These are imports from my other blog. Some of them are old. I decided to paste them as a response to a comment of whether or not the manikins um....reach climax...... when poked. So in response, they do scream and moan. Sorry if there are any repeats.

I just received this in my list serve.

All,
There has been some discussion about the 'sights and smells' of the simulation lab and someone asked for ideas on simulating wound drainage, or infected wound drainage. I'm sorry I've deleted the original thread (we're migrating our work email system over the weekend and they want it cleaned out!). Anyway, Kim Martin (the Queen of Moulage) from Dayton Beach Community College offers this suggestion: banana pudding mix (sugar free) 2 tsp, strawberry preserves (out of date preferably) 1 tsp, yogurt (the fit and trim stuff works well--any variety but you have to leave it sit out and get warm overnight) 1-2 tsp and finally a few drops of vinegar. Its not pseudomonas but its  pretty disgusting and the students all refuse to whiff after the wound is 'opened.' Washes right off with soap and water.

Manikins
Well on to the work stuff. We are trying to bring our Nursing skills lab out of the dark ages. If any one remembers me blogging about vendors bringing in manikins that can breath air and sweat and other stuff, this is a follow up. We found out that we have a basic early version, it was off at the western campus. We brought it in to check it out. It has less dojiggies and whatnots than the ones the vendors brought in. It does however make sounds. I expected the heart, lung and bowel sounds. You have to use instruments to hear those. This manikin can be programed to make other noises so the instructors can observe how the students react. The instructors control it by using a hand held thingy. So basically its a remote control life sized doll. We played with it a little bit to make sure everything was working properly. It coughs which didn't really surprise me. It also moans, I mean really really moans, Moaning loudly. It screams, like a woman. I had to put that in because its genitals can do the switcheroo. That will be really weird when its supposed to be a guy. The worst one however, was the vomiting sound. Oh my god, I almost had a sympathy hurl it was very realistic. We are ordering 4 of those I think.


Recipes
I received a recipe book for replicating bodily "specimens?" using food products, mostly. Although one or two used KY, so not edible.There were three recipes for replicating different kinds of poop.I will only post the most basic. Because Duh, Those ingredients actually make poop.

Granulated fiber product (i.e.Metamucil) + coffee = stool
alter liquid amount for differing consistencies.

Duh!The others are rather involved and include things like corn and premade chocolate icing. I wont post those.The instructors are so excited. I can't even describe how excited they are. Well, they can put them in the big remote control dolls.

I have such a weird job. I have to laugh, what else can I do??

Prostrates from Halloween

I can't believe tomorrow it will be November!!! I have 2 new employees. I am very happy about this. Work is looking up. Home is definitely up. Carl was sick for a few days, and he is feeling better now.  I got my flu shot for free today at work. I haven't done that before. Thor is an assassin for halloween. I had too much sugar today. People kept coming around to the offices with candy and donuts and lollipops, OH my! I got to watch the Med school Costume competition during lunch today. There was a medical category. Someone came as Monkey pox. I can't remember most of them. The person who won in the medical category came as a uterus. In one of the non medical categories a cross dressing Dorothy won. HE/SHE had a nice beard and rather muscular thighs which were prominent when he clicked his ruby slippers for the judges. That was a short dress!

On a different and equally weird note, one of the missing prostate mysteries has been solved, just in time for the instructors to use them. The prostates that went missing last year were actually all still here. Three of them were inside the GU model. and one of them was in the case with the older GU model. Apparently, my student who checked them wasn't very thorough. I did tell them to look inside.

This is such a relief. The prostates that go to the new model have Velcro on the back of them. The only think I could think of that someone could use them for was to throw at those Velcro targets. They were too light to be used for paper weights. It was weird too, because I had to order the new model because the old model was missing his. I thought, what a weird collection. Well now I can rest easily. There probably isn't a prostate collector out there after all.

I had to assess all of the breast care models yesterday as well. You know, they aren't very realistic in my opinion. One of the older ones had the breast attached with a spring. Strange

Well, I have to go. I have a few more weird things to do before I go home.

Hi!

I must need more vitamins in my diet, or more oxygen, or more foreplay. Daily I see weirdness around me. I think it's Hilarious!! but I think I may be mental. So my regrets if this is boring tribble.

Healing Concrete

Apparently once long ago there was a healing Garden between the Hospital and Clinics Building and The Health Sciences Learning Center. This of course was a named space, meaning that someone payed to have their name on it. The name is no where to be seen. As is the garden.

Due to some construction a temporary corrugated metal sheltered walkway between buildings was the only way between the buildings when I first started working here. See, they tore down the Boxer connector. A named connector payed for by the Boxer family.

