Month of Thanks - Day 3

Just as I am thankful for my parents, I'm also thankful for Jake's parents! They even sent me birthday presents! And I'm thankful that his parents get along so well with my parents! We're also excited to visit THEM for Christmas!

Month of Thanks - Day 2

I'm very thankful for my parents. For all of the support and help they've given me/us... particularly the over the last year. :-) I'm very excited to get to visit over Christmas.

Month of Thanks - Day 1

The number one thing I'm thankful for at this point in life is Jake. :-) On my birthday we will have been married for 175 days. And they've been great!

Month of Thanks

So I'm stealing from Karen Herrington a wonderful idea about getting into the right spirit of Thanksgiving. Everyday for the month of November, she is writing about one thing she is thankful for. I'm a little behind- seeing as how it is already the fifth. So I will try to catch up. :-)

Beautiful November!

November has been beautiful so far! Beautiful weather in the upper fifties into the sixties! Sunny! Leaves changing! Wonderful!

Jake and I sat out on the balcony this afternoon and studied together!

BIRTHDAY TIME!

My birthday is on Saturday!! :-) I'll be turning the big 2-1!

This is the inspiration for the new birthday layout!

Our First Halloween!

Last post about Halloween! I promise!!

We went to the costume contest at my work and won second place! We lost to a man riding an inflatable ostrich. Which was only fair. :-)

Me and my ribbon!

Jake and his ribbon, reading the book we won!

We did most of our Halloween celebrations on Friday the 30th. We went to a lecture about scary movies and then an old vampire movie at the International Cinema. Then we stood in line outside for a while to go through the Haunted Laboratory set up in the Clyde Building. It was indeed bigger than last year! The only problem was that we were in the first group to go through... so it very much felt like a dress rehearsal.

Saturday, I worked from 7 AM -7 PM. So we didn't go out to do anything. We stayed in and watched a scary movie.

All in all, our first Halloween was a smashing success!

Congratulations to Jake for getting an A on his Physics Exam today!

The Night of the Living Pins

We have been doing AWESOME at FHE lately! Tonight, we went bowling. The bowling alley on campus had a special tonight. It was The Night of the Living Pins - $1 a game if you come in costume! So, we went in costumes!

Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter!!

We played two games. Both of us did better on our first game. I even broke 100!!

The leaves are changing colors... And so is my hair!

As you may have heard, Jake and I are going to be Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley for Halloween. Jake already has the black hair, but it's going to take a little tweaking so that I can be red headed Ginny. So Sarah sent us some semi-permanent hair dye. The first time we tried it (with Carsey), we didn't realize that the dye was heat activated. So there was NO change. Jake and I redid it on Sunday.

The "Before" picture!

YAY for Carsey coming to help us!

Fun times!

Chilling in my "cap"... aka plastic bag...

Twenty minutes of blow drying later... TAH DAH! Red head!

Awesome Saturday!

Today was an Awesome Saturday!! Here is how it went. With some photo documentation. :-)

Jake and I got up and headed down the street pretty early this morning - around 8:45. Which is early for a Saturday!! We started out our morning with a free blue pancake breakfast!

We got blue pancakes!

And blue milk to go with it!

Here is Jake enjoying his pancakes! (They were yummy. I especially enjoyed the chocolate chips.)

YUM!!

We were glad we got there early, even if it meant waiting around an hour until the parade started. Because this was the line when we started eating.

I had gotten cold and pulled my arms into my hoodie. Jake decided to take advantage of this situation and tie me into a straight jacket... Which didn't help me keep warm at all.

Here are some of our favorite floats:

The Class of 1959 was in town for their fiftieth reunion. So their class officers were in a float! And their Homecoming Queen! She's the one sitting on the back! We thought it was cute!! :-)

Of course, the Folk Dancers were also some of my favorites! This was my first year not performing in the parade with them. I waxed nostalgic!

The Mayor of Provo and his family rode in the parade on a golf cart and some Segways! The Mayor and his son even did tricks and twists and such on their Segways. This was their body guard... He didn't do any tricks though...

The Museum of Paleontology had DINOSAURS on their float!!!

The new pizza restaurant, "Pirate Island" had a float!! Which was pretty epic! They even had a Jack Sparrow look alike who spoke with the accent and everything. We're going to go there for my birthday in a couple weeks and I am all kinds of excited!!

