Sassy Shoes

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the sassy shoes I’ll never buy –>

I tried to walk and it was almost a public disaster.  I’m obviously not that skilled.  I didn’t intend to buy them to begin with though.  They were only $18 but I know that I rarely where heels, let alone platform heels.  However, I know that anything orange at least gets me to stop and look, or try it on as the case may be.  I ended up getting what I really came for though, thankfully: replacement standard black shoes fore everyday wear.

Forgive the ghost white hand.  Clearly store lighting is fifty shades of awful.  You get the point though.  I was actually really glad to have found these on the clearance rack.  I love spending less than I intended on something.  I think I made up for it though when I went next door to Walmart for bread and walked out with much more than that.  Try pudding, cereal, carrots, cheddar cheese, eggs, and the originally intended bread… Oh well, all necessities on some level right??

One more thing before I head out to enjoy taking the rest of this Friday night off, I wanted to share my newest, extremely tasty version of egg salad: the lemon pepper kicker.  In the mix:

One hard-baked egg, mashed with a fork
One stalk of celery, minced
2/3 tbsp of light mayo
1 tsp of mayo
A healthy dash of lemon pepper seasoning

It was perfectly dressed (not overly wet from too much mayo like a lot of egg salads) and clung to my bread like a champ.  Perfect dinner.

Question: How often do you wear heels?

Rotten Tomatoes

You know, when you want tomatoes on a salad, finding that all your selection has molded is a harsh blow to take.

Seriously, I bought these literally two days ago.  I hadn’t even undone the plastic!  I guess in retrospect perhaps I should have undone everything and washed them.  You know, I figured they were safe.  How wrong was I?  Instead, I busted out a can of tomatoes and used those.

You could taste the difference but the awesome creamy goat cheese, lemon pepper seasoning, and light Caesar dressing hid the canned flavor fairly well.

It was overall a good dinner which I was grateful for because honestly I was starving most of the day from 2 o’clock on.  I ate lunch early because I was hungry and then my tummy was grumbly not two hours later and I ate a Kashi snack bar but sadly that did very little to settle me.  Then I had to sit through a whole class on ear and eye development (aka one of the last weeks in embryology).  By the time I got home I was hangry!  Anyways, on another random note, I found an interesting, rather irritating flaw in my embryo book while I was reading about signaling stuff.

Gahhhhhhhh!  Doesn’t anyone edit anymore?  Oi.  Sometimes I think I should be a book editor…and then I remember I want to counsel people and I get over it, real quick.  So, for now, I’ll just be angry for a few moments and then have dessert.  Later group!  Have a wonderful Thursday and an even better Friday because we all know that is basically the weekend.

Questions: When was the last time you found a mistake in a book?
How do you keep your produce from molding?

Hurry Up Rice!

Today didn’t feel like a Wednesday.  Probably because Jack and I got back from Thanksgiving vacation on Monday.  I started off the day with a breakfast cake which I totally failed to take a picture of before I wolfed it down following my 35 minute elliptical session.  I spent the rest of the morning running around getting my mandatory flu shot (ugh, I predict soreness tomorrow!) and being the patient for first year role plays.

By the time lunch rolled around I had already made some decent progress on my second patient letter from yesterday’s counseling sessions.  I even got my evaluation back from one of the appointments and I was happily surprised to see this –>

Talk about one awesome feeling.  No improvement comments!  I shouldn’t let this go to my head though as I have another patient tomorrow and there is always room for little tweaks here and there.  Anyways, I got hungry around noon and pulled out my variety lunch.  Last night when I was packing I was really, really indecisive so I just grabbed whatever I felt like in the moment.  Part one: two hard-baked eggs with homemade curry spice blend to sprinkle.  Part two: celery and green pepper slices with BBQ sauce.  Part three: an apple.

Needless to say I munched my way through everything as I continued to work on my patient letter.  That sucker ended up being three pages, size 10 font, single spaced.  Large and in charge my friends!  The whole afternoon was a blur of studying and more letter writing and editing.  I swear my fingers get such a workout in this program!!  By the time I got home I was hungering for some mandarins so I peeled two and quickly sucked them down.  More school work ensued (I’m boring, I know!) and then at six o’clock I decided I wanted something marinated and I wanted rice.  Oh good, it is already dinner time and I’m wanting stuff that takes quite a few minutes to prepare.  There isn’t really a way to hurry up rice…but I wanted to honor my desires though so I had some pretzels to tide me over while I made dinner.

