Just a few hours left to 2008! I remember so clearly the first few moments of this year, when Glen and I looked at each other and said, it's 2008! It's really here! It was like the fact that we were going to get married didn't fully set in until it was the year that we had been talking about for so long.

And, it was a great year :-) The first half was non-stop wedding planning, and after the Big Day was over, we came back to the hospital for the second half of medical school. First in psychiatry, my desire to become a doctor was reaffirmed... then in surgery I discovered I really really don't want to be a surgeon, both important realizations. I've also made some new friends in my new class and it's been wonderful; I guess if you spend 14 hours a day with someone for 6 weeks you're either going to end up loving them or hating them, and I got the former.

Now Glen and I head into the second half, and I have the feeling that as I made it through the fall, I can make it through the spring. There is also the wonderful feeling that in one year we will be effectively done... second semester seniors :) It's in the foreseeable future!

We spent a lot of time with family. There were a lot of birthdays. Somehow in our free time we managed to attend 4 weddings (and I attended 4 wedding showers). There were also a handful of funerals.. we lost a family member in his 90s, and family friends in their 20s and 50s. And on the flipside, we found out a friend is pregnant!

We ended the year with lots of friends here in Philly celebrating Glen's birthday. We've been out of college for almost 4 years now and yet we're still managing to get together every few months; I'm proud of us! If Glen weren't sick with bronchitis, we'd be ringing in the New Year with you guys tonight!

For a final reason to celebrate in 2008, two very special friends got engaged this weekend! It's not on facebook yet, so I don't think I should be the one spreading the news. I just can't wait for all the fun!

2009 holds our last full year of medical school, our first wedding anniversary, the first baby in our group of friends, lots of wedding planning for someone else this time, a young friend starting high school (which makes me feel old), President Barack Obama, a hopefully a thousand more reasons to enjoy this trip around the sun.

Happy New Year!

An a cappella song came on my Pandora holiday station.

"Unless this is the group from Carmen Sandiego, this is getting turned off.
...
Rockapella! This IS the group from Carmen Sandiego!!!!"


Amazing.

Today was the half way point between Christmas and Thanksgiving. I did
feel especially in the holiday spirit, but I think that was because I
was actually in a good mood today due to my working in the outpatient
clinic rather than the OR. These two half-days on outpatient have
renewed my desire to become a doctor, after 11 weeks in the OR all but
squelched it; they've reminded me that medicine can be enjoyable! (It
remains to be seen how I feel about inpatient medicine and, I guess,
the ER)

4 more days of work, then our exam, and then three weeks to recuperate!

The Team

This morning on rounds the 10 person team was spilling out of the
patient's room into the hallway and he asked the doctor if he had the
whole Verizon team with him. I like humor in the AM.

Also, I wanted to explain that I wasn't trying to say that that was an
excessive amount of hours. Lots of people work that much per week. I
just had promised to report the total. :)

med school, continued (and continued... and continued...)

A common question and actual answers I have received:

Could you rate your pain from 1 to 10?

"22"
"really bad"
"7 and three quarters"
"well last week when I was at the grocery store....."



The total for the week was 59 hours.

It's my patient's 83rd birthday tomorrow. I hope we send him home to
celebrate. He'll be with me always... as I believe there is a
worrisome amount of his bone dust in my lungs.

LONG day today -- even longer than my work-plus-business-school days
last year! It's really hard to get home at the time you should be
heading to bed. I always have to stay up and unwind a little bit. But
then, here we are, hours past bedtime. I'll give you the hours worked
tally at the end of the week. I bet it doesn't sound as impressive as
it feels.

Good night!

13 hours today.
The weird thing is that it didn't even feel long... I don't know if
I'm acclimated or if it's just being in the OR that makes it go fast.
The worst part is looking at the clock and actively thinking about the
time... things like "I left my house 12 hours ago" and "I thought I
would be cooking a nice dinner by now."
I think if there were no clock in the OR I could go all day and night
and be perfectly happy. Ignorance would be bliss.

The skyline from the skybridge:

oops... I missed November.

It was a good month, filled with Anesthesia. I semi-took the week of Thanksgiving off. I studied and cleaned and did laundry, very exciting.

I'm pretty excited it's finally December. It makes it feel like the year is over, and vacation is only a few moments away. Also, that means the whole school year is so much closer to over, and we can get this med school thing one step closer to done with.

I started a new rotation today. I thought idepts were supposed to be light. I worked 11 hours today with coming in later than will be usual. I'm beginning to hate the hospital. I'm coming up with a nice list of careers I could do with my degree that don't involve treating patients. I think consultants get paid pretty well.

Also, I hate neck anatomy. And all of anatomy.

General Surgery

yesterday one of my appointment notes from the surgery clinic included the phrase, "Anus was clean."

I am so glad it's the weekend,



P.S. If your foot was rotting from GANGRENE because you smoke, wouldn't you be motivated to quit?  If you're about half of my patients, apparently not.

Autumn colors

3.5 weeks in...

I so need a mental health day.

Lessons from my Surgery Rotation at the VA:

#1) Don't get old.

#2) If you must get old, please, along the way, keep down your blood
pressure, eat a lot of fiber, get some damn exercise, and, for
heaven's sake, Don't Smoke. If you fail to follow this advice, a team
of people dressed in funny gowns and head gear will one day remove
your lung / colon / foot whilst listening to the Rocky theme.

#3) Hug your nearest veteran. He probably has PTSD.

good quotes from today:

"she's so pretty, I just want to kiss her!" - 70-something year old vet as my partner looked deep into his eyes (ie did the pupillary light reflex test on him)
Awkwardness ensued.

"Granted, it is hard to read after a full day in the OR. For a change, go to sleep right and wake up a few hours early the next day and read before going to the hospital." - Surgical Recall textbook
Hahahaahahahaaaaahaha.

"it's so beautiful outside!" - 2nd yr resident as she arrived for the day (from outside lectures) during hour 7 of 12 hours inside the hospital.
I already mentioned this one, but it's still good.

"We'll be back in the morning." - resident, on evening rounds, third rounds of the day
"What time?" - funny Vietnam Vet patient in hospital bed
"Early." - resident
"I'll make breakfast." - patient (with open oozing abdominal incision)

Goodnight.

Afternoon break

I just heard that it's really nice out today.

It's 9:25p and I am definitely going to bed.

How in the world is it not noon yet??

Surgery Orientation, cont'd:
Apparently food service doesn't start until 7:30am. We have coffee and
fruit and bagels and pastries now.

6:15am - Surgery Orientation:
I can't believe they don't have coffee.

And how does that make you feel?

Yesterday they called in the bomb squad to the Phillies Stadium. I turned the news on at 5p and they had a view from the helicopter hovering overhead of the remote detonator robot getting ready to enter the stadium. Update on the 6p news: upon detonation, they discovered it was a case of hotdogs... they were the ones to be shot into the stands with a hotdog gun, so I guess they were technically ammunition.

Some things I learned during my psychiatry rotation:

Quitting "cold turkey" gets its name from the goosebumps you get when you come off heroin and other opioids.

"Hysteria" looks like "hysterectomy" because the Egyptians believed the former was caused by the uterus detaching and wandering the body in search of a source of moisture. Whenever it ended up latching on is when the woman developed symptoms.

It's easy to stay married for 50 years if you love the person.
(that one's from my 86 year old patient)

Tomorrow is the shelf exam and then my rotation is going to be over. I'm really going to miss it. I don't know if it was the work itself, my patients, or my awesome attendings, but going into psychiatry is a possibilty for me (geri-psych anyway).

Back to the books for tonight, then New York this weekend!

Sunset in Philadelphia

I'm sitting here using my iPhone as a flashlight because we have no
power. They were trimming the trees on my block today and a branch
fell and hit the transformer. I lit our fireplace candlabra and a
bunch of other tealights. This might be romantic if we didn't have
major exams over the next few days. Glen, fresh off night float, is
taking advantage of the near darkness by stealing a nap... disrupted
only by the gentle noises of giant machines eating huge tree trunks
and the soothing flashing orange lights of the PECO truck parked right
outside. Power outages really make me wish we didn't have an electric
stove.

