mainly clothes but also boxes with stuff in them that we still hadn't unpacked and shoes and purses and games and more boxes and hats and just all kinds of crap. So I spent the day going through everything and putting together piles for goodwill and piles to throw away, and piles to keep. Then I washed and folded the keep piles and moved everything else out. Unbelievable how many tshirts Jason has, and the sheer number of jeans was astonishing. Wait until he sees how many he has when he gets home. But the closet is much better now and I don't hate going in it quite so much.

After I was done I cooked up a big batch of grilled asparagus tossed with olive oil, kosher salt, grated parmesan and tomatoes. Kelsey and I ate the whole batch - oh my god, so good. And relatively healthy too :-). I'm full now and tired from closet cleaning so I think I'm ready to veg out for a while. Maybe if Jason comes home at a decent time tonight we can watch the Brad Pitt movie about Jesse James that came in the mail today.

Cardiac, Schmardiac

2008-02-19T17:40:00.001-08:00

Oh my gosh, my new echocardiac class has started and I don't like it at all so far. Our teacher is really new and I think extremely overwhelmed by it all. By the end of the day today it looked like she was ready to cry - and everyone was pretty easy on her as far as questions go, at least compared to how the class usually is. She did an echo exam right in class though and that was pretty cool. She's definitely good at doing the exam because she moved from view to view without any effort whatsoever, while we're still just trying to find the first view and what buttons to push to make the picture better when we do our exams. I just hope it gets better. At least the book and workbook are easy to read and understand so that definitely helps.

We were supposed to have our Physics final tomorrow but it looks like we'll just have part of it now....the teacher that is doing the other part is out on leave because her mom just passed away this week (very sad) so she didn't write her part of the exam and says we'll have it sometime next week. So that's three tests for next week which is a bummer but I was pretty studied up for the Physics part anyway so maybe it won't be so bad.

I got an email from an old friend from Exel today and he told me that one of the guys I used to work with died last fall from a heart attack. I was very sad to hear that, because I always liked him for the most part, and he was really nice to me when we had the fire in the house on Heatherfield. He had a house fire the year before and we compared insurance and reconstruction stories. That's such a shame. Just one more reminder to make the most of your time while you can because you never know how long you have.

Everybody hug your loved ones extra hard tonight.

How long will it last?

2008-02-17T12:20:00.000-08:00

Beaglehaus decided to come alive again, but we're not sure how long it will last. According to the resident computer expert, it either needs a relatively cheap motherboard that we have to order from somewhere special or a complete overhaul of everything with will be very pricy. I'm thinking of moving my stuff to blogger just in case everything goes kablooie and it's all gone.

So, what's been happening? I know you were all as thrilled as we were when a beagle won Westminster. First time in 100 years and well deserved. It's about time something other than a stuck up poodle took the prize.

Good looking dog, but still not as cute as this:

So what else? Hmmm..school is going well, very intense but moving right along. Meg is also doing well in school, keeping her grades up, working, and generally becoming more comfortable in Seattle I think. She's already registered for next quarter when she'll take 3 classes instead of 2 so it will start to get harder, but I have no doubt she'll do great.

Kelsey is on mid-winter break right now so she's off all this week and is very happy about it. I think her plans involve a lot of doing nothing.

I have spring break starting March 20, when I am off to Austin to enjoy some warm sunshine and meet my new niece. I am so looking forward to that - and it will be nice to have a whole week when I don't have to be studying! I also have trips booked to Baltimore the first weekend in May for Robert and Kristin's wedding, and then in August back to Harrisburg to visit with the family for a week. Thank you IRS for your generous refund check :-).

Jason was supposed to go snowboarding with his officemates last Friday but his knee has been bothering him so he decided to skip it rather than take a chance on aggravating it further. Which is sad, because he so likes to snowboard and probably won't get another opportunity this year.

That's all I can think of to tell right now. We're in the midst of a gray Seattle winter when hibernation is the order of the day, so we don't have much to talk about other than mundane life stuff. The sun is shining today though so we may actually venture out to Greenlake for a walk with the pups. If we can manage to get dressed.

