Notes From Life

What more could a girl ask for?

2009-05-24T21:21:00.003-04:00

SARASOTA, Fla. – For my birthday breakfast this morning I filled up on Eggs Benedict and cheese blintzes (my two favorite breakfast foods). For dinner, we pigged out on sushi (see above). My stomach is telling me that I don't need to eat for a whole year. But it was totally worth it.

Postcards from New York

2009-03-15T10:00:00.001-04:00

Snipets of New York, compiled over several trips:

A woman, riding the subway and wearing earphones, keeping beat by moving only her toes.

A restaurant with only 18 seats, making the most amazing vegetarian food for a bunch of omnivores.

Two men, holding open a subway car door and encouraging the people running down the stairs to hurray up to make the train. It was clear that no one knew each other.

The sound of a far off trumpeter wafting through subway tunnels and hallways to passersby.

The feeling of being on top of the world, when really you are only on the 16th floor of an apartment building.

Rock the Vote

2008-11-01T12:20:00.003-04:00

12 years ago I stood in a line to cast my first vote ever for President of the United States. It was exciting and a little anti-climactic. I remember thinking both thoughts like "That's it? No bells? No one congratulating me for finally being old enough and caring enough to vote?" and "Whoo hoo! I am finally old enough to help decide who is going to run this country!"

I have voted in every Presidential election since then (and many primaries leading up to those elections). But what I still don't get is the apathy about voting that so many people in this country seem to have. I remember in my teenage years the innovative MTV campaign to get young people to vote. This year I have noticed that the effort to get people to vote has come in many flavors--from Martha Stewart urging people to get registered to vote on her daily show, to a whole story line on "Ugly Betty" focusing around the first time an immigrant to this country can vote.

So will turnout be better this year? Will the young people vote? If the line that I stood in for an hour for in-person absentee voting is any prediction, it looks to be a banner year for the democratic process.

Whoo hoo!

Ruminations on a job

2008-10-06T13:12:00.000-04:00

--David recently said to me after I had told him a story from work that I was always there on people's most important day of their lives (being a Labor & Delivery nurse). I had never thought of my job in quite that way before, and now it seems somewhat strange to me.

--In nursing school, our professors assured us that within a year of being a nurse we would all probably be preceptors (trainer, mentor, resource) for new grad nurses as well as charge nurse of whatever unit we were working in. I am about to finish being a preceptor, and next week I start getting trained to be charge. Yikes! I wish that I had taken my professors more seriously!

Ah, Olympics...

2008-08-18T16:00:00.001-04:00

Sarah, Jay and Simon came over this past weekend for some Olympics, HD-style. Some highlights of our mini-event were watching sports that we had never seen on TV before (field hockey and handball, I'm looking in your direction). Out of this came some classic comments:

While watching what we decided was field hockey:

David: Do we (the USA) compete in this sport?
Sarah: We're not even sure what this sport is!

While watching what we decided was handball:

Jay: Um, I have some questions as to why this is an Olympic sport...
Sarah: It looks like water polo without the water.
Sarah (a little later): This is the best sport ever!

While watching sabre fighting (aka Fencing):

David: They could not possibly make this more like they were playing on the moon (commenting on the hi-tech uniforms, helmets that glowed when a player was hit and the overall darkness surrounding the players).

New Pictures: Lewes, Delaware, August 2008

2008-08-17T18:01:00.003-04:00

Bringing my loyal reader (or two) up to date with photos, click on the boardwalk bench above to see photos from our recent week on the Delaware shore.

Old Pictures #2: Las Vegas, June 2008

2008-08-17T17:56:00.003-04:00

Click on the neon above to see pictures from our trip to Vegas, which we vow to never visit in the summer months again.

Old Pictures #1: Seattle, April 2008

2008-08-17T17:49:00.002-04:00

Click on the Dungeness crab above to see pictures from our spring trip to Seattle. (We've been a bit busy, so are being slow in posting these.)

Reunion 2008

2008-05-28T20:55:00.001-04:00

Click on the photo above to see more pictures from Smith College Reunion 2008.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- Fourteen years ago I met Angela (standing on the left) before we had graduated high school. We were visiting Smith as prospective students, having been accepted into the class of 1998 just weeks earlier. We hit it off spectacularly, bonding over both being midwesterners. We wrote in with our house request, and mentioned that we would like to be roommates. When we were moving in together in August, we met Kate (standing in the middle). Ten years ago, dressed in all white, the three of us cheered on the alumnae marching by us at the Ivy Day parade before graduation.

Now, still friends, we are the ones being cheered on.

Too afraid to click

2008-04-26T16:11:00.005-04:00

I was reading WashingtonPost.com this morning, when I saw the link circled at right.

Do they really have a video of a shark killing a swimmer?

They don't. (It was the AP TV news report from the beach after the incident.) But it does seem a poor choice of words.

Rookie Mistake

2008-04-26T10:02:00.002-04:00

The other day I had a patient who progressed very fast, and with whom I had to start pushing before her water broke (she was pretty uncomfortable from the pressure).

Her husband and I got her into position for pushing, and I sat down in front of her on the bed to track her progress. She took a deep breath in, and pushed down.

Just as she did that, her water broke.

Not a little trickle, but a HUGE pop, with the amniotic water bursting out of her.

And all over me.

Her husband and I burst out laughing. My patient was a little freaked out, but after seeing what had happened laughed too. And then I changed my scrubs.

I giggled for the rest of the day. And will not make that mistake again.

Ethical Dilemna

2008-03-14T16:31:00.001-04:00

The other night I was taking care of a Vietnamese patient who had just had a c-section as I came on my shift. As opposed to when I admit a patient to Labor & Delivery, attend the delivery and then recover her from the birth, all I had to do was recover this particular patient from her c-section for an hour, then transfer her to the Mother-Baby unit. During the recovery, her mother approached me with her hand extended to thank me for my work. As I shook her hand, I realized that she was slipping me money. I tried to hand it back and tell her that I couldn't accept it, but neither she nor her daughter spoke a word of English, and she adamantly refused to take the money back.

At the nurses' station, I opened my hand and saw that it was $20!

I knew this was an ethics violation (we can't accept monetary gifts!), but there was nothing I could do.

Am I now going to be known as the nurse who needs to be paid off for good care?

Six Months Redux

2008-02-13T12:27:00.001-05:00

I have been an RN now for a little over six months, and off orientation for almost four of those. It's been a turbulent, exhausting, exhilarating time. Here are a few highlights:

I have gotten over the terror of starting IVs, and can throw in an 18-gauge needle into almost anyone's arm
I have survived my first "OB Code 1" (what my hospital calls an emergency c-section)
I have had patients who have pushed for more than 2 hours to deliver a baby and patients who have pushed for less than 10 seconds--the quickest being the woman who basically did an abdominal crunch to birth her baby
I have questioned a young MD-in-training on her recommendation for more drugs and been right
I have witnessed the heartache and sadness when parents lose an infant
I have seen a teenage mother fall in love in front of my eyes
I know what a cervix feels like and how to find it
I have had my first fainting father
I have begun to feel slightly more competent in my job

It's still sometimes overwhelming to go to work, but so far I am really enjoying my new career!

Old Man Winter

2008-01-20T20:26:00.000-05:00

Since moving to the Mid-Atlantic region eight years ago, I have realized that I do miss Wisconsin winters. Not the bitter cold, but the snow.

I miss the muffled silence of of the world in a snow storm; the way the moon and stars reflect off the tiny crystallized flakes on a cold, clear night; the monotone color of the world when everything is in shades of bark-brown or white; the way that trees and bushes bend under the weight of snow; and how your eyes hurt on from the blinding brightness on a sunny day.

Let it snow!

HD Convert

2007-12-12T14:33:00.000-05:00

So David and I have moved into a new and larger abode than we previously lived in. And we both have new jobs and a little money to spend on getting furniture for the new place.

One of the conversations that we have had since beginning this endeavor on buying a new place was whether or not to buy a new TV, specifically an HD TV. I maintained that since we had a perfectly fine 27-inch tube TV, we were fine and that the money could better spent on redoing our dining table.

Then came Black Friday. The sales were ridiculous. So David went at 3:30 am, stood in line with hundreds of people to buy a TV that was no longer in stock. Last weekend our TV came, and like my life before TiVo, I will never go back.

Well, unless I am watching a show that is not in HD.

Not again!

2007-11-19T14:40:00.000-05:00

Last year I wrote about the tragedy of Campell's Soup discontinuing their Creamy Tomato condensed soup.

