In which my yarn is bigger than your face

 This morning I had my musculo practical (this afternoon I found out I passed it!) Then I came home to nap. After my nap I headed to the yarn store to grab another skein for my mittens. I weighed it I used 28 grams/50 for the first mitten meaning I'll probably be a little short on this one. While I was there I decided I should really probably expand my christmas buying/knitting list. This lead to as the Yarn Harlot said today "a yarn accident." I won't show you all of what I got cuz it will give away my Christmas knitting plans. But I will show you the majority of my purchase $$wise is this 1450yd/1 pound skein of Moutain Colours Weaver's Wool. You'll have to wait and see what gets knitted up in the next 24 days!

Cat for scale 

Cell phone for scale

productivity

I surprised myself with how productive I was tonight. I could have gotten one more thing done to be really impressed, but I still did way better than the last few days. I still failed at taking pictures today, but hopefully tomorrow while Kristin is here I can find something picture worthy. The biggest news of the day is that I don't have to redo my cardio practical. My meeting with Dr. Norman went well. He gave me good feedback about my exam going smoothly and he felt like I was professional and interacted well with my patient. He said he heard the 5 min warning and knew I didn't have very much left and thought I was home free so he was shocked when I didn't finish in time to close. He understood why I double checked what I did and said that with my findings he felt like I would have struggled to close with the patient anyhow. Basically he said he wasn't planning on having me come back unless I wanted to. Considering that last night I figured out we only have 16 days of school left and in the time frame we have 2 group projects, 2 assignments, a quiz, a musculo practical and 6 tests, I think I'll pass on redoing my cardio practical.

I haven't been doing the 1 thing you're thankful for every day in November. But after a message from Timm saying "sarah baker, thank you very very very much for not being an over dramatic cunt. it so ridiculously apreciated" I thought I'd sum up a little of the awesomeness that is Timm, that I'm thankful for. So Timm, thank you for being the most honest, trustworthy person I know, that handles my stressed out mode well 99% of the time. Thank you for warming up my hands and my heart. Thanks for appreciating my nerdiness and usually not making fun of it. You balance me out super well and I can't wait to see all the awesome things we're going to do together!

Day two: Check!

I don't know whether to be glad Tuesday's over with or not. I don't feel ready for the rest of this week right now, but on the other hand I'm definitely ready for it to be over with. Today was relatively uneventful: school then home and studying and eating. That's about it. I got together with my partner for Thursday's practical and went over our plan for that, so at least that's done. Neuro test is at 8 in the morning and I'm gonna be real honest that I'm not as prepared as I should be, but I'm just gonna take the hit on this one. I've done well on everything else so if tomorrow doesn't go great it'll be fine. (Meditation for the night C's make PTs) The only other remotely exciting thing for the day is that both sleeves are done on the sweater. Now all I have left is the trim for the pockets and to finish weaving in ends. Hopefully it'll be done in time for Timm to take pictures of it this weekend for me. Hope you all have a wonderful hump day tomorrow!

Also: Heard today the Duggar's annoucned they're 20 and Counting as my mother said "oh my goddd"

One Day Down

Monday and first practical: check!

This morning I left my coffee at home which I hoped wasn't an indication how the rest of the day would go. I studied some at school before lab. After lab I ran home to get my watch which I also forgot and see if my coffee was still warm. Then back to school to get progressively more nervous until my practical. It went ok, but there's no way to know for sure till next week.

When I came home I started working on dinner. Ham, veggie, potato potpie:

After what seemed like way too long in the oven:

And after more waiting for it to cool:

And my mom's recipe for leftover pie dough, throw some cinnamon sugar on it and presto (so good I didn't get a pic until they were almost gone):

So glad today's over. Tomorrow is the only day this week without a test or practical so hopefully I can get a lot of studying done for the rest of the week.