Projects and random thoughts

2008-01-17T20:56:00.000-08:00

Lots of projects due within the next couple of weeks. I have to do a powerpoint presentation next Wednesday night on Total Anomalous Pulmonary Vein Return, then I have a powerpoint presentation to do on Toshiba's Ultrasound systems, followed by a paper on a case study about spermatic cord torsion and finally a presentation on uterine fibroids, which is the big one that I have to present in front of like 40 people. I have a nice 4 day weekend this week, and only one test to study for next week, so I plan to spend most of the next 4 days working on projects. If I can get the majority of it done this week then I can focus on class and studying without having to worry about getting the powerpoints done. Also, I worked today instead of tomorrow so I don't have to take a break from the school stuff.

Jay's on deadline again, so he hasn't been home for dinner lately. My month of menu thing has worked out pretty well I think, and we've only switched one day. It looks like this works pretty well, so I have to work on February soon.

Happy birthday to Kirk...talked to him tonight while he was being Daddy to Riley. He said he was tired :-).

Oh my gosh...I don't know if anyone has caught Celebrity Rehab, but cripes, what the hell has happened to Jeff Conaway??? The man is barely functioning. Very sad to see...and of course I cannot look away. Dr. Drew is moving ever closer to pure media-whoredom - he may have crossed over permanently with this show.

That's it, I've emptied my brain of immediate thoughts. Fun, wasn't it? :-)

We got a new printer and some other stuff

2008-01-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

I know, that must not be exciting news to most of you, but it's awesomely good for us. Jason's laser printer (which predates me!) was on its last legs...bravely trying to crank out just one last sheet, even though it had big black stripes running down through the middle of the page, and you couldn't put more than one piece of paper in the paper feeder at a time, and sometimes it would just cough and sputter and print out a word or two before quitting. So with three of us in school now, we knew it was time. We actually got another HP laser printer, just black and white because as much as Jay wanted color I just couldn't justify a need for that. Color is awfully expensive to buy and to maintain because now you're worried about 5 or 6 cartridges instead of just 1, and each cartridge is like 80 bucks. Anyway, he's setting it up now and we'll all four be able to access from our laptops so that will be so cool.

The people next door have moved out. These were the ones that had random people from all different states staying there and blocking our driveway. I saw one of them drive away yesterday in a station wagon packed with stuff, and today there's a big FOR RENT sign in the front yard. I hope whoever stays there next doesn't park in front of our house - we hate that.

Megan spent the weekend at Port Orchard. I guess her new friend's mom lives there so they took the ferry over on Friday night and they're on the way back now. We're going to spend our gift card to Macaroni Grill today for an early dinner, then she wants to be picked up after we're done in West Seattle.

So that's the update, really not too much going on but little things...if I think of something better, I'll post later :-)

Being spoiled

2008-01-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

The carpet guy was here tonight to make sure that the piece of carpet we ordered for Kelsey's room will be large enough. He said we had plenty...which is good news, because we can use the left over stuff to put in the laundry room since we lost the remnants we had in there. Also, he said not to worry about picking up any of the staples or stuff off the floor, he has a tool that will do that in three minutes. So he'll be here Thursday around 9 am and he said it would only take them about an hour and they'll be all done. So by Thursday night Kelsey will be back in her room and I know she's really looking forward to that.

But I'm really spoiled because Megan made dinner tonight. It was so nice all day to know I didn't have to cook when I got home :-). She made eggplant parmesan and spaghetti and salad and garlic rolls, and it was really good. No, I'm not just saying that...it really was good. I put her recipe in my recipe book for another time.

Later tonight we'll make elephant ears for desert. Meg is doing homework right now and Jay is doing the dishes and we have two tons of recycling to take out to the side yard since it's been about a month since we last got recycling taken care of. I plan on studying for about an hour or two tonight and then going to bed early because I'm really tired today. Must have been staying up until 1 to watch "The Wire" Season 5 premiere. I should probably not do that again on a school night.

Routine, interrupted

2008-01-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

Well, we are finally back home in Seattle but not yet back to normal. We had a wonderful time visiting with all of our families even though the trip east is exhausting. It's so nice to be able to see everyone at Christmas though, and that makes it worth it.

Meg flew home on the 29th, and is settled into her new room and has started her classes. She's also spent some time job hunting, but no luck on that front yet. It's only been a few days though so we haven't lost hope yet. We're still waiting on her stuff to be delivered though and I don't know where we're going to put anything when it gets here.