Last week I went to my local Aveda store to replenish my shampoo and conditionner, only to find that my conditionner that I have used since middle school has been discontinued! Why oh why does this happen to me? And anyone have any recommendations for a good leave-on conditionner?

Ah Sweet Wedded Bliss

2007-11-16T18:42:00.000-05:00

Betsy (aka Elizabeth) and Adam's wedding was a little more than a month ago, and yet the pictures make is seem like it was last weekend. Click on the couple above to see the whole album.

And congrats to the new couple!

What is that noise?

2007-10-23T10:17:00.000-04:00

David and I spent last night in our new house (!!)--it's still in DC, but it's a bit removed from the downtown neighborhood where we used to live.

We could hear crickets and the wind moving through the trees. It was a breezy evening, and at some point in the middle of the night David woke me up to ask if it was raining in our open windows. Confused, half-asleep and nervous that we couldn't reach all the open windows (due to the boxes of crap) if it was raining, I put on my glasses and looked outside.

Not raining--just the sound of the fallen brittle leaves being blown down our alley.

It feels like we are living in a different city.

Thank God I Didn't Lose the Camera

2007-10-14T20:55:00.000-04:00

48 Hours in Madison was not enough time to hang out with Spencer and Sophie, but I did manage to snap a few pictures. Take a peek by clicking on Spencer above.

Wedding photos to be posted soon...

Fugees in the House

2007-09-12T21:45:00.000-04:00

Since I have started driving to work, I have been forced to listen to the crappy, crappy stations that DC radio offers its listeners. Our car has a tape-deck but no CD player, so I dug out all my old mix-tapes from college. I put one in last week that I made my senior year of college (circa 1997), and discovered that it has 2 songs that I have no recollection of at all. Not in the slightest.

Evidently, these 2 songs were among the ones I most enjoyed listening at the time. Yet 10 years later, I don't even remember them!

Also of note is that in 1997 I did not like rap, and one of the mystery songs is a rap song.¹

¹When I moved in with David, he taught me to appreciate the art of rap, which included teaching me that many rap songs start out by identifying the artist. As I drove home the other night, the rap song on the mix popped up, and I finally listened hard enough to hear the rappers identify themselves as the Fugees.

Update on Red Pine Super Camp

2007-09-05T12:22:00.000-04:00

News came to me via Facebook over the weekend that Red Pine Camp has been sold, again, only this time to Madison native and RPC alumnae, Pleasant Rowland.

She plans on continuing the operations at the camp in accordance with the "conservation easement that restricts [her] and [her] successors from ever subdividing the land or using it for any purpose other than "a camp or other educational activity.'"

Yay!

"Red Pine is number one,
and ever more shall be it so!"

Red Pine Super Camp

2007-09-02T21:56:00.000-04:00

"Oh listen to a story of how Red Pine began,
And how it became the best camp in the land..."

For four summers bridging my middle school and high school years growing up, I went to sleep-away camp. I learned how to water ski, sail, ride horses and be an archer. It was always the highlight of my summers.

Recently, I received news that Red Pine Camp has been sold to developers in northern Wisconsin looking to capitalize on the real estate market. After operating for 70 years, it looks like my camp is going to close. Just thinking about all the summers that both my sister and I spent learning how to be Red Pine Ladies and escaping the frenzied routine of being a tweener makes me nostalgic for a simpler time. It will be a great loss to have such a wonderful place close.

Zero to 60 in Three Seconds

2007-08-26T21:21:00.000-04:00

I have had a helluva month:

I started a new job;
We've organized ourselves enough to put our house on the market next week;
I went briefly to the beach; and
My grandfather passed away

Needless to say, it's been a bit hectic, and I have neglected you, my reader. Potential blog posts are rolling around in my head, and hopefully it will calm down a little in the coming weeks for me to do some proper updates. Thanks for your patience!

I've Had the Time of My Life

2007-08-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

In either 1986 or 1987 I got my first real watch--it was a Swatch with a green face that had a black lace overlay design, and a clear purple plastic band that smelled good. It was so cool. I quickly became infatuated with Swatches and had several others before my highschool boyfriend upgraded me to a more adult watch from Eddie Bauer.

With a need for a plastic watch to wear at work, I decided to venture back to my Swatch-wearing roots. As David & I walked into the Swatch store in Union Station, it was fitting that the music playing was "I've Had The Time Of My Life," by someone or other from the 1980s movie Dirty Dancing.

The thought occured to me after my purchase: Am I too old for a hot pink watch?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Restaurant

2007-08-01T14:21:00.000-04:00

So, do you remember when I arrived at the airport in May only to discover that my driver's license was expired? Well, it was a source of seemingly endless teasing from David while we were in Puerto Rico.

However, seems his karma has bit him in the ass, so to speak: we went out to eat on Saturday night with friends, and when David tried to order a beer, the waitress scrutinized his ID. Apparently it had expired on his birthday, a mere 8 days prior to this outing. Technically, she was not supposed to serve him, but I guess that he at least looked over 21, so he was off the hook with a warning, and an impending trip to the DC DMV.

It's Zarf/Zoe!

2007-07-27T19:52:00.000-04:00

David & I went to the Shakespeare Theater the other night to see "Hamlet." Upon looking at the program (see above) I had a sneaky feeling that I knew the lead actor, but I couldn't quite place him.

Turns out, he played a character on my soap opera this past year. His character had just been written off two months ago, and now I know why!

Sometimes, you don't have to go to New York to see famous people on stage.

0001207623

2007-07-01T20:53:00.000-04:00

I have taken the hardest exam ever. EVER. And I passed!

There is nothing like taking a computer test that automatically shuts off when you have either passed or failed, and then you have to wait around a few days to find out the results. What torture.

But in the end, I credit Georgetown for preparing me; KT, Tiny T and Kate for being great role models; and all the good luck wishes that I received via phone and text message. And lastly, David for giving me "Ring of Circle" just before the exam.

Now, onto work!

Update on Networking

2007-06-24T21:31:00.000-04:00

First it was Friendster.

Then it was MySpace.

Now it's Facebook.

Thank god for "cut and paste."

Last one from the PR--I promise (until the next one that I forgot about)

2007-06-10T21:30:00.000-04:00

PLAYA MELONES, Culebra -- On Playa Flamenco, there wasn't much in the way of marine life: not very many fish around the outcroppings of coral, no sand crabs or hermit crabs that we saw, and no iguanas sunning themselves. However, the other less-visited beaches were teeming with life. Take for instance Playa Melones, which as I have already posted, had great snorkeling. It also had a bunch of sand crabs making their home at the beach.

Click here to see a video of our favorite crab.

Final Thoughts on the PR

2007-06-06T15:19:00.000-04:00

Puerto Rico was amazing, but as all vacations, it was too short.

Old San Juan was one of the most picturesque cities that I have been to in a long time--Spanish colonial row houses, enclosed by a 15-foot thick wall around most of the old city. It was a place that echoed of pirates and soldiers, where we sweat more in two days than in a whole summer, where 500-year-old glazed cobble stones still pave most of the city, where the locals slide easily between English and Spanish, and the birthplace of the piña colada still sells the tropical drink.

I can't wait to go back!

It's Mango Time!

2007-06-04T14:57:00.000-04:00

DEWEY, Culebra -- Almost every house on Culebra has a mango tree in its front yard. I love mangoes. I spent the entire time while we were on the island pining after fresh mangoes (they're not sold in the local markets since everyone has them anyway). One early evening as David and I were walking around town, we came upon a tree that was located in an abandoned lot and hung over the sidewalk. As you can see above, he was just able to jump and pick one for me. (I think that he had grown weary of me saying "Oh look--there's another mango tree!")

Unfortunately, the mango that David had picked was as hard as a rock. A couple of local Culebra women were sitting on their front porch watching this unfold. After David was successful in his picking they motioned us over and gave us two ripe mangoes. They laughed when we tried to pay them for the mangoes--afterall, they had a whole tree to themselves. Below is David's mango on the left, and one of the ripe mangoes on the right (I had eaten one by the time we took this picture).

A Little Learning From Mr. Ray

2007-06-04T14:35:00.000-04:00

PLAYA MELONES, Culebra -- I've mentioned how much I love snorkeling. David and I hiked to a beach near our hotel to see some more fish, and hopefully a sea turtle or two. What we found instead was a stingray! I've never seen a stingray while snorkeling. Very cool. Contrary to what you see above, I was not trying to scare off the ocean life.

