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What's the point of Twitter?

People ask me that all the time. The answer obviously is to follow John Mayer. @johncmayer, if you will.

A little preview:

johncmayer: Smucker's Uncrustables peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are to be thawed and not microwaved. But I'm high now!

johncmayer: Mom says I can't wear my new Air Jordans until the first day of school, but I'm walking around the house in them.

johncmayer: Why are some bottled fruit drinks filled so high that they inevitably splash on you when you open them? I need an acceptable miniscus.

johncmayer: Fact: 87 percent of all negative replies sent to me contain the misspelling of the word "you're."

johncmayer: I like to check iTunes every week to see if I'm featured on a celebrity's playlist. When I'm not, I spread vicious internet lies about them.

johncmayer: I'm so full of myself, every time I read a book I blurt out "wait, can I just tell you my story?"

johncmayer: Worst idea for a room scent holding stron

g at ketchup.

johncmayer: 30 minutes to showtime. Finishing lyrics to "Perfectly Lonely" in the dressing room. I love this game.

Other common question: Where the hell have I been?

-I don't know. In a cave? Drag me out.

-(so probably watching tv)

-making homemade granola but being disappointed that it didn't form little clusters. How do you get it to form little clusters?

-Jupiter Island. Gamma turned 80. It was pretty wild.

-shopping in anticipation for my birthday in (less than) 2 weeks. Thanks in advance, Mom!

Classes started at UT this week, and I wasn't a part of it. I'm so ridiculously glad to not be walking into the ugly ugly nursing school this year, but I'm feeling pretty jealous of everyone's college-y lives that are going on without me. Facebook statuses about being hungover in class and other fun things while I'm sitting here preparing to go to bed at 9:30 for work in the AM. I hope tomorrow doesn't suck. Fridays can suck. But maybe if tomorrow sucks it'll be quieter on Saturday.

Or maybe I'll just need a margarita Saturday night? Likely.

Kristin & Julia

....doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Moving on.

Obviously I recently saw Julie & Julia. I went with Dani, which was ultra appropriate. She had a fajita party during my freshman year during which I was clueless as to how to chop an onion (or anything else for that matter). Now things are a little different, but she still owns an apple corer (corer?), so she wins.

Anyway, after the movie I wanted to make Julia's Boeuf Bourguinon asap, but the recipe would require me to use every pot, pan, and utensil in my kitchen. I was kind of ashamed later that night when I used Prego to make pasta. You can't watch Julie & Julia and use Prego later! I'm making up for it tomorrow with Emily's and my* FAJITA FIESTA** and an "I have blueberries and buttermilk that need to exit my fridgie" blueberry coffee cake (for work? probably).

*again with the awkward "____'s and my" that came up in my last post.

**I wrote all that yesterday and didn't post it. Fajita night was a success. If you're interested, this is the marinade I use. As for that coffee cake, I didn't do it. But hey, the buttermilk is good til the 19th, so the possibilities are endless. Watch me end up buying more blueberries in order to make something even though the point was to get rid of my leftovers. Typical.

Other news: I attended a "Booty Boot Camp" last night. I'm sore. The instructor was not amused by my dumb jokes during the class. Apparently there's nothing funny about squats, and after today I think I would agree.

I'm working tomorrow, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday. My booty boot camp accomplice (referring to her first year as a new teacher in a teach-for-America district) shed some light on being the new/overwhelmed/stressed/dumb one at work: all you can really do to reach that elusive "point" that feels so far off is to show up for work every day. Show up to work, do what you can, and eventually things fall into place. So I'm going to do that, hope for the best, and try to acknowledge more than just my mistakes from the day at the end of the shift. Being hard on yourself can push you towards improvement, but after a certain point I think it will push you right past improvement and on towards insanity. Or alcoholism. And I don't have the time for insanity or the liquor collection for alcoholism.

Chunky Monkey

So here's the deal with bananas. I like having them on hand for breakfast, especially on work mornings (plain oatmeal + banana + honey is the formula for survival from 0600 to 1300, mark my words). In that case, though, I want them yellow. Bright yellow. Not spotty. So I only buy about 3 if I'm at the store in order to finish them before they get too brown, which means I have to break them off from the giant bunches. You know what that means? That means I end up breaking open the peels on the bananas I plan to put back.

