Ben's birthday is 1/1, easy for me to remember. We had a lovely brunch with his parents and saw Benjamin Button (loved it). We finished the evening with pizza and ice cream cake. Pretty low key but nice. I got him a cool camera strap and a book on bizarre WWII inventions, since he's kind of a WWII nut.

Resolutions are everywhere and I feel I should declare mine publicly so I stick to them. I only have one real resolution and it's been the same for several years = lose weight and get back in shape. Seriously y'all, I appreciate your comments that I don't look fat and I don't need to lose weight, but you don't know that I just have good genes to carry weight well. Sitting in lectures for hours every day gave me a comfortable, squishy butt. I weighed in this morning at my highest ever. To put it in perspective:

Last year this time weight (minus) pre-marriage college weight = 10 pound gain over 7 years
Current weight (minus) last year this time weight = 15 pound gain over 1 year

I know I won't be able to get down to my ideal 125 pound high school wt, but to be back in that early marriage era range is realistic and healthy. How will I do this? I looked at dance classes and can only afford one a week, and they're all in the evening. No good. I looked at gyms after talking to Kristin (who is gorgeous and svelte lately). The gyms here would be fairly expensive: 200+ initiation fees plus $30 a month. Plus they seem kind of icky with their sales pitches and guilt trips. Miranda (also doing resolutions) reminded me that the Wheat Ridge rec center is just up the street and offers all the same amenities. For 82.50 I get a 20-visit punch card: less than $5 per visit!

We quickly hatched a plan to get our butts there two times a week, even when I have classes. We went for the first time this morning and I feel GREAT! I was so much more comfortable working out with a buddy. Also half the people at the gym were oldsters instead of the tiny 19 year olds at Regis's gym, where I was constantly intimidated during the workout. These flabby people are totally non-threatening. Well, except for the grizzly geriatric who did sit-ups in front of us while reclining UPSIDE DOWN and with a GIANT WEIGHT on his chest. Yikes. He could totally kill me if he wanted to.

So! The only diet change I plan to do is to go back to more vegetarian meals, less dairy, less white carbs, etc. Oh, and cut down portion sizes. All the regular stuff.

Other goals I've made that aren't really resolutions but you could call them that:

• Get a sweet nursing job by July and start raking in the cash to our savings account
• Put up shelves in the basement storage room and clean it by Sunday
• Watch old movies with Brian more often
• Make a hat out of the yarn I spun
• Go to our family cabin with Ben and friends
• Get a new cat litter box
• Post Christmas vacation pictures before it gets embarrassingly late
• Sew tablecloths for Young Women

Hooray for fresh starts!

I love going home to my parents' house in Grand Junction for the holidays. There's good company and food, comfort and support, and time sort of stands still. With a week and a half left of school vacation I forced myself home New Year's Eve, a blessedly uneventful drive. A Saturday night itchy throat turned into a full blown head cold Sunday morning. Today I'm feeling on the mend with the help of chicken soup, sprite, and a mountain of moist tissue balls. Ick. Last night around 3:20 AM when I got up to get a warm washcloth for my head I decided that today would be my computer-working day. I would upload photos, blog, look for a good note-taking iphone app, upload music and movies, and update my resume. Here are some select photos, the rest will be on flickr shortly. Some were taken from Ben's flickr photostream.

The snowy view from my the back balcony. Those criss-crossing tracks are from the deer. They swoop in at night and nibble in the garden like it's a salad bar.
There was a lot of this. And waffles.

After a day in GJ we drove up to Salt Lake to visit family. Grandma made a feast for our arrival. The next day we had a heavy winter storm. I read a book and knit the day away. Ogden offered a nice knitting shop where I got some gorgeous yarn. We had to stop at the Arctic Circle for fries with fry sauce on the way home. By night the roads were clear enough to see the Temple Square lights. They have the best tree lights. No one else knows how to wrap a tree so well. At the end of the night we met Andy and Jen at a french bistro where I had a wonderful beet and goat cheese salad. I'm going to try to recreate it at home this week.






The biggest surprise came from Ben. He presented me with a box of sparkly earrings and a card that read "I changed my mind." I've been thinking about getting my ears pierced for months and the only thing holding me back was Ben's insistance that he liked the fact that I didn't have pierced ears. With his go-ahead I had my ears done at the Retina Center. More pictures to come in a later post.

Grandma came down a few days after Christmas on her way to St. George. She helped me figure out how to use my cheese making kit that was under the tree. (Note the lovely anthro apron from Amanda, that has it's own apron! Oh, the cuteness!)

I tried to make the scones from Cooks Illustrated twice. This second version with blackberries and candied orange peel would have been perfect if I'd pulled them out of the oven a bit sooner.

I was able to get together with old friends to catch up.

How come I'm finally wide awake now that it's time to go to bed? I skipped trivia because of this and now I hardly feet sick? So not fair.

Saturday is all-appetizers cooking club and I have no idea what to make. Someone should point me to some links.

This has changed my life:


Dubbed the "Clever Cat" litter box, it's a top-entry poophouse for your cat.

Molly never grasped the concept of putting her bum inside the litter box. She prefers hanging her tail over the edge while sitting in the box, presumably thinking that all four feet are inside the box and that's good enough. After having her for a couple weeks I bought a box top to create three walls, but she still managed to dribble out the door flap occasionally. So I come in every couple weeks to clean up the spilled pee. (Yes, I put a mat underneath but still. Gross.)

Years later I find this box. FOUR walls! She adapted right away and we have been mess free for a week. I don't know that the fancy top mat with hole is necessary. Once I set it up I realized I could have bought a large rubbermaid tub and it probably would have worked just as well. But the idea of catching her with her head poking out makes me laugh. Sort of like this rest stop we used to visit in Wyoming or Utah on our family roadtrips. The stalls were short so you could see your neighbors' heads while peeing, like this:

One week ago I went to a new stylist and she chopped off most of my hair. The only comment I have had is from Brian, who said, "Whoa, did you cut off a bunch of hair?" Aside from that I have had no feedback.

Now, I'm not so vain that I need everyone to ooh and aah. But usually you can expect a few nice words after a new style. Which leads me to believe that my new hair-do must be SO horrible that everyone is pretending it didn't happen.

Okay, okay. Probably no one has said anything because it was snowy the day after so I had bad hat hair, then I got sick and didn't do my hair or even lip gloss for four days. But that is over! So the next time you see me I could use some reassurance.

Aw, you guys are all so nice! Thank you for all the compliments, solicited and not. I'm a lot better at styling now and it's grown out just slightly how I like it.

Back to school, Mental Health to be exact. What a breeze. The teacher might be a nut but the material should be fairly simple, so I can work with her. My Roles class should be very helpful for resume building and getting a job. The cool thing about my schedule is they shifted T-Th classes to the afternoons, so I have the mornings to continue going to the gym.

As promised, here I am getting my ears pierced at The Retina Center. This might be the most sterile ear piercing ever performed.

We spent a good deal of time getting the placement right. Because of my gimpy left ear it was tricky to determine what looked the most centered and symmetrical. Then Mom and Dad took out an array of needles to determine what the best gauge would be. We started with the easy right ear, numbing it with ice.

The needle easily went through. The red is the iodine, not blood. Unfortunately the needle was too perfect of a match with the stud, and we needed something larger to work the stud through. After a second poke and a lot of wiggling the stud around my ear hurt. The ice had worn off and re-icing only stung it more.

So here I am getting a happy anesthetic shot for the other ear. Here's the larger needle in the left ear. Pain-free this time.

Mom jumped in to assess and make sure the stud was straight. Ta da! Pierced ears. We did a final check in the mirror and determined they were just about perfect.

Jack Donaghy: The Quiz Score: 87% (13 out of 15)

I' m ashamed, but this was sort of hard. The had good false choices.

Monday I went to trivia, since my Tuesday classes are in the afternoon I have no need to hurry to bed. We were a small team but we pulled form 7th to 3rd place throughout the night. Nate has a funny face in our picture. (Apparently that link is busted. I think you can see our pic here but the post has to be manually found on their blog, scroll back to date 1/13.)

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The school gave us MLK day off, basically our last vacation until we graduation in fourteen weeks (14 weeks!). So far I have accomplished:
1) one hour at the gym with Miranda
2) tracking down a lemon curd recipe using only yolks
3) throwing out old shoes because they were too worn out and/or the cat barfed on them

I’m down to 29 pairs of shoes, not all pictured, and not counting various ballet slippers. You can’t really see but on the top rack at the far right end are my newest acquisition with Christmas money, patent leather black pumps. Here it is online, but mine are shiny.

I started my clinical for Mental Health today. I'm working at an inpatient facility that's part of the hospital where I did my OB rotation (but it's in a physically separate building). They have three units, one for severe-moderate psychosis, one for depression and other milder disorders, and one for chemical dependency. I'm working them in that order, so my first three days are with the craziest. Today was mostly orientation. In terms of "work" this will be a breeze. Mostly we talk to the patients, listen to their group sessions, and then watch movies or guest lectures with just us students. We have to do "Process Recordings" and NCPs (nursing care plans) but those are easier than doing prep sheets on patients the night before, like some other clinicals require.

Ok, I typed that first part right when I got home and was motivated to blog. Now it's almost bedtime and I don't want to hash out any more details. Let me sum up the night:

1) I spent 30 minutes coloring pictures at a table with genuine psychotics while we listened to Metallica.
2) Miranda and I made an unusual evening gym visit, squeezing in 15 min on the elliptical and 15 minutes of weights. Better than nothing!
3) ZOMG! I took Jem for a jog when I got home and I ran longer than ever before! I haven't lost any weight yet but I definitely have more energy and stamina.
4) Ugh, I don't want to go back tomorrow.
5) 30 Rock was awesome again. "That's just a white man myth, like Larry Bird and Colorado."

Good ideas =
A. Exercising after work
B. Eating ice cream at the end of a long day
C. Calling back the student you agreed to mentor (who left you a panicky voicemail) taking 30+ min to talk

Bad idea = [A + B + C / sleep] + needing to wake up at 5:45 am.

A recipe for making doughnuts from a patient who clearly uses meth and introduces herself, "Hi, I'm _____. I have bipolar. And I'm suicidal."

Doughnuts
"You take a can of biscuits and cut out the centers with a ketchup bottle cap, you know, to make the little hole. Fry it up in a lot of oil and then roll it in a lot of sugar. Mmmm."

I thought that was a clever little recipe. Seems like something Joy from My Name is Earl would make. On second thought, maybe it's more of a Randy recipe.

New Year's Eve was spent with friends playing Scene It on the Xbox. Jem was pooped well before midnight.

My felted owl was dismembered by the beagle. I could piece him together again, if I ever have a stall in my craft queue to-dos.

I wanted to show everyone that for the most part I'm still cooking! Last week I made grilled pork kabobs from MS Everyday Food, they were alarmingly good. The warm weather afforded us a second night of grilling, so I made some pizzas. One has tomatoes, zucchini, and goat cheese, the other is more traditional with artichoke and hearts of palm (from Sunflower's marinated olive bar) with asiago cheese, marinara, and basil.

