Clinical Site!

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

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!

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!