The Return of NaBloPoMo

Since I seem to do well with NaBloPoMo and not at all the rest of the year, I've decided to do it again. Needless to say life has been ridiculously busy with 21 hours of grad classes, wedding planning, and working the occasional shift at Scooter's.
Since the start of the semester:

• I've figured out our centerpieces
• I made my wedding shawl (which I'm not allowed to show pictures of because Timm doesn't want to see it till I walk down the aisle)
• I've also made 3 peoples Christmas gifts (also can't share)
• Timm and I went to Kansas City to see Hanson on Oct. 1 and got to meet Taylor (who complemented Timm's hat and beard)
• Had two sets of engagement pictures taken

Because I don't have many of the pictures at my fingertips right now, I'll leave you with the engagement video that our wonderful photographer (claylomneth.wordpress.com) put together after our second shoot.

Schools out for the summa, and much more

I've been writing this blog in my head since Saturday, as Friday was the last day of classes. But more stuff kept happening and not only was there no time to write the blog, but it was getting longer and longer in my head. So sorry about the long post but I promise you if you read to the end it'll be worth it. (Also sorry about so many pictures.)

So first up, the roomie went out of town on vacation for a couple days and I was on cat entertaining duty. Apparently Dexter didn't think I was entertaining enough and decided to prove he could ride a bicycle lol. It was pretty amusing, although I was a little worried he was gonna knock over the bike and have it land on him in a mess of cat/bike parts, but he got down without injuring himself :-).


As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to participate in project Spectrum, but wasn't knitting anything in the right colour for May. I did manage to complete a green project for June though! This is Sexy Vesty in Cascade 220. I did a crochet border around the neck cuz I was running low on yarn, but I might like it better this way. I was debating whether the vest in combination with the plaid shirt was too That 70's Show. Timm voted yes, but everyone else voted no, so I wore it to my practical for school. Practical #2 to be specific, which I rocked!


The other exciting thing that happened in knitting land lately is my bird socks are FINISHED!!! (You might notice I'm wearing the outfit seen above in this picture lol). I finished them while I was at school after taking my practical. I found the perfect ribbon to go in the top at Mangelsen's, you can't tell well from this picture but it has a little ruffle on it :-). I'm pretty sure this is my biggest knitting accomplishment ever. I'm still in search of clear rainboots, if anyone finds them please send me a link or buy them in a size 9!! Unfortunately I finished them at the wrong time of year and it might be a while before they get some real wear.

Also remember how I promised a reward for reading to the end of this post . . . well these socks are in the middle ;-)


There are a TON of weddings among my classmates this summer. So Steph decided it would be awesome if we had a class bachelorette party for all our brides to be. I'm gonna say she's pretty much a genius. We decided to start out with dinner then continue onto drinking and possibly dancing. This is a picture of 8 of our 9 brides to be. All the brides wore colours and the other 20 of us wore black dresses. We created quite a spectacle in the Old Market. To the point that we had a couple families from Florida (in town for the college world series) stop us and take a picture with their sons (about a dozen middle school aged boys). It was an awesome night!

The weekend after that, Timm and I attended the wedding of our dear friends Audi & Cameron. It was pretty awesome. They had their ceremony at an old historical home. Instead of a traditional ceremony it was a tea party. We were invited to dress up and create a name for ourselves. I was Lady Emma Lindberg. Timm was Lord Buster O'Neil. We had a great time.


Later that evening they had their reception full of dancing, yummy food and a rainbow cake! They had a "photo booth" set up with different facial hairs, glasses, frames, and chalkboards that you could write on and strike a pose. This resulted in my by far favourite picture of Timm and me. I'm really excited to print it and put it in a frame!


The next day there was supposed to be a car show at the zoo, so Timm & I headed over to check it out. The car show ended up being a little disappointing (a few new corvette and some sweet Model A's but that was it), but the zoo itself always has something to put a smile on my face. This time I'm not sure which was better the friendly leopard or crazy Timm!


After that tiring weekend, I had my last week of school. I'm officially done with the first year of Physical Therapy school! I made it I'm now a PT2!! And most importantly I get a month and a half off to relax.

