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.

Maggots

    Ok, first off, don't read this if you are squeamish. It contains numerous references to maggots, as indicated in the title. Consider yourself warned.

     This morning, I woke up, got ready for work, and walked into the kitchen to make my lunch. Spread across the floor was what looked like about a cup of rice. I was like “CAITLIN!!!!!” She's one of my roommates, and she's a lovely girl, but she isn't very neat sometimes. And then I stood there for a bit, annoyed at her and wondering if she'll clean it up today or next week. The I noticed that the rice was moving. Fast. It wasn't rice. It was maggots. Big ones. On my floor. MAGGOTS. I didn't scream, I didn't barf, I didn't panic. I let a few choice words fly. Several times. I was in major oh-my-god-there-are-maggots-on-my-floor-get-them-off-my-floor-why-are-there-maggots-on-my-floor-where-did-they-come-from-clean-it-up-I-have-to-go-to-work-maggots-maggots-maggots-on-my-kitchen-floor-maggots-on-my-dining-room-floor-oh-god-maggots-in-the-living-room-maggots-in-my-house-oh-god-why-me mode. I also only had about 15 minutes to clean it up, make my lunch, and go to work. It wasn't going to happen.

     Luckily, one of my other roommates, Kevin, woke up and slouched into the hallway, where I waited with a dustbin and a panicked litany of “Kevin, THERE ARE MAGGOTS ON THE FLOOR MAGGOTS FREAKING MAGGOTS ON THE FLOOR WHY ARE THERE MAGGOTS ON THE FLOOR I HAVE TO GO TO WORK AND THERE ARE MAGGOTS WHERE DID THEY COME FROM MAGGOTS ON THE FLOOR!!!!!!” Poor guy. What a way to wake up. He mumbled something about putting clothes on and left while I tried to sweet the maggots into the dustbin.

     Here's the funny thing about maggots – they don't sweep. They are also very fast. Faster than you'd think. So I sort of rolled their gross little squishy bodies across the floor with a broom and piled them into sort of a central location in the middle of the kitchen floor. I turned my back for a second to get the small dustbin AND THEY ALL INCHED AWAY FROM MY NICE NEAT PILE. It was gross. Thanks to Francisca's Genetics class, however (and her delicious brownies), I had learned to eat a brownie with one hand and stare at a vial full of squirming maggots with the other. So I wasn't so much grossed out as I was panicked as to how I would get this cleaned up and prevent them from spreading to other parts of the house.

     About that time, Kevin came back with a mop and some bleach and started sloshing it around while I threw some food into a bag, apologized profusely for my inability to help out much, and went to work. That day, there was a deluge of emails in my inbox regarding maggots. I have never learned so much about maggots in such a short amount of time.  Nor have I ever written or read so many emails containing the words "maggots."  Kevin and my fourth roommate, Danny, had bleached the floors in three rooms, cleaned out the garbage pail (which was found to be the source [we empty it regularly, I PROMISE {just not this week, apparently}]), and looked up Wikipedia information on maggots. Evidently it took 3 hours.  Poor guys.  So now our garbage pails are all sitting outside, we are cleaning everything as soon as we use it and making sure the drain trap is always clean (occasionally an issue here) and hoping that we starve the disgusting things out. They also left a helpful sign on the way into the (maggot-free!) kitchen.  

No maggots here!  

    And that was my day. It was unnecessarily eventful.  

Gee, thanks, I made it myself!

    When people compliment you on clothes you're wearing that you actually made yourself, what do you say? “Gee, thanks, I like it too!” “Gee, thanks, I made it myself!” “Gee, thanks, it's my favorite!” The first one is like “well duh I like it, I'm wearing it!” The second one is like “Why yessss, I am a person who is obviously digging for compliments” and the third is probably the best way to take a compliment, I guess. Because when you say “Gee, thanks, I made it myself!” then you basically condemn the complimenting person to being like “OMG REALLY YOU ARE SO TALENTED THAT IS AMAZING WOW YOU ARE THE COOLEST PERSON EVER!!!” which is just kind of a weird position to be in. Like on the one hand, yeah, I have some mad sewing skills, and I am proud of them. On the other hand, I'm a Mennonite, and pride is pretty much as bad as one-bun zwiebach on the scale of zero to sin.

