Class, Cousins, Christmas, Cats, Cable

Ok so in today's post we're going to cover:

• Presentation
• No TV
• Burridge Lake Aran Blanket
• Visiting cousins
• Boigie in a Shoebox

Can you tell I'm in presentation mode? I just finished presenting on somatization disorders and I'm glad I'm done. Two more medium sized assignments to do before 8/17 and then I'm officially done with everything that's graded in this class. Next semester, I have Advanced Health Assessment which I'm dreading for some reason. I think because it's one step closer to having to do clinicals again, and I hated them in undergad. What if that happens again? I don't think I'm truly in danger of that happening, what I hated the first time around was the really down and dirty stuff about nursing, bathing people, feeding people, getting them to the commode or on the bedpan, you're phone ringing every two seconds for something that should have been diverted to the medical assistants, who instead, were sleeping in the housekeeping closet. LAst time, I wished I had more time to understand the diagnosis and the treatment plan for the patient but I was too bogged down in the aforementioned things to even have a slight grasp on the big picture. This time I won't be doing inpatient, I'll be in clinics and the whole focus is on the diagnosis and treatment plan. But alas, I am still approaching it with trepidation.

In other yuppy related news, Hubbleson and I decided to 86 the cable! I say yuppy because it seems that people tend to play up not having cable as if it is a way to measure their superiority over other people. This, however, is not the reason we did it. We kind of fell into it...RCN must have mentioned to us on some bill that they were switching to digital earlier than the rest of the nation but somehow we missed that so one morning M went to watch TV and there was only a cryptic message only visible on one channel that said 'RCN is now digital'. He called and found out that the converter-free cable ship has sailed and the Y family was not on it. After 15 minutes of ferocious messages back and forth we decided to do a pilot study of surviving without cable. We rationalized that we have Netflix and there are many episodes free online should we really start jonesing for some TV. So far so good, it only kind of sucks when I'm the only one here and on nights like this, where Hubbleson has once again tweaked something with our settings so that no matter how many buttons I push I can't get the fricken DVD player to work. These desperate times call for things like, knitting while listening to a podcast. It's like I've come full circle back to the early 19th century or something. I figure only good things can come of not having TV, I already feel more apt to go out and do things, we can watch more movies together, and we will be more productive with other household related things.

In my knitting life, I have started the Burridge Lake Aran Blanket in earnest. I can't find a good pic of the finished product without having you have to open up adobe, so you'll just have to hold your horses on that one. The blanket is for the in laws for our homemade Christmas. Which I sincerely hope that they stick to, they tend to go whole hog for Christmas and sometimes I feel we just buy things just to meet the quota and match how much you think the other person is probably spending. Luckily, the consensus this year is to only exchange homemade things. This blanket is very complicated and very large so I'm probably behind already.

I see that next on the list is "Visiting Cousin". Midway through my phone crisis of last week (it up and died suddenly on me), several phone messages filtered in from my cousin from DC by way of WI. She was in town for the weekend and wanted to see if I was free to get together for lunch. We were able to meet up on Sunday, M and I took her to Fanuiel Hall to get a snapshot of Boston since she could only stay for lunch. It was great to see her, my tech savvy husband suggested I bring wedding pics on my iPod cuz we still haven't gotten around to ordering them (it's 500 pictures, people!). It was really nice to catch up with her, that's probaby the most we've gotten to talk since we both still lived in WI.

Lastly, Boigie, who tips the scales at 18.5 pounds as of Sunday, was trying to cram his wiggly waggly self into a shoe box. He attempted to get in, it wasn't working. He got out, rearranged the tissue paper, tried to fit in again. Still a no go, he then repositioned himself horizontally in the box, still didn't work. Reposition tissue, repeat! It was quite a site to see, I feel I've been there myself with a pair of jeans I was sure fit last time. Maybe if I lay down while trying to button these....