Year in Review

Well, I think it's definitely safe to say that I fell off the blogging wagon this year. There's no way to catch up on everything that happened in the last seven months, so I thought I'd try to give an update with the pics from my iphone. The one little problem with that is that 9 out of 10 pics on my iphone are of my dog. Yes, I am one of those people. I'll try to do my best with what I've got though.

Here goes:
In November I helped with a baby shower for my friend Caroline. We had it at Another Broken Egg. She had the sweetest little baby boy named Mac the first week of December.

This was part of the table decorations. I also managed to make my second successful Thanksgiving dinner. I was pretty proud of this. This time it was just myself and Stephen eating it though, so we'll definitely have to cut the recipes in half if we do it again next year. We threw away a ton of food.

In December, I got temporalily promoted at work, and things got super busy. Luckily, we only had to work a couple of weeks before getting a nice two weeks off (for me) and one week off (for Stephen). Ben came to visit for Christmas, and we went to Ruston for New Years.

Santa on the door knob didn't last very long. :)

January and February were a blur. My promotion became permanent, and with the added responsibility came a little added stress and time commitments. It's been great though really, and I am truly doing my dream job. I also got some help in the office in January. Our new Coordinator of Student Life, Cedric, started, and he has been amazing.

March and April started my super crazy time at work. There were more activities going on in those two months than I could possibly count. I did turn another year older in March, and Stephen did a phenomenal job on my birthday. :) I can't believe how old we are getting.

May was a wonderful month of rest. Stephen and I finally both had nights and weekends off for a whole month. It was glorious! We took a quick trip to Ruston for Mother's Day and surprised our Mom's. Other than that, we just had some nice, relaxing weekends. 

I can't believe it's almost June already. I will try to do better at blogging over the summer, although as you can see from our year in review, we are pretty boring. I will also try to take more pictures that we are actually in, less pictures of the dog, and less pictures of things sitting on my kitchen table. I really need to change out our placemats. They were in pictures throughout this whole post. :) Happy almost June! 

Residency Revealed

It is interview time at the hospital. All of the fourth year med students around the country are interviewing for their residencies. When they come for their interviews at UAB, they ask the current residents to attend dinners with the interviewees. It gives the interviewees a chance to ask questions about the program, the city, etc. Stephen and I have gone to a couple of these dinners in the last few weeks. Listening to the conversations and the questions that are asked makes me think about all of the common misconceptions that the rest of the world has about doctors.

Most people probably don't realize that fourth year med students have to go through a match system to find out where their residency will be. The best thing that I can compare it to is sorority recruitment. It is very similar minus all of the singing, cheering, and skits. :) Med students interview at the hospitals they are interested in, then they rank those hospitals in order of first to last choice of where they would like to end up. Then the hospitals rank all of the people who interviewed with them. A fancy computer system matches all of the hundreds of applicants with the hospitals' choices. Then, you find out where you live on match day. I can't speak for how all match days work, but Stephen's was nerve racking. All of the students names are pulled out of a bowl. When your name is called, you go up to the front of the room (in front of your med school class and all of their family and friends) and you open your envelope. Then you read out loud your name and where you have matched. That's how you find out where you are going to live for the next three + years of your life. Stephen's match was a good one, but Iowa was in the middle of his list. All that I could think the whole time I was waiting for his name to be called was how much I really really didn't want to live in Iowa. Luckily, we got Birmingham, which we love.

So, back to some of the common misconceptions. Everyone seems to think that doctors make a lot of money. What they don't realize is that it takes doctors a LONG time to get to a point in their career where they make a nice salary. Even then, doctors today don't make what the doctor's of yesterday made. I am so proud of Stephen and all that he has accomplished, but sometimes I don't like to tell people what he does for a living. A few weeks ago, someone at work made the comment, "You're married to a doctor. We all know you just work for fun." This was insulting on so many levels. The main one being that I have worked very hard to be where I am in MY career. It's not something I do for kicks and giggles. What that person did not realize is that he makes way more money than my husband, and working is not something that I could choose not to do right now. Residents make in the low $40,000 a year range. When you add a med school loan payment that is as much as our mortgage (not kidding), it takes two salaries to make it. I really don't know how people do it on one. I'm thankful that God has blessed us with two salaries to make ends meet each month with a little left over (sometimes).