Grumble grumble.

Procrastination Opportunity

This guy has some pretty cool toys/gadgets:

http://www.markysparkytoys.com/html/toys.html

The kids in my family will likely be getting Super Spinmallows for Christmas this year.

Important Observations

I just spent the latter part of my evening watching Legally Blonde 2
for the first time. I was somewhat surprised to find that it is a
terrible, God awful movie. The first one was surprisingly good for a
silly chick flick. This one featured gaping plot holes, recycled story
lines, ...I'm a little too sleepy to eloquently explain what was wrong
with this movie. I'll move on.

Ann Taylor lift on Walnut St should be open past 7pm on weekend
nights. That's the second time I've been escorted out of that place!

Must sleep... So much to write... Zzzzzz

If when getting handed your take-out bag, the girl says "single with
cheese," and you say, "no, without cheese," and she says, "oh yeah...
without cheese." you can be sure that when you finally open that
burger, there will be cheese on it.

I think I craved fast food because I've been watching so much tv
lately. That's because i've been home alone a lot and I like the
background noise. I think my blood vessels can take one wendy's
hamburger per year... Also, I did NOT get the "shakin' & bacon" combo
which is a bacon triple cheeseburger served with a milkshake and
french fries. I intended on not even getting one piece of cheese.
You'd be surprised how hard it is for them to hold that disgusting
orange goody cheese.

I used to buy 25 cent Winterfresh.

I don't chew a lot of gum. Tonight while on call I popped a piece of
gum in my mouth and was whisked back to George's, the stationary/candy
store near Hunter. Hollerback if you hear me ;-)

The Aly Brain Digest

My thoughts for the day:

When you ask someone to be your supportive friend in the audience on
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, you're really saying, there isn't a
single topic of knowledge where I think you would be useful as my Call
A Friend lifeline.

The DMV on Market St is WAY more pleasant at 3:45pm than during
lunchtime. I got my married drivers license today! Tomorrow -- on to
the registrar.

The new FOX show Hole In The Wall is actually worth watching.

A little extra anti-psychotic medication goes a long way (I didn't get
called a whore today). As an aside, earlier in the week, an attending
physician recommended I take 0.5mg Haldol qd to get rid of my anxiety-
related hiccups.

This morning our neighbors' recycling was strewn all over the
sidewalk. It included several large empty condom boxes, and it was
sort of funny. Also, there's a not-for-profit organization that hires
formally homeless folks who want to get their lives back on track to
sweep up the debris leftover AFTER the garbage men come. Those guys
rock my socks.

I have to work 7:30a to midnight tomorrow and I'm not thrilled. But. I
think I'm going to ask one of my patients on Geri Psych to play cards
with me. By the way, in case you didn't know, getting old pretty much
sucks.

And, finally, I LOVE NY.

I thought I would try to write a little thing each fay but I don!t
know if it will work out.

Today one of my patients called me a whore. Well, wrote Whore to me
because she can't speak too well right now because she's too heavily
medicated for her schizophrenia... Or maybe not medicated enough.

Maybe she wasn't calling me a whore as much as having a written
outburst about whores.

Who knows. Either way I still have to go in tomorrow and try to talk
to her and assess how she's doing with no verbal communication and
this as what I'm getting through writing.

I need me some Z's!

Man, this was supposed to be the easy part of the rotation. I went in
at 8:45 this morning! It was great.
Then for the first time, someone decided that the students on the
geriatric floor should also have to attend the 7:30 morning report for
the general inpatient psych floor. Now I have to get up more than an
hour earlier to go listen to what happened overnight to patients I'm
not responsible for treating. THEN I get to go to the morning report
for the patients I AM treating right after that. Yay starting every
single day with two+ hours of meetings!

The up side is that maybe morning report will give us geriatric
students some exposure to the general stuff since we've had such
specialized training so far: three weeks of outpatient psych focused
on drug rehab before these three weeks of geri.

I was just so looking forward to sleeping until 7:15!

Ugh

"I don't know if I could be a woman president -- I'm kind of
emotional. I think it would be fun to be first lady!"
-Selena Gomez, teen Disney actress

We're getting no where!

I'm hoping this is a typo:

Please remember: for each interaction you have with any resident or faculty, encourage them to fill out a "Student Evil Form."

The past week has been crazy. The flood in our basement really threw us off, so we definitely haven't done everything we thought we would a week and a half ago. But, I think we have been pretty productive, totally redoing our kitchen in particular. We ran into IKEA 30 minutes before they closed Monday night and managed to grab every new piece of furniture we needed. It was like a scavenger hunt... trying to find the shortcuts between sections, searching out our pieces and writing down their codes, scrambling through the self-serve section and pulling down boxes! Pretty exciting stuff for these two home-bodies.

Then, of course, we spent the rest of this week putting the stuff together. The only piece you will actually notice if you come to our house is our new china cabinet, which allowed us to bring the majority of our wedding gifts back to Philly. We could throw quite a party!... if we weren't heading back to clinical rotations on Monday.

On top of the flood, my other adventure for the week came on Sunday night. I had driven up to NY for a family combo-birthday party and I was driving Amy as far back as Philly so she could catch an Amtrak. It was a 9:30pm train and we, of course, missed it. I felt partially to blame and I didn't want Amy sitting in the Amtrak station for an hour alone, so I thought I'd do the sisterly thing and drive her down to DC -- it's only another 2 1/2 hours from Philly and I thought it would be some good sister-bonding time. Well, we got A LOT of bonding time in there. Lesson: do not attempt to drive ANYWHERE on the east coast on a Sunday night in the summer. It was a combination of the vacation traffic and the fact that Sunday night is the start of the overnight-construction-work-week. Then, I guess it didn't help that I took a detour that didn't actually go anywhere.

See the road that just stops right before the railroad tracks on the left?


Well, on my phone, that road appears to cut under 95 and come out the other side, just in time to get back on at the next exit. No no, it does exactly what it appears to do on this map (and what it appears to do if you zoom in enough on the phone too). Let me just say that the pavement ended as we crossed the state line over in Maryland, and that should sum up our surroundings. Crazy Elkton.

Anyway, I got back to Philly at 5am, and Amy could've gotten to DC much faster on the train. But, let me tell you, the traffic is A LOT better between 3 and 4am!

Like I said, since then, we've just been at home organizing, cleaning, building furniture. And, watching the Olympics. It's been pretty fun to be on vacation while the Olympics are on. There's a twelve hour time difference, so at night starting at 8pm you can watch live. You can watch reruns from overnight during the day though, on channels like MSNBC. Thank goodness for that because at night, all they show is swimming, gymnastics, and volleyball. I guess these are sports where the Americans are expected to do quite well so they think they'll appeal most to viewers... but after a week I'm a little tired of them.

The best event I watched so far was a rerun of whitewater kayaking (did you even know that was a sport? they play in on a man-made course in Beijing!) where the Americans weren't even competing. I was cheering for the guy from Togo and he won the silver medal, his country's first Olympic medal ever! That's exciting. And, Glen and I watched Poland vs.... (I can't remember) play Handball... which is like soccer except with your hands. It kind of looks like lacrosse without sticks or basketball without dribbling. The players don't wear any pads but they're constantly knocking each other on the gym floor. Craziness! We couldn't really discern any rules. We also watched some fencing but I really have no idea what's going on when I watch that.

So, last night I was very excited to see that track and field had finally started! Something to freshen up our evenings. An American girl got the bronze in the 10,000 meters, only the third time for an American to place in that event. I also saw pieces of reruns from the women's septathalon -- it's fun to see all the crazy things they make one person do. I hope that when the basketball tournament gets closer to the finals that they'll move those games into prime time. They've been playing them at 7pm Beijing time, 7am our time and we haven't been able to catch any reruns.