Under the Sea

2007-05-31T16:39:00.000-04:00

PLAYA CARLOS ROSARIO, Culebra -- I LOVE snorkeling. Today we hiked over a small mountain to get to a fairly deserted beach (there was one family already there when we arrived) that our guide book recommended for top-notch snorkeling. It lived up to the hype. Unfortunately, we were unable to capture the coolest part of the adventure due to a short-lived camera battery, but as you can see from this picture, we did see Parrotfish, fan coral, and lots of other types of coral. It's no South Pacific Ocean, but it was definitely one of the best places we've been to in the Caribbean so far. Tomorrow, we go in search of the place recommended by the locals.

Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

2007-05-30T21:15:00.000-04:00

DEWEY, Culebra -- David & I spent the afternoon nursing our sunburns by lounging in our hotel garden by the water. What we discovered was that we were unwelcome guests in said garden. Two or three (we couldn't keep track) hummingbirds flitted over our heads between the flowers and the bird feeder. It must have been at least 15 years since I've seen a hummingbird. They are so cool. When they dive-bomb your heads, they sound like a cat purring.

Monster From the Ether

2007-05-30T09:03:00.000-04:00

The other night, after landing here in sunny Puerto Rico, David checked his blog subscriptions. One of the stories caught my eye—an 11-year-old boy had shot and killed a wild pig in Alabama. This sounded normal except for the size of the pig: 9 feet 4 inches long, weighing just over 1,051 pounds. Here is the picture:

How on earth do animals this large still live in the wild in this country? And how old was this thing when the kid shot it? And, amazingly enough, this was the second pig of this size killed in the South in recent years ("Hogzilla" was killed in Georgia in 2004, and weighed about 1,000 pounds).

Meanwhile, we are encountering much smaller beings here in the PR: mosquitoes, no-see-ums, reef fish and wild hens and roosters (a nice wake-up call in the morning).

Ooops!

2007-05-28T20:44:00.000-04:00

I learned two things today:

My driver's license expired last week.
One can fly without an ID.

I didn't mean to show up at the airport this morning without a valid ID, of course. But it had slipped my mind that the D.C. DMV never sent my renewed license in the mail, which I had signed up for two months ago. The odd thing was that the United Airlines agent, upon hearing my pathetic story, calmly issued me a new boarding pass (which read "NO ID") as if this sort of thing happens all the time. I suppose it does, but I sure felt dumb. And who knew that people can fly without IDs?

Of course, this meant I got extra attention going through security, including being subjected to the space-age puffer machine.

In any case, we have arrived safely on la Isla Culebra, where the streak of not getting carded for beer continued tonight at dinner...

No, this is not a fraternity pin

2007-05-25T23:17:00.000-04:00

This is the pin (not shown to scale) that all the nursing students got at the Pinning Ceremony last week. It's about the size of a quarter, and has the Georgetown University seal in the center (which may or may not have been designed by the first school nurse).

I plan on wearing it on my ID badge (once I have an ID badge) for my hospital.

31 is the new 21

2007-05-24T11:29:00.000-04:00

It's taken 10 years (ten years!), 2 bachelor's degrees, 4 colleges/universities, 8 jobs, 5 apartments, one condo and multiple gray hairs to get to this point:

I have not been carded for drinking alcoholic beverages the last 6 times that I have ordered such beverages in the last 2 weeks.

I suddenly feel old.

Georgetown, I Hardly Knew Ye, Take 3

2007-05-21T11:25:00.001-04:00

Click on photo for entire album

16 months, and another Bachelor's degree! Congrats everyone!

Georgetown, I Hardly Knew Ye, Take 2

2007-05-21T11:10:00.000-04:00

For those of you who want to see the speech as it was given at the Pinning Ceremony last Friday, here is the video:

Georgetown, I Hardly Knew Ye

2007-05-21T10:52:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to take a brief moment to thank all the family and friends of those of us in the second-degree program. None of us would be here today without the love and support from all of you. In addition, on behalf of all the second-degree students, I would like to thank all the professors and clinical instructors that we have had over the past 16 months. You have been wonderful teachers, mentors and cheerleaders—you’ve not only trained us well, but you’ve instilled in us a belief that we will become successful Georgetown nurses (even if we don’t trust that about ourselves yet).

For those of you who have not experienced the Second Degree Nursing Program first-hand, I thought that I would give you a little recap of our 16 months here:

When I received the letter of acceptance to this program, excitement and fear hit at this same time. I had been out of college for almost 8 years, and the thought that I would be thinking, eating, and sleeping nursing school for 16 months was more than just a little daunting.

When I walked in the doors of St. Mary’s on that cold day just after New Year’s last year, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The first person that I met was Chrissy van Hilst—she and I were both ridiculously early to orientation (I think that was the last time I was ever early for a “class”). What I learned during orientation was that we, as a cohort of men and women, came from all over the country—we even had a classmate who was still jet-lagged from her flight from India. Several of us knew each other from past jobs; some of us had Master’s degrees; a few of us were married, and had children. Still others had barely been out of college before diving right back in. We are a diverse group to say the least.

Fast forward a couple of months—we had somehow made it through the first round of midterms, and our first clinical rotation was on the horizon. We were learning how to conduct head-to-toe assessments, and how to get over our fear of walking into a patient’s room for the first time.¹ Then in a flash, the semester was over. We were a quarter of the way through the program!

The summer semester went by in a blur—we learned to survive 3-hour lectures, saw the beauty of a human birth, felt the anguish and strength of parents with sick children, and the suffering that patients with mental illness can experience. We crammed more Patho into our heads than I thought was humanly possible, and then we were set free for 3 weeks of well-deserved vacation. By the time the fall semester started, I think that we were generally comfortable with the routines of the second-degree program—we were no longer the newest cohort on the block.

One year after starting this program we began our senior semester. For me, the things that we had learned in the past three semesters started falling into place just as the terror of graduation started to sink in. And here we are today, about to embark on the next phase of our lifelong journey.

We have grown as people, as nurses, and as scholars. We have learned to assess and care for patients, to seek answers to our questions, and the importance of continuing our professional education once we leave the safety of Georgetown. We are a strong and vibrant cohort of second-degree students with diverse backgrounds and diverse professional goals.

Thank you for letting me ramble down memory lane for the past few minutes. To close, I thought that I would use the words of the wise singer-songwriter Dolly Parton from her song “Travelin’ Thru,” as it captures my feelings today:

Oh sometimes the road is rugged, and it's hard to travel on
But holdin' to each other, we don't have to walk alone
When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try
We can make a world of difference, if we want to we can fly

¹ The original sentence (which was censored) read: "We were learning how to conduct head-to-toe assessments, and how to put in Foley catheters ("You want me to put what in where?" was the thought running through my head on that day)."

The light at the end of the tunnel

2007-05-10T16:27:00.000-04:00

16 months ago I began a journey. I have said this to almost everyone I know, but it really seems surreal to me that in just a short time I will be done with my second bachelor's degree, and starting a new career in nursing. I have stuffed more knowledge into my brain that I had thought was possible.

I couldn't have done this without the love and support of DL004D (who sometimes slept on the couch to keep me company while I was writing papers late at night), and the encouragement of all of our parents. I would also like to thank my friends whom I have not seen (or spoken to) as often as I would have liked in the last 16 months--your understanding has kept me going.

I have met some amazing people in this program, and been lucky enough to have some amazing professors and clinical mentors. It's really hard to believe that it's almost over!

Thank you for holding...

2007-05-09T22:32:00.000-04:00

The next available blogger will be with you shortly. We here at Grand Marnier appreciate your patronage and support, and will be updating this space soon. Please stay tuned...

My Two Year Anniversary

2007-04-01T22:39:00.000-04:00

One of the secrets about living in DC is that you have to report for jury duty about every two years (there is such a small jury pool, and such a demand for jurors that necessitates this action).

Not only have I reported for jury duty twice, but twice I have served as a juror at the DC Superior Court in the 7 years that I have lived in DC.

Yesterday, I received a letter from the US District Court for the District of Columbia stating that I had been chosen for jury service there. Unfortunately, unlike the Superior Court where jury service equals one day or one trial, the US District Court makes you call in every day for two weeks. Unlucky for me, those two weeks fall in May right during finals and graduation. Let's hope the US District Court administrator takes pity on my letter to them and grants me a different date!

