Home for the Holidays

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

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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'....

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

Aloha

We're here. The hotel is really pretty and our room is very nice. There's a HUGE balcony that overlooks the central courtyard and pool. And if you look to the right, there's the ocean :-). It's not supposed to be an oceanview, but I think if you can see the ocean, then it's an oceanview room.

We were all very hungry after the 6 hour flight, so we ate as soon as we got here, which was fine because our room wasn't quite ready. The hotel restaurant is literally right on the beach, so we watched people frolic in the warm Hawaii sun while we sat broiling in our cold Seattle clothes.

Now we're changing, and off to the beach for us. More later.

Off to Hawaii

Tomorrow at 6:30 am we leave for the airport for our trip to Hawaii. Unfortunately, as it stands right now none of us are sitting together on the flight. We have two window seats and an aisle. I'm hoping we can get that changed, but I'm not counting on it as it looks like the flight is completely full.

For our East Coast friends, remember we are now going to be 6 hours behind you until we get back to normal schedule next Tuesday, so keep that in mind when you call :-)

We'll try to post pictures as we go, since I'm taking my laptop and there is supposed to be free wireless at the hotel. The weather for our trip looks like this:

Thu Fri Sat Sun

86 86 86 86 High

73 73 72 72 Low

So yeah, we're stoked. Can't wait for the hang gliding especially...we'll be doing that Saturday morning.

I had a weird dream last night that I ran into Lori and Tom at a bar here in Seattle. And neither one of them were that suprised to see me.

Aloha!

Sick...again

Last week was a quick week for school. The instructor was sick on Thursday so she cancelled classes, which means I had 5 days off. My liver test on Wednesday went great, I think. She hasn't handed back the tests yet, but I'm pretty confident I did well. It felt much better than the brain test, that's for sure.

So last night we had Kelsey's guitar teacher over for dinner, and for dog-related instruction. She'll be staying here as the beagle's primary caretaker while we are in Hawaii. Ayla is going to act as the beagle's secondary caretaker, covering lunch and after school duties. For dinner I made rouladen and garlic mashed potatoes, and we had a really lovely bottle of red to go with it. Almost immediately after Bronwyn left I started getting symptoms of a urinary tract infection, and it continued to get worse throughout the evening. Jay ran to Whole Foods and got me cranberry juice and cranactin pills, and I doused myself with those, lots of water, and some water mixed with baking soda. Around midnight I felt kind of better, and by morning (after about 10 trips to the bathroom)I felt almostly completely back to normal.

I decided that it would be best to see the doctor however, since we'll be away Thursday - Monday. And I was not relishing the idea of suffering from this while on a 6 hour plane ride. It turns out that I just had a "tiny" infection because my home remedies last night flushed most of the infection out. Dr. Daniel gave me some antibiotics anyway to take for three days, just to be on the safe side. Hopefully I'll be completely well by Thursday - which I fully expect to be.

Okay, quick update is over, I'm back to studying the heart for the test tomorrow.

My brain's no good

The test today was HARD! First were multiple choice, but like the kind where it says to circle all of the answers that are true, so it wasn't an easy multiple choice. And then the diagram part was not looking at images and labeling the different parts, which is kind of what we were all expecting based on last week's test - no, this week we had to draw our own images. So she says, draw a coronal view at the level of the third ventricle and label all the structures you would see - yuck! Criminy - I was just trying to remember what the third ventricle would look like when it came up on a scan, and here I have to draw it myself with all the other junk around it. Results on Thursday, I'm just hoping I pass (which is 78 or above, anything less is a failing grade here).

I was on the way to pick up my carpool partner this morning, and sitting at a red light. I glanced over to the car next to me, and this chick is smoking with her left hand, talking on the phone with her right hand, and has an open laptop in the passenger seat, screen facing her. Holy distraction batman! I'll be the first to admit talking on the phone while driving, and I occasionally also sip coffee, but I sure don't do them both at the same time and I also don't type on my laptop while doing ANY driving. She must have some mad drivin' skillz. Or else she's a dork.