Down came the snow

Today the snow came down like rain. I was in class all day and when I finally got to my car around 5 it had lots of light snow on it. I have to admit I really like the snow, but I dont so much like when it is mixed with salt and sand-its just not as pretty as pure snow. And it drives Jake nuts that our car needs washed. The next place we live will definately have a garage! Scraping ice and snow in the morning isnt fun at all. I'm hoping it stops for my commute to Indy tomorrow morning.

Internship Updates

I know this isnt apart of the internship updates, but I stole this picture from Tabathas blog because its adorable! If you didnt already notice-Ann, Isabella, and Nellie are getting bigger! I havent seen Isabella since Christmas and Ann/Nellie since our trip to Phoenix so I was excited to see a picture. As of now they are all rolling all over the place and soon to be crawling. I wish they were all more annoying and bad babies because then I might not want one of my own-Thanks to you guys, Rach and Tab, I'm wanting one and going through niece withdrawals! To try to tame these withdrawals I've been visiting the nursery at work every time I hear the lullaby. There have been 4 sets of twins born since I started, but the last baby I saw was born 6 weeks early and he was a whopping 21" long and 10 lbs 6 oz. I felt bad for that mother!

As for the internship, I started at St. Vincent in Caramel on Monday. I met my preceptor-who is the only Dietitian that works in ICU, peds, OB, and Med/Surge. However, St. Vincent has a bariatric unit, which is doing 192 Roux-en-y surgeries this month!!!-more than most places do in a year) and they have 5 full time Dietitians and 2 part timers. Let me just start out by saying a hospital chart isnt anything what I thought it would look like-its not a chart, its a binder with inserts and more inserts. As for docs having horrible handwriting-true, true, true, but what I dont understand is why they would want to write sloppy because their orders are soo important-needless to say I'm excited St. Vincent is going to computerized charts. So far its going great-I've been in information overload since I started, but I have to admitt I think it gives me some sort of weird high! I havent had MNT since last spring, but its all coming back to me daily eventhough my list of "to look up" words, meds, procedures, diagnosis is at least a page each day I find this rotation much more enjoyable than the last one.

I will be doing part of my rotation at St. Vincent in Caramel and part of it at Seton Specialty Hospital which is a Long Term Acute Care Facility (which I quickly learned was abbreviated "L-TAC") Props to Rach and Ellen for being Nurses/nursing students the abbreviations are killing me.

Since Monday we have had some pretty unique patients mostly in ICU, but also at the LTAC(P.S. Jake is learning too-all the things I learn and am excited about he gets to hear). A patient was suspected to have a mitochondrial disease Mitochondrial Encephalopathy, Lactic Acidosis, and Stroke-like episodes or MELAS. Another case study has Pickwickian Syndrome...both of which I had no idea existed. I was able to see 2 swallow studies on Wednesday and I'm excited to see a wound (necrotizing fasciitis to be specific) be re-dressed on Monday...its a tendon showing, gross you out type of wound, but its cool-believe me.

I thought the drive would bother me more, but Ginny works at Westfield and our hours are very similar so we've been able to work out a carpooling system. Carpooling with a friend is fun and the conversation never runs dry. We are hoping to get to go on vacation with them sometime in the next 6 months-we are currently trying to work something out, but schedules are hard to mesh.

On the news last night...

While Jake and I were watching the news last night they did a comparison to the weather in Anchorage, Alaska and Indiana....It was actually colder here than Alaska! That's just unreal. Its that "make your coat feel like hard plastic", "booger freezin", "you better have long johns, sweat pants, jeans, a tank top, t-shirt, long sleeve, sweatshirt, with a big ole winter coat with a sock hat, coat hat, gloves with hand warmers, boots, and a scarf" kind of weather. Weatherbug currently has our area at -7 and the Rio wouldnt start this morning. Good thing I didnt have anything going on so Jake could just drive our other car. Poor Rio :( Even with a full tank, some heet, and occasional start ups she still cant even turn over when Jake tried to start her. I think in August shes gonna get a rude awakening.

It hasnt been this cold since 1994, or 4th grade for all you 2003 graduates! It might have been around that huge ice storm we had. All I know is mom freaking out that we wouldnt have enough food, keeping the stove on and open to help heat the pipes in fear they would freeze, and wishing I could play outside. Oh the memories..Keep warm out there-we have been with an occasional hot cocoa.

