Creamy Potato Cheese Soup
May not look that great in the photo, but man o man does this SMELL SO GOOD.

Recipe found by E, courtesy of here. I am such a sucker for anything with rosemary in it (for that matter, anything with cheese in it!).
Sorry all I do lately is post about what we’re having for dinner. Frankly, it’s all I have the time (and inclination) to write about these days… classes rolling into finals, work, processing the new job, getting started at SFGH… I feel a tad overwrought. I do have about 12,000 photos to take off my camera and share with you, including a bunch from Halloween [yes Amy I am working on it!]. I’ll be happy when school is over (my last final is TOMORROW! woot!) after this weekend and I’ll have my Saturdays back again. I’ll also be happy when I have a set, predetermined, fleshed out schedule at my new job and know what my hours will be like. It’s hard for me when things are so up in the air. Working best on a set schedule, I tend to let everything go to pot when I can’t plan out my days.
In the meantime, I should just re-name this website whatwe’rehavingfordinner.com and call it a night.
Oh! Real quick- today I had a bunch of stuff to get done for my new job. I took a physical fitness test, agility test, drug test, auto-injector for nerve agent and organophosphate poisoning tutorial and exam, got fitted for and learned how to don and doff my PAPR suit with respirator, fitted for my N-95 mask and verified all of my immunizations.
After all that rigmarole (passed everything, phew), I took Linus on a nice little 4 mile trail run at Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve. The dog is now COVERED in TICKS!! He was wearing his tick collar and I also put flea and tick powder on him, but… to no avail. I’ve already taken SIX ticks off of him. Earl is going to kill me (he absolutely *hates* ticks). Hopefully smell of yummy soup will distract nerd from new tick infestation at our apartment.
Guess I should get Linus his own PAPR suit before I take him hiking. :-/
The PAPR I was fitted for looks just like this, only with bigger rubber gloves over the latex gloves and also in a very skin-tone flattering BRIGHT UGLY YELLOW:
You know, it was surprisingly hard to move around in it. I believe this was due to wearing shoes inside the big rubber boots and also having a double layer of latex gloves *inside* giant rubber gloves. Also, the chemtape was horrendously hard to manipulate without having it stick to your gloves. In the event of a HAZMAT incident I think you’d really need a partner to help each other get in and out of the suit.
The doctor did a test on me where he TURNED OFF MY RESPIRATOR while I was in the PAPR suit and let me stand there for a few minutes. This was to demonstrate how quickly 1.) the eye visor becomes steamed up and 2.) run out of oxygen in the case the respirator battery runs out of power or somehow gets disconnected. Basically, if that happens you must leave the scene because you’re of no use to any patient. Honestly at this point I am dubious how helpful I can be to any patient while wearing the freaking suit even if everything is hunky dory. It was *that* hard to maneuver in it. Well… I guess any time you’d be wearing a PAPR would probably be a load-and-go anyways, so all you really need to wear it for is to get in, get the patient, and GTFO; there wouldn’t be much need to dink around on scene in the suit…thankfully.
Frankly, if I was a patient and a bunch of EMS professionals showed up to help me donning PAPR suits I would be freaking terrified!! They should put flowers or peace signs on them or something.

3 Comments
I know I would be scared if someone came to get me in one of those suits! Your potato soup looks great! I’ll have to make some next week when it gets colder around here. As for the ticks, Frontline Plus works great to get rid of those little boogers! We have lots of ticks here in West Virignia. We usually put some on our dogs in the Spring when we first start seeing them on them and it lasts the entire Summer! This year was a bad year and I have been finding a few on my girls in the last two weeks. I’m hoping that it gets cold enough to kill those things. I don’t want to put some more Frontline on them this late in the year plus it is a chemical and I hate doing it. Frontiline kills the ticks after they bite them. Does the same with the fleas but for some reason we don’t have fleas around our house. I have yet to find a flea on my girls. I suppose the Frontline works great! Plus my husband puts out some kind of a bug killer with fertilizer in it in the Spring but that is just right here in the front yard. They run all over our 66 acres.
Angela
soup looks delicious!! poor Linus!! Koda has had a few ticks now and then but not lately; these guys are sooo short those ticks just love jumping on them
my husband got fit tested for the N95 masks (source of stress for him; he’s in purchasing at the hospital and N95’s are at a premium). such a rigamole to get tested!
glad you passed it all and that school is almost over!
betty
Difficulty in PAPR suit? But it’s supposed to overcome any strain!
(Apologies to all. now indulging in mental replay of _The Andromeda Strain_)