Neglect

I have not meant to neglect my blog. I have many things to tell you about and a camera full of pictures from a fabulous long-weekend with my siblings. But house guests and constant puppy vigilance have kept me very busy, so the pictures are still on the camera and I need to go to bed.

I leave you with Wylie and his newly discovered vices:

Sleeping around:

And drinking:

And him, just being cute:

Later this week... Disneyland with the Tylee clan and hanging out with Kate and Ben and the always enjoyable train game (aka Ticket to Ride).

Knitting, Again.

I'm sure you are all wondering, where are the puppy pictures? I'll get around to posting those on the other blog. I'm working on moving everything over there. Adam has given me permission to write about knitting and cooking and doctoring over there. And I just like the look of wordpress better, so eventually I will be retiring Free Time. Once I get the puppy pictures up over there, I will let you all know. Until then, more knitting. I'm loving sock knitting. It is so much more fun than anything I've ever knit before and the only thing I've ever knit for myself (other than mittens) that I will actually wear!

Starting the "falling leaf" socks

One sock, finished and blocked

Close up of the "leaf" detail

Sock, on my foot

I have the day off today, so Wylie and I are hanging out. He's sleeping, I'm trying to catch up on all my "to do" list items. It's supposed to be 80 degrees today, which is just so wrong in January. I went running this morning, but it was a terrible run. I only made it about half the distance I had planned to go. I'd like to say it was too hot, but I don't think I can blame 70 degree weather for my inability to run more than 2 miles. I was going to make soup for dinner, to try to finish off all the leftover turkey broth I have in my freezer, but soup is not really what you want to be eating when it's 80 degrees out. Kate and Ben are coming to visit this weekend (yay!) and we're going to Disneyland (yay again!). It's going to be nice have weekends again.

Happy 2009!

Hope everyone has enjoyed the first two days of 2009. I almost made it until midnight on NYE, but I'm old, so I made Adam come home and go to bed at 11:30 pm. And then I had to work on the 1st. I was hoping to get out early, but given the unpredictable nature of my job, two of our patients ended up needing to be transfered to the ICU, so that kept me busy most of the day. Today was my (much needed) day off. I only have another week of this rotation, two more call nights, and then life should be better for a few months at least. Adam and I are getting ready for the puppy, who we are picking up on January 10th, although we are still debating names for the pup. And today I have decided I'm going to knit nothing but socks from here on. They are so much fun to knit, and perfect for me. They have complicated patterns, they only take about a week to make, they have a very basic structure so I can make them without a pattern and they are actually practical and something I will wear. Here are the finished Christmas socks:

Lovely, aren't they? And very soft and warm. I'm now working on a pair for me--different pattern, and green, but I'm very excited about them. Sure, I will still knit the occasional baby hat, and I do have three sweaters in various states of completion that I will get around to finishing eventually, but this sock knitting thing--I can't believe it took me this long to try socks!

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.