Wild, Wild West Wrap up

On Saturday, we all went to the Greyhound racing track. It was my first time to the track so I was excited. We decided to do a little betting to see if we had what it takes...turns out we didnt. We didnt bet or lose a lot of money, but I dont really understand how to pick the winning dogs. We bet them all to place and out of 10 races we only showed 2 dogs. We did learn that 4 and 8 are winning dogs-except when we bet on 4 or 8. I think we were jinced because our dog would get out to the front and on the first turn he would get bumped or trip a little and then all of a sudden he/she was in last place. Probably 4 times our dog was in dead last. We had a blast even though we didnt win anything. I think I want to try the horse track next...maybe the Kentucky Derby, maybe.

These are just a few panoramic pictures I took while we were in Sedona. I thought they turned out really well! Enjoy! Oh, and the computer isnt letting me upload the video we took while we were on the Pink Jeep tour, so just imagine bumpy rocks and steep inclines!

More Wild West

Orange picking with uncle Jim-they were delicious! :)

Canyon Lake

Pink Jeeps!

While I was searching for information on Sedona I found Pink Jeep Tours. The company has been around for 50 years, since 1958. The owner once stayed in a pink hotel and thought it was memorable, so he decided to open a business with Pink Jeeps. Later on Barbie came about and a few years after she was around-she got a pink Jeep. I thought that was neat. Our tour guide had tons of information about the company and earth science...lets just say he was awesome! I've never met anyone, sorry Mr. Flowers, who knew so much about earth science and could spit it out so fast that I could actually understand the meaning!

Jake and I posing with our the Pink Jeep

A top "Chicken Point". This was once a point in the tour, but because of the 19 point turn around the jeeps had to do to make it all the way around the point-girls were scared and would get out of the jeep. This then became known as Chicken Point. The actual point was about 3X3 while the platform the Jeep would turn on was only a little wider than the jeep itself and the other side of the rock was a huge downfall. Lets just say I wouldve probably gotten out too! In the next post I will have a video of our trip-it was so exciting, it was better than off roading because we were off in the middle of no where cruising on red rock, doing 45% grades through the mountains!

Wild, Wild West Continued

The blog wouldnt let me add these pictures to the last post so this is a continuation of the last post. On our next stop was this awesome chuch that was built into the side of the mountain. I didnt think we could go in it-so we didnt, but then Jakes dad told us you can go and check the inside out, but only if its open. Anyways, here are a few pictures we took of the church.

This picture comes from atop a mountain near the Sedona airport. We had a great time mountain climbing, although it was a little scary walking along the side of cliffs and not being able to tell where the drop ended. The scenery was awesome-it was hard to leave when you could hike so many places for fun, but it was great exercise too! Another reason why warmer climate would be nice.

Queen of the mountain! This shows just how small we are in the grand scheme of things.

We're Back From the Wild, Wild, West!

After visiting in Arizona for a while, it was hard to step out into the cold Indiana weather. Going from 75 to 25 is hard to get used to, but I guess we have done it before. We arrived in Arizona late on Wednesday evening so we didnt do much but talk to aunt Donna and uncle Jim for about 2 hours. At that time we were both exhausted because it was past 1:30 am our time and we were ready for bed.
The next day, we rented a car and drove to Sedona, Arizona. I had been searching for things to do and see while we were on vacation and this is one of the destinations that was popping up all over the internet and I had an insider, Tab, giving us advice too! Sedona was only about 1 1/2 hours from Phoenix which wasnt long given the scenery we were able to take in. You dont realize how flat Indiana is until you travel somewhere the mountains actually exist.
Our trip in Sedona started out at the visitor center so we could figure out the hotspots for tourists. While we were at the center we were able to take a few pictures of Bell Rock. Aparently its pretty big in movies, but I had no idea until we were in Sedona. It did look familiar, I just cant come up with any movies that I remember it in.


Those were just a couple of the many pictures taken of Bell Rock. They dont even do it justice.

This little guy was one of my creations on the way to Sedona. I wanted to take him to different places so he could see what we saw and take it back to Purdue. Basically, I felt like drawing a picture.

Ever since I was little I've been fascinated with catus. They are just so weird if you think about the water they dont need and the needles, not to mention the texture. It's just a little weird to me-but I might be over analyzing the poor plant. I thought this one looked cool.

Picasa Collage

Please dont delay our flight snow!

The weather has me a little worried that our flight tomorrow afternoon will be delayed/canceled. I'm hoping that the last of the snow or sleet or whatever we've been getting will be gone by then. When I was watching the news today, they showed a picture of Indy and it was really foggy-so it could even be fog that delays our flight.

So, our plans for the short trip have changed a little because of snow-and I mean lots of snow in Flagstaff, AZ.

