Christmas Dinner

Due to the terrible weather on December 23rd, Julie and I have been stranded in Nashville. Thankfully, every cloud has its silver lining (and I don't just mean the 50° weather), as we have been baking Christmas cookies and got to try out a new recipe for our Christmas Dinner. Julie found a recipe online for Sweet Potato Cannelloni, which was very tasty and is pictured below. If you get the urge to try this, ask me for some rather necessary modifications.

Additionally, we made sweet potato biscuits, a ham, and a baked mushroom and asparagus dish. Here is how the meal as a whole turned out:

Computer

This is Julie's old computer:


This is Julie's old computer on David:


Any Questions?

Thanksgiving Dinner

It was George Washington who started the ball rolling on Thanksgiving as an eventual national holiday. It has been several minutes since I last read his proclamation, so the details are a little fuzzy, but I think he said something to the effect of: "Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the copious preparation and consumption of the bountiful provisions of the harvest provided by the Almighty God." Even though I just made the last part of that up, it is an accurate description of what happened.

In any event, my parents were visiting for a couple of days, so all four of us did some cooking for dinner, turning our nicely set table:

into an ephemeral repository of food:


In the above picture, you can see a Butternut Squash and Apple Soup served with some croutons.

The next picture shows the bulk of our food waiting to be served, including Twice Baked Potatoes; Kale, Spinach, and Collard Greens with Garlic; Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Bacon; Sweet Potato Biscuits; Sausage, Mushroom, Corn Bread, and Chestnut Dressing, and of course a turkey:

I think it is cool that you can see the steam coming off the Brussels Sprouts in that picture... but then again, I am a dork. Your mileage may vary.

Finally, for dessert we had some Berry Trifle, although we used Cool Whip instead of whipped cream and Mascarpone:

Downstair Tour, again

Since we have most of the furniture and decorative items properly arranged on our first floor, we thought we should re-do the tour video. It goes by pretty fast because I wanted it to be only two minutes long.

The only significant changes we expect to our downstairs are the purchase of a new trash can and we might get another one of those thingies that the mugs are on to balance out the dining room (and make the mugs less crowded, and have room to display something else). Because the video goes by fast, you don't really get to see an overall view of half of our kitchen, so here is a picture of that:

You can expect a tour of our upstairs sometime later.

Scrubs: the good, the bad, and the ugly

With only 3 weeks left of my 4 month long stint of wearing scrubs 6 days a week, I figured I should write a post about it as therapy to get me through the final stretch.

The ugly

I think this is obvious. Pretty much everyone has seen scrubs, so you know how ugly they are. They are one color; ours happen to be a pale blue and are so blah. They also have either VUH or VCH with a year stamped on the butt, now that is flattering.

The bad

They do not fit. Surprisingly, Vanderbilt does not offer a petite size, but they did get a special set for the 6'9" resident, so unfair. When I wear scrubs, I have to tie them way up high, but since I put a badge and pager on them, they naturally fall down through out the day until they finally arrive at my hips. This means that I spend most of the day tripping over my scrubs that make their way under my shoes. Not only are they really long, but the smalls are made for some very large people, because I think three of me could fit inside. The shirt is also huge, it is constantly slipping off my shoulders and they of course have a huge V neck, luckily we are allowed to wear tank tops underneath them.

The good

It took me awhile, but I was finally able to think of some good things about scrubs, once I got over their imperfections. First of all, there is no wrong side since the inside looks just like the outside. This means when you fold your clothes and when you get dressed in the dark in the morning, you don't have to worry about orientation and you don't have to try to pick out an outfit to wear in the morning and try to match clothes, because it has already been decided for you. Also, if they ever get really bloody or covered with something else (you can use your imagination for that one), then the hospital will wash them and I don't have to. Finally, as ugly as they are, we all looked hideous in them and it is nice knowing that you are not the only one stuck wearing them and everyone looks bad in them.

Just three weeks left.

Black Box

A couple of weekends ago we finally got a freezer. We figured black was the way to go since it is in the garage.

Last weekend we went to Costco and bought stuff to put in our black box. So now if you come visit you have your choice of sausage, beef, pork, chicken, and healthy choice meals. There are also sweet potato fries, dumplings, giant thing of parm, sausage sub, and a lasagna in it, but there is still plenty of room for more stuff.

Weeds

So here are a couple of pictures of the weeds I have all over my backyard. If you know what it is and/or what I can do about it, please let me know.

House continued

Here is the outside of the house. It looks a lot better with its columns, or at least we think so.

