I'm using metal kabob sticks and matches to burn marshmallows. mmmm... Really don't need the chocolate, but I shall have to invest in graham crackers when my jaw is more recovered.

Mike laughs at me every time I walk into the office with a burning brand of goo. Happy to serve as a source for mild amusement if it means I get my carbon fix.

Hurray for chemistry allowing me to open my mouth again. The day spent in household chores aggravated my jaw far more than I expected. Today's lessons: 1) cleaning is bad for you and 2) I never, ever, ever would survive as a housewife.

On the upside, I planted rosemary, basil, cilantro, and parsley seeds today. I don't have a green thumb, but my thumbs aren't necessarily black either. I'm tired of purchasing bunches of herbs only to throw the half I don't use away. This gardening endeavor is meant to fix that.

Back to work tomorrow. It will be a good day.

Three weeks in and still loving the new job. Tomorrow, I get to learn something completely new. So. Cool.

On the way to work Saturday I picked up the best donuts ever from Westhampton bakery. If you live in Richmond, you must go there. Donuts truly worth the calories. Krispy Kreme ain’t got nothing. Westhampton only makes two flavors: glazed and chocolate covered. That’s enough.

Lots of fun at the FS/WS get together after work on Saturday. Came home with bagels. Odd, but there you go.

Last day with students tomorrow. I’m sad. I’ll be appreciative in a few weeks when I’ve adjusted to only working 40 hours a week and not having to get up at 4:40 in the morning. Till then though, I’m sad. Working with the students has been a lot of fun.

Think happy thoughts my way Friday morning. That’s when my dentist’s dentist knocks me out (drugs, not heavy blow to the head) to pull a molar and pack the resulting hole with cadaver bone. Mike has taken the morning off. I hope Mike doesn’t have to take the afternoon off.

Since I took Saturday off for the potential of lingering mouth problems, we are planning on MD Sheep and Wool. I can walk around the fair grounds stoned out of my mind on painkillers if necessary, can’t work though. Maybe we’ll avoid the live animal pens though, just in case. Also, a no picking up the pottery without supervision rule might also be necessary…

So what does one wear to one’s first autopsy conference? Tomorrow morning, 8am. I’ll let yall know how my choices panned out. I’m currently leaning towards business casual with slacks that have no natural fibers so that any potentially stray fluids will wash out easily.

Heh. Stray fluids. Mike’s creeped out that I’m looking forward to this sort of thing. Not stray fluids, the watching of things that could lead to stray fluids should a novice be allowed to run the “operation”.

Chicago was awesome. I gained five pounds. We had fantastic popcorn and meals and great joy in watching Wendy see both Blue Man Group and Wicked for the first time. I slept in till after 5am every day. There was snow on the ground. The city has this odd habit of throwing evergreen branches around to fill garden beds. I’m sure there is a purpose, we just couldn’t figure it out.

No headaches while in the land of ice and snow. Headaches before and after. I haven’t actually gone back to work yet, so I blame the blooming trees.

Speaking of work, I GOT THE GENETICS JOB. Warranted yelling at least once. Schedule not set yet, there is great potential for a rough couple of months ahead with transitions.

Cats have still not come to trust we aren’t leaving for long periods of time again. Poor guys.

Walked just over three miles during lunch yesterday, forgot to change to my tennis shoes. Pout, now I have a blister on the ball of my foot. Danskos are not made for walking.

New cake recipe for this weekend, cross your fingers.

Hand doc gave my wrist a thumbs up yesterday, all good. Now just have to keep going through the steps to make the force my employer to pay the hand doctor.

For the first time in years I have a normal BMI. When did that happen?

After all the rush to see the new dentist quick, the extraction isn’t scheduled till May 2nd. I did like the dentist though. He answered all my questions, of which there were many, competently without dumbing them down at all. The physics of implant vs bridge in grinders, how the allogenic bone grafts are different than the autologous one that failed in my pelvis, healing time, etc. Dude, this is going to take awhile. Extraction, heal 2-3 months. Put in the screw, heal 5-6 months. Make the crown. Get the crown. Finally have tooth in.

