Category: Uncategorized (Page 164 of 212)

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?

My class just sang happy birthday to me 🙂 It’s nice to know I’ve made some friends during this program.

Three hours later, but they made it.

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.

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.

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.

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.