And before we say goodbye to swimming, we've got one more Phelps race. Last night was amazing!! I hope you watched. He was going to lose and then somehow moved his arms faster than the speed of light during his last stroke and touched 0.01 before the other guy. And afterwards, he always seems truly humble about it and gives comments to the interviewers that make you actually like him. So, I don't mind the emphasis on him... I could just do with a couple fewer montages of clips set to moving music.

That's the end of the Alyson Olympics Digest. I think I rambled about that because as soon as I finish this I'm going to go read for my Psych rotation that starts on Monday, and I am absolutely freaked out about that. "It'll be fine" -- I know, I know. But I took an entire year off of med school and you can't imagine how out of the groove I feel. I don't know how much I'll be writing once that starts so, adios for the time being and wish me luck!

Man plans, God laughs, is it?

Tuesday night Glen and I sat down and planned out every hour of our vacation.  We were going to start by cleaning out the upstairs, then the back room, including getting self-storage and containers.  I was going to change my name.  Glen was going to finish a paper he's writing from his research.  We were going to get done all the little errands around town before we go back to rotations on the 18th.

The next morning we woke up to what sounded like the toilet bowl exploding.

The toilet bowl, in fact, was still intact, but sewagey-water was gushing out of it at an unimaginable speed.  We slammed the door to the bathroom and pushed a towel against the bottom, but to no avail.  Soon enough the hallway in front of the bathroom was flooded.  Then, the water seemed through the walls and a pool appeared in our bedroom and in our back office.

In case you've never been to our house, we have a two floor apartment -- our bedroom, bathroom, and office are in the basement, and our kitchen/living room is upstairs.

We also have the switch for the water for the entire hours in our bedroom, so we turned that off.  We didn't really expect it to help because the water seemed to be coming back up from the street, but it was the only thing we had under our control so we did it.  The water stopped soon after; it may have just been a coincidence.  Whatever -- the water stopped.

It stopped just before reaching anything that would have been seriously damaged.  It was like a miracle.  Nonetheless, we have carpeting in the basement and it was soaked with sewage.

Somewhere in there I called my landlords... it was 7am and they didn't pick up.  But they called back within five minutes.  Joe was here within a half hour and started to shop-vac the basement.  He had a plumber here within the hour who cleaned out the clogged pipe between the house and the street -- the water flood our apartment was probably mostly from one of our upstairs neighbors' morning shower.  Then, in another miracle for the morning, our landlord called up the CEO of the carpet company and had him send over his cleaning team and by early afternoon, our apartment had been commercially sanitized.  (Our landlord is an architect for Commerce Bank so we assume he gives this carpet company a lot of business and has an in.)

So, other than the fact that we've been sleeping on the couch for the last two nights waiting for the chemicals to evaporate downstairs, the problem was really taken care off within a few hours, thanks to our awesome landlords. 

Now, back to the cleaning plan.  We lost a day... two really, so no camping trip for us.  As long as we get this apartment cleaned out, I will feel like this was a successful vacation.

Any advice on what to do with my collection of 38 wedding magazines?

We've been home from our honeymoon for a month today :-(

But happily, if we work hard we might be able to finish our last paper for business school tonight, and then we'll really be on vacation!

Oh and I realize no one is going to feel bad for me having to get up at 10am.

We're on this shifted schedule now that we're just in evening school. We don't get home until 10pm so we don't get to bed on a normal night until 2 or 3am.
10am would be early for you too if you were still up at 5:30am.

Can't sleep.

I went to bed 3 hours ago, and I was feeling tired then, but by the time I brushed my teeth and got to thinking, it just wasn't happening. I read my magazine for a while, and then started pulling books off the window sill next to the bed. Then I decided it was time to at least try and I turned off the light... but I couldn't stay still or keep my eyes closed. My stomach is also all upset.

It's finals week and I'm just stressed. We have our major presentation of our group project for BUS700, the capstone course, tomorrow evening. I'm doing the middle 10 of the 30 minute presentation, but I'm not nervous about that. We all put a lot of work into the project and we did a really good job. It's that after that I have two more final papers due, both on Wednesday the 6th. I'm taking Friday off and then jumping back in, two days for each of them. I think they'll get done but Glen and I really will just have to be typing for four days straight and I'm not looking forward to it. Plus, lately I just haven't been able to sit down and work for that long. I feel kind of like a wimp, but at the same time I guess it's not really anyone's bag to type for 16 hours straight four days in a row.

I think I read or heard "bag" used in that way today and so it just kind of popped out. I sound like a senior citizen, but I can't think of a better term there.

Then, after business school is over, med school looms. I am so very freaked out to return to the clinic. I knew I would feel less familiar with all of the scientific stuff, but I can also read up on that stuff pretty easily. I didn't expect to completely forget how to do an H&P (history and physical exam). It's seriously an art and I don't even know where to begin it. I'm not sure where I can look this information up in a concise place. Luckily though, I am heading back into Psychiatry which is so different from every other rotation that I probably wouldn't have felt prepared for it no matter what. Maybe it will all come back to me once I get back into the hospital. Maybe.

And between now and then there are SO MANY things I need and want to do. Like clean out our house. There's the topical wedding mess upstairs, but there is also the deep, established mess that is the back room. It's hard to remember that we actually used that space as an office first year and did all of our studying there. And it's harder to believe that we let that mess keep us from using our desks for TWO YEARS now. We're going to get some self-storage space, do some shopping at the Container Store, and not be shy to make use of the garbage bags and dig ourselves out. That is going to eat up a couple of days of my 12 day vacation.

Then, the Name Change. I mentioned it a month ago but haven't actually started to pursue it. I having doubts about whether it will be worth it. Can't I just have everyone call me Mrs. Quigley regardless of what I do legally? It's just that, still being in school, I am going to have to alert the registrar and they are going to have to try to get that information out to the several hospitals and innumerable preceptors I am going to work with this year. Another girl I knew who had gotten married during med school had two names on her two name tags -- the school would reprint one but not the other. And, Jefferson won't issue new email addresses. They change your name in the directory so if someone is looking you up they can find you, but if someone assumes because they know your first and last name that they know your email address... nope. If I go through with it, I have to leave at least a full day for tackling that mess.

I also MUST write out my thank you notes before we go back to school or I know they won't get done. I don't even have thank you notes yet. I had dreams that I could work on these while camping or at the beach, but those dreams are fading fast. There aren't enough days to go anywhere.

Oh, and we've had an additional fun bump in the road. The loan company that a lot of Jefferson students use (including me and Glen) is being hit by the bad economy and doesn't have enough money to pay out to schools. Can you believe that? So we haven't gotten our refund checks yet that usually come at the beginning of July. Well, actually Glen already got issued part of his refund so Jefferson sent him an urgent email asking him to cancel his loan with this company and get a new loan because Jeff is having trouble covering the checks they sent out! It's a huge mess. I should have expected given the amount of debt I'm in for this whole lending crisis to touch me somehow. (Just to clarify, everything is going to be fine I think, we just have to do a bunch more paperwork.)

Well I'm hoping that 35 minute rant will have gotten some of my worries off my chest and maybe let me start to feel tired. I have to get up in 4 1/2 hours and I have a big presentation to do tomorrow!

I thought it might be a cool idea to find an international pen pal for
my cousin as a 10th birthday present.

I did a quick google search and very soon found out that most
international pen pals are curvy blonde twenty-something eastern
European women who really want to get in touch with an American man.

I think I have refine my search terms.

An issue of semantics

This evening we had a graduation ceremony of sorts, to acknowledge all of the MBA students who are finishing up this summer semester (and a few who finished up this past spring, apparently).  It was hors d'oeuvres for us and our family, a greeting from the dean, a 10 minute speech from an alum, and then we each came up to the front of the room and accepted a certificate (sort of like an IOU for a diploma) and a small gift (cool Widener-engraved jump drive key chain).  The whole thing lasted about an hour, which is probably how long all graduations should last.