I found a little coffee shop yesterday on my walk that has peanut butter and banana Panini’s on the menu. I am TOTALLY having that for lunch today. Yummy.

Dude, it’s only Thursday.

Hurray! Progress.

Last week sucked. I didn’t cry on Monday. It was Saturday before I made it through an entire day without crying. I caused a car accident, got a letter denying my workers’ comp claim, had a very bad doctors appointment, and overall just got emotionally broke. I skipped work at the school Wednesday afternoon. I left a note for the instructer of that day’s lab saying, “in massive amount of pain. Going home to avoid crying in front of students.”

Saturday was good, Mike was very attentive to his crazy wife. My birthday was celebrated. It snowed, which was kind of like the world pissing on me as it was my birthday celebration day and I hate snow, but I decided to forgive the world. Then Kirk and Cindy drove into Richmond just to have dinner with us at a restaurant that was a pure indulgence of me on Mike’s part. Except for the fact that I’d been in way too much pain for way to long that left me worn out and, well, in pain, it was a really nice dinner. Cindy and I shared different tapas plates while the boys had pasta entrees. Who knew duck and cherries went so well together?

Then we came back to the house, ate ice cream cake, and played a game. Then they drove home, hopefully without incident.

Then Sunday dawned really late for me ( I slept in till nine, which is kind of amazing). It was relaxed and nice. Hurray.

Tuesday’s follow up with the work comp doctor was scary. He raised the specter of topical and oral steroids in the path of “aggressive treatment”. He indicated my nervous system was responding in weird and bad ways to the amount of pain my bum arm was causing me and made an appointment with a hand specialist for first thing this morning. Sigh.

Hand specialist guy was awesome! He listened to me, which is enough to make him awesome. There is still quite a bit of damage to heal, but no more splints. Use the hand till it hurts, then stop. Oh, and take this med that targets nerve pain specifically and this other med that will help deal with the tendonitis, joint, muscle mass pain stuff. I took the meds when I got home. No nausea. Pain down to a 2.

Side note, I kind of love the, “on a scale of 1-10, what is your pain level” question. I get to say, “Bearing in mind that 10 for me is a two story fall, I’m at a _____.” People make the best faces when they realize I just told them I’ve fallen two stories.

Poor Adam. He just called about something completely unrelated and got side swiped by my sudden lack-of-pain giddiness. Thanks for listening man!

Got a letter from EVMS. I am wait listed. So not a no, but not a yes. Sigh.

On the up side, we had a lovely dinner at Karsen's in Carytown last night. Pricey, but yummy. HIGHLY recommend the pear martini, the chopped salad appetizer, and the quail appetizer. Mike says the bread pudding is exceptionally lovely.

The Virginia Chapter of the American Society of Microbiologist conference was Friday and Saturday. It was kinda cool. It was pretty much two days of fifteen minute presentations by graduate students on their research. Many of them were so far over my head that I occasionally wondered if they were still speaking English. Some of them were ingeniously simple and could make a difference to the world right now. One was foolish, why did someone let this poor graduate student spend all this time, money, and mice on an experiment of such poor design? Don't they have graduate advisor's to prevent this sort of thing? Many of them seemed like "good starts" to learning lots more about the bugs they had focused on. Exciting really to see all these different things happening all around me.

Then there was the fun of answering the "When are you getting married?" question from people who don't see me often. He.

I borrowed a book before Coronation from U of R and went to return it today. There is this little tiny art gallery near the library that was closed the last time I was there, so I slipped in today upon seeing the open door. What a cool little space! The have a room where you can see rocks fluoresce, a billion different shells, and lots of little exhibits broken up by country or state. There are coral fossils draped with necklaces made of that coral. They have a Chihuly! One of his Persian pieces. It's basically a large, yellow, irregular bowl filled with different open and closed green and yellow pieces. Trust me, the piece is so much cooler than I make it sound. It's a neat little find, in any case.

