Christmas, Part One

Which I have detailed on our other blog: here.

And today, more puppies! Photos here:

Puppies

Christmas Baking

Another day off, so I set to work doing some Christmas baking. I always make the same three cookies.

Oatmeal coconut crisps :

Molasses sugar cookies:

Russian tea cakes:

This year I also tried a new one, peanut butter filled chocolcate cookies:

I ended up with 10 dozen cookies, now all packaged up to give as gifts.

I can't believe it is only a week until Christmas. The house is all festive, the gifts are all wrapped. It's really my favorite time of year. Here's a picture of our tree, with me trying to be artsy:

And completely random and unrelated, I saw this bird outside our house today. Anyone know what kind it is?

Progress

Work is keeping me busy these days... as are preparations for the holidays. We have family coming for various lengths of stay from the 24th through the 15th of January. And with the rest of the family spread across the US and Europe, we've been busy packing up gifts for shipping. But I'm still managing to make progress with my various projects.

Knitting--the sock is done. Unfortunately, the sock is destined for Austria and in order to ensure the rest of the gifts arrived in time, the package had to go off without the sock. But I sent pictures, and in a few weeks, I'll send of the completed pair. I love knitting socks. I think I may knit socks exclusively for awhile. They are the perfect project for me--take only a week, can have some fabulously intricate designs and are probably the most practical thing I could knit. You may all be getting socks for Christmas next year. Just fair warning. Here are some photos of the sock in progress, I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of the final project yet.

Running--I ran 5 miles today. Now those of you who run marathons, etc. may scoff at my 5 miles (of course I know you would never scoff to my face, you are all too nice) keep in mind, I am someone who could barely run 3 miles when I was in the best shape of my life. And since I haven't been a collegiate athlete for about 10 years now, the fact that I've finally gotten back into shape is a great accomplishment for me. I've even lost weight... despite complete failure in my attempts to eat less. It does seem I have lost a disproportionate amount of weight from the bust area while my hips have only gotten a bit smaller (so unfair!) I feel better, and even have muscle definition again. Sorry no pictures here.

And cooking, cooking makes me happy. I love how my cooking skills have progressed from the pasta and frozen Costco chicken breasts of my post-college years. In the last week I have discovered how easy it is to cook (American versions of) Chinese food at home. I found a great recipe for sweet and sour chicken, and another for General Tso's chicken. Although as my cooking skills continue to improve, Adam points out that I'm less likely to get him to take me out to dinner, because he likes my cooking. Isn't he sweet? If I could figure out how to take pictures of food and have them look like something people would like to eat, I'd put them here.

Tonight I'm making mac and cheese. I use a different recipe every time. Right now it smells fabulous. I hope it tastes as good as it smells...

Making the Most of the Weekend

When you only get one full day off a week, you have to find ways to make the most of all the other time you get off. Like weekends. On weekends when we aren't on-call, the interns get the day off. So I go in in the morning, see all the patients, write all the daily notes, and then sign out to the overnight intern and head home. For most of this month, I haven't been getting out until 2 or 3 pm because we have had a ridiculous number of patients on our service. We still have quite a few, but they have all been here so long that nothing is going on with any of them. Thus today I was out of there by 11:30 am. Which left me the rest of the day to try to make a dent in my never-ending "to do" list.


I wrapped presents. Yes, we are already done with our Christmas shopping. It always an amazon.com Christmas here in the Tylee-Silberfein household. I hate malls. So now we (and by we, I mean me since I love wrapping gifts and Adam doesn't) are wrapping everything in preparation in shipping all the gifts off to their various locations.



Knitting! I had this brilliant idea to make socks for one of my gift recipients. However, I made this decision last week, I have never made socks before, and I chose some impossibly difficult Austrian cable-knit pattern. Needless to say, this gift recipient will be getting an "IOU" for the socks. Because that inch pictured there? Took me the majority of the Dallas-Pittsburgh football game to finish.


The other thing I did today is a secret if you are Kat, Tom or Bear (in the off chance that he has learned to use the internet before 6 months of age). If you are not one of those people, you can click here. If you are one of those people, you can click there too, but you'll ruin the surprise.


And I made dinner. Yes Mom, those are brussel sprouts. They actually taste kind of ok. The whole dinner was something of a disappointment (goat cheese and sun-dried tomato quiche, which just ended up kind of mushy and not terribly satisfying). The brussel sprouts were ok though. I'm willing to add them to my vegetable rotation.