...And then put them back on the shelf with their broken stems hoping no one saw me.

The point is that last week at HEB I went a little crazy craze and just threw the whole bunch in my cart and planned to deal with it later.

What do you do with brown, spotty, gross-looking bananas? And one single egg left in the fridge? And the chocolate chips leftover from these cookies? And half a little jar of peanut butter? And a long shift coming up on Friday?

Chunky Monkey. The Chunk Monk. The Monk of Chunks.

Baker friends are looking at this ^ picture and wondering how these bananas became so wonderfully perfect for baking. Non-baker friends think I'm trying to poison them. On Wednesday night while Lora and Dirk were over, they taught me the trick of putting the brown spotty bananas in the freezer til I wanted to use them the next day. So I did, took them out in the morning, and found them like this in the afternoon. Something about the ice crystals breaking down and making the bananas super mushy and sweet. THEY. WERE. READY!

An added bonus of the freezer trick is that it took literally no time to mash them up.

This step smells like my favorite smoothie. (Cut up a banana and freeze it in a baggie, then blend it with a cup of milk and a spoonful of peanut butter. You're welcome.)

The dry stuff was boring-looking, so here it is blended with the good stuff.

I forgot to take a "before" picture of the muffin tins.

The "after" picture is making me wish I'd had enough bananas to double the recipe to keep more for myself.

Baked goods (and chocolate in general) make nurses and hospital staff happy (sane). There's a reason my manager Mary keeps a giant jar of candy in her office. So I brought 20ish of these muffins to put in the break room for a little Friday pick-me-up hoping everyone would love them as much as I do. And, I decided (after someone asked if I was going to give them a heart attack with these), these muffins are good for you. In 20ish muffins there's only a few tbsp of oil and one egg, the peanut butter has good fats and protein, and bananas are bananas. I used 2% milk (can't rock the skim milk in baked goods, though that's what I usually drink, and what the crap would I do with the leftover whole milk?), the amount of sugar in these is comparable to what a lot of recipes have in just 12 muffins, and chocolate chips are good for the soul.

I watch crappy TV.

Look at those smiles. Could there be a better show to watch on your mornings off? It's comfort TV. The mashed potatoes of TV. Except mashed potatoes are delicious, and this show technically sucks. But now that I live alone, I'm not torturing others with crappy TV - only myself. Some walk around naked; I watch Full House.

For my own self-justification, I loved it as a kid, and true love lasts a lifetime. There's something about brainless, predictable, hug-filled TV that just feels so right. It doesn't matter that Bob Saget would later go on to make stuff like this. Wake Up San Francisco? Comet the dog? Life lessons queued to music? Gag me, but you just can't beat it.

Full House was also probably the start of Kori's and my Olsen twin cult following (what is the correct way to say that? It's not "Kori and I's" is it? Irrelevant). We wrote them a letter circa 1995 saying (lying) that we were twins also, so we should be pen-pals. We also owned and/or rented all of their videos (featuring the Olsen & Olsen Mystery Agency, I Am the Cute One, slumber parties involving coordinated song and dance and staying up til midnight, etc etc), bought all of their movies (plot summaries: exotic location, boys in love with them, wardrobe changes, and a plot-line for the last 15 to 20 minutes of each movie. After they kiss their respective boys), blindly defended them against all of the cocaine accusations (we're kidding ourselves), and made a last-minute Walmart run to buy accessories to dress like them for the Spirits/Iron Spikes Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous mixer.

...or maybe that last one was just me.

and Emily. The Ashley to my Mary-Kate.

I'd like to post a picture, but those pics would be from my pre-Mac days. I don't want to hunt through my giant folder of old disorganized documents. None of the pictures have thumbnails, etc. I digress.

Incase you were wondering, the episode I caught today was the one where Joey was Mr. Egghead and accidentally breaks Stephanie's nose. Classic.

On a similar note, if The Wonder Years ever comes back on TV, I might have to quit my job to make time for it.

Tho-mas Jef-fer-son! Tho-mas Jef-fer-son!

