Destination, Determination, Deliberation and…….. Disappointment

     I haven’t had any blog posts for an embarrassingly long time.  Mostly it’s because my life has fallen comfortably into the “boring” category.  I get up early, go to work, spend my day using my degree (hahahahahaha…..), go home, maybe go climbing (I’m up to V3 bouldering routes, yay progress!), maybe hang out with Ben or the East Bay Supper Club, go to sleep, and do it all over again.  I went home for a few glorious, snow-filled days in December; Ben finally got his kidney sorted out, so now we can actually DO things again; and I’ve just been kind of hangin’ in there and slowly constructing my wedding dress.  I had a brief, shining moment where I thought I’d be able to go to medical school, but after doing the Time Zone Shuffle and the Airport Hop across the ENTIRE COUNTRY, my plane was late, I had a lot of trouble getting my rental car, and by the time I finally got to my hotel, it was 11pm, and I still had to iron my clothes!  So I was really tired, froze in ALL of my interviews, and was waitlisted.  So yay.  Go me.  That was the only school that offered me an interview.  The others either said no or haven’t gotten back to me.  I don’t have a whole lot of hope that I’ll get off the waitlist and into an actual spot in medical school.  Ben has heard quite a few “no”s as well, so it’s time to re-evaluate. 

     Plans A-D all involved some combination of one or both of us attending school in a variety of geographic locales.  As the “no”s pile up and our respective lists of prospective schools get shorter, Plans A-D look increasingly unlikely.  So now we need to formulate Plans E-H, to become the new Plans A-D.  Sometimes I wish I were in the book “The Giver,” so that I could just be assigned a job and not have to waste my time wondering how I plan to accomplish my life’s goals. I’m currently hiring a life planner right now.  I swear, I will do whatever you tell me to. 

      The only thing that is absolutely fixed right now is that Ben and I are getting married in Kansas in July.  So that’s a nice thing to have set in stone.  Unfortunately, what happens after that, is totally and completely unknown.  But, as Wilkie Twycross says in Harry Potter, when trying to Apparate, always remember the 3 D’s – Destination, Determination, Deliberation.  And eventually, you’ll get there.  Or get splinched. 

This was a super bitter post.  Here’s a photo of an Australian Shepherd.  LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS!!!!!!!

The Luckiest Kidney Stone

    Well, Ben's poor little Festiva finally bit the dust. So Ben spent like a week and a half manically looking up stuff online, and as of last night, we own a red 2-door 2003 Ford Focus hatchback! It's a pretty spiffy car. You should help us name it! I was going to name it after a Pokemon character, because as Ben said last night “I haven't been this excited to buy something since Pokemon Red came out!” But all of the cars in my family have been named after old people, like Walter and Edgar. Trials. We went up to Richmond last night to get it, and since it was an automatic, I got to drive it back to the house! It's been almost 9 months since I've driven anything, and it was weird. But the car drive really smoothly, handled easily, and didn't have that annoying kchuk-kchuk-k-LUNK associated with manual transmissions. So that was exciting.

    We were planning to take off early this morning to drive to Corvallis, OR, to spend Thanksgiving with Ben's aunt and uncle, so we were pretty excited to have our serviceable new car to take us! But then Ben called me at like 2:30 in the morning like “Eurghhhhh........ pain.......... bring the car and take me to the ER.” So it's a good thing that we found the car last night and brought it back to my house, because the poor guy was in no fit state to drive. I took him to the Alta Bates Summit ER near his house, and after a brief triage in a thankfully empty waiting room, another brief wait in the ER itself, 4mg of morphine and a CT scan, the doctor decided that he was passing a kidney stone the size of a beach ball. I've heard that kidney stones are incredibly painful, and now Ben can tell you that they are. Poor guy.

    So he's in a room now, getting pumped full of fluids. We're hoping they can get a stent put in this afternoon to help kind of get things moving along. I drove back home around 7:30 to eat some breakfast, take a shower, and put on some “real” clothes instead of the sweats and flannels I sleep in. Hopefully the urologist and the surgery team are  able to take time out of his Thanksgiving day to help us out. Poor guy!

    But really, this has been about the luckiest time to get a kidney stone. We had a car available, we have 2 days off from work plus a weekend, it's a holiday, so the meters aren't running, it happened before we left instead of during the 8-hour drive (not sure what we had done if Ben had suddenly doubled over in pain while driving on the Interstate), and he was able to be seen quickly. The downside is that we were planning a 4-day trip to Corvallis to see Portland and the Oregon coast, and it looks like we won't be able to manage that now, which is really a shame. And that we spent Thanksgiving in the hospital, instead of in the presence of family, friends and/or food. We spent it with each other though, so I guess it could be worse.  

