Happenings In Short

As usual, I have zero time to post but in short, here are the details of my life lately:

• Laptop almost died, M saved it. Hard drive #3 and still kicking
• Cellphone almost died, M saved it. He's not sure how
• Open houses last weekend,cute neighborhoods but horrible commute.
• Class today, no clinical Thursday. 3 classes left after today. Note to self: savor current and summer schedule, because Fall is going to suck the big one.
• Got new yarn from Webs from aniversary sale for 2 new sweaters for me
• S and A are having another boy
• Anniversary coming up this weekend, M has something planned but don't know what.
• New yarn came: One is camel colored, one is a burgundy/aubergine.
• Farm pick up last Sunday. Pick up switching to Saturdays for summer.
• Cookie taste test: Nestle if you like chocolate, Pillsbury if you don't.
• New running shoes this weekend. They call it persimmon, I call it bright orange.

February Meat Pick Up

This month's bounty includes:

A few pounds of ground beef
Chicken legs
Leg of Lamb
3 Garlic and Cheese Sausages
Maple Cured Ham Steak
2 Portherhouse Steaks

Grass Fed Beef Burger

So we finally tried some meat from our farm share.

Here are the differences we noticed:

Much more dense, less air pockets than regular ground beef
Had a hint of slight gaminess that I taste with lamb (didn't notice it a few bites in)

Next up:
Maple Cured Ham Steak

Holiday Fun and Meat Farm Pick Up

This weekend was full of holiday activities. We baked, who am I kidding, I baked cookies with A while S and M drank beer and half heartedly chased E out of the kitchen, not before he could get into a giant canister of flour or drop the molasses jar on the ground as we stood around and watched it's slow creep across the kitchen floor. I made sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal cherry cookies. I made half and froze the other half so that my family can have fresh cookies when they arrive. I still intend to make Special K bars, and no M, those are not ketamine bars. I'm also making Vanilla Snow Angels and Ginger Crinkle cookies. When? God know...I guess this coming weekend.

I'm also midway through planning the various menus for Christmas meals. My father in law was not able to come down at all, but my mother in law will be here for a few days when my family is here but then she's going home on Christmas Eve. This means there have to be 2 meals. I'm going to do appetizers for one of them and then we'll have a meal on Christmas. We're writing down some ideas for apps and side dishes and I still need to come up with a dessert for the main meal.

Anyhoo, as you can see we also got our Christmas tree and decorated that while watching Elf and drinking delicious Gingerbread Egg Nog. Here are some selected pictures for your viewing pleasure:





























In farm share news, we picked up our first month's supply. It was really cool, they pull into a parking lot at a community farm with their white van. You come and look for a cooler with your name on it, you return your cooler from last month. You have the option to purchase fresh eggs on a first come first serve basis. We got home and this was some of our booty in the cooler (see pics). In addition, we got lamp chops, pork chops, sweet italian sausage, a steak, a ham steak, 2 lbs of ground beef, and a chicken. I'm impressed so far....we'll see how it tastes. She did tell us that cooking times were much less because the meat was much leaner and muscle takes less to cook than fat, a somewhat disturbing fact, but we're glad to know it!

Do Not Do An NP Program If You Are Prone To Stress!

So I met with my advisor this week (right before my random systems exam) and I'm totally stressed out about the remaineder of my Master's program. The rest of it promises to be grueling in and of itself but then I have to factor in work, assuming it's possible for me to stay at my current job. At the end of the program, we have to have 600 clinical hours...Spring 09 semester is 150 and is only 3 credits, there is a class and a seminar attached to each clinical which means leaving early another day for the actual class. In addition, I'm supposed to sign up for a Health Policy course which is offered Monday nights 7p-945. I'm going to be going nuts during this semester, trying to do all of this and continue working 40 hours. It only gets worse from there....I have two remaining clinicals after I make it out of this one. Each of those requires 225 hours per semester plus class and seminar. I think by that point I'm done with any additional classes so it would be just that. It's clearly going to be an issue to take 2 full days off of work to get the clinical hours in...I have no idea what I'm going to do yet and of course I'm stressing about it already. Aside from this, we basically have to find our own clinicals, which is unlike undergrad where we could express an interest in being placed on a certain type of floor and the advisors would work their connections. Now the expectation is that we line up our own clinicals which is reasonable for the Adult Primary Care clinicals. The last clinical, however, has to be OB and Pedi which probably requires two different placements unless I can manage to find a true family practice which are relatively scarce. I have no connections in this area of the health care world. My advisors advice? Start working on it now. No offer to help me. Great. Oh, one exciting thing...we are required to have a PDA so I've started doing some research on them. I've primarily looked at the Palm model that has Wifi and the Dell one that's comparable. I'm too lazy to look up the model numbers!

So on to lighter subjects...I'm having palpitations and stomach gurgles over the last one and it's not even here yet! M and I bought boat loads of candy for the trick or treaters this year and I only had one very cute lady bug ring my bell. 1! So now, we are left with a dangerous amount of candy that is currently on the back stair well so that I don't undo all of my work at the gym this morning. M is in VT this weekend in the recording studio, so I've had a weekend to myself. I had no problems occupying myself with a little shopping, some knitting while procrastinating doing things for my class (even though I have a test this week), and catching up on my Hulu.com play list. Today, I'm getting bored though and I think they plan to record till at least 5 so chances are I'm living the single life for another day. I decided to make something fun for dinner...tacos!

Which reminds me, M and I will be picking up our first bundle of meat from our new farm share on December 1! Grass fed animals, here we come! We are going to be paying $80/month for 10lbs of meat. The meat will include chicken, beef, pork and lamb (we had the option to go without the lamb but M likes it, I'm not as big of a fan). Next weekend, we plan to go look at an additional freezer that we can stick in the basement for the extra meat.

Off to study....It's the day of reckoning. I've managed to put this off all weekend!