AKA "Peggy" the Anglophile

2007-03-20T22:29:00.000-04:00

When I was in eighth grade, I was chosen to be on the Women's Panel. This was a group of 10 eighth-grade girls who picked famous women in history, researched them, then "became" them in a presentation that we took around to various elementary schools in my hometown. The year that I was on the panel, such women as Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst (British suffragettes), Susan Butcher (first woman to win the Iditarod), and Indira Ghandi (first female prime minister of India) were represented. I chose Margaret Thatcher.

Looking back at Thatcher's history in British politics, the reason I picked her probably had to do with the fact that she had been mentioned in the news frequently that year--her last as the first female prime minister of England.

Apparently they are going to make a movie about the Falkland Islands debacle, and seeing as how I have experience at portraying Thatcher, I think that I should be included in the talent search.

Things That Go Bump In the Night

2007-03-19T21:42:00.000-04:00

Over the past fourteen months I have gone from someone who didn't have a clue about what to listen for when taking someone's blood pressure, to practicing inserting IVs into David (who, to his credit, was very patient with me this evening). Here are some things that used to terrify me, but no longer do (or at least no longer make me break out in a cold sweat when I have to do one of them):

giving any kind of shot
giving IV push medication
putting anything into a central line
putting in a Foley catheter

Starting IVs still makes my heart race (Will I be able to find a vein? Will I blow the vein once in (thereby having to redo the whole thing)? Will my patient bleed all over?), but it is getting easier. If only I had more volunteers to practice on... Any takers?

This is my Spring Break in DC??

2007-03-07T17:50:00.000-05:00

Photo taken by DL004D

This is a photo taken of our courtyard about 2 minutes before I wrote this post. What is the deal with the weather?? Where are the cherry blossoms and the hordes of tourists? My guess: inside drinking hot chocolate and trying to keep warm.

Guacamole for all!

2007-03-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

We went out to dinner the other night at a new (to us and downtown DC) restaurant--Oyamel. Now, as people in the loop about food and restaurants in DC know, this is a venture started by Chef Jose Andres, who also runs Jaleo, minibar & Cafe Atlantico, and Zaytina. In addition, he's won awards, done a TV show in his native Spain, and is a Chair Emeritus of the Board of Directors of DC Central Kitchen, a non-profit dedicated to fighting poverty and hunger in DC.

In honor of Chef Andres, and because of the high percentage of restaurants in Penn Quarter that bear his mark, I propose that we rename Penn Quarter "Jose Andres Quarter."

Who's with me?

Sometimes I Know Best

2007-01-31T11:38:00.000-05:00

My wonderful husband, in an effort to cut our costs while I am in school, did not want to re-up our membership to AAA this year. To be fair, it's a little on the expensive side, and we hardly ever use it.

However, this weekend, two hours after he had landed in Houston for a job interview, I got a frantic call--seems that David had (inadvertently) locked his keys in the trunk of his rental car, and he didn't know what to do!

Good thing I didn't listen to him, and re-upped our membership without telling him.

Thanks, AAA.

Sensory Overload

2007-01-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

This semester I am doing my Senior Practicum in the Emergency Department at Prince George's Hospital Center--one of the few hospitals serving the communities across the Anacostia river in DC and the near-eastern suburbs. Because I am a Second-Degree student, I only need to have 84 hours of practicum clinicals (in this case seven 12-hour shifts), so I go every other week.

Last week, I almost did more in 12 hours than I have done in all my clinicals over the last three semesters:

I started an IV!
I put in a Foley Catheter!
I hooked people up to 12-lead EKGs!
I did in-line suctioning for a patient with a tracheostomy!
I watched an ABG being done!
I saw a guy who had OD'd (and was now combative) come in and be put in four-point restraints! (a little on the morbid side, I know)

It was a good day.

This Little Piggy Cried "Wee wee wee"

2007-01-10T17:26:00.000-05:00

Here is a fact that may (or may not) surprise some of my readers: I am a klutz.

Case in point:

In the spring of 1998, my friend Kate and I went to Florida for Spring Break to catch some rays and visit my grandparents. While walking on the beach the first day that we were there, I stubbed my pinky toe so hard on a rock on the beach that I broke it. Unfortunately, there is nothing to really do for a broken pinky toe other than tape it to its neighbor and wait for it to heal. It hurt for a good six weeks after that.

This past weekend found David and I in Florida once again (to visit my gradparents), and low and behold, I broke my other pinky toe. This time, on the bed post as I was walking to the window. It's a beautiful shade of red, purple and blue if anyone wants to see it.

(As a side note, I seriously considered asking the Delta agent if I qualified as someone needing extra time to board since I am hobbling around with my injured toe.)

It takes talent to be this klutzy, and I apparently have it.

Leavitt's Lark (TM pending)

2007-01-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

Limes, oranges and kumquats ready for canning

In a previous life I think that I was a domestic goddess. Okay, actually my sister-in-law was the domestic goddess, and I was friends with her then as I am now.

Either way, this year we made some kick-ass holiday conserve (see picture above) and mango chutney. Before I met her, I had never canned before, never made homemade Indian food, never fried up latkes, never rolled my own Korean spring rolls or sushi, etc. etc. etc. SAL has opened my eyes to the art of making things to eat, and I will forever be in her debt. I can't wait to see what other flavors of Leavitt's Lark come off the canning line!

8,500 Other Things to Do

2006-12-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

I am trying to wrap my head around a Bioethics take-home final, and just cannot stop my mind from wandering to all the other things that I want to/should be doing at the moment.

Like:

Christmas/Chanukah shopping
Discology mailing
Holiday Letter finishing
Cookie making (cut-outs and chocolate shortbread stars)
cleaning
laundrying
sleeping
blogging

Anyone have any suggestions for focusing my mind on the tasks ahead of me before the end of this semester?

Overheard in DC

2006-12-07T10:03:00.000-05:00

Last week, as I was preparing to do a nursing simulation with GUS (Georgetown University Simulator), the $300,000 human simulator that the undergrad and graduate nurses, as well as the med students use, I overheard this comment from the young-looking med students who were finishing up:

"I just want to get an MD so I can start poking people."

Too bad they didn't realize that nurses are the ones who do the poking, they could've saved a lot of money.

Networking

2006-12-02T23:23:00.000-05:00

When I went away to college, email was still a new thing that not everyone had--colleges still forced you to physically sign up for an account.

However, over the years, the internet grew, and so did I.

It started out with a Friendster page, then a blog, and now I have jumped into the MySpace craze. When will these fads stop?

Although, I have to say, MySpace is kind of cool--I have found with two friends from college whom I hadn't talked to in a few years. It's amazing how small the world has become because of the internet.

Creamy Tomato

2006-11-29T19:40:00.000-05:00

David, whom I love dearly, thinks I don't like tomatoes. He is dead wrong. I like them in sandwiches, chili and soup.

Which brings me to this complaint: why does Campbell's insist on discontinuing my favorite flavors of soup? In high school, it was their Cream of Corn soup. Now, it is their Creamy Tomato soup. They've replaced it with Tomato Bisque, which you might think is just the same as Creamy Tomato, but NO! It is not! There are now pieces of stewed tomatoes floating in the soup.

Sometimes, change is not a good thing.

Harold

2006-11-21T12:16:00.000-05:00

Two thoughts on my experiences at pharmacies in this fair city of Washington over the last 6 years:

I used to be a customer at the Rite Aid in my old neighborhood. When I would walk up to the counter to refill my prescription and I would see that Harold (a pharmacist) was on duty, even my worst days would fade into the haze of the traffic congestion of Dupont Circle. Harold always greeted me by name with a large smile before getting my prescription. We would make small talk--he was finishing pharmacy school while I was still in the midst of prerequisite classes for nursing school. Our relationship was the reason that I kept refilling my prescription there after we moved away two years ago, despite the inconvenience that it caused. He was a rare gem in a society that no longer values customer service or personalization, and I miss seeing him.

------

Yesterday I was at the new CVS that opened across the street from me, getting a few necessities, including some pseudofed. Since the media blitz about the crystal meth problem in the U.S., jurisdictions and companies around the country have begun instituting rules about the sale of pseudofed--it's now behind the pharmacy counter, and, at least in DC, the pharmacist writes your driver's license number down next to your signature for the purchase. I asked the pharmacist while he was doing all this if these policies had helped stem the abuse of pseudofed for meth manufacturing. His response surprised me--pseudofed is so abundantly available on the internet that (in his opinion) the only thing the new policies had done was make busy work for him and other pharmacists.

