pressure front

There has been a Winter Weather Alert on Milwaukee since Monday afternoon, and it goes until tomorrow afternoon. There is a Blizzard Warning with Lake Effect Snow in effect until Wednesday afternoon. It is predicted we will end up with anywhere from 20 to 28 inches of snow over the next three days, which will cause snow drifts anywhere from 4 to 10 feet. This picture was taken as I left for class at 12:45, from the 3rd story landing of my apartment building, out the front window. Usually, I can see all the way down to the lake, which is two miles away. Today, you can very faintly make out the Shroeder/Cramer Complex of Health Sciences, which is four blocks away.
In physics, my professor said that LECTURE WILL BE CANCELED on Wednesday if the Blizzard Alert is still in place, regardless of whether or not Marquette calls a snow day.

This is what it looked like coming out of the athletic training room today at 4pm on my way to Medical Ethics. (PS. My professors likes to watch documentaries on STRING THEORY. I.Want.To.Be.His.Best.Friend.)
Milwaukee, your "blizzard" does not impress me.
You have let me down.

bla bla bla blatty bla bla

Iowa was so much fun!
Ok, well, the track meet itself was fun. Even just being at a meet again brought back so many good memories from high school... and made me really miss it. As I am not board certified yet, I am only considered an Athletic Training Student in the presence of a certified AT, so Dave Leigh, who is also one of my professors, traveled with us. He's basically the most awesome person in the world, and told me at the start of the meet that he was just there to supervise and that he really wanted Alicia and I to run the show. So I took charge and tracked down the head AT of Iowa and got our barrings with her, I was telling our team where to go and where we would be if they needed us, I was taping ankles and giving out ice and doing evals, I was sprinting across the field house to get to the girl who pulled her hamstrings in the 400 meter dash and catching one of our girls as she passed out after her leg of a relay.
Granted, one ankle, one hamstring, one shin, one fainter, and about 50 billion bags of ice was ALL that I did during the 9 hour meet, but I still feel pretty good about my abilities as a future athletic trainer right now. Alicia seemed so hesatant to do anything without glancing at Dave first, and he mentioned to me how he was impressed with how professionally and calmly I handled everything - example of:

Girl walks up to where we are sitting looking... well... I just know that "I'm about to ask for something" look.
Me: "What can I get'cha?"
Her: "I think I'm going to pass out."
Alicia: *freezes*
Me: *Jumps up and gets behind her, hooking my elbows under her armpits*
Dave: "Ok, just go ahead and sit down and put your head between your knees."
Her: "okay..." *eyes rolling in and out of focus*
Me: "Hey, I got you. We're just going to sit down nice and slow ok. Go ahead and lean back on me ok?"
Her: *leans as I slide her down onto the ground*
Her: *is very pale*
Me: "Alicia, slide over our ice cooler and help me put her legs up on it."
Her: *is back* "Oh man this is embarassing."
Me: "Nope, you are totally fine, I'm going to put this bag of ice under your back and one on your forehead ok? Then we're just going to sit here as long as you need ok?" *I ask her about fluids, which are fine, if she is diabetic, she's not, and food. She hasn't eaten since breakfast at 8:30am, it is now 4:00pm and she just ran a 0:58 400meter dash, which is hella' fast*
Me: "Here's an orange. I want you to eat this ok."
Her: *eats orange. Feels better. Sits up. Eats a cookie. Feels much better.*
Dave: "Michelle, I'm impressed, you handled that very well."

Bam! Roasted!

Then I got back to Marquette at about 12:30am, and after not being able to sleep at all (but watching Easy A) on the bus. I got back to my apartment thinking I needed to do laundry after soccer (a mere 8 hours away) to find the note "Laundry room Closed" on the laundry room door. Awesome. I am wearing my LAST pair of clean underwear. I check to see if I can get into the laundry room, which I can, but there are currently no washers in it. Fuck. Off.
So I had to pack up two weeks worth of laundry and haul it to a friend's house.

Now I'm back in my room wondering if 8:40pm is too early to turn in for the night.

So if you attach a carrot with a potato pealer, you get very thin strips of carrot that can be used like lettuce in a BBQ chicken, rice, lentil, and salsa salad.

Yesterday, one of the soccer boys threw a roll of pre-wrap at me.
While he was riding the exercise bike.
While he was talking to another soccer player.
While I was explaining an exercise to someone.
While we were on opposite ends of the athletic training room.
While there were people walking in between us.
AND I CAUGHT IT.
Underhand.
Down by my right knee.
Without looking.
I was pretty damn impressed with myself, let me tell you. One of the other soccer guys who say it was all, "Damn. That was pretty cool." So I told him not to swear in the training room, but thank you for the complement.