Happy Thanksgiving from Room 4223!

What WOULD I say?

You guys, seriously, this is my new favorite thing.  It's HILARIOUS.  But I didn't want to inundate your Facebook walls with nonsensical crap, so here's a list of my favorite algorithm-generated statuses:

Seriously, guys, I'm sure you have to restock the local population!!!

I was a chillinducing version of Ave Maria this awful, windblown, wasteland similar to kansas, there are two hours of the penis, wouldn’t that be my friends in 2A, Adventure with photography business, it would like an opera

This is the battle cry of the nicest people

"Can you guys please, just please, get along?  Please?"

WHAT is a Holdeman Mennonite?!

No, no, really, think that the first day of going to take your clothes off.

He was the one of the one paying attention to a good batch of crabs.

got up early, went to watch Kevin Leary!

an informal survey conducted this elf was hitting on Carl's dwarf Can Daniel Lassman eat spelt?

Someone just donated 3 big boxes of your favorite people.

It's an evolutionary mechanism designed to ensure the continuation of species! A camouflafghanistan! Yeah, that'll catch on...

I think I'm an irreconcilable perv, it doesn't NEED a personal journal.

Halfway through my boyfriend! Not very tricky, origami, napkins, socks, and dress pants.

May have a doctorate in Divinity of beavers!

Not even PATTY SHELLY has a doctorate in the divinity of beavers!

Who needs a Creeker to the nursing home again.

I think the 7C girls (Abbey Kirk, Taylor M-J, Sarah Unruh, Sarah Pohl, Sara Volweider, Melissa Volk, Eric Buller) would probably do this when they all get into Kidron Bethel.

There's a reason *I* go to Planned Parenthood so...

I mean, why do *YOU* go?

Oh gosh, I am not that clever.

our basement reeks of marijuana.

Shine so holy and bright Oh Fortuna in a sheep costume




has a hot date with Brian Skinner!

Ok, party with Jenae Janzen, Martin we will

And Yoda too, apparently...

I think I'll have the insatiable urge to a preposition.

BETHEL BETHEL BETHEL

Indeed.

The point is, we decided we are many.

We also decided that we have Multiple Personality Disorder.

Ironically, agnostics and atheists are no longer a reality

*Insert mustache stroke here*

Ghosts Don't Like Lamps

   Halloween isn't until next week, but some of our friends had a party anyway. Getting a jump on things, I guess. Ben and I went as Calvin and Hobbes, since that strip was both of our favorites to read when we were kids.

   I made my Hobbes costume by hand-painting an orange top and jogging pants that I bought at Thrift Town for super cheap. I didn't have a tail because I forgot that tigers have tails until Thursday night, when it was too late to do anything about it. Ben borrowed one of Jonathan's striped red-and-black shirts and we spiked his hair with liberal amounts of Alyssa's hairspray. As it turns out, Ben knows more about hairspray and hair styling than I do!

Angry Calvin face

   The rest of the VS house went as the genie from Aladdin, the Tin Man, Tinkerbell, and some character from Pokemon. 

We left the house planning to catch a couple of buses to get to the party, but when we spotted a nice Oriental rug by the side of the road, I decided that Sara (the genie) had to pose for it. As I snapped the photo, the bus we were planning to take roared up over the hill, headed for the bus stop two blocks away. If you would have been walking through the Lower Haight the other night, you would have seen six people running pell-mell down the sidewalks and catty-corner across intersections, one with ludicrously spiked hair, another in tiger-stripe pants. It would have made a better story if we had caught the bus, but we didn't. So we ended up walking a long time to get to the party.

The photo that cost us a bus ride.

   My favorite costume was either “American Gothic” or my friend Meg, who dressed up as a deviled egg. Most of our young adult friends from church were there as well as a couple of people we'd met at previous gatherings. 

Deviled egg!

Tinkerbell and Miss Euphegenia Doubtfire!

Clue!

It was a good time, but by 11:30, I was pathetically pooped (too much late-night Netflixing while painting, I guess). I fell asleep on the BART home, and still had to bike a mile and a half back to my house. I slept with my light on because I read some scary ghost stories while at work. That has nothing to do with the rest of the evening, I just thought it was really funny when I woke up and my lamp was still on.