Last weekend I made angel food cake with lemon curd and blueberries. I made angel food cupcakes the week before for Cooking Club and they didn't quite work out. Probably because I didn't use cake flour, I halved the recipe, I didn't whip the eggs long enough, and I tried to bake them in cupcakes instead of a traditional round. They were still tasty, but not big and fluffy. This one makes up for them.
Saturday was a fantastically relaxing day. It started with a solid work-out with Miranda. I benched 45 pounds with 4 reps of 4! The first time we tried I could hardly do 4 singles. After lunch and Animal Crossing (duh duh duhhhhh, I'm addicted again) we took old Jemmer to the dog park.
Apparently we weren't the only one with that notion. There were so many dogs!

Later we met with the Walkers, Amanda, and Brian for dinner at Zaidy's deli. Zaley was into the sauerkraut hardcore.



Beautiful cakes and pickles...

After dinner we watched Stardust at Amanda's recommendation. FANTASTIC movie. I remember seeing trailers for it a couple years ago, and boy, did they miss the mark with their advertising. If you haven't seen it please go watch it! Between this and Coraline, I might have to start reading Neil Gaiman's stuff.

Miranda posted a lovely blog entry about our ongoing gym time. She sums up my feelings perfectly.

(Oh my gosh. My mom laughed at me and Kristin in high school because we often dressed alike. This photo is going to make her chuckle again. I never noticed our dark pants, green jackets, and short, dark hair made us look so twinny. At least MY sigg water bottle is black. So there. We don't match :-P )

Sucks:

• We found out this weekend that Ben's car only has a month or so to live. We've started looking for a new (used) car. Ugh, the hassle, the money, etc. At least we'll have a shiny new and improved vehicle at the end of it.
• I hate my clinical. Seriously. I almost dread going there. The days are so long, there's so little to do. I can't stand my professor and I'm so bored in class (yet I have to study for the tests to get A's). I can't wait to be done with Mental Health.
• I've had to act like a real student lately: doing homework on my Saturday, staying in on week nights, no energy to cook or clean, and the usual money woes.

Not so Sucks:

• Things are not THAT bad. I'm working on a new scarf that I'm in love with.
  
• My folks might be able to come visit the weekend before my birthday.
• I got hooked on Animal Crossing again. Only bad thing is that I can't spend hours on it like I used to.
• I joined a new blog, http://shot-a-day.blogspot.com/
• My new phone is so so sweet. I love having access to email and internet when I have just seconds of time for breaks at clinical. I also love using Zenbe to organize my lists.
  
• I've become decent friends with a lot of my classmates. I'll be sad to part with them at the end of the year.
• Graduation is in sight! We had a short meeting today about the pinning ceremony.
  

Just counting my blessings here, trying to stop myself from being such a whiner. Also procrastinating studying for our exam tomorrow.

A couple weeks ago I caught Molly defending her sunspot from the Jemmer. I'm glad to see that she's starting to stand up for herself! (She won, by the way. Jem wandered back to snooze in the basement after this.)

Mental Health is almost over, thank goodness. I had my last test today. Just one small assignment left, then 24 hours of clinical and I'm DONE. Can't stand this class. Adult II starts Monday and it looks like a doozy. My teachers let us knit in class, so throughout Mental Health I worked on this scarf. I love the colors and the pattern shows them off very well.

Here's Jem checking out her new digs. We absolutely love our new car. It feels like we need to christen it by taking Jem for a hike or at least going through a drive-through.

Is there a vehicular virus in the air? No sooner do we get the new Vibe, than my car decides not to start this morning. Great. Just what I needed. Luckily I have a great friend who was able to take me to school, so I was only 10 minutes late (thankyouthankyouthankyou Nate). Another classmate (see comments) was able to take me home, sparing Ben a 40 minute detour from his own drive home. The car still wouldn't start tonight, so I quickly arranged for a tow truck to the mechanic and a rental for my classes tomorrow. I wanted to smack my forehead when I saw it was a white PT Cruiser. What is it with these Cruisers and rentals?

Hopefully Paul's recommended mechanic will do a quick, honest, and cheap fix. I'm counting my blessings that this didn't happen the morning of a clinical.

Speaking of clinicals, I'm done with the horrid drugderies of Mental Health! After Med/Surg lecture all day M-Th this week (termed "Hell Week" by former students), I start clinical at a hospital next week which mostly serves the indigent population. I'm looking forward to diving back into the real medical stuff. Already this week we've covered GI, liver, pancreas, urinary, and cardiac systems. This afternoon's lecture was a quick and dirty instruction for reading EKG strips. Really useful stuff that I think should have been covered in Med/Surg I. I hope I get a lot of practice reading strips in clinical. At least I'll be sure to do them in my practicum. Oh, did I not mention? I found out that I landed my ideal location for senior practicum! I'll be in the MICU (medical intensive care unit) at the same hospital where I had my med/surg I rotation. I'm totally stoked about it. I don't have my exact schedule yet, but my preceptor generally works 8 hour night shifts, so I'll most likely have those. The downside is that I won't see Ben except on weekends for a month. The good side is that during the quiet later hours I'll have time to discuss patients and procedures with my preceptor and to do paperwork. My parents say they're going to get me mace or a taser. Or both :-) I found out that there's a lot we can park in, so I don't have to walk as far outside of the hospital as I did when I worked days in the summer. So, you know, being mugged isn't a SURE thing.

Still waiting for the tow truck . . . what else . . .well the vibe is working out great. Jem has taken to her trunk space nicely. It's so comfortable and quiet. We totally love it. My folks stocked my fridge with delicious Whole Foods groceries so even though it's been a stressful week, we've had fresh and healthy home-cooked meals every dinner and lunch. Even tonight, I have some pizzas that I'll pop in the oven after dropping off the car. I made butterscotch bread pudding last night in my new stoneware pots, an early birthday present. This week is New Beginnings for the Young Women. Since class only goes until 4:30, if I can take care of my car business quickly I can actually attend a YW event! Then Friday I'm going to take it easy to celebrate being 27. Some shopping in the morning, lunch with Ben, hanging with Amanda, then binge on good TV shows that Nate recorded while binging on Virgilio's pizza and garlic knots.

Still waiting . . .I should review EKG strips before I forget about prolonged QT intervals and all that jazz.

Three hours later, but they made it.

My class just sang happy birthday to me :-) It's nice to know I've made some friends during this program.

The car is fixed, hurrah! It might have future trouble but he showed
me some tricks to get it to start. I love that when Paul recommended
this place he mentioned the mechanic's haircut but failed to mention
the two Giant Parrots. Ok, it's a gnarly crewcut, but Paul, the giant
talking birds didn't come to mind?

Favorite Movies: The Princess Bride Score: 92% (11 out of 12)

I had a great birthday weekend. Ben invited Mavi and Katie to come up from Grand Junction as a surprise. There was much eating and dancing and revelry all weekend. I might put up pictures later, but I haven't pulled myself together that much yet.

Monday was kind of brutal. I was able to work in study time during the weekend, but still got 88% on my first Adult II exam. I don't feel like studying more would have gotten me a better grade. Just tricky questions on nursing care, rather than straight-up pathophys. I hope to do better on the next test on Monday, which will cover Cardiac, Neuro, and Endocrine systems (eek!). After the test Monday morning I still had lecture, then a presentation in my other class, followed by a panal of new grads from Regis who did their best to stress us out. Ending the day worried about taking the NCLEX and getting a job is not a good way to go. And then I came home to find the water had been shut off because of a break. Yup, just like it did a year ago.

I came home from classes today to find running water. I might venture to take a shower later, if I think it'll be staying on. We haven't received any official word but there are a lot of trucks in the parking lot moving dirt around. Whatever that means. I'm just glad I was able to flush the toilets again.

I can't wait for Miranda to get back in town, I'm terrible about working out without her! For example, I could be at the gym right now, running and lifting and listening to music. Instead I'm dawdling on the net, with equal parts thinking about homework, napping, and doing dishes. I need someone to kick my butt into gear!

BTW, I seem to be slacking on this blog a bit, now that I post daily pictures on shotaday. I hope not to get too behind, but in the mean time be sure to check us out on that other blog!

They fixed our water with a temporary patch, and will look into a
permanent fix later. Hallelujah.

Somebody stop me!

(psst- I do! But I can link two simple loops together too.)

Behold: The Pocket Dump
(and not even any alcohol wipes today)

I studied a lot for more this test and the material was more familiar to me, but I got the same grade, a high B. It's bumming me out pretty bad. I really don't want to lose my 4.0 during my last class. We also had a four hour class on job interviews in the afternoon. Hmm. Seemed like we could have covered it all in 45 minutes. Also, the morning's guest lecturer on burns only gave us one break and went into our lunch hour 10 minutes. Come on. That's just rude. She and my regular teachers and the job interview speakers kept saying things like "I know you guys have had a hard day, but let's go over . . . " Your apologies are FUTILE if you take up my lunch! Or only give us one break per 4 hour block! And make me come in 30 minutes earlier in the morning to test but don't let us out early!

Ahem. Sorry. Mondays are rough. Only three more I guess.

Saturday I had fun teaching dance to the Achievement Girls (aged 8-11) at church. I taught them to cha cha, some charleston, then a short jazz routine. It reminded me that I really love to teach dance and choreograph. Maybe someday I can return to them.

Right now Ben is playing a GTA extension with headphones on. Jem is moping at me from across the couch because we are so boooorinnnnng. I have a stack of books to read about skin diseases and shock, which we'll be lectured on tomorrow. The air smells like bacon because I made crunchy salty BLT's (minus the T, plus cheese) for dinner. This is how we roll.

And the event is . . . I put in an IV today!! DA DA DA DUMMMMMM!

This week's clinical was way way better than last week's. The main difference was my attitude. I adopted a lassaiz-faire approach to student nursing, since this hospital put so many restrictions on us. Oh, I see that I haven't talked about this clinical yet. I'm on a general med/surg floor in a busy hospital. Their student policy is that we can't do anything without our clinical instructor with us. We can't even pass meds if the patient's primary nurse is with us, if the instructor isn't there. Everything is controlled by fingerprint and card access. They won't give us cards or even a login password to check the computer for orders or lab results. So basically our hands are tied. I also felt that last week our instructor was babying us and not letting us do things ourselves, she kept stepping on our toes. We gave her a lot of feedback on that and this week she has given us a lot more control. It's still hard to get your patient cares done when you're on someone else's schedule - hence my new attitude. If I had an 8 AM med and it's 9:30 and she's still busy with another student? Oh well. Not my problem, as long as I let her know I was waiting. If she wants to chat with her fellow nurses when I'm waiting at the desk for her omnicell access? Chat with them instead of sending darts with my eyeballs (oh, but you guys know me, I would NEVER do that ;-)

I had two patients Th and F, one stayed the same and one discharged in the morning today. All my patients were Spanish speaking only. I used interpretors, fellow students who spoke spanish, the telephone interpretor, and a lot of charades and sound effects. I learned that they appreciate it when you use their phrases even though you can't say anything else. I quickly incorporated senora, gracias, lo ciento, delora (for pain), mucho, grande, and counted uno dos tres before giving a shot. I did the admission interview for a patient and had to use the telephone interpretting service. It definitely affects your ability to connect with the patient and it takes twice as long as usual, but we got through it.

I haven't done too many procedures yet. Lots of IV meds and boy, am I missing the syringe pumps at other hospitals. I had to sit and slowly push a medication over ten minutes! I do check a lot of urine and vomit, take a lot of vitals, do the assessments, and give heparin and insulin shots. I tried to start an IV yesterday but I was afraid to dig around too much, so I let the nurse finish the stick (which worked first attempt). Today though I did all the prep, got the flash, tested patency, and taped it down. The whole shebang. There are so many steps involved. I wish I had more chances to practice so I could remember all the little steps. I should mime it out in my free time.