I'm going to IOWA today for a two-day track meet. Granted, the 5 hour bus ride there, and back, is going to suck, but when I tell a future employer that I have traveled with the Track Team, and not only that, but OVERNIGHT and as an UNDERGRAD, he or she will be impressed.
Plus, I like watching track, and unless someone falls off the pole vault, I don't to worry too much about any traumatic injuries. The most the track people ever ask for is for a band-aid or to roll out their calves (see: pain and torture) after they run. Easy. As. Pie.

Bleh

Snow is bleh.

I need to clean my apartment. Like, now.

I need a nap.

I need to read a lot of stuff.

I need to go buy a book.

Salsa is delicious yes?

Hurray for further expanding my basic medical knowledge! We're currently learning about the heart, and a disorder called Sudden Cardiac Death. That's right. One minute you are fine running up and down the basketball court, the next minute you have dropped dead. In most cases, this is due to something being structurally wrong with the heart. The only problem is that in about 85% of the cases, DEATH is the first symptom (this includes no family history of heart problems).
It's kind of scary stuff. I hope I never have to put the skill of using an AED to the test.
Tomorrow in lab we are listening to each others' hearts! I'm excited for this lab, I love the way a heart sounds!

I called my mom to ask her about my dad's heart (he has Mitral Valve Prolapse which occasionally causes an arrhythmia with heavy exercise) and when she answered the phone my mom is all "MICCHHHEEEELLLLLLEEEEE!!!!~~!!!~!~!~!" and in the background I hear about 7 other women going, "Oh it's MICHHHEEEELLLLLEEEE! MICHEELLLLEEE!! MY BEEELLLLLLLLLLL!!"
Ummm... apparently once a month a group of 50-ish women get together eat dessert for dinner, drink a little bit too much wine, and call it "book club."
But my mom also told me that I should start coming to book club this summer because some of the other ladies bring their daughters and she wants to show me off. Which is fine. I'll let everyone know how big of a deal I am and get tipsy with my mom's friends. Maybe it will like, improve our relationship, or something.

I'm a girl!

It's kind of ridiculous how much I love these boots. But I do! They are sexy and empowering and I just feel like a total badass when I wear them. (which I want to do everyday) However, the next time I get the urge to pull on high heels and tromp around in the slush and snow to and from school and all over campus, tell me no. My feet are freaking killing me! I don't understand how some women do this all day everyday, like, the balls of my feet are going to be so sore tomorrow!!
I still just fucking love these boots though.

I forgot to mention yesterday something my ethics teacher said. We were talking about the moral theory of Utilitarianism, and how it would apply to saving a drowning child. Good: Life saved, family happy, bla bla bla. Bad: (and here I quote) "Wet socks. Which is the single most vile thing on the planet."
Oh my god I've found my soulmate.
He also posted something online about how inner city public schools are starting to look like prisons and that people are starting to worry about the influence this has on children. When the zombies come, those people will be eating their words and scrambling for a spot in an elementary school where you can very effectively lock people out.

snow

You know, as far as Mondays go... Well, today was pretty ok.
First I woke up from a really odd dream involving my great grandma's house and my calves/arches DID NOT feel like they were going to rip when I stood up. Usually they do, because I usually forget to stretch them out before I get out of bed.
Had toast for breakfast. Mmmmm toast. I ran out of butter about a week before the semester ended last year, and didn't buy more until yesterday, I missed toast.
Realized I would not need coffee to get me through physics lecture. I like to think that means I'm adjusting to getting up everyday at 7am rather than noon.
Did well on my Physics quiz.
Got out of my Exercise Prescription/EKG lab early so I was able to go back to my place and put some chicken in my crock pot. I love my crock pot by the way. All you do is throw everything in there at once, set it on low, and then leave it there for 8 hours while you do other things.
Made myself some salt and vinegar flavored sauted vegetables for lunch. They almost tasted like the potato chips, except healthier and not like potatoes.
Went to the training room and had all my soccer guys say they missed me over break and are sad I'm not working with them anymore because their new group of students doesn't know how to do anything. It made me feel pretty loved.
Went to medical Ethics and OH MY GOD MY TEACHER HAS A MOHAWK. He's 30 and working on his PhD or something, swears a lot, and waves his arms around when he talks. He kind of reminds me of my cousin Nathan and Matt Mabey. I think this class is going to be awesome!
Got home and checked on my chicken and Mmmmm! it smells so good! I pulled it out of the crock pot to shred and it was just FALLING APART on the fork before I could even get it to the plate!
Currently eating my chicken. I used the pulled pork sauce recipe from Jill and it's pretty freaking good. Not as good as the pork, but chicken was cheaper than pork yesterday.
Now, I'm going to nap for an hour or so then go to the gym, get a great work out in, and get totally ripped.