I started off by mixing a 1/4 cup of soy cause, a tablespoon of honey, a tablespoon of rice vinegar, a 1/2 tsp of five spice, and a tsp of minced garlic together.  Then I poured that over a Trader Joe’s tempeh block cut into four thin “steaks”.  Thankfully tempeh soaks up marinade super quickly so the fact that it only marinated for half an hour didn’t matter much.  I baked it at 350* for 25 minutes, flipping halfway through.  I also roasted some onions tossed in olive oil, basil, and garlic.  My rice cooker did all the hard work while I baked.  I didn’t soak the rice, obviously, because of my lack of foresight but it worked perfectly.  Plus I made more for leftovers!  Also steamed the last of my frozen broccoli.

A nice well rounded meal I must say.  The butter in the rice really did it though.  I forgot how sultry butter on starch can be!  A bit later I wanted something sweet so I grabbed a caramel rice cake and smeared it with some peanut butter (a natural brand from Aldi for super cheap and its actually really great, score!) and pressed some mini marshmallows on top.  It was heavenly.

Please ignore the utterly full and dirty sink in the background.  I promise I washed them all before I sat down to blog.  Now I’m off to sleep.  I have to lift in the morning (still on stage three of NROLFW) as long as my left arm is actually functional given that it was assaulted by a needle today.  Here’s hoping.  Sleep well blog world!

Questions: Did you get a flu shot this year?
Are you a fan of mini marshmallows?

Thanksgiving Break 2012

[by iPhone and Instagram]

Question: How was your holiday weekend?

An Opportunity Lost

Today was a rough day.  The kind of rough day that shakes you to your core.  Makes you remember just how out of control your life is sometimes and how good cries are rarely pretty.

It all started last night.  I was invited to an ugly sweater party with some of my first year classmates and friends.  I made some so-called slutty brownies to bring and others brought cookies, veggies, dips, and “tiger butter”.  There were dough wrapped meatballs, fresh tomato and feta salad on pieces of bread, buffalo chicken dip, and chocolate dipped pretzels.  For drinks we have everything from various types of wine to champagne punch and hard cider.  Needless to say we had more than enough food and I ate wayyy too much.  It all tasted so good and my self-control went out the window.  I was stuffed, deliciously stuffed.

Naturally when I finally got to bed it was something like 2am and since I’m normally up at 6am my body is hard pressed to sleep past 8am.  As you can imagine I was awake and sadly wired at 8:15 this morning.  Because I felt like a ton of bricks, sluggish, and really unhappy with my weight (obviously thank in very large part to all the goodies I was probably still digesting) I went to the gym.  I then spent the next two hours there.  I started off with the stationary bike for 50 minutes, followed by 30-40 minutes of NROLFW stage 3 lifting (wooo, it’s getting rough), then 35 minutes on the elliptical.  What a grueling morning, huh?  And, unfortunately, I’m not above saying some of that two hour gym time was motivated by penance for the night before.  Not the most healthy motivation but I’m just being honest here.

After a shower, I headed to a lunch meeting at my church about the storytelling ministry I am a part of.  I decided to call my mom on the way to chat about some sad news I got about a local job opportunity.  It won’t be happening which means in order to work in the specialty that I want to tackle most of all (infertility, assisted reproductive technology) I may have to move away from where I am now.  I may have to move away from Jack.  I may have to leave a part of the country I am just so comfortable in.

When I got the news on Friday I was professional about it.  I spoke with the doctor about ways that we could continue the conversation and different patient populations I could see.  I held it together.  I still had so much of the day to get through that I couldn’t lose it, I couldn’t fall apart.  I mean, I was bound and determined to not let it have this huge effect on me.  I mean, it’s only one job and I knew it was a long shot, I would have been creating a position from scratch.  I admit though, I want to do that some day.  And the reason this opportunity didn’t work out had absolutely nothing to do with anyone being at fault.  It is simply a numbers game.  There isn’t a big enough patient population to “feed” a genetic counseling position.  I get that, and I respect that.  It doesn’t mean I wanted it to happen any less though.  I was born to be an ART/infertility counselor.

Anyways, I hadn’t really assimilated what had happened, what it all really meant.  Essentially, the way I see it now, the likelihood that I have to move to find the perfect position just increased.  And that’s scary (and in some small ways kind of exciting too, changes in scenery are neat sometimes).  So, on the phone with my mother, on the steps of my church, in broad sunlight, and in the middle of pedestrian traffic I broke down.  I cried.  I sniffled.  I heaved.  I caught my breath.