Tomorrow it's back to work. Only 3 days left of this rotation. Next month won't be any better, but it's my last in-patient ward month (I have one ICU month left, but I actually enjoy the ICU) which is a glorious thought that will carry me through the next 4 weeks. I'm trying to convince Adam to go get our Christmas tree this Wednesday, but I'm not sure I've convinced him yet. I love Christmas.

NaBloPoMo Day 30--Done

Sunday on-call at the VA is usually a pretty quiet day. They don't have a real ER there, so not a lot of sick people show up. There are no clinics on the weekends, so docs can't send their patients to the hospital, and there are no weekend procedures, so the orthopedic surgeons can't dump their patients on our service ("yeah, I know he's got a broken hip, but I think he'd be better served on medicine." "what are his medical problems?" "he's 85, i'm sure he's got something").


Today was no exception. I actually got to leave work at 6 pm, since we don't stay overnight when we're on call at the VA. It was nice to have time to catch up on the boring but necessary aspects of life. Like laundry. But I also had time to catch up on my food blogs, bookmarking all the recipes I want to make in the coming weeks. And we finished our Christmas shopping last night (thank you Amazon!) so I pulled out all the wrapping paper and gift tags so I can start putting together the packages to send off to our various relatives.


I feel like it has been a ridiculously long time since I had a day off (it was Tuesday...). And you my dear readers have had a ridiculously long time without an interesting post about anything. We're both in luck. Wednesday, I get the day off. Finally. And today is the last day of nablopomo. I'll probably disappear for awhile, it's hard to post regularly when I'm on the wards, mostly because not a lot happens in my non-hospital life. So you all have a little break to look forward to. Thanks for putting up with this. I think I will not do it next year.

NaBloPoMo Day 29--Almost there!

It is a good thing this whole post everyday thing is almost over, because I am completely out of anything to say. So I give you another photo from the Tracy 1970's collection (except this might be Kate, I'm not sure...):
Nice hair Dad!

NaBloPoMo Day 28--Post-Thanksgiving Turkey Coma

I have nothing to say, but as there are only 2 days of this nablopononsense left, I must eke out something for your reading pleasure. So I leave you with this:

I had some crazy hair back in the day!

NaBloPoMo Day 27--Thanksgiving

After washing what seems like every dish in our house, twice, my hands feel like prunes. But for our first go at Thanksgiving, I think Adam and I did ok. Nothing turned out spectacularly but neither of us have any special family recipes to start from, so this was a Thanksgiving from scratch (except for the Silberfein apple pie, Adam is always very successful with that one). I tried to document the day through photos, but the lighting in our place is lousy, I hate using the flash on my camera, and without image stabilization... well, you end up with a lot of blurry food photos.

Adam was in charge of the turkey. Using his mom's patented self-basting technique, we ended up with this: Yes, it looks like it landed flat on it's back after falling from a great height, or perhaps someone who spent too long tanning on one side (which effectively it did, since we cooked it most of the time breast side down), but since we carved it all up in the kitchen, no one ever saw the unattractive turkey. The meat was tasty and moist though, and isn't that the point of a turkey? Who cares what it looks like?

Afterwards, I got to hack up the carcass with a cleaver (what does it say about me that my favorite part of thanksgiving day was the hacking up of the turkey carcass?) and it is now simmering away on the stove to provide me with large volumes of turkey broth.

We had a lovely evening with one of Adam's co-workers and his family. They have 3 kids under the age of 3, and were the most wonderfully well-behaved, polite children. It almost made me want to have kids. Almost. Dog first. Kids later.

NaBloPoMo Day 26--Traditions

Now don't get me wrong, with my last, oh woe is me post. I'm still excited about Thanksgiving. Adam's making the turkey and apple pie. I'm making a whole collection of other things, including the pumpkin bread that is baking right now. The fact that I have to work in the morning sucks, but it could suck worse. I could be one of the patients in the hospital and have to eat the VA's version of turkey. And as Adam has pointed out to me, as we get older, our memories of what holidays were in the past get harder and harder to recreate. And that is ok, we just need to start creating our own holiday traditions. We'll figure those out. For instance, Adam needs soup on Thanksgiving because that is something his family always had. I need cranberries made from scratch because one year long ago I realized those were ridiculously easy to make, and I decided to make them every year. At Christmas, Adam needs his blue sweatshirt and Christmas socks for Christmas morning. I need corn souffle for dinner (pronounced soo-full for those not familar with the traditional Tylee family dish) and cranberry nut bread with coffee for opening presents on Christmas morning. I need molasses sugar cookies and Russian tea cakes and oatmeal coconut crisps. I need mom to teach me how to make fudge (hi mom!). I'm sure we'll figure things out as we go along and come up with our own blend of the Tylee-Silberfein holiday traditions. As long as those traditions don't involve me regularly working on the holidays, it will be great.

