Weekend update

After clinicals on Friday I was pretty well exhausted, but we had our usual Friday night dinner at Sarah's planned. So I took a nap, relaxed for a little while, and then rode over there to hang out with Sarah, Ronen, Paul, and the babies. The babies were particularly fussy that night, but it didn't stop us from having a fun evening that included a good game of Settlers.

At some point during the evening Sarah and Ronen asked me if I could babysit for them that Saturday night. Of course I said yes, they've been such wonderful friends that it's the very least I could do for them. Besides, they weren't going to need me until after the babies were put to bed. At some point after that plan had been made, someone suggested that Paul should come over and keep me company while I was babysitting. He said maybe. At some other point in the evening, I asked Paul if there was a good way to bike down to David's Bridal so I could try on dresses for Matthew and Leah's wedding. The only direct route is along a road that is decidedly unsafe for bikes. He not only told me there was a route, but offered to show me personally some time this weekend. I, of course, said that I would really like that (even though the route seemed straightforward enough) and so we planned that I would give him a call when I knew what time would work best.

Fast forward to Saturday. I had a bat proofing company come at 8am to inspect the house, give an estimate, and make arrangements for them to come back and do the actual work. After that I went straight back to bed and didn't get up until noon. Then I went about my usual Saturday grocery shopping and did some minor stuff around the house and homework. Around 5:30 I called Paul and told him that Sunday around noon would be a good time to go for that bike ride. He informed me that his possible plans for that evening had been cancelled and so he'd be coming over to babysit too, which was a pleasant surprise. I then called Sarah and asked her for a ride to her place, since I knew I'd be too exhausted to ride my bike back home at midnight. She then informed me that Paul would be coming to babysit too, at which I laughed and decided that we should just do conference calls. Around 7:00 Sarah and Yasmine picked me up (apparently Yasmine was really excited that they were going to get m and insisted on coming) and I got to play with the babies for a little while before bedtime. Paul showed up during the whole bedtime process (it usually takes about 30-45 minutes, and involves no loud noises downstairs and frequent screaming from upstairs) and eventually Sarah and Ronen got to go out for their date.

Paul and I just talked for a nice long time, but just before 10pm, Maya started crying. Maya doesn't go back to sleep on her own, so I had to go up there and do my best to calm down a very upset one year old. She finally fell asleep on my shoulder after about 15 minutes, and I got her down in the crib, but as soon as I tried to open the door and leave her room she woke up screaming again. Around the half hour mark I gave in and called Sarah. She told me to just take Maya downstairs to play for a while, and she and Ronen would be home as soon as the movie was over. She didn't realize that the movie was over 2.5 hours (they saw Dark Knight). But, Paul and I managed to keep the little baby content for as long as it took, and she was awfully cute, even though she should have been asleep. When Sarah and Ronen got home they were very grateful and Paul and I were both exhausted. He gave me a ride home, and somewhere along the way asked me if I would like to go to a soccer game tomorrow evening. I said yes, gave him a very tired hug, and immediately collapsed in bed.

Today, I had to go get my rabies shot at 10am, which took almost no time at all. And then around noon, when I'd had some real breakfast and done a little bit of homework, I called up Paul and we went off on our dress trying on excursion. The ride was fun, and quite pretty along the Erie canal. Paul valiantly stuck around while I did the dress thing, and then we rode back. He left me at home so I could get a little more homework done, and a shower, before picking me up for the soccer game. The Rochester Rhinos are not a very good team, but they're a lot of fun to watch. I don't think I've been to any pro soccer games before and I really liked it. I might even have to go again some time. We cheered, and booed, and yelled at the refs, and laughed at the cheerleaders, and generally had a lot of fun. And Paul was a total gentleman and opened my car door for me, held my hand, paid for my ticket, offered me his jacket, etc. I think this might qualify as a first date.

So, this was a very good, but not terribly productive weekend. For the next week I have to write up a nursing care plan for my assigned patient from last week's clinicals, go through a mid-term evaluation with my clinical instructor, verify the transcipt that Nami and Nina put together last week, transcribe my part of this week's focus group session, and work my W,Th,F clinical shifts. It's going to be another long and exhausting week. Only two left.

