Oh yeah, I went there.

I worked the 5am-5pm shift (with CRAZY call volume, btw… I thought Sundays were supposed to be slow?! wth?!) and then showered up at the station, met E at Caltrain and we headed over to my company Christmas Party, which was wonderful.

Picked these reindeer ears up at CVS between calls today. u like?

ps- i won a flip camera at the party as part of our raffle! yay flip video camera aside, I am really loving work so far!!

*Dog wishes it was Bedtime Snack for Three … though he did get a Greenie after his bath tonight, so life isn’t all that rough in Corgi Land.

These are the “duds” from the batch of cookies I made to bring in for my first day at work tomorrow. Certainly didn’t taste like duds, however they were the least aesthetically pleasing of the bunch.

I better get to bed; getting up at 5:30am for work! aye!
ps- speaking of spending time in bed- I started a really great book this weekend, Up Country, on recommendation by my mother (she gave it to me to read about two years ago, lol… just getting around to it now- I had a lot in queue!). Vietnam War thriller, so far (125 pages in) it’s GREAT. Why did I let it sit on my bookshelf for two years before reading!

I ran this idea by Earl, and while he liked it, he killed my buzz (so darn practical, that one!) citing things like “development costs” and “price per unit” and decided this wouldn’t be realistic for us to develop… so if any of my beloved readers would like to oversee this into fruition, please doso

Basically, I think it would be a great idea for someone to make a LARGE LCD screen which could mount on the wall in your kitchen, connect to the internet and display recipes which you can follow along while you cook. That way, you could pull up any recipe online (where there are zillions) and never have to deal with printing it out or the printed recipe getting covered in water, flour, oil, what have you as you toggle back between checking it and your cooking.

Ideally, the screen should be large and bright enough to read from the other side of the kitchen (while your hands are covered in say… chicken guts) so you can just glance over and see what temperature exactly you need to set the oven.   Also, the screen itself should be oil, water, grease and fire resistant.   The operative word here is “rugged,” so when inevitably you do get it gross from cooking, it’s an easy clean up.

Cookbooks are a pain to use in the kitchen- they fall all over the place (cookbook stand is on my xmas wish list, but cookbooks come in so many inconsistent shapes and sizes, how well really could any of them work?) and get wet, stained, flour on them, you end up breaking the spine by accident, etc etc. Also, as wonderful as they are for reading and inspiration, cookbooks are becoming a tad irrelevant with so many great varieties of recipes on the internet. I still adore cookbooks, and think they’re really fun to read, however trying to read and follow along with small print in a book without getting it gross while you’re cooking and your hands are all wet and dirty can be a challenge.

Right now if I find a recipe I like on the internet and am using it to cook with, I chose from the following options:

1. print it out on my own printer and bring that to the kitchen. Drawbacks to this: waste printer paper, required effort to print, 1 sheet of paper gets gross quickly and is hard to use more than once. If you really like the recipe and want to use it again, saving multiple sheets of separate paper can be disorganized and hard to reference in the future.
2. leave recipe on computer, run back and forth from kitchen to check it between steps. this is what I generally do, although it’s a bit annoying especially if you are cooking more than one thing at a time.
3. sometimes I do a bastardization of #2 and it involves me staying in the kitchen cooking and yelling across the apartment to Earl “HEY, REAL QUICK CAN YOU CHECK FOR ME ARE THESE ONIONS SUPPOSED TO BE MINCED OR CHOPPED.”  This method at least has the fun benefit of amusing me and bothering him while he’s trying to get work done. 

Hence- we need a big screen hanging on the wall with easy to see LARGE printing!

Think of your target markets- you could sell it to private homes AND industrial kitchens.  I’ll look forward to seeing this product on the market soon… and won’t even ask you to send me royalty checks.

ps- update on the car: it needed a new cam sensor and crank sensor… wasn’t TOO spendy but combined with the tow ended up setting us back $540 total.  Just another month in the life of a used Jeep Grand Cherokee owner, I suppose.  Probably getting time to put El Jefe out to pasture in a year or two, though in the meantime will try and eke as much use out of the vehicle as possible.  Picked her up from the shop yesterday (we really like our garage, btw if anyone in SF is looking for an honest shop that doesn’t rack up the price on unnecessary fixes) and she’s running fine now… which is great because I’ll need her to get to MY FIRST DAY OF WORK ON MONDAY AT MY NEW JOB!!!!!!!  whoooo