Here is our new welcome mat. All of the mats at the store that were for outdoor use were pretty tacky and since David just loves dogs, we went with this one. Plus it is always better to be cheesy than tacky, unless you are a lymph node.

Here is our new refrigerator. We just love Sears outlet since we were able to get this for 50% off because it has some scratches that are on the side. You cannot see them though because of the wall and the cabinet.

And here is the inside of our refrigerator. I managed to take the picture without the alarm going off, but I could not get both doors to stay open. The freezer is already full of meat.

And finally here is our laundry room with our new washer and dryer from costco.

House

I know everyone has been greatly anticipating this post and the suspense has probably been a bit too much. Since David is sleeping and I really have no desire to work on autopsy reports right now, I decided I would try to edit the videos and get them up on the blog. I quickly figured out why David has not done it yet. Somehow the video settings on the camera got changed between the first one and the second one, so the second and third videos are a bit fast. The last two are the upstairs in case that is not obvious and includes our master, bonus room, two other bedrooms, guest bath, and laundry room. We will probably redo the upstairs at some point, but should probably wait til Freddy gets here, because the upstairs will not be complete without him.

Church

Today in church, the one we were visiting as we still have not chosen one yet, the pastor was speaking on Genesis 1:1. He was talking about how he thought it was most memorized verse and he followed up with saying that he thought it was known by more people than even Genesis 3:16, of course he meant John 3:16, but David and I were curious so we looked it up. Here is what Genesis 3:16 says:
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

New address

We finally get our house on Friday. For those who don't want to dig around in our old posts to find it, our new address is:
8837 Cressent Glen Court
Antioch, TN 37013
In case you are wanting to send anything to us before December and you desire to make it formal, then my name goes first since I have a doctorate. I am not sure what happens after David gets his since one of them is an MD and the other is a PhD. I will have to look into that.

In other news, on the way to the hospital everyday, I pass a storage place that has Jeremiah 23:24 on its sign. I found it amusing.

Feel that . . . that little bump, bump, bump

I just thought I would inform everyone that I go over 11 speed bumps in the parking garage in the morning and I think it is 12 when I leave. If you include the two at our apartment that makes it about 27 speed bumps each day which is not including all of the bumps in the road. When we get our house, I will be able to cut out 4 bumps in my day, woohoo.

Also, in case you are wondering subject is from a movie. If you can name what movie it is from, then David will make you pancakes when you come visit us. If you can't name the movie, then David will probably make you pancakes anyways, so it is a win-win for you because 1) you have not seen the chick flick or have managed to suppress memories of that movie out of your mind and 2) you get pancakes. Although, I am not a pancake person so I would not consider it a win-win.

David's Desk

As some of you may already know, David's huge metal desk did not make the cut and was kicked out of the pod, so we needed to find a replacement. This weekend we went and signed up for a costco membership because that is where we are thinking about getting our washer and dryer. While we were wandering around the store in awe of all of the bulk stuff, we saw a desk that seemed perfect for David except for the fact that it was made of particle board. When we got home, I looked it up on the internet and found out that the store price was $250 less than their online price. So today we went back and got David his desk. It is a U or V shaped desk depending on how he sets it up, which is the shape that he has always wanted. We are slightly afraid that once it is assembled, a mere glance from David will cause it to fall apart since it is made of particle board. One problem was getting the desk upstairs. They are very large and heavy boxes, so we had to make two trips to Costco to get the boxes, since only one box would fit in my little ford focus at a time. We then had to open the boxes and take all of the stuff out of the boxes in order to get it up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. Below is a picture of David putting all of the stuff back in the box.

The desk has 53 particle board pieces and 415 fasteners which are pictured below.

Five Ingredient Cooking

If I were ever to make a five ingredient cookbook, this beef curry would be in it: beef, red curry paste, coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves, and bamboo shoots. I guess the rice it is served with would be six, but whatever. The vegetables we had with it were a few more than five ingredients: potatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, yogurt, jalapenos, corn starch, chili powder, cumin, coriander, turmeric, curry powder (and fiber supplement - because Weight Watchers thinks it will help me lose weight!). I think the thing I am looking forward to most about moving in to our house is having access to all of our cookbooks again. Although the ironing board and my drill are pretty high on that list, too.

Friendly Chicken

My latest cooking experiment was an attempt to create Costco's Mediterranean Stuffed Chicken. It is always difficult to make a dish that you have not eaten and for which you don't have a recipe. Also, I am not very good at stuffing chicken. Given the picture at Costco's website, I have a feeling they grind and then compress the chicken meat. How else could you get such perfect looking stuffed chicken breast? Anyway, since we already had pine nuts, the bacon was on sale, and our grocery store has a really cheap generic gorgonzola, the price was about 1/8 of Costco's price. Not bad!