Construction on the new Boxer connector was ongoing for over a year. When they finally finished it, it was Grand! It was warm, dry, ice free, well lit, and mice didn't drown and collect in the corners when we had torrential downpours. One of the stunning features is that one entire wall of the connector is almost all window,so as to look out over the "name?" healing gardens.

At long last a view of the healing ?concrete?(bewilderment)?!?

OKEY DOKEY then. This healing space was also at times a "water feature" deep enough to be stocked with Koi. No landscaping or water plants. No lilies. No fountain in the middle. What disappointment.

Progress on recreating the healing garden was stalled for over a year while they tried to engineer a drainage system that would not interfere with the Radiology Department located directly beneath the healing concrete.

Um, Radioactive healing concrete pond.

So I was a little impressed when the drains went in a couple of months ago. The drains are raised above the concrete so it only drained when the water got really high. Now then, radioactive healing concrete puddle. I guess that is an improvement.

None of this is really funny, just a little background history.

About a week ago I saw something rather curious. There were large waddling men in the radioactive healing ice rink. These men had layers of clothes under industrial sized Cardhart snow pants/suits? This is Wisconsin's negative degree weather season. Curious. I couldn't stop and watch. I was in a hurry to retrieve Gyn and GU models from K6/110 in the Hospital and Clinic building. This relates to my bouncing boobs story in my "finger in my ear" blog.

Marks day one. Waddling Cardhart men.

Day Two. Waddling Cardhart men, try to chip ice.

Day Three. Waddling Cardhart men, bring "God sized" hair dryers, to melt ice and dry radioactive concrete garden.

Day Four.Waddling Cardhart men start laying insulation and roofing material on to radioactive healing concrete, to create Healing radioactive roof. AH...I see. hence the raised drains. Waddling men achieve partial success. 1/4 roof laid.

Night after 4th day. Winter storm hits Madison dumps 1 foot+ snow on radioactive roof project.

Day Five. No radioactive men.

Day six. Radioactive waddling healing roofers arrive with shovels. Shovel 1/8th garden. Radioactive men give up, go home.

Since then I have not seen hide nor hair of the Radioactive waddling Cardhart healing men bearing God sized hair dryers.

The healing space saga is not yet finished. I will update you more as I receive more news. Meanwhile I know where I will be eating my lunches with any luck come Spring.

Oop, ran over.

Now have 15 minutes to prepare remote control manikins to bleed when poked.

Have a good one.

Good morning. I hardly slept a wink last night. When I did I had really strange dreams.

One of them was at a University I often attend in my dreams. I'll call it Dream U, just for the heck of it. This may sound like a funny dream but it was kind of scary. Dream U looks like a mix of University and high school.

One time I was running around trying to find a bathroom and of course someone was chasing me. I found a lot of icky nightmarish  bathrooms and kept looking for another one.I can't even begin to describe them but they were real horror story material. Dream U was like an abandoned industrial building in this one. 

Strangely I didn't wake realizing that I had to pee. Often when my dream features a bathroom it's time to wake up and go to the bathroom.

Well, I know that all of the Dream U dreams are at the same place, even the industrial potty nightmare dream. It's still Dream U.

This time at Dream U, Carl was there. We were standing in this place where a bunch of wide concrete stairs met at a sort of platform. Some stairs going up some going down. The stairs and walls were painted that nasty pasty scholastic grey. The same color some people paint cement porches. In the wall of the platform there was a window with one of those roll top metal garage doors that lock when the window is closed. Above it there were those black slats that  you can slide letters in to make words.

Someone was handing out paperwork for us to fill out. This time it had something to do with parking passes. We were warned through the loud speaker not to misrepresent ourselves in any way especially when it came to selecting our ethnicity. Ok, whatever.

When we got the forms we sat down on the stairs to fill them out. One of the choices for ethnicity was Hobbit. So we laughed. I thought about selecting it and decided it was funny but I couldn't. Then Carl said what is the worse thing that could happen. I agreed. I checked it and forgot about it.

Now I am curiously in a lecture hall with a room sized table in it. All of the clothes that I own are in the middle of the table. I have no idea why. I have to get to them and gather them up. I am not naked by the way. Well, students start coming in for their lecture class and I only got a few. I had to leave though. A lot of my dream was trying to go back between lectures and trying to gather up my clothes. Sometimes getting caught in a seat and having to attend the lecture. Sometimes getting kicked out of the lecture. This was very annoying and took a long time.

