awwww

Tara said I should post some more puppy pictures on here so everyone can see them. We're down to seven puppies and three more are leaving later today.

This is Fred Rogers charging the camera.

Another Christmas picture

This is right before Geronimo left with his new family. They were going to keep him a secret until Christmas morning. Yeah right.

This is White Fawn. She wasn't where I thought she was going to be when I pressed the button. Oh well . . .

before

Here are a couple of "before" pictures of my room. These are actually more "in progress" pictures. You should be able to see a slight difference when I post the "more or less finished" pictures in the next couple of days.

This is a new wall we put in to get rid of the awful wood paneling that was there before. Believe it or not, the previous color blind owners had a pink border with that nice mustard-colored wall!

Some of the fun work to get all of the drywall joints properly taped and covered with joint compound.

Here's the other end of the room with some more of that paneling. This end had the lovely surprise of containing an ant colony that we evicted. We put drywall in this end too.

I'm awake . . . what more do you want?

I actually got out of bed before noon today! What an accomplishment . . . If I wasn't reading such a good book, I'd probably get more sleep. I'm reading Memoirs of a Geisha, on Tara's recommendation. Plus, I want to see the movie after I'm done reading.

I have baseboard trim in my room now. It's in, the holes are filled, and I sanded and painted them yesterday. I would be totally done with my trim painting if my window's stain didn't keep coming through the latex paint. Now I have to use KILZ to stop it. Ew. So I'm pretty sure that by the time I leave, it will somewhat resemble a normal bedroom. I'll post pictures when it's done and clean.

Well, I'm off to rearrange stuff in the attic. If I'm not back in 2 days, send a search party.

Christmas puppies

This worked until one puppy figured out that it could jump off the swing.

7 weeks old

my new sleeping bag!

are we there yet?

I'm not sure how such a "short" week can seem so long. I'm sure I will feel like everything has gone too fast when I get to my Flowering Plants & Ferns test tomorrow morning and realize I should have started studying earlier. It's comprehensive, so I should already know most of it, right (assuming I studied sufficiently for the first 4 tests) ? We actually have used a lot of the information relating to plant anatomy while classifying and identifying lab plants. At least that has been an ongoing reinforcement of terms...

That's about all the time I have to devote to writing on here.

2 more days!

Things left to do:
teach Pre-Algebra tomorrow morning
Flowering Plants & Ferns Final Wednesday morning
go shopping at the VM for mom
pack
clean
turn in all the half-done assignments I have saved on my computer
go to nursing dedication & graduation
LEAVE!

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Hark the herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled"
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
"Christ is born in Bethlehem"
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

6 days left

I'm pretty sure this is a good representation of how I have slept this semester. (Each peak is a break, by the way.)

I passed my First Responder written and practical finals yesterday. Thanks to that class, I now know how to treat all of these injuries. (Click on the picture to see it full-size).

Christmas

Lindsey drove all the way down to see us this past weekend so we could have Christmas with the girls. It's something we've done every year since we've been at Southern. We've done everything ranging from a huge pile of presents opened in the middle of January to painting ornaments at Clay & Stitches. This year, we each got a collective group gift. We rented Love Actually and Christmas With the Kranks and drank Mexican hot chocolate. It was great!

We got Tara lots of things to help keep her cool (moisture-holding bandana thing), warm (long underwear), and bug-free (another bandana thing) while she's trekking around New Zealand next year working with ADRA's Adventure Plus Team.

We got Jaclyn two sets of the Corelle dishes she wanted. She knew we were getting them for her, but since I got them in NC where the sales tax is lower than here, I decided to get two. She said it's scary to think those are the dishes she will probably have for the next 20 years!

They got me some really nice scrapbooking shape cutters from Creative Memories. Mary Jane's sister in Montana sells the stuff, so they got it from her. Hopefully I will go get some of these pictures printed and make a scrapbook page of Christmas. They got me some stickers too so I can finally finish the pages about my broken nose and about our ornithology trip to Dauphin Island from last school year. Those can be my goals for Christmas break.