Umm. I feel like I should summarize other things going on or write a nice conclusion. But I'm hungry and tired of typing, so laters!

Two gifts from two beloved members of my household after a hard week. Of course, Ben received greater thanks for his gift :-)

Yeah, it's been a long hard week. I had a lot of projects due and a whopping final that I never felt fully prepared for. I had a couple meltdowns. Ben lovingly helped me deal with the stress. I wasn't what you would call "nose to the grindstone" all weekend, but I studied a lot hard than I usually do and felt incredibly guilty every moment that I wasn't studying. I hate that part of school life - you're never done. I got through my final with the same grade as always, 89%. I studied differently for every test and never improved my grade. I still don't know if I'll pull an A with other contributing class points or if I'll lose my 4.0. It's bugging me not to know.

So Tuesday was my last "class." The last test, the last paper, the last written assignment. Next in Senior Practicum we have mandated online discussions, but none of that other stuff. If only I felt more free, but there are still plenty of things to worry me.

Wednesday, my "day off" I put in four hours (mandated) service doing production line work. Horrible stuff. Gave me back spasms and sore fingers. Then I got to wait in a few small offices arranging paperwork and getting an ID badge for my practicum placement. Fun stuff. This is the same day Ben got hit on his passenger side door, you might have seen it on Shot-a-day. It looks like everything will work out fine with fixing it, but still, not a good thing. I decided the best thing for me to do was grab a cheap bite out, then watch America's Next Top Model and spin yarn. Blissful mindlessness.

Today was more of the same at MedSurg II clinical. One patient with frostbite and ETOH withdrawal, the other with perforated diverticulitis. I spent the day hanging antibiotics and trying to control their pain. Not too exciting. I tried to put an IV in the first guy but his veins were so scarred from overuse that even the nurse had to try twice after I gave up. Hopefully our last day tomorrow will be both exciting and easy. The mantra that we all have adopted is "I'm done with this." Once you have your next placement it's a drag continuing at your current one.

Speaking of my next placement, it'll be all nights. I start Monday. Class only on Monday, 8-noon at Regis, then go sleep, and start at 7:30 pm going until 4 am. Continue 7:30- 4 am T-F. Wow. The rest of the month will be sporadic blocks of 12 hour nights, 3:30 pm - 4 am. Weird. I'm curious how hard it will be to change my sleep-wake cycle. I hope I get to see Ben once in a while for the next month. I'll let you know how it goes.

According to webct, with my 95% paper grade (that I think was unfairly docked too many points), my course grade is 92.26. In Regis grades that's an A-, and is only worth 3.67 for GPA. So I lost my 4.0. On my last class. By 0.24 percentage points.

I am PISSED.

I'm back from my second shift on nights in the MICU. My biggest fear is relieved: my preceptor is a very nice, competent nurse who was very excited (requested in fact) to have a student. She has been working with me on all levels- tasks, time management, and global care/pathophys. I've done new things already: put a foley in a man, heard rales, rhonchi, and wheezes, drew blood cultures, trach suctioning, and EKG interpretation. Our patients are REALLY sick and have a lot going on, both in terms of diseases and a mass of lines going into their bodies. They are constantly on the borders of their vital sign parameters, thus I have alarm bells ringing in my head right now. Our patient today was tachycardic all day, going from 115 to 125 every minute or so, setting off the alarm every time it pass 120. Ugh.

I'm doing eight hour shifts and at this rate I kind of like working nights.
1) no traffic on your commute
2) You don't feel guilty for sleeping in
3) the gym is less crowded at 2 pm
4) fewer visitors/therapists checking on your patient
5) more attention from the single doc on call for your patient

We'll see if I'm so enthusiastic when I go to twelve hour shifts, or after the adrenalin of a new place has worn off.

One thing that confuses me: the nurses have acting fairly horrified at some of the things I have seen in these two days. Deep fistula-like wounds between the scrotum and thigh, nasty diarrhea-like urine, booty stank, and fungal-like cellulitis head to toe with massive peeling. Isn't this what they see all the time? Are they putting up a show for me? Or am I seeing a skewed sample of the type of skin and genital conditions that they normally receive?

Guess I'll be home tonight on account of the snow that dumped on Denver. Regis says to stay home from clinicals, so I emailed my contacts and left a cell phone message with my preceptor. Haven't heard back yet so I hope she's not expecting me to come in a couple hours.

Somehow I'll have to entertain myself all night!

We've started taking Jem to daycare again so I can sleep during the day. The new owners of the place we used to take her have a started a blog. You can see photos and video of her there. Ben says the owners seems like true dog lovers, and they are open early enough that he can drop her off on the way to work. Perfect!

Ben found this site called http://knowyourmeme.com

It explains some of the biggest internet memes from the past 10 years. They're all old to me (OLD!), but it's fun learning the background. I feel like there is this rich, bizarre internet community that many people in the world are not even aware of. I suggest to anyone who uses the internet for anything besides email and shopping, that you watch the videos on this site to educate yourself. Then if I say o rly or post a lolcat, you won't scratch your head.

PWNED! FTW! ROFLCOPTERS! LULZ! PEW PEW PEW PEW!

Not bad. Kind of clunky (stealing Brian's words), kind of obvious at times. But fun. I like the pseudo-science, shiny feel of it, reminds me of Pushing Daisies. The music reminds me of Arrested Development, but that could just be because Lindsay Funke is in it.

See? This is why we take Jem to daycare. Ben picked her up early during the blizzard, and she slept the rest of the day.

video.

• I can't figure out the afternoon drive time. I got there 30 minutes early (again) so I went in search of a gas station so I'd be full for the anticipated snowy drive home. I was almost late because of traffic between the gas and the 4 blocks back to the hospital, then my usual parking was taken! I literally ran to the building, making it to the locker room flustered but still 5 minutes before shift technically starts (I prefer 10-15 min early)
• I nearly took independent care of one patient. He's a very large gentleman with hypercapnic respiratory failure and possible anoxic brain episode. Yes Brian, I wiped a lot of scrotum today. But that's not all I do! It only constitutes 10 minutes of my 12 hours on shift!
• I got to watch a thoracentesis. The docs weren't that familiar with the kit, so they spent a lot of time fiddly with devices and sounding unsure about themselves. Their patient was very nervous and despite lots of morphine (why not ativan?) was shaking like Molly shakes when we take her to the vet. Poor guy. They pulled 500cc out of his lungs. The puncturing part made me woozy, like when I saw the PICC insertion. I guess I don't do well with long jabbing needles that take some brute effort to get in.
  
• My preceptor bought me a hot cocoa, right when the snow started!
• I walked through the steps for hanging blood, from lab to vein, with my nurse.
  
• My feet ache and stink after 12 hours of work.
• We got a late night admit, "a train wreck" of a guy. I was able to get 15 min vitals, label tubing, get poop and pee samples, MRSA swab, and generally felt useful and able to function without being in the way or asking what to do next.
  
• One of the respiratory team was behind me on the way to the med room and booed loudly. He totally got me and giggled for 5 minutes over the spooked yelp I let out. :-P
• Other students from other schools are popping up on my unit. Tis the season for practicums.
  
• I'm surprised how well I work at night. My preceptor was dogging me for zoning out yesterday around midnight, but I'm quick to remind her that that was because I'd only had a bowl of cereal since noon, we didn't get a break until after 1 am. Today with proper nourishment I did fine, like I usually do. In fact, I feel inclined to call my folks on the drive home to chat about my shift, and then I realize what time it is for them.
  
• But night shifts are isolating. The unit is this weird secluded environment where you obsess over your patient's status constantly. You don't think about the news or blog feeds or friends or even meals. You get home when everything is closed and your husband is fast asleep. Then you wake up midday and feel like the world has passed you by - your inbox is full, there's a ton of news feeds you missed, everyone else is winding down for dinner while you slurp cereal trying to rev up. On your days off you're left alone again when everyone else goes to bed. So you read or watch TV on headphones. There's no where to go out, no errands you can run. You don't want to wake the household with too much bustling. Nights are more difficult emotionally then physically.
  

I couldn't fall asleep quickly after my last shift. So I pulled out the Flip camera and made a short film about what I do when I get home after the night shift.

Yeah the editing is sloppy, and the flip camera in low lighting is not great. Cut me some slack, this was just for fun.

The music is "You Only Got One" by Frou Frou.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4023021&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Winding down to sleep from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

Went to trivia last night and we did pretty awesome, if I may say so. We got nearly all the dance remix category right. We aced the naughty word search visual round. I contributed to the "capitalists, pigs, and capitalist pigs" category by naming a Michael Moore quote, knowing that Chicago was once famous for its pig industry, and knowing what part of the pig streaky bacon comes from. Then my dreams came true - the second audio round was musicals! Of course, they were far too easy, as happens when your specialty is featured. If I recall, these were the eight selections:

• You're the One That I Want - Grease
• Do You Hear the People Sing - Les Miserables
• Title song - Phantom of the Opera
• Be a Dentist - Little Shop of Horrors
• The Goodbye Song - Sound of Music
• Surrey with the Fringe - Oklahoma
• Seasons of Love - Rent
• Officer Krupke - West Side Story

See? Easy peasy, they hardly needed me. But I've been hoping for a musical audio round and it finally came true. Now I'll wish for a ballet round. And a job, while I'm at it.

So you just finished a stretch of four twelve-hour shifts. Your back hurts, your legs hurt. You woke up too early, but not well enough to get showered and go to church on Easter. You still hear monitor alarms ringing and you wiped more poop in the past week than ever from your personal butt. Sometimes you need to pull out the good old stuff on youtube.




Smile, it's your day off.

whoa. Brian was very animated this evening.

We had another crazy late snowstorm in Denver. Well, mid April isn't that crazy, but still, it was a LOT of WET and HEAVY snow. Ben was so kind by letting me borrow his car for the night. I got to work a little late because of traffic but saw that my usual street parking was available. When I pulled in I noted that it was the third Friday of April, and thus my car might be towed for street sweeping. Hmmm. There was another car parked in the zone and it had a good layer of snow on it. I circled the block and didn't find any other parking (duh, they were already taken by the people who usually park on my street but left their house earlier like a smart person would in bad weather). I pulled back in the spot. The tow time only lasted another 1 1/2 hours, and with the snow I doubted they would be sweeping. I decided to risk it.
I made it up to the floor in time. My coworkers informed me that they would probably just ticket me if they made the rounds, and the ticket is just $20. Whew, good risk.
But I got nervous as I left the hospital. Would my car still be there?

Oh very much so.

Waiting for the elevator to take me downstairs for the last time. The next time I put on scrubs to go to a hospital, I'll be an RN. Hoo, boy.

It was a good last day. I like lists, so here:

• I had two pleasant, friendly men with cardiac problems
• I totally heard a murmur. Not just sort of - a REAL murmur. Finally.
• The lemon pound cake that I made for the nurses was devoured by midnight. (see shot-a-day blog)
• It was only an 8 hour shift
• I didn't get mugged in the middle of the night for the whole month. Yay!
• My nurse gave me tons of compliments, boosting my confidence
• And what made it a GREAT shift? NO POOP! Seriously. I can deal with it when I have to, but I HATE having patients poop in the ICU where there aren't bathrooms.
  