The New Normal

Not a whole lot of interest has been going on lately.  Ben and I finished our engagement photo shoot with Alyssa (it was a two-part thing - partly because I love pictures, partly because of the locations involved, and partly because Alyssa was willing to take loads of photos of us).  We went to the Embarcadero and Civic Center for the first half the week before I left for Kansas.  We had planned to do the second half the Sunday after I returned, but wouldn’t you know it, the government shut down!  So now it’s personal - THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS RUINING MY WEDDING.  Whatever.  We rescheduled for this past weekend, and everything was fine.  We ended up going to Fort Point (which is right underneath that first, weird little arch on the Golden Gate Bridge).  It was FREEZING COLD.  The fog has come back with a vengeance again, and since we were right on the water, it was even colder than usual.  But the fort was very beautiful - old brick, with lots of repeating arches and columns and such.  And right under the Golden Gate Bridge, too!  So we had a lot of fun (well, I did, anyway - Ben doesn’t understand the concept of “suffering for a photo”).  ALSO WE SAW DOLPHINS!!!! Apparently that's a fairly rare thing and they haven't been seen in quite awhile.

My primary application for medical school FINALLY went through.  BEST DAY EVER.  This whole time, I’ve been like “OH MY GOD WHAT IF I CAN’T GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL EVER BECAUSE OF THIS STUPID STUDY ABROAD THING THAT I DID ONCE, I’LL NEVER BE A DOCTOR, JUST BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO HAVE AN INTERESTING LIFE, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DOOOOOOOOOO?!?!?!!?!”  But the application has been verified now, and I’ve gotten two emails from schools that I’ve applied to, being like “Yeah, we got your application, so we’ll look at it to see if you’re interesting enough/diverse enough/smart enough/doctor-y enough to be in our program, and then we might send you a secondary application. But don’t hold your breath.”

My work has been interesting lately.  One of my coworkers has been sick for a week, and her mother (whom she cares for) is in fragile health, so she’s been in an out for months now.  My other coworker was just reassigned to another department, so lately it’s been just me and my supervisor running the place.  And she has to leave early a lot because she’s taking a night class, so in the evenings, it’s just me a lot of the time.  I guess it’s good because it shows my bosses that I am a competent individual who can handle things on her own, but it’s also nerve-wracking when this clinic and that clinic are calling me last-minute to schedule interpreters, the interpreting agency is calling me to tell me that they can’t cover assignments, my interpreters are calling in sick, and I still have to recheck all of the schedules for 200+ patients.  It can get hectic.

There was also a BART strike.  So that was fun.  They walked out on Friday, which was nice, I guess, because impact was significantly less than it could have been, but they didn’t get back on the job until early Tuesday morning.  So I spent several days riding home with one officemate or another in stop-and-go traffic.  It didn’t actually take much more than about 30 minute longer to get home, and I guess it was actually cheaper for me to carpool than take BART, but stop-and-go traffic makes me carsick, finding a carpool buddy is a PAIN, and Ben had to come pick me up from Wherever, East Bay once I’d managed to fight my way across the Bay Bridge.  Anyway, the unions realized they were being a huge pain and that if they didn’t voluntarily go off strike, legislation was going to be passed to prevent them from going on strike ever again, and BART management realized that everyone was super pissed and they just needed to fix it and eat the costs.  

This weekend is Halloween.  I was up late last night making a Hobbes costume out of thrift-store clothes and fabric paint.  Ben is going as Calvin.  We’ve been planning this costume for months, but it just now occurred to me that the Halloween party we’re attending is this Friday. So… EEP!  I have to put a few more stripes on and then I should be done.  

And that’s about it, I guess.  Like I said.  Not a lot going on.  My life has become significantly more boring since I got a “real” job and a do real adult things, like staying up late Netflixing “Breaking Bad” while handpainting a tiger costume.  

Crushing Butterflies

   Our climbing trip to Arkansas was also just the BEST. We left Bethel on Saturday evening, stayed the night at Eric's house in Independence, then drove the rest of the way Sunday morning. That way, we didn't have to waste an entire day driving, but also didn't have to drive all night and set up in the dark and cold (been there, done that, it's miserable). Eric's older brother Ryan came with us, as well as one of their McPherson friends, Mikael, whom I had not met before the trip. We had a good time on the way down listening to Broadway soundtracks in Eric's truck and admiring the fantastically beautiful Arkansas scenery. Right before we hit Horseshoe Canyon Ranch, we stopped off at Low Gap, which is either the name of a restaurant or the name of a town, I'm not sure. If it was a town, it consisted of the restaurant, as far as I could tell. Their buffet line was DELICIOUS. They had catfish and frog's legs, which I have never tried before. They are a little tougher and chewier than chicken, but otherwise quite good. And their pumpkin cheesecake was amazing. I had two slices. If you're ever in the Jasper, Arkansas area, you have got to stop there. It will be the best decision you make all day.

