This was going to be a prospective Week-At-A-Glance, but then I kept putting off the writing part and just made little notes of what I did. So I went back and filled out the details and now it’s a long retrospective look at what I did last week.
Monday – A.J.’s last day here over this long Labor Day weekend. We got up and took a walk around the part of the Interurban trail that runs by the office. It is lined with blackberry bushes on both sides, so we often bring containers when we walk and pick the berries. There are 2 or 3 different kinds of blackberry bushes along the trail so there are always some that are perfectly ripe. A.J. has been bringing bags of frozen berries back to St. Louis with him and we’re going to have little blackberry pies when I get back. He made some for Jill2 for a Star Trek night and she said it was the best blackberry pie she had ever had. Today we also had lunch over at the Lynnwood Claim Jumper with Sandi and the visiting South Dakota relatives. This was a first time experience for the out-of-towners, so we got one of the big desserts (an "I Declare") to wow them with. I’ve found that ordering a black decaf coffee and then just using the whipped cream off the dessert works wonderfully. No messing with cream and sugar, just a mouthful of whipped cream and a slug of coffee – heaven in my mouth. 🙂 After lunch we had just a little bit of time before we had to head to the airport, so A.J. and I got out our Beamo and tossed it around in the driveway. This frisbee-like thing has got to be the most fun park toy I have ever played with. I like to play ring toss with it, where A.J. is the thrower, and I am the thing that the ring has to land over – I can catch it by putting my up-stretched through the hole in the middle, then the beamo just falls down around my waist to my feet. It is so much fun – sometime I’ll get a video or picture or something so you can all see what I’m talking about. Well – then it was time to drop A.J. at the airport – which was a funny goodbye since he would be back on Thursday night (a little mix-up when buying the tickets led to visits 2 weekends ina row instead of more spaced out – but it still worked out well so no worries). After that I got some laundry and visiting done over at mom and dad’s and then I headed out for an evening of socializing and reminiscing with Arielle – my best friend from high school. I hadn’t seen her for a long time – we usually end up talking on the phone once or twice a year and seeing each other maybe once a year – but I love how we can just pick right up like no time has passed. We went down to Alki and ate at the Bamboo Grill followed by coffee at Starbucks. I love how we can talk about everything from school/work to relationships to current events and life in general and there’s no awkward pauses. no worries of "should I be saying this?" or wondering how she’s taking the things I’m saying.
Tuesday – After the long holiday weekend, I went back to work at the NICU today. I met up with Heather and we bussed back to West Seattle together. After some dinner down at Puerto Vallerta (in the West Seattle junction) with Heather and Justin, the three of us went to The Garage (on Broadway by Seattle U) for some bowling and pool. I slept over in West Seattle and got to experience the bus ride to the U by myself the next morning…
Wednesday – Yes, so the bus ride… funny how it costs half as much to get to the UW from West Seattle ($1.50 compared to $3.00) but it takes twice as long as when I leave from Lynnwood. I was on call today and we had a lot of 31-week babies threatening to deliver, but in the end only 2 (a set of twins) actually showed up. I get to follow them now for as long as they are here… well, catually for as long as I’m here, because they’ll likely be here longer than the two weeks I have left here. Surprisingly enough, after those two little guys showed up around midnight, I got to go to bed and didn’t get woken all night. 🙂 Oh, and A.J. e-mail my Step 2 CS score sheet to me today, and surprise – I passed! And the score sheet was really lame without any explanations or anything – but the main gist is that I passed so I suppose nothing else really matters anymore.
Thursday – So after being on call, I got out of the hospital early and bussed home to Lynnwood where I showered and ate lunch and watched a little sci-fi before falling asleep. I slept for three or four hours and then still had time to watch some more sci-fi and an episode of House (great GREAT show – very funny!!) and work on the Camp Casey newspaper before leaving to go pick up A.J. at the airport. We had a late dinner (and A.J. spent an hour on the phonewith T-Mobile debating a charge on the monthly bill) and then went to bed.
Friday – Last day at work this week! It was a short day, I was done by noon or so and then had lunch with Heather. A.J. came to pick us up from the U and we dropped Heather off at a bus stop downtown so she could get home to West Seattle. Then A.J. and I went down to Pike Place Market and had the chowder sampler for lunch. It’s from a little chowder shop in Post Alley – but I forget the name. It’s really yummy – I especially like the seafood bisque! We also got some fresh peaches and a maple doughnut! We walked around downtown a little bit, and then headed up to Queen Anne. We sat in Starbucks and reminisced about our years at SPU – and both agreed that we would take much more advangtage of the area (Queen Anne) if we were at SPU now. Funny how hindsight works, huh? But I think we took good advantage of other areas during those years – I just miss being in Seattle and being able to hang out in places like that. As we sat in Starbucks, I had the great idea of visiting the SPU campus to go see if our University Scholars Honors Projects were really in the library like we were told they would be. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find there, but I was really excited to see that I could search the database by my name and my project would show up. It was catalogued and numbered and everything. It was very cool. 🙂 I felt very special. After that ego boost and reminder of how I used to understand very technical science-y things, we wandered around the rest of campus. We explored the new science building, and then the old Slick (Miller Science Learning Center = SLC = Slick) which is now called Otto Miller hall – which I don’t appreciate at all. I like the old name better, it had more character. Anyway – that building is all remodeled too, and we ran into a couple of A.J.’s old professors who showed us around and chatted.
Wow, this is a long day – I’ll start a new paragraph. 🙂 So after the SPU fun, A.J. and I headed back up to Lynnwood for some racquetball with Brasten and Chris. It was a great night and we all played well – I had so much fun. I am going to miss playing racquetball when I go back to St. Louis. A.J. plays on Wednesdays there with his law school friend(s), but I will only sometimes be available for that. After the exercise, we all went to the Claim Jumper for appetizers and dessert – and we celebrated Rainbow Bear’s 6th birthday. You should go to his website and check out the picutres.
Saturday – After a little sleeping in, A.J. and I got up and headed out for the Puyallup Fair. Fun, fun, fun times. 🙂 I went down the Giant Slide 5 times in a row and it was awesome! We had yummy fair food (sliced caramel apple, spud’s fish and chips, strawberry milkshake, scone) and browsed through all the vendor displays. A.J. took lots of pictures of the info-mercial people, and I think he’s going to put together a little photo album of them. I love going to the Puyallup Fair and just wandering around. Did you know that people enter their collections of things to be showcased? I could enter my vast array of koalas for people to ooh and ahh over. I might just do that one day. People had Lion King and Dolphin and Spice Girls collections… so why not koalas?
Well – this entry has gotten very long. Hopefully it was a not too uninteresting read for all of you, and hopefully it has captured my memories well enough for it to mean something to me when I read it again later on.
I got a 242 – which is really good! It’s even better than my Step 1 score was (231). This is wonderful and awesome and I am so excited!! Of course, it was sent to St. Louis, so A.J. opened it and read it to me… it was so suspenseful as he read through all the mish-mash, blah blah, blah at the top of the score sheet… I almost couldn’t stand it! Anyway, to put it in a little bit of perspective, the mean and standard deviation for recent first time test takers in the US/Canada is 218 +/- 23. So I’m above average.
