Despite the flurry of schoolwork I’ve been doing a lot of the things I like doing this summer. I haven’t been taking as many pictures, but here are a few from the past month.

We hiked up Apex trail in Golden with our friends and our dogs.

We go for walks at Crown Hill about every other day. I caught this cute goose family crossing the walk to take a dip.

Last weekend we visited Neil’s home in the mountains. Seriously. Mountains. He lives outside of Idaho Springs. The last 5 miles to his house is up steep dirt roads. You can see several peaks on the Continental Divide from his house. We had a sweet little barbecue, laid back, and watched the clouds roll by.

Here’s a picture of the Rockies game I think I mentioned earlier. I went as part of my volunteer work for school. On another day we went to Golden for rhubarb, but the farmer’s market hadn’t opened yet for the season. Instead we went for a quick walk along Clear Creek, where they had these statues that scared Jem.

I’m still cooking! Most nights, in fact. Our gas grill is awesome. I use it a couple times each week. I love not getting the house hot. It turns outs grilled pizza is easy and delicious. Much better than oven pizza. I also make some cookies. I tried substituting whole wheat pastry flour for half the flour. I had heard this works well, but apparently not. My cookies were flat as pancakes. I added some more all-purpose between batches and they turned out sturdier. I made some peanut butter jelly bars that were ok, but I was expecting greatness. Disappointing. Then just last night I made a raspberry tart with vanilla pudding. We devoured it while watching BSG and SYTYCD with friends.

This afternoon we went to the Highlands Street Fair to watch Paper Bird play a free concert. It was blistering hot! We met our friends there and took Jem. It seemed like everyone wanted to stop and pet the her. I think since the beagle won the dog show this year they’ve become more popular. The band was good but I was eager to get out of there for a $1 shake from Sonic. We got home and collapsed for a nap. Then I grilled some brats. Now Brian is patiently waiting for me to stop blogging so we can play a game of some sort. Maybe we’ll watch some more Doctor Who tonight. I borrowed his set for this latest incarnation and it’s pretty fun.

We entered our second block of 5 week classes with a whoosh. Today I had lecture and lab for Nursing Foundations. We discussed hygiene and bathing patients. In lab we learned 3 skills: hand washing, gowning up for infectious patients, and how to put on sterile gloves. I can tell that I’m really going to like this skills class. In between in the afternoon I had a meeting that was supposed to be an info session for clinicals – but they didn’t have time to answer many of our questions and didn’t really tell us anything new. Then I met with my group to review a presentation we’re doing tomorrow.

I actually had school from 8 am until 5 pm, with just a 30 minute break between group work and lab. Then when I got home I studied madly for a pharm exam tomorrow (GI drugs, antimicrobials, antivirals) and put the finishing touches on our group presentation. This is the kind of work load I was expecting from this program, so I’m ready to handle it. Nevertheless, I’m quite tired and ready to fall into bed.

Woohoo! The wonderful Threadless is having another $10 sale. If only I had $10!*

Time for a test. I’ll list them from memory:

I Olfactory – sensory
II Optic – sensory
III Oculomotor – motor
IV Trochler – motor
V Trigeminal – both
VI Abducens – motor
VII Facial – both
VIII Acoustic – sensory
XI Glossopharyngeal – both
X Vagus – both
XI Spinal – motor
XII Hypoglossal – motor

How did I do?

Harder than it looks. Can you beat my score?

Yesterday I got to see the Sim Lab. Ours looked similar to this picture I found online. It felt so real and also so artificial. The mannequins are controlled remotely by the instructor outside the room. They can talk to you like the Wizard of Oz, so you can ask the patient questions. They can control the various sounds and stats coming from the patient. There’s a phone and some equipment, but a lot of it is fake, so you just say “Let’s increase your oxygen 2 liters” and she types that into the computer while you feign the motions. It was awkward having three of us trying to assess the patient at once. We all had our scopes out on her chest, trying to determine whether we heard severe tachycardia, or the plastic chest vibrating from breath movement. We eventually figured out that our patient had lobar pneumonia. I think I’ll do a lot better next time. I’ll ask more questions instead of jumping into assessment. Because we were limited in time we were not sure what exactly we were supposed to be doing. Getting a history? Exploring her body sounds? Attempt a diagnosis? I found it very stressful from the lack of instruction. Also, our first time with a real patient will be with an instructor at our side helping us, not on the other side of the glass grading us. Now that I know what to expect I think when it’s really time to use the sim lab for testing, I’ll be ready and confident.