    That being said, why thank you, I did make this dress myself, and if I may say so, I'm damn proud of it. I may have actually followed the directions on this one. By which I mean I didn't make any super huge alterations (except for the bust, because again, I am not build like Marilyn Monroe). I did cut it out in a size twelve for some reason. That was stupid. So I had to take a lot in on the bodice. And then the armholes! Gah, the armholes. They wanted you to use bias tape to bind the armholes! BIAS TAPE. Barbarians. So I found another similar pattern, used the armhole facing, modified it slightly, and used that to bind the armholes. Then of course, that created way too much facing on the shoulder strap, which was kind of stupid, so I had to do some kind of creative cut-and-stitch to get it to lie flat.

     But the pattern is great and I love it (I'm currently making another dress out of it). It's a great, cute little A-line that goes pretty well with my Toms or a pair of tights and heels.

Educational Update

    My blood pressure just dropped a few more notches.   I am SOOOOO relaxed right now.  I might just slither out of my chair and onto the floor. 

    So my application to osteopathic school is one more step closer to actually being submitted to my schools of choice.  It’s a long story.  And a long blog post.  Sorry about that.  If you don’t want the back story, just skip to like, the last paragraph.  To apply to medical school, one has to fill out a primary application, which has all of your grades, all of the classes you’ve ever taken for college credit at any institution, a stress-inducing, vaguely-termed “personal statement,” and all of your demographic information.  Then, once you submit that application, it goes to the schools that you designate, they look it over, and pick people that they think will be a good fit.  Then they invite these people for interviews, and then pick out of that pool in order to find the class of 2017 for the University of Wherever.  It’s a grueling process and takes a very long time.

    So.  I started my application in June, right after I found out my MCAT scores.  I spent a long time thinking up and polishing my personal statement (with lots of help from Ben, who is a wonderful person for putting up with my incessant demands for his editing skills), so by the time I submitted it, it was the end of June.  It’s supposed to take like 4 weeks for the application to get spammed out to the individual schools, so after 3 weeks, I logged onto the application site every day to check the status.  After 4.5 weeks, I bumped it up to twice a day, in hopes that my vigilance would convince the nebulous pool of application service employees that I really really REALLY wanted this.  After 5 weeks, a member of that nebulous pool sent me an email being like, “hey, we noticed you took a class in Guatemala and listed it on your transcript for Bethel… but you need documentation from the Guatemala school.  And until we get that documentation, your application is just going to sit and wait.”  That was on the same day (and the same hour, I think) that one of the managers for General Medicine at UCSF called me and told me that, because I was a UCSF employee, I actually couldn’t shadow their doctors, which was my last hope of finding someone in the Bay Area to shadow and to write me a letter of recommendation.  It was a bad day.  I sat in the bathroom over my lunch hour and just cried.  It was very pathetic. 

    But then I got my act together and spammed out a desperate-sounding email to the school in Guatemala, being like “OMG YOU GUYS I NEEEEEEED YOU TO HELP ME!!!”  I was expecting all of my med school dreams to come crashing down around my ears because of this stupid transcript, because the staff at this school is kind of bad about returning emails.  Like, when Roxanne and Ruthi and I went in 2010, they took a month to get back to us.  But, miracle of miracles, they returned my email in ONE DAY.  I was totally blown away.  So I responded to the email in Spanish, foolishly, because then they responded in Spanish, of course.  So here I was, panicking about my transcripts, trying desperately to convey what needed to happen (which I’m sure they were already aware of), in a second language, at work (because of course my Internet was also out at my house.  Of course), and then trying to read their emails enough to respond to them.  It was a rough week, but eventually we got it figured out. 