Kelsey is not yet settled into her room because she still doesn't have carpet. I called Home Depot when we got home, and apparently they never got the measurements from the measure person who was here on the 18th, so they hadn't done our quote or ordered the carpet. I finally got the quote back from them yesterday, and it was over $400 more than what they had initially estimated it to be. So today we were back out carpet shopping :-(. We found a good sized remnant at Carpet Liquidators that will do nicely, and they can install on Thursday! Hooray, Kelsey will get to go back to her lair by the end of the week, and I can clean up the guest room.

Our dogsitter had a small accident while driving home from the airport in Kelsey's car, and it looks like that's going to cost us $500 to fix. Ouch, another hit to the bank account. Oh, and while we were gone she had to call a locksmith because the dead bolt on the front door broke, so that was $110.

Oh, and when we got home and I got in my car to go to school the next day, my battery was dead. We haven't tried to jump it yet (thank goodness we have the extra car these days), but I'm thinking we'll just need to replace it because that battery is about 9 years old and probably on its last legs anyway. Just another expense to add to the pile :-(

But it's not all gloomy! I took a page from Raellen's book and I worked out dinner menus for the whole month of January and wrote each day's dinner on the calendar. I went grocery shopping on Thursday to restock the fridge and I shopped with the next week in mind and so far it's worked great (okay it's only been three days, but it's still working).

Tomorrow we have to move all the furniture out of Kelsey's room and pull up all of the staples so we're going to take it easy the rest of the afternoon. Jason is going to play on the Xbox, I'm going to read, Kelsey's watching Heroes on DVD and Megan is out with friends. There's a fire going in the fireplace and the beagles are curled up next to me. Sometimes life is good :-)

Home for the Holidays

2007-12-22T19:34:00.000-08:00

We made it to Pennsylvania, tired but intact. The flights were actually quite noneventful, on time and little turbulance so all we have to complain about is that it's hard to sleep on a plane no matter how tired you might be. We got to meet up with Jonathan at the BWI airport and have some lunch before we headed to Harrisburg. I think I speak for all three of us when I say how exhausted we all were by the time we got to bed last night.

Today though we were all rested and ready to enjoy the family. There was coffee and bagels at Kris's, where I got to see Aunt Mare, Sue, Lori, Pam, Britini, Briana and Kayla. Later we met for lunch at the pizza place (yay! East Coast pizza! O how we have missed you) and that was another big group...Mom, Kris, me, Jay, Megan, Aunt Mare, Sue, Lori, Nicole, Kassidy, Briana, and Kayla. We don't travel anywhere lightly.

Spent a little time shopping for stuff for the gift giveaways at Kris' Christmas Eve party, then we played Apples to Apples for a little while. Now I'm ready to sleep again, even though it's still kind of early (at least for us). But I'm plumb tuckered and full of Christmas cookies so I'm headed to bed.

Santarchy

2007-12-15T21:15:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I really love this city.

The caption for the picture reads:

Santas swarm the merry-go-round at a Wallingford park. For the tenth year of Santarchy in Seattle, over 100 people dressed up in Santa suits, met up, and spent the day wandering the neighborhood and invading bars. They handed out candy canes to kids, and spread Christmas cheer to all.

No Title

2007-12-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

Finals are done, so the first quarter is over. Only three more, and then clinical. We got our schedule for next quarter, and so far it doesn't look too bad, but I fully expect it to change since the fall schedule changed at least three times. As of now, I only have class Monday through Wednesday which would be really cool. I'll be able to keep working on Friday, but I have to figure out when I can go in one other day. Thursday is no good, because with the book shipping schedule I whould have at least a day between the two days I work. Tuesday would be best, but I'll have to see what I can work out there since Monday and Tuesday are 10:00 - 4:00 days for school.

I slept late today but woke up with a headache, so I guess I shouldn't do that anymore. It was just really nice not to have to worry about taking a test or doing a paper today. Grades will be posted Friday and I expect I did fairly well.

Today I plan to tackle the basement and finally devote some time to getting the flood mess sorted out. Jason has made a valiant start, but I'm anxious to really get it finished. Kelsey and I will look for carpet when she gets home from school today. And then one week from tonight, we'll be heading back East for the holidays. There's a lot to do before then. I suppose I should get started.