Fiery Beef and Even More Fiery Stuffed Chillies

This is Fiery Beef and stuffed pasilla peppers. The fiery beef is in a yogurt sauce that is flavored with chili powder and garam masala. Yogurt sauces are tricky for me, because if you don't put in enough corn starch, it separates, but if you put too much in, it get too gummy and nasty. The pasillas are stuffed with potatoes, cream cheese, and cheddar. The recipe recommended using anchos, but the store didn't have any of those. Either pasillas are a lot spicier than anchos, or the person who originally designed the recipe is insane. But, on the plus side, potatoes with cream cheese are fantastic - I might try substituting some of the sour cream in Party Potatoes with cream cheese some time.

We tried out our fifth church this weekend, and are starting to get frustrated by the frequency with which pastors take trips during the summer. Also, the larger churches down here have property that would rightly be called a "complex." The second church we went to in Nashville even had a barn. Also, they have their exits on fairly busy roads, so there are police officers who help direct traffic in and out of the churches when services let out. It's Crazy!

Julie and David's Continuing Diaspora

We recently had our "selections audit" in which we made sure that everything they did with our house was correct (and, for the most part, it was). We also learned that we will almost certainly be able to move in within 5 weeks. Yay!

So here are some things you may not yet know about our house (displayed in the pictures below):
1. We have two air conditioners - one for the upstairs and one for the downstairs (because it gets HOT in Nashville)
2. We have a flat electric stove - no more cleaning those annoying drip pans!
3. We have a deep sink - "My what a deep sink you have, grandmother" "The better to clean you with, my dishes"
4. We do have some hardwood floor - a whopping 9ish square feet of it
5. Our attic is well insulated
6. The government requires that our builder install a steel pole (in the spot marked by a box) so that if we run our car into the ventilation, our car gets damaged instead of the ventilation.

Chocolate cyst

Any males reading this may want to just skip to the end.

Today we are actually going to buy curtains. Last weekend we bought curtain rods, finials, and holdbacks. We went for walnut or at least that is what it said. David will have to do a little sawing to get them to the right length. The curtains we are going with are from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, which is going to quickly deplete my pile of 20% off coupons. For those who may not have known, Bed, Bath, and Beyond will take expired coupons and will let you use more than one at a time, which is very good for us. Here is a link:
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=115794
We are going with chocolate for the windows in the great room and sage for the sliding glass door. The sliding glass door is the only one that is getting holdbacks. Finding curtains was actually a pain because I had decided on chocolate and there are a lot of really bad chocolates out there some have a lot of gold and others a lot of red. A lot of curtains just seemed very flimsy and did not seem like they would actually keep light out.

As far as what I am doing in Pathology, I am currently on microbiology, so I have to do a couple of case presentations a week and just find out what goes on in the lab. All in all, it is not too bad and allows me plenty of time to look at the weekly unknown slides. On the micro service, it is just me and another first year as far as residents go. We also have one student for the whole month and each week we also get another student. It has been fun trying to figure out different things to teach them, especially since we do not really know anything. So far we have been paged three times on the service, most people go the entire month without getting a page. It made us feel special, although they were pretty unnecessary pages. I also have spent almost $1000 in books, that is how much our yearly book fund is. For those interested, the books I bought are:
1. Histology for Pathologists by Mills
2. Practical Dermatopathology by Rapini
3. Henry's Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods
4. Sternberg's Surgical Pathology (still don't have this, b/c it is being released in Aug.)

For the unknowns, they give us about 10 slides and we have to figure out what is going wrong. Thankfully, at this point all they really expect from us is that we can describe what we see on the slide, although all of us first years are still trying to figure out the vocabulary. For instance, if we see something pink, the proper term is to describe it as eosinophilic. That is one that I think that most of us knew before we started though.

As far as the house, I will refer to David on that one. I have pictures that he took on the last walk through, but I don't know why he took pictures of some of the stuff, so I will let him post on that. By the way, the title was just my attempt to unite the two topics.

Our House, Some Food, and Southern Living

First is an update on our house. I went in and measured all of our windows so that we can buy drapes (for downstairs) and blinds (for upstairs). Since almost everyone who reads this blog already owns a house, you will all I'm sure be unsurprised to learn that Julie and I were rather unpleasantly shocked at the exorbitant costs involved. But we have a huge stack of 20% off any item coupons for BedBathAndBeyond coupons, so that should help. In any event, the inside is making progress: we now have a sink! I have absolutely no clue what is going to take them a month left to do. I think I could have the inside ready n a month. Also, it's hard to see from this picture, but our property has been "leveled," although "smoothed" would be more accurate seeing as how our back yard is a hill.