    Meanwhile, I sent a Facebook message of the daughter of my high school biology teacher (who happens to be a D.O, and had offered to let me shadow) being like “OMG I NEEEEEED YOU TO HELP ME!!!!!!”   She lives in K.C, and I live in the Bay Area, so it was not really a plausible solution until I had run out of all other possible solutions.  She very graciously agreed to help me out, for which I am eternally grateful. 

    AND FINALLY, after the Guatemalan school agreed to send my transcripts, after my D.O. Facebook friend agreed to let me shadow, and after my Internet at my house had been turned back on, THE PINNACLE occurred.  2.5 weeks after being sent, after checking my application twice a day for two weeks, my transcripts arrived at the application service, and somebody in the nebulous cloud of application service employees entered it into my application.  Thank goodness I decided to check today!  I decided over lunch that I wouldn’t, because it would just be disappointing.  BUT IT WASN’T.  So I clicked the “submit” button.

   And now we wait.  And exhaaaaale.  It’s been a rough two months in terms of med school applications.  

Sustained Silent Reading

    Ladies.  Gentlemen.  I have finished all of the books in my house.  I finished reading the Harry Potter series about a month ago, so sadly, it’s not quite time to start re-reading it.  So I need some recommendations.  I’m not super into the extreme fantasy books with half-naked women swooning into the arms of a muscled youth waving a blazing sword at a looming dragon on the cover, nor am I into poetry at. all.  If it’s written in a weird format, (“Everything is Illuminated” or that weird book about the liver we read for C.I.C, with the George-Bush-in-the-TV-static), I’m not going to read it. I like books with a quick twist at the end that turns the whole book on its head.  If the book is about communicable diseases (i.e. “The Hot Zone”), so much the better.  But really, I’ll read almost anything.  For real.  When I was a kid, I read all of the home-restoration magazines in my house (over 100 issues) before I went to bed.  Twice.  Or maybe three times.  And all of the sewing magazines, at least twice.  And boxes of National Geographic magazines.  And when those all ran out, I used my mom’s library card to check out years of old Reader’s Digest magazines.  This was all in addition to having one book in my desk at school (for reading under my desk during the math lesson and spelling tests), one in the living room at home (for post-school, pre-supper reading), and another in my bookbag for the 45 minute bus ride. 

    So.  I need recommendations.  Please, nothing with vast amounts of symbolism.  I just don’t get it. 

Operation "Get Hot for Wedding"

    As part of Operation “Get Hot for Wedding” (hereafter referred to as Operation Hot), I joined a climbing gym.  I had already planned to join at some point, since I do enjoy climbing a lot, but now I have a legitimate excuse to spend money on a membership fee.  I wanted to be sure that I actually wanted to commit, so I tagged along with Greta from church when she went a couple of weeks ago.  That sealed the deal.  It was so awesome!!! 

    So this week, on Monday, instead of going to Supper Club, I went to the gym in downtown Oakland and got a membership from a long-haired climber-dude behind the counter.  He had the kind of biceps that bulge even when he’s just standing still.  Then on Tuesday, after grocery shopping, I biked down to the gym in Berkeley.  I checked at the front desk to see if I could do the “Intro to Climbing” class that started in 10 minutes, but I was by myself, and the girl at the counter said I should do it with a partner, so in the time between learning and practicing with someone, I don’t forget how to belay and end up killing my partner.  So I just bouldered instead.  Which is, in my opinion, really boring.  Basically it’s climbing without a rope, to a maximum height of about 10 feet.  Like I said, really boring.  And hell on the forearms. 

    So I just stood there and stared at the wall for awhile, then puttered around on some of the easier routes.  Evidently I was doing something BLATANTL Y wrong, because this dude came up and was like “Hey so….. you’re gonna want to do it this way……..”  and that was kind of embarrassing.  And then he insisted on sticking around while I heaved and huffed and puffed my way up one of the easiest routes on the wall.  I was like “um go away please.”  He was actually super nice and I’m sure he meant well.  I just don’t like it when people recognize that I’m obviously totally bad at something. 