Sadly though, it was finally confirmed to us that we have not completed our MBA's until we do this rotation 4th year where we shadow physician leaders in the hospital.  We don't get our diplomas until then, and more importantly, we can't start writing "MBA" after our names until then!  I had big plans... it was going to go into all my notes in the hospital, signed onto every credit card receipt, get added into my email signature...

So I suggested to Glen tonight that I would just start writing: Alyson Quigley, "MBA", with quotes, until the degree actually comes through.

Then Glen pointed out that I haven't even started legally changing my name yet, so I'm not really even Alyson Quigley, either.

So, for the time being, its Alyson "Quigley", "MBA", "all around cool-meister" ...and anything else I feel like adding in quotes while I'm at it.

This is how the school year is going to end, is it?

We usually get a break at 7:50pm during class. Today the sole clock
in our classroom broke and stopped at 7:46pm. The situation at hand
was finally brought to light at around 8:15pm.

Things I Planned to Do During My "Light" Business Year

1. Learn to speak medical Spanish.
2. Learn to cook crepes with the crepe pan Glen gave me about 4 years ago.
3. Clean out the back room so we can actually use it as an office again.
4. Alter/hem all of my clothes that need alterations/hemming.
5. Get back in touch with my Japanese roommate from Summer 2000.
6. Sort and post the photographs from last summer's Disney trip.
7. Sort and post all my other family photos.
8. Start scrapbooking with said family photos.
9. Pick up Pilates.
10. Read books for pleasure... or even just finish 1776 which I somehow had time to read while I was studying for the boards and in my pediatrics rotation.
11. Finish multiple embroidery projects.
12. Throw weekly cocktail parties for my friends.
13. Visit the Art Museum.
14. Learn to Scuba dive.
(list to be extended as I remember the grandiose statements I made leading up to this year).


Things I Did Accomplish :-)
1. Cleaned out my clothes closet, more or less.
2. Made necklaces for 7 girls in my wedding party
3. Planned a kick-ass wedding and honeymoon.
4. Published 2 papers.
5. Got an MBA.
6. Came out alive, and mostly sane.

Glen: "Don't we have some sort of tomato knife??"
Aly: "Yes."
Glen: "Well, where is it?"
Aly: "At your house, with all of our wedding presents."
Glen: "Agh! Drats!"

He scoffed at me when I registered for a tomato knife.  I am vindicated!

AHH

omg!  Our professional wedding photos are available online, but I'm still not finished with my 2nd of 3 papers that I have to finish by 4pm!!!  Agh!  MUST NOT OPEN EMAIL.  How frustrating is this??  Also, tonight I was going to just crawl into bed as soon as I got home to recover from this all nighter but now I am going to be up all night AGAIN looking at pictures!

And.. we now have Caller ID.

Um, that was the creepiest phonecall ever...


{rings twice}

Me: Hello?

Man: Hello?

Me: Hello..

Man: Um, Alyson?

Me: This is Alyson.

{hangs up phone}

I called to change an appointment today and they couldn't find me in the book.  After a minute I realized it was because I had just told them my maiden name, but when I made the appointment I realized it would after the wedding so I made it under my married name.  I forgot that that's my new name!

My high school class has a "google group", with an old-time internet bulletin board for discussions. A college friends sent me a tongue-in-cheek article about ranking high schools that we were in, so I posted it there, and discussion about Hunter vs. Stuy ensued!

Meanwhile, I heard from a high school friend that one of our classmates recently committed suicide (on my wedding day, actually). I felt so guilty joking around about average SATs scores when there was something much bigger going on... but I didn't know what to do. After a couple of days, I finally decided to make a post on the discussion board about his death, in case anyone hadn't heard. I tried to phrase it in the most appropriate way I could, because really I think it's kind of disrespectful to advertise someone's suicide on an internet forum. But, seven years later my class is still surprisingly in touch and I think everyone would want to know we had lost another of the 171.

Mindy just reminded me that he was married; another classmate just visited with him six months ago. It's so very very sad.

Hi everyone! I'm baa-aack! It's been a wonderful last few weeks. The wedding was absolutely awesome. I had a great time, largely in part because it looked like everyone else was too. A HUGE shout-out to our band, the Jon Lewis Orchestra (www.jonlewis.com) for keeping the dance floor packed! There are some great pictures on facebook (would love to get some orginal, good res versions of those if anyone has the time) and here is a link to my aunt's comprehensive online gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/czlemoncreek
Ignore the bad shots of me and my peeps.

The honeymoon was also awesome, and a welcome relief from the craziness of the wedding week. We chilled out on a private island, had all sorts of food delivered to our cottage, snorkeled, took pictures, ate more, and spent three nights on a sailboat sailing around the grenadines. What an adventure! We were sort-of roughing it, in the no-air-conditioning-difficult-to-shower sort of way, but the food was still awesome on the boat, courtesy of our world-traveling first mate and chef, Ellie. They took us around to the best snorkeling sites in the grenadines and we had bought a waterproof case for my digicam, so we have some amazing shots! I'll try to add some to this post.





Now, unfortunately, we're home. Tomorrow is orientation for Third Year (redux) already and we have to be at the new building at 8am. We're going to be clinging to Mindy as the only friendly face in the whole room! Luckily we're still on island time, which not only means being laid back, but also means you go to bed at 10pm (because it's been dark out since 7pm) and wake up at 7:30am (because it's been bright out since 6am). So, it should be possible for us to get up.

What has been impossible is for us to get back into the school groove. We have a ton of work due for business school Tuesday and Wednesday of this week from when we were away and basically we have done zero of it. I think the Wednesday stuff is more important because we were given an actual due date for that; for the Tuesday assignments we were told we could hand it in "when we came back" so... maybe that can be later this week. We only got back Friday morning and there has been so much to do since then non-school related. This includes preparing for an inspector to come to our apartment tomorrow to assess the value of the house for our landlords' home-owner's insurance. I called my land lady to give her a head's house about how VERY messy our apartment is but she didn't seem worried (I don't think I accurately described the magnitude of the mess... or maybe she thinks that will bring DOWN the assessed value and thus her property taxes. Maybe our mess will earn us a break in the rent!). I'm going to try to clear a path through the downstairs back room which has been storage for about two years now.

Other TO DO's on the list include officially changing my name, which I understand to be a total pain in the ass. I think I will work on that starting next week... there's the driver's license, social security card, new passport, all new credit cards, the REGISTRAR at several schools, my Jeff ID badge, and 107 magazines I am subscribed to. I think there is a website that has advice and stuff... I'll post my trials and travails as they happen.

Well I have lots more to say, but like I said, I get exhausted by 10:30pm now and this is way past my bedtime!
-ASQ

JoJo (my now-7-year-old cousin and ring bearer, whom you've all come to know and love by now I'm sure) gets the phone passed to him yesterday and says, "Hi Aly -- I mean, Mrs. Quigley. So, how's your second week with Glen going?"

Back in the states after a full day of traveling, texting this from my phone. What a great honeymoon! I'm looking forward t

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update

Jun 21:  91 degrees with isolated T-storms

argh!

Fox Forced to Address Michelle Obama Headline

June 12, 2008,  5:20 pm

Fox Forced to Address Michelle Obama Headline

By Jim Rutenberg

For the third time in less than three weeks, Fox News Channel has had to acknowledge using poor judgment through inappropriate references to Senator Barack Obama.

The network has released a statement saying it should not have referred to Mr. Obama's wife, Michelle, as "Obama's Baby Mama,'' as it did on Wednesday in an on-screen headline commonly called a "chyron."

"A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron
during the segment," Bill Shine, a Fox News senior vice president, said in a statement.

The chyron appeared during a discussion between the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about political attacks against Mrs. Obama. It read in full, "Outraged Liberals: Stop picking on Obama's baby mama!" It was first publicized on Wednesday by Alex Koppelman of Salon.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as one "chiefly in African-American usage" that refers to, "The mother of a man's child, who is not his wife nor (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner."