Lindsey's newfound love of the outdoors inspired us to get her a gift certificate to her new favorite store, REI. She was very excited. Now she can get a nice sleeping pad for her very nice sleeping bag.

Opryland

The Opryland Hotel. We went Friday to the NSTA convention in Nashville. The hotel was SOOO cool! I just took pictures of the building and the three "greenhouses."

If you want a better view of the pictures (I'm trying to save space) just click on them to see a big view.

The concierge desk's cool stained glass ceiling.

The Delta river. They actually do boat rides through this.

The Christmas tree

The Delta Island - little shops and restaurants set in the biggest greenhouse

The Cascades area - each balcony is a room opening into the greenhouse.

Christmas comes to SAU in November

It's kind of ridiculous to celebrate Christmas in November, I think. Anyway, it's what we did last night. It was nice until the Tri-Community fire department came 15 minutes early and messed up the Christmas tree lighting, which I did not see. Here are some pictures:

Hackman Hall (School of Religion)

I Cantori singing carols in front of Hackman

My boss, Asti (red/pink scarf) and her husband Rick (I don't know the blonde lady on the left)

experiment

Um . . . I'm trying something. Just ignore this post.

puppies x10

Maggie & the 10 Little Indians


They're only quiet when they're sleeping.

New teeth mean we have to feed them real food. They're not sure if they should eat or wear their new food.

First food means first bath

He swears he's innocent. I wonder if the other two puppies sharing his dish got any food?

a rather blustery day

I guess one of the good things about a macro setting is that if you get bored you can take partial pictures of your face.
We decided that it would be good to go walking on the biology trail on Sabbath afternoon. It's not a very interesting hike, but it's something to do. I've always thought it was interesting how devoid of nature our biology trail is. We saw a few other people out there, but mostly we just walked and listened to the only sound when you're walking in the fall: the crunching of dead leaves. I convinced Jaclyn & Stephanie to take some amusing pictures around a tree. We really weren't outside that long.

It was getting cold and we couldn't decide what to do. So we went back to the dorm and crashed on the 3rd West lobby couches. It was the first time I had been back in that part of the dorm since before the fire. I don't think I would want to live up there. It's good that the school put mostly freshmen up there.

Break begins in approximately 8 hours! I have so much to do before then. Luckily, I did a lot of cleaning in the apartment this afternoon so the deans won't evict us when they do their walk-through inspection this week. If they tried that, we'd just blame the RA we live with. A lot of it is her mess. Amazing since she comes out of her room so seldom.

This is a sad little dog that was found outside of Hackman Hall shivering. :(

not all that it was supposed to be

So I wasted 12 hours yesterday sitting around hoping that something interesting would happen and that I would get to see what it's really like to ride an ambulance and be an EMT. When you only get one call in 12 hours, that's not really possible.

I got to see what staging is because we did it twice--it's moving to a more central location in the district to cover if two or more other units are responding or transporting. So when this happened in the morning, we had to drive about 15-20 minutes north to sit beside a Hardee's until we were released to go back to the station.

Our only call happened just before noon. A 47-year-old man was rear-ended as he turned left onto a road. He hit a tree (not too hard) and had lumbar pain. So we put a C-collar on him and I held C-spine while we put him on a backboard. Then we loaded him up into the back of the ambulance for transport to Erlanger. We gave him oxygen, monitored his vitals (BP, pulse, respirations and pulse-ox), and started an IV so they could give him pain meds once he reached the ER. I felt bad because he winced with each and every bump we hit on the way to the hospital. The whole run took a little over an hour.

For the rest of the afternoon, I watched TV and tried to read. It wasn't the greatest experience. Mostly, I was bored. If only I could go again... I did get the EMS half-off deal at Taco Bell. That was good.

owwwwww

I hurt my back again! Participating in backboarding during First Responder class today was a bad idea. Somehow I hurt my back last Friday--get this: by laying on the couch--and it was getting better until today. It hurts to sit, stand, and lay down. (I think I'm in trouble.)

