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

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.

How do you get to be the artist in residence at a resort on St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands???

http://www.caneelbay.com/activities_watercolor.cfm

www.caneelbay.com

I meant to write that yesterday was 250 days until the wedding!

We're off to double class again tonight -- be back after 10p. Sigh.

CNN.com -- Deadly amoeba lurks in Florida lakes
By John Zarrella and Patrick Oppman
ORLANDO, Florida (CNN)-- Something in the lakes around Orlando, Florida, has claimed the lives of three boys this summer.

I had to post this because N. fowleri was one of the scarier things we learned about in med school, and everyone should know about it.

If you've talked to me in the past two days, I've complained about tonight's class and how we had three week's worth of reading and 5 written assignments due today. In class he realizes it's way too much to talk about in one class (yeah, duh, and too much to accomplish in 6 days) and he decides not to collect two of the assignments and cancels all of the reading for next week so we can catch up with discussion. You know this means that eventually weeks of reading are going to get scunched (a real word) together again.

I finished my awesome Health Policy Survey presentation (thanks to all, copies will be distributed) and now I'm going to search for an article to do my article summary on for Information Systems... we have several articles to read each week, but we have to find a unique one to read and analyze for our homework.

On the bright side, I'm not currently studying for a shelf exam (sorry guys).

Wedding stuff has gotten totally pushed to the side, except for a colossal to do list that I made up. Nonetheless, I've been extra excited about it lately -- it's nine months from Friday! I got to show a new co-worker my wedding dress pictures :)

I feel like I'm leaving something out, but it's impossible for it to be important.

I remember!
I'm buying this:
Cookie cutters for 3-D cookies! Awesome!

I had two good phone calls yesterday. First was Bank of America trying to get me to sign up for some kind of $13/month identity theft protection. The girl said they would send me three versions of my credit report and she'd like me to overlook them. Sure! That'll be easy.

Then last night I finally responded to Hopkins' requests to update my alumni directory information. Every five to seven years they publish a compendium of every alum back to the 1880s. Because the list won't be released until March and then will be the official copy for at least five years, Glen and I had some decisions to make. We decided to put our occupations down as students at Jefferson because even after we graduate in three years, as residents we'll still be students so that'll stay pretty true. We put our careers down as Physician/Surgeon, which was kind of exciting. But then the really excited part came when decided to take the leap and list ourselves as married, with my married name going into the directory! (I'll be searchable under both Liedy and Quigley) Our names are crosslinked. The woman verified my information and said, so you're listed as Mrs. Alyson Shannon Quigley... and I just laughed.

Finally, check out this awesome wedding bingo. The more things go wrong, the bigger chance that you're a winner!

We're back in Philly for about 48 hours, catching up on errands and laundry. Oh, and I should really water the plants. Tomorrow we're heading south to rendezvous with the college crew for a BBQ (that rhymes if you say it aloud). And tonight we may be hosting some of the sojourners in our apartment before we all head down to Columbia MD in the morning... early afternoon? We'll see when we wake up.

It also seems like getting the heck out of Philly is a good idea because the lady at our package store told Glen that American Idol is holding auditions in Philadelphia on Monday... registration starts tomorrow morning. Everyone within two days' driving distance of Center City who would like to make a fool of themselves on national TV is going to be pouring in starting tonight. I hope our house guests can find parking.

On the wedding news front, we may have a band picked out.

And Amy finally got to see me in my wedding dress, and she got to try on bridesmaid dresses. This is our current favorite, but in a periwinkle color.











I also found a cool idea for wedding rings. This artist engraves your partner's fingerprint onto the inside or outside of your wedding ring.I've also starting getting into the idea of asking couples to list their own first dance song on the RSVP card. This might make the reception more personal, and encourage people to get up to dance. However, if the band can't play it or the DJ doesn't have it, I wouldn't want the couple to feel neglected.

Lastly, check out this awesome article celebrating everyone's favorite computer game,
The Oregon Trail.

It's so much easier to enjoy your weekends on the outpatient service - you know your patients are all at home enjoying their weekends too. Our first Friday on inpatient we all felt so weird knowing we weren't coming in the next morning but our patients were stuck in the hospital.

Either way, this is my last weekend of clinical work for a long time.