It went by so fast. I'm so excited to get back to a normal life, but I don't think that will happen for at least another 3 months.

If you know me, you can confirm that I am a huge Chipotle enthusiast. This week they changed their menu *gasp!* It was my duty to investigate. It seems the only item change is a new pozole soup. Bleh. What is wonderful though, is that they offer more items at lower prices now. I usually get three tacos or a salad. Both are HUGE and leave me happy but bloated and heavy. Oh happy day, they now have a single taco and salad combo - behold!

It's so beautiful.

Perfect taste, not too much food, and it's a tad cheaper. They also added a kids menu, which is genius since I can't imagine what kids would eat there before, their portions are so huge. My love for Chipotle has only deepened.

My first day off was spent cleaning my house top to bottom. I scrubbed baseboards, people. My cleaning day was slightly dampened by the 2 inches of snow we received this morning. So I couldn't open the windows and let a gentle spring breeze freshen the air. Oh well. I also started a new knitting pattern. I might not have enough yarn for it. We shall see.

I'm pretty stressed out about not having a job lined up. I know it's early and I haven't even sent applications in (I will this week, I promise!). But try telling your brain that. I'm out of school and out of work. I'm starting to study for NCLEX, that will keep me pretty busy while I look. Nevertheless, my emotions are up and down lately.

Miranda is inspiring me to throw a nice party on Friday for graduation. In my mind I was just going to spread the taco bar out on a table with some 2 liters of soda. Now I have visions of garlands and fancy cupcakes and fresh fruit juices. Darn that girl! Making me be cool and stuff *pout*.

Ben just turned off his xbox and announced "time for bed." Since I'm still trying to get on a normal sleep schedule I should obey.

Driving back from the airport Saturday Amanda found out that the Alpaca Festival was going on Right Now! My humoring parents let us spend a couple hours admiring the fuzzy creatures and getting some fleece for spinning.

More pictures are on my flickr stream.

Friday May 1 I had my pinning ceremony for nursing school graduation. I was thrilled that all my grandparents and most of my close family flew into Denver to visit, despite rain and plane breakdowns. These are photos from the the ceremony and party following, taken by my personal photographer, Ben Mason, who is quite excellent. You can see more of the photos on his photostream here. But these are some of my favorites. I'd love to see the photos that others took, Miranda and Mom and Dad! Send them my way when you get a chance.

We made it safely to the glittering city, albeit am hour delayed. But
the shuttle ride and checkin went smoothly. Our room is beautiful, I
promptly checked the bathroom and see it to be appropriately
sumptuous. I love nice hotel bathrooms. We have a view from the 24th
floor of the strip, including the pirate show below. Were just going
to stay in tonight, it's 2 am Colorado time. It looks luke were in
for a fabulous weekend!

It's hot here!

Hahaha ahaa, jk! Dudes, water is $4/liter here, and we haven't found
a single drinking fountain. Crazy. Mac king show was hilarious, I
think I busted my gut laughing. Could be the aches from mirandas an
workout yesterday *shakes fist at Miranda*.

We hightailed it from the bellagio fountains to CP to catch the
aniamatronic show that kind of freaked me out as a kid in the 90s.
Will love to get bens reaction to this.

Hmm, lots of time to blog when you're waiting for free shows to
start. This is the pirate show at our hotel. We get to watch it from
a primo spot because were hotel guests. The baccus show at CP was
decidedly lame. Turns out i was reminiscing about the Atlantis
animatronic show, so well have to catch that one tomorrow. Maybe
between buffet at Paris and before mystere.

I hope you enjoyed the live blogging from my trip. Pretty much summed up by the pictures. We had a fantastic time! We saw the Mac King Comedy Magic Show (hilarious!) and the Cirque du Soleil Mystere show (amazing!). Ben and I agreed that Cirque succeeds in making you feel like you are an inferior human.

All of our photos from the trip are on flickr. Ben's beautiful pictures are here and my pictures with more people in them are here. Please go there and look. Posting them here on blogger is kind of a pain.

Every time I come home from a trip I remember how happy I am to be living in Colorado!

The Walkers have their family Lorne and Laurel visiting this weekend.
Laurel is a cupcake fiend, so we are hitting all the major shops in
Denver. This is our first stop.

Don't worry, well post interior pics later. We bought one to eat
here, and two to take home to compare with the others.

The Shoppe, my favorite.

And we end at happy cakes. Whew! Now we need to eat all of them!

Here are the rest of our pictures from the hunt for Denver's best cupcakes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelsmason/sets/72157618212804173/detail/

(crap, somehow this one didn't get sent at the proper time, and I can't fix the order of my posts)

I have heard complaints that we didn't summarize our cupcake findings. Well, we all dug into them so fast and we didn't spend too much time talking and deliberating. But I think the consensus was that Lovely Confections had the best tasting cake and frosting overall, but their style was a little conservative and their flavors a bit subtle. The Shoppe came in strong with powerful flavors and funner design, plus their shop was deemed the most fun for visiting and hanging out.

I've been pretty good with studying for NCLEX, getting in 2-4 hours everyday M-Th. I scored very high on my second practice test, so that's encouraging. I received authorization to test from DORA and Pearson, and scheduled June 10th to test. I was planning to take it a tad earlier, but that was the next time available. I won't complain about a few extra days to study.

Busy day today. Miranda and I had an awesome session in the gym this morning - we ran for 25 minutes instead of 20, learned a new machine in the weight room, and benched 55 pounds (up from 45). It's about time for me to cram molly into her new cat carrier for a vet visit - she'll love that ;-) Then I have a quick break to change out of my cat-hair covered clothes into something more professional for a job interview at 2 pm. Exciting! I'm trying not to get my hopes up about this one, but it sounds good. We shall see. At least it's nice to have an interview; jobs are scarce. I'll let you know how it goes. Then tonight I hope to make a strawberry tart from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

Happy Friday!

My job interview went very well. Except that it wasn't an interview. They didn't ask me any questions about myself. It was more like a first day orientation to the job. They seemed wary about making sure I wanted to work for them. It was weird, but I got the impression the job is mine if I want it. I'll be hearing from them this week and hopefully will get something more concrete.

It's been a lazy weekend and I love it. Lots of rain, I posted pictures on flickr of my thriving garden. Lots of good food, lots of hanging out with friends, playing with Zaley. I made a strawberry tart from Julia Child's book and I made ice cream from Miranda's recipe. I messed it up, not adding the milk that was in the instructions but not on the ingredient list. It still tasted good. Nate is starting to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's a well regarded anime series that Brian loves. I watched the whole thing with him two summers ago, while I was doing pre-reqs at Red Rocks. I hope I get to watch a fair amount of it with them. Of course, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) has started, and Burn Notice will be on soon, and I'm gunning for the Stamps to watch Arrested Development with me, so I might have too much TV on my plate :-)

Tomorrow it's back to studying for NCLEX. I'll leave dishes until then too. Right now it sounds real good to get in warm pjs and listen to the rain as I fall asleep.

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The colors were glorious at Crown Hill today. I took a load of photos with Ben’s fancy schmancy camera. Look on my flickr page for more.

[question removed, since it technically violated their terms of service to share it. Too bad for all you late readers, it was funny.]

PS: I had a third interview-type thing with the dialysis company today. It looks great. It's a dream job for a new nurse. It will be hard, but I'm ready for it. I'm 90% hired. They want me, they just need to submit my candidacy to the higher-ups and get salary approval sorted out (and if they offer me anywhere near what they talked about today, it's bazzonkas for a new nurse). (Yes I made up that word).

PPS: Galactorrhea is a side effect of Haldol. I'll probably never forget that now.

PPPS: Brian has Battlestar Galactorrhea. HA!

I had a productive week of studying. I took the final practice test today and passed. It was a "worst case scenario" test - 265 of the harder questions. I guess that means I'm ready to try the real thing next week. I'll bide the time with more practice questions from the Kaplan bank.

I wish I could be enjoying my time at home more. I've had a persistent lower back ache and on-and-off migraines for over a week now. Grrr. I can't attribute it to anything but stress and anxiety about the test and new job.

New job? Yeah, I've decided that I have a new job, even though it's been a tad ambiguous the whole time. I know my salary and start date (June 22) and that seems like a good go-ahead to take my friends out to ice cream last night in celebration. Oh, how I love Sweet Action! The job is the acute care dialysis unit I talked about earlier. I'm 30% excited and 70% terrified. Maybe that's the cause of my body aches? The intense training they describe, the chance of killing a patient, and having most of my patients speak Spanish only - kind of scary stuff. But they think I can handle it and I know I'm a smart capable person who can rise to a challenge. Still . . .

I planted a catnip plant in my herb garden. It took Molly a couple days to find it. There's only one leaf on it now.


Before and After

Spring has been rainy in Colorado. This allows me to indulge in baking so long as the house is cool. The other day I was debating between pretzels or cookies when I found 2 pound blueberry packs on sale. Decision made. (I made pretzels today instead, and they are delicious).

The NCLEX was just as bad as I expected. Like my classmates and previous grads have said, you can't help but think you failed and want to throw up and cry right afterwards. To sum up, I got 75 questions - the minimum you can get. That means the computer quickly decided wtih 95% certainty that I either passed or failed. I don't *think* I bombed it. Some of the questions I definitely knew the answer to. But the vast majority were a total toss up between 2 good options. And there were a smattering where I had no idea and no technique to help me, so I just guessed. I think the test was harder than the practice tests Kaplan provide. I'm choosing to interpret that to mean that I was doing well, because for every question you get right, they give you a harder question. So maybe I was performing in the upper range.

GArblaMAALAMALA. blerg.

I wish I had my results.

I'm in GJ, visiting my folks. My plan is to unwind with Tivo, knitting, and a hot tub. Here's hoping it works.

The most nerve-wracking credit card information entering experience you can ever have. I'm so so happy to see a good result (though I wish it gave more performance details). I guess I can finally say with confidence I'M A NURSE!

I have to take a moment to thank all my readers for your thoughts and congratulations! I have the nicest friends. It was nice having some time to breathe this week. I feel like school is finally done and I can switch my lifestyle from student to employee.

My job at SDC (small dialysis company) is as solid as can be without peeing in a cup. We're still waiting on my official license, but they're sending me things I can fill out and work on in the meantime. In case you haven't waded through my recent, vague posts about my job, here's the facts:

• I wanted to specialize and get off a hospital floor asap
• When I had a rotation at this hospital (let's call it BH for big hospital), I loved the building and location but didn't like the work atmosphere. I wished I could work there but not for BH. Well, that's what this job is!
• I will be an acute care dialysis nurse working at BH on our unit with an unbelievable city view, and down in their ICU.
• I will work daytime 12 hour shifts. Three a week.
  
• Once I'm trained, I'll be on call for one night per week and one weekend every month or so.
• They have a thorough 10 week training and orientation.
• The starting pay is about 20% more than the average new grad salary. They already approved my pay increase after I'm done with orientation.
  
• They really truly want me. I didn't have to "prove" myself.
• They're already talking about my growth in the company, saying I would be an excellent charge nurse, that I'm "apheresis material," and eventually could move into managment.
  
• It's a small company. I do well in small companies, where everyone knows everyone.