Someone has taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and turned it into four colors. Green, Gold, Orange, and Blue. It's called "true colors". We spent two hours figuring out our true colors and what that means today in my Education and Management class.

Apparently, I am the epitome of green. Of the 24 students in the class, four were green. Then we figured out one of the greens was actually a gold. Four were blue, and the rest of the class was fairly evenly split between gold and orange.

The differing of groups was: Golds have a list and check it twice. Greens have a list, then make sub-lists. Blues have a list but lose it. Oranges don't make list

The last hour we broke into our color coded groups and answered questions. It was pretty impressive how quickly the larger groups came up with a single answer to questions like: "I meet deadlines because....", "When stressed, what do you do to relax?" and "I prefer to read...".

"I meet deadlines because..." was pretty demonstrative of the groups too. Gold: because I'm obligated too. Orange: because nothing would get done without deadlines. Blue: it feels good to meet deadlines. Green: what kind of question is that? Its a deadline.

Then we began learning how to tear other people's research apart. Strange day.

To celebrate my green-ness, I made green mint oreo ice cream for dessert and I'll wear green tomorrow.

From: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070302/D8NK5R202.html
-------------------
Mar 2, 12:22 PM (ET)

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) - A man toting a 3-foot sword apparently met his match when he broke into his ex-girlfriend's apartment: The woman's roommate grabbed a sword of his own and sliced the intruder, police said.

The roommate, a sword collector, fended off the ex-boyfriend, who was cut on the arm, police said.

Elvis Javier Polanco, 18, was treated at a hospital and charged with burglary and aggravated assault, Beaufort County sheriff's Capt. Toby McSwain said. He said Polanco broke a window and climbed on his friend's shoulders to get into the apartment.

The roommate, Louis Delgado Hernandez, disarmed the intruder while the woman called police, McSwain said.
--------------

Freaking fantastic!

Okay, maybe posting at 4 in the morning isn't the best idea, but a) its better than posting drunk and b) I can't sleep, I've already spent an hour doing school work, and screwing up a posting is better than doing poorly on my on-line quizes.

I currently park my car near main street station downtown. This means that to get from car to class / hospital and back I have to cross Broad street on the bridge between the two 95 entrance ramps. For those of you not from around here, that means crossing 4 lanes of traffic, thankfully with a median, often during the busiest sections of the day. Up or down a rather steep hill - not an insignificant effort when you have ten to twenty-five pounds on your back.

On the way back to my car this evening, I caught up to this little tiny woman in little tiny slip on shoes with really thin little two inch heels (sense a theme here?). After introducing myself by marveling aloud about how good a job she was doing walking down the hill in those shoes, I slowed my pace a bit to keep even with her, and crossed the street just behind her. I was afraid she was going to fall at that crazy intersection. Then I noticed that the guy in scrubs in front of us was doing the same thing. Just kind of keeping an eye on her. We stayed in a loosely associated pack the rest of the way down the hill.

I don't think the woman even realized that these two complete strangers had made the slightest change to their day just to watch out for her. I was plesed to note I was not to only mother hen out and about.

Mind you, I guess he could have had more nefarious intentions in mind, but I'm sticking with the positive.

Mike gets off around 3 and were are heading to Ymir straight-away. Packing for cold weather makes for a lot more stuff than warm. I'm pretty sure we can get it all in the mini without killing visibility. I know we can't get it all into M's car :)

While visiting the west coast, M's parents stopped by the jelly belly factory. His father found he simply could not pass up the deal being offered up on the "mistake" jelly beans.

So he spent almost no money buying four, two pound bags of belly flops. One for each kid and one for themselves. Then they spent likely far too much money mailing two of the three kids their misshapen candy.