Two days to go

2007-12-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the Physics final, and then Wednesday is the Abdominal Scanning final and the last Pathology test. I've tried to put in as much hours as I could studying these past few days, but I've been horribly distracted. The weekends just seem so busy, especially trying to clean up the basement from the flood. The house was smelling quite mildew-y, so we had to get all the wet carpet and stuff out. Jay did most of it, I tried to help a little.

We have a new niece, Riley Ann....isn't she cute? Seriously, she might be rivaling Kelsey in the cheek department for a newborn. I can't wait to meet her.

My carpool buddy from school surprised me with a gift of dinner in a bag today...rigatoni and sauce from Williams Sonoma, some yummy dipping oil, and a loaf of rosemary garlic bread. How nice was that? She's so sweet..she said she was giving me a gift because I was so nice about giving her a birthday gift last week (gourmet popcorn and a bottle of wine). She's great, and I'm glad we're carpooling together. She's about on par with me as far as grades go, which is cool because there are quite a few that aren't doing so well, which I imagine would be tremendous pressure. Wouldn't that be awful to work so hard on pre-reqs to get a 4.0, and then fail out of the program? I think they usually lose 1 or 2 each class, but I'm hoping everyone can get it together and pull through.

Okay, back to studying. See what I mean about distractions?

Water water everywhere

2007-12-04T21:19:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a deluge. I think I've probably spoken to most of the people the read this blog about our adventure with the "Great Seattle Flood of 07" or "The Day of the Storm Drain Reckoning", so I'll just update.

The water went out almost as fast as it came in, leaving muck and mud and ruined carpet in its wake. Really, I consider us fairly lucky. We'll have to replace Kelsey's carpet and her computer, but mostly it's just mop up work for us. We're fairly confident that there isn't anything wrong with the drainage system for the house. The mayor was on TV last night saying that Seattle's drainage and infrastructure systems just weren't up to handling that much water. Like, enough water to fill Green Lake 6 times....over 5 billion gallons. I don't know where he came up with that figure, but it sounds substantial and awe-inspiring, so I'll repeat it.

I know there has been national coverage and probably pictures of the after effects to a lot of people around here, so some wet carpet isn't all that bad when you look at the big picture. I just wish the natural disasters would bypass us for a while. Couldn't happen at a worse week either, since I have finals next week and a huge project due on Monday, so I can't help too much with clean up until next Wednesday.

Thanks for all the calls and good thoughts though...we sure appreciate it. :-) We'll see most of you really soon.

Surprise!

2007-12-01T20:07:00.001-08:00

Everything went perfectly.

Megan came in last night, and Kelsey was spending the night at Ayla's house, so that worked out great. Megan spent the night in her new room here, and then this morning she and I went to the hotel and took over the presents and the cake while Jay took Kelsey to her guitar lesson. Megan stayed at the hotel until it was time for dinner. We got to Benihana for our reservation, and they seated us at the table, and then a few minutes later the hostess came over and said I have one more for you, and Megan was right behind her. Kelsey was so surprised, her mouth literally dropped open.

We had a great dinner, and all the Japanese men came over after to sing a Happy Birthday Japanese song and serve us fresh pineapple.

Then we walked down the street the hotel where the girls are staying for the night.
The Hotel Monaco is super cool. I got the suite, so there was a big king size bed and a sitting room with a pull out couch and awesome prints on the fabric, and animal print bathrobes for all the girls, and even a fish in a goldfish bowl. It's a pet friendly hotel, so if you don't have a pet with you, they provide one. It's sooooo Seattle.

I had made a Guitar Hero cake, and ordered a couple of cases of Jones Soda with Kelsey's picture on the bottle, and Megan had it all set out for when we got into the room.

We had cake and opened presents - Megan had an autographed poster personalized to Kelsey from one of her favorite bands, and she got Guitar Hero III from Jay and I. Then we left the girls with promises that they wouldn't squeal too loudly and be kicked out. I think Kelsey enjoyed her birthday party, and all of her surprises.

What is this, Pennsylvania?

2007-12-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

Criminy. They said it wouldn't ever do this here. Who do I sue?