NaBloPoMo Day 25--Holidays

I have fond memories of the holidays from my childhood. I love the days where you get out of bed, stay in your PJ's for the entire morning, cooking and baking, with the smells of turkey and pumpkin pie filling the house. The last three years I've missed that. I think I've worked every holiday since I've been here. And even last year's Christmas, when my family was here and we had a big dinner with friends, which great, wasn't the same since I was at the hospital until noon. I didn't get to spend the morning in my PJ's, opening presents, eating cranberry bread, and drinking coffee. We're doing Thanksgiving on our own this year, and Christmas with Adam's brother (I think). I'm sure we'll have a great time but I miss the days of having the whole family gathered around the table. Being an adult is hard.

I'm going to watch Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving Special now. And put together my Thanksgiving Day Spreadsheet. How's that for holiday tradition?

NaBloPoMo Day 24--Progress

A few months ago I decided I needed to do something to get back into shape. So I started running. Very slowly. In fact, 2 months ago when I started, I was walking more than I was running. My route looked like this (you may have to move it around to get the full route to show up, I can't figure out how to make google maps look the way I want them to in my blog):


View Larger Map


Today I ran 5 miles. Still, interspersed with occasional walking, but I've made progress. In fact, I'm now having to double back and loop around in order to make my route long enough to get my entire run in. Here's what I did today:


View Larger Map

The best part of all of this is that I can actually tell a difference. I have muscles again, my clothes fit better. It's amazing. Excericse and eating less (and honestly, I'm not eating that much less--just no snacks and no seconds) really do lead to weight loss!

NaBloPoMo Day 23--ugh

One week to go... must not quit. But after being on call last night, rounding for what felt like forever this morning, not getting in a good nap once I got home and knowing I have to be up at 5:30 tomorrow to do it all over again, another short, pointless post. This nablopomo thing is probably doing more to drive away my readership than anything else!

But Adam wrote a nice post on our other blog (too many blogs! must consolidate!) about our fish. Enjoy: tracyandadam.wordpress.com

NaBloPoMo Day 22--the final stretch

Only one week more to go of my incessant blogging.

But today, nothing. I'm working overnight at the hospital. Enjoy your weekend!

NaBloPoMo Day 21--more dogs

For those wondering what exactly a Vizsla is, watch this:

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/dogs-101-vizsla.html

(thanks Aunt Terri!)

NaBloPoMo Day 20--dog vs child

As we start to think about the arrival of our pup (a boy), we have realized that we are going to have to make some adjustments. But as we were disussing our work schedules this evening, figuring out who would be around in the morning, whether either of us could come home at luch, who could get home in time to take Pup out in the evening, I began to wonder, is it easier to have a puppy or a child? They each have their good points, and in reality, the kid probably wins. After all, they will eventually be able to have conversations with you. And that's pretty cool. But then again, Adam has conversations with our fish, and swears the fish talks back.

The dog however, seems to have some distinct advantages over the kid. With a dog you can leave it in a crate/kennel during the day, they (eventually!) go to the bathroom outside, and you can generally leave a bowl of food on the floor for them so if they get hungry, they can just wander over to the bowl and eat as they please. Babies on the other hand, well, it's frowned upon to leave them home alone, especially if you were to leave them in a crate. They require a lot of assistance with the whole bathroom thing for many years. And at the beginning, they can't even get themselves from point a to point b, so fending for themselves on the food front is out of the question. So far the advantage seems to be going to the dog... Oh I'm sure babies have their good points (most of the babies I have met are very cute, and their parents *seem* to like them), but I think I'll start with the puppy. If I can't take care of something that is this independent, I think I might have trouble with parenthood.

NaBloPoMo Day 19--Puppies!

Sigh. Are you guys tired of this daily blogging yet? I am. The whole point of this blog is to write when I have something interesting (at least to me!) to say. Required daily blogging isn't quite the same. I know I could quit anytime and return to my usual sporadic posting, but hey, I've committed to this thing. I think I can make it the last 12 days.

Today, puppies. And probably frequently over the next 8 weeks as we get updates on the puppy. Bingo is the mom, she had 11 puppies last night. ELEVEN! That's a lot of puppies. We get to pick ours up on January 10th. We are still debating on names, so please leave your suggestions in the comments. For those who don't know, we are getting a Vizsla, which is a Hungarian pointer. Why? Because Adam saw one in a bar once and thought it was a great looking dog. Which they are. Even when they are wiggly eyeless puppies they are pretty darn cute.