Earlier this week, the Fox News anchor E.D. Hill had apologized for raising the possibility that the Obamas affectionate fist bump during the senator's victory rally in St. Paul on June 3 was "a terrorist fist jab.'' Two weeks prior, the Fox News analyst Liz Trotta said she regretted making a joke about a possible assassination of Mr. Obama.

Her mea culpa followed that of former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas a week earlier after he made a similar crack at a gathering of the National Rifle Association.

In other news, Fox News Channel announced today that it was hiring Mr. Huckabee as a contributor.

Going to the chapel..

Today was 10 days, tomorrow is 9 days!
I've gotten over that 'how is it so soon?!' feeling and now it's just a reality that we're getting married in about a week.  We basically had a dual-meltdown earlier this week, but I feel like we might be over it now. 
Tomorrow we are going to wake up early and actually go get our marriage license!  Then to the church to deliver it, along with my baptismal certificate, to the priest so he can do all this paperwork.  They need my baptismal certificate because it serves as proof within the church that I haven't been married before because they record every sacrament you receive on it, including the sacrament of marriage.  What we're not telling him is that this one was sort of legally forged... the church had no record of my baptism :-(  But we have photos and the vivid recollection of my Aunt (and godmother) Reenie who says I screamed the entire time.  So, based on our claims (they didn't even get to see the photos) they wrote me up a new baptismal certificate.  Who knew it was that easy!  (Apparently a lot of documents from that time period under that priest are missing, so it made sense to them).

Then we're going to get Glen a wedding ring!  I am going to use my great grandmother's, which I am very excited about.  Not only is it a family heirloom, but she and my great grandpa were so in love their entire lives that it's got to bring some good luck with it.  She was a redhead too!  We're talking about getting her wedding date along with our engraved on the inside -- June 21, 2008 and April 11, 1917 :-)

Then to another dance lesson.  Don't get excited people, we're just learning to not fall all over each other.

Then three hours of class.  Ignore that part.

OK, also, if you're reading this, you should join Twitter.  It's just like updating your away messages, but it get aggregated for people who are 'following' you kind of like a news feed.  You can update via the web, IM, or text message, and you can choose to have specific other people's updates sent to you those ways too.  You can have your twitter updates become your facebook updates so you don't have to do it twice.  You can update every five minutes or every five days.
The best part is your updates appear on my homepage!  That way when I log it, it's not just alternating updates from me and Glen.  (OK, and occasionally from Nate, Geoff, and Echo)  Come on, do it for me!  As a wedding present, even!  :-)  When you join, just look me up under redheadmed, 'follow' me, I'll get alerted and then I can follow you. DO IT.

Look how good the forecast is for the end of the next week!
...it just has to stay that way between now and then...

We are sooo close to having June 21 on the 10-day forecast!
http://www.weather.com/outlook/events/weddings/tenday/19147?from=36hr_topnav_wedding

Right now, Thursday is supposed to be 81 and sunny! Wouldn't that be perfect? (Anything below 95 sounds perfect after this week)

I haven't been writing a lot lately because life has gotten so insane. There is so much work to do and 99% of it Glen and I have to do ourselves.
I had my final fitting today and I thought it would be a lot more exciting... I think I was just stressed and really I was just trying on the same dress I tried on last week, not even fully hemmed. I still don't know what to do with my hair and as of this morning I am doing my own makeup, so I have to figure that out too. We really want to be enjoying this last week and a half before we get married, but there just isn't much going on to enjoy! Maybe it makes you enjoy the first weeks of your marriage all the more.

Social Studies Lesson

This is the coat of arms for the territory "British Indian Ocean Territory"

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Check this out... Isn't that the cleanest workspace you've ever seen? I'm almost officially moved out of my desk!

My computer is insulting me

My current targeted advertisement at the top of my inbox is a link to "Shop for Flat Chested Bras!"

Screw you, Gmail.

Sunny days are here again

oh my gosh look at the Philadelphia forecast!

http://www.weather.com/outlook/events/weddings/tenday/19147?from=36hr_topnav_wedding

90's and high 80's for all of next week!
I wonder if it will stay that hot through to the wedding?
It's amazing... you can already see June 11 on the 10 day forecast... the day when the wedding day will show up on the 10 day forecast!
Or will it be the 12th?  Well that's on the 10 day forecast too!

oh my god it's coming soooo soon!

Traditional (and logical) food pairings

http://www.culinate.com/mix/dinner_guest/nutritional_combinations

You Can't Hide That Tiger Pride

For some reason I think this is hilarious:
http://www.writeonpencils.com/cgi-bin/shopper.cgi?preadd=action&key=PNCL-SCND

You can buy other people's personalized pencils... some were overprinted, others have mistakes! If you weren't doing this for the humor, I'm not sure of the point. It does bring the cost per regular pencil down to 4 cents, but they're only 8.2 cents at Staples to begin with.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, this is what I want for Christmas.

IT'S FREAKING JUNE!

Holy Crap!  We're getting married in THREE WEEKS.

A little birdie said...

I thought I'd try Twitter to keep my blog a little more alive. I guess those updates won't go out to the two people who get emailed my entries or anyone who has me on a feed (does anyone?) but it will add some interest for anyone who makes the effort to click on the link in my GTalk profile.

I read this epic article from the NYTimes Magazine from this past weekend about this blogger who went on to gawker.com or something and how blogging ruined her life... it was very dramatic but the whole article read like another blog entry. Anyway, something she said stuck with me -- you write your blog and pretend that it's only your friends reading it. I know I had a mini freakout a few months ago when my blog was coming up on Google. But other than that, I pretty much assume that it's just my GTalk friends that make it here. I think I'm going to put a little survey up for a while to get a feeling for whether this assumption is totally off the mark.

Red Tape, White Dress

http://secureprod.phila.gov/wills/marriagelicense.aspx

It's an additional $10 to get a marriage license to wed a minor. 

I was supposed to have a kind of a bad day, and instead I chose to have a really good day :-)

So here I am, sitting up late doing this project with very sunburnt shoulders.

But, it was so worth it.

Today Glen and I went for our wedding cake tasting. I think it is one of the best wedding planning activities, especially if you don't happen to get stuck in two hours of Memorial Day weekend traffic on your way out to the burbs. (I left the good directions at home and instead we had to rely on our GPS which sent us probably technically the shortest way, but had us wait at about 1058 traffic lights instead of jumping on the Turnpike.)

In a nice juxtaposition, I also went to the dentist this morning. Let's just say I have more than one cavity. I'm kind of pissed off because I went to a different dentist in Philly last year and pointed out this one tooth that I thought had a cavity (excuse me, carie) in it and that guy said, oh no. This new guy showed me the X-Ray and it's taken over half of my tooth (some how it doesn't hurt at all). It was there already when I went to the last dentist and he didn't find it. I could have had it fixed a year and a half ago AND while I had dental insurance. Anyway, I'm not that upset because I'm rid of the dentist I didn't like and I've found a dentist I really like, so I'll all be taken care of in a couple of weeks for less than I spent on my wedding shoes.

Today is the 21st!  One month to go!  We're tying up the loose ends, but most of the planning is done.
Today is also the day that the response cards are "due" back... yet almost 80 guests haven't responded.  A bunch of people have told me that they are going to come, but I also need your dinner choices because we have to give them to the reception site sorted by table.  So if you're reading this, stick that card in its pre-stamped envelope!!!

I'm finishing up my lunch of a home-made turkey wrap.  There's a sandwich place by work, Tuscany Cafe, that Glen and I really like.  Everything is so fresh there and I actually feel good after eating instead of stuffed.  However, their wraps are $7.99 which makes it tough to stick to our budget.  So, I decided to make my own wraps.
First of all, the turkey cost $6.50 for the two of them.  Then, Glen and I bought two baggies of chips for 90c each that would have come free at Tuscany.  So I'm already up to $8.30 for two and I have yet to price out the rest of the ingredients... a scoop of guacamole from the batch glen made, fresh basil from the plant I bought, baby spinach, a tomato, dollop of garlic ranch salad dressing, and two slices of cheese.  So I'm not sure I saved any money at all.  And secondly, I had to wake up early to stand in the kitchen in my robe making these wraps before work.  They may only pay me $12/hr before taxes at work, but I value my sleep time at at least $50/hour. 