We haven't been making much in the way of interesting food lately, because they keep Julie pretty busy with her residency (and slowly accumulating stuff for our impending move into our first house is taking the rest of her time), and I also have little time. So, our food picture of the day (month?) is of Marcie's mini meatloaves with cheesy mashed potatoes and garlicky broccoli. Mashed potatoes made me realize how difficult life can be without a Kitchenaid mixer. They were quite lumpy.



Finally: things are different in the South. Specifically, things are slower. On the 4th of July we feebly attempted to attend a Nashville Sounds (minor league baseball (Triple-A affiliate of the Brewers)) game with Julie's parents, but the rain won and the game was canceled. Anyway, that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that I had to call in order to get our tickets (they can be gotten online, but things ended up being complicated, so I had to call). When you call someone in the North, they tell you your menu options in 20 seconds flat - maybe 30 seconds if they are making a conscious effort to be overtly polite. In the South, on the other hand, you don't even start hearing your options until thirty seconds into the call (I timed it) and then it was another thirty seconds before I heard what I wanted. It's on of those things that will take a little getting used to.

Spicy Meatballs

Since it has been a while since we made a new recipe, we thought we should celebrate the occasion by posting about it. This is spicy meatballs and mixed fresh vegetables in a spicy coconut milk sauce. At the grocery store we went to, they only had green chillies (jalapeno, serrano, and finger), but no red chillies, which is what we really wanted for both of these dishes.

The grocery shopping in Nashville has been mixed. We haven't found an Asian grocer so far, but of course we haven't looked too hard either. The wide selection of mainstream grocers (Kroger, Walmart, Publix, Harris Teeter, Whole Foods) means that we have been able to find some hard to find ingredients (e.g., Greek Yogurt, curry pastes, fusilli pasta, lots of chillies) and have seen some really strange ingredients (e.g., tortillas made out of bean sprouts, buckwheat pasta). But, we are still having difficulty finding things like bulk spices.

House Update and More!

Here is an updated photo of our house. Supposedly the 60 day notice was sent this week, although it is probably in Illinois now or in route back to Nashville. He said that it will go on lockdown this week since he is hoping the cabinets will be installed at the end of the week. Also, we got our ceiling fans today and they should go in at the end of this week or beginning of next. The drywall is currently up. In case you are wondering, we asked about the columns that go in front and they are one of the last things to go in because it is easier to get stuff in and out of the house without them. Also, they are not support columns. The bricks sitting in the front yard are for the columns. There was not a lot to take a picture of inside since there were a whole bunch of shirtless guys on stilts doing drywall, which we figured nobody really wanted to see a picture of.

In other news, we got our emissions tests done today. My car passed and David's car failed. He had to go buy a new gas cap which apparently is common for cars more than 4-5 years old and then his car passed. The O'Reilly store down the street from the emissions place makes a lot of money off of such things.

Also, I am now certified to run a code and I am recertified for CPR, so if you are in need of either of those well then call 911.

In case you were wondering, it is very hot here.

Tour of Our Apartment

In Theory

So we paid some guys to help us move our stuff into the pod. There were three of them; two looked like college guys doing this for the summer, and the third was an older dude who probably did this kind of thing full time. When they got here, we told them that it was going to be a tight squeeze fitting everything in, so they should probably do it as Julie and I had planned - to which the older guy responded "that's a good plan in theory" and proceeded to ignore it. After they got a bunch of stuff in his way, it became apparent that his strategy was to put as much stuff as possible on top of our couch and completely crush it. So, I made them re-do it the way we wanted, and despite the old dude's continual protestations about "theory," our plan worked. In order to assist in the process of getting furniture out the door, we did away with the door.




I think the concept of "theory" has a bad rap because most people don't use them and most people who do use them don't understand them (thereby being unable to avoid the tendency to apply them in situations in which they are not applicable). But those of us who understand the theories that we use regularly know to estimate the inherent error in applying a given theory to the real world and can therefore accommodate. In short, our beautiful plan worked.

