Dream a little dream of me

Well, folks, here it is. Summer is officially over in Utah, and it is time to pull out the gloves and scarves… though I wore neither today. When we woke up this morning, it was probably about 40 degrees outside. Fun times. I walked to the bus stop wearing my jacket, holding an umbrella (I know, gasp! Jeanette using an umbrella! It’s not ideal to show up to work looking like a drowned rat), and my head covered in my Georgia Tech hat Cliff got me that one year. It was chilly and wet waiting for this bus, but I survived. It is definite proof, however, that summer is on its way out, at least for the day.
Then why is it that our apartment is so warm? I am predicting not needing to turn on the heat EVER, all winter long, which could be nice I suppose. We’ll see if that prediction comes to fruition.

In other news, look, pictures!Look at the pretty new paint job on our car! No dent and no scratches! Yay!




And here's one with Kyler. We're enjoying the pretty car, even if we do need to get new brakes now. Fun....

Kyler and I hiked Ensign Peak with Liz and Jake a few weeks back, and it was really fun. A nice short hike with an amazing view of the city, even if, yes, my hips started hurting. Yay for going uphill.
So here are some pictures from Ensign Peak.
Kyler and I up at the top with the monument. We can actually see this thing from where we live, if we look closely up into the hills.




Another one of us, this time with the view of Salt Lake City. It looks a lot smaller from up there.




And here's one of Liz and Jake, for good measure. You can see the mountains pretty decently in this one...

Let’s see, what else have we done… Kyler and I both got emails from the Army, offering to pay for grad school if we join up. That’s the joy of taking the GRE. I haven