I have this great life philosophy – chocolate makes everything better. So far this is working for me. Katie Whitehead introduced me to rice krispie treats with chocolate and now they are one of my favorites. Jamie came over for dinner and we decided to make some for dessert. We ate a lot of them, but there are a few left to take with me to work tomorrow.
My electrical engineering background (not to mention my time as a patent examiner) came back to haunt me in class tonight. We had a pop quiz on acronyms. I had looked over the list of acronyms earlier in the day so they should have been fresh in my mind. However, as soon as I reached the letters “CRT” I had to think twice. My first instinct was Cathode Ray Tube. (I am guessing some fellow engineers and geeks will have the same reaction.)
So now I had to switch gears and go from engineering to medical. I did finally come up with the correct answer – Capillary Refill Time. Now for a little lesson: CRT is the time it takes for color to return to the nail after you press down on the nail tip and should be less than two seconds. (You can also test CRT on the palm of the hand or the bottom of the foot.) This is a generally accepted method of assessing peripheral perfusion and, indirectly, cardiac output. However, the time can be greater than two seconds for women, the elderly, and someone in a cold environment.
In other news, I made an A on my first test and a 100 on the pop quiz. Yeah! I never did that well when I was at Tech (we won’t compare Georgia Tech to a technical school right now).
Look at the cute picture Wade found for me. I just love frogs!
I had class for 8 hours last Saturday, had to study all this past weekend, and then I had a test tonight. For a class taught at a technical college, there is an insane amount of work. I had to memorize all the systems of the body, ambulance control, medical and legal issues, etc. I was hoping not to have to spend the entire weekend studying, but it didn’t quite work out that way. I spent most of the weekend at the kitchen table (see the pretty tulips Wade gave me?)….
But now the test is finished and I hopefully did alright. There were 200 questions and a lot of bubbling on a scan tron. Then we had to wait around for everyone to finish the test so that we could listen to some lecture – blah!
As a final study break on Sunday night (before it went far into the night) Wade and I had a bonfire! Our backyard has a fire pit that we pile sticks in (the joys of living right outside the perimeter). The pile was finally good sized and there was a fall chill in the air. We went outside with our graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. Madison kept trying to find a few pieces we dropped.
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 Bonfire |
Wade and I decided to make sugar cookies again – yeah! I sent Wade on a hunt for Halloween cookie cutters (he came home with a pumpkin and a ghost) while I studied. Wade’s mom called with her recipe and I took a break to make the dough (which is super yummy too).
Here’s the recipe:
1 cup of butter creamed with 2 cups of sugar. Then add 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of salt, 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Add 4 cups of flour, one at a time, till the dough is thoroughly mixed. Then add 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Let the dough chill in the fridge and take out a small portion at a time to make the cookies. Roll out the dough, with flour, till it is 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick and then bake the cookies at 400 degrees for 8-1o minutes.
Wade and I had fun with the cookies and ended up with a little flour fight. You can see that Madison got caught in the middle.
I was preoccupied with studying so Wade decided to perfect Madison’s playing dead. Here she is learning to stay in the “dead” position till we tell her to get up (or rather till we give her the treat). If you look closely in the background, you’ll see Wade’s Halloween costume. It’s in the early stages, but he’s been working on both mine and his. Mine is definitely low tech and Wade’s is once again “working.” Now the trick will be getting it to D.C in working order.
I spent about 5-6 hours on the phone last night. I tend to be pretty bad about catching up with people using the phone. Thank goodness for email! I normally wait so long to talk to people that I feel like I should really have time when I do call – as in at least an hour. But finding an hour or more to dedicated to a phone call never seems to happen.
As luck would have it, I got stuck in some nasty traffic yesterday. I was bored and had plenty of time, so I called everyone I knew. I called Melissa, Rob, Mindy, Matt, Kate, Wade, and Mom. Only Mom answered and she was sick in bed. Before I got home I had connected with Mindy – this was the end of a 2 month game of phone tag. We talked for a couple hours and as we were hanging up, Kate called. I then talked to Kate while she made her hour drive home from class. Then I talked to Wade – he probably got short changed. I was pretty sick of the phone by then.
I hope we end up living somewhere that has call based calling rates. When I lived in DC, I could pay $10 for a home phone line that gave me unlimited incoming calls and 30 outgoing calls. In Atlanta, the minimum phone bill is around $40. Because of that, Wade and I both just use cell phones. But talking on a cell phone for hours gets uncomfortable.
Ah well, now I feel mostly caught up with my long distance friends!
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