In celebration of the end of school and my new found freedom I went to the zoo with a few of my knitting friends on Friday and their kids (4 kids under the age of 3!!). It was a great time and definitely exhausting. The kids were super cute, but also excellent birth control lol. I adore Bailey's monkey backpack. I think the picture on the right may be the only time all three of them were looking at the same thing, the Tiger.

Then I had another bachelorette party to attend. This one was much smaller than the previous one.
It's one of the same brides with a few classmates and her future sister-in-law. We had a lot of fun. Particularly with a book of "challenges" for Sarah to perform throughout the night, including kissing the first guy with a mustache and asking 3 men how "big" they are. It was pretty hilarious. We also discovered that apparently no one carries around condoms anymore (another challenge).




After an exhausting Friday, I worked Saturday and Sunday. Then headed to Timm's for a few days.
Monday we decided to have some fun. We went over and saw the '39 Ford Tudor that Timm's thinking about buying (I definitely approve) and chatted with the owners (see more on Timm's blog). Then we grabbed some burgers and headed north.

It was such a pretty day to be driving and we rocked out to some good tunes on our was to Tea, SD. There we went into a few antique stores. We found this awesome Singer sewing machine. I also scored a Smurf's sheet that may be a dress in the near future. We saw a bunch of skulls, awesome furniture, cool dishes, and much more (again more pics on Timm's blog). I also saw a fabric store next to the antique mall that I REALLY wanted to go in, but it was closed because it was Monday (so lame lol). So we continued north.

We went up to Sioux Falls and poked around at the mall (where I scored a cute dress for $5), then headed to the theatre to see Cars 2 in 3D. It's pretty cute/funny and definitely worth the $$. After that we decided we needed some deliciousness. So we headed to the Red Lobster. My grandpa used to love Red Lobster and we would go there when I was really little and I'd get a Shirley Temple as a nice little treat. I always thought it was the coolest thing ever, especially the cherries that come in it, so of course I had to get one! Then I got a pound of crab!! It was so yummy! Timm decided to put his 3D glasses back on during dinner and be a dork (as usual). We skipped dessert because we were both full and hit the road back home.

So Tuesday, Timm had to go to work and I went with him, hoping to hook up with one of my friends that had just moved from Omaha to Sioux City. I watched some of Timm working on a tribal arm piece, then headed to lunch with Stephanie. We had Chick-fil-A, which is so delicious and what I miss about working in the mall in Arkansas. Then we headed back to her place to hang out and knit. We chatted for a while, then I went back to the shop so Timm and I could go home. We watched the sunset on our drive and Timm said he hoped we would make it back into town before the sun went down so we could find a good place to watch it. Unfortunately the sun moved faster than us so we settled for eating the yummy dinner his mom had made. After dinner Timm suggested we go get ice cream. I said sure. We headed out the door and I grabbed Timm's hoodie cuz I thought I'd be cold walking over to the gas station. Then we got outside and Timm was getting in the car. I said we should just walk cuz it's so close. Timm said no we need to take the car. I insisted that I needed to burn some of the calories of the ice cream and Timm said we need to take the car. So I got in and we started driving. Then Timm drove past the gas station and headed north of town. He asked me to put on the Brad Paisley CD because he had a riff stuck in his head and he couldn't figure out which song it was from. Then Timm turned onto a dirt road and pulled over and asked if I would dance with him. I said yes. So he asked me to get out and tell him when the music was loud enough. He turned up the music and changed the track to "I Hope That's Me" and came over and started dancing.
Then on the third verse that says, "Somebody's gonna buy a ring,
Somebody's gonna make you cry,
Somebody's gonna lift that veil,
And get to look into your eyes,
And I hope that's me, I hope that's me."
He got down on one knee and pulled a box out of his pocket. He asked if I would marry him and I said yes. (I also at some point asked him if he was serious and he's giving me shit about it, but I said at least that means I wasn't expecting it haha). I knew from the unique box that it was one of the rings we saw together in Portland.