Many mornings later, my clock radio turns on. Usually I drive and park with my parking pass, then I walk up to Dream U from there. I start driving to work. This morning it's announce on the radio with my name and everything. (I imagined this would show up in news of the weird later). Dream U student, Renee Croushore has purposely mislead the Department of Transportation by claiming to be a Hobbit. Currently, There are police helicopters and the police force is in full force to locate Mrs. Croushore. Not to worry they have a satellite scanning for the car and should apprehend her shortly. Mrs Croushore will be charged with Fraud, charged a fine and may be served jail time. This is not turning out to be a very nice dream. Then I am on the run.

Who knew I would be in so much trouble for claiming to be a Hobbit. Really I did know better.

So I woke up. Then I went back to sleep and ended up at Dream U. I woke up again. Went back to sleep...at Dream U again. Ugh. Not much sleep after that.

I did have another dream which was worse sometime early this morning. That one was more personal and I wont go into it here.

Man am I tired.

morning with my finger in my ear and other stories.

Jan 14, '08 11:18 AM for everyone

Ok. That made this entry seem more interesting than I am sure that it will be.

I feel like I have spent the entire morning with my finger in my ear. Which incidentally is not a good place for my finger.  Have you ever had that nagging almost pain in your ear. Where you think " is this an ear ache or just a sinus/ snozolla ear popping pressure thingy". Subconsciously my finger goes to check the whole thing out. Then, there I am with my finger in my ear thinking,  "I am sure that putting my finger in my ear isn't going to help this at all". Having convinced my conscious mind that fingers do not belong in ears, I manage to push on that little triangle flap where your ear meets your face to see if that helps. Only to find myself later, again, with my finger in my ear while I am not thinking about it.

I am about a week behind in my blog postings. Last week I covered Christmas break. Well, here are some interesting things from since then. If I can relate them with any amount of  freshness whatsoever.

Forgotten snow ball fight: Well this one wont be fresh. I had a hilarious snow ball fight with Thor and Carl. The details of which I can't remember. Maybe it will come back to me. I was sure you all would like the story.

Work weirdness:

Rolling shelves of bouncing breasts
The first event scheduled in one of my lab rooms this year was a voluntary Gyn exam review. This was scheduled for during Winter Break, immediately following my two week vacation.

Once I returned from my break I had 1 1/2 days to have everything ready for the review session. This isn't a very big deal, it did however require collecting models and whatnot from wherever they landed at the end of last semester (Mainly, the other building) and evaluating them.

All of the women and men's health models had been in the K6/110 lab room in the hospitals and clinics building across the boxer connector from our building. The boxer connector is wonderful by the way. It connects the two buildings so that we don't have to go outside. There is a wonderful view of the healing gardens, or healing concrete as it is now but that's a different story.

I head over to bring the materials back. When I get to the lab all of the models are there on the metal rolling shelving unit. Most of the models are in boxes or cases. Some of the models don't have either. I have an entire wire shelving unit full of cancerous and non cancerous breasts and testicles. Hard plastic Dr. office cross section models of male and female genitalia, complete with numbered parts. Zack, Zoe and 2 Eva's Iife like full scale exam practice models with interchangeable parts, in zippered cases.  Well, you get the idea.

The trip back....

Here comes the fun part. I get to roll this 6 ft tall by 3 ft long rolling shelving unit over the tiled floor near the cafeteria, through the boxer connector, through the atrium with the little cafe kiosk in it down the hall into the other lab room. No sweat.

Have you ever rolled an open shelving unit over a tiled floor before? If they were large tiles they would make the highway concrete sound. Ba dump.. Ba dump..Ba dump...But NO.... These are small tiles. they sound more like Ba dahdahdahdahdah dahdah dah dah dah dah. Ba dahdahdahdahdahdah. See I slowed down there for a minute. Do you have any idea what kind of vibrations that makes?? As you can only imagine I had boxes vibrating around on top of one another slipping ever closer to the open sides of the shelving unit. An adjustment here and there seemed to be working well until I hit a real bump. BUMP!  There go three breast boxes right off the side before I am able to catch them. Even with my super mommy reflexes they slip quickly beyond my grasp and hit the floor. Boxes and lids and breasts go bouncing and flopping across the floor.

Uh, I have to cross the foot traffic here and try to reclaim my box contents without anyone stepping on the squishy silicon nipply (spell check doesn't like nipply or nippley hmmm) discs that are now spread across the floor. Ha!!!

I gotta love my job. There just isn't any other thing like it.

Model evaluation

I set my student worker to work on evaluating the condition of the models while I took care of some other tasks in my office. I gave her a contents sheet for Zoe, Eva and Eva. After a little while she came back and mentioned that she was having a difficult time. I took over. I did have to admit that it wasn't easy to determine which uteri belonged with which model. Although they are different models, they all have interchangeable uteri along with many many many screw on cervixes. Each model should have 7 uteri, plus 1 introverted and 1 extroverted (ha!! not that's not right) uteri with ovaries,fallopian tubes, and ligaments. Inverted that's it. One of those uteri was missing everything but one ovary. I then assemble the models as completely as I can setting them out for the next day's review session. Keeping in mind that even if the sets are not complete, they can only use one uteri and one cervix per model at a time so it shouldn't be a problem.

which leads me to the ovary incident.