    After my fingers got so cramped and tired that I couldn’t hang on to even the easiest holds, I decided to check out the weight room.  There were so many ambiguous-looking machines!  I haven’t been in a weight room since middle school, so I pretty much walked around like a creeper and watched all the other people so I’d know how to use the weights.  I did find a pull-up bar, and struggled my way through a grand total of …………….. 3 pull-ups.  I could do like 10 or 12 two summers ago!  Something to work on, I guess.  And then I found this other thing that you sit on and hook your feet under one part and grab onto another part with your hands and then pull your feet and your hands together.  Supposedly works your abs.  Well, I don’t know what I was doing wrong, I even set the weights to the lowest setting, but I heaved and yanked and couldn’t get the darn thing to move even a little bit! 

    And now, a day later, all of my muscles are like “WE HATES YOUUUUUU!!!!”  




   Edit: I was going to use Operation "Get Hott(-er) for Wedding" but I didn't want to sound vainglorious.  That's not true.  I've just always wanted to use "vainglorious" in a sentence. 

6 Blocks

    As most of you can see from my Facebook page, my parents visited me for the weekend.  They left super early Wednesday morning, taking the Amtrak from Hastings, NE and arrived in California around 4:30 on Thursday.  We had supper, I showed them their hotel, we sat around and talked for awhile, then turned in early.

    Friday was a lot busier.  We got up early, sat with the commuters on BART, and arrived in downtown San Francisco around 9am.  I took them to the piers at Embarcadero, then to Yerba Buena park (I told them it was the best park in SF and they said “………really…..?”).  Then we went to THE MOST FANTASTIC FABRIC STORE IN THE WORLD.  One of the Spanish interpreters at work told me about it.  FOUR FLOORS of fabric.  It was SO AWESOME.  I found some adorable fabric with matroyshka dolls on it (hello new dress!) and another chunk with pileated woodpeckers (hello new skirt!).  The fabric store was close to Chinatown, so that’s the next place we visited.  It was close to lunchtime, so we stopped at a restaurant off the beaten path, where our waitress knew next to no English.  The food was pretty good, but they got literally every part of our order wrong.  Oh well, I guess. 

    After lunch, we walked back down the hill and took a bus out to UCSF, where I work, then took a light-rail out to the ocean.  Mom and Dad had a pretty good time walking around in the water, and I had a great time keeping my feet dry and picking up about 50 sand dollars that were just laying around on the beach.  We also saw a dead sea lion.  Next on the schedule was Fisherman’s Wharf.  We wanted to take a bus, but for whatever reason, none came for 20 minutes, so we decided to just hoof it.  Good thing, too.  A bus never did show up.  Fisherman’s Wharf is kind of a giant tourist trap, so we just skimmed the surface, looked at things, and did manage to find some reasonably-priced clam chowder for supper, and a 3-way split of a Ghiardelli sundae, which was totally delicious. 

    On Saturday, Ben was available to drive us around, which he did with much good humor.  We got up early to go to Muir Woods (tip: if you get there before 9am, you get a good parking spot and you don’t have to pay the $7 admission fee!).  We took a 3 mile tour of the forest, admiring the redwoods, and trying to spot birds in the canopy, and then left just as hordes of people descended on the park.  Ben took us up the coast on Hwy 1, where we encountered a bike race.  Passing bikes on the wiggly Hwy 1 is a terrible idea, but driving behind bikes on Hwy 1 (or anywhere) is worse, so we risked life and limb and managed it. 