Horrible picture quality. I never said I was a photographer.

I forgot my camera (!!! fail!) when I went to Emily's in Rockport for the 4th, so this is the best my phone (plus brightening from iphoto) could do.

Incase you're wondering, the title of this blog was absolutely chanted during the fireworks. It didn't flow as well as Emily's original "U-S-A! U-S-A!," but it got the point across. We love America. You can tell by our glowing headbands. I had 24 hours of sun, fun, margs, bahama mamas, hot dogs, hamburgers, and dancing with Emily's conservative aunt. Magical.

Work update (because "how's work?" seems to be the question of the day every day): Each shift gets a little better, I've already learned a lot, I hate having to ask 900 questions (but appreciate the 900 answers!), and I still cannot ever figure out who I need to call (or if I even need to call them!) when the patient is being seen by all these different teams of docs/residents/interns.

Other life updates: I'm going to Colorado to see Andrew tomorrow! Exciting! A little bit of a bummer that weather.com says thunderstorms all weekend, but that's why I have my handy dandy men's water-resistant windbreaker. With a hood. Bring it.

Other other life updates: I need to learn Spanish. TEACH ME!! I can't survive off of "tiene dolor?" forever.

...No I didn't eat two of these and end up feeling too sick for lunch. That would be childish.

These are multi-purpose cookies: mostly as thank-you cookies I promised (several times) months ago, partly as future thank-you cookies to whoever will help my brother and me lift my old desk into his truck tomorrow, and slightly as experimental cookies because last time I made them I didn't like the way they flattened with smooth tops.

That's also why I found it necessary to eat two despite their colossal size. Experimentation. It's science.

I solved the flat/smooth top problem. I could tell you how, but then I'd have to kill you.

All Grown Up?

Better late than never... I graduated, studied like a madwoman, took the NCLEX, passed the NCLEX, started work, and here I am. Dani told me she missed my blogs, so, on this lovely Monday that I happen to have off, I thought I'd update.

I gotta tell you, that RN label on my badge feels pretty good. The downside? I'm realizing that working as an RN under a preceptor (as it will be for the next 18 weeks) is preeeeetty similar to being a nursing student. But I have a lot to learn, no doubt. I'm looking forward to getting to know the nurses on my floor better and hoping that they end up being fun people! :)

I worked (well, shadowed) on the floor for an 8-hour shift Saturday to round out my 36 hours from orientation the week before, and I started the new week with a 12-hour shift yesterday. Shadowing for two days is really, really boring, and I'm looking forward to having my log-ins so I can start taking my own patients. But, based on what I've seen so far, here's my impression of the floor:

My badge says oncology, but my nurse and I had more of the "neuro" side of neuro/oncology this weekend. There are lots of head injuries - some with few symptoms that get to go home the next day, and others that have been there for weeks with trachs, PEG tubes, disorientation, the works. We had a lady who had just had a crani for her chiari malformation (which I had to google later), a pneumothorax/chest-tube kinda patient (spillover from the trauma floor), a random cholecystectomy admit from the ER, and one patient with lung cancer and superior vena cava syndrome getting chemo over the next few days. So after my first two days of work I've seen some familiar things, some new things, and some things so new I had to google them. This first year is all about getting experience, and it seems I'll certainly be getting it.

So, I guess despite my aversion for med-surg kinda floors during nursing school, I really do think I'm going to like a lot of things about this floor. On the flipside, it makes me nervous realizing that I most definitely won't have the answers to a lot of the questions the patients and families are going to have or to the situations that come up. I think all of us, as we're starting out, know the kinds of nurses we want to be, and it's rough knowing that it's just going to take a while until we have enough experience to be those great nurses.

...But the paycheck in the meantime will be nice.

In other news, I went for a jog first thing this morning after I slept in til 7:00 (felt like noon after this weekend!) - my first physical activity in weeks and weeks! It's easy to get busy and do nothing but watch TV in the downtime, which is what I've been doing, but this morning reminded me that I'm much more pleasant to be around if I take a little me-time outside.

In other OTHER news, I'm finally reading My Sister's Keeper, and it's fantastic.

Alright, that's it.