Internship

Just a really short and quick note to let you all know what I've been up to recently. Hanging out with some unsavory individuals, let me tell ya. Yep, my internship started at the Med. Examiners office. This is my third day, and I can honestly say that I've learned far more in those three days than I did in the first year of graduate school. Handled my very first autopsy with flying colors. Apparently I have an here-to-for unknown iron stomach. We're at that time of the year that the dead no longer stay very "fresh" and that's all I'll say about that.

Everyone here is amazing and so very helpful. They are truly good people who do a really difficult job, with no props whatsoever. They don't expect (or often get) a thaink you from the public. They are hounded by the media for answers to questions they either don't have, or can't give out. They go out in the heat, snow, rain, whatever to do their jobs and I have yet to hear any true complaining from any of them. They crawl into some of the most abysmal situations and are proficient at a job most people can't imagine doing. They are also regarded with a kind of "freak show" curiosity by the mainstream population, i.e. "How can they DO that?" Remarkable bunch of people. Next time you see your local investigator, give them a hug (and hope they aren't packing iron).

Right now it's a little boring as we haven't had anything for a while. Hoping it picks up a bit next week. I want to see and learn as much as I can. So plan on working as much as I can as well, although I need to get some laundry done. I was only able to find 4 pairs of khakis on my "khaki-quest" last week, so need to wash them up so I have something to wear. Also ran out of big ol' Sudafed pills and soda at home. NEED SODA. CAN'T SURVIVE WITHOUT IT. Soooo...better hit the store. Anyway, I'll chat at ya'll later
Love,
B

Garden Pics!

I'm posting some pics of my garden in all it's glory. I'll try to explain what they are and not screw up too bad. If you can't tell, I'm totally obsessed with my garden, hehe. Here goes.


Can't resist showing off the cherry tomatoes we'll soon be enjoying! I have a feeling we're going to get a rush of them, then dry out for a bit but damn, I'll take what I can get!


That's all one species of cherry tomato! I think I may have overplanted JUST A BIT! I honestly thought most of them wouldn't survive the transplant, but they surprised me. I lost only two plants.


Sweet peppers in the foreground and the MONSTROUS zucchini plants in the back. Can you believe how HUGE these are?


One more pic of the zucchini. I just can't get over these guys.


Just showing you how large these zucchini leaves are. That's my wittle ol' hand there. Monsters.


Awww...my bean plants. They are bush variety so won't vine out, but they look like they're thinking of starting up some flowers. This variety only will harvest 2-3 times, so you need to keep a continous supply of seedlings going. Which I haven't done yet. This weekend will be for that.


My two lonely ol' cucumber plants. They're flowering so that's a good sign.


My containers of stuff. Left is basil and right is romaine lettuce. I'm expecting the lettuce to wilt out soon as it's way too hot for it. But the basil is doing well.


Right is parsley, left is cilantro. I'm pretty happy about the herbs, but I'll tell ya, nobody got seeds like Gurney's! I will be ordering herbs from there next year so I have a shot at getting something decent.


Let me know what ya'll think!
Love,
B

Viva La Vegas!

Just to keep everyone updated on the Vegas fun, I sent out an email to anyone who I know is going with hotel info, prices for your rooms and some thoughts on what we might be doing. Check out this site to see more attractions: http://lasvegas.com/attractions/?vc1=1&vc2=txtl_txt_atr_6

Please check your email if you've requested a room and I also sent the confirmation stuff for each one of you. You will have to bring this to check-in and I will have to be there. If anyone else is thinking of coming, let me know and I can reserve more rooms or just let you know where. Check-in time isn't until 3:00 pm so remember that when making travel plans! Here's the hotel info: http://www.barbarycoastcasino.com. Check out those plasma TVs in every room! Woohoo! Hehe. As I'm looking through the attractions, I've seen about 20 or so things I'd like to do, so I will have to narrow that crap down. Well, better get back to work! Can't wait until this vacation!

Love,
B

Insomnia...ain't it grand?

So, just can't really sleep so thought I'd update on several things. Trying to type "quietly" and it's making me make a bunch of mistakes so forgive if it gets jumbled. I have a friend staying here doing her internship and she's seeing all sorts of interesting stuff. Can't tell ya'll about it, but it's so far been a good experience for her and I'm now more excited than ever for my own internship.

Garden is flourishing. My zucchini plants were very crowded so I took a chance and uprooted two of them to move them to another part of the garden, figuring if they die, oh well. I still have two others to produce. Tomatoes (cherry ones) are producing flowers! Exciting stuff there. Herbs and lettuce are growing (well, most of the herbs anyway) but our record-breaking heat may start getting rough on everything so I'll have to be extra diligent in watering them.

Gave in and went to the doctor on Fri., hoping he could ease some of my allergies which have been awful. I'm already on two medications and they are helping, but still have sinus headaches, drainage (always fun to talk about) and feeling generally miserable. So, he checked me out and agreed that I'm still suffering and put me on TWO MORE medications. I pushed to see an allergist and get some testing done to see what I'm allergic to, but he wants me to wait until the season is over. I would have to go off everything for a while before the skin test (which sounds like tons of fun) and he thinks I'll be in trouble if I do that right now. Said this is the worst season for allergies he's ever seen. The clinic was completely out of samples so I had to get a prescription for one of the extras he wants me on. Thankfully, the combo of the four seems to be working since his next effort would be to put my on steroids. No fun. After the season, he'll send me to the allergist and we'll do a full skin test. In case you want to know about what it is, they basically stick you with a ton of different things, scratching the surface of your skin to get the offending bit into the dermis. Then you wait for 12-15 min. and if your skin swells up and gets really itchy, that's what you're allergic to. They then give you creams and cold packs to ease that reaction and you get to go back onto your medication. You have to wait in the office in case you have a severe reaction and go into anaphylactic shock, which is life-threatening. Fortunately, I don't think I have any really serious allergies, just a lot of little ones, so don't worry about me. But seriously, how barbaric! Don't they have anything better than that? There is a blood test but it's much less sensitive and pretty much worthless according to my general, but we'll see what the allergist says. Doctor also forbids us to open windows at all in the house and keep the air on for the rest of the season, limit my time outdoors, if I AM outside for any length of time, I am to immediately shower and wash my hair, wash my bed linens once a week, get my air ducts clean, etc., etc. Fun summer, hunh? I go back in two weeks for an update on if the combo is working and to get blood drawn for all sorts of tests. As in cholesterol, triglycerides, blah, blah, blah. I wanted a baseline when I'm in reasonably good health so we have something to compare to if anything happens. He also wants me to get a mammogram done when I hit 35 for a baseline on that too. Then I can wait until 40 to start getting them regularly. Maybe someone, somewhere suggested this, but I don't remember, so I'm urging all my friends to do it too. Sounds like a remarkably good idea to me. So, let's all remember to jump on the ol' Happy 35th B-day to Me...Let's stick our boobs in a vise!!" bandwagon. Then we'll go drinking.

Had a good cry today. Watched Baghdad ER on HBO on Demand. Everyone needs to see this HBO documentary. It chronicles an ER over in Iraq and shows the horrible injuries our soldiers face everyday they're over there. Made me cry it was so sad, but very, very good. Extremely graphic, but we should all know what they're going through, especially now.

Thurs. night we went to the Improv for open mic night and got to see the local talent show their stuff. Most were really funny, but this poor girl bombed the worst of them all. Here's a sampling of her "special" brand of humor: "So, the reason I'm a stripper? Because prostitution is illegal." Then there was a pause as though we were supposed to laugh. No one booed her, thank god, which I was grateful for, it takes guts to even try, so gotta respect that. But Paul and one of his work buddies, were rolling with laughter, not WITH her, AT her, if ya know whadda mean?

Last night, Paul and I were reminded that we're entirely too old to enjoy the nightlife on the Plaza. We met the friend that's staying with us and her fiancee who came down for the weekend at one of the pubs down there. Yikes. I felt ancient. So much silliness it was silly dammit. Paul and I were rolling our eyes, although when he hit the bar to get us a round, he found $80 laying on the floor. As no one was actively searching for it, he grabbed it and it paid for our night. I tell you this because karma is an interesting notion to me and I believe he is getting back $300 he lost to the wind in Nebraska one day before we were married. He was very philosophical about it at the time and figured "oh well, I guess someone else needed it more than I did." I was freaking out, not being as philosophical as he. Over the last year or so, he's been finding random money laying on the ground, a fiver here, a dollar there. I think he'll continue to do so until his $300 is returned to him. Nutty hunh? But, it keeps him occupied, continually glancing to the ground to see if there's a little gift for him.

I'm going to attempt to lay in bed and hope I don't just sit there like a log with too-open eyes and finally find some rest for the night. Busy day tomorrow of finishing laundry and trying to get Toby to see the vet. More on that when I know more. Sweet dreams all.

Love,
B

Garden Days

Here's some photos of my "ghetto garden." As you can probably see, there's a bunch of leaves in there. I did that temporarily until I could get some mulch to help with water retention. Also, can't hurt to get those rotting leaves in there. Yummy! This weekend, the plan is to side-dress the tomatos since they need all kinds of food that has probably already been leached out of the soil. I planned on getting a soil test done, but ran out of time, so it's a shoot and miss kind of game right now. The tomatoes are really happy in the ground and are doing some nice growing. The zucchini has just exploded as well. We've got three plants, which should be more than enough for the two of us, if they produce that is. The cucumbers are down to about 3 plants as well, which is honestly a miracle. You should've seen what I transplanted, sad, sad plants. The onions haven't resurrected yet, but here's to still hoping! The beans are growing again (new crop of seeds) and the canteloupe which died off once, has been re-seeded when I did the rest of the transplanting. Still nothing there yet. But it's been fairly cool, so I expected they wouldn't germinate.

Planted a bunch of herb seeds the other day, tarragon, sweet basil, italian parsley, curled parsley, cilantro and oregano. Unfortunately, it might be a little late for these little guys. But I might get lucky and the good thing is that a couple are perennials and I will grab some of those plants to keep in the house over the winter. All the herbs will stay in containers, so bought some more of those to get up to the right number to give these the room they need. We'll see how it goes. If all goes well, I'll be drying a lot of herbs and will send some to whoever wants some. I'll keep you posted!


Weeping Willow


Shed

Also, wanted to share a couple of more pics. The first is of our little ol' weeping willow that is the happiest tree. He's just growing and growing. We're getting some beautiful weeping out of him! The second is just to show the shed with its new clothes. Paul re-sided it and put a new roof on a while ago, just haven't taken a recent pic of it. He did a remarkable job and if we didn't have that shed, one whole bedroom would be filled with storage tubs. That's about it for now! I start the internship soon, but a friend from class starts her's here on Sunday. She has to go in at 7:30 am!! Yikes. No, but...YIKES. That's mighty early for me, so looks like I'll have to start retraining myself on how to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I've been cracking on those papers, so I've gotten a couple of the six outlines done so far. So many to go, it's a little depressing. But it's all good, I can do it (just keeping saying that over and over again and it will come true).

Love,
B

Better late than never...

Here's the promised pic of the new car. In this pic, it's already been tinted (pretty dark too!) It's much, much cooler with that black leather interior. It's so damn adorable, I can't STAND it!! lol ;)

Love,
B

Wedding Site!

Here's the gazebo where the wedding will actually take place. They were setting up for a ton of weddings that night, so try to imagine it at night, lighted with white X-Mas lights!



Hey! How the heck did I get in that one? Hehe. Beautiful place! They set up everything for you and although it was pretty steamy (103 degrees), I bet it will be gorgeous in Nov.

Love,
B

P.S. will have to wait on the car pic, looks like I deleted it :(