Month: January 2009 (Page 1 of 2)

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 😛 )

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

(bonus goofy dog photo)

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.

I finished my gloves right after break. I skipped blocking so I could wear them right away. They are super warm and soft. I might try to shrink them slightly in a warm bath.

I finished my beret with the yarn that I spun. My gauge was WAY off.

As Brian and I model, you clearly need dreadlocks to pull off this hat. So I ripped it out and started a different pattern. I’m not so keen on this new one either, so I might let the yarn hibernate so I can start working with the yarns I got in Ogden.

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.

A goat chariot? LOVE it.

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.

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.

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.”

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Shoes, originally uploaded by rachelsmason.

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.

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.)

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

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.

————

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.

Peace out.