After the parade, we did some cleaning around the apartment. Dishes and such. Then Carsey came over. We were attempting to dye my hair reddish for Halloween. (Note the use of the word "attempting".) Turns out the dye was heat activated though... which explains why it didn't change colors at all... So we'll try it again.

Then, Jake and I went and did a session at the temple. Which was enjoyable. It was pretty empty - probably since we were there during the football game. The only thing that puzzled me was that there was a Box Elder bug in the Celestial Room... How did it get there?!?!?

After we were done at the temple, we went to Coney's for ice cream. They had a special $0.50 cone special going on. So we got two awesome ice cream comes for a dollar!

GREAT SATURDAY! :-)

HAPPY MOLE DAY!!!

In Chemistry, molecules and atoms are often measured in a unit called a mole. One mole of something is 6.022 x 10^23 molecules of that something. In other words....

1 mole of Carbon = 6.022 x 10^23 atoms of Carbon

This "6.022 x 10^23" is known as Avogadro's Number.

Today is the lovely, yet nerdy holiday known as "Mole Day". October 23rd... from the 10^23 part of Avogadro's Number.

So I would like to wish everyone a HAPPY MOLE DAY!

Studying for Chemistry...

I have a chemistry exam that I need to take by noon today. (or rather, I need to START taking it by noon). I've known that it was coming up but I've also had an exam in Human Development and a midterm for my anatomy lab. So I didn't worry about this one until those two were over. I was up studying last night. And then I got up again this morning around 8:30-8:45 to study some more. I was cold and kind of sleepy and not really wanting to be studying chemistry... so I came up with my most BRILLIANT study motivator EVER!...

*drumroll*

HOT CHOCOLATE!

Now I am quite contentedly reading about ionic bonds and mole ratios and limiting reagents while sipping my lovely hot chocolate.

With a touch of cinnamon.

:-)

I hope the exam goes well.

Chemistry Magic Show

This week is National Chemistry Week. So... for FHE, Jake and I went to the Chemistry Magic Show. There were explosions, color changing liquids, elephant toothpaste, glow in the dark compounds, and blowing up marshmallows. Best of all, there was liquid nitrogen ice cream! It was a fun night!

Fun Activities Lately!!

Jake and I have done some fun activities lately!!

Last Monday, we had a fun FHE activity... which will remain secret until some future time.

Last Friday, Jake rode to my work with me and waited through my inservice and then we went up Provo Canyon and drove the Alpine Loop. It was beautiful! With the trees changing and the mountains and the streams. YAY. :-)

I tried again with the picture posting on here... They sort of came up in weird arrangements... sorry about that...

New Fall Layout!

After much tinkering, I finally refigured out how to change my layout. I'm going with something a little more fall centered.

Jake and I went and drove the Alpine Loop this afternoon. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time. I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow.

Life gets busy...

Oh man life gets busy. So... this seems to be the thing to do (I've seen it on at least three blogs lately). I'm just going to post a magical little list of updates!

• I finished the last day of my phlebotomy externship yesterday. They let me do a syringe draw the last day. Which was exciting and not nearly as scary as I thought it'd be. So I should get my certification in the mail in a week or so!
• Midterms are going well so far. I got A's on both my Human Development and Microbiology ones. And an A on my last Human Development paper!
• We had a good General Conference Weekend. Jake's parent's came out here for Emma's baby blessing. Fun was had by all!
• We (or maybe just I) are(/am?) getting excited for Halloween. We have AWESOME costumes!
• We've had BEAUTIFUL weather here. Chilly in the mornings, but nice crisp cool fall days.

So... lots of things and yet nothing at all have been going on here. But things are going well. We're sure ready for Thanksgiving break though!

Where is your Eustopian tube?

I just feel like I haven't posted anything in forever and that I should get on that... So... here's my little story.

I was in the lab for my anatomy class tonight. We were learning cranial nerves and eyes and ears. There are several different stations, one of which is partially "self" taught. We were at the self-teaching station and I was the only one in the group whose lecture period had already discussed ears. So I was leading the discussion. But... some stupid girl got "Eustachian tube" and "Fallopian" tube mixed up... Fail...

In other news... school is going well for both Jake and I. I got an A on my microbiology midterm last week. And I'm set to finish up my phlebotomy externship tomorrow!

Nothing Much of Interest

Not much is going on...

I was sick for a chunk of last week, and Jake was home sick today.

We had a good conference weekend, concluding with dinner at Jake's grandparent's house. There was food, family, and fun.