More battiness

This whole bat thing just keeps on going. I did some research online today and according to the CDC anyone that wakes up with a bat in their room (it doesn't even specify whether the bat lands on your head) should get vaccinated for rabies. This was not what I wanted to see, but I decided to go along with it since rabies is rather fatal.

So I called the university health services weekend number and the nice doctor on call told me that I should go immediately to the emergency room because they are the only ones sure to have the vaccine and be open on a Sunday. So I went, after I had finished watching today's stage of the Tour, and began my 4 hour journey through the Strong Memorial Emergency Department. Each time I told someone I was there for a rabies shot because a bat landed on my head the look they gave me was slightly more incredulous.

After being shuttled from waiting room to waiting room, listening to an elderly German couple reminisce about Heidelberg, and getting my scalp inspected for bite marks by a nice physician's assistant, I finally got into a real exam room. A pair of nurses came in looking incredibly apologetic and carrying a handful of syringes. They explained that I was going to be given a rabies vaccine, the first in a series spread over the next 15 days, and some immunoglobulin. Unfortunately, the immunoglobulin had to be split into 5 separate shots because you can only give a certain amount in each intramuscular injection. And because I was going to get so many shots, they wanted to put them into the largest muscle possible. That meant that I got a grand total of six shots in the butt today. They stood on either side of me doing simultaneous injections, so now I have two bruised areas with hard lumps of fluid under them. The lumps have been slowly going down over the course of the day, but it still feels pretty bruised.

Tomorrow I can expect a call from the Monroe County Health Department (they reported the whole bat incident to the health department) to schedule a time and place for my remaining injections. Luckily those ones will just be for rabies, no more immunoglobulin. I don't know how that will work with me going to the wedding next weekend, but I guess that will be figured out tomorrow.

I spent the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself and waiting out the rain so I could go grocery shopping. I managed to get to the store in dry weather, but on the way home was caught in a truly torrential downpour. My groceries survived mostly unscathed, but there was not a single dry spot on me. All my clothes are now hanging in the bathroom and I hope my backpack dries out before tomorrow.

Rainy Day

I'm loving the rain right now. Yesterday was a miserable 90 degrees with the sticky humidity permeating everything. Today it is about 70 and raining, which just feels like Portland.

I'm done with my first classes. I've written the last paper and taken all the tests. I have most of the grades back, but not quite all. Some are better than others, but I should pull at least an A- in everything, I think. I'm actually going to go talk to my pharmacology professor about my clinical paper assignment, because I either really screwed up something and can't figure out what, or the TA that graded my paper didn't do a very good job. I'll find out which tomorrow.

This weekend has been pretty lazy. I spent all day Thursday at Muddy Waters writing my genetics paper. Friday I lay around the house watching a really good stage of the Tour, then went for a ride in the rain that was sadly cut short by a flat tire. I changed the tire but the pump I carry with me is only powerful enough to inflate the tire to 75%. That's enough to get home on, but isn't fun to do any real riding on and any underinflated tire is more likely to flat again. After I got home I was covered in mud and grease and spent about an hour scrubbing myself clean.

I then ate lunch and promptly fell asleep while attempting to read. Luckily I woke up in time to get dressed and head over to Sarah's for a game night. Unluckily, I decided to pump up Johnny's tires before I left and managed to break the valve and let all the air out. That meant that I would have to change the tire, which takes a ridiculously long time on Johnny because his tires are kevlar and not very stretchy. So I called Sarah and she came to pick me up. She had Yasmine and Maya with her and Maya was not very happy at all. She's got a probable yeast infection, and was doing a lot of screaming. Anyway, when we got home Sarah took care of Maya while I got a lesson in cucumber peeling from Ronen. Apparently there's a very particular way to do these things in his family. Paul showed up at some point and we were all put to work getting dinner ready. Dinner involved the usual toddler-induced hilarity and chaos. After dinner, while the little ones were being put to bed, Paul and I made cookies and got Settlers out to play. We played the Cities and Knights version, which I had only played a couple of times before but really like. Paul beat us without too much competition, and then we just sat around chatting until Sarah looked like she was going to fall out of her chair from exhaustion. I got a ride home from Paul and immediately passed out in bed.