Look at how nice my handwriting is when I copy my loose-leaf physics notes into a spiral notebook and have time to make it look nice rather than frantically scribbling down everything my professor says.
I think the thing that frustrates me most about Physics is that, while reviewing last semester in class last week, and looking at my notes again now, how to do the four or so problems we went over MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME. I sit here and I'm thinking to myself, "OF COURSE that is how you do this problem. That is so simple and logical and ordered." Then I get to a test or a quiz or something, and my mind goes completely blank. I just sit there for an hour making herp-derp faces at my paper.

I found a bunch of old MSN conversations, from when I first got this laptop to whenever we stopped using MSN Messenger. Reading them was weird, it was almost like I was there again, having those conversations again, I could hear our voices in my head as if we had met for coffee or something. It was also hilarious to read about what was concerning to us three years ago.

Lita and I made cookies today! Except we didn't have any Hershey's Kisses, so we used chocolate chips and made the cookies proportionally small. That yielded two trays of button cookies, one with milk chocolate and one with white chocolate, and four very large cookies, which we put faces and other designs on.
We watched SLC Punk and I thought about how odd it must seem to Lita, who knows nothing about Salt Lake, didn't get most of the references, and was intrigued by the Salt Flats. I also thought about how fucking hot the blue-haired-27-year-old-Matthew Lillard is and if he were to walk in and tell me to take my clothes off, I probably would.

Wrestling Friday, youth soccer this morning, youth soccer tomorrow. No sleeping in for me.

I get to go to IOWA next Friday with the track team for an overnight meet. How fun!

I really wanted muffins, however, I do not have a muffin tray. Here's to hoping they come out somewhat the same consistency as cornbread.

Last night I had a dream that Drew and I got fed up with everything and had Rev. Kev marry us. Whenever I dream of marriage I never see the whole ceremony, it's always just before, or just after. I remember a vague glance of standing in front of a fireplace in a room with yellow walls, and I seemed to know, in the dream, that my dress was pretty. In the dream we then went back to my parents house and into my room to go to bed. Dream me was worried what my parents would say that Drew was sleeping over, but then my dream self remembered, "Oh. Right. We're MARRIED. Duh."
But mostly I remember the feeling of extreme RIGHTNESS when my dream self looked at dream Drew and realized he was now my husband.

This afternoon Nichole and I are going down to Homestead High School and working at a wrestling tournament! It'll be a long night, but it should be fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things work at Homestead.

I was going to take a picture of outside today, but I totally forgot. So here is a picture of my warm boots, which I love.

In an attempt to save money on my electric bill, I will leave things unplugged if they are not in use, including lamps, my cell phone charger, and the microwave. When I left for Christmas Break, the only thing left on in my apartment was my fridge. You know how much that saved me over the course of a month? TWO DOLLARS. Which means, that I have my electricity bill just about as low as I can get it without stumbling around in the dark or trying to cook popcorn on my gas stove. (gas, water, and heat are included in my rent. My showers are always fantastic and toasty!)

I had something fantastic and interesting to say but I cannot remember what it was.

I am very slowly, but surely, copying all the recipes I've collected over the past few months onto note cards so they will fit nicely in the box Jill made me for Christmas. I keep adding categories and I now have 10 little piles of cards all over my desk.

One day, I will have a beautiful house.
Until then, I'm keeping my great-grandmother's very nice silver in my closet (as in a replacement butter knife is $14), as well as my mom's old flour and sugar jars.
Sometimes, I seriously wonder what I'm supposed to do with all the things in my apartment when I go do a clinical all semester, but still need somewhere to live when I get back for another semester. Put it in storage for a few weeks or find someone who wants to sublease a furnished room I guess.

I found my physics book online for $2. I'm pretty stoked about that, cause the bookstore wanted $137 for it.
Two of my professors are being super awesome and saying there is a book that goes with the class, however, they will not teach from it and it is only available in case anyone needs extra help studying. Which saves me about $200, hurray!
This semester I have a class completely dedicated to heart rhythms, normal and abnormal, and what that means for the exercising population. We get to go to the cadaver lab and play with REAL HUMAN HEARTS in a few weeks. So excited!

My computer has been loosing battery unusually fast since I got back to school.

Many thanks to my mother, who, in a moment of genius, only put things in my Christmas stocking that I will ACTUALLY USE this year.
I'm definitely going to need this to get me through the day.

I'm ready to be here again.

Fun fact.

My boyfriend is the boy that is the "guy friend," to all his girl friends from high school and work.

Sometimes this is very hard for me to accept without getting jealous and possessive.