Mind you, I am inclined to think it was worth it all just to get the big bag with belly flops printed on it.

His parents are soooo cute.

I need new emotions icons. Sick with a cold does not deserve a frog behind a toilet.

Pescado is spanish for fish, I think. I know it is the name of a yummy restaurant in Midlothian. We went there for dinner last night.

We started with Sangria, get the red. The white was okay, but the red was ever so much better.

Mike had the tuna. It was good, but not fantastic. I think, if it wasn't the only fish we really cook at home (and usually do a pretty-darn good job on), it would have been better.

I had the special, and I whispered to people waiting as we walked out that they should order the special. It was the rock fish meal. Rock fish in a lime fish base with floating chili peppers, then smoked rock fish with some sort of cheese in crimini mushrooms, then a chunk of rock fish on rice that was a little sweet with grilled (not charred, grilled) asparagus on the side. The soup was spicy. The waitress and I agreed whole heartedly that the soup was spicy despite the protestations of the cook. Really good, I ate a good portion of it, but too spicy to finish. I could have had just the mushrooms and been really, really happy. Well, I would have had to have had more than the two that were on the plate, but you get what I'm saying. The entree itself was happy dance inspiring. Right there at the table. Me, doing the happy dance. It involves wiggling.

Then I ordered dessert. I turned away from the adventursome avocado tart in hopes that Mike would try whatever I ordered. I settled on the silver and gold chocolate cake/mousse thing with cinnamon ice cream. This was yummy, if not awe-inspiring. Its best feature was the little slivers of chocolate cake sandwiched between think layers of fluffy mousse. Usually, desserts are the other way around, which is wrong. This is my journal, so I get to declare when something is wrong, and I declare that to be wrong.

Okay, so my review isn't doing the restaurant justice. If you like the fishes, just go already. Reviews from other hospital folks indicate that the restaurant also serves up a rather fantastic carne asada. I'll have to take his word for it, but YOU don't have to. You may drive to this little resturant in the village shopping center and try it for yourself. Drive down midlothian turnpike from the powhite, go past the Wal-mart, and make a right turn at the CVS into the shopping center there. It is on the right hand side of center as you pull in.

Next place to try is Dd33 at cox and broad. Mmmmm, love finding new restaurants that don't suck.

This looks like so much fun. We could get teh different players to be responsible for different parts of the game....


Cupcakes of Catan

Last Thursday, I broke down and ordered a new hematology atlas. It was just way to hard to try to do diffs on sick people without a book of well-labeled photographs at my side. I had searched all the usual suspect places more than once and couldn't find my well abused and barely annotated one. I paid for super quick shipping so that I would have it in plenty of time for the following weeks round of case studies.

That night, I had a dream. In that dream, I found my atlas. Unfortunately, I found it when it fell out of the sky and into my hands, so it wasn't so helpful.

Then the next morning, as I stood next to the bed regaling Mike with the story of the useless finding dream, I looked down. My old atlas was on the floor next to his side of the bed. The new atlas had already shipped.

So now the lab has an official copy of the atlas with the words "For Lab Use Only, DO NOT REMOVE" written in big, black sharpy all over its cover. Yeah, I could have returned it. But now, when I can't find my atlas again, I know there is one in the lab.

Mind you, I think I'm okay with my dreams not necessarily being prophetic. Last nights had me in the hospital for an illness everyone else was convinced I had. Then all of the sudden, Mike was on the floor and I was breathing for him by blowing into a straw. I kept wondering why the idiot doctor hadn't intubated him so that I could squeeze a bag of room air into his lungs instead breathing him full of the air I was rejecting. Very strange. hmmm....

For those of you going, have fun at Ice Castles! Cross your fingers for me.