It was good to get it out.  It was better to let myself fully grieve that opportunity loss.  And this wasn’t the end.  After all, it is only November.  The “employment season” for freshly graduated genetic counselors is just really beginning.  But you know, in the moment, it feels like crap.  It feels like it is over.  It feels like nothing will fit you and your future careers desires that perfectly again.  I don’t know what it would be like to be so far away from the ones I love.  I could end up who knows where.  And the whole thing is happening so quickly and so slowly at the same time.  We have five months left.  FIVE.  Then we’re going to be big kids, with big kid jobs out there in the world…

So, yes, it’s easy to despair, it’s easy to shut down when what you so desperately wanted falls through your fingertips.  And it’s easy to think that long distance will be the end of lots of things.  But then you receive a message that makes you cry again but this time for one of the best reasons: you realize just how loved you are and just how strong your relationship is.

And suddenly things don’t seem so bleak, they don’t seem so overwhelming.  I wiped away the tears, gave a meek smile, and turned on some laughs to lighten the mood.  Comedy Central came through.  Achmed never fails me.

Questions: When was your last, good, “ugly cry”?
Who is your favorite Jeff Dunham character?

WIA[A]W

Today’s WIAW is going to be a big recap of all sorts of foods because of my lack of posting due to lack of time lately.  This new rotation I’m in is kind of kicking my booty in terms of time management.  So let’s call this post a What I Ate All Week, a WIAAW, if you will.

So, without further ado, get ready to drool.  I’ll separate it by meal type I think and save the best for last, the desserts.  Let’s hope to it!

Breakfasts:

1) Brunch at a local place just a block and a half from my apartment.  I had some of the best sausage gravy ever smothering an incredibly fluffy biscuit.  Had a side of “Anna’s potatoes” too with gruyere cheese…ridiculously awesome.  And that big red disc you see, I kid you not, that’s a red velvet pancake and potentially one of the greatest things on the face of this earth.  Those pumpkin pie pancakes in the back (not mine, I may be a piggy but not that much!) might have given the red velvet a run for their money.
2) Breakfast cake like always with walnut butter, maple syrup, and chia seeds like always.  Oldie but a goodie.

Lunches:

1) Chunky veggie krab slaw with homemade coleslaw dressing. Delicious!
2) Harvest turkey cranberry salad from Panera Bread.
3) Football game date lunch: Buffalo chicken nachos.
4) Football game date lunch: Loaded Texan burger with fried onion, cheese, bacon, and BBQ and a Philly sandwich.  We went halfsies and had both straight and curly fries.  I love the spirals!
5) Sweet potato cauliflower goat cheese bisque. Homemade and super.  Based on this recipe with some obvious changes (hence the goat cheese in the name).

Dinners (and Drinks):

1) Dinner and a movie date: Pumpkin pie martini.  Oh yea, like liquid pie greatness.
2) Dinner and a movie date: Halfsies of a chicken, pineapple, peanut sauce, sesame slaw sandwich and a bacon bleu burger.  Waffle fries for me!
3) Dinner and a movie date: cranberry cosmo for me and a boozy peanut butter chocolate milkshake for him, well, me too. As if I wouldn’t sip that!
4) The sweet potato cauliflower bisque made originally at Jack’s apartment on Saturday night before I made my own version yesterday.  He stuck much closer to the recipe than I did.  Both were good.
5) Traditional dinner plate of chicken/apple sausage with BBQ sauce, steamed broccoli with mustard, and some curry blend seasoned roasted butternut squash.  Oh me, oh my –> so yummy, must make again NOW!
6) Heaping, overflowing salad made for tonight.  Topped with hot leftover curry roasted butternut squash and spicy French dressing.

Desserts:

1) Dinner and a movie date: Cinni mini dessert. Tasted like hot molten gingerbread.
2) One of the most insane looking peanut butter milkshakes ever.  We all about jumped the counter watching it be made.  Wowza.
3) Andes mint pie a la mode.  Seriously delish.  I could have eaten the whole entire pie, easily.  I wouldn’t have even felt bad about it.  I would have been too blissed out to care.  Probably would have been a bit sad in the morning though…

With that my dears I hope I have made you salivate.  I know I enjoyed it all while I was eating it!  I’m going to leave you with two cute pictures from the dance Jack and I attended on Saturday.  It had been a long time since we’d gotten to move on the floor so we had a great time.  And dips are a must…after giggles of course.

Questions: What is your drink of choice when you go out?
Favorite flavor of milkshake?