I've been looking at a lot of wedding stuff lately, mostly because I've been procrastinating writing this paper I have to do by tomorrow.

I found a website that will design 5 monograms for $15.
Which ones do you like the best?
Then, which ones have an historic/colonial feel and which ones would look good in a lilac color scheme?
See? All this wedding stuff is hard work!

11 months until the wedding! Everyone said once we got within the year mark it would go quickly, and the past month went in a blink (...in some respects anyway. I felt like I worked at duPont for months and really we spent only 8 days there). It feels like there is still a lot of time-sensitive stuff to do for the wedding, and by the time we finish our rotation it is going to be only 10 months away. We need a band, a florist, and a honeymoon before everything good is taken.

Today we got our hot-off-the-press copies of Harry Potter and went to read them in Washington Square after having a late lunch at a crepe restaurant we found on 6th just below South. It was a nice relaxing day. We also sent out a bunch of emails that needed to be sent, so it was also productive, a little. I am looking to get to bed before 11 so we don't screw up our sleep schedule too much. I woke up at 4:30am this morning on my own. That was uncool. I went back to sleep and then woke up at 7:30 with a sore throat -- I was sure I had caught something from one of my patients. Like my most recent patient who I followed all of last week -- Thursday morning I'm in there wiping off his runny nose goo from all over his cheeks while he's coughing in my face and then Thursday afternoon when his test finally came back positive for adenovirus, we put him on droplet precautions and I could only walk into his room with latex gloves, a disposable gown, and a surgical mask on. I got out of bed and gargled with some Listerine and when I finally woke up the third time at 10:30am I felt totally better. Cross your fingers for me.

Thursday on the way home we swung by CVS to pick up the prints of our disposable underwater camera from Sanibel (none of the pictures came out very well so I have nothing to post) and then we took the short cut back through the playground. We still had our white coats on with our stethoscopes hanging around our necks and this little boy on a bike stopped and stared at us and then yelled HI! We said hi back and then he asked us if we were two doctors?! I told him we were just students... he looked a little confused and maybe I should have explained that better, but my brain was still melted from the day. I was really touched though to see the white coats carry that much weight with a random little kid. :)

Umm, more randomness: here's a great recipe we tried a few nights ago:
Boil a 16 oz package of frozen gnocchi. Drain.
In a pot, brown 3 cloves (or 3 teaspoons) of chopped garlic in 2 tablespoons olive oil.
Coarsely chop (or tear up) and rinse a 9 oz bag of spinach; throw this into the pot with the garlic and oil and cover to let the spinach steam from the water still on the leaves from rinsing.
When the spinach is just wilted, add 14 oz canned diced tomatoes (the small can, or half the big can).
When the whole thing is heated through, add the gnocchi and toss; salt and pepper to taste.

It was really really good and so simple to make. I think you could add any pasta, but the chunky sauce went well with the gnocchi.

I thought there was one more thing to write... but I can't remember so I'm going to bed. Sweet dreams!

Today I actually started to feel like a third year. We spent several hours tonight at a "clinic" run by the AOA (medical student honor society) learning to place IV lines and draw blood... first on manikins and then, on each other.

That's my hand above.

I had previously announced that I am not going to ever have surgery and tonight I would like to add to that that I never plan on having an IV line inserted. It just feels weird.

I do feel 1000 times more confident about having to do it on a patient now that I successfully did it on Chuck. Let's home all of my future patients have such great veins.

I apparently have terrible veins (hence the above picture). The guy who was teaching us (who was actually just a first year but who had worked as a paramedic for something like 12 years),
said it's because I'm a redhead, but he didn't explain that statement at all (maybe that's why my old dermatologist had "RED" written on my file so he would know a redheaded patient was coming in that day. I doubt there was that valid of a reason). Our teacher tonight was also overly attracted to Selene's jugular veins. It was an interesting evening all around, and unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me.

Tomorrow we have orientation days for our respective rotations, so we'll be meeting the pediatricians in charge of our block and I believe we'll be seeing some kids to learn about the developmental milestones and practice some of the pediatric physical exam (hint from a fourth year: leave examining the mouth to the end because they'll already having it open, screaming).

Also, here's a quick reprint of my wedding color swatches taken with my good camera. I think the colors are a little truer:
Good night and good luck, especially to the people I know who have to report before sunrise!