So what's not to like? Seriously, this job is perfect in so many ways. They were a little nervous that I was just grasping at any job opportunity. Smart of them to watch out for that. I went into nursing thinking there were a lot of jobs. I was told that 90% of regis grads get a job offer during their practicum to work there. In my class 2 out of 54 students got a job at their practicum. I hear that 188 nurses applied to 8 openings for new grads at St. Joe's. It's tough this year. But I wouldn't take a job that I didn't really want to do. I hope I can make a home for myself at SDC.

Oh, one thing I wanted to journal about before I forget this transition period is how grateful I am for the NCLEX studying I did. I might have passed without doing the daily hours of studying, my test scores predicted it. But going over all of what we covered in school coalesced all that knowledge into a useful form. All the bits and pieces gelled. I was able to look at how much I had learned in one year and say to myself "You know this stuff. See? You're a nurse now." It was worth the time just to gain that confidence and sense of accomplishment.

One reason I was looking forward to this downtime between NCLEX and job was to take care of a little project. I was sick of the upstairs smelling like a cat box. Molly had peed all around her litter box in the closet. It grosses me out knowing that I can't ever get the carpet clean enough. (BTW, I want to poke needles in all the house designers who put carpet where the dining table goes. ARGH!)

I got it in my head that I should replace the closet carpet with linoleum. Brian had done his bathroom earlier this month and inspired me. With his help I now have a beautiful, wipe-able floor!

I posted photos from my Grand Junction getaway on flickr. Here are a few of my favorite photos.

Wow, suddenly I'm a guest blogger! on the Cakespy. Laurel, Miranda, and I wrote out our reviews of the Denver cupcake shops and the Cakespy blog posted them for all to see. Check it out here!

15 days later I was listed as a registered nurse with the state board! Finally. I called my future employment and they said to come in tomorrow to complete paperwork, and to plan on starting my orientation on Monday. Woot!

Jem is at daycare so I have a quiet, calm house. There's a storm blowing in, like most afternoons this spring and summer. I love them. I hate summer and its heat. The afternoon rain cools down the house and keeps my garden lush. I've been crafting a lot in my downtime, reading, and watching old TV series on Hulu. I picked up some fabric from Fancy Tiger yesterday and from Joann's this morning with visions of swishy skirts. I met Ben for lunch today. It's nice to break up the work day by having lunch out with family. We've done a few times since I've been out of school. I hope once I start working we can still do it on my days off.

I made a few things today.

This is a sweater I've been working on for a week or so. I started the first sleeve today. It's so weird knitting a sleeve. It felt like I was building a disembodied arm.

Here's the first skirt from my stash. I got the cotton print at Joanns, the orange trim was from Ikea. It only took 30 minutes! The selvage edge saves the time of sewing a hem; the waist is just elastic. I was inspired by the instructions on this site.

Then for dinner we had boxed mac and cheese with hot dogs. Because I'm awesome like that.

I spent my first day as an RN watching saftey videos and completing
worksheets. It's kind of weird being part of a huge corporation. So
many orientation materials and check offs and training sheets.

I'm finishing this post on my second day. Much more interesting now.
Learning all about kidneys, like you might expect. Not as much A&P as
I'd like, I might fill in with my own study. This afternoon il learn
how to set up he machines. It's great to be employed.

I'm watching a video of graft placement surgery. It's surprisingly
gory and narrated by a bored Texan surgeon.

I prefer clincal to class. Time crawls by here.

“Feel the thrill.” Fistula jokes…

I realize I haven't written in a while. That's what happens when your life gets turned upside down. I haven't done the 5 days a week thing in, like . . . my life since high school. Seriously. Once I went to college I've had three day weekends for most weeks. Add a workday that starts at 6 AM and you can see why my home life has been a bit topsy turvy. So I'm updating you all that yes, I'm alive. Yes, I'm loving my job. I'm still posting pictures on shot-a-day (link on the right side). I might have more occasional, short blog posts from my phone, since I can do those on my breaks. Here are some other thoughts.

I'm CRAVING anthropologie clothes. When oh when will my first paycheck get here?

I'm planning to get a new (used) car this year. A big chunk of my paycheck will go towards that. Now whenever I drive I'm window shopping the other cars on the road.

Glee looks like it will be the greatest show this fall. Maybe even more than 30 Rock?

Oh wait, SYTYCD will have a season 6 this FALL! Crazy. This summer's season 5 is killah. I'm rooting for Melissa/Ade and Brandon/Janette for top four. They would do some wicked routines together.

I had lunch out today (guess where) and I saw a doctor in his lab coat, a cop in his blue uniform, and a sailor in his white dress uniform. Add to them my nurse scrubs and we looked like a children's book on professions!

I freaking love my iphone. I think I still love my macbook more, but it's a close race now that I'm away from desks all day.

I took out 6 giant needles from arms today. I did awesome in that no blood squirted and the patients didn't wince. Yay!

Amanda graciously loaned me some fun books. Reading is great. You all should get on Goodreads so we can make recommendations to each other.

Certain-Dri has changed my life. What is this new life? Where my pits are not mucky and clothing wet by the time I blow dry my hair? Where I can lift up my arms without fear? And in July with a nerve-wracking new job! Seriously, Certain-Dri is gaining on Instead cups for best hygeine revolution ever! (And since my family doesn't want to read about my feminine hygiene I'll refrain from describing that. But trust me, Insteads are a miraculous invention. Girlfriends, this is almost my favorite subject so ask me about them anytime.)

I spent hours reading a manual on ICD-9 coding today. Did you know there's a code for a disease called pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism? That was not a typo.

I kind of want a TV tuner card for our project hulu computer-tv. But its only purpose would be to record SYTYCD. Everything else is on hulu itself. Maybe not worth it.

Maybe we should restart Netflix this fall.

My cat is a druggie. It took three attempts to get her inside this morning. When I coaxed her with my feet she ran to get another fix of catnip. I had to pick her up and point her towards the door.

My house feels like a disaster. Not only is it not clean, but we have heavy summer heat. Blech. Also we had an ant infestation. I kicked it with combat traps. I've also seen two earwigs and a cricket in my kitchen sink. Dirty bugs . . . I declared tomorrow morning Clean Up The House morning.

Should I try a dry shampoo?

We just rejoined Netflix after a three year break. There's so much on there now! I'm impressed with the amount of British television - even all of series 1 Doctor Who (9th and 10th Doctors). I think I will be busy setting up a queue this afternoon. Also, I want to get a remote control for our xbox now, so we don't have to use the controllers.

Good day at work today. Started at 6 am, like usual. I went in back to start mixing bicarb jugs and string the machines. Then we found out our charge nurse had missed her alarm, lives across town, and won't be in until after 7. Oops! Usually there are two nurses and a tech and me. But today it was two techs and me. They called our supervisor and she asked me to take report on the patients. Okay, not a big deal But I was really excited to do this! I got to put my license to work, taking report like a real nurse. The only hard thing was not getting too many details. Since I don't know all these regular patients, I wanted to ask more about their history and current stay, but the other staff knows them so well it's not necessary. It was nice to feel really useful- I saved the team 20 minutes for when the other nurse arrived and we were rushing to get the patients in the door.

Right now I'm still only qualified to set up machines, assist in getting the patients connected (though not breaking skin or connecting catheters myself), returning blood and terminating treatment, removing needles, and cleaning up.

Tomorrow is computer training. I get to sleep in a tad, but probably work later in the afternoon to make up for it. Monday I did my orientation at the hospital. I'm very happy to have my official hospital badge with access to break rooms and utility rooms. I don't have to sign in at the front desk on the list of employees who "forgot" their badges. People don't overt their eyes, searching my person for a name badge, when they see me. I also bought some scrubs in the official colors for RN's at the hospital, so I REALLY blend in.

I had 10 minutes left on my shift and Ms. A was taken off the machine. Some powers that be (too much Angel?) decided that it was the perfect time for her to have a ginormous BM. I helped clean up while the docs fled the room, then frantically put three machines in test mode and ran out the door. I'm forbidden from going into overtime while on training, so I got to take off early today. Today, which is my very first PAYDAY!

After a short stop at the bank I went straight to Anthropologie. By golly, it's time to celebrate! I changed out of my scrubs in my car and spent a glorious hour and a half trying on lovely things. For once I was the woman with an armful of clothes in the checkout line, the women who cause me envy. Sure, all from the sale rack and the "for once" might be "for the last time" too. But boy was it fun. That poopy bed felt miles away, even though I had to drive by it on the way home.

Behold my bounty!

At home another treat - Jem is at daycare so I'm free of dog duties! I made a plate of cheese and pickles and popped another Angel DVD in the xbox. (Pausing it mid episode to write this blog, because I couldn't pay attention to both) Tonight Ben and I further the celebration with a fancy dinner. I'm not sure where. We've been talking about the Melting Pot, but I just found a new French Brasserie in the Highlands that sounded good. Decisions, decisions. Here's hoping the rest of my weekend is as rockin' as the first three hours have been.

Thanks for all your kind comments! Many of you (here and on facebook) dissed the melting pot, thanks for the tips. Ben has been there and loved it, so we might have to on another day. Last night we went with the French place, Felix Brasserie. It was par for French food. Classic stuff. I had a frisee and yellow beet salad, country pate plate, and steak frites. Ben had a green salad, oysters, and halibut. It was all good, but not the kind of French food that knocks your socks off. I think Brasserie Ten Ten in Boulder was better. But I love eating in new places anyway, we didn't mind that it wasn't awesome.

After dinner we met friends in Denver who were playing board games. I bounced over to Fancy Tiger for their 3 year anniversary party and got a free gift (a pattern), then we went to Sweet Action. The place was hopping! I'm happy that it seems they will survive their first year. After dessert I went home, leaving Ben with friends and games. I watched the whole first disk of How I Met Your Mother that we had ordered from Netflix. Went to bed right after Ben got home, a little before midnight. What a great, long day.

Ok, not snow. But the heavy hail we got tonight made it feel like snow. There’s a thick white crunchy layer on the ground. The trees have been pummeled, releasing a sweet evergreen scent. It feels like it should be Christmas.

On our way home from the Bulldog we hit heavy baseball game traffic and detoured away from the standstill highway. Out west the rain got heavier, whacking the car windshield. The wipers couldn’t keep up. Ben called and warned us that there was three inches of hail in Lakewood, but that it had stopped falling. We creeped along Colfax. Most of the businesses were dark - multiple power outages. We glided through the street with rivulets of rainwater and floating ice. It looked like the arctic. There was low swirling fog from the ice condensing on hot asphalt, illuminated by colored stoplights, police cars, and fire engines.

Our cars escaped damage (yay carports!) and we are one of the few in our building whose windows were not broken. We replaced our ancient windows the summer we bought the house. I think they were stronger and had springier screens that could withstand the force of the hail. Our neighbors are all milling around outside picking up the broken glass and buzzing about Channel 4 news supposedly coming out to cover the storm. We feel very fortunate to have no damage.

I had taken the Flip camera out with me today to do a 5x5 video. After dropping off friends I got some action on the road and at our house. Here’s a little clip of us enjoying the crazy lightening.

Hailstorm Aftermath from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

I love you, Ben. Happy 10 year anniversary of our first date. I'm looking forward to getting Chinese food with you tonight, just like we did 10 years ago. And I bet you get me home by 8 pm again too. I'm so happy that you found me, that we could grow together. What wonders are in store for the next decade? Where will go, who will we be?