Sometimes I wish that the world could hear the conversations at a residency interview dinner. Some of the questions they might hear asked would be 1) How often do you see your family (wife, kids)? 2) Are you able to afford the cost of living in this city? 3) How much is your mortgage?...Of course these questions are accompanied by lots of questions about the quality of the program, etc. etc. You get the point though, hopefully. So, next time you meet a doctor (especially a young one), congratulate them on all they have accomplished. Med school and residencies are not easy. At the same time, don't expect them or their wives to be wearing Versace or buying you expensive Christmas presents. :)

How 'Bout Them Dawgs???!!!

I am so proud to be a Louisiana Tech alum, and I'm proud of the way the Bulldawgs played against Fresno State. I wore my Louisiana Tech sweatshirt on Saturday when everyone else where I live was wearing Bama gear.

Speaking of that other game that everyone watched this weekend, I went into the weekend kind of on the Bama side. I have never been an LSU fan. I think that this mostly came from being on the sideline in Death Valley with the Louisiana Tech cheerleaders. Out of all of the places that we traveled, LSU had the meanest fans, and it was the only place where cops had to escort us in and out of the stadium. If you went to school at LSU, then by all means, you should be their biggest fan. I have no ill will against LSU fans. I am just not a fan myself.

I had an experience this weekend that made me realize that every team has those jerk fans. Stephen and I decided to order a Pizza Saturday night. We waited until after 7 p.m., thinking that Pizza Hut wouldn't be as busy after the game started. The parking lot was full, so Stephen dropped me off, and I went in to get the pizza (in my Louisiana Tech sweatshirt that was blue with red letters btw). This guy in an Alabama jersey said, "How dare you come in here wearing that?" I said, "It's a Louisiana Tech sweatshirt." He said, "It's a Louisiana shirt, why would you wear it." Now, at this point, I'm really hoping this guy didn't actually go to school at Alabama because he could not tell the difference between Louisiana Tech and LSU. I told him that I went to school at Louisiana Tech and that they were playing on ESPNU at 9:30, and I was supporting my alma mater. He replied, "Of course they're playing on that channel, all of the good teams play on the good channels." This guy was seriously an ass. Then he told me that he had money on Bama winning the game.

We went home, and I honestly played words with friends through most of the LSU/Bama game while we waited on the Tech game to come on. I have to say though that I got great satisfaction out of knowing that the Bama fan from Pizza Hut lost money when they lost. :)

Team Singing Fight Song after win at Fresno
I am so proud of Tech's team. This clip made me proud. I always made the cheerleaders and Regal Blues learn the words to the Fight Song each year. I'm glad that the football coaches do the same. :) Go Dawgs!!!

Internal GPS Needed

I desperately need someone to invent an internal GPS. You know, something that could be implanted into my body and a little voice would whisper in my ear whether or not I'm going in the right direction. It would also yell "STOP" if I start to go the wrong way. I'm sure this probably already exists somewhere in the spy world. If it does, I need one. Anyone who knows me knows that I have the worst sense of direction. It runs on my Dad's side of the family. You may think that's impossible, but it really does. My brother once drove the wrong direction on the interstate and didn't notice until he crossed the border of the wrong state. I would probably do the same thing if I traveled by myself more often. I go the wrong way even when I use the GPS in the car. I can't always tell where it's telling me to turn when it says to turn now. I've tried to use my phone GPS when walking. I've had the little blue dot right on the place I was trying to go and still not seen the place. This bad sense of direction is a family curse.

Today my bad sense of direction kicked in when I had to go downtown to UAB to go to the eye doctor. One perk of Stephen working at the hospital is the pretty great health insurance we have. The one bad thing is that you pretty much have to go to UAB to make that health insurance worthwhile. I asked Stephen last night how to get to where I needed to go today, and he gave me pretty decent directions. The problem is that UAB covers 83 city blocks (according to wikipedia) and the hospital is about half of UAB. It's huge! So, I drove right past the building that I needed to go to this morning. I made the block and looked for the sign that said Callahan eye hospital patient parking, and I turned in. I thought it was a little weird that you had to press a little button instead of pulling a ticket. A lady asked me who my appointment was with. When I told her, she told me that I was at the wrong lot, and I needed to back up and pull in the lot next door. Well of course, there was a car behind me. I had to push the button again to tell the lady that there was a car behind me and I couldn't back up. She got frustrated and said she would let me through but I was not to park, I was to go right out of the exit on the other side. I did as she said, made the block again, and finally got to the right parking garage (on the third try).