Today Glen and I went to Home Depot to get some giant tupperware containers for our camping stuff, and while we were there, I stopped by the paint department to get some swatches for wedding color ideas.

As you can see, I'm leaning towards the bluey-purples, but I threw in some blues and mossy greens to round it out. I don't really know what I'm going to do with all of these cards, but they're fun to play with. Maybe I can make up some sort of game with very complicated rules to play with them.

We also got the car washed and vacuumed the inside out -- there was still lots of actual dirt in the car from our camping trip. We always pick the best days to stand out in the sun and labor; the last time we went and vacuumed the car it was also about 95 degrees out. When we finally found a parking spot back at home (ugh, Sunday evenings), we spent another hour wiping down the interior and the windows -- in contrast to the rest of the clean car, they were looking disgusting. So now we have a sparkly clean Aveo parked directly in front of Beth's house, ready for us to carpool and commute to DuPont Children's Hospital in Wilmington, DE on Wednesday morning.

Then, as we finally walked back from the car, Glen pointed out a butterfly sitting on a stoop on our block. It looked kind of cute sitting there, and just as I took out my camera to snap a photo, it flew off. We thought we missed our chance, but then it swooped back down, directly at us! It actually landed on Glen's head. It kept flying up and then back down at our faces, and then a second butterfly came to join it. It was bizarre and kind of hilarious to get attacked by a pair of butterflies. Maybe they liked us, I don't know. I got this picture when one finally took a rest.

Tomorrow officially starts... more orientation. In the evening there is a 'clinic' to teach us to place IV lines and take blood and give stitches, so that should be interesting. Our first opportunity to find out how inept we really are!

Slate's Wedding Issue - http://www.slate.com/id/2167723/

something I want to read, but haven't had the time for yet.
I figure if I post it here, I'm least likely to lose the link ;)

Our family came down to Philly tonight to celebrate our negative one year anniversary!!

Us at City Tavern:

The weather today was absolutely beautiful. We all hope that one year from today is just as great.

My next update will be from Sanibel, Florida... TOMORROW!

I was just checking out this slide show of a wedding on theknot.com:
http://weddings.theknot.com/

The couple had their reception at the Down Town Club where we are, and from the one photo and short description of the church, I think they got married at Old St. Joseph's, one block from Old St. Mary's. It looks like they took pictures in the historic parks where I want to also.

What struck me as funny is the one picture of a place card reading "10th and Locust Streets" -- I know a lot of couples try to think of interesting names for their reception tables instead of just simple numbers, often naming them after places important to them. Unless one of them is a Jefferson student, the only other thing at 10th and Locust is Locust Bar, and I don't think you want to bring up any memories you made there at your wedding...

OK only a few more days of this, I promise. The 21st is now set to be sunny with a high of 84 degrees, so it's actually getting nicer. Although it's so late now that that might be tomorrow's forecast for Thursday. I hope this is how it turns out next year :)

I'm not sure why I'm so obsessed with the weather. This 21st thing is a little different, but I generally open up weather.com several times per day. Maybe because it's a good procrastination tool -- it's always changing but only a little so it doesn't distract you very much. Also, I'm always planning several days ahead and I like to know the weather so I have a complete idea of what that day is going to be like.

I'm also a little obsessed with checking the headlines throughout the day and especially when I get up in the morning, but I know why that is. The morning of September 11th it was my first week at college and I was just barely getting into my schedule so I woke up at around 10am for an 11am class and never heard anything until I was starting to walk across (a very weirdly empty) campus. By the time I found out, it was completely over. So now 6 years later I still check the news as soon as I get up to see if anything happened while I was sleeping, and then again throughout the day because just sitting and studying I am so cut off from the real world.

I did get out into the real world a little bit today -- went back to study on the front steps. Had to come in the first time right after lunch because it was actually too hot in the sun (and I was worried I was going to burn) but at around 5pm it was perfect out in the shade. I have an hour long mp3 of the sounds of waves crashing, so I listened to that on my iPod for some white noise and to up the relaxation if at all possible. What would also make it more relaxing is if the city could hang a One Way arrow at the intersection of 9th and Lombard... I guess the fact that the north-south street alternate directions isn't enough for people because every day I see someone turn left from Lombard into the oncoming traffic on 9th street. Usually there is a lot of honking and then the person has to back into the intersection. I'm amazed that I haven't actually witnessed a crash from this problem yet, but if I do enough more studying out there I'm sure I will eventually.