We're both up and going gearing up for more midterms.

Such are the lives of the college kids.

Halloween

I am SOOOO SUPER DUPER stoked about Halloween!!

Jake I and I are going to be Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley! Our costumes will be EPIC! We ordered real Gryffindor ties online. And we found black graduation robes at DI yesterday. WHICH WILL MAKE AWESOME WIZARD ROBES! All we need to do is make some wands!

Also, we have coupons for a Halloween Cruise on the Provo River! I guess it has lighted pumpkins along the shore and they tell you scary stories and the pirates attack your boat! And we get to go for only $5.

Also, I want to go to a haunted house. :-)

Opinions

Today during down time at the health center, I was reading yesterday's Daily Universe. As I worked my way front to back, skipping the sports articles, I came across the Public Opinion page. Regarding these opinions, I have two opinions of my own.

Opinion 1: These people are radical extremist crazy people who get worked up over little things that really don't matter in the big scheme of things.

So... that wording was slightly overexaggerated. But I'm gonna go with it to just highlight the differences between my opinions.

For example - there was a girl who wrote in about the HUGE problem of people walking across the grass on campus. Yes, perhaps it does kill grass which does waste some time and money. But... is it a big deal? Is that the most important thing you can think of to address in your community?

Opinion 2: Good for you for caring enough about something to try to do something about it.

Most people in the nation don't care enough about their community or nation to do anything, even something as simple as voting. I've never felt as though I were passionate enough about something that I was motivated to write to a public opinion page. But, I admire their commitment to a cause.

Which of these opinions dominates my view? Who knows? Depends on the day.

Silly Old People!

So old people are way stinking funny. Part of it is I think because they don't care what people think anymore (if they did to begin with), and part of it is because some of them are legitimately starting to go crazy. Since I work with old people right now, I decided that this post will just be a compilation of silly things old people have said to/around me. Unless otherwise specified, they are patients from work.

My own grandmother before her death, regarding some Nigerian refugees in her ward - "They was the blackest niggers I'd ever seen!"

A 70+ old lady after I gave her a snack - "I'm not pregnant!"

A little old man who realized his fly was unzipped - "Oh no! What if that monster had gotten out?!? BOTH INCHES of him?!?"

Old man as another CNA was getting him ready for bed - "What do you want to do now? Lay down and make love?"

Cute 103 year old lady - "You're far too pretty to be wasting your time here, you belong in Hollywood!"

Little Blind Lady - "You better look out... I saw something in this building... It had the head of a chicken... and giant mammoth tusks that came out in all sorts of shapes... And in its beak, it had a bunch of straw. That's not the sort of thing you want hanging around here, so you better watch out. Cuz one day you'll see it too!"

Little Old Man - "How old are you?.... And are you married?.... Are you pregnant yet?... Well.... its cuz you gotta start taking him serious when he pokes fun at you! That's how you get pregnant. You're just not taking him serious!"

Little Lady when I entered her room particularly quietly - "I'll start calling you Pussyfeet! You remind me of our school principal in Ohio back in 1939! You never heard him sneaking up behind you. We called him Pussyfeet!"

A man close to dying told his wife that he was going to make 450 cookies and that she could frost them. Because then they'd have them ready for the Cub Scouts!

AH..... soo many more funnies... But alas... its dinner time. I may just do posts like this periodically. Because they are just so darn entertaining!

Giving Stool

I'm now halfway through my externship. And even though it'll be great when its done (I'll have SOOOoo much more time!), I think I'll miss it. I'm really enjoying it and learning all these different things.

But anyways... This was just too funny.

A patient came in and we needed to run tests on a stool sample. So, one of the other phlebotomists gave him the specimen container and explained the procedure to him, told him where the bathrooms are, etc. Then, this humorous exchange took place:

PATIENT: How much [stool] do you need?

PHLEBOTOMIST: As much as you can give us.

PATIENT: Well, I'm a very giving person.

We managed to hold in our snickering until he left the lab, but then we all cracked up! We imagined opening the pass box to find a specimen overflowing from the container, that had all smooshed out as he tried to close the lid...

It took us several minutes to regain our composure.

Externing

I learned today what *exactly* an extern is. Or rather, why an extern is not an intern.

Interns - Generally have completed almost all of their training, and often get paid for their time.

Externs - complete hours as part of their training before graduating/getting certifications (i.e. a teaching practicum for education majors) and do not get paid.