Mom wanted to see some shorebirds, so we tried to find some, but it was mostly a fail.  We saw a long-billed curlew, and she was pretty excited about that, but that was about it.  Stinson Beach was the next stop.  But it was cold and windy and kind of miserable.  The most interesting part of that stop was a big grey Suburban whose panic button kept going off.  Two ladies were desperately trying to get in, but each time they tried, the panic went off!  Turns out they had the wrong big grey Suburban!  Theirs was parked (exactly like the first) between a large white CRV-type car and a small black car.  It was easy to see how they’d be confused.  We laughed about that for a good long time.

    Then we drove back down the wiggly Hwy 1 to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Like every trip back from Muir Woods, I took a nap.  Idk what it is about that place, but I get sleepy just writing about it!  Mom and Dad decided to walk all the way across and back, just to say they did.  I said “well phooey with that!”  and sat with Ben in the shelter of one of the towers.  It was cold and windy and my feet were just about walked off. 

Sunday was church at FMCSF. Mom and Dad met all the Kansans there, of course, and Dad ended up having a 20 minute conversation about broken ankles with this guy from Moundridge.  Afterwards, we went to the dog park and tried to spot some Austalian Shepherds, but there weren’t many.  Dispirited, we climbed to Alamo Square to see the Victorian houses, walked through a farmer’s market, and then finally headed back to the East Bay.  We tried some more birding, with limited success, then walked around Lake Merritt a bit, saw where Ben worked, and crashed a mass at the Cathedral of Christ the Light.  We had more success at Fenton’s Creamery, however, where we ordered half burgers and GIANT AMAZING SUNDAES.  The one I split with Ben had chocolate in every ingredient.  Delicious.

    Ben had to work on Monday, so he couldn’t drive us around anymore.  So we walked.  And walked. And walked.  Through UC-Berkeley, down Telegraph Avenue (where we ate grilled cheese and tomato soup), to Berkeley Bowl (BEST PRODUCE EVERRRR).  After Berkeley Bowl, where I stocked up on “used” fruit, we had to make a stop by my house to sort it and freeze it.  Mom and I sorted through 4 clamshells of raspberries ($1.69 for the whole shebang!) and found maybe a pint’s worth of decent ones.  Not really worth the trouble.  The big gallon bag of strawberries was a significantly better investment.  So we cut those up and threw them in a few quart bags in the freezer.  Dad sacked out on my bed while Mom and I looked at wedding dress ideas on my Pinterest board and tried (and failed miserably) to find dress patterns.  Guess that means we’ll just wing it.  Surprise, surprise.

    Ben’s parents were unexpectedly delayed on their way back from China, so they ended up being in Berkeley at the same time as my parents, which, while unfortunate, was serendipitous in that we’d never had all of us together at the same time. So that was nice.  We met them for supper and milk tea in the Asian Ghetto near Telegraph.  It was a really good time. 

    So that’s about it.  My parents should have made it to Kansas by about now or so.  They took the train back (including navigating BART by themselves!). 

    I think this post is about long enough without adding photos to it.  You can look at my Facebook photos and kind of match things up, I guess. 

Engaged

Yep, that’s right.  Pretty straightforward, not too much to say on the matter.  

No, I’m kidding, of course you want to hear all the sordid details.  

So Ben has wanted to get engaged for like, EVER, but I’ve always been like “Eh, I don’t feel like it, it can wait.”  It was very frustrating for him, and annoying for me, because he talked about it a lot.  So I was like “Hey Ben, how about you just cede that responsibility over to me - then when I feel like I’m ready, I’ll ask you, and then you don’t have to put up with me saying no... over and over and over....”  So that’s what we did.  We had sort of been talking about getting married before we went to school next fall because logistics would be so much less complicated (and also because we love each other), but we just hadn’t made it official.  So it’s not like this was some spur-of-the-moment decision.  Ben continued to be his super considerate and kind self, and didn’t really push the matter too much.  Every so often he’d bring it up, but only about once every ten times that he thought about it (or so he says).  And every time, I thought “Eh, not today.”  I just didn’t feel it.  And every so often I’d think “Gosh, he is such a great person, how could I NOT want to marry him?” But then I’d chicken out and decide that it could wait.  