Yesterday was supposed to be my first day of working on the Fuld project. I met up with Elspeth, another friend from class who is working on the project with me, and we rode our bikes to an STD clinic in the "bad part of town." It's actually about a mile away from my house, but it's amazing how the neighborhood changes in a very short distance. It's not a dangerous place to be in the middle of the day, but I would never go there at night. We found the clinic and met with LaRon, who is running the study. We thought that we were going to be recruiting young moms to participate in the focus groups but LaRon informed us that they had been having trouble getting enough people, so they've hired a full-time recruiter. That was a big relief to me, since walking up to teenage moms in the street and asking them if they'd like to come talk about their sex lives didn't sound like much fun. So Elspeth and I just got a tour of the STD clinic, which is a cool nurse-run free clinic that offers a lot of really good services for free. He then gave us the software and stuff we would need to do transcription and emailed us the audio files of preliminary group sessions so that we could get an idea of what to expect. I started listening to one last night and transcribing it is going to be hard work. First of all, it's hard to understand what they're saying because of the way the talk and all the slang they use. Secondly, they all talk at the same time, and they have their kids with them to scream in the background. I'm one of the people transcribing next weekend, so it'll be very interesting to see how well I do. At least I don't have to recruit, but it'll be slow going.

Today I'll just be hanging out at home finishing up a lot of minor chores. I'll edit my genetics paper, do some laundry, maybe some baking, finish listening to those audio files, sew patches onto my scrubs, and maybe get to the assignment that we already have for our next class. It's not due until Wednesday though, so I'm not terribly worried. My schedule looks pretty manageable next week, it's the following week that things get crazy with the beginning of clinicals.

Weekend report

Saturday was sort of a non-day for me. I slept in, a lot, got myself up and moving way too late to go to the public market. Puttered around doing nothing, cleaned my room, finally got home from my shopping at Wegman's around 6:30, and then sat around and polished up my clinical paper for Pharmacology before going to bed.

Today, on the other hand, was a little more eventful. I went for my first ride with my new heart rate monitor. There's a post about it on my other blog. After I got home I went out to a BBQ with Sarah and family at the house of some of her friends. The original purpose of the event was to have me meet Sarah's friend Paul, but that luckily got somewhat diluted by the fact that today was the final of the European soccer championships and all of the men invited wanted to watch the game.

Sarah and Ronen picked me up around 2:30 and we arrived at the friends' (Eric and Nancy) house about 15 minutes into the game. Sarah and Nancy quickly disappeared with all the small children (there were three of them) to the backyard and I stayed with the guys to watch the soccer. It wasn't a terribly exciting match, but it was still fun to watch. By the time it was over we were all really hungry, so Eric cooked up the burgers and we got all the food laid out. The difference between a BBQ with my friends in Portland and a BBQ with this crowd is quite striking, and entirely the fault of the three girls. Everything revolved around the kids, which doesn't make it less fun, just a completely different experience.

I actually got to talk to people a little bit more over dinner, including Paul. He's an interesting guy, and fun to talk with. Obviously a little bit socially awkward, but not too shy so between the two of us I managed the social graces and he managed to keep the conversation going. He's an optical engineer, currently has a torn hamstring, and seems to play every sport known to man. He's also well over 6 feet tall, probably late twenties, a total geek, and completely adored by the three little girls (he makes remarkably good animal sounds and they love him for it). Basically, he's exactly my type. Except for the Catholic thing, but that didn't come up at all today.

Since Sarah is the most blunt and direct person I have ever met, she of course asked me on the way home what I thought of him. I'm sure she will be asking him the same thing about me as soon as she gets the chance. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, happens next. I can tell that Sarah is loving her role as matchmaker and I am sure that if she gets any encouragement from him at all she will make sure I meet him again.

Regardless of the whole Paul thing, I had a really good time playing with all the little kids and meeting some more friendly people today. Tomorrow I will be going for a bike ride with another classmate, Elspeth, and taking a pharmacology test. I'll have to try out my heart rate monitor again. Yay for new toys!