The ovary incident

later the next week.... phrased as I wrote it for my email to my sister the other day.

I found an extra ovary on the floor the other day. It fell off of the cabinet that we were putting things on. I was pleased to see it because I knew there was one missing. I put it in my pocket so that I could finish what we were doing. I remembered to take it out of my pocket so that it wouldn't get washed with my pants in our washing machine. Now it is sitting next to my coffee on my desk.

days later...

There is still an ovary on my desk. Maybe I will put it back today. Ug time for more coffee.

I am copy pasting from my Multiply site. I haven't quite figured out how to acclimate to live journal yet. Miss you folks. Happy New Year!!!!!

Winter Break 1

Welcome to the land of Fog and coffee. My mind, my state, my state of mind. It has been remarkably foggy here in Wisconsin.  I don't think I have been anywhere so dense before. Ha! Well seriously, the fog has been truly beautiful. Everything takes on an etherial look. As long as you don't need to go anywhere all is well. My ride share ladies drive me to and from work. They are pretty sensible. Driving is harrowing everywhere, but the highways are the most dangerous. Some folks think that driving 70 mph into a wall of fog is a good idea. We don't have much highway driving for our commute.

Just for anyone who was worried about it the group of odd January tornadoes that came through Wisconsin didn't come anywhere near us.

I think that this is our last warm weather day for a while. We have had 3 or 4 record high days in a row. Today the high is 40. Yesterday we were above 50. I hope the rest of our driveway melts off before we get more ice.

I found this cool coffee company and thought I would give them a little free advertizing.

Well they wont let me post it. But there is a cool Fog Woman Coffee co. with a neat logo.

I might have to do the rest of this blog in parts. otherwise it will take you a day and a half to read one entry.

I think before break I mentioned how happy I was that the snow storm that was predicted for the weekend that Morgan arrived wasn't going to come after all. Well, Le Oops. Between  Fog and snow, all planes were grounded out of the Pittsburgh airport on Sunday before Christmas. Monday, Morgan got to Chicago on time. Then his several hour lay over became longer and longer. We were a little worried and trying to figure out if he could get a shuttle to Madison or if we were going to need to drive to Chicago to pick him up. With weather and Christmas eve at an airport and Carl (who usually drives in the Chicago area for me) having the runs, it was a little tense. He did manage to get a flight out. Thor thinks that Sunday and Monday were the longest hours/ days he has ever felt. We are used to the snow thing, driving to the airport wasn't too bad.

I can't tell you how happy we were to see him.It has been a long time. Thor and I squished him quite a bit. Maggie barked as we got closer to the car and then put her ears back in the oops position and was very excited to see him. Of course, Morgan wanted to go to a mall as soon as we picked him up. I wanted to go straight home. A mall on Christmas eve was the last place that I wanted to be. We compromised and drove past Monticello to Monroe to hit the Walmart there before home. It was closed. Weather and being stuck at airports had hampered a little bit of last minute Christmas shopping that the kids had been planning on. Plus Morgan needed a few personal items that he forgot to bring like a toothbrush and deodorant.

I was a little anxious as to how he would like our new house. He hadn't seen it yet. Carl was very happy to see him and we bumped around each other to give Morgan a tour of the house. I think he liked it. He didn't seem to dislike it. And we were all together which was making me very happy. Morgan got set up for the night and he and Thor stayed up long after Carl and I went to bed. (old fart syndrome).

I have to go now.... more later...

Winter Break 2

Winter Break and whatnot 2

Jan 8, '08 1:44 PM for everyone

Morgan's stay with us was magical and much of it flowed together so I am not going to try to separate days too much. Christmas day was great. Morgan and I walked up to the end of the back lot in the morning. He hadn't seen it the night before. He spent a lot of time up there romping with Maggie during his stay. We ate, opened Christmas presents, and mentioned all of the shopping for each other we were going to do during the visit. The actual day of exchanging isn't so important to me. Family was the perfect gift. The boys did get sleds though, and we did get the perfect weather for it. I also mentioned that I wasn't going to any stores on Christmas. Sorry boys. The day after Christmas is right out too. Anyone seeing a pattern here? Plus everything is closed in small towns. In the afternoon we did lots of sparing, wrestling, grappling stuff. Mostly Thor and Morgan, although I got to play too. Quentin came over to sled ride with the boys. Morgan spent a few nights at Quentin's house. There were two days of snowball fights. The one when Quentin was over and Morgan was on the phone with Julia was kind of funny. He was a great target it's hard to throw and dodge snow balls while he was on the phone. Thor and Quentin were really going at it too. Thor got Quentin up a tree. Where the victor quickly changed as Quentin caught the advantage. There wasn't much ammunition up there though. Then Thor was in the tree. It was all very fascinating. I was mostly shoveling. Morgan, Thor, and Quentin all took turns helping out Thank God. They all have way more energy than I do. There was a lot of snow!!!! Then the electric guitar came out. It was passed around to whomever wasn't shoveling or in the snowball fight. So we all rotated in and out.