And then finally last week or so, I was like “Yeah, no, really.  How could I NOT?”  So when I went to the store on Tuesday for my weekly grocery run, I bought some ingredients for fish tacos (because somewhere down the line, I told him I’d make him fish tacos and propose to him) and cantaloupe (because he loves cantaloupe).  We usually cook together on Wednesday, so having him over for supper wouldn’t raise any suspicions.  And the next day, all the way home I was freaking out like “OMG HOW DOES ONE EVEN DO THIS TYPE OF THING?!”  So then an hour later, we had sweet corn, blackened (on purpose!) fish tacos, taco toppings, and cantaloupe on the table to eat.  

We started eating and I was like “Hey Ben, do you remember that one conversation we had about fish tacos?”

“Yeah, about how I had the BEST FISH TACOS EVER in Rockridge?!!?”  

“Um. No....... the other one....... nevermind...... do you want to get married?”  

“Like for real?  Are you asking for real?”

So then the poor guy was so excited that he couldn’t even finish the delicious fish tacos that I had made, let alone the cantaloupe!  And then we did the thing where you call your parents and text your best friends, and there was the predictable amount of “awwwww....” and “about time!” and “CONGRATULATIONS!!!!”  

Ben had to take a picture while I was calling my parents
and attempting to eat fish tacos at the same time

Oh, and I know you’re going to ask - I don’t have a ring.  Sorry!

So we’re engaged.  We don’t know much more than that, to be honest.  We’re going to probably get married sometime next June or July, before we start school.  

Cue planning madness.  My mod was like “OMG NOW YOU HAVE TO GET A PINTEREST!!!!!!”  Yuck.  Stayed tuned for lots of posts about which silverware I should use at the reception and whether I should have white or whole wheat zwiebach.

Oh, and in case you’re interested, here’s the fish tacos recipe I used.

Santa Cruz

       In the latest installment of my life, Ben had told me to pack a swimsuit and prepare for 60 degree weather for a surprise trip this weekend. Those things don't really go together, but I did it anyway. We ended up going about 80 miles south to Santa Cruz, which is right on the coast. We left at 7am for some reason, so it was a chilly morning, but we got a GREAT parking spot, which is really something to celebrate around here. 

The Santa Cruz boardwalk and amusement park is supposed to be the “World's Best Beach Boardwalk” or at least that's what all their banners say. It was pretty cool, but mostly empty, since it was by that time about 830 in the morning. 

 We waited until the park opened and then bought a fried Twinkie and a fried cheesecake, which we both wanted to try. They were really good! Then we went walking some more, to work it off.

Not healthy.

       We had dinner on a long pier. It was more fried things. Fish things. We also saw a sea lion super up close, which was exciting. He mostly just stared at us and barked a couple times. 

Faux hawk

 After dinner the sky cleared up a bit and it came up sunny, which was nice, because then it warmed up somewhat. We then walked over to a little green park on a cliff and took a nap in the grass. Neither of us had gotten much sleep in the last few days. Later, we got up and watched a bunch of little kid surfers. They were crazy. They were like 12, and they were surfing all over the place!

         After that, we visited a couple of beaches. One was sand – a pretty standard beach. As we were getting ready to leave, this big black Lab came up and just kind of sat down on Ben! His owner was like “Oh my gosh I'm so sorry, he just won't socialize with other dogs, just people!!” It was hilarious. Then we visited a rockier beach, which was basically a bunch of tide pools. It was SO COOL. It was like Cabo Blanco in Costa Rica, complete with sea anemones, starfish, and sea urchins! I poked the sea anemones and they felt really sticky. A quick Google search told me that they were trying to sting me. I also tried to pick up some starfish, but they were stuck tight to the rock. They were also super close to the wave zone. I wasn't watching very closely and ended up drenched to the knee. Oops. So I let them be.

       

 
It was a real winner of a day, that's for sure.