Paper

2006-11-19T21:03:00.000-05:00

I realized recently that this blog has passed it's first milestone.

So much has happened in the last year--I have completed (well, almost) three semesters of my four-semester nursing program; David and I traveled across the Pacific ocean for the second time in our lives; friends had babies; and it's been a year since I have been writing to my small internet audience.

Thanks for stopping by to read my notes on life. Here's to many more!

Grammar School

2006-11-19T19:35:00.000-05:00

David and I had a couple of conversations this weekend about O.J. Simpson's new book, "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened," and we both came to this conclusion:

Shouldn't it be titled: "If I Did It, Here's How It WOULD Have Happened"?

(Apparently, David blogged on this too.)

Martian Death Flu Redux

2006-11-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

Three and a half years ago David got the flu, which then turned into pneumonia. At the time, he nicknamed his sickness the "Martian Death Flu."

Two weeks ago (and promptly after receiving the flu vaccine I might add) I got sick. Sick with terrible body aches, a cough, and a fever that would not leave me for five days. FIVE days! I missed four days of classes, one clinical rotation, and actually went to my doctor in search of something to help. Her diagnosis: bronchitis. After ten days of antibiotics and some serious cough medicine laced with Vicodin, I am definitely on the mend, but still don't feel totally normal.

And now David is in bed with a fever and body aches.

Damn the Martian Death Flu.

The DC Bubble

2006-10-14T13:58:00.000-04:00

Last weekend David and I went home for our friends' wedding. David, having grown up a die-hard Badger fan, secured tickets for us and 12 of our closest friends to the UW vs. Northwestern football game. On the walk from David's childhood home to Camp Randall stadium, with 85,000 fans in red, I noticed that there were people out campaigning for the upcoming November elections. As I walked past one group of supporters for current Governor Jim Doyle (D), I grabbed a sticker to show my support.

(As a side note, Governor Doyle's two sons attended my high school, and, I admit it, I had a crush on one of them.)

As we kept walking to the stadium, I noticed another group of Doyle supporters. I showed my sticker and waved to them. Except that one of the them looked familiar. Several thoughts rushed through my head at once: was that one of my parents' friends? Was that one of David's parents' friends? Was that one of my childhood friends' parents? Then it hit me--that was GOVERNOR JIM DOYLE! Shaking hands with the Badger fans! I made my way through the crowd (my DC friends trailing, not sure what the heck I was doing--after all, my vote no longer counts in this battleground state), and shook the Governor's hand and wished him luck in November.

In DC, the masses can't get within 50 feet of elected officials due to all the security measures and the secret service. It was nice to see that outside of DC, the security paranoia exists at a minimum level, and that elected officials are just that--regular people who have been elected to lead their constituents forward.

I Ain't Gonna Cheat On You No More

2006-09-22T17:15:00.000-04:00

College has changed a lot since I was a traditional undergrad. I've written about the differences in clothing choices before. But technology has also changed drastically. Cellphones are now the norm (too bad we didn't have cellphones in the mid-90's—I would've saved a lot on my long-distance bills); wifi and lower computer prices have liberated students from computer labs; PowerPoint lectures are the norm (whatever happened to good ol' blackboard and chalk?); and online class websites are utilized everyday for homework, lecture notes, grades and student forums. Not to mention how integral the internet has become for all types of communication (as evidenced by this blog).

All of the above I encountered at UMd when I was taking my pre-reqs for nursing school. One thing that I did not encounter until this fall was the use of Turnitin.com. This is a web-based service in which students upload papers to be scanned for plagiarism. I don't know if I am just naive in thinking about my first undergrad experience—but I don't think that I know anyone who cheated by plagiarizing. Is it really that much of a problem now?

There are a couple of interesting points brought up by this Washington Post article: once a paper is uploaded, that paper is now the property of Turnitin.com, to be used as comparison against future papers submitted to the site. Another point is that some classes mandate the use of Turnitin.com (for my bioethics class, we can submit conscientious objections to using the site), otherwise the student will fail the assignment. It seems to me that using this site goes against trying to build trust and confidence in students, and in a student's ability to cite information sources correctly (or teacher's ability to catch mis-citations). What ever happened to learning how to write a research paper—not just in forming a thesis and backing that thesis with assertions and facts, but learning the proper way for citing materials used? Are teachers going to take advantage of this and let it do their work for them?

Hot Time, Summer in the City

2006-09-20T20:27:00.000-04:00

Mmmmm... Farmers' Market peppers...

Way back in August (okay, last month) I spent two weeks in Madison, Wisconsin. I did a bunch of stuff: dinners, sailing, Door County, saw friends, and went to a wedding. Click on the peppers above to see my album.

Nothing beats the Famers' Market at home.

She was just 17, part 2

2006-09-20T16:14:00.003-04:00

This week in my general med-surg (medical-surgical to all those non-nurses out there) nursing clinical, I was gently surprised by the poise of my traditional-age classmates (they are all 20). Most of them were surprised to find out that I was 10 years older than them, but having said that, all agreed that having second-degree students in their classes was great. All of a sudden I felt not as an oddity (as I did at UMd, or in some of the other classes at Georgetown), but as someone to be looked up to, and appreciated. More like a big sister, I guess.

It was a good day.

She was just 17, and you know what I mean...

2006-09-05T22:32:00.000-04:00

I had an interesting juxtaposition of experiences today and this past weekend:

While adding money to my Georgetown GoCard for purchasing such things as a hot chocolate on a rainy, cold day in early September, I was told that I looked like I was 17. 18 at the oldest. I am used to being mistaken for someone much younger that my actual age, but the woman really kept at it. I mean, really! Then, 20 minutes later a traditional nursing student (she's a junior) couldn't believe that I was 30 either.

Juxtapose that with the events of this past weekend when the Orlops got together for lots of laughing and a jaunt from Hartford to the place where it all began in Northampton, Massachusetts. We were loud and obnoxious alums enjoying our visit to the ol' stomping grounds, sweet-talking our way into such free things as seeing the artist-designed bathrooms in the basement of the new Museum of Art.

I went from feeling my age (somewhat) to being told that I looked almost less than half my age in the span of a day.

When you say "Wisconsin," you've said it all!

2006-08-08T14:18:00.001-04:00

I Love Wisconsin.

I saw this sign approximately 37 minutes after landing in my home town.

Take that, California Dairy Association.

Through the Ringer

2006-07-27T14:38:00.000-04:00

I hate school. Well, actually, I really like it, I just hate the end of semesters.

I am at that point where I feel like Hannibal Lector has opened my skull, scooped out my brain, sauteed it and put it back.

Ugh.

It's still "MAN-ayz" to me.

2006-06-28T20:13:00.000-04:00

David likes to correct my (mis)pronunciation of words, perhaps because he's a journalist. Interestingly, he can't spell to save his life.

Did he have anything to do with this page?

Beastly Mispronunciations

Blackout

2006-06-23T11:36:00.000-04:00

Last night, my condo building lost power (not to mention the buildings across the street and throughout the neighborhood). I had come home from school about 20 minutes prior to the big event, and was lounging in boxers and a sweaty tank top (it was a 95 degree walk home from Dupont Circle after all), enjoying the air conditioning and thinking about the mango sorbet I was about to make.

There was an actual audible *BLIP* and suddenly I was immersed in the twilight glow of the end of the day.

I spent about 20 minutes on the phone trying to get through to Pepco to report said outage, and have decided that in addition to the cluelessness that seems to plague this city with regards to public utilities, they also seem to be clueless about customer support. This was evidenced by this recording:

"Thank you for calling Pepco. To report an outage, please stay on the line, or use our website at www.pepco.com."

How could I use their website when I had NO POWER?!

In Full Swing

2006-06-16T12:15:00.000-04:00

I have just finished my third week of my summer session. A year from now I will be taking the NCLEX (licensing exam to become an RN), and starting a new career. It is all a little unreal to me still.

Much the way that it is still unreal that we, as students, help care for very sick patients. Like the 27-day-old baby girl that I had on Tuesday. She has Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome--basically her heart never developed properly, so the right side of her heart is doing all the work. She has to have 3 surgeries to correct the defect (she has already had the first one), and her heart will never pump like a normal heart. It was just crazy to see that she was bordering on cyanotic (looking blue) and had a low oxygen saturation in her blood (75%--normal people would have about 98-100% oxygen saturation), and yet she was in the process of being discharged from the hospital.