So my lesson learned is not that I should eat at Tuscany every day, but that I really can't afford my taste in food.


Some recommended reading:

I'm going to try to follow this over the summer:
http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/the-grand-tour-send-off/

Watch this crazy video, and then the New Yorker article if you have a lot of time on your hands:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/trapped-in-an-elevator-captured-on-video/

And I heard Lucian Leape, who is quoted in this article, speak at Jefferson on this topic a few weeks ago :)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18apology.html?ref=health

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My days-until-the-wedding chain is down to its last bow.

How are you spending your next 14 months?

First, writing this May entry means that my archive will now have two Mays in it, and maybe it's time to change it so there are two year folders!  Very exciting.  Proof that I can jabber on for years at a time.

Second, we got our clinical schedules last week for next year.  At first I was really unhappy that my order was all screwed up, with Family Med and Internal Med at the very end of the year, after I will more or less have to choose between them.  But I've grown to appreciate that I got almost all of my first choice hospitals, let alone didn't get sent to Pittsburgh or York for a rotation.  Most of the people who are looking for people to switch are trying to get out of having to move across the state for a block. 

Then after we took the time to compare my schedule with Glen's we realized a miracle had occurred!  We requested a lot of rotations outside Philly... not so far that we'd have to move but definitely driving-only spots, like in DE and NJ.  Except, we only have one car between the two of us so we were taking the chance that we would have to drive in two separate directions.  It worked out that we alternate rotations that we need the car!  It's really perfect, and has convinced me not to try to mess with moving internal medicine and screwing everything up.

So here's my schedule so you can keep track of me for the next 14 months:

May 12 - Aug 8 - Summer Semester of Business School (overlaps Block 1 of med school that I did last year).
Block 2 - Psychiatry at Jefferson (I want to do the Geriatric Psych rotation)
Block 3 - General Surgery at the VA in Wilmington DE (no weekends and no call!)
Block 4 - Anesthesia and ENT at Jefferson
[Winter Break]
Block 5 - Ob/Gyn at Virtua West Jersey (the ppl I know who did it there are the basically the only ones who had a nice OB rotation)
Block 6 - Family Med at Jefferson
Blocks 7/8 - Internal Medicine with 4 weeks at Christiana in DE, 4 weeks at Jefferson, and 4 weeks back at Christiana.
That finishes up on Thur June 18, 2009.

Maybe Glen and I can go away to celebrate our first wedding anniversary :-)
Or, maybe we can start studying for Step 2.... that's way too far away for me to have to start worry about yet.

 

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
  - Faith Whittlesey

Some quick snapshots from this weekend's wedding... I hope everyone has as good a time at ours!

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately. I'm in a Hampton Inn down in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, up, sitting at my computer because I'm writing up my final paper / take home exam for BUS640 Process Management. If anyone wants to know about lean manufacturing principles, just ask.

Glen and I are here to attend his cousin's wedding tomorrow. It's funny because we almost chose this very date for our wedding because this weekend is our sixth anniversary as a couple. It's weird to think that we could have been getting married tomorrow... and still pretty weird that it's only 8 weeks from tomorrow that we'll actually be saying our vows.

A lot of wedding loose ends have been getting tied up. The invitations went out and my mom received her first response today!!! (We know about lots of people who are coming, but it's not official until we get the little card back. Plus, we have to know your dinner choice!)

So, basically I've got a lot of wedding on the brain, and it's very very exciting. We're not really doing anything for our anniversary because the wedding stuff is really overshadowing it... it doesn't seem as important when we're about to set a new date to celebrate. Plus, once you hit six years it's kind of like, OK, let's get on to the next step now!

I really have to get back to this paper which is only a third done so I can get some sleep tonight. I wonder if the bride and groom are able to sleep.


P.S. If you didn't get a response envelope in your invite, let me know. We had some issues stuffing those in. Some people got multiple.

P.P.S. April 26, 2008 is also the date that Elliot names in an early season of Scrubs as her future wedding day as she has booked the reception hall years in advance. I'll work on finding a YouTube of that.

Glen and I made it into the Widener Business School newsletter:
http://www3.widener.edu/SiteData/docs/April08SBAnewsletter/b74c4ac2fb5d44f165d59c03d6ecf065/April08SBAnewsletter.pdf

We're on page 4.  It's cute, but why are we so fuzzy?

And, for clarification, we' re actually not the married couple on page 6... they're undergrad juniors.

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greetings from Harrisburg. Glen and I are here for a mtg of the PHC4 technical advisory group. They're in charge of deciding how to present all the data on hospital acquired infections and the like in PA. Anyway, the capitol is gorgeous and I thought I'd share a pic.

BZZZZ Time Is Up.

The contest is over because it has proven ~impossible~

As Mindy mentioned in her comment, it is the only post office in the country that does not fly an American Flag because there was no American Flag when it was founded. So why should I have thought they would have had a telephone?!

(just kidding, I'm pretty sure they have a telephone just the postal service is kinda of full of too much red tape)

My mother had a similar postal adventure today -- how can three different post offices tell you three different prices to mail an envelope? Is it really a matter of opinion? Do they take their best guess? They've made it an art and not a science? Nonetheless I believe our wedding invitations are actually going to go out (and possibly even arrive at their destinations).

People are going to come to our wedding!
We're actually getting married!!!

Contest!!! Win a prize!!!

I'm holding a contest.

The first person who can provide me with a working phone number for the B. Free Franklin post office will win a fabulous prize.

I'm not going to make this any harder than it already is, so here is the address:
316 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

The catch is that a human being, preferably who works at the post office, has to pick up the phone at this number.

GO!

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My wedding countdown chain is getting shorter and shorter! 65 days left!

How the Flu Virus Trots the Globe Each Year [click here]

April 17, 2008, 9:10 am

How the Flu Virus Trots the Globe Each Year [click here]

Posted by Sarah Rubenstein

What Does Martha Stewart Know About Caring for the Elderly? [click here]

April 16, 2008, 4:29 pm

What Does Martha Stewart Know About Caring for the Elderly? [click here]

Posted by Jacob Goldstein

JHU Reunion by the numbers...

$46,133,559 raised by Reunion classes.
4,151 Homewood Alumni back on campus.
2,856 Crabcakes served at the pre-game lunch.
70 events from Alumni Colleges to reunion dinners.
15 Reunion classes spanning 70 years.
A 10-4 Blue Jay victory over Maryland.

...never making it to Bmore because you stayed in DC and hung out with your friends: priceless.

Sorry, that was corny.
$46 million from one reunion???  Why did I have to pay any tuition at all?

If homecoming was this past weekend, does that mean Spring Fair is this coming weekend???
I will nix the 17 things I planned for this weekend if someone will join me for some deep fried oreos, strawberry smoothies, and meat-on-a-stick!!!

Geriatric Care Is Facing Crisis [click here]

Surge in Training
Called for to Meet
Exploding Demand

By THEO FRANCIS and VANESSA FUHRMANS
April 15, 2008

Internists who go on to specialize in geriatrics end up taking a pay cut.

It's 18 minutes long but it's amazing!

Opinion
Campaign Stops: Calm — and Hope — in Indianapolis [click here]
By Ron Klain
Published: April 3, 2008
Robert F. Kennedy's speech on the death of Martin Luther King during a campaign stop in Indiana still resonate today in this primary season.

"Forty years later, whenever I hear people say that a politician’s speeches don’t matter, that campaigns are a waste and that the sort of conflict we have in the 2008 Democratic primary is “destructive,” I think of Robert Kennedy’s words in Indianapolis that night — a speech that would have never happened but for the hard-fought, highly competitive 1968 primary campaign — and the millions of people like me who were inspired by them and their impact on that city."

and..



sorry about the subtitles.

Wardobe Malfunction

I try to keep it clean on this blog, but I have to tell this story.

My favorite bra since I bought it a few months ago has been the Victoria's Secret 100 ways bra. The straps are completely adjustable so you can perfect the bra for the shirt. It's held together in the front by a small rubber strap in between the cups that I guess gives it some flexibility and versatility.

Last night I was driving us to class down at Widener and SNAP. I felt like I had been flicked with a rubber band. The little strap broke! I wasn't even doing anything!

It was fine because I just kept my coat on for the rest of the night (of course the classroom had to be hot for the first time in two semesters), but what if it wasn't coat weather? Or I had been somewhere that people could actually see me? I wore that bra to my shower when one million photos were taken!

I am definitely making an angry phone call, but in the meanwhile I just wanted to warn every one... and share my kind of humiliating story, haha.

Cases

Am I Looking at a Malignant Melanoma? [Click Here]

By BARBARA SCHILDKROUT, M.D.

Published: April 1, 2008

For doctors there can be a fine line between good Samaritan and busybody when it comes to offering unsolicited medical advice.

I wanted to get a quick entry in before March was over, because I almost missed a whole month.

Unfortunately, today was a really hard day, and I can't find much to write.

Glen and his mom and I went to a funeral of a former next-door-neighbor, a kid that Glen had grown up with. It was only the second time I had met the family, but I felt like I knew them because of all the stories I had heard about the years they spent as neighbors.

We were talking a little bit about the wedding and the mom turned to me and said, "You know, you're a really really lucky girl to have him."

That's something that I know with all my heart, but no one had ever said to me before. Glen's family wouldn't brag about him like that, and none of our friends are going to talk like that. But she obviously loves Glen like a son and is so proud of him.

A we prepare for our wedding, one of the most wonderful parts has been seeing more and more clearly how many people we have in our lives that love us. People that we thought might not be interested in coming all the way to Philadelphia are so excited to just be with us that day. We are going to be surrounded by so much love as we say our vows.

But finding this deep connection today made my own grief for the loss of Brian sharper. His mom sees me as entering her own family, and that family is really suffering right now. And a little bit more than before, I can see what Glen and Kathee are going through with his death.

This is now the seventh person we've mourned since we got engaged. I guess the more people you love the more loss you eventually have to feel. The love is worth it though.

blehhhh
I so don't have time to catch whatever's going around the office. :(

I should add that these were TWO separate projects that required the spreadsheets and the documents!! One for work and one for school. I can't escape!

Rose and Thorn

Today Rani told me about an activity she does at her mentoring program called, Rose and Thorn. You list the best thing and the worst thing that happened to you all week. I'm going to try this, but condense it down to just today, because my brain is a little shot and I can't think back that far.

Today I spent nearly every waking hour typing data in an Excel spreadsheet and then transferring it over to a Word document into sentence form. I'm only awake right now because I just finished for the night. Oh, I guess except for the hours I spent in meetings today.
That was the thorn.

The rose is that I had some awesome guacamole with the freshest chips at lunch AND I got an awesome e-mail from a very old friend. We've been friends for 19 years. We'll have to celebrate our 20th anniversary some how :-)

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can get up in the morning and go back to entering data in spreadsheets and transferring it back to documents. This will last until next Tuesday, except for when I take a break to go a funeral. I'm crossing my fingers that I can hold onto my sanity.


P.S. you should try the rose and thorn thing too.

That makes six.

My great uncle Gwynne passed away today.  This was not especially sudden and I believe he was around 90 years old, but it's still sad and makes my heart ache.  What a brilliant and yet sweet man -- like another grandpa to me.

Going down to Maryland on Friday I guess.  It will be nice to see all of my cousins, and my great Aunt Helen.
I wonder if it will be believable at work that I need off for another funeral within a few weeks. :(

I'll be having Americone Dream

Don't forget to celebrate
Ice Cream for Breakfast Day!

tomorrow, the first Saturday in February

the "official" website: http://www.itzahckret.com/icecreamforbreakfast.html

wow.

Wow I'm an idiot.

Glen and his mom and I were just sitting in the Starbucks down at the corner finalizing the wedding guest list and the rehearsal dinner plans.  Someone asked what time it is and I looked at my watch and reported, quarter to 10!  We thought the Starbucks was closing at 10 so we realized we should start packing up.  Then Glen remembered the Whole Foods parking lot closes at 10 and after that you can't get your car out until the morning!  So he ran and got the car, Kathee ran to the bathroom before her long drive home, and I cleaned up the table we were at.  When Glen arrived with the car and we walked outside we saw that the Starbucks doesn't close until 11pm on Saturday nights, but we all agreed it was a good thing we had thought they closed at 10, or we wouldn't have gotten to the car in time.  (That happened once before and we were scared Kathee's car had been towed and had to call the towing company and she had to borrow ours to get home to her puppy and we have to be at the garage right when it opened to get her car before it got towed then, and she had to drive back to Philly the next day to swap cars -- all around just not fun).

So we've been home for 15 minutes now and Glen just ran upstairs and asked me if I saw what time it is.  It's EIGHT o'clock.  I think the watch hands were at the 8 and the 10 and I thought it was about 20 to 10 but really it was 10 to 8.  I wonder if Kathee, now in her car on the way back to Delaware, has noticed this yet.

I just happened upon a study that was trying to prove whether drinking cranberry juice really helped prevent urinary tract infections.
They took a group of older people who were in the hospital anyway and gave half cranberry juice and half a similar control beverage and then measured how many UTIs they got.  The cranberry juice drinkers developed half as many infections, but their numbers weren't large enough to prove that cranberry juice had any significant protective power.  In a useful contribution, they add that they were able to prove that yes, older people like drinking cranberry juice.

it was a brief nail polish break from the work, by the way.  i only painted my left hand.

Don't you hate it when you have to go to the bathroom as soon as you finish painting your nails, but you can't because your nails are wet?
I do.


Don't you hate it when you're up until 1am working on a project for work and you're not allowed to earn overtime?

Yesterday was 5 months until the wedding and tomorrow is 150 days until the wedding!
We've been getting a lot accomplished lately and having a lot of fun -- we are both so excited.

But at the same time, work got busy and school has hit, so there's not much free time left over.  The messiness in our house has reach a whole new level -- a Saturday sometime soon is going to be blocked out for me to totally clean out my closet.  We're going to squeeze in a trip out to the mall possibly on Thursday to finish up some Christmas returns before it gets too late and to actually fill up that registry!

Back to work...

You're a golf ball to me, man.

I actually got kind of a cute forwarded email today, so I thought I'd take the advice of Wired Magazine and post it to a blog instead of filling up other people's inboxes
(sorry to the two people who get my blog in their inboxes)


When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded t o fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box o f pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.

"It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

I've wanted to write a lot lately, even started a few entries.  So much is going on!

Today was a day of extremely mixed emotions, after a similar weekend.

Saturday, Glen and I began to seriously plan our honeymoon, down to the exact flights.  When I called my mom about frequent flier miles, she told me she had just found out one of her closest friends had entered hospice.
Today, we booked our honeymoon and Malaika passed away.
We reserved the first days of our new life together in paradise, and woman who was an aunt to me my entire life left us.

One does not temper the other; I alternated between beaming from ear to ear and tearing throughout staff meetings.

We more or less made up our wedding invitation list soon after we got engaged in order to send out engagement announcements, and Malaika is the fifth person on that list to pass away.  Making a list of everyone in life who is important to you is just a very strange way to watch time go by. 

Please visit www.thebreastcancersite.com, thanks.

what a day for a daydream

The last few days have been very odd -- almost 70 degrees out.  I would like to see how long it is before we get another forecast like that (or maybe start getting regular forecasts like that), maybe 4 more months?  And when we do get into that area, the wedding will be so close!

I have a paper chain of gold and silver links hung in my cube at work and we've almost made it from the side hanging on the right cabinet to the ones on the left cabinet!  5 1/2 months!  eek!

Jim Hjelm came out with a new junior bridesmaid dress that matched our bridesmaid dress so well -- now we don't have to order from two separate brands and try to match colors.  I just hope my junior bridesmaid gets over her disgust of skirts before then.

This afternoon Glen and I got a great email -- Widener took my suggestion and is offering a section of our Thursday night class on Tuesday afternoons, right before our Tuesday night class.  Now we only have to drive down to campus once a week!  (albeit with nearly 6 hours of class in a row).  This very afternoon I actually groaned out loud at my desk when I found out that another activity I wanted to do took place on Thursday nights that I didn't think I could make -- it seems like everything is scheduled for Thursday nights.  Now we can do all of those things!  This includes going to the Down Town Club's next open house a week from today so Glen can finally hear the Jon Lewis Orchestra, and possible taking six weeks of SCUBA lessons so we can get certified before our honeymoon!

Also today, I found the best airfare down to the Caribbean where I think Glen and I are going to book our honeymoon.  We might try to get everything booked tonight!

We're also in the process of working with Glen's cousin Shannon for him to custom design Save-The-Dates for us.  We're trying to decide whether to stick with our current wedding website, or upgrade to pay for something like Aly&Glen.com, and quickly so we can include them on the Save-The-Dates.  The current site's address is just kind of easy to mis-type, and we might put the hotel information on there so I want to make it easy for the less computer-literate to reach.

Going to try to post more often now that life is starting to get back to normal after the holidays.  Ciao!

Moooooo!

Mindy (and Eugene) just opened up my eyes to this site (because I've been whining about Google not having a To Do List for a while) -- www.rememberthemilk.com
It's awesome! It integrates so well with Gmail, you'll think it's a Google product (Google Calendar too!)
And, if we add each other as contacts, we can send each other tasks to do -- almost as fun as being Pandora friends.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I plan on returning to posting, so here's something I've been saving on my desktop forever and rediscovered with a little New Year's cleaning: http://www.cspinet.org/new/cafchart.htm


Caffeine Content of Food & Drugs

>background on caffeine

Coffees	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
Coffee, generic brewed	8 oz.	133 (range: 102-200) (16 oz. = 266)
Starbucks Brewed Coffee (Grande)	16 oz.	320
Einstein Bros. regular coffee	16 oz.	300
Dunkin' Donuts regular coffee	16 oz.	206
Starbucks Vanilla Latte (Grande)	16 oz.	150
Coffee, generic instant	8 oz.	93 (range: 27-173)
Coffee, generic decaffeinated	8 oz.	5 (range: 3-12)
Starbucks Espresso, doppio	6.5 oz.	150
Starbucks Frappuccino Blended Coffee Beverages, average	9.5 oz.	115
Starbucks Espresso, solo	1 oz.	75
Einstein Bros. Espresso	1 oz.	75
Espresso, generic	1 oz.	40 (range: 30-90)
Starbucks Espresso decaffeinated	1 oz.	4
Teas	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
Tea, brewed	8 oz.	53 (range: 40-120)
Starbucks Tazo Chai Tea Latte (Grande)	16 oz.	100
Snapple, Lemon (and diet version)	16 oz.	42
Snapple, Peach (and diet version)	16 oz.	42
Snapple, Raspberry (and diet version)	16 oz.	42
Arizona Iced Tea, black	16 oz.	32
Nestea	12 oz.	26
Snapple, Just Plain Unsweetened	16 oz.	18
Arizona Iced Tea, green	16 oz.	15
Snapple, Kiwi Teawi	16 oz.	10
Soft Drinks	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
FDA official limit for cola and pepper soft drinks	12 oz.	71
Vault	12 oz.	71 (20 oz. = 118)
Jolt Cola	12 oz.	72
Mountain Dew MDX, regular or diet	12 oz.	71 (20 oz. = 118)
Coke Blak	12 oz.	69 (20 oz. = 115)
Code Red, regular or diet	12 oz.	54 (20 oz. = 90)
Mountain Dew, regular or diet	12 oz.	54 (20 oz. = 90)
Pepsi One	12 oz.	54 (20 oz. = 90)
Mello Yellow	12 oz.	53
Diet Coke	12 oz.	47 (20 oz. = 78)
Diet Coke Lime	12 oz.	47 (20 oz. = 78)
TAB	12 oz.	46.5
Pibb Xtra, Diet Mr. Pibb, Pibb Zero	12 oz.	41 (20 oz. = 68)
Dr. Pepper	12 oz.	42 (20 oz. = 68)
Dr. Pepper diet	12 oz.	44 (20 oz. = 68)
Pepsi	12 oz.	38 (20 oz. = 63)
Pepsi Lime, regular or diet	12 oz.	38 (20 oz. = 63)
Pepsi Vanilla	12 oz.	37
Pepsi Twist	12 oz.	38 (20 oz. = 63)
Pepsi Wild Cherry, regular or diet	12 oz.	38 (20 oz. = 63)
Diet Pepsi	12 oz.	36 (20 oz. = 60)
Pepsi Twist diet	12 oz.	36 (20 oz. = 60)
Coca-Cola Classic	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Coke Black Cherry Vanilla, regular or diet	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Coke C2	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Coke Cherry, regular or diet	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Coke Lime	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Coke Vanilla	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Coke Zero	12 oz.	35 (20 oz. = 58)
Barq's Diet Root Beer	12 oz.	23 (20 oz. = 38)
Barq's Root Beer	12 oz.	23 (20 oz. = 38)
7-Up, regular or diet	12 oz.	0
Fanta, all flavors	12 oz.	0
Fresca, all flavors	12 oz.	0
Mug Root Beer, regular or diet	12 oz.	0
Sierra Mist, regular or Free	12 oz.	0
Sprite, regular or diet	12 oz.	0
Energy Drinks	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
Spike Shooter	8.4 oz.	300
Cocaine	8.4 oz.	280
Monster Energy	16 oz.	160
Full Throttle	16 oz.	144
Rip It, all varieties	8 oz.	100
Enviga	12 oz.	100
Tab Energy	10.5 oz.	95
SoBe No Fear	8 oz.	83
Red Bull	8.3 oz.	80
Red Bull Sugarfree	8.3 oz.	80
Rockstar Energy Drink	8 oz.	80
SoBe Adrenaline Rush	8.3 oz.	79
Amp	8.4 oz.	74
Glaceau Vitamin Water Energy Citrus	20 oz.	50
SoBe Essential Energy, Berry or Orange	8 oz.	48
Product	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
Frozen Desserts	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch	8 fl. oz.	84
Ben & Jerry's Coffee Flavored Ice Cream	8 fl. oz.	68
Haagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream	8 fl. oz.	58
Haagen-Dazs Coffee Light Ice Cream	8 fl. oz.	58
Haagen-Dazs Coffee Frozen Yogurt	8 fl. oz.	58
Haagen-Dazs Coffee & Almond Crunch Bar	8 fl. oz.	58
Starbucks Coffee Ice Cream	8 fl. oz.	50-60
Chocolates/Candies/Other	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
Jolt Caffeinated Gum	1 stick	33
Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar	1.45 oz.	31
Hershey's Chocolate Bar	1.55 oz.	9
Hershey's Kisses	41g (9 pieces)	9
Hot Cocoa	8 oz.	9 (range: 3-13)
Over-The-Counter Drugs	Serving Size	Caffeine (mg)
NoDoz (Maximum Strength)	1 tablet	200
Vivarin	1 tablet	200
Excedrin (Extra Strength)	2 tablets	130
Anacin (Maximum Strength)	2 tablets	64
September 2007. Most information was obtained from company Web sites or direct inquiries. Serving sizes are based on commonly eaten portions, pharmaceutical instructions, or the amount of the leading-selling contaner size. For example, beverages sold in 16-ounce or 20-ounce bottles were counted as one serving. Additional information: Juliano, L.M. & Griffiths, R.R. (2005). "Caffeine." In Lowinson, J.H., Ruiz, P., Millman, R.B., Langrod, J.G. (Eds.). Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook, Fourth Edition. (pp 403-421). Baltimore: Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins.