30 March 2012

Babysitting Boys Means Angry Birds

We babysat for some friends the other night since it was their anniversary weekend. Scott adores their three boys and sometimes invites himself over just to play with them. The boys were a sinch to look after, and when they had gone to bed we found their Angry Birds "board game" and started experimenting. This slingshot is NOT as easy to perfect and maneuver as it's on screen cousin. Scott did manage to shoot down this level three castle for the full 300 points.





You can't hear the dialog very well, since we were trying to be stealthy quiet with the kiddos were asleep. So this is basically how it went: Scott told me to record because this round of shots was "going to be money" despite the fact that he had only shot down a couple pigs previously. Then he asked me what order of birds he could shoot. The level card you pick up shows you how to build the castle and what birds you slingshot to try and knock down all the pigs.

First thing Scott said when I stopped the video - "I sure hope Kaden and Sterling [his nefews] get to see that soon!"

28 March 2012

Fortune Cookie

I haven't been feeling great the past few weeks. Living in the model apartment was not necessarily as ideal as it sounds. The master mattress is definitely low grade IKEA kind of ware, and I partially blame it for my sleepless nights of late. But you'll be happy to hear that we are now back in our OWN apartment! Ceilings and floors are now better than new, and best of all I'm back in my comfy pillow top bed.

While I was feeling kind of crummy, Scott and I chose to eat out at Sum Yan, one of the two Chinese food options in Lebanon. We can never remember the exact name though, so we usually call it Sum Yum. It doesn't sound like a healthy option for an upset stomach and poor appetite, but I couldn't get the idea of a big bowl of egg drop soup out of my mind.

Before we left, Scott found this fortune in his cookie:


The first thing that Scott said when he read his fortune was, "We can't pay for this food." I think Sum Yum needs to find a new cookie distributer.

21 March 2012

YW Talent Show Mad Lib

Prepare to be impressed! As a personal progress activity for our Young Women, we prepared for and held a talent night during mutual. There were nine of us in the room that Tuesday night of the talent show, including three adult leaders. It was a pretty imtimate group. Each of us had to bring a talent. I was asked if I could help MC the event, as I had previously thought I could come up with some good filler material if any of the ladies needing some prep time for their talent (like setting up their Hello Kitty collection or tuning their guitars).

I decided a mad lib may be the best way to fill up some time, as it involves active audience participation, creativity, and general silliness. Thinking for sure I could find a good LDS-type, clean mad lib on Sugardoodle.net or some other Mormon resource, I scoured the internet. No luck! But never fear, I came up with my own and it's kind of a big deal!

I'm happy to share, just in case you ever need to act as emcee for a Mormon talent show! You can access a pdf copy of the Mad Lib, here.

Or you can just read what the girls in the Lebanon Pioneer ward came up with, [with some commentary from the peanut gallery]:

'Twas the night of the talent show and all the Young Women were sprinting. Thought they had all prepared a talent, the happy ladies were still depressed. [ironic, right?]

Maddie decided to bring her guitar to play us a rap song. She practiced for 8 hours to perfect her fermada. [That was one long fermada!] Kyreen wanted to bring her collection of suede ligers, but her aunt ran over them all. So instead she decided she would "love" as her talent. [Ah!] At 7:00 Am, Sister Charlie finally decided she would share with the group why she wanted to be a blacksmith by doing a juggling demonstration. Danielle was very flexible and wanted to show the group how she could put her elbow by her knee camp. [Impressive, to say the least.] After studying about her ancestors from Turkey, McKenzie choreographed a tan tango routine and brough a mickey mouse button as a prop. Tasha wanted to display her dramatic flair by reading 27 paragraphs from Harry Potter and the Prisioner of Askaban. She used a Portuguese accent for all the male characters. Why?! Marli is quite the poet. She wrote and sang a song about fuzzy buildings. And of course, Sister Tanner is a fantastic cook! She baked 42 dozen gourmet cupcakes using Willa Wonka's gobstoppers, flour, and egg yolks. They were obsessive!

The Young Women were ready, all drearily chattering, when you of the Relief Society room there came such a clattering. We peeked out the door and who should appear, but the nursery leader with her hairy hymn books. "Dang! We're in a tight spot!" She said, "and don't you worry, I will wipe snot and be back in a hurry."

So the Young Women pushed
[random], and said, "Let's Go!" Then they had the most terribly magenta grundibar Young Women's talent show!


This is where you can feel free to leave me a compliment in comment form about my sweet mad libbing skillz!

19 March 2012

It's Never Lupus



Sometimes there are great benefits to being at OSU, like when the real life doctor who provides inspiration for House, M.D. comes to campus for a presentation! Too bad we couldn't attend. I know... climax killer!

Since Scott and I had other obligations last Tuesday (Scott watching BYU beat Iona and I emceeing a YW talent show), we tragically missed Dr. Lisa Sanders presentation on campus in Corvallis. The title of her talk is the same as her book, Every Patient Tells a Story. You can listen to a possibly similar interview given on NPR a few years ago, where she describes how she works with FOX to make Hugh Laurie look incredibly intelligent and come up with ideas like intestinal gas lighting on fire in the operating room.

If I ever find the OSU recording, I'll be sure to make that available as well! Enjoy!

16 March 2012

True Orange Fans


One thing I can say with certainty is that OSU has possibly the most loyal fans I have ever met. They are deep into Beaver love even though their sports teams may not be performing ideally. The other day our entire office celebrated the end of the food drive with a pizza party (ironic?). Though, there was clearly another reason for a pizza lunch in the board room. The OSU men's basketball team was playing in the Pac 12 Tournament that lunch hour against the number one seed, U of W. With the support of our entire office, OSU won in the last six seconds of the game! I'd like to say that by beating the #1 seed they were able to dominate the rest of the tournament and go on to the national bracket, but sadly that is not the case. I'm okay though, because I still have good memories of pizza and basketball delaying administrative meetings.

Sure love my job!

14 March 2012

Med School Update


A couple weeks ago we went up to Portland for a Northwest region Osteopathics Association awards ceremony. Western University was a main sponsor of the event and thus had invited students and their significant others to attend. While we were up in Portland, we visited some of Scott's relatives. Of course, Scott offered to practice his osteopathic manual manipulation techniques on them. He's been practicing these techniques on me for weeks, and I think he wanted a new scenario to analyze! Plus, I can tell he feels great satisfaction when he is able to reduce pain in a joint or muscle with these hands-on methods.

This visit reminded me that it's been awhile since my last update on our medical school journey. Here is the interview I had with Scott recently:

What are all the classes that you've had so far this year, Scott?
OMM (manual manipulation), ECM (clinical studies), Gross Anatomy, Head and Neck, MCBM (Molecular and Cellular Basis of Microbiology), IDIT (Drugs and Bugs), Blood and Lymph, and Neuro

Which class has been the hardest for you?
Ugh, all of them. Don't write "all of them"! Are you writing everything I'm saying?

Okay, I'll clarify... Which class was the most difficult for you to study?
MCBM was difficult because it was covering all the sciences. Like ALL of the sciences. You feel me? IDIT was a tough course because you had to memorize all these drugs and diseases, but then it was fun because you start seeing the correlation and talking about things you would see as a doctor.

How much do you study?
I go to class until 3:00 or 5:00 Pm, and then I come home and study until midnight. There's just not enough time to study all the material.

Do you enjoy school?
Very much. Thank you for asking.

What's one big take away from this past (almost) year?
I consider it more important to be balanced than to get high honors in every class - to be able to spend time with you (Katie) and spend time playing basketball and being physically active. I used to say "getting decent sleep" too, but that's not really possible any more.

Anything else you'd like to say?
Nah. That's my life right now.

I did some serious luring here, folks, and didn't make a big catch. Being so involved in the med school atmosphere it is difficult to come up with probing questions of interest to family and friends or perspective students. On my end (I should post the wives perspective someday) I've had a fairly easy time keeping busy. The biggest key is making sure that even though both of us are busy our worlds don't become so seperate that we don't understand each other any more. We know that we are in this together, and we make an effort to spend time with each other every day and have something that we can share like a TV show, scripture reading, or a date.

Any burning questions about medical school out there?

12 March 2012

Living in the Model


One night a couple weeks ago I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep and I noticed a hole in my broken down apartment. Not really unusual, since we've been living in the apartment for the month of February with torn up floors and missing walls and ceilings. This was the first time though, that a hole in the ceiling, from what I could see, had a little view of the outside. A sudden realization hit me that construction to put our apartment back together was going to take much morework and logistics than deconstruction.

I visited our complex management to see what our options would be, as I could forsee that living in our apartment was not going to be possible during the construction phase. They offered for us to stay in their model apartment while we waiting out the two week construction to put our apartment back to normal. Scott and I talked it over and agreed that this would be best.

So last week we moved half of our belongings into the model apartment, prepping for a two week stay. We then moved the other half of our belongings into our master bedroom to make room for construction workers to do their job. Hence why I was not very active in the blog world last week.

Living in the model apartment has reminded me of how much I love my apartment when it is whole. It's so peaceful and stress free to walk into a staged home. Though I had to laugh at the advertisements on the nightstand and the kitchen wall. I know their purpose is for perspective renters when the apartment is shown, but part of me wonders if management felt comfortable leaving these advertisements for us to maintain a positive image of their complex through this ordeal. Either way, we are crossing our fingers that we'll be back in our like-new apartment in 10 days.