Necessities

Head not clear enough to blog. This is how I spent my last 3 days at work.

Ode to Los

This week is certainly full of odes isn't it? But I felt like I needed a brief one since the Los gathering last night was so pleasant.

Long term readers may remember me blogging about getting a job at Los Hermanos in fall 2008 and the training, and so forth. I LOVED working there, for the most part. The hours were not awesome, and making hardly any money was even less awesome. What was good about the job then you may ask? It was the fact that I got to hang out with fun people all day long. I actually liked going to work because I loved goofing off all night with a little bit of hard labor in between. With some exceptions, the hiring-cool-people record was very good at Los. The fact is, we all just got along and had a lot of fun. We were all young and in school and trying to figure out what we were going to do next. Of course there were spats and disagreements; you can’t help it when you work with people all day long and into the nights. Also the fact that most are in their early to mid 20’s….

But since I worked full time, and sometimes overtime, I got to spend lots of time with all the workers. And the time period that I worked there was especially awesome because we’ve all been able to stay friends since. For some reason we all got especially close during the year I worked there (not because of me or anything, just that time frame). I haven’t worked there since August of 2009 and I still see them every couple months.

We got together last night because Rachel and her husband Danny are moving to Arizona to start school. Rachel worked there for quite awhile and everyone loves her because she is just so sweet! It’s becoming a trend though. My old roommate Becky that also worked there practically slipped away in the night last weekend. And two other couples are moving soon too! It’s kind of sad to see everyone move on and away, but I am so grateful that I was able to work there and make the friends I did. I have incredibly fond memories of that old building, and wish that it hadn't moved across the street! It's wonderful to see everyone going their own ways and getting married and having kids, but still having fun like we used to.

Side note: I am happy to have a job that I don’t rely on tips for.

Tech-ies

This blog is a dedication to my friends, the Tech-ies. Not to be confused with Trekkies. Although that new(ish) Star Trek was pretty awesome. And I have seen the original six Star Trek movies before….. more than once….. I have an older brother, c’mon!

To use a favorite phrase of mine: but this is all neither here nor there. As devout readers (you know who you are) know, I have been working at Primary Children’s Medical Center for the past year and a half. This hospital will be abbreviated in this post as follows: PCMC, Prims, Primarys. Any one of those will substitute the incredibly long title for the hospital that I usually refuse to type out. But for all you less devout readers (you also know who you are), I figured I’d follow scientific writing rules and write the entire thing out once before I’m allowed to abbreviated it (if you don’t believe me, see Handbook for Thesis Writing available on the U of U website, it’s a page turner).

I’m rambling again. The point is, because I’ve been working there I’ve made good friends with the other techs. I think I mentioned a recent Halloween party we had. There is Jennie (far right, was same year in my program), Jenessa (far left, finishing second year of CMP program), and Hannah (second from left, recently finished another master’s program at U). From August 2010 to May 2011 the four of us worked together several times a week. There were two other techs during that time, Amanda (who I work with at WIC now), and Darren. But they worked super infrequently, and don’t come to our gatherings. There are actually two new techs, but since they weren’t part of the original lineup, they don’t get invited. That sounds mean and elitist, but why would you invite people when Jennie and I don’t really know them? It ruins the fun intimate group we have going.

This little motley crew came over to my house Wednesday night for a Mediterranean Night. We don’t always have themes, there are no streamers or balloons or anything, but we do like to mix it up a bit. I didn’t come up with the Mediterranean food choices, but I definitely cemented the theme when I said we were also tie dying t-shirts. That is a very typical Mediterranean activity, yes? Even if it isn’t, I had dye that has been sitting around for AGES!!

We do something every other week, or maybe a little longer between depending on the busy-ness of the season. We sometimes will go out for dinner or see a movie, but we also rotate through each other’s houses so we can have a little homemade fun. So far we have done a BBQ and Halloween do at Jennies, a Fajita Night and Christmas Party at Jenessas, a pizza night at Hannahs, and a dessert and now Mediterranean night at mine. With lots of other delicious things in between.

I loved working with them, and I love that we still hang out even though we don’t work together like we used to. I still work at PCMC occasionally on weekends, but it’s not quite the same. And oddly enough Jennie (who works at IMC) and I sometimes contact each other for work related reasons. And oh the emails. It seems like I daily am conversing with someone, or all of them in ridiculous, winding emails. Not entirely unlike these blog posts.

And finally, praises and thanks that Wikipedia is back online. Holy jeepers, I thought I was going to go crazy the other day!

The Christers

While I am sitting here at work guzzling water because I’ve got heartburn and I’ve convinced myself that would help (2nd day in a row I’ve forgotten to take my heartburn meds), I decided to write a small ode to my good pally Christers. Her name isn’t actually Christers, it is just Christa. But she calls me The Suze, and I call her Christers, and we’ll leave it at that. We are celebrating her birthday tonight, and as she is the reason this blog was created years ago (as a joke, don’t think she knows that), I thought I would share some fun moments with her.