Of course, it makes a nice birthday present for Kelsey, since she's been missing the snow. Wait until she has to drive in it...in Seattle...where there are no plows, salt, snow accustomed drivers, etc.

Brrrrr

2007-11-29T22:24:00.000-08:00

It's gotten very cold here in the PNW this week. We were supposed to have snow last night, but of course that never happened. Still, very chilly only in the 30s this weekend.

Saturday is Kelsey's birthday party. I'm making the cake tomorrow, then we're going to Benihana's with her friends Ayla and Chloe on Saturday, and then a girls night at a downtown hotel. Low key, but I think it'll be pretty fun. I can't believe she'll be 16! Holy cow.

Only 2 more weeks of school before winter break. I got my ultrasound physics test back today...I thought I had failed it, but turns out I got 21 out of 20...and I DID miss some questions. I don't get how she grades, but I'm not about to question it.

I heard John got his Mini today. How exciting. I'm informed the car's name is Earl. I expect the car to have a thick redneck mustache and to always blink when you take its picture. I look forward to meeting it.

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'....

2007-11-27T21:24:00.001-08:00

Wow, I can't believe how long it's been since I updated. The whole last week just flew by. Mom and Aunt Claire were here, we had a lovely Thanksgiving, I think they they had a pretty good trip, and now it's back to the daily grind.

Thanksgiving day we had 8 for dinner...see my last post if you forgot who was coming :-). We had lots of food, lots of wine, and lots of fun. Kelsey and Bronwyn played guitar and sang, Simon brought his Guitar Hero III game, and Darcy brought a fun game called Apples to Apples, which we played after dinner. It was all very fun but man I was exhausted when it was all done. I haven't cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for a couple of years, I kind of forgot the work involved. Jay cleaned up though, bless him, which took almost as long as cooking did.

The girls took off for Leavenworth the next day, and we had a really nice two days of shopping there. I didn't go too overboard though, just a couple of small things for the dogs and for Jay. The weather was cold but the sun was shining and the sky was blue, and the drive over the mountain through Steven's Pass was stunning.

Mom and Aunt Claire left yesterday, and although I haven't talked to them, I understand they had horribly delayed flights and didn't get back to Harrisburg until 4:30 am today. Yuck and I'm sorry :-(. I sure hope that doesn't happen to us when we fly in December.

I have two more weeks until the quarter is over. I can't believe how quickly that went too. We scanned again today and I'm happy to report that my scan partner located my right kidney, and (we think) it looks fine.

Failed Pastry

2007-11-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

So today was the last day of class for the week. We're off for Thanskgiving, and we don't have class tomorrow either so I get a nice long 5 day break while Mom and Aunt Claire are here...which is awesome. I'm going to work late tonight to get my clinical handbook project done because it's due Monday. I'm almost done. I should probably be finishing that instead of posting here, but .... things happen.

We got to scan today for the first time. It was pretty cool, except I had a really hard time finding anything on my scan partners. I'm like.."is that the liver? What's that thing? I think that's the aorta...no, maybe it's the spine. Criminy, what's that?? Where's the kidney?" Yeah..first time, not so great.

And then it was my time to be the scan model. So as I lay on the table and pull my shirt up I just remind my young 20 year old partners that I'm 45 and I've had 2 kids. Don't you judge me! Anyway, it was good to actually get to practice what we've been studying for the last 8 weeks. I hope I'll be better next time.

After dinner I decided to practice a new pastry recipe that I got from the Russian girl that sits behind me in class. She brought them in for her birthday and they were really tasty so I thought I'd try it out Thanksgiving. We're having 8 people - in addition to Mom and Aunt Claire, some friends from Jay's work are joining us as well as Kelsey's guitar teacher. So I try out this recipe, all metric system measurements and all. It's like this yummy cream stuff layered with phylo dough pastry. FAIL. My cream part never set up, it was still really runny, and even though it tasted really good it was definitely not the finger food it was supposed to be. I think I'm sticking to apple pie and pumpkin pie on Thursday and skipping the Russian pastry.

One Class Down

2007-11-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

The first 6 weeks are up, and one class is finished. Sectional Anatomy, final grade 91% - which is a B, and I'll take it. It was a tough class. The next 6 weeks are shaping up to be very intense, so posting is probably going to be even less. Sorry, I know how everyone so looks forward to reading updates on Beaglehaus :-).