My schedule next week looks pretty good- I have 4 12s: Monday, Tues, Fri and Saturday.  No 24hr or 36hr shifts right away at this place- unlike my last EMT job.  Apparently they don’t want rookies taking the 24s.  Imo this is very smart and makes a lot of sense- the longer shifts can be REALLY overwhelming and physically demanding, especially if you aren’t used to it and run calls all night (which ALWAYS happened to us, plus my old place my shift had a standing 4:30am dialysis run for the same guy MWF, so even if we were back at station and had no calls around, say 1am, it was futile to try and catch any high quality ZZzzs because we knew we’d be heading out to pick him up 3:45am) – seems much more sane to let employees get used to the job first and then have them take on the longer shifts- heck, even a 12hr shift running calls all day and transporting heavy and/or very sick people is a bit of a shock for anyone coming from a cushy office environment.

Man I am so excited for my first day!!  I think I am going to resort to my old tricks and show up with a bunch of cookies to share with my new coworkers; hopefully they’ll provide social lubricant and help get things started off on the right foot.  Apparently I’m the newest hire by SIX MONTHS and the ONLY new hire right now… *gulp* … so looking like I’ll be stuck with the rookie moniker for a while [mentally prepares for a few months of licking boots].

Fuck my life.

So this happened tonight:

That was $140 (plus $20 tip) just to get the Jeep towed from where it broke down in SOMA to our garage in Cole Valley.

I’m sure it will be at least another $700 minimum to fix whyever it wouldn’t turn on.

Uuuugh. Need car to get to work. Need work to pay to fix car. Help, trapped in a Cartesian Circle of poverty and suck. FML.

I learned over on TGR that Noah, a five year old from South Lyon, Michigan, is nearing the end of his battle with neuroblastoma. Noah’s family is celebrating Christmas early this year-next weekend- as they think he might not make Christmas. Noah’s last wish is to receive Christmas cards from all over.

Earl and I just wrote up a card and mailed it out. If you’d like to send Noah a card as well, his address is:

Noah Biorkman
1141 Fountain View Circle
South Lyon, MI 48178

For more information, you can read the TGR thread here, skeptics can verify this on snopes here, and watch this touching video about Noah and his story here.

So, go ahead- send out a card and make his day. Such a small amount of effort for a great kid. Here’s to a brave little guy.
ps- cancer sucks the fat one!!!

All things considered, I could think of worse ways to spend a chilly Friday evening.

Hurrah!

Tonight I finally got through the final edits to the back-end of DwC, meaning the site overhaul is totally finished. You like? I couldn’t be happier with the overall look and love the plug-ins which Chris designed.  You are invited to check them all out over on the sidebar.

I’ve updated the training calendar over there to reflect my training (starting next week), as well as my reading library to accurately reflect what I am reading and plan to read. Not sure if I mentioned this, but Earl and I (well, more just me after Earl found a dead bedbug in a book, got grossed out and sort of gave up) have become quite the patrons of the San Francisco Public Library. We get over there about every other week, and I’m always working my way through a big stack of books on the night stand. It’s a nice change from buying books- not only because it’s friendlier on the budget, but also because I find myself taking chances reading books that I never would have bothered to purchase. For example, I just finished reading Paula Dean’s memoirs, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t get the best shrimp and crab au gratin recipe out of it- Something I, and my tummy, would have missed out on otherwise. We’ve really been enjoying hitting up the library on Sundays after the Farmer’s market.

Plans for this weekend have me in class ALL DAY tomorrow and afterwards meeting Earl at the gym for our Saturday lifting session. I joined the gym two weeks ago, and have been lifting 3x a week under his tutelage. He crafted me a nice simple all-body workout which hits:

1. chest
2. quads
3. tris
4. shoulders
5. back
6. calves
7. biceps
8. abs

and gets me in and out in just about an hour.  It’s a nice change from some of the super intricate and confusing lifting programs I attempted to follow back in NYC.  Perhaps that is why I never really followed through with any of those… this time shall be different!

Other than that, I have about 4 chapters to read, take notes on, and study for school.  My classes just started in earnest this week and I am already feeling a bit behind.  It’s time to step up that game.  Oh!  And I am going to try and make homemade whole wheat tortillas to serve chicken tzatziki on for Made from Scratch Sunday.  For some reason, I have been craving Greek something FIERCE this week.  Will let you know how those come out…. I am salivating already.

Anyways, I hope you have a nice weekend   And thank you again to Chris for his wonderful work on the Dances with Corgis design overhaul!