The capability of the human body to adapt and strive for survival is amazing.

Ents

2006-06-15T15:07:00.000-04:00

A couple last thoughts about New Zealand before the memories fade into the mist of my mind:

New Zealanders seem to be very conscientious about trimming their trees. All the pine trees that we drove by (be it pine trees in forests, pastures, or alongside the road), all had their dead lower branches trimmed off. We didn't see much of the landscape that was featured in the Lord of the Rings trilogies, but seeing these forests jogged my memory of the scenes from the Battle of Helms Deep (I think). Why don't Americans take better care of trees? I guess it's probably laziness, but still...

It's always interesting to visit grocery stores ("food store? food market? supermarket?" "supermaket!") in other countries. For instance, Qiwis (the people, not the bird) seem to really like chocolate cereal. And chocolate on their bread (I bought some generic Nutella in a moment of weakness). And drinking chocolate (why is this not called hot chocolate you ask? Because you can make it hot OR cold!). Also, they don't seem to refrigerate their eggs. Do that many people eat that many eggs that the store never has any that go bad?

After seeing such a beautiful landscape, it got me thinking. Do visitors to this country think that the landscape is pretty here? I know that we have a very diverse countryside, but when I drive from DC to New Jersey, for instance, there is nothing all that interesting to look at (unless you take the Del Mem Br across the river and admire the DuPont chemical plants).

Driving Directions

2006-05-29T22:50:00.000-04:00

It's interesting how different countries handle basic infrastructures like, say, roads. And what roads and how they affect the people living there mean to foreign travelers.

David and I spent six days driving around the North Island of New Zealand and discovered many things:

There is no truly good map of New Zealand roads. We went to the fantastic Tourist Info office in Auckland before leaving for points south, and picked up several good maps of the country and the highways. Interestingly enough, the map that turned out to be the most helpful was the one with the fewest roads actually drawn on it. Why is that, you may ask?

Well, for the simple reason that it showed which roads were "sealed" (aka "paved"), and which were "unsealed" (aka "gravel"). When driving on the left, up and down and all around mountains, it turns out that traveling via gravel roads is much MUCH slower. And more nerve-wracking. Especially when said gravel road is really only a lane and a half wide.

We only made that mistake once.

Another bizarre thing about highways in NZ: the occasional one-way bridges that you have to drive over. There are signs letting you know who is supposed to "give way" (aka "yield"), but it still seemed quite weird to us--if they were building a bridge, why not just make it wide enough for two vehicles in the first place?

Combine the above with the way that Kiwi's give directions: "Take the main road into town, then follow the sign for the beaches. Cross the one-lane bridge, take the third left after the bridge, and go about 5 kilometers. We're on the right." I kid you not--those were the actual directions to our farmstay. The directions worked just fine, but it was weird to not have street names.

All of this seemed to contribute to the laid-back state of being that is the Kiwi (person, not the bird). We talked to an American working in a Thai restaurant as a waitress one night who said that there was recently (only a couple years ago!) to properly map and label all the streets of NZ. She apparently had this map, but I have a feeling that no self-respecting Kiwi did.

Jet-Lag Purgatory

2006-05-29T22:46:00.000-04:00

We have been in the East Coast time zone for just a little over 24 hours, and I can say that I am definitely feeling the effects of jet-lag. Last night I didn't fall asleep until 4 AM. David astutely reminded me last night at 2 AM when we were both still counting sheep that really it was only 9 PM Tahitian time. That doesn't make me feel much better today. And a marathon day of classes is looming in front of me tomorrow. Ugh.

But more on our trip...

The City of Sails

2006-05-18T04:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday David and I landed in New Zealand feeling not like death warmed over (unlike when we landed in Palau and I couldn't tell right from left, although David says that I can never tell right from left).

The people of New Zealand are the nicest people on this planet--there was even free tea and coffee waiting for the international arrivals between immigration and customs! I could go on and on about how nice the people are in this country, but then this would be a boring post.

We made it to our hostel after two busrides, checked in, then walked through our neighbourhood (Parnell) to downtown Auckland. We went to the Maritime Museum (lots on the America's cup), saw lots of grand old buildings (in the process of being renovated by the city), ate lunch on the harbour (fresh fresh fresh scallops and mussels), and made our way back up to the Auckland Museum to learn about the Maori.

(As a side note--we discovered that the old main train station had been turned into apartments and a cafe for college students here in Auckland--how cool is that?!)

We were asleep by 7:30 last night.

Today, after getting twelve hours of sleep in the horizontal position (no more airplane sleeping for a week!), we took an early ferry to the island of Rangitoto. There we hiked up a 600 year old volcano (the youngest in Auckland, although scientists claim that it is "dead"), and caught the spectacular views of the city and surrounding area. Not a cloud in the sky.

After returning to the City of Sails, we made our way to Victoria Market, to peruse some shops. We even got Simon his birthday present! BEFORE his birthday!

So, first impressions:

Auckland is just like Seattle. Seattle has the Space Needle, Auckland has the Sky Tower (did the same guy design both?). Seattle has tons of coffee shops, Auckland has tons of coffee shops (today I had a filtered coffee from a Seattle-themed shop). Seattle is built on hills, Auckland is built on hills. Seattle has views of Puget Sound, Auckland has views of the harbour and the Pacific.

Differences of note: they drive on the wrong side of the road here, there are many different accents (not just the New Zealander accent), the sun shines all day (albeit the temperature is chilly), and my Coco Pops are really just Coco Krispies.

All in all, a good way to start a great vacation. Now onto the west coast and caves lit by glowworms!

End of An Era

2006-05-09T18:02:00.000-04:00

I took out my bellybutton ring late last night. I have wanted to take it out for a while, but I had no idea how to get the ring open. My friends at school suggested pliers. Not sure why I didn't think of that first...

In the fall of 1997 I went with my friend K.F.H. to see the Bearded Lady about getting our navels pierced. Yes, she really was a bearded lady. I was going through a bit of a rebellious period. The year before I had gotten a tattoo. In between getting the tattoo and navel piercing, I dated a guy who rode a motocycle. I wanted to be a bad-ass.

Now, let's be honest, I could never really pull off the bad-assness. My husband likes to tease me about wanting to be a bad-ass when I yell at him for walking across the grass instead of on the sidewalk. I like to remind him that he squeezed my hand much harder than I squeezed his hand when I got my tattoo.

But there it is--at age 21 I had both a tattoo and a bellybutton ring. Two facts that continued to surprise and amaze colleagues and new friends.

Until now. Now, it's just the tattoo, and that will stay with me (much to my mother's chagrin).

In The Blink of an Eye

2006-05-01T17:15:00.000-04:00

Somehow the semester is over. Well, except for finals. It really is surreal to me that somehow I have completed four months of my 16-month nursing program. I know that I have learned a ton, but I still feel like I know nothing.

(I thought my readers might want to see what me and my clincal group from this semester. My classmate K. is not in the picture.)

In other news, two weeks from today, David and I depart for our South Seas Adventure in New Zealand and Tahiti/Mo'orea. All the planning and talking and thinking about this trip is finally coming to fruition! Whoo hoo!

Spring has sprung

2006-04-12T20:31:00.000-04:00

My dad and step-mom visited last weekend. Click the picture above to see my photos from their visit, although most of them are of Tai Shan (the baby panda).

Pink is my new hero

2006-03-13T20:59:00.000-05:00

For all the feminists out there--run, don't walk, to see Pink's new video, "Stupid Girls."

I didn't listen all that closely to the lyrics, but the pictures in the video was enough--she made fun of every pop starlet in the news these days. Your know the ones--the entertainment tabloids always seem to be vomiting up their photos: Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, the Olsen twins. A parody of Desperate Housewife Colette Sheridan even makes an appearance.

I wish that more mainstream pop singers had as much chutzpah as she seems to have.

85 Degrees and Sunny

2006-03-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

As I walked home from Dupont Circle today I passed:

a three-year-old chasing his mother in circles

men, black and white, playing chess

a busker trying to get some respect from passers-by

a gay couple walking their toy schnauzers

a woman loading up her old fashioned bike with groceries purchased from Whole Foods

a man resting against a store front laughing at his recently developed pictures

a woman with a vibrant orange scarf casually draped across her shoulder

a man wheeling his daughter in her stroller

a young couple chasing after their 18 month-old daughter who loves to run

a older father pushing the wheelchair of his daughter who has severe disabilities

a pair of older men, long-time friends, out for a walk in the late afternoon.