Love,
Rachel

One month into my new job. Somehow I'm on "week 6" in my training. They're trying to get me up to speed as fast as possible.

I'm keeping track of the number of sticks I've done:
Grafts - 4
Fistulas - 8
Catheters - 12

Today was technically a bad day. I cannulated a guy with a smaller fistula, sort of my first "non-easy" attempt. The stick itself went fine. The arterial line was perfect. The venous line a bit trickier to get a flash. I had to fish around a little and push deeper than I expected. Finally that pulsing red ribbon appeared. About 45 minutes into his treatment his pressures kept sy rocketing. The nurse and tech came over to assess. They flipped the needle and pulled out a little. When we restarted treatment he infiltrated. Darn. I helped recirculate the blood while they put in another, higher stick. The rest of his treatment went ok. So I didn't infiltrate him personally, but I feel responsible for the venous line going awry. Later I took off a different patient. As I was removing his venous line the tape nicked the safety wings and brought the needle out as I pulled off the tape. A fountain of blood squirted at me, I was not prepared to cover the hole yet. I grabbed a fistful of gauze and tried not to stick myself with the errant needle. Blood all over the floor, the table, my supplies, and my shoes. Ok, so it was probably only 10 cc, 20 at most. But this was the first time I had blood on the loose! I was able to stay cool, calmly asking my preceptor to bring me a LOT more gauze. The patient continued to snore the whole time, completely asleep.

I'm glad for these little mishaps because they show me where I'm making mistakes. Things have been going so smoothly. I'm happy when I spill blood, when a line is busted, or when a patient gets hypotensive. How else am I going to learn to handle these things on my own?

Last night was the finale of So You Think You Can Dance season 5. Some great stuff this year. I watched it with Amanda this week and was sad to hear that she hasn't seen any of seasons 1-3. I sought to educate her. I decided I was qualified when I exclaimed at the TV screen "What, ANOTHER Paso Doble? That's the third one this season!" Huh, funny how my brain tracks these things.

I was also thinking about how this show aired the summer that I got my first real job, working for the psychiatrist. Now 5 years later I've gone back to school and started my second real job as a dialysis nurse. Amazing how much can happen in 5 short years.

Since I went through the trouble of hunting down clips for Amanda, I'll post a few of my favorites here for you. I'm sorry that many of these clips will be dead soon, that's the nature of music rights. That's why they can't air the shows on hulu or release DVDs. Damn dirty copyright laws.

Season 1

Solo: Blake



Yes it's totally cheesy when he takes off his shirt - but he does it during 4 back attitude turns en dehors! His crisp transitions are what get me - he's in controlled the whole time and doesn't waste a single second.


Season 2

Top 10/20 Group Dance by Wade Robson



This is one of their manically popular dances. Everywhere on the internet the next day. They repeated it later with the whole set of 20 dancers and then brought it back this summer with Wade dancing in it. I prefer the larger group, but sadly they have been hunted and taken down by Fox. You can only see the full cast in this poor version.

Top 4 Group Dance by Wade Robson



Utter brilliance.

Mambo by Alex De Silva: Benji (winner) and Heidi (4th place)



They are cousin ballroom dancers with a long history of partnering together, and that communication is what makes this so good.


Season 3

Top 6 Group Dance by Wade Robson (are you sensing a theme?)



Love the lights, costumes, netting, performances, and musicality. Great piece.

Top 16 Group Dance by Tyce Diorio



Tyce does most of their "broadway" genre and they generally suck hard. This is one of his rare moments of genius, unfortunately ruined by overzealous camera work.

Top 20 Group Dance by Wade Robson



Love the use of Busta, love the stark costumes, and love the blatent rip off/homage of Fosse's Rich Man's Frug at the end. I'm a sucker for Fosse when it's well done.

Hip Hop by Shane Sparks: Lauren and Pasha



A strong contender for my favorite piece, this one is so creative. I love when the lights and music and costumes and movement come together so well. Pasha is a cute, gentlemanly Russian ballroom dancer, so seeing him work so hard on hip hop is an awww moment.

Season 4

Hip Hop (sort of) by Napoleon and Tabitha: Chelsie and Mark



Another "Favorite dance" contender. I could watch this over and over. It brings out the teenage girl in me.

Contemporary by Mia Michaels: Twitch (4th place) and Katee (2nd place)



Mia does some great ballad-type stuff, but I prefer her upbeat numbers like this one. Kudos for props well used.

Season 5

Solos: Brandon (2nd place)





Possibly the best dancer on this series yet. His cabriole from the floor kills me.

Contemporary by Mia Michaels: Jeanine (winner) and Kayla (4th place)



Gorgeous.

Jazz by Wade Robson: Brandon and Janette



So fun and sharp. I can't believe this wasn't an encore last night.

Contemporary by Mia Michaels: Kayla and Kupono



This is the encore which has worse lighting. I can't embed the original so you should go to it here. Such a good piece on addiction, so perfectly played.

Contemporary by Tyce Diorio: Melissa and Ade (who were my favorites this season)



Yeah, this made me cry. So how about I end on a fun one?

Hip Hop by Shane Sparks: Jason and Kayla



Zombies!

I'm thrilled their bringing back season 6 in the fall, but worried that I'll spend too much time in front of the TV. Is it worth it to buy a DVR and cable for one TV show??

My mac will soon be in the repair shop. Thank goodness for property
insurance that covers what warranty doesn't. Thank goodness for my
iPhone that keeps me connected and acts as a backup. Thank goodness
I back up my computer - even though the hard drive was spared. Thank
goodness I have a job - even if insurance pays for it.

Despite all these blessings, I broke my favorite thing that I own. I
let myself down and feel pretty crummy about it. Doesn't help that
the day before the spill I had to buy a new car battery and wiring.

(Thank goodness Ben was home and let me take his car while he arranged
the repairs. Thank goodness for husbands).

I slept like a log last night thanks to the cooler temperatures. Summer sucks.

I had my last class for orientation today. I took my final and got 100%. They said they had never seen anyone get all the high/low pressure alarms right. Woot! Since class only consisted of taking my test I went to the hospital to work and ended up staying until 6. Long day.

Stick scores:
Catheters: 18
Grafts: 6
Fistulas: 23

We're having a great storm right now with rumbling thunder. Cat and dog are cowering in the basement.

Ben and I are both hurting from my computer being gone. We're both too heavy on computer use to only have one.

Good day today. I added 2 more grafts and 2 more fistulas to my count. One of the grafts was on a sweet lady we haven't seen before, and I was able to stick her way up into her armpit and got great flows. I see site rotation becoming one of my issues that I have strong opinions about :-)

At the end of my shift we had one of our regulars come in not looking so hot. She had anasarca pretty bad and was unresponsive, barely arousing to her name. She also had a face mask on 10L of O2. Yikes. While we were trying to reposition her I noticed that her face mask had blood in it and there was blood on the sheets between her legs. We got a little panicky because there was nothing about any of this in report from her nurse. We checked vitals and blood sugar and everything came out normal. The blood in her mouth was all her rotten teeth bleeding at the gums. We couldn't find a source for the bed blood - her diaper was clean and there were no skin breaks. With the renal fellow's ok we started treatment - she didn't even flinch when we put the needles in and she normally uses lidocaine. Finally we got an interpreter in the room and was able to talk to her husband (he accompanies her on every treatment since she is a 1:1 patient and we can't staff it). He told the interpreter, who told us, that she has been very tired for a couple days but otherwise is fine. He noticed she was bleeding a bit from her mouth and in her stool and so he stopped giving her Coumadin, and was that the right thing to do (YES! MUY BUENO! we told him). Sure enough in a couple minutes she "woke up" and started talking to her husband. After some inquisition we found out that she was getting a nebulizer treatment shortly before coming up to us. RT left her on 10L after the treatment and she came up that way for no reason. Holy smokes were we confused though. I mean, sure this is acute care, but if someone needs 10 liters of oxygen, is way below baseline mental status, unresponsive to pain, and bleeding from every orifice, then we do dialysis in their room in the ICU.

Sorry my story had a boring ending. I don't have many cool experiences yet.

My shoe situation makes me unhappy. I love my Danskos, but I still have achy legs and feet at the end of the day. Like, -I have to stand up slowly like an old lady-sore. I need to find a reliable second pair to switch it up now and then. I'm looking at MBTs ($$$ + ugly), Z coils ($$$ + ugly), New Balance (porous), and crocs (ugly). Does anyone have any other suggestions? Should I just get a second type of Danskos? In the mean time I scheduled a massage for Friday. I always tell myself that I should get them more often. It's money well spent. I feel recharged and luxurious afterwards, and for not much money since I use a student clinic. Yet I go just once or twice a year. I should make it at least a quarterly treat. I spend more on my hair than my muscles.

Can't wait for fall. There will be chilly weather and more time off with orientation finished. If I could sign up for dance class too my body will be oh so happy.

I'm writing from my repaired macbook! When I got the message after work that it was ready for pick-up I went straightway across town to Park Meadows to pick it up from the Apple store. They cleaned up the screen and gave me a new keyboard and frame too, so it's quite pretty. I've resolved to limit my eating and surfing to a minimum and to be more careful. I really really love this thing.

What a day of work it was! One nurse didn't hear his alarm and didn't leave his house until 6 am, his house which is in Conifer! The other nurse called in sick. So it was up to the remaining nurse and me, still in training, to get the day going. Ay yi yi. Crazy crazy. We got enough staff by mid-day but I don't think I sat down all shift. I was only supposed to be there until 1 pm but I stayed on to help out a bit. The last patient I was working on pissed me off. She's one of the type who won't hold her own access to clot, so I have to stand there holding her puncture sites with gauze for 10-15 minutes while I could be doing other things. During this she inquired in broken English where her lunch was. What? Lady, you refused to eat your breakfast tray, which is sitting there cold. You know you're about to leave dialysis for a floor bed, why are you asking me about lunch?? I told her no, I didn't have lunch for her, and she rolled her eyes and sighed like I had caused her the greatest grief imaginable. We have a few patients like this. It's a real challenge for me. I'm ALWAYS nice to them, don't get me wrong. But inside it steams me to know that they come here for FREE life-saving treatment, don't take care of themselves by following our advice on diet, exercise, and treatment regimen (this particular patient always comes in too far gone, she should come to us a day earlier), and don't even do the little things like holding their access which would save us a TON of time. Then they get pissy about my not putting their feet up fast enough, or not having a lunch that they like, or not have three blankets. I don't know what it would be like to be in their shoes, but I like to think that I would act a tad more polite and grateful.

Whoa, got a bit ranty there, didn't I? Sorry about that. Really, I love my job. It's been a long week.

Right now I'm having a power lunch of coke zero, cheddar baked lays, and a snickers. I have to put together a short lesson for the Young Women tonight at mutual. Tomorrow I have to attend CPR class because my CPR card doesn't specify "Healthcare Provider" on it. Grr. I just certified last summer and attended two CPR courses during my school nursing rotation. I'm really looking forward to that massage Friday night.