I started back to work at the Library today for a couple of hours. I'm going to try to work there on Wednesday mornings, and on Fridays when I normally don't have school. Tomorrow though is Consortium Day. This happens once a quarter when all the second year students do presentations on stuff they've seen in clinical so far, and the first year students help them get the presentations together. It's a full day of presentations and also everyone brings a bunch of food so we can all mingle and talk. We have to dress up too, so after I'm done with this post I need to go figure out what I'm wearing tomorrow. I'm making mac and cheese for the lunch, so I need to be cooking macaroni at around 6:30 am. Ick.

Jay's been on deadline so the past few nights he's had to work kind of late, but he was home at regular time tonight, and it's been nice having a night off from homework too. We're counting down days now until we go back to PA for Christmas and get to see everyone. Jason and I haven't been home in a year, and I really miss seeing everyone. I'd love to try to make more trips home next year, if we can swing it. We'll see.

We have fire!

2007-11-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

So readers, you may or may not know that our new house has a fireplace...but we didn't use it at all last winter because the house inspector said we needed to get a chimney inspection done. Older homes sometimes have masonry loss in the chimney, which would mean a quick house fire if hot embers got between the brick and into the house. We put off the inspection basically because we expected bad news and didn't have the money to put in a new liner.

Today though I was really missing a fire (which is weird because it was a beautiful sunny day today), so I called a chimney inspection/cleaning company to make an appointment. Turns out the guy was really close to our house when I called and didn't have any appointments after he was done at his current place, so he said he could show up in about an hour.

Good news! He said the chimney was fine, just needed to be cleaned. Yay! He took care of the cleaning, advised us to get a creasote log, and we were good to go. Apparently the mason that did our fireplace used a good design as well as good mortar, and we had "minimal pocket loss".

So..we have fire! Just in time for the cold and rainy season. Life is good.

Pie

2007-10-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

I watched Waitress, with Keri Russell, on the flight over to Honolulu - and since watching that movie I've had this urge to bake pies. So I baked two pies over the weekend. The first was a white chocolate cream pie with a meringue top. The flavor was okay, but the texture of the chocolate cream was weird. It was more gelatinous than pudding like, and was an unappealing light brown color. I give that pie a C-.

Today I made an apple pie with a lattice top, and let me tell you people, that pie was one of the best pies I ever had. The apples weren't the best baking apples, but the flavor was fantastic, especially when paired with vanilla caramel swirl ice cream. I poured the sauce for the apples over the lattice crust so the sauce went into the spaces between the crust pieces, and all over the crust too. So the top crust was flaky, cruncy, sugary, yum. That pie has been rated an A+.

I've already achieve perfection after two pies, so there's no need to continue. I've found my signature pie.

Jason sez: Mmmmmm...Pie....AGHGAAgHAGAHGHGHAGHAHHHAHHA...

Diamond Head

2007-10-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

This morning dawned sunny and HOT. We slept in this morning (until 7:30!) and then went to breakfast at the Shore Bird. Unfortunately, it being Sunday morning and us being later than usual, we did not get a choice spot by the sand. That's okay...every seat looks at the ocean anyway :-).

After breakfast Kelsey went in search of souveniers while Jay and I went to Diamond Head.

It's a .8 mile trail up to the top of the crater. It's not that steep going up because there are a lot of switchbacks and we scooted through that part. Then we hit the stairs. Man, there were a lot of them (99 I think). The view at the top was worth it though, it was awesome. We also witnessed a marriage proposal at the top. Sweet, but who wants to be dripping with sweat while either on the asking or the answering part of that?

Going back down was of course a cake walk compared to the going up portion. It took us about an hour total for up, look around, and back. According to the time estimates at the front gate, we did pretty good. We swung back to the hotel and picked up Kelsey, then hit Hilo Hatties to load up on souveniers for Kelsey's friends and Jason's work buddies. Hilo Hatties is a huge store where you can get anything you would ever think to want in Hawaii..leis, macademia nuts, seashells, hawaiian shirts and dresses, and of course monkey heads carved from coconuts. They've got it all.