For those of you who haven't dealt with it, the MCAT is the SAT of med school. There is a physical sciences section, a verbal reasoning section, a biological sciences section, and a writing section. The writing section doesn't get graded in the practice MCATs so that is the last you will hear of it here. The other three sections, 15 is the max score and 10 is the minimally acceptable for most schools

First practice MCAT scores: 8, 12, 9
Second practice MCAT scores: 9, 12, 10
Third practice MCAT score: 7, 11, 8

I'm have a minor freak out session at the moment. My actual MCATs are the 27th of this month. Yes, I know I can take them again, but I have to give up my stat class to take an exorbitantly expensive prep course I was trying to avoid, then put off working for who knows how long so I can take the math course in the summer. Then I'll take the MCATs at during the more traditional month of April followed by a certification exam in May. ugh.

I have what amounts to a "word a day" dictionary friend listed. I like words, I like to see new ones, it works out. What gets me though, is the people that reply to the word of the day. Strange.

Totally unrelated, I'd vote for him. Go look at this: http://www.wickedcoolstuff.com/zoliforprt.html. Then go look at the rest of their stuff.

We all have a reptilian part of our brain that causes emotional responses to things that we would normally scoff at. It just so happens my reptilian portion is a Marine. Reptile, Marine, pretty much the same thing. Creatures that run from meal to meal, mate to mate, with occasional incidents of great violence in between. It's just that the Marine can sometimes pretend to be a mammal.

All this because my dad sent me "How great they are" email supposedly written by an Air Force Colonel Doc about the Marines he treats. I am prone to rolling my eyes at feel good emails, but the reptile kicked in. Stupid reptile.

This part though, this part is funny: "I had the sad duty of standing over a young Marine Sgt. When he recovered from anesthesia - despite our best efforts there was just no way to save his left arm, and it had to come off just below the elbow. "Can I have my arm back, sir?" he asked.
"No, we had to cut it off, we cannot re-attach it." I said. "But can I have my arm?" he asked again. "You see, we had to cut it off." He interrupted, "I know you had to cut it off, but I want it back. It must be in a bag or something, Sir." "Why do you want it?" I asked. "I am going to have it stuffed and use it as a club when I get back to my unit."

Fridays are my new favorite day of the week. Back when I had almost 2 years straight with no class on Friday, I always got lots done. I expect this semester to be the same.

With that in mind, I have to go review anti-nuclear antibody fluorescent patterns, investigate resources for a presentation on the ethics of live organ donation, research a case study for group (blah) presentation, determine what type of erythrocytes are released with excess erythropoieten, find documentation for the use of 59Fe in the cohort labeling of RBCs (I think that is what you use for cohort labeling), relearn carbohydrates, and do some as yet unknown task in immunology.

Then I'll pull out my MCAT books again.

Today will be good.

Okay, so the past two days I get out of class (at different times), do some stuff, and go home.

During the doing stuff portion yesterday, I found myself wandering in the cookie isle of the target thinking, "I don't even want any cookies". I had the things I needed in my hand, and my head hurt really badly, and I felt nauseous. I picked up some headache powders before heading home. I laid in the bathtub for an hour with my eyes closed, then Mike rubbed my shoulders a bit, and the headache finally backed off a bit. I went to bed with a minor one.

I was fine this morning, no head pain. Came home, got some bills in the mail and started studying, and now I have the headache without the nausea. This sucks.

On a happy note, this semester looks like it will be chop full of interesting and new information. On the downside of that, there are multiple "team" projects we are being forced into and my statistics class starts at 7pm on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I was hoping to be done with night classes, but its' possible that taking this one means that I'll actually be done with undergraduate classes when I graduate. Not taking back to back math classes over the summer would be sweet. At the very least, I'll only have to take one math class over the summer, which is only half as sweet, but still sweet.

Poor Mike. I just ordered the Dr. Demento 20th anniversary two cd set, Dr. Demento 30th anniversary two cd set, King Missile's Happy Hour, and King Missile's Mystical Sh**/Fluting on the Hump.

Poor Mike. Good thing he loves me.