It's perfect, I couldn't be happier. This is my apology for the near future of this blog being about weddings.

-The future Mrs. McKenny

Back in business

Well I'm back in the swing of things with my nose to the grindstone. Classes started last Monday much to my dismay. I was excited to see all my PT buddies and get away from 8 hour shifts at the mall but I definitely wasn't ready for all the reading and studying that school brought with it. I hope to get back to posting regularly now that I'm back on a schedule during the week. I have a bunch of stuff from my break and Christmas to share. But for now I present to you Elvis cookies (or what happens when you start running out of everything in the middle of baking): I noticed at lunch today that the banana that I had thrown into my lunchbox a few days ago had gotten quite beat-up. I contemplated making my go to banana cookies, but I was craving something a little different. (side note: before heading home for Christmas I had stopped into the gourmet dog store in the mall and found dog treats to take to Cosmo they were banana and peanut butter flavored. I thought at the time that it was cookie form of my favourite quick breakfast.) So of course today I thought bad bananas + peanut butter was still the best idea ever. I wasn't sure if I could just add peanut butter or sub it for something in my normal recipe so I started looking around online. I found a blog called Siriously Delicious that had a recipe for chocolate chip peanut butter banana cookies. I decided to give it a whirl (I wasn't craving chocolate, but what the hell couldn't hurt). Well I started mashing bananas and got out my margarine to soften when I realized I didn't have a full stick of butter, so I threw in a few tablespoons of vegetable shortening. I got those together in a bowl and went to grab my peanut butter only to see that I had less PB than I remembered making it only about 1/4 of a cup instead of 1/2. I started scrambling around for what I could do ( I should also add that theres a nice snow storm involving 8" of snow happening outside making me unwilling to go to the store). After some looking through the cupboards and online to see what can be substituted for PB, I decided to use Nutella. Because of the Nutella I decided not to put chocolate chips in for fear of the other flavors being overpowered. The first batch didn't come out very well, they flattened out too much and got a little burnt on the bottom. I threw in more flour which helped a lot (you can see the difference in the pic above). Hopefully you'll be hearing from me again soon. I'm crossing my fingers for a snow day tomorrow although we were the only ones that didn't have one today, so I'm not holding my breath.

last day of NaBloPoMo

I can't believe I successful posted every day in November. I feel so accomplished. Which only half way makes up for how unaccomplished I was on the physiology exam today. Apparently sometime in the last few weeks our physiology class changed it's name to BioChem. The test was horrible. It focused on tiny, tiny details that even the PA students don't care about and the PTs really don't care too much about the endocrine system as a whole. There were hardly any questions on the reproductive systems (which made up about 1/3 of our notes and was what I actually understood) and there was a page and a half of questions about the thyroid which we only spent one day of lecture on. It was ridiculous. According to some of my classmates there were multiple questions that had more than one correct answer (I was unaware that any of them were right). I don't think I've ever guessed so much on a test in my life.

After the test we had two hours of anatomy lecture. The first of which most people dazed off through. The second one our 80 year old professor explained sex to us, which was hilarious. He told us that there's a center in the brain that elicits orgasm and if he put an electrode on it and gave us a button to control it we would all push the button until we died. "You wouldn't eat, you wouldn't sleep, it would just be orgasm 24/7."

After that we got out of class an hour earlier than usual, just in time for the first day of the ice rink being open! A group of the PT students decided that it was the perfect solution to our craptastic day so we bundled up and headed out. After all getting the correct skates and wristbands we hit the ice for about 45 mins. I have a feeling my legs will be feeling it tomorrow. I do have to report that despite betting that I would be the first to fall down, I didn't fall down at all! I bought a season skate rental pass so I will hopefully be going many more times between now and spring break.

not much to say tonight

I'm cramming for my physiology test tomorrow. I'm really excited to get it over with. I'm devouting tomorrow to cleaning and reorganizing before I start in on all the last round of test material. Only 17 days (not counting today) left in the semester!!! We got our grades for the test before break back today. The class average for the short answer portion was a 66% :-o. Needless to say it's my worst test grade in that class and I hope to make up for it with the final.