Today we had our lab for neurological assessment. I had no idea there were so many reflexes! It was pretty fun whacking my lab partner. 😉 I committed myself to learning the cranial nerves this weekend. I learned them just barely enough to pass my exam in A&P. Now that I’m doing assessments that apply to them, I want them ingrained in my memory for fast recall. No mnemonics, just know them.

I’m excited for my Weekend of No Plans. My family is visiting SLC for Andy’s graduation (Go Andy!). I finished my nursing home hours (woot!). No parties or church activities. I’m going to nap and run errands and do chores and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

I’m going to grill pizzas and artichokes for dinner before going to the Walkers to watch BSG. Azalea is growing up so fast! She is seriously the cutest baby I have ever seen. Every time I see her she giggles and wags her tongue at me. Darn baby giving me baby lust.

This is a quick post, because I gotta fly in 5 to get to trivia tonight.

We had to move the big church BBQ to the church building because of possible rain. And boy, did it rain. Decent turn out, probably would have been higher if nice weather, but everyone seemed to have a good time anyway.

We saw Son of Rambow this morning. Good movie. I feel like it could have been better, but still good. I liked it better than the new Indiana Jones. You should see it.

(You probably don’t care about my errands, but since I was already complaining about these items, I might as well post their resolutions.)

Once in class I found out that the blackberry version of pepid required an internet connection to access certain critical parts of the program. Well now, that doesn’t jive with my situation. After long negotiations, customer service calls, and some help with my parents I have reconfigured the whole PDA situation. I bought a Palm Tungsten E2 to serve as Pepid software reader and my calender/to-do solution. Then I gave Amanda my blackberry. It was a happy exchange, since she was in need of a phone and I did not need a fancy schmancy phone now that I had a palm. Then I got a new motorola phone. It sucks that I donated my old one when I got the blackberry. It worked just fine and I’d be happy to still have it. But I need a phone one way or another, and this one is purple and shiny and all kinds of pretty. So that’s something. The palm I got is working great. I had one when I went to CU so the user interface is second nature. Pepid was obviously designed for this kind of device, because it works more smoothly than it did on the BB.

I ordered some Dansko clogs to wear to clinicals. Zappos is a fabulous company. They sent my order overnight as a free upgrade. They answered all my questions about how the shoes should fit and style/size availability. Sadly, of the four pairs of shoes I ordered none of them fit that great. I should have listened to the great reviews on their site, that advised ordering a size up. By the time I was ready to return the shoes (at no cost!) they no longer had my size in ANY style of Dansko pro. I looked feverishly all over the internet. No where could I find my size except on weirdo sites for horse trainers and chefs, with no free shipping. Today I took my big box of Zappos returns to the UPS store in Applewood and stopped by Mucellis’s Shoes, which was listed as a Dansko supplier. 15 minutes later I walked out with a great pair of exactly the shoes I wanted. The shoes are handmade, so even within a single size the fit will vary. The store manager brought out all 4 pairs in my size of the narrow shoe (which is hard to find, I called several places and they didn’t carry the narrow). She apologized they only had 4! She helped me figure out the best fit and color and was extremely friendly. I was glad I tossed my student ID in the purse because they give a 15% discount on closed heel shoes to all nurses/students, and 10% all other shoes! (They also give the discount to teachers, and specialize in carrying larger sizes. One of my readers may be interested in that.) I totally lucked out by trying that store. Apparently people come up from as far as Castle Rock to get shoes there.

And it’s a beautiful cloudy day with spots of rain. My herbs are flourishing, my clematis and primroses came back this year. I’m enjoying one of my guilty pleasures for a few moments before starting an essay about myself, due Tuesday. You can guess which class it’s for. By the way I got A’s on my first two exams – woot! Oh, and So You Think You Can Dance starts up tonight. Ah. What a great day.