What a week

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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? :-)