I am an extern. A phlebotomy extern to be more specific. At the BYU Health Center. Go me! Which means, I finished a class training me to draw blood (in February, actually) and now I have to complete 40 hours of on site professional training/experience/etc.

It was my second day today. At the health Center (which shall heretoforth be referred to as the "SHC" or Student Health Center), they like their externs to just watch the first day. To get the hang of lab procedure and protocol, the set up of their particular facility, get used to their equipment, etc. I did get to practice on one of my coworkers though.

But, today was my second day! So after one more practice run on another coworker I got real patients! I only did 3 hours today, but I still got a good number of sticks in. I only missed once! But when the real employee tried on the girl whose vein I missed, she had a hard time too and kinda dug around. Which... really sucked for the girl. I felt bad. But, it kinda made me feel better about missing. But after about an hour to an hour and a half this morning, they let me do things pretty much entirely unsupervised unless I had a question or something. They said that is much sooner than they usually set externs on their own. Which means I'm doing a good job!!! :-)

But I've gotten to learn lots of interesting things during my two days so far. I learned the difference between a flu swab an a strep swap, I learned why you do NOT want urine tests for gonorrhea/chlamydia to be "clean catch" samples, I learned about the quantiferon test for foreign students who have receive the BCG Tuberculosis vaccine (they will have a false positive result to the standard TB antibody test used in America, so they have to do some different blood work to test them. And you want to purposely rupture the cells for this test, which is usually something you try desperately to avoid), and I GOT TO SEE A MOLE THAT WAS REMOVED FROM SOMEONE'S ARM!! Which was sweet. It was all gnarly and had all sorts of little arms and roots that anchored it into the skin.

Fun stuff. I'm excited for the rest of my time.

I should make more posts...

I should make more posts. I really like reading everyone else's blogs. So I should improve my own.

I'm sick... It bites...

So I've been home sick the last few days. Sore throat, all that jazz. It really bites.

Also, when I tried to make Raman today, I accidently turned on the wrong burner... The burner that had our big sauce pan and some random dishes including plastic tupperware... So the tupperware melted to the bottom of the pan and the whole apartment reeked...

Sigh...

I hope I am less sick tomorrow. Or at least by the next day...

Got a job

So I finally got a job as a CNA. It's at a short term rehab facility. It's mainly geriatric patients recovering from stroke, surgery, injuries, etc - along with the occasional Hospice patient. The maximum stay is 3 months. So for the most part the patients are fairly independent and low maintenance. It's also a small facility. They have a maximum of 16 beds, but we've been running around 8-11 right now. Supposedly they always get low during the summer time.

Anyways. I trained on several different shifts, but they've had me working mainly on the 4 PM - 12 AM shift. Which, honestly, is a breeze.

After I get to work and get report, I just get to walk around and take everyone's vital signs. All I really have to do is respirations and blood pressures. Temp, pulse, and O2 saturation are all done electronically. So thats pretty easy and it gives me practice to keep up those skills!

Usually soon after I finish the vitals, its time for dinner! Which is generally enjoyable. We just help everyone get down to the dining room and serve meals. We get one free meal per shift we work. So I usually eat in the dining room with the residents. This serves a double purpose - 1. We have to have at least one CNA in the room whenever there is food. In case of choking. And 2. It's fun chat time!

After dinner things get a little busier for a while, trying to get everyone back to their rooms and settled in, and people sometimes want to start getting ready for bed.

Things settle down pretty quickly. And then its basically just chilling, doing some cleaning, charting the vitals that were taken earlier, and answering call lights.

There are some... less than appealing parts of the job. I get to help a lot of people to and from the bathroom, change incontinence pads, help people wipe, etc. And I'm really not a big fan of emptying catheters. But... those parts are definitely outweighed by the enjoyable things. And it doesn't bother me as much since I know that its something that these people really just need help with. So its really rewarding.

Anyways. That is my job. And so far, I love it. Hard work, but worth it.

20/15

That is my vision at my second post op appointment this morning. One week after surgery. 20/15.

Also, and much less awesome, I have a sinus infection.

Post Length?

Are blog entries supposed to be short/thought provoking things? 

Or am I allowed to write longer discourses detailing whatever lately?

I don't know...

Sick

So.. I'm sick. The week before my wedding. Which is sad. Although, looking on the bright side, I guess I'd rather be sick now than the week OF the wedding. Or the day of the wedding. Or the week of the honeymoon. So maybe I should stop complaining. Although really.... I'd rather not be sick at all!

