A little show and tell

For today's version of the photo blog, I give you the following:

My dad put up 2 levels of stair railings ready for my mom's first home visit last week. He and I spent much of Friday night/Saturday morning making the lower level living quarters look nice for my mom's arrival (figuring she would not see the rest of the house until a further weekend visit). You should have seen him blanch when after lunch she announced that the first level of stairs had gone so well, she wanted to do the second set so that we could all eat dinner in the kitchen.

Those are cranberry streusel muffins so see (they're from Bonnie Stern's Lighthearted Cooking cookbook so I am maintaining my belief that they are healthy). They came to a potluck brunch with me.

The Snowbeast (big white thing has a name) is continually growing: 14 inches long at the last measurement! And I completed my grey fuzzy hat. It's a gift but oh, so tempting to keep (see how good it looks on my head?).

Talkin' 'bout my generation

So there's this phenomenon I've noticed when talking to people my age (or maybe just the geeks I hang out with). Any situation or discussion topic seems to lead to "You know this is just like that episode of the Simpsons (some show offs will add the season here) when..."

I've been resisting. I watch the occasional Simpsons' rerun but am hardly a Simpsons efficionado. However, I caught myself comparing my parents' situation to what would happen to Homer if Marge were incapacitated for a month - hey, wait! That's just like the episode where Marge got arrested for shop-lifting!

I must be showing my age (and my geekiness).

Ile Bizard hike

You say tomato, I say bwahh

I have been described as a mother with a 19 year old frosh son (my dad). I have spent much of the afternoon discovering moldy tomato surprises throughout the house (somehow, feeling very much like a frosh mom...).

My dad did a great job clearing tomatoes out of the garden pre-frost. However, they have just sort of sat whereever he set them down (table tops, counters, on top of his papers...) several weeks ago.

I think I'm off tomatoes...

Worn out...

So, here I am: semi-moved back home.

Casey thinks it's pretty cool (though seems concerned that I may leave her with my dad for another 2 weeks and head back to New Orleans).

My mom's improved a lot since she started rehab a week ago. We had a dramatic morning over whether or no she could come home on a weekend pass (man, you should have seen the dirty look the nurse who told her the team decided that she should stay gave the doctor who came in 10 minutes later to tell her that she could go): final verdict being we still have no railings and she has not done stairs yet. She could camp out in the den downstairs (complete with renting a commode) but that somehow did not appeal (I can't blame her). I spent some time photographing the layout of the bathroom for her occupational therapist today. I"m here until Wednesday so hopefully can get the house adaptation we need to do into gear.

Luckily (cough cough), I can stay away for so long because I have lots of portable lab work. Note to self: my new least favorite expression from my supervisors: "Now here's a really cool idea for you." ie: it's a cool idea but now you get to work for it - I now know more that I ever thought I would about interleukin-6 and fuel selection during exercise... unfortunately, I have a growing list of more reading to do (there seems to be an exponential relationship going on here: for every article I read, I find 10 more I need to read - argh....

Somehow, the big almost-white thing that shall soon be named is slowly getting bigger...

Learning culture shock!

That's right. Culture shock. I realized that I was experiencing a great deal of it this week (and feel all the better to have identified it).

My background learning culture: clinical procedures (including invasive ones and ones involving expensive equipment) are learned as follows: see one (if you're lucky: this is occasionally replaced by telephone instructions by a sleep-deprived senior), do one, teach one.

The other grad students in my lab's learning culture: clinical/experimental procedures (especially ones that are invasive or use expensive equipment): observe several times, repeat several times having others check your every move, get someone to re-explain/re-affirm all of it as frequently as possible.

I see a difference. Do you see a difference?

Now that I have started my trials, I have been receiving e-mails from lab mates remnding me how procedures are done or inviting me to come in to their trials to observe procedures and re-confirm with what I am doing. Coming from my background, I was rather insulted: had I been doing things wrong? did they have a problem with me? was this some passive aggressive attack upon my abilities? I even sent a rather snitty reply to one of these invites before my revelation occurred:

In the normal world, see one, do one, teach one is not necessarily how things are done. Many people have a more thorough approach which could very well be very beneficial to one's learning and one's skill-building. I was not in fact being singled out for any malicious purpose. Hmmm... Maybe I just need to chill...

Knitting, lots of it!

Occasionally, my blog likes to pretend to be a real knitting blog. I figured I should humor it and, seeing as I got some knitting done this weekend, post some yarn related material.


I finished my second pair of fingerless gloves! I was knitting them in a medical waiting room last week when a lady came up to me, concerned that I might not realize that there was a big hole in the middle of my knitting. I reassured her that it was a thumb hole and pulled out my first glove to demonstrate.



I bought more yarn this week (I needed a wedding gift) and cast on not one, but 2 projects (I was stuck in the lab running trials and the internet was down: what else is a girl to do?). The first is going to be a big project. I am looking for a name for it (remember Cookie Monster for Elena and Jon?). I was going to go with White Fang, but it seems too delicate to be White Fang... Maybe something elven from Lord of the Rings? I am currently taking name suggestions.




I started the fall foliage hat from knitty.com's fall '07 issue. I keep doubting my gauge and have been trying to try it on for size. However, I keep putting myself in danger of dropping stitches and I have a notoriously large head (thick skull and lots of hair). So as long as it isn't for me, whether or not the hat fits me is not a good judgement of size. Must find myself a head model...


Check out the pretty handspun stuff Amanda gave me! Spun by Amanda using Alpaca - she made herself a gorgeous pair of fair isle gloves and gave me her leftovers to make myself a pair (I should have gotten a picture of Amanda's gloves to give her credit where credit is due).

Local Inukshuks

These were taken a couple of weeks ago...

Big news!!!

My mom got a spot in rehab! She goes tomorrow!

My whole family is breathing much easier tonight...

GREat!

Quick update (got 10 minutes to kill in lab):

GRE: Done! 740 quantitative, 690 verbal. I guess I didn't earn my MD on looks alone afterall.

Mom: Still in hospital. Has had 2 surgeries. Is doing great hopping around on one foot with a walker. Every few days ortho (sigh... ortho...) gets frustrated that she's still in hospital taking up space and threatens to send her home without rehab (um... we have stairs... lots of stairs...). I'm trying to get things set up here so that I can move back home for a month or so if needs be.

Research: Slowly but surely. Have run 3 trials with one drop-out. Will have my first subject completed as of Saturday (yay!). I'm hoping to have 2 or 3 people completed as of Christmas.

Knitting: working on a second set of fingerless gloves. Had better start making x-mas gifts all out very soon.