I pass beautifully restored row houses, see the ghosts the "Paint District" and the hole in the ground that will soon become more modern luxury condos, row houses that are no longer single-family homes, row houses that haven't yet succumbed to gentrification making its way east and abandoned shells of row houses.

I love my walk home.

A Day in the Life Of...

2006-03-13T18:35:00.000-05:00

4:30 am Panic wakes me updid I miss my alarm? Dammit, my alarm isn't supposed to go off for another half-hour.

5:00 am That was a half an hour?

5:08 am David reminds me that my alarm is going off again. I roll out of bed and into the shower. My eyelids are swollen, and my eyes are dry and red from not enough sleep. Glasses today.

6:12 am I am dressed, fed and kissing David good-bye. I head to the Metro in the stillness of the dawn. The sky is grey with the first hints of sunlight and birds are singing. Spring is here.

6:43 am I hop off the crowded Georgetown shuttle from Dupont Circle and head to St. Marys Hall, the Nursing School building, with 2 fellow classmates. Our bright white pants, shoes and jackets seem obscenely bright in the minutes before the sunrise.

6:56 am After stuffing or locker full of our backpacks and extra clothes, we make our way downstairs to the lab where my clinical group is meeting before we head to Georgetown Hospital for our first day of clinicals. I hear my lab instructor telling the students already in the lab that our assigned unit in the hospital has patients that are quite sick: HIV/AIDS, drug addicts, dementia, etc. Adrenaline is high in our group.

7:15 am This is itwe walk in the front doors of Georgetown Hospital. We are officially student nurses. As our lab instructor takes us on the tour, I cant help think that we look like eight ducklings dressed in white following mom dressed in navy blue.

7:33 am We tour the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit). These kids are really sick. There are alarms going off in the rooms, and at the central nurses station, and it generally feels a little chaotic, although the PICU nurses and doctors dont seem to have such a visceral reaction to all the alarms. The temperature must be 85 degrees (two of my classmates almost faint in the heat).

8:02 am We tour the regular pediatric unit. It is much quieter here, and we are able to practice turning on the suction on the wall, and plugging the oxygen flow meter.

9:01 am A tour of the Medical ICU. These patients are really, really, really sick. Some are in total isolationas visitors we are not allowed to enter their rooms for fear of bringing in a potential infection. We see IVs and feeding tubes in use and discuss the many alarms in the ICU. Throughout these tours we see groups of medical students and interns doing rounds.

9:45 am We find our way to the basement where the Physical Therapy facility is for another tour (lots to digest). We get a demonstration of some equipment that we didnt have in our lab back at St. Marys.

10:15 am Our last hospital tourthis time of the Emergency Room. This is the first time this morning that we are not allowed to observe any patients. This tour concludes with a view of the HazMat (hazardous material) room and equipmentstandard since Sept. 11th.

10:25 am A break until 11 am. Caffeinated beverages are bought and consumed. We all feel a little overwhelmed.

11:01 am We meet and head up to the unit where we will be spending the next six weeks. We take an in-depth tour of the unit and peek into some patient rooms. We are assigned some patient charts to read, and some of us take vital signs (temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, pain). The patient's chart that I am assigned (with two other classmates) is complicated and long. Our patient is quite sick.

1:10 pm We end the morning with a debriefing in the visitors' lounge. Our lab instructor has been nothing but reassuring, kind and empathetic to us. A very good start to my first clinical rotation.

Rush Hour?

2006-02-16T15:18:00.000-05:00

I take the Metro to school four days a week. Most days, I take it at a different time (6:15 am, 9:30 am, 8:15 am), and most days I am amazed at the ridership numbers. Besides me and my classmates who are the people that take it at 6:15 am? Where are they going? What kind of jobs are they going to? (Many people ride that early!). At 9:45 am--who are all these people? They look like they are going to work, but who starts work that late? It is really crowded at that time of day.

I can thank David, ever the champion of public transportation, for teaching me to notice these things.

Three down, many more to go

2006-02-16T15:12:00.000-05:00

I have finished the first round of midterms for this first semester of my accelerated nursing program. This all still seems a little unreal to me, like I am living life at Mach 2. It also seems like the people in my cohort and I have known each other for forever, even though in reality it's only been six weeks. It feels a little like that first semester of college where everything is so different--being away from home, actually responsible about paying bills and doing homework without some one checking on you, knowing no one, then knowing everyone so well.

It's weird to think that I am experiencing all these things at age 29.

Do you have culture?

2006-02-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

Not long ago, my friend C. and I were riding the free GUTS bus (Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle for the uninitiated) to Dupont Circle after class one night when we both overheard a student talking to her friends about how lame DC is, and how it has no culture, and how New York or Boston was so much better, and how there were no real neighborhoods in DC, and how it has no personality, and how... Okay you get the point.

There have been few times in my life when I have ever confronted someone with the intent to argue with them--I can only think of 2 at the moment. However, I love DC, and there is nothing more disparaging to me than someone insulting somthing that I know to be untrue.

So, what did I do (much to the surprise and support of my friend C. who grew up here)? I leaned over and inquired as to what made her think this--what year she was, where she lived, where she had been exploring in DC, etc. To all of these I got what I deemed to be unsatisfactory answers.

This whole interaction gave me pause for thought and an interesting conversation with David that night over dinner. Is it just immaturity? Location of Georgetown (it is not easily accessible to the rest of DC since none of this part of town is on the Metro)? Apathy of the college-aged? Ignorance of the rich history and culture of DC? Desire to look cool in front of friends by dissing something?

Who knows. But what I can tell you is that Georgetown as a university does not seem to be giving DC good PR.

Nervousness

2006-01-20T18:29:00.000-05:00

When you have your blood pressure taken, have you ever wondered what the nurse or doctor or tech is listening to with their stethoscope?

Well, I have, and I heard it (the Korotkoff sounds) for the first time this week. Pretty cool (although my lab partner's arm probably does not think so since I slightly over-inflated the arm cuff on my first try).

Incognito?

2006-01-20T17:36:00.000-05:00

For most of my life I had an unusual last name--the kind that no one knew how to pronounce, but once you did, you wouldn't forget it. Some of my friends in high school liked to call me by my whole name just so they could say my last name.

Who cares, you ask? Well, my father is a well-respected doctor in my hometown, making it hard to live inconspicuously.

When I got married 2 years ago, I took my husband's name. My husband's parents are well-known university professors and researchers in their respective fields, and until yesterday I had not truly appreciated that fact. One of the classes that I am taking is directly related to the research that my father-in-law does.

It turns out my new name is not nearly as inconspicuous as I had hoped. :)

The Upfront Costs

2006-01-16T12:22:00.000-05:00

I always forget how much money you spend at the start of a new semester in college. My books were absolutely outrageous this semester (although many we will use for the rest of the program): almost $800. In addition to that, I need school supplies: notebooks, pens, folders, binders, etc., etc., etc.

I also decided that I needed a new backpack. We bought one at the Eddie Bauer outlet that when filled, turned out to be incredibly uncomfortable. Before classes started we went to REI, me with a bag filled with text books so that I could properly try out backpacks before purchasing them.

Here is the model that I bought (although mine is a pale lavender version--my only choice in the post-holiday shopping season).

So far I feel all shiny-new, and a little stiff: no real organization scheme yet, and my backpack not broken in. It feels good to be a student!

A Familiar Feeling

2006-01-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

Classes have officially started, which means that the traditional students are back on campus. When I was at the University of Maryland taking my science prerequisites, I was amazed at the changes in campus culture since I had been a co-ed in the mid-90's:

Instead of little or no make-up, flannel shirts, jeans and hiking boots, young women now wore lots of make-up, form-fitting, navel-showing shirts, low-slung pants or short skirts and heals. (It always seemed to me that professors would get quite an eye-full in a lecture hall filled with such young beauties.)

Few had backpacks--many had leather bags that I would use as a purse or a bag that I could use to take all my stuff to work.

I felt like an old prude. I wore a backpack (on both shoulders!), was married, had a mortgage, and rode public transportation an hour each way to class. I preferred indie rock to Britney Spears.

Granted, some of these differences may have been geographic--I spent my undergrad years at a liberal women's college in New England, with a stint at a Big 10 school in the Midwest. Neither being a place that was really warm enough for showing off midruffs. But I digress.