NaBloPoMo Day 18--Work

I'm at the VA hospital this month, and our call schedule there is a little different. Normally when we are on-call, we admit patients every 4th or 5th day. On those days we stay at the hospital overnight, get a few hours of sleep, work half of the next day, and come home and sleep the rest of that day. At the VA however, they have decided that the resident should not stay overnight (it's one of the creative ways they have of dealing with resident work hour limits). So today, I got to work at 7 am and left work at 10 pm. Because even though I don't spend the night, I still have to do all the work I would have done if I were spending the night. And even better! Tomorrow I go back to work in the morning, and instead of sleeping, I have to go to clinic in the afternoon! I'm not a big fan of this schedule. Thus, I'm too tired to write more. I'm going to eat my grilled cheese sandwich (which always makes me happy) and go to bed. But I will leave you with this:

PUPPIES! Our puppy was born today. We get to take him home in 8-10 weeks. I want to name him Milo. I don't know what Adam's name de jour is.

NaBloPoMo Day 17--the Olympic Coast

My first date with Adam was a hike along the Olympic Coast. It was a bold move on his part, "want to go camping this weekend?" But equally bold on my part for agreeing. We drove out to the coast, I learned he didn't like cherries, he learned I like Bon Jovi. And we spent the day hiking along one of the more unique trails you will find. We hiked the Ozette Loop. It started cloudy, but by the time we reached our campsite there was a beautiful sunset. And marshmallows. It must have gone ok though, since I'm still listening to Adam sing, and he's still letting me cook for him.

NaBloPoMo Day 16--Up Next

Rough day at work today, and 2 hour nap, making dinner and watching a movie with Adam. Thus no time for a real post today. So I give you photos of some of my favorite Seattle-area hikes:

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Baker, the south side

Mt. Baker, Skyline Divide

North Cascades, Sahale Glacier

the Olympic Coast

If time allows the next few days, I'll post more pics from these hikes. I miss the mountains. Although I don't miss camping in 30 degree weather, which is what we ended up doing on those two Mt. Baker hikes. We even got snowed on once. But still, I can't wait to be back in the Northwest. I just can't get used to this 80 degree weather in November.

NaBloPoMo Day 15--Post-Call Baking

I do have more past adventures to share, but now that I'm back to the painful work of inpatient medicine, I'm too tired. Last night started out fine, only a few admissions, things were quiet. But then it all got a little crazy. While I was interviewing a very nice man in the ED, they brought in another gentleman, who sat down and proceded to have a massive heart attack. My poor patient was a bit concerned, "do you need to go help them?" he asked. I looked over, and as anyone who has ever attended a code knows, there was a massive group of people surrounding the man--doing chest compressions, putting in lines, hooking up monitors, pushing meds. So no, I didn't need to help. I think the gentleman must have died 4 or 5 times, but they kept bringing him back and eventually got him to the cath lab. Last I heard, he survived the procedure and was awake and talking. My patient however, remains a mystery. A very nice man, but as you talk to him, you realize he's not making any sense. He's not answer questions correctly. He can't explain what is going on. And he got worse and worse while we were talking, eventually reaching a point where he would only speak Spanish and wouldn't follow commands. But this morning, he was back to his cheerful chatty self. Hopefully we'll figure out what is going on with him...

So with all that excitement, I only got a few hours sleep. Which means when I got home today, there was only one thing to do--bake a cake. We're having a pho party tonight (I'm not cooking pho, I'm leaving that to the Asians in the group). I am making the communal birthday cake (there were 2 b-days in our group this last week). I *love* baking. I enjoy it more than cooking, but I can't do it very often. I have a tendency to eat all of whatever I bake. Luckily there are occasions such as the pho party that allow me to bake for groups. And my friends are always so nice to compliment whatever I bake, no matter how poorly it turns out.

It's not pretty, in fact it looks as though it has been through an earthquake:

But I think I should get some credit for attempting a German chocolate cake from scratch! Here's hoping it tastes good.

NaBloPoMo Day 14--Back to Work

Today I start a new rotation, in-patient at the VA hospital. This is perhaps my least favorite hospital to work at. I love the patients, they are some of the most grateful, happy, compliant, and just nicest people. But the bureaucracy of the government... well, it all makes my job a little more difficult at times.

I'm on call tonight, and thanks to the government installed firewall on all VA computers, I do not think I'll be able to blog from there. So, this is it for today. I will leave you with a fun fact though. According to my "who's here" widget, the most common way for people who don't know me to end up reading my blog is through a google search for "quitting residency" which leads them to this. Unfortunately for them, I don't really think that is the information they are looking for. But if any of them make it to this page, hi! I know residency sucks. But it ends eventually, and then you can get a real job, and hopefully that won't suck!