One of the days we grabbed some movies at the library. One night we went to Tosino's for Morgan's birthday pizza dinner (very belated).

The Saturday before he left we went into Madison together. Carl surprised us by taking us all to an Indian food buffet for lunch. Morgan took us all to see "The Golden Compass", which is what we asked him for for Christmas.

Then we went to the mall so that Thor could buy Morgan a present at Hot Topic. Morgan had bought Thor a really cool belt on one of the nights that he was out with Quentin.

After the Mall we walked to Toys are us so that Thor could try and spend his gift card. Now you must understand that between the mall and Toy's are us there was the parking lot snow dumping ground. Now I don't mean the huge piles that take up spaces near the parking lot lights. This was the whole dumping ground. We had at least 2 feet of snow accumulated before the plowing of the lot. The mountain ranges were immense. And the boys had to climb them. Now you could build a huge igloo for and entire homeless town in this thing. There was probably room for 2 whole castles with outer defense walls and everything. It hadn't really been sculpted in any way so it really was mountainous. There was a beautiful coat of freshly fallen snow on top of layers of different kinds of snow. soft, ice, dense, fluff. you name it. A veritable potential for painful trips to the emergency room. So I had to climb them too. I couldn't let my boys go out of site on any icy precipice if I couldn't be there to watch their dramatic fall into the frozen crevices and call 911 or something.

Now, Morgan being and unstoppable energetic 16 year old bounded over every place with the greatest of ease. Thor traversed the mass in the quickest possible route to Toys are us and waited as patiently as he could (not much). He could have fallen completely out of sight in this thing. He is an average sized 11 year old so that is saying a lot. Sinking up to his crotch with one leg here or there was definitely more than enough for him. I think jarred wrists were involved as well. And of course being egged on as a boring but once fun Mom was enough for me to go following Morgan around for a while. Remembering when this would have been huge amounts of fun for me and trying to relive those times almost worked in-between twisted ankles and stuff. It was a joy to see him in his element being 16 and having a ball without the aid of explosives. I could have watched that delighted for hours on end, if I hadn't been cold, wet, tired, 36, and participating.

Eventually it became my turn to be incredibly impatient as I walked around Toys are us in search for the treasures that Thor might find within. Trying and failing to not feel my age. The boys finally settled in the electronics department. Morgan got me to play the guitar thing, where you hold the guitar and try to hit the right buttons as they flew toward you in time to rock music that I grew up with. Scary. I took a turn, stopped, took another, stopped, and finally slumped onto the floor and tried to take a nap.

Next I became overwhelmed with exhaustion and malaise and urged them on to Best Buy. I chose to meet them at Barnes and Noble where Carl was enjoying a nice mellow read along with a coffee.

The only "safe" way to get to the Best Buy was over the mountain range. The other option being crossing the flow of traffic who couldn't see each other anyway over the 5 foot snow banks in a snowstorm. So off we went. Morgan encouraging us to yell victorious things from the highest peaks.

As I finally trudged onward to Barnes and Noble, I wondered to myself, "why the heck am I so tired"?

All in all. Morgan spent a considerable amount of time, with Thor in deep conversation about music and wrestling on the floor. With me in attempts at philosophical conversation or at least a huge effort on Morgans effort to glean a sense of how I am doing and what I am doing currently. Working, reading, eating, watching DVD's, sleeping, cleaning, and walking the dog didn't seem quite what he was looking for but he seemed to be easy with it. He watched movies with Carl and romped with the dog teasing her and scolding us for letting her get fat. I even just enjoyed watching him in a typical teen age sack out lack of consciousness in the middle of the day. His constant interactions with his phone implant seemed to go quiet at appropriate times with a little nudging on our part. Watching him with Quentin was fun too. Happy with his adventures to endless wanderings and driving around with Quentin was good too.

As was hearing about them making pancakes at 2 in the morning. Quentin and Morgan commented on how our bathroom is the coolest room in the house. Quentin lined up our adjustable mirrors to view his cloned legions extending off to infinity in both directions. Warm feet with the heated floors was cool too.