Ben inspired me to put together that video I was filming the day of the hailstorm.  It's a 25 second movie - 5 second clips from 5 parts of my day.  I like it.  I hope I'll make more of them.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6237769&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
July 5x5 from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

Weird morning so far. We only had one patient to dialyze and he cored
20 minutes into treatment. It was the first core I've seen. He went
into respiratory arrest and we called the team, then cardiac arrest
while they were working on him. I wasn't working on him, so I mostly
stood aside, brought out supplies, and gave information. He made it
and was transferred to ICU. What a rush. So now we are documenting
and decompressing. I guess codes are really rare for our unit. Still
no other patients. Weird day.

Oh yeah, we totally had giant pieces of DD PDUC for dinner.  That's double-decker pineapple upsidedown cake, don't you know.  I had chips for an appetizer and Ben is having popcorn as a second course.  Working has definitely taken a toll on my nutritious cooking.

Oh, hi Blog readers. Sooo, long time no posting, right? Been busy.  Done with orientation. Oh, and I bought a new car today.
[hands flapping with excitement]  Been saving up my pennies since getting a new job and found some great deals for Labor Day weekend.  I wasn't expecting to get one so soon, but the price was right and the color was right (hey, it matters!) so there I go.  I earned my good price with hard haggling.  That guy was a total jerk, I almost left the table.  It actually kind of soured the purchase for me.  But I came out victorious in the end and my new car is PERFECT.  I really love it.  Ben's going to help me get a hot stereo, just to make it a little more special.  And I'm going to get some Sticars to personalize the outside.  Probably more pictures to come.  It's getting dark and I'm tired from a busy busy day. 

PS It's a 2009 Nissan Versa 1.8 S hatchback in Arctic Blue.

This afternoon I was killing time between picking up my car (now with a working AC) and my staff meeting in Aurora.  I went to Anthropologie, a lovely place that is quickly becoming a usual pay-day jaunt.  While trying on a darling dress (not on sale yet) I caught site of my pale gams.

AAAAACK!  Look at those huge leg veins.  I cannot believe how quickly those suckers popped up.  I've only been nursing 10 weeks.
The camera phone photo only hints at how big they are in person.  At this rate I'll have giant blue ropes by the end of the year.  I wear podiatry-approved shoes and compression socks every day.  What more can I do?  I'm at gravity's mercy.

Announcing the beginning of a new blog:  Emma Pillsbury's Box of Baubles http://emmasbaubles.blogspot.com/

This is a new blog I have started, devoted to the jewelry worn by a character on Glee.  It was too fabulous not to start a blog.  Please read, share, enjoy. 

If you're not watching Glee yet, why not?

Whew, 13.25 hours today.  Seeing the sunrise and the sunset out of your work window is weird.

Last night after work I left for our family cabin at Bear Lake, with
five adults, two dogs, and a toddler in tow. The plan is to sleep,
relax, hike, walk the beach, drink milkshakes and ironports, play
games, watch movies, read books, and knit. Three blissful days away
from work and responsibilities.

Enjoy some of my favorite photos from our getaway.  Many many more are on my flickr site, and we'll be forming a group with more cabin pictures than you can shake a stick at.

I spent the last hour editing down all the footage I took with out flip camera.  Then the program failed and I realized that I hadn't saved it since I started trimming clips down to 5 seconds each.  And I was almost half done.  Grrr.  So in the words of Miranda, iMovie is going to go sit in the corner and think about what it has done for the rest of the night. 

Amanda wants details and I'm not sure what to say.  We did pretty much exactly what I wanted to do on this trip.  Bullets commence bulleting! (bulletting?)

• The cabin is still deliciously seventies in design.  Brown and yellow shag carpet with matching harvest curtains and harvest fireplace.
• I made Nate and Ben walk up the drive way first before attempting to mount it.  They poo-poohed my warnings about the steep angles, but later agreed that it was deceptively difficult to maneuver.  
  
• Fry sauce is awesome, equally delicious on french fries and tator tots. 
• We all memorized Zaley's signing video.  "It's signing time with Alex and Leah..."  will that ever get out of my head?  
• There is nothing wrong with having a LaBeau's milkshake every day.
• The autumn colors were beautiful.  We have a lot of pretty aspens in Colorado, but we miss out on the oaks.  
• I thought this might be my first trip to Bear Lake without a sunburn, but somehow it fried my nose!
• The water at the lake was amazingly clear, like a swimming pool.
• We are all majorly nerdy bloggers.  This trip will be documented with photos and videos TO THE LIMIT!
• In all our smart meal planning and grocery shopping, we forgot to take into account the attractive small town eateries that stole our appetites. 
• Disney's Robin Hood is really really good.  
• Jem is depressed that we hadn't moved into the cabin permanently.  Talk about dog heaven.  She started every morning bouncing bed to bed, doing consecutive laps up and down the stairs. 
• The weather was perfect - cool and sunny with scattered clouds.  This morning, before we left, there was a terrific thunderstorm.  I woke at 5 am to close the windows and watch the lightening beams shoot into the lake.  The rain cleared by the time we were packing up.
  
• I found some joyous remnants of my youth, such as fancy Kermit and Miss Piggy sheets that Amanda and I used to fight over, and our old Rainbow Brite "Rainbow Inside of Your Heart" cassette. 

I'll work on the video another night.  I planned to do another 5x5, but it will be more like 5x40.  Molly is happy we are home.  The couch is coated in cat hair.  Miraculously my beta fish is still swimming.  He has to be 304 years old in beta fish years.  I have one more load of laundry to do before climbing into my glorious bed.   Tomorrow is a short day of work, just some computer training.  Later Ben and I will catch up on Glee.  Look for more updates to Emma's Baubles this week!

Who can tell me what that animal skin is hanging above the arm chair in the living room?  I've always wondered.  We couldn't come up with a good guess.  Badger? ManBearPig?

Wow, today was a pretty bad day.  I was supposed to be a 10a-10p shift.  They called at 7 to say that a tech was sick and could I come in sooner and still work late?  I got there at 8:30 and expected a long day.  Although we didn't have a third shift, so I got to leave at 7:30p, our patients were a wreck.  Seriously, what is this?  Acute care or something?
-----
 I had written/published this long thing about all our patients, but decided I didn't want a big rant about the day out there in that much detail.  Clotted systems, severe hypotension and hypoglycemia, barfing, and mucho mucho alarms.  Enough said.
-----
I'm still decompressing before going to bed.  I have the weekend off.  Amanda and I hope to see a corny teenager performing arts movie (FAME! I'm gonna live forever . . .)  I need to update my blog on Emma's Baubles.  She was only in two scenes this week so it should be a quickie.  Boy, and someday I might put together that vacation video I promised you.

Happy Weekend, everyone!

PS: My car is super awesome and driving it is the best part of my day.  Rock.

[This is a re-post of the video, now on Vimeo and in higher resolution]

This started as a 5x?? video, one of those 5 second clip things.  But there was so much to put in that didn't fit exactly 5 seconds!  I trimmed it a lot though.  I believe less is more.  But the 5 seconds became more of a guideline than a rule.

I'm disappointed that I whipped out my camera mostly when Zaley was being cute.  I wish had caught more scenic panoramas.  Oh well.  It gives a good picture of what the trip was like.  Watch for the bat!

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6842368&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Video Diary of our Bear Lake Cabin Getaway from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

There's a deli meat advertisement on Hulu.com.  I think this kid is Brian circa 1992.  Except Brian would have NEVER forfeited his Halloween candy.  Well, maybe for an R-rated movie.  But even then . . .

Holy crap guys, my Emma's Baubles site has actual traffic.  In fact, Instyle.com linked to my site!  In a Jayma Mays quote!  My dream is that Jayma Mays will discover my site and comment on it.

I love that on Sundays you get to put on a smart, pretty outfit in the morning, then change into your most comfortable grubbies in the afternoon.  Best of both worlds.

I'm writing from a patient's room at 9:15. I'm about halfway through
an 8 hour treatment. Because of a shortage of slow, continuous
dialysis machines, we are simulating that sort of treatment with our
regular hemodialysis machines. My schedule worked best among staff
for staying here until 2 am, so here I sit. I found out I'd be
staying at 5 pm.

She's tolerating the treatment well and the MICU nurses are very nice
and helpful. I really can't complain. But it's an unexpected late
night and those are hard.

Not much to it. Vitals every 15 minutes, top off dialysate fluids,
run machine checks periodically. She's been watching The Perfect
Storm and Wild Hogs on TV. I prefer my Artemis Fowl book, alternating
that with Stephen Fry's Incomplete & Utter History of Classical
Music. (Thanks Amanda!)

I plan to sleep in very very late and take a nap too.

Ah, Stargate is the next movie of the night. To answer Serin's
question, I started work at noon. So I'm entering overtime for 12+
hours. . . now! I'm trying really super hard not to think of my warm,
soft bed with snuggly down comforter, snoozing husband, sleeping
puppy, and dozing kitty. All probably wondering when I'll join them.
I'm glad Jem was at daycare today. Ben tells me that she wore herself
out hard. Hopefully she will agree to my "sleep in super late" plan.

I finally finally finished this sweater.  I stopped near the end because summer came, and I didn't want to not be able to wear it when I finished it.  Then I stopped to make a dress for Zaley.  The recent snow reminded me that I need to GET ON IT and finish this thing.  Ta Da!

See the owls along the neckline?  I need to find buttons to put on their eyes.  Then it will be more obvious that they are owls.  It's not a perfect fit.  The back sags a little, the collar could come up higher.  But it's my first sweater!  The homemade look is ok.

What a grand day to have off from work!  I woke up at 6 am and promptly turned off my pager, no longer on duty.  Then I went back to sleep :-)  Later I made pancakes for breakfast, and shared them with my dear husband who was working from home.  You see, when we got up there was already 3 inches of snow, with much more forecast.  We took Jem to daycare so she would get plenty of exercise despite the cold.  Also, we could have an undisturbed day of coming and going from the house with her out of it.  I haven't taken her to daycare in a long time and gee whiz, I thought she was going to stroke out on excitement.   She starts running around the backseat, whimpering and clawing at the window, getting more and more exacerbated the closer you get.  She DEFINITELY knows the route there.

To give him time to work undisturbed, I slowly shopped around Target, one of my favorite suburban pastimes.  I needed some Halloween candy, stat!  I also called my sister who is shacked up in the mountains, hopefully having a relaxing time.   Then I got a peppermint hot chocolate at Starbucks and chatted with my mom, watching the snow fall in heavy clumps.

At home I met up with Ben and we walked down the block to the local Chinese restaurant.  I love eating lunch out with Ben, and I love hot egg drop soup and rice with soy sauce on cold days.  It was quite a trek to get there actually.  The snow was knee deep in places on the way back.  We passed a group of snowboarders on the sidewalk. They had built a ramp of snow at the top of a set of stairs down the hill.  The stairs have a long, shallow rail running down it.  They also hooked a bungee cord to the railing.  They would bungee up the snow ramp, then jump on the railing with their snow boards, ride it down the hill, falling off onto the snow banks when they lost balance.  Very clever. 