I was once again directionally challenged after my appointment. Since they dilated my eyes, and I couldn't drive for a while, I decided to walk to the building Stephen works in and have lunch with him. Well, I got really lost on foot. In my defense, I kind of couldn't see anything because my eyes were dilated and it was really bright outside. I had to ask two people for directions. I finally found the main hospital building. Luckily my sweet husband (knowing how bad my problem is) took pity on me and walked me back to the eye hospital and my car after we had lunch. :)

The most fun part of this whole adventure was that they didn't have trial contacts in my prescription, so I get to go back next week. Hopefully, I will do better the second time. :) If anyone hears of the invention of an internal GPS, send one my way!

I made it!

I made it through Orientation Week, Pre-Recruitment/ Go Greek Activities, Sorority Recruitment, Fraternity Recruitment, and the Student Government Retreat. There were no major catastrophies, and I learned how to do the wobble. For those of you who are unaware of what the wobble is, it's a popular dance/song that is played at least twice any time we have an event with music. After a month of doing nothing but work, I am looking forward to a weekend off to spend with my wonderful husband. :) Things can finally get back to normal for a while. :)

As busy and crazy as the last month was, I have to say that I work with some pretty darn amazing students. They were a pleasure to spend time with, and I couldn't be prouder of all that they accomplished.



My beautiful Panhellenic girls before the Preference parties.




SGA Executive Cabinet at their retreat.



So, I Used to Be a Singer???

I commute an hour one way to work each day and an hour back, and the radio has gotten kind of old lately. I recently pulled out some of my OLD worship cds from back in the old junior high/ high school days. The worship music has been a refreshing addition to my commute, and I think it is definitely good for my soul. It has gotten me thinking about the last time I probably listened to these cds.

When I was in 7th-9th grade, I was in a singing group called "Forever 4 Jesus." I bet you can't guess how many of us there were in the group. If you said four, you are correct. We got a new youth pastor at our church the summer before 7th grade. He traveled across North Louisiana and South Arkansas almost every weekend speaking at youth rallies. One day he got some of the girls from our youth group together and asked if we wanted to put together something to sing at one of the rallies. That was the start of Forever 4 Jesus.

We started putting together a collection of soundtrack tapes (yes tapes), and practicing a couple of times a week. For a couple of years there, we were singing at least once a month in our church and a couple of weekends a month at youth rallies. We even entered the Gospel Festival in Minden, La. and came in first place in our division and second place overall. We got a trophy that we kept in the choir director's office at church. It was a really fun experience, and I have such wonderful memories of the three other girls in that singing group.

It's really funny for me to think about it now. I don't consider myself a singer by any means. I sing in the car, and that's about it. When I sing in the car, and Stephen is in the car with me, he usually makes fun of me. I can remember singing in the shower when I was younger, and my family would bang on the door and tell me to be quiet. I'm kind of thinking now that people were just trying to be nice to me by letting me be in a singing group. :) Nonetheless, I am really enjoying my old worship cds.

Too Short

Our weekend was too short but oh so nice! Stephen and I had a date night Friday. We went to eat at Zea Rotisserie at one of our favorite weekend night spots, Brookwood Village. Brookwood has live music outside every Friday and Saturday night. After we ate, we sat on a bench outside for a while and listened to the music. Brookwood is actually a mall, but there's a really nice area outside of it with shops and restaurants. Our favorite Italian restaurant, Brio, is there, as well as our favorite yogurt place, YOLO.

Zea is a really great place to eat too! We took Stephen's parents there last time they were in town, and they loved it.

Saturday morning, my friend Ellen and I (and her toy poodle, Buddy) went downtown to the Pepper Place market. I had never even heard of this place until Ellen asked if I wanted to go with her. It is amazing. It's an old Dr. Pepper factory that has been turned into an indoor/outdoor Farmer's market. There were also some crafts there too. I picked up some amazing jalapeno cheddar bread that Stephen has devoured and some fresh tomatoes. Stephen and I are going to go back next Saturday so that he can see it too. They have everything from baked goods and veggies to homemade icecream. There was also live music and cooking demonstrations. It is a really cool place, and I can't wait to go back!

We also cooked a LOT this weekend, which was good because the weekend is normally the time when we are the worst about eating out. We had sandwiches on the phenomenal jalapeno cheese bread, we grilled hamburgers, Stephen made pancakes, and last night we made a really good zuchini pasta bake. I'll have to post the recipe for that some time. It was excellent! There are only a handful of weekends left before life becomes crazy again, and I intend to enjoy every single minute of them! I hope everyone out there in the blog world had a great weekend too!