Projects and random thoughts

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

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

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

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

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.