We never got to have a fire in the fire circle or light up our cheap gas stove that sounds and looks like a blow torch when we run it. That may have been for the best though. The fire might have been too temping, no welding in the living room thank you very much.

Yule and new year.

I wont have easy access to internet until Jan. 7th. So I will try and check in. I miss you folks. Wish I could be closer for the holidays!! I'll try to bring back some fun stories!!! And pictures.

Love you all!

Yesterday there was fog for the drive in and home. It was beautiful. I was glad I wasn't driving, I think. Barb drove and she was tailgating and driving too fast. Close your eyes time. Oh well.

This morning, all of the fog had frozen on the branches leaving crystal forests and groves. Spectacular!

Today the predicted high is 36 degrees. Wonderful, maybe some of the snow and ice on our driveway will melt.

Tomorrow is supposed to be above freezing also. Maybe some rain.

Earlier this week a huge winter ice storm was predicted for this weekend. Today it's calling for rain and a freezing "sprinkle". Say sprinkle three times fast without smiling.
Rhymes with tinkle and twinkle, LOL. I am easily amused today. I was afraid the storm would interfere with Morgan's travel arrangements.

I think we should still have a white Christmas unless we have a real heat wave. I wouldn't mind a warm New Year.

Today a wonderful lady, whom I have many conversations with but don't know her name, gave me a Juncus Spiralis, to replace the one that I killed in my office. The one that I bought didn't have any care instructions or a name. She commiserated with me and checked in to see how we were doing. I tried everything I could think of. Dry, wet, light, shade, trimming, re-potting etc. She researched the plant and talked to nurseries and finally tracked this thing down. It's so cool. It's curly, hence the Spiralis part I guess. Anyhow, she brought me one for the holidays. She bought one for herself too. I ran off quick and bought her a chocolate bar. I really wasn't expecting anything and although it's not exactly what the season is about, I felt better reciprocating. She is a really cool lady.  Soooooo, Juncus Spiralis is part of the reed family and requires a lot of water but not enough to get moldy and it likes indirect light. I think I will re-pot mine just in case. Yeah!! dirt!! Once again, I love dirt!! Always makes my day. I am going to take my plants home today to keep them from dying while I am gone. It's so nice that it is above freezing, that helps.

The semester is winding down. Whew, that was a rough one. My tuck in and burn time is starting. Everywhere I look there is something to do. I am making some headway however, organizing projects and writing lists is occupying a lot of my time. It doesn't seem like that accomplishes much. Tomorrow is the last day of work before my Winter Break. Anything I see now, I will need a reminder for on January 7th when I get back. I am ticking some small stuff and some urgent stuff off of my list as I go along. Then bing I see ten more things to do . I will get back just in time for all the requests and demands of Spring semester.  I just have to realize that I like my job. I like my job. I like my job. And if I can become engrossed and find all my projects interesting all will be exciting and swell. Lets see if I can find that ability to become engrossed. I can do it.

Well there is a bit of cheer in the air at work. Everyone, is having little mini parties here and there. I am about to run off to one. Egg nog has been promised. I'll probably stay for about 15 and then get back to my desk.

I was going to take tomorrow off, I don't have a ride in. So its the park and walk 30-45 min scenario. Plus Carl would have to stay late at his work until I could pick him up. I would much rather stay home and clean. Yet, we can use the money and I can get some more work done. Cleaning can wait. My paycheck after this one coming up is going to be slim. Nothing I can  do to get paid for more than 64 hours on that one. I prefer the checks when I get 80 hours in. Plus, its on the A pay-period check which they take all the payments out of. Gratitude! I have insurance and what-not! Yeah! I wish that check was on the B pay-period, ah well nothing I can do about it. Very important. At least I  get  paid vacation. Much  much gratitude!!

That's the way the cookie, crumbles. I am going to attempt to make rum balls. I have everything but the vanilla wafers.

oop. Egg nog time. I'll have some for you too.

Giant Microbe (co.) cells these. Cells, ha ha. Sorry, I had to do it. If I could afford it I would buy one of these for many of my friends. I know I could use an extra brain cell from time to time. Besides, who knows what positive benefit would come from hugging our brain cell from time to time. Or talking to it like I do to my plants. If I tell it what a good brain cell it has been today, something good may come of it, right? If I think that way, I must be sure to never let Maggie see it. I wonder what petting or tickling it would do. I could pull all the yucky trying to stuff too much into the brain cell stuffing with silky milkweed down, coffee beans and glitter.

