Mark Your Calendar

Even though we can't be in Baltimore for Christmas, we are coming in December. MAybe I can see some snow after all! Pencil us in for December 15-18. Nothing is planned yet, but I want to see lots of people! That means we'll have to do a lot of group stuff since there just isn't enough time to see everyone. Stay tuned for more details!

Ramblings

So I bought this garlic at the grocery store the other day. I couldn't find the regular garlic and wound up with "Elephant Garlic." I wasn't sure what that meant, but hey, garlic is garlic I thought. I pulled it out to put in my pasta sauce and it's freakin' huge! I took a picture of its hugeness but for some reason blogspot does not like my picture and I can not share it with you. Sad. Because it is HUGE. It's almost a small onion. So huge, in fact, I had to cut one clove in half to use next time.

This year will be the first time I make Thanksgiving dinner all by myself. I have to work an evening shift that day so I guess we will eat at 1:00 or so. How big of a turkey do I buy for 3 people? And how early do I have to get up to put it in the oven? And how long does it take to defrost in the refrigerator? I'll have to make a menu so I can do a grocery run soon.

I've noticed at the hospital they have no IV push protocol. Or maybe they have it but keep it hidden because I have seen no one use or talk about it. This is odd for several reasons but I will not go into them. Everything here is IVP. All pt's seem to get narcs and phenergan IVP if they are tolerating po meds or not even nauseous. What's with that??? I pushed metoprolol and labetalol today on unmonitored pt's!!! (RN's on Marburg gasp here.) I nearly freaked out. Nothing is in a minibag. Ever. Except antibiotics. Which I hear they used to push up until very recently. No wonder there are so many addicts!! Phenergan 25 mg? Benadryl 50 mg? Demerol 50mg? Sure. No problem. And another thing. Where are all the supplies? What do you mean I have to order opsite, SCD's, TEDS, and abd pads from central supply? And why can't I get a normal saline bag from the pyxis to piggyback with my antibiotic?? The choice here, you ask? Waste 30 cc of the med (which is a lot if you only have 65cc to begin with) to prime the weird IV tubing or free flow it to the pt. What would you do?

It's Finally Fall!!

It's taken until November for there to be a chill in the air, but it's been worth the wait. Fall is my favorite season. I love watching the leaves change and pulling out the winter sweaters. Going to the pumpkin patch is usually the first event of fall for me. Alas, they have no pumpkin patches in east Texas (or so I am told). I had to console myself with store-bought apples for homemade applesauce. It didn't quite do it, but I'll take what I can get I think. Halloween was a bit of a letdown. We had very few trick-or-treaters. Maybe because we are in the back of the development? Even with the little darlings taking handfuls of candy we had a lot left over. Luckily, I had anticipated this and bought chocolate. Now we don't have so much left.....

I had my first ICU transfer yesterday. It was for hypotension which turned out to be fungal sepsis. It was a bit of a letdown because there was nothing really emergent and that typical adrenaline rush was not there. Not that I want a sick patient, of course!

We are off to Houston today with a list of things to do. We have to go to Ikea to replace a chair that broke and the Asian food store for some more rice. I think we will get dim sum for lunch. I need those little rolls filled with BBQ. I'll have to find out what they are really called!

Back to the Real World

Sorry for the long hiatus. We've been busy getting married, having fun in Hawaii, and generally enjoying married life! If we haven't sent you the ofoto link to our MANY pictures please let us know. (The flikr link is flikr.com/photos/aong765). We'll be more than happy to send it to you....You can let me know what you think of my first attempt at macro photography! Also, our photographer posted a few pictures from our wedding online at www.blog.stacieannsmith.com

Swimming
The underwater casing for the SD 20 came. We had to try it out at the pool yesterday. Pretty good, huh?

This was the sunset from the backyard when we got back from Houston today. 

China Town
 

Dim Sum Yum!

We went to Houston today to this restaurant. Doesn't look like much on the outside, but look at the dim sum they have! People come around with carts and you choose which dumplings you want to eat. it was really crowded.
 

Yes, you saw it here :

Can you believe this price?! I couldn't either. Of course I had just filled my tank up with $2.15 gas. Still I guess that's not bad compared with what we've been paying the last few months...


P

This is a horendous picture and the color is all wrong. It's really more of a hunter green. This week has just been orientation stuff. Very boring. I HATE the computerized charting. It doesn't make sense. And to top it off, it will change from HBOC (whatever that stands for) to Meditech in a few months. I've seen that system at Bayview and I've gotta tell you, it's even worse! And people wonder why mistakes happen in the hospital. All of the policies are a little strange here, but I'll get used to it. The one thing that looks familiar is pyxis. Except they use the pyxis for all meds not just narcotics. And you have to scan everything first. Don't know how that works yet.

MMM MMM GOOD

Here is a picture of tonight's dinner for those who think I don't cook. I went for a little Asian theme here. Steamed green beans. Jasmine rice sprinkled with seaweed. (Only Albert ses that. Mine was plain.) And the best part: Baked salmon topped with a special avocado sauce and toasted sesame seeds. Light creamy avocado really goes with the salmon. It seems weird, but it works. Trust me.

Recipe:
Mix cut up avocado with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, lemon juice, minced garlic, dash sugar, ginger, and sesame oil. Extremely easy.

I had orientation today at the hospital. It couldn't get any more boring....or maybe it could. I'll find out tomorrow. Now I must swim.

Just the beginning...
This is going to be a work in progress for awhile, but I plan to post more stuff to keep everyone in Baltimore updated on what is going on down here in Texas. Stuff that has been going on: Yesterday was my birthday! Albert gave me a beautiful necklace that he picked out by himself. And surprised me with a chocolate raspberry ice cream cake....Does he know me or what??
I was knitting a scarf off and on for the past week. It was really looking good until I dropped 2 stitches somewhere and one thing led to another and it now looks like this.





This is Albert's new camera, the Nikon D80. The pictures it takes are gorgeous. Needless to say, he is addicted to it. I'm just glad it came in time for the honeymoon in October.