Ben got back to work and I finished Shakespeare in Love on Netflix.  Good movie.  For a snack, I indulged in my all time favorite - diet cola with ruffled cheddar baked lays.  Browsing for another instant play Netflix show, I found a real gem - 

Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre!  Holy crap this is a treasure.  Did anyone else watch this when they were kids?  It was on Showtime in the 80s, then picked up for syndication by the Disney Channel and PBS.  I selected Snow White to watch.  What. a. cast. First, we have Vincent Price as the mirror.  With his face is painted like wood and stuck in the wall, he provides droll narration.  Then Vanessa Redgrave plays the queen.  I kid you not, she has red crimped hair frizzed out and wanders around waving her arms, draped in teal and purple velor.  Fabulous.  When she dies of vanity at the end she actually sticks her tongue out to make goofy gaggy noises while rolling on the floor.  Fantastic.  Finally, the singing prince is none other than my beloved Rex Smith!  One year after his world debut in the Pirates of Penzance film, he's back!  Singing!  In thigh high leather boots!  Oh, be still my heart.  The episode needed a lot less stupid dwarfs and a lot more Rex.

So yeah, really good day so far.  I'm not feeling the cooking vibe, so at Target I bought ready made frozen lasagna, ready made garlic bread, and salad in a bag.  If you know me, you know how weird that is.  Ben said "This doesn't look right" as he was putting the groceries away.  I need to find something quick to take to movie club though.  Brian has picked a super-Halloweeny treat.  It's the Black Cat, by Edgar Allen Poe, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.  How great is that?  I hope I can watch it all and still get enough sleep for tomorrow when it's back to work for me.

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This is what I came home tonight. Brrr! I wish I had tomorrow off of work! It was no fair having to go in today when everyone else in Denver got to stay home.

My hands are coated in sugar and butter and cinnamon.  It feels and smells and tastes sooooo good.

Hi there.  Been quiet lately, no?  Today I'm home sick.  I haven't missed a day of work yet, but I felt so darn crummy today, I didn't think I could make it through the afternoon patient turnover, work 12 hours, then be on call.  So I called my manager and asked them to bring in the evening person early and I went home.  I feel kind of bad about it.  I have a lot of guilt about missing work.  At least today was a good day to leave early.  I helped get the day started at 6 like usual, so they're not behind schedule (like so often happens when someone calls in sick and the day starts short-handed).  We have a moderate patient load with no portable one-on-one runs.  So staff can stay in the room with a manageable number of patients.  Still.  Do you remember going to the school nurse and as soon as your mom says she will come pick you up, you felt better?  That's how I was today.  Once my manager confirmed I could go early I thought "Oh, Rachel, you're not that sick.  Stick it out!"  But I'm trying to be nice to myself instead of running haggard.  I've got indigestion, nausea, some woman troubles, and I kept nearly fainting while working this morning.  Seriously, I grabbed the wall on my way back from the kitchen with coffee for a patient.  Also, I have an old dance injury in my back that flared up this week.  It's not as bad as it was during last year's flare-up, but it makes moving around and lifting fairly painful.  Thus I just got up from a nap and ate my lunch.  I'm going to lay low and still do call tonight.  I hope I can power through my next set of shifts - MTW all in a row! so I can have an enjoyable Thanksgiving break.

I'm sure in my lack of writing lately, the top question on your mind is What does Rachel think about season 6 of SYTYCD?  Am I right?  Too bad.  That's what you get :-P

• Love the new stage.  The backdrop gives the show designers something to do instead of screwing up the view with complicated lighting, like they used to.   It also prevents the camera men from doing wacky side and circling moves from the old thrust stage.  Instead we get more nice, front-on views so you can actually see the dances.
• I don't miss Mia.  Bring on Stacey Tookey and Mandy Moore instead!
• I love Adam's judging comments.  With our fab new DVR I skip Nigel and Mary and go straight to his review. 
• I'm not impressed with Wade Robson this season. 
  

  (sorry, can't find just the dance online)


skip to 1:45 for the dance


skip to 2:05 for the dance




(sorry for the dumb pop-ups)

I wasn't a fan of Ashleigh at first, but she's really improving.  And Jakab is another superhuman dancer like Brandon of season 5.  Not as powerful or versatile as Brandon, but Jakob's lines are better.


skip to 1:40 for the dance


It's no "Bleeding Love," but another great one by Nappy Tabs. (Yes, I watch Bleeding Love about once a month still.  So. Good.)

After 5 years of pining over the idea of building a DVR, Rachel and I finallly decided to go for it as a (early) christmas present to each other. We are both pretty thrilled with it. There were some bumps along the road, but fortunately - the right software existed for me to make it happen to our specifications.




I got a micro ATX form factor case for the project. The guts are as follows:

• Sempron 140 processor
• Gigabyte AM3 motherboard with HDMI output
• Two 640 GB WD green hard drives
• Samsung DVD-RW
• Radeon 4200 onboard video card
• Hauppauge 2250 dual ATSC/QAM tuner card
• 4 gb of unganged 800 mhz ram

The hard drives use the onboard RAID controller to function as a RAID 1 configuration. I did this because I wanted a fairly robust storage solution for the house.

The RAM was supposed to be 1033 mhz, but it was unstable at that clock, so I had to bump it down. I didn't want to deal with returning it, and it seems plenty fast.

The processor actually has two cores, that my motherboard was able to unlock, so while it is a Sempron 140 - it registers at post as an Athlon X2 4200+.

The idea for this build was to use MythTV on ubuntu linux. I bought all my hardware with an eye for linux compatibility. That didn't work out. I'm sure that if I really hacked on it, I could have gotten it all to work with linux, but I decided that it wouldn't be up to rachel's standards in the end. I had a copy of Windows 7 beta, so I thought I'd give it a try for the media center.

It worked great! I had spent several hours trying to get linux working, but windows media center was up and running within 30 minutes.

There were still a few software quirks to work out, however.

The main thing I had to work out was the power settings. The system didn't wake from sleep properly, so I had to configure everything to work as hibernate. I got lucky, as my motherboard supports waking from hibernate for windows scheduled events (like show recordings). I had a hard time getting the thing to go back to hibernation after it woke up for a recording. I eventually found this software (http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml) for configuring standby behavior with windows media center, and it works great.

I also snagged a plugin to make hulu desktop a clickable item from within windows media center. There are several out there, and none seem to work quite right - so I'm still working on that.

I had some trouble getting the sound to come across the HDMI because the settings in windows were strange. In the end, I didn't really need to do anything - it just worked. The problem was that it doesn't say that it's a 5.1 signal unless one is actually being sent. This was mainly a problem in the windows media center speaker configuration thing, as it couldn't tell I had 5 speakers for some reason.

Windows media center is a very slick DVR solution. It has netflix watch it now included in it, and you can record things with all the power that you might find in a Tivo. I actually like the interface better in some spots.

We have the capacity to record about 40 hours of HD stuff and have some room left over for music and photos.

We can record two shows at once, which I am amazed that we actually do (I'm looking at you bones).

Here are some (bad) pictures of the interface.

I might love the meals after even more.

Thank you to all my family who came to Colorado and celebrated a
time-shifted thanksgiving with me!

My wacky husband craves ice cream more the colder it gets. Here he
and Brian sample the many flavors at our favorite shop.

Today I fulfilled a three year dream of ordering vanilla beans from ebay.  I found out about these sellers years ago, but either didn't have the cash or didn't have an active paypal account to deal with it.  I was whining about wanting vanilla beans to make more marshmallows and Ben basically told me to shut up and order them already.  After 25 minutes with paypal customer service to unlock my account, I bought my beans.  What a steal!  I got a 20 bean sampler of two varieties, costing $0.50 per bean.  Incredible! 

We got them tonight and Ben spent most of dinner trying to figure out why they cost so little compared to stores ($6 and up per bean).  Something about inelastic demand.  Or scarcity.  I don't remember.  It's cute how he thinks I understand economics.  All I know is I'm going to make some FABULOUS marshmallows tomorrow.

Here are photos of my finished owl sweater!  I bought buttons a while ago, but had to reorder more from Hobby Lobby.  Weeks later I found out they were discontinued and out of stock everywhere!  I finally snipped them all off and replaced them with sea-green beads.  I like these new eyes better anyway.  I also re-knit the collar so it comes up closer to my neck and doesn't slide off my shoulders.  It's so satisfying to say that this project is DONE.

Is that it makes excellent biscuit dough.  She wouldn't stop kneading my belly!  Yes, this is a lot of cat pictures, but I got a few comments enjoying my last picture of us.  Thought you might like some more.  Oops, she's back.  This time on my knees.  That's cool.  As long as I can see my screen and type :-)

You need to stop with the darling sweaters.  I can't take it!  At least, not at full price . . . hurry up winter sales . . .

For those wondering where we'll be for the holidays, here tis:  I'll be in GJ this Monday/Tuesday (14-15th) for a short, quiet visit with my folks.  Then back to Denver where I work 3 back-to-back shifts Th-Sat and on call Sunday.  Monday is my day off of work.  Then I go back for 3 more in a row Tue-Thur, ending with an evening shift on Christmas Eve.  Ben and I will book it down to GJ on Christmas morning and spend a couple days there with family.  We're going to visit the gang in Utah, leaving either Monday or Tuesday after Christmas, and return to GJ Wednesday or Thursday.  Either way we need to be back in Denver by Ben's birthday on Friday the 1st, then I'm back to work on Saturday. 

If any of my friends out there happen to cross paths, give me a call!

Just got back from a quick trip home for the holidays.  I'll be back for Christmas, but took advantage of a long work break by visiting Grand Junction.  I finished some craft projects, started some new ones, and made many many marshmallows.  Somehow I have become the homemade marshmallow guru.  I travel the mountains imparting the wisdom of whipped sugar.

While holiday shopping with my mom I got a fabulous new Christmas tree.  I already had this rad black tree from last year.  Check out my new disco-tastic green tree!

I couldn't be bothered with a full sized tree this year.  But these little guys I can handle.  Here are some more Christmas-related photos I've been meaning to post:


Isn't my advent calendar chocolate TOTALLY a companion cube??

Earlier this month I went to the Holiday Handmade craft fair with Miranda.  She blogged about it here.  I'm finally posting my pictures of all the beautiful crafts (note: I received permission to take every photo).  Boy was it crowded!  Next year we'll go on the second day and plan to do more shopping.  I had most of gifts done already.  Even so, it was good I only brought a limited amount of cash.  I needed something to keep my spending in check!  Luckily most of these sellers have etsy.com shops.  I collected many business cards and plan to return to their online stores later.

Jem is a major wimp when it's cold.  We wouldn't care except she won't pee when it's icy and we have to make multiple trips out to get her to go.  We've never had much luck with boots in the past.  It seems the designers rarely test them on actual dogs.  Ben came across these at Petsmart and they work great!  Not only that, they would totally fit in Jerrica/Jem's wardrobe.  What do you think? 

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8361074&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
Jem's Boots from Rachel Mason on Vimeo.

I'm trying very hard to stay jolly today.  Peppermint hot chocolate in my thermos, Big Soft Ginger cookies packed to take to coworkers, a green t shirt under my scrubs (gasp!  against the rules!).  But it still sucks to have to work on Christmas Eve.  Darn people getting sick.  Here's some Muppets to lift any other sinking spirits.


http://www.hulu.com/embed/hDzecNT5xiBVIHaGtNQLRg

Christmas break is turning into a fiber feast!  I've been knitting up a storm on my new addi-clicks turbo needles and learning to spin on my new spinning - wait for it - wheel!  Holy smokes it's so much fun. Technically it belongs to both me and Amanda.  Santa thinks we are mature enough to share a Christmas present.  :-)  I'm taking video clips of our vacation.  In January I'll knit those together into a little film of Christmas with the Waterhouses.  Hope everyone is having a relaxing week!