The only other thing of note today is that I came home and my roommate had sat a magazine on my desk. I was on the phone to my mother and said "What did your mother do?!" Apparently, she got me a subscription to Ladies Home Journal (cause you know I magically turned 40 over night). I now have "84 ideas for the happiest holiday ever." I bet that they don't include drop out of school so you can have your time, money, life and sanity back. It also informs me how to stash more for retirement (I think not having 100k in student loans would be the first thing they'd advise). Well I better go study more so all this debt isn't in vain.

Did you know . . .

That for four weeks in utero our intestines leave our abdomen because the liver is hogging all the space and they need room to grow too. In the process the intestines will rotate 270 degrees. Eventually, there will be about 22 feet of intestines attached to about a 7 inch long base of mesentary. I think that's pretty crazy.

As you can tell, I'm still studying away. We had our practical (with living anatomy) today. I think the practical went fairly well after getting a general consensus from other students afterwards on some of the answers. I was really excited because they announced at the beginning that one of our living stations was being thrown out because the equipment wasn't working properly (yay for not identifying heart sounds and breath sounds!). However, I may have gotten a better score on living if we had the heart and breath sounds. I apparently don't know my right from my left and need to be faster at finding landmarks. We'll see how many points I lost for those stupid mistakes.

Gonna be a late night, still got plenty of studying to do and packing to head to Timm's after the test tomorrow (yay for skipping physiology on Wed!)

Study, study, study

'tis the season

to eat cranberries! Last week when I was at Trader Joe's overwhelmed with wonderfulness, I grabbed a bag of fresh cranberries. As someone who love cranberries in all other forms, I'd never had fresh cranberries or used them to make anything. I thought it was high time to change that, but wasn't sure what to make with them.

I remembered a recipe I'd made this summer when I had bought blueberries. It turned out awesome and I polished it off probably faster than I should have. This recipe was for Blueberry Buckle from the Better Homes and Garden Cookbook (the red and white checked one that it seems like everyone has, got mine from an estate sale a couple of summers ago). I decided to give it a whirl with the cranberries. I figured I might need to add a little more sugar to account for the tartness of the cranberries.

It just came out of the oven, so I can't report on the taste yet but it smells and looks delicious.

Other than that, it's been a pretty uneventful day. I had class at 1 and then lab. Class was physiology and right now we're on the endocrine system (hormones). Today we started the male reproductive system and I'm so glad to finally be on something that I understand and have a good background in. All the pituitary hormones were stressing me out a bit because they're so confusing and for the most part I haven't learned about them much before now. Lab was a review day and then we had a practice lab practical set up for us. I had to hurry through the practice practical so I could go to work, but it went fairly well. I definitely have an idea what I need to study more as far as the practical aspect is concerned. I'm pretty sure I need to study everything more for the written exam, but at least I have an extra day for that.

the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone

and all your intestines are connected and shoved in a tiny tiny little space.

Tonight my living anatomy partner came over to practice for our test on Monday. Because of the lack of movements to test and bones to feel in the abdomen and thorax, a lot of our living anatomy this unit was drawing out where everything is inside the body cavity. First we drew the "planes" of the abdomen that help you locate everything else.

Then we drew all the intestines and major organs of the peritoneal sac. Look I got my gallbladder back!



Then we washed off and drew the organs and vessels on the posterior body wall.


There was lots of funny comments and giggling that occurred (especially because Meghan is ticklish and doesn't like me finding her transtubercular plane). I also keep accusing Meghan of cheating because she can use my scars as landmarks for the different planes and organs but I have nothing to go on.

I got the ends on the hat for Operation Christmas Child wove in last night. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Good thing I gave it away today or I might have grown attached.




Thanksgiving is getting so close I can almost taste the turkey and pumpkin pie (and by that I mean freedom and blissful days of no school). Until then, more studying!