   After arriving at the Ranch (which is really like a high-falootin' dude ranch for clueless city folk, with some of Arkansas's best climbing routes thrown in on the side), we paid our dues for the next four days, rented shoes, and immediately hit the walls of the canyon for some warm-up routes. There were a lot of campers still hanging around, since it was Sunday afternoon, so we thought it would be best to let them all trickle on home while we climbed and then picked over their camping spots for the best location. Once it started getting darker and chillier, we decided it was time to pack up and head back to the campsites. As soon as we got there, we noticed a group with THE BEST spot in the whole camp – down on the side of the hill, sheltered by a bunch of trees, with a great fire pit. So we snagged it as soon as they left, and started setting up the tent. Eric discovered that of all the things he had so responsibly packed, the one thing he'd forgotten was the pump for the queen-sized air mattress. Some talk was made of using the truck exhaust to blow it up, but thankfully, better sense prevailed and no one died of carbon monoxide poisoning. As Eric used his tuba-playing skills to manually inflate the air bed (sounding like a dead-ringer for Darth Vadar), Mikael built a fire and we started on supper.

   The next day, we got up with the sun, had some packeted oatmeal, and headed out for our first big day of climbing. We went to the North Forty routes, a long chain of moderates that kept us occupied all day. I don't know how many we did exactly, but it must have been eight or ten. I learned how to lead climb and belay, leading a 5.8 route and top roping a 5.9+ with a difficult crux right at the top. The higher the number after the five, the more difficult the route. 5.6 is the easiest at the Ranch, and is like walking up a ladder. 5.13 is the hardest and is best left to people like Will Nagengast. The hardest part about the routes at the Ranch, at least initially, is that I was used to climbing bouldering routes at the gym, which are like 10-15 feet, not the 50-60 feet outside. More like a marathon than a sprint!

   On our second full day, we went to the Cliffs of Insanity and the Far East to climb a 5.9+ route called Orange Crush. Well, our book called it a 5.9+, but other people's books had upgraded it to a 5.10a, so we called it a 10a because it made us sound cooler. It was 80 feet, which is about twice as long as all of the other routes we'd climbed in the last two days. It was exhausting! Thankfully, the crux was in the middle, before we'd run out of all of our energy! The view from the top was absolutely amazing! We could see the entire canyon and at least a 270 degree panorama from the corner of the route. Very, very beautiful. 

After spending an hour or two wearing ourselves out on Orange Crush, we took a very long break and had some lunch, then got back to climbing some easier routes. I led one with a layback finish, which I'd never done before, and is kind of weird and awkward. My arms were really tired by the time I got to the last couple of bolts and I wanted to quit and just go back down, but Eric, who was belaying, wouldn't let me! So in the end, I had to finish it if I wanted to get back to the ground. It was annoying, but I'm glad he made me do it. We ended the day at Magoo Rock with a couple of easy, fun routes that involved a lot of swinging back and forth between two rock faces and a lot of bicep comparisons. 

 Supper was canned chili cooked in tin cans over the fire. Happily, we managed to scavenge a grate from another campside, so we didn't have to reach directly into the fire to place the cans, which was a nice change.

   Our third day was only a half day, since we had to drive back to Kansas in the afternoon. By the time we finished packing up the campsite, we only had time for a few routes before we had to leave, so while Eric and Ryan finished folding up the tent, Mikael and I went to Titanic boulder to practice leading. 

 A couple of groups were there already, and we had a good time talking to them. The climbers that we encountered were always SUPER friendly and willing to lend out advice or direction. It was really cool to get to know them a little bit. Some of them came from as far away as Minnesota! They said it was a 13 hour drive, which made us very happy that we only had eight. 

 We ended our time at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch with a 5.10b that only Eric could do. It had about a 6' roof at the very end that involved planting one's feet on the wall and stretching out horizontally to reach up and over the ledge to secure the final bolt. By far the most difficult route any of us had attempted all week.

   On the way home, we blatantly defied the government shutdown in order to drive through a gorgeous state park. The ranger, who was tootling around in a golf cart just waved at us. I don't think he cared that we were there. The weather was incredibly nice, so we drove through the winding roads with the windows down, blasting “The Lion King” and “Children of Eden” and receiving some strange looks at intersections. After switching vehicles at Eric's and wolfing down some leftover chili, Ryan and Mikael and I drove the rest of the way to Newton, arriving back around 8:45.