I thought of just making some for my friends. However, besides the copyright infringement, I am not too talented in the fine art of hand sewing. I suppose it wouldn't be a very good present for anyone to receive an extra brain cell for "the Holidays" if its stitches were loose and stuffing was hanging out. I think we all already have enough of those. Although ones made out of striped socks might be fun.

I tried to draw a polar bear in a snow storm for my avatar. I think I completely missed an entry for our latest snowstorm not counting last Saturday. On Saturday we were only to get 1" and then we were to have sunny skies all day. Well, not so at all, It started snowing in the morning and didn't stop all day long. So our shoveling is even further behind. Our neighbor was kind enough to snow blow our driveway during one of our big storms. I had spend over 4 hours shoveling. And was proceeding to shovel the 3 foot drift that the snow plow heaped on the end of our driveway around 4 PM when Carl was due home. The neighbor came home around then and offered to save my back a little and snow plow the rest. Hooray!  We've been toughing it out since then.  It's certain that we will have a white Christmas. If it miraculously melts, we will have flooding. It's great to have a white Christmas in our new house. We are going to have to shovel a dog walking area in our yard. Maggie has reached the point where the snow is to her chest. I am learning shoveling lesions. You should widen your driveway toward the entrance instead of making it a little wider than your car. I wasn't physically able on our super dooper storm. Now it's kinda too late. So it's 3 point turn time. Plus the neighbor across the street parks on the road exactly across from our  driveway. All in all the snow is very pretty.

Last week at work pulped me among other things. I am going to try to make some pretty paper out of myself, that or some kind of smoothie. That is what you do with pulp isn't it?

I was on melt down. All in all the instructors and students got what they needed. They hardly noticed the chaos they created by not cleaning up and having me direct their traffic all day (which was a last minute " you are doing this aren't you " thing). They are definitely going to have to do something else next year. The 3 courses finals in one day shuffle when I  noticed a  conlict for finals in another room and only had one day to "fix" it. Had me in a bawling heap. Well enough of that. I have other deep worries adding to the mix. I am optimistic, optimistic, optimistic. Whew! You can't achieve what you can't imagine. Then you have to believe that your request has been answered the solution is already on its way to you. So hard to get there sometimes. I already feel it for medical work on my TMJ. I know that's coming this year, I can feel it. I could feel the purchase of the house. These feelings don't incorporate other tricky details though. I am on the teetering edge of feeling a higher paying job this year. I feel it coming but no time frame really. I know feeling the emotion relating to the success is the way to receiving what you ask for. That feeling of belief is where I need to be on a few other very important issues. I keep thinking I would switch one of the above feelings out for a few other important ones. I must keep that the universal energy isn't limited and wants to provide all that we ask for. It responds to our thoughts as though all of them were requests. So each feeling that I have is returned to me but enhanced because the Universal energy is very generous with responding to our thoughts with energy. All of this thinking and believing was completely unattainable for me last week and perhaps for a few weeks before. Emotions, depression, and the feeling of hopelessness and being overwhelmed are super hard to flip. Plus they get enhanced until I can flip them. It may seem as though I am doing myself in by feeling this way, but it really works without fail when I can get to the positive asking and receiving cycle. Goals.

Well there you go, my three pence worth. If I haven't lost everyone to rolling your eyes at my ramblings and moving on to more important stuff. I'll go back to more conventional what's up with me journaling.

Morgan is coming for Christmas. I am really excited. I think the week will go super fast though, sigh. I will enjoy every minute of it. He hasn't seen the new house yet. It's only a two bedroom. The den can be set up for a room for Morgan if he ever wants to stay for extended times. There is always room for Morgan. It will be set up with an inflatable mattress while he is with us. His old mattress was uber yucky in my opinion. Our computer is in that room, which I was hoping that Morgan would like. Alas, our computer not only doesn't have internet right now. It also really really crashed. You turn it on and it crashes every time. Gads, I have no idea when we will be able to fix it. I really really really want Morgan to feel like this is his home too.

Ro and Charlie's (Morgan, Catherine, Pepper and the cats) weekend sounds like it was awesome. I wish I could have been there. I am learning how to bake and cook. I am still on basic cooking and baking. Maybe next year I will learn some super tasty celebration goodies. We need to learn to celebrate more.

I have to go. I kind of had a long lunch blogging this much. I have to try to use 27.7 hours vacation and personal holiday time before the end of the year or I will loose them. I think I am going to loose them though. I have too many 32 hour weeks coming up with legal holidays that I can't work for. If I take so much as a day off I am down to 32 hours even if I have vacation days lined up. My "new job" will be full time. Goals. I have a ton to be grateful for with the job that I currently have. Gratitude.