When we were all shopped out we headed back and returned the car (thanks for the upgrade!), then back to the hotel for showers, which felt so good you have no idea. Now we're all dolled up and ready for our luau, which is our last scheduled activity :-(. Tomorrow is a travel and study day, so this is probably it for vacation now. I'll try to post more on the luau later. Aloha for now!

Flying like a bird

2007-10-20T23:38:00.001-07:00

This morning we picked up our car bright and early at Enterprise. We had reserved a very small Toyota Echo for $11 a day, but they offered us an upgrade to a Mustang convertible for only $10 a day because they had an extra one that hadn't been rented. We jumped on it, since today was forecast to be 86 and sunny all day, and we had some long beautiful coastal driving ahead of us. Well, that baby wreaked havoc on our hair, but boy was that nice to be driving a convertible in Hawaii along some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

We got to the hang gliding place with lots of time to spare. Tom and Denise were fantastic instructors, and I honestly don't think we could have had a better time. Here's Kelsey flying on her turn:

Next were Jason and Kelly:

When we finally came down to earth we took off for our Movie Set and Ranch tour at Kualoa Ranch. But first we had a long leisurely drive through the coast of the North Shore. We actually got there just in time for the tour. That was pretty fun. We saw the hill from Jurassic Park where all the little dinosaurs came running down and the people hid behind the log.

We also saw where they filmed scenes from 50 First Dates, Mighty Joe Young, Lost, Windtalkers, and lots of other movies. We got such a taste for more Lost stuff that we went back towards the hang gliding place because Tom and Denise told us how to get to the set of the Lost main camp on the beach. Awesome! Not only was that area gorgeous, but we got to get really close to where they do the filming. They weren't there today because it was Saturday, but they had been there yesterday. We took lots of pictures, and also gathered a bottle of sand from the set for Megan.

It was a long and tiring day, but our best day so far I think. We're going to hike up Diamond Head tomorrow morning and then tomorrow night for our last evening we're going to a luau. Yes, I know I said earlier that we weren't going to do this, but I want to so we're going.

Pearl Harbor day

2007-10-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

Last night we took a walk around the area near the hotel, which is full of really expensive upscale shops. We wound up finally at the International Market, which is full of really inexpensive kind of junky kiosks, where the owners jump at you the minute you stop and look at something. We wandered around for quite a while looking for a place to eat, and finally found a 50's style diner that had a fun atmosphere and Trivial Pursuit on the tables, but the food was kind of lacking.

This morning we got up pretty early and had breakfast at the Shore Bird, the restaurant here at our hotel that's right on the beach.

Oh my god, that was so pretty. We sat right at the sand, and they had a really nice buffet. We got free breakfasts with our package, so it was not only lovely but also we didn't have to pay :-). We had to meet our tour bus at 8:00, so we got to breakfast around 7:10. We were done by 7:30, so we know how long it takes to eat for next time.

We were booked on the City/Pearl Harbor tour. Turns out it was mostly Pearl Harbor, as the City part existed mostly of driving through Honolulu while "Cuz Cliff" pointed out various places he used to play as a child. No, he did show us other stuff, but the only place we were allowed out was the Ioloni Palace, and that was only for 10 minutes. Apparently tourist busses aren't allowed to discharge passengers at the Punchbowl National Cemetery (we only drove through), and Chinatown is only a couple of blocks so not worth getting out. It was only worth Cliff noting how much they were asking for pineapple.

Speaking of which, we also drove past where the old canneries were. Did you know that Hawaii doesn't produce and can pineapple anymore? It got too expensive, so they moved the operation to the Phillipines. They turned the old Dole cannery into a yuppy looking shopping center. The cannery is NOT the same as the plantation though. At the plantation, they still grow pineapples but it's just for sale to the tourists, not a worldwide exporting industry. They're really good though, we had them at breakfast.

Pearl Harbor was really busy, so we had to wait about two hours after we got our tickets until the tour. Here's me and Kelsey waiting in line:

After we got our tickets we went back to the bus for the city part of the tour, and then back to Pearl Harbor in time to do that part of the tour. That was pretty cool, and very moving. I had no idea that the USS Arizona was so close to the surface, but I didn't know that Pearl Harbor was such a shallow body of water.

Tonight we're going to take it easy, I'm going to study, and then early tomorrow we go on our hang gliding adventure.