And then once all the furniture was in, they started loading boxes. Once again, their plan seemed to be to put as much weight as possible on our sofa cushions (despite the fact that they knew that we didn't want that), so I had to ask them to leave. All in all, I am not taken with the idea of using movers. It is much better to have a few strong friends and/or family and do it yourself. That way you won't get as much extremely dirty sweat on all of your upholstery. After they left, we unloaded all the boxes they put in and loaded all the boxes ourself. As you can see, it worked just fine.



In case you have never seen a pod being delivered or removed, I have included a picture of our pod hanging in midair so you can see how it works. The final picture is of the truck going away. I took it through a screen because I thought that would turn out better than taking it through the glass (the screen is only on the bottom half of the window). Needless to say, there is some cleaning left to be done.

Packing a POD

We got our pod today from PODS, and their mechanism for delivering it is tres funky, so when they take it back, we will take some pictures so you can see all of our furniture and boxes swaying in the air suspended by some chains. Anyway, since we have a lot of stuff, and because we are nerds, we decided that it would be prudent to measure the pod and make a precise plan for how everything is going to go inside. The pod we got has a useable interior space that is 83 inches wide, 185 inches long, and about 90 inches tall. There are 4x4's on the walls, so the actual size is a bit bigger, and we'll be able to cram things like table tops and mirrors and whatnot between the 4x4's.

Anyway, I used Geometer's Sketchpad to make a scale model of the pod and everything that we have to put inside it. The picture below was our first attempt. Everything fits. Yay?



Not quite. See, we also have a lot of boxes (below) and then there are things like a coffee table, a bunch of chairs, a few lamps, a papasan, a small filing cabinet, etc etc etc. So, at this point we weren't feeling too good about our chances.



But not to fear. Upon taking apart our bed, we made a new estimate for the "mattresses and stuff" and came up with this significantly improved design. I am going to print it so the moving guys know what to do. They are going to think we are losers, but at least all of our stuff will fit!

House: Mechanical Walkthrough

For all of you who are curious about our most recent trip to Nashville to do the first walkthrough of our home, here are some pictures. First is the forest of studs that is our second floor. I was standing in the bonus room looking at the back of the house when I took this picture, so you are seeing bedroom #2, the laundry room, and the second bathroom. Pretty nifty, huh?


Since none of the other pictures from the inside are much more interesting, I'll spare you from seeing them. Onto the outside of the house! In case you've had trouble visualizing what it will look like, this will hopefully help a little. The reason the pink wrapping looks different in the two pictures is that the wrapping company screwed up and used the wrong wrapping, so they went through and re-wrapped the whole thing. So, we got a double-wrapped house. I'm hoping that means we'll have better protection against humidity.



And finally, for those of you who are planning on visiting, at least we have a bathroom for you to use:

Day 6: Ketchikan

On Day 6, we arrived for a short day in Ketchikan. This little city is known for totem poles and apparently very large stuffed animals. Below is David with a whale, we also have him with a moose, polar bear, and some other stuff that is stuffed. We wandered around the little city for about an hour, but unfortunately there was not much to see. If we came a couple of weeks later, then we would have been able to the massive number of salmon that invade the city. Sadly, the creek was empty though. Besides salmon, Ketchikan is also known for rain. It receives around 162 inches of precipitation each year. We did not get any rain when we were there.

Below is one of the three totem poles in the city. I think it was called the chief pole.

We then went ziplining walked across skybridges in the Tongass National Forest. It was fun, but a little scary I have to admit. It actually goes by so quickly that you really do not have a lot of time to look around. I probably would not do this one again unless I knew it went further into the forest because it really did not cover much area. Also, I was a little on the short side for the course. I kept having to stand on my tiptoes to have them hook me up to the zipline. There were a total of 8 ziplines with the longest being 850 feet and 3 skybridges. The highest we were was 135 feet off the ground. Make sure you click on the picture of me ziplining; otherwise, you can barely tell it is me.

On the second to last zipline, a woman from the group got stuck in the middle of the zipline. I think she must have been braking before they told her to. We got stuck on one of the canopies for about half an hour because they kept having to get more employees to come get her down. She was stuck on the fastest one, so it the workers were getting tired going backwards on it. They eventually had to have her rappel down and walk back. We were unable to see this rescue because we were two platforms away. While we were waiting, we were able to see an bald eagle which completed our list of wildlife that we were wanting to see.

After all of that, they give you a medal and hot cocoa and cookies.

After we got back on the ship, we ate of course. In case you are wondering we are going to post a separate post on food and by we, I mean David. We also went to the Motor City musical show in the Princess Theater. After seeing this, we were happy we had not gone to any of their other musicals and also happy that they did not have enough cast members to go over an hour. There was just something wrong about a bunch of white people singing motown hits.