For the most part, my cohort of 2nd Degreers is much like me--people who have decided to change careers and are back in school. We wear jeans or outfits suitable for work, we wear backpacks and have the beginnings of crow's feet, laugh lines and the occaisional grey hair. While the traditional students are less Britney Spears-influenced, many still fit the description above.

Thank god I have friends this time around!

This is what I want to do!!

2006-01-16T11:35:00.000-05:00

On Monday, January 9th, my 2nd Degree cohort had our first set of lectures for Nursing 050, which is the introductory nursing class that we take this semester.

The opening lecture for the day was conducted by the most charismatic, intelligent and energetic professor that I have ever had the pleasure to listen to amongst my four years in undergrad and extra year and a half taking the prereqs for this program. She was a woman who is foremost an RN, but who has gone onto get her Ph.D. because she sees that the future of nursing is changing. She works mainly in public health, and specifically with the HIV/AIDS community, and is worried about the ever-closer health care crises that this country faces both because of the aging population and the unsustainable increases in health care costs. Hospitals are closing and the primary mode of getting health care will be through community clinics.

In her inspirational speech to us, she charged us with effecting social change within the health care system. While that seems daunting as a new student, I know that it can be done, and I certainly hope to be on the front of that change!

The 411

2006-01-16T11:18:00.000-05:00

2 weeks ago today I was at home feeling like crap, and totally nervous about starting school. Since then, I have had:

one full day of orientation (mostly silly things like a tour of campus, completing registration, and finalizing financial aid)
one full day of an introductory lecture on Pathophysiology and Pharmacology (one of the most talked-about classes from the student panel the day before during orientation)
one full day of lectures for our Nursing 050 class. The actual title is Health Promotion and Disease Prevention--this class is strictly for our cohort of 2nd Degree nursing students, is 7 credits, has our clinical and lab sections in addition to the 3 hours of lecture each week, and is a basic intro to nursing class to get us up to speed.
2 full days of class.

I can't believe how fast the last two weeks have gone by!

Technical Difficulties

2006-01-12T12:13:00.000-05:00

Yikes! I know that it's been a while since posting last, and I know that there are people waiting on baited (bated?) breath for the stories of my first 2 weeks of nursing school, but we can no longer borrow our neighbor's internet, and the computers at school suck.

So, next Monday (when we are getting our own internet connection at home! High-speed and all!), I will be updating with all sorts of stories for you kids out there.

Thanks for the patience.

15 to 2 and 5 to 1

2006-01-06T11:43:00.000-05:00

My head is full of things to tell you, dear reader of this little blog, and I am at a loss as to where to begin.

Some quick facts to start:

There are 32 people in my cohort in the January start of Georgetown's 2nd Degree BSN program (BSN=Bachelor's of Nursing)--women, men, young, old--you name it, we have it.
My program is accelerated (for those who haven't heard about this over the past few years), and will take me 16 months to complete: 4 back-to-back semesters. I graduate in May 2007.
I am taking 18 credits this semester, then 11 in the summer semester, 15 credits next fall, then another 18 next spring. Clinicals start this semester.
What do I want to do after getting this degree? Work as an RN (assuming that I pass the NCLEX--the board certification test), and do my Master's so that someday I will have my MSN and be a Nurse Practionner.

Now that that is out of the way, onto some substantive thoughts...

And then there were 32

2006-01-04T17:48:00.000-05:00

I have just completed my first two days as a Hoya in Georgetown's Second Degree Nursing program, and I am a little exhausted and overwhelmed and excited and nervous with adrenaline still coursing through my veins.

I can't believe that it has finally started!

Aaaahhhh!

More to come later...

The Newest Attraction at the Zoo

2005-12-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

As the year slows down at work I have become obsessed with watching Tai Shan, the five-month-old panda cub online.

If you haven't watched the cub online, please visit this link. He is most active in the morning hours. And just about the cutest thing that you have ever seen. I want to reach through my computer screen and pick him up and snuggle with him. Too bad he's wild and has sharp claws and teeth.

Snow Day

2005-12-12T11:58:00.000-05:00

One thing that I really miss living in DC: real snow. I mean the kind that comes down in multiple inch amounts, accumulates and stays on the ground for more than a day before becoming crusty, icy slush.

I don't like being cold very much, so I tend to bundle up even in the (balmy for Wisconsin) 35 degree winter weather that we have here in the Mid-Atlantic. But I really miss snow--the kind that you can go skiing on, sledding on, have snow-ball fights with, build forts out of; the kind that hushes the everyday sounds of traffic; the kind that reflects the sun on a cloudless day making your eyes hurt because the world is so bright, and reflects a full moon at night making it bright enough to see without a light; the kind that covers the world in white as if the dull browns of fall need to be forgotten and covered up in anticipation of the renewal of spring.

I am not terribly good at any sports. That said, there are some sports that I enjoy quite a bit: swimming, volleyball, biking, hiking and skiing--both downhill and cross-country.

All but the last I can do (and have done) here in DC. But skiing... It seems like the longer I live in a place with no immediate ski areas, the more I miss it.

Anyone up for a roadtrip this winter to catch some powder? (or man-made snow as the case may be?)

You like me, you really like me!

2005-12-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

I have worked at my present job for a little over a year--enough time to learn all the idiosyncracies of a large association, but not long enough to know all 350 people that I work with.

I will be leaving my job for grad school at the end of this month (since school begins on January 3rd), and everyone that I have run into in the hallway this week has mentioned wanting to take me to lunch.

It's been interesting comparing this to leaving the non-profit that employed me for three years. I saw the organization through ups and downs (albeit more downs than ups), established relationships with our affiliates, and effected organizational change through several publications. Yet the response to my leaving my current job (one in which I have done very little except hone my talent--or lack thereof--in completing crossword puzzles) has been amazingly different to when I left my prior job.

What do I make of this? Are the people at my conservative Washington association nicer? Were the people at the non-profit overworked, more concerned about money, time, various audits from the federal Department that awarded them a $7 million grant? Or did I just make a better impression on the people here?

Beats me, but I am looking forward to lunch!

To Kiss or Not to Kiss

2005-11-28T09:58:00.000-05:00

I saw Pride and Prejudice this weekend--once with my aunt, uncle and cousin in New Jersey, and the next night by myself in DC since D. is out of town and refuses to see "period films where people wear costumes."

I read Jane Austen's novel for the first time in college I think. It quickly became one of my favorite books. When the BBC produced a 6 hour miniseries of the same name, I hungrily watched all 6 hours, then borrowed my boyfriend's mother's VHS tape to watch it again. This comprehensive version is almost a literal translation from book to screen of the story, and features Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy (a role he would reprise in Bridget Jones's Diary, the modern adaptation of Ms. Austen's novel).

The newest version, while considerably shorter, does not dissapoint. It hits all the major plot lines, has beautiful costumes and scenery.

It also has one of the most sexy, romantic non-kiss kisses that I have ever seen on screen.

So my challenge to you, dear reader, is to come up with what you think is the most romantic moment on the silver screen that you can think of, and let me know. I know I have my winner.

A Washington Moment

2005-10-28T12:18:00.000-04:00

I just watched (from 3 stories up) the First Lady get into her car and drive away from my Washington insitution place of employment.

She colors her hair.

Much Love for the Metro

2005-10-27T11:32:00.000-04:00

Here is why I love the Metro:

Last Friday, as I was running 7 and a half minutes late (MST) per my schedule to get to the airport to leave for points north, the Metro train I was riding came to a grinding halt between 2 stops.

Normally, when something abnormal such as this happens, a conductor comes on and says something unintelligible. People look up from their papers puzzled, trying to discern what could have possibly been said. ("Did he just say there was a rabbit on the tracks?") They then delve right back into their reading, knowing that they do not control their fate on this day.

This was not what happened to me. Back to the grinding halt, and my slight paranoia at not making my flight:

After a minute or two, the conductor comes on the PA system and says: "Thank you all for riding Metro. Unfortunately we are experiencing some technical difficulties. If the train begins to move, you know that I have done my job."

The people who normally are not paying attention to any of the PA announcements looked up, surprised that a) they could understand the conductor; and b) that he said something slightly humorous. After they had processed these two things, the conductor came back on."Oh, and if the train does not move, I still know what I am doing, and if I can't get it to move, neither can anyone else."

I love the Metro.

Am I being naive or is plagiarism a huge problem?
	No, a few bad seeds have given students everywhere a bad rap.
	Yes, all the cool kids are doing it, so everyone else has to as well.
	Maybe, but how will we know unless students are made to use Turnitin.com?