If you can see where Flagstaff is you'll understand why this makes it hard to get to the Grand Canyon-one of the places we wanted to go while we were out in Arizona. Instead, we will probably be staying close within the city of Phoenix enjoying the nice weather out west. We rented a car for Thursday and Friday so we can travel around for a while. Lake Havasu City is really close-for all you Real Housewives of Orange County fans, but we probably wont be traveling there either. Las Vegas is a thought-its only 4 1/2 hours away, but we dont really want to gamble. Who knows what we will do, we are gonna figure it out when we get there. I'm just really excited to fly. Airports might be my favorite part about traveling, I know its kinda weird.

Next week is going to be hard on my internal clock. I've been staying up til 1:30-2 am and waking up around 10-11 in the morning. This is so far from the times that I will need to be ready for next week its not funny. I will probably be whipping out the Crystal Light Energy packets since coffee has proven to not be effective due to the horrible after taste that I cant stand!

In other updates, I have started job hunting anywhere dietitians are needed. I might be a little picky on the type of job and place, but when it starts to get closer to July I might be a little easier to please. Jake and I have started to weigh the options of buying a house close to August/September/October time frame. We have had long conversations debating on whether it would be a good idea for us now or not. The housing market really makes us want to buy now, but we arent sure where and if we want to stay in a/any location to make it worth buying a house. Needless to say, apartment living isnt my favorite-although I do like knowing if something breaks its not our job to fix it.

I've got a hair appointment at 3:00, New Year...New Look-until next time!

Pictures!

Happy 2009! New Years Eve with Jackie & Alex-Ellen & Ryan were with us too, but I didnt get a picture with or of them :( But, I think Jackie or Ellen did so maybe I will get a hold of one after all!The before: plain white walls
In December I went down to Rockville and helped Aunt Debbie, Jimmy, and Jen paint Papaw Waltz's kitchen and living room!. Aunt Debbie & Shawn finishing up some last minute painting of Papaw Waltz's kitchen.
Rachel & I at the Colts vs. Lions game where the Lions almost, but not quite, beat the Colts. Its ok Colts fans we wore blue and we arent afraid of losing!

Jason, Tabatha, & Isabella were in town visting Scott in the hospital so I was able to hold Isabella! I think shes blind from my cameras flashes

After she unwrapped her gift from us, she enjoyed sucking on daddy's fingers and sporting her new hair barrett.

Ann & Nellie laying patiently on their floor so mommy can get dressed and ready! I thought their outfits were so cute I took a picture of the back of them...you'll see below. I had some problems because Ann kept rolling back over-so I had to think quick.

B'Jolly!

This picture and the next few are of Scott, Jakes dad, rocking out on stage at 8 Seconds Saloon in Indy. He is on the left in the red shirt playing the guitar. Their band was really good, but the place was really smoky-I think I smoked a pack of cigarettes that night it was so bad. It was neat to see all the people doing country line dances to the music all night long. Did I mention they were opening for Neil McCoy?! He was pretty excited!

Until next time!

Brain Food

Did you know mushrooms are a top source of vitamin B5-an elusive nutrient needed for neurotransmitter production. So, feed your brain today!

A Tribute to 2008...The things we did, saw, experienced or loved!

1. Jake got his first full time job
2. I graduated from college
3. Jake celebrated the 1 year anniversary of his graduation
4. Bridal showers-need I say more?!
5. We got married and kissed in front of lots of people
5. And, went on vacation together to another country where we experienced the bumpy and unsafe roads of the dominican
6. Enjoyed Dominican Rum & Champagne
7. Became Detroit Lions fans
8. I started my internship through Purdue
9. Jake joined a basketball league at Faith
10. We dressed as grandma & grandpa for Halloween
11. Jake carved an partially uncooked turkey
12. Jake retired #88 in the spare bedroom
13. We purchased our first car together
14. We purchased new furniture for our apartment
15. We gave up Hamburger Helper and any other helpers out there!
16. Our insurance company sent us envelope labels-very exciting
17. We became aunt and uncle of 3 adorable little girls- Hi girls :)
18. I voted for the first time in my life
19. We became hooked on YouTube videos
20. I re-learned how to knit
21. Jaked golfed more this summer than any other summer
22. We got DVR, which may have been one of the best and worst moves we have ever made!
23. I rode a horse for the first time
24. Moved into our 3rd apartment together
25. Went to the Brickyard-where the tires made the race a big bore and waste of gas money
& last but not least
26. We experienced the economic downfalls of the stock market and learned never to watch CNN or Headline News because of talk about politics, war, or the economy!

This is way off that subject, but when I was at FNCE in October I signed up for a Dole Nutrition Calender so I thought I would share the Health tip for the day:

"Bananas boost fat burning. Bananas contain resistant starch, a fiber whose digestive by-products block the conversion of some carbohydrates into fuel, forcing your body to rely on fat stores instead"

There you have it-but some bananas today!