The memory space on my camera phone was completely full, so I cleared it out and am posting a bunch of them up. Below is a random smattering of photos taken on the cell during last year.

Aside: In the interest of DwC’s (laughable) Alexa rank, SEO optimizer Earl cautions against these types of photo-medley posts. Nonetheless, I enjoy the mishmash.

From a recent run over in Marin Headlands, overlooking the Bay. nice spot for a break:

Silly photo of me hanging out in the station between calls. taken around 3am while fighting the inevitable 20th hour jinx of “i know if i go lay down for bit, the moment i actually pass out, we will get a call”

looking rather frumpled stealing Earl’s sweatshirt.

kitten smooshes herself into the pillows

my friend Elaine mid coffee-break with Linus

love this snoopy cartoon on the fridge. SO fitting. Linus has NO hardships!

mid-ride, I am dying here- not quite all the way up a very LONG, SLOW HILL. those kill me the most. i’ll take short and steep any day over long and slow.

palo alto police logs- massive leaf blower crime spree! sadly amusing due to the juxtaposition of surrounding town police logs filled with drug busts, larcenies and homicides.

earl looking modelesque skiing in the rain at squaw this season

my favorite sign! hanging in the kitchen. i repeat it over and over… like a mantra

Our little clan has a history of crazy eye infections.

• Court: I’ve had cellulitis in my eye, conjunctivitis repeatedly and have a family history of graves disease.
• E: Has pigmentation sloughing off of the back of his cornea which is an early warning sign of glaucoma
• Lucy: (shown, above), had crazy eye issues this spring, which lead us to frequent one of the two Veterinary Ophthalmologists in NYC and spend thousands of dollars on her. Apparently she had an optic nerve which was releasing fluid into the back of her eye, which was making her vision cloudy. She was treated with shots and aggressive steroid treatment and ointments. She was NOT a happy kitty. You can see E, above, trying to give her the medication and how much she struggled. For an old, blind cat, she certainly had quiet a bit of spunk in her to try and fight when she did not want to take her eye drops!
• Linus: For the past two days he has been having green gunk oozing out of his eyeball. When I noticed it was green and not going away, I got worried and finally took him to the vet. He had also been scratching at that eye with his paw. The diagnosis was canine conjunctivitis which is apparently not contagious and could be the result of dust in his eye or picking it up at the dog park. He’s now on drops three times a day and also an eye-bath. They asked me if I wanted to put him in an Elizabethan Collar, but I declined… for now, he’s been pretty good about not pawing at himself. Poor guy. If he is continuing the scratching I’ll get one for him.

One of the books I’m currently working my way through is Goals! by Brian Tracy. This was recommended by hiker/explorer DonkeyLegs, whos hikes I had been following on the Appalachian Trail. Seeing as I had been in a bit of a rut, the 100 Goals list concept intrigued me.

One of the exercises in the book is to create a list of 100 things you would like to do in your lifetime, and no matter what you do not stop listing until you reach 100 items. So on a balmy summer evening this July, I enlisted Earl to join me and we sat on the patio under candlelight, splitting a bottle of wine while writing out our goals.

I was surprised at how easily the list came to me. I wrote furiously and quickly surpassed 100. Some goals were small and silly, others were big essential life-changing items. A few where X-rated and some were family oriented. Many where deep seeded goals which I have been harboring for years, whereas others struck my fancy right there on a whim. Very many of them are seemingly frivolous yet are surprisingly important to me. Happily, more than couple of them have already accomplished between July and today!

Later while perusing the web I also came across the website of Ian Usher, who earned international acclaim when he sold his life on ebay. He’s now continuing the momentum from his last endeavor and attempting 100 Goals in 100 Weeks. I poked around Ian’s site and was inspired how he listed his goals out in the open, upping the accountability factor. Ian’s website reminded me quite a bit of the style of my friend and triathlete Felix Wong, who posts of lists his goals and notes once they are accomplished. I’ve always admired Felix’s site and aspired to create something akin to his checklists. Aspects of each Ian and Felix site’s reminded me of why I initially started my Ironman blog, partially to document all the training out in the open and make sure I actually DID it all!

Paying homage to DonkeyLegs, Ian and Felix, I have posted my 100 Goals. A few of the more risque goals have been toned down with an editor’s eye for this site. Listing them all out was not only fun and rejuvenating, but also a bit grounding. It was almost as though creating the list helped center me closer to my purpose; I found myself reenergized and ready to start checking them off. I believe Brian Tracy would be proud!