Also... I miss Jake. He's in Minnesota and I'm in Nebraska and I won't see him until Monday evening. Boo that.

LASIK

In an attempt to do at least a bit of catching up, I got LASIK last Friday. To both eyes. 

I was kinda worried when we got there because I realized that I would be VERY conscious and awake throughout the ENTIRE procedure. Every other surgery I've had (all of 2) have been done under a general anesthetic. So this was going to be a new thing for me. That was really just my biggest worry going into it. They gave me some motrin and some vallium, but that was it. (And also, the vallium didn't noticably start kicking in until on the drive home... Which I suppose is understandable because the procedure only took about fifteen minutes).

But anyways. To answer common questions I've been getting asked...

No, it didn't hurt. I barely felt a thing. They tell you you'll feel some "pressure". But this time, that really was all I felt. And it wasn't even to an uncomfortable extent. Just like if you close your eye and kinda press with your fingers. That was all.

Yes, I could see almost immediately after they were done. I went in with pretty bad vision (In my pre-op exam, I couldn't even see the big E thats at the top of the eye chart without my glasses). But I could see fine that day. The next morning (approximately 24 hours after the surgery), I had my first of several post op appointments and I checked out at 20/20 vision. Which they said is actualy likely to clear up even a little more by the time I'm done healing. 

Some other random stuff about it...

You can't wear eye makeup for a week after the surgery. And also, I need to go buy a new tube of mascara because they don't want you going back to an old one and getting an infection. Oh well, I've needed some new mascara for a while.

They projected the surgery onto a screen in another room so that family/friends can watch if they want. Mom watched the whole thing. Jake managed to come in and see the last 3-4 minutes. Sounds like they were pretty much in agreement that the weirdest part was watching them remove/replace the corneal flap and then to watch them smooth it out once they put it back on.

The worst part of the surgery was just a smell. There are two lasers. One to cut a flap in the cornea, which they then peel away. And one to reshape the tissue underneath. I don't really remember much about what the first laser was like. But the second one just kinda flashed all over in different spots and was a violet type color. But there was this smell with it as it vaporized the tissue that was kind of like burning hair. It was a bit unnerving. But that was the worst that it got. And really, if the worst part of a surgery is just that there was an unpleasant smell for a minute or so... not so big of a deal.

I was mislead about my sleep. They told me that I was encouraged to sleep as much as possible the day of the procedure (which was at around 9 AM). However... It turns out that you have to stay awake for the first four hours you get home, and THEN you get to sleep. Which I thought was quite lame. Because I was kinda sleepy going into it, figuring I'd get to nap all day. And then when the vallium kicked in, I REALLY wanted to sleep. Jake sat on the couch bed with me most of the day trying to keep me awake. He kept all my facebook apps updated for me so I didn't fall too far behind in Mafia Wars, Farm Town, whatever (also to distract me from sleep). We kind of watched The Office. As in he watched and I listened. And supposedly I was very grumpy about not getting to go to sleep. And also I kept asking Jake and Brigette about some hallucinations/dreams/whatever that were not real and I'm assuming induced by the vallium.

I get to put in LOTS of eyedrops. Including this special one for when I go to sleep. It's actually a gel. Rather than a liquid drop. Its pretty goopy and odd to have in your eye. 

I have these crazy goggles that I got to wear for the whole first day of the operation, and still get to wear when I sleep for a bit longer. They kind of look like the really old fashioned aviator goggles. Or so my family thinks.

I had a few spots of hemorrhaging in the whites of my eyes. Just from the pressure of the laser and the thing to hold my eyelids open, etc. They said it could take up to three weeks for them to fade. I'm hoping not since the wedding is about a week and a half from now. (we enter the single digit countdown tomorrow!!!) But they're already starting to fade quite nicely. So I think it may work out alright. 

But... yeah. I can see now. No contacts. It's quite nice. Yesterday and today my eyes are feeling particularly better. They mainly just get a little dryer than normal but thats all. I was pleased with it all. Its good.

Evidently I suck at this blogging nonsense...

So I think I'm kind of a failure at this blogging stuff. I go throughout my day and I'll think "That'd be a good blog topic", etc.... But do I ever get around to it? Nay. And its not that I'm not on the computer. I waste literally hours a day on the computer. So I don't know... But I'll work on it.