Hawaii already?

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

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

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

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

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

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!