The following are some of my attempts at pain relief since last Friday: hot baths, Darvocet (worked, but only had 3 pills), Icy Hot, massage (thanks Jaclyn), heating pad, ice, Vicodin (didn't work, but made me dizzy), and of course Tylenol and Ibuprofen, oh, and ThermaCare back pad things. Anyone have any more ideas?

Since I have to go ride on an ambulance all day Friday, I'm getting worried that my back won't feel better in time. It also doesn't help that I can't ride my bike very well with a hurt back. This makes getting to class either take a long time or frustrating trying to find a parking place.

On a great note, I got about 10 hours of sleep last night! I kind of ignored my alarm clock this morning and didn't get up until 10 minutes before my 9 am class. I managed to walk in 2 minutes late after taking a shower and getting dressed. Sometimes I amaze myself.

Here's a nice picture of Jaclyn and me under the trees at Spalding when they still had leaves. We left Sabbath school early last week to go take pictures of them and Katie Lamb and her husband were out doing the same thing. Katie took a picture of us and sent it to us today. I didn't even know she knew who I was. The quality's not great, but it's an ok picture.

Ok, I'm going to sleep so I can get up and go to work. The professors have collectively decided to torture me by making me do all of their projects for next semester since I'm not working in the office during student teaching. Grr...

craters!

Well, I guess I have had a lot of pictures to post lately. I have some pictures from the lab I taught at the middle school on Friday and today. We learned about craters and how they are formed by dropping 5 types of balls (softball, tennis ball, golf ball, etc.) in 4 types of "soil" (wet sand, dry sand, sugar, and potting soil). They took measurements and learned that the mass of the object hitting and the type of surface hit determine the structure of the crater. It went really well and we all had fun.

blogthings

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a road trip killed the boredom

On the road trying to escape Collegedale for a day hours (I'm the one on the left taking the picture while Jaclyn, my roommate, tries to drive). We stretched the trip into a 5-hour drive through some of the beautiful scenery in the Smokies.

We decided to drive along the Ocoee River

Then followed the Nantahala once we were in NC

Not good if you have to pee...

I think we stopped about 100 times on the way to Asheville

Lamiaceae

Our first stop on the Parkway. Jaclyn said the trip was worth the view at this first overlook. The Parkway was beautiful, even though most trees had lost their leaves. We ate lunch at 1 mile above sea level.

The Cooks' dogs Rex (left) and Cooper (right)

Today we headed back the fast way, through Knoxville. Our main stop was at Mellow Mushroom for calzones that neither of us could finish. Now we have to face the never ending stream of work, clinicals, school work... So much for weekends. If only they could stop Mondays from coming...

I'm gonna go crazy

I have more things to do before December than is physically possible. It will be interesting to see how everything comes together. I don't even want to make a "To Do" list of everything because it would be too depressing.

On the topic of depressing, I'm in statistics again, where some people think that if they yell their questions at the teacher all at once, they will somehow gain greater understanding of probabilities using the normal curve. Sorry for the run-on sentence, but it had to come out.

I am HUNGRY! I didn't get a real lunch and I only had some of the casserole my roommate made before biking back over here. I miss having someone cook for me. It's just me being lazy...


I got to play with a pygmy rattlesnake today in First Responder class. Mike (my teacher) used it in one of our scenarios. Afterward, we sat in a circle and he let it out of the pillowcase. It only struck once. It was QUICK. Any movement made it jerk its head around to watch. Pretty cool, although illegal. They get to be 15-32" long and live as far north as North Carolina. It's little rattle sounded like a cell phone vibrating. Some guys in my class decided it would be funny if Mike came back and the snake was gone, so they dumped it into one of his wader boots and left the empty pillowcase in his office. They got caught though, and then couldn't remember which boot they had left the snake in. Uh...?