I am so grateful for my friends. Thank you for being there and forgiving me for my shortcomings. I really love you and want to be there when you all need anything. I really hate it when any of my friends are in need at the same time I am. That is so crappy. It makes my eyes have uncontrollable thunderstorms sometimes. Darn that unpredictable whether. Uncontrollable at times.

Well a great holiday to those who are able and hang tight for those for whom these are not easy times. A new year is on the way. The light will be increasing shortly. Thank the elements and cycles of the seasons.

We are experiencing the upper edge of the ice storm. I didn't go to work today. If it weren't for the large accumulation and a long driveway, it has been pretty spiffy.

Gorgeous I might Add. The flakes were huge for most of the snowy part. Wow I am talking past tense. I don't really know when this is going to end. Ice, snow, Ice, snow. I think we have had at least a foot. Started before we woke up. Doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon. I wish we had a snow blower.

Thor and I spent some time on our backs in the snow trying to catch snow flakes on our tongues. I found it was easier to catch them while I was standing up though.

Maggie loves the snow. She romps a lot. It really bothers her feet though. She licks them a lot and they get quite red. She was outside with her for hours today. She is a happy pup and will sleep really well tonight.

I have to go, I'm at the library. Have to share you know.

This weekend was wonderful.

Friday Thor went to his friends house. Carl and I got some personal time. He has been feeding me like a queen lately.

Saturday I had the house to myself. Thorin was his friend Collin's house. Carl went on a day trip with his friend Chris.  I had a lot of things planned that I didn't get around to doing. But I finished my book, took a nap, did dishes, walked the dog, finished decorating the Christmas tree, decorated an outside tree, listened to music, and did some dancing exercises.

Yesterday I caught up on some of the things that I had planned to do on Saturday. I took the bath that I really wanted to take on Saturday. Then I got a little overly motivated and made food, did dishes, changed sheets, coordinated outfits for the week, did laundry, picked up stuff around the house.  The only problem with Sunday night was that I couldn't mellow out. I even had a little Port, to no avail.

I also enjoyed the house very much. Its warm and yummy.

It is the first weekend in a long time that has really been rejuvenating.  I have had many good weekends that still left me wanting more rest.

So, this is my "hell week" at work. Today ran really smoothly. If this is what I can expect for the rest of the week it will be cake.

much love to everyone.

Thor had a snow day today. We had 6" by this morning. That on top of the snow and ice from Saturday. God is it beautiful though. I think we are supposed to get as much tonight... Well, I have to catch my ride back home. Good night, friends.

I can't wait until the Semester is over. Two more weeks to go. We are under a winter storm advisory 2-6 inches. We may go home a little early. I have a billion things to do before the semester ends. Many of which are presenting significant obstacles. No panic for me today. So here we are with a good day. Yippee! the chocolate fairy gave me a visit. I came back to my office and there was a whole pile of assorted mini Hershey bars. Then an instructor called and asked for a favor. She mentioned that she left the chocolate because she didn't want to add to my work load but she needed a favor. She is a sweetie, and all she needed was for me to put some papers on her cabinet. No sweat.

We had snow and ice on Saturday. We shoveled right away and then had more ice. Oops we didn't go out in time for the second shovel. Our yard and driveway are treacherous. I managed to shovel the pile of snow and ice that the snow plow left at the end of our driveway. We got to the sidewalk too. Alas we have no salt. What were we thinking? Anyhow we live on a dead end so I don't think anyone will fall and sue us before we get the salt.

Last night I got home late from work. Carl had dinner in the oven and was decorating the Christmas tree with Thorin. What a nice surprise, and boy was I hungry.

Hopefully I will have enough energy to vacuum when I get home. Usually I dust, Thor swiffers and Carl vacuums. Carl has been working overtime so I am going to try to get that done for him tonight. Between the dog and the tree our floor needs some serious attention.

I wish you all could see our back lot. I don't have a camera at the moment. I really love it though. It has some mature cedar trees, a fire circle, two wild flower gardens, that will need serious weeding come spring and a bit of lawn. The back yard is on quite a slope. I don't think I could even get up there without falling on my but at the moment. I have some chairs and left over birdhouses up there as well. We are going to try to buy a bat house for next year. The mosquito's were KILLER this Fall. Hey, does anyone know what you do for composting during the winter. I don't think I can dig mine out at the moment. We were shoveling stuff over the food so we didn't attract raccoons or worse.

Our town has a pay per garbage bag policy to encourage greener alternatives. So composting and recycling are big. They currently have burn barrels for paper waste. I heard that is bad for the ozone. I might try to find a way to recycle that somewhere locally. No way am I going to trek it all to my office to recycle.

Well, this turned out longer than I thought. I hope you all are having a jolly day. Mine isn't too bad. I am looking forward to going home. Thor is looking forward to sled riding at the neighbors house.