See you guys tomorrow.

NaBloPoMo Day 13--Nothing

It's my birthday so I'm declaring it a day off from blogging. But by blogging about not blogging, I'm still NaBloPoMo'ing. Tricky, isn't it?

NaBloPoMo Day 12--UNESCO

As I was writing about the Slovenian caves yesterday I wondered, how many UNESCO world heritage sites are there anyway? Is it really that big of a deal? (there are 878 and yes, I think so). And then, similar to the Tylee battle of who will be the first to visit all 50 states, I began to wonder, how many UNESCO world heritage sites have I been to? The answer...

1. Salzburg, on my first visit to Austria
2. the palace and gardens of Schoenbrunn, during my adventure in Vienna
3. historic center of Vienna, of which I saw more than most tourists (see above)
4. Watertown Glacier National Park (see NaBloPoMo Day 9)
5. Luebeck, in northern Germany. I lived here for a month during a high school exchange program.
6. the palaces of Potsdam, which I visited during above mentioned summer exchange.
7. historic center of Rome. Ah, Rome. I did love that city.
8. Vatican City. Did you know they have a statue in the Vatican City Museum that looks just like Bill Clinton? Seriously. I wish I had taken a picture.
9. the Maya site of Copan in Honduras, with it's lovely ruins and such a nice little town
10. historic center of Florence, which I did not enjoy so much
11. the city of Cuzco, in Peru
12. Machu Picchu!
13. the Skocjan caves in Slovenia, of course
14. Yellowstone National Park
15. Olympic National Park, site of Adam and my first date
16. Redwoods National Park, home of the Paul Bunyon and Babe of my childhood

Only 862 to go!

NaBloPoMo Day 11--Slovenia

I don't remember why we decided to go to Slovenia. My friend and I were planning a post-medical school graduation trip to visit my mom in Austria. I imagine we looked at a map of where my mom lived, picked the country we knew least about and decided to go there. And such a good decision it was.

A few fun facts about Slovenia:
-- It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria on the north, Croatia on the south and Hungary to the east
-- They declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991
-- Slovenia became a member of the EU in 2004 and introduced the Euro in 2007
-- There is one inch of sea coast for every inhabitant (I don't think you actually get to own your one inch of sea coast though)

I encourage anyone planning a trip to that part of the world to spend a few days in Slovenia (a few days is all you need). And to make your trip even easier, I shall provide you with 10 things to do when you visit Slovenia:
1. Visit Bled, a beautiful lake resort town.

2. Eat kremna rezina (cream cake). A Slovenia speciality and so yummy.

3. Walk to the Vintgar Gorge. It's about an hour long walk, but through beautiful countryside.

4. Rent a car. It's really the only way to see all there is to see in Slovenia as the trains are not going to get you to many places. And the roads are great.
5. Drive through the Julian Alps. This is where Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" was based.

6. Stay on a farm and make some Slovenian friends, like these guys who shared their beer and prosciutto with us.

7. Visit the Predjama castle, near Postonja. You can visit the torture chamber and re-create scenes where you put your friends on the stretcher.

8. The caves! The most amazing place I have ever been. Think Goonies, but without the pirate ship. There are two big cave systems: the Postonja caves, which repordedly have moving sidewalks and trams, and the Skocjan caves, which are a UNESCO world heritage site, and the ones we went to.

9. Eat seafood in Piran

10. Spend a day in Ljubljana, the capital. But skip the castle. Worst castle in all of Slovenia.

NaBloPoMo Day 10--My Favorite Place in the World

Now this was not a terribly competitive contest, as I have not traveled extensively outside the U.S., but this was one of the most beautiful, enjoyable, funnest trips I've been on. Today, just the pictures. Tomorrow, I will tell you the high points, so you too can visit this beautiful place.

NaBloPoMo Day 9--Glacier

My last stay in WWAMI-land was 6 weeks in Great Falls, MT. When it came time to head back to Seattle, it would have been easy to head south to I-90 and cruise along that all the way home, but no. After discovering my love of the road trip, I could not bring myself to take the direct route. Besides, the road through Glacier National Park had opened up a few weeks ago and this was my chance to check it out. So I drove north, and took a very leisurely drive through the park. Nothing much else to say about Glacier really, I didn't get out of the car and hike at all, just drove from viewpoint to viewpoint. It was all quite beautiful, like so much of the west is. Here are some photographic highlights to encourage you all to get out and explore the west.