Crazy weekend fun

Last night was the East End Festival and a night out with the main social crowd from school. We were celebrating Jessica and Eric's birthdays, or at least that was the excuse for the outing. I managed to get a ride into town with a group of girls that I'm getting to know pretty well, including a Sarah from Portland. You guys might get to meet her between semesters, I think she'll be going home too.

Anyway, we met at a British pub called the Old Toad. I sadly didn't get the chance to see much of it, since we were running late and whisked off to the festival. The festival was all local bands playing on several different stages. Think loud, crowded, lots of beer and greasy food, people cheering for no reason, etc. It was a lot of fun, except for the 90 degree heat with extra humidity. Every time a breeze picked up there was a lull in the noise as we all stopped to make the most of it.

While standing in line with the group for beer, a random guy I'd never seen before (clearly very drunk) put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You are so..." and then couldn't finish the sentence. So Kristina, who was standing beside me offered some help, suggesting "Beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, lovely..." and on and on. He decided to agree with "all of the above," I was bright red at this point and wanting to go hide in the crowd, but couldn't figure out a graceful exit. He probably noticed this and then stalled me by asking if I would like a beer. I was so surprised I didn't answer, but Kristina answered for me, saying that I would absolutely like a beer. She also told him what kind. So I ended up getting free beer, having hardly said a coherent word since the moment he accosted me. Of course, when he handed me the beer he asked if I had a boyfriend. The answer was an emphatic yes. I don't think he was too disappointed, since he promptly turned around and bought beer for the next girl in line.

I think the highlight of the East End fest was a country-ish group with an enormous man in overalls doing the worm across the stage to Sweet Home Alabama. It was definitely a sight I will never forget.

The festival ended at 11, so we went out to a place called the Blue Room afterward. They were playing music from when most of us were teenagers, so we danced like idiots and did a lot of giggling. I got home around 1am, completely worn out, drenched with sweat from the heat and dancing, and feeling quite happy with my Friday on the town.

When I woke up this morning it was only slightly cooler outside. But, I had to get food, so I went to the market and Wegmans and did my grocery shopping. I tried to convince myself to get on Paris and do a workout, but it just wasn't going to happen. So I tried to convince myself to work on my Nursing Science paper, but that was almsot impossible with sweat dripping off my face onto my keyboard. According to the thermostat it was 80 degrees inside the house by about 2pm. It only got hotter throughout the day. So I fled to Muddy Waters for air conditioning and caffeine to get me through my paper writing. It was remarkably successful, and I'm now pretty much done with the assignment and have caught up with my Pharm reading. I also managed to put together the two videos in the previous post and spend a lot of time joking around with the barista.

This barista was very funny, sarcastic and inappropriate. For most of the day (I was there from 2:30-9:30 except for a short dinner break) I was the only other person in the shop. A few examples of his (funny) inappropriateness: We complained about the weather and he suggested starting a commune in the shop and invited me to join the commune because, "I'll need women to help me populate it." Then, when I got back from dinner and said something about the weather not being nice he said, "Like Mormons at your door trying to convert you not nice, or the people who throw the Mormons out not nice?" Oh, and my personal favorite was when I bought my second drink from him he gave me 50% off just for hanging around all day. But he said, "I'm only giving it to you half price because I put something special in there just for you. *wink* If you start feeling a little woozy, let me know, it means the rufies is working." We then went on to describe an advertising campaign for the shop that included, "It's a great place to bring a date! Free rohypnol with every drink!" I blame all of this on heat stroke.

So, things I have learned this weekend:
1. Keep your mouth shut and you might get free drinks.
2. Get used to a constant layer of glistening sweat, since it reappears immediately after showering.
2a. Sunscreen only works for a little while, since the glistening layers of sweat get rid of it pretty fast.
2b. Sweaty sunburnt skin should not come into contact with a leather couch. If it does, it hurts a lot when removed from the leather.
3. Air conditioning is one of the best inventions ever.
4. Become a coffee shop bum and get free barista entertainment plus cheap coffee.
5. Chocolate peanut butter blended iced coffee is right up there with air conditioning.


Oh, and maybe some stuff about pharmacology too. By the way, I got a 96% on my last pharm test. And I have no exams this week, which is a small miracle unto itself. Tomorrow I will do a workout on my bike, I promise. I ight also go shopping for more summer clothes.