We met the very first day of college almost EIGHT YEARS AGO (as of this fall)!!!! Where does time go? I was the nervous first-time-away-from-home freshmen, and I was on the lookout my first day for nice people to sit by in class. I saw this girl who was trying to locate the owner of a key she found on the floor. She seemed lovely, so I trailed her into the big auditorium room and sat by her. We briefly struck up a conversation, then as class ended she went in some random direction (this is actually a funny story), and I went another. Then before my very next class, I see her sitting outside the classroom. I was so pleased to find out that not only was she in this next class, but she had also been in my music class earlier that morning! We hit it off right away and made plans that very weekend. Looking back I know this was no accident. I was in such desperate need of friends, and here was this person with my exact sense of humor who had three classes with me. The moment I knew we were destined to be friends was when she mentioned “The City and the Country Mouse” story, which I had loved as a kid. I was almost positive that story didn’t exist anywhere else outside my house. The similarities don’t end there, I assure you, or we certainly wouldn’t be friends anymore.

The funny thing about Christers and I is that we seem to always have the weirdest things happen while we are together. We once watched a man in a dog costume approach cars in a parking lot, we found ourselves sitting through an organ recital while a campus party raged outside, and my most favorite incident was recently when we watched a young (able-body and minded) girl drive up to a lamppost in a nearly empty parking lot and begin kickboxing it with full gear on. I think it is more likely that both of us are very keen people watchers, and we just keep our eyes open when we are together.

But the fact is, some of my best memories from Provo, or ever, are with Christers. We’ve driven on the wrong side of the road together, eaten large servings of rice pudding which apparently we didn’t like at all together, unknowingly stolen BYU property together, and generally eaten way too much each time we meet (sushi, frozen yogurt, BYU football luxury tent , and Rio Tinto catering).

Sadly, we have few pictures of us over the years. The most recent one was from about 3 years ago. My favorite is the 3rd picture in this post because it shows our faces during one of those weird moments I was mentioning.

So Christers, if you are reading this, know that it is in lieu of a birthday card. I forgot to write one before I left for work today…..

Task List

So, first post-Christmas blog I think? Christmas was great, as it always is. And unlike the previous two Christmases I’ve had, I did not throw up once, or have to work. So that automatically made it the best Christmas since 2008! It was a pretty typical day, so I won’t really talk much more about it. But it is always lovely to spend time with family and just sit around and relax. As the family has gotten older, it has become much more relaxing than ever.

I do love the holidays, the hustle and bustle of getting presents and parties sorted out. But after this Halloween-Christmas season, I am completely wiped out. So I am actually very much ok that they are over. I finally feel like I can go home and just relax without a laundry list of things to do. Still have a list, but with much less “vitally important” items on it. What are top three on the list you might ask?

1) Organizing my iPod. Sounds a bit weird? Well, there was a bit of a mishap with the iPod a couple months ago and it got cleared completely. I had backed up my music fairly recently, so it was easy to get everything back on. I did have over 100 playlists though, and that is what I am working on restoring. When you have a lot of music on your iPod (especially when some of it you never listen to, or have ever listened to) I find that playlists are the best way to go. I was able to rebuild many quite quickly. I mean, how hard is it to make a Beatles playlist and put their music on it? But I’ve kind of been dragging my feet with some of the others that require me to scroll through 8000 songs to find my favorite running songs. The good thing about this though is that I am finding lots of songs I completely forgot existed! Remember Anastacia (not cartoon) anyone? Or Vengaboys? Quality.

2) Learning Spanish. Oi, this is the bane of my existence. Because I work at WIC, about 50% of the people (this is not an actual statistic, just what it feels likes) speak Spanish. So, I can’t do super in depth counseling. I can only ask brief sentences that require only one word answers. So no “how are things going?” questions or “what are his eating habits like?” types of things. Mostly things like “how many times does he eat vegetables every day?” and “how many ounces of milk does he drink every day?” So, I’ve bought books, and I’m in theory looking for Spanish classes. But I haven’t really made an effort, so that’s what I need to do.

3) Retool the family cookbook. For mother’s day, I headed the team to edit the family cookbook and put it online. Apparently some files or something got corrupted; so many recipes have the wrong amounts listed, which has caused excess sodium being added to foods. I now need to go through and fix everything and add new recipes that we have all cooked since May. I have been encouraged by other family members to get going on this, but obviously its number 3 on the list, not number 1.

So, that’s that. It was all put on hold last week and this week while I graded papers for Anne (this picture is one of the beauties I found while grading). It was not that bad though. I sat and watched the entire Vicar of Dibley series. Not as good as Ab Fab for those readers who read my previous blog. And I’ve been promised Benihana in payment. So, on tonight’s list, iPod and Spanish. But probably some iPod and mostly sitting around or trying to find some dinner.