   My last two days in Newton were spent sleeping in, stopping by Bethel for chance encounters with friends, eating at Mojo's, having tea and taking walks with Jacob and Martin, having supper with Gary and Carla, having supper with Zach, watching Glee with Ryan and Brian and Eric, getting cheese fries at Newell's with Evan, Brian, and Eric, and listening to Eric complain about how poor my computer's performance was as he tried to fix it.

   This was truly the best vacation. Thank you all for reading, and thank you all for making my trip to Kansas truly memorable. I love you all.      

Kansas Vacation!!

   What a great vacation. I mean, wow, it was the best thing ever! SUPER HUGE thanks to everyone who fed me and let me sleep on their couches for the last 10 days.

   So I think I'm going to break this up into a couple of installments, because otherwise it will be like 10 pages long and ain't nobody got time for that. First installment – Fall Fest. Second – climbing in Arkansas.

   I  left San Francisco on Thursday. For some mechanical reason, the jetway at SFO crapped out and it took them a super long time to fix it. So I missed my flight, despite running full-tilt down the entirety of the Denver airport. Good thing I gate-checked my suitcase, I guess. After standing in the customer service line for an hour with everyone else from my flight, I got a later flight to Kansas City. The whole time I was hardcore panicking because I was supposed to shadow a physician the next day, and if I couldn't shadow her, I wouldn't get her letter of recommendation, and then my entire med school career would be over before it had begun. Dark times. On the bright side, because I left Denver so late, the plane flew through a lightning storm! I SAW A LIGHTNING STORM FROM 33,000 FEET! 

It was totally worth missing my flight. It was absolutely gorgeous. Grace picked me up, drove me back to Lawrence, gave me a tour of the pharmacy school, and then I crashed onto the sofa and tried to sleep. Didn't work. I might have gotten four hours of sleep that night, between sleeping on a sofa, the blinking router light that I eventually covered with a sock, and the blinds that flapped in the wind.

   The next day, I got up SUUUUUUUPER early (especially considering I was still on California time, which is 2 hours earlier than Kansas) and drove BACK to Kansas City to do my shadowing. IT WAS SUPER AWESOME!!!!!! The doctor I shadowed is actually my high school biology teacher's daughter, so it was really great to have that hometown connection. And let me tell you – she does a great job of making a point to sit down and talk to her patients without spending the whole appointment staring at her computer screen and checking little boxes. It might take a little longer, but I really think it's the best way to do healthcare. She is a family practice physician, so we saw a really wide variety of cases. I walked in that morning knowing that I really wanted to be a family practice physician, and I walked out that afternoon being like “OH MY GOD I HAVE TO BE A FAMILY PRACTICE PHYSICIAN AND I SERIOUSLY DON'T SEE MYSELF DOING ANYTHING ELSE AND IF I DON'T GET TO DO THIS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, I MIGHT DIE.” So that was a very helpful experience.

   Grace and I drove from Lawrence to Bethel after a quick boba tea pit stop. We drove through some super heavy rain and a great sunset, which just reminded me how great sunsets are – what with the buildings and the hills, sunsets are hard to come by in the Bay Area. Upon arrival in Newton, I went over to Jackie and Ben's to meet the mod. We all managed to get together with ONE DAY'S notice, which is super impressive, considering that's something we had never been able to do when we actually all lived together. Half-price apps at the 'Bee are sort of our “thing” (and really, it's one of the only things to do in Newton after 9pm), so we headed out that way. It was really good to see all of them again, and to catch up on everything. It was a pretty late night by the time we eventually got out of there.

   The next morning was FALL FEST!!!!!!!!!!!! Melissa Volk said it best when she said “Fall Fest is kind of like Mennonite Christmas.” Everybody is all on campus again, everything is decorated and looks really nice, there is a ton of food and lots of hugging. Seriously, so much hugging. I just sort of walked in a circle around the Green about 6 times throughout the day, stopping and talking to everyone. It was the best feeling ever, and definitely one of the top five happiest days of the last year or so. 

New Year's cookies!

Lauren's first Fall Fest!

 At three, I met my family for the play “You Can't Take it With You.” It was VERY funny. I especially appreciated Jacob's steamboat noises – I guess he's gotten a LOT of compliments on that.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmphhhhhhh

   After a quick supper at Braum's, the family headed over to the football game. I could only stay for an hour or so because Eric was coming to pick me up to go climbing. The start of the game looked really good – from what I've heard, the team is really getting somewhere this year. Around 830, Eric showed up with his friend Mikael and we headed off on our climbing trip. More on that in the next post.