Oh that reminds me that last week I also watched a 10-wheeler trunk back up 9th street. He was technically going the right way, but he was facing backwards. I don't remember what I was doing at the time that I couldn't watch to see how this issue was resolved, but I really can't imagine where or how he got himself turned back around. I guess if he backed past an intersection he could then turn onto that intersection, hopefully in the right direction this time? But there was a cop kind of directing him so he didn't side swipe any cars (read: my car) and he had been backing up since about South Street and had already crossed Rodman and Lombard, headed towards Pine so I don't know what the plan was. He was breaking all of the branches of the trees that line my block because nothing that huge ever drives up our street forward, let alone backwards!!

Lastly, today opened a fifth week in the little 'archive' list to the left, so that means this is my fifth Sunday of studying, as well as blogging. That's a little too much studying if you ask me. Almost there.

5 days away: high of 86 degrees, partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain.

So so far the forecast has been pretty stable. Does that mean I'll really have 10 days notice of the weather on my wedding day? This year there are thunderstorms the day before so I bet last minute they get switched on to the 21st. Well, no, I guess since I'm not actually getting married this year, that bad luck will wait for next year.

I was really confused for the earlier part of the day why no one was online and why the emails I sent last night hadn't been responded to. At some point I realized it was Saturday and normal people relax on Saturdays. That's OK. Next Saturday I will be lying on the beach with a frozen pina colada from the tiki bar.

I'm afraid I will be so sick of reading that I won't know what to do with myself on the beach. I mean, swimming will take up 50% of the time, but what about when I'm on dry land? I can only "work on my tan" for so long (about 5 minutes before I'm crispy). Any ideas?

Now the forecast is a high of 90 and mostly sunny. As I think our families are coming into town that day for some post-boards fun, I'm starting to get more concerned about this year's weather than about next year's -- that's hot!

I took a practice half-test this morning from the boards people and it came out OK. It's so frustrating that you can't even see which questions you got wrong let along explanations for the answers. I'm afraid I may have reinforced some wrong things in my brain. Glen and I spent lunch brainstorming some of the harder questions that we wanted to look up the answers to (we took the same practice test).

I switched the blog motif to get ready for our trip to Sanibel in 7 days!!!

Also, I like the fun sidebar on Monica's blog and I might start adding some pictures to mine -- a little mini gallery. I miss my camera during all this studying :(

Today's forecast for June 21st is 87 degrees and mostly sunny. And although two days ago they wanted me to battle the rainy day blues, now for the 21st they suggest "Plan a Beach Trip." That change is over just two days!

It kind of stinks that now that we're headed into our review period we're pretty much tied to our laptops for practice questions. That means definitely no more study days in Washington Square. We haven't been there in a while because of the weather. I guess we're almost kind of sort of taking our test there though because the testing center overlooks the park!

10 Day forecast - June 21st: high of 85 and Sunny. We just went from 'rainy day blues' to sunny in 24 hours. This should be an interesting week.
I only sort of care what the weather is going to be like this year -- I'm just trying to prepare myself for next year's roller coaster ride.

One week left until we take our boards, and I don't feel prepared at all. So what do I do? Sleep all morning. I just couldn't fall asleep last night and I was so exhausted when I got up. I would hit snooze and when I woke up again, it was an hour later instead of 5 minutes later. (Glen didn't hear the alarm at all). Oh, well time to go read while I eat my lunch (that's possible as long as you're not reading about helminths[click at your own risk]).

Oh, also, you can lose your sense of smell (anosmia) due to injury, brain tumor, or Cadmium poisoning. Those first two causes were from reading my Neuroanatomy book. The last was from watching House. :-)

Today is the date next year when I am going to start freaking out.

June 21st is now in the 10-day weather forecast.

This year, it's supposed to be 86 degrees with scattered showers. I can imagine my hair in that weather.
And next to it, the weather channel has a little link: Beat the Rainy Day Blues! Like they needed to rub it in.

Well, we'll see how the forecast changes over the next ten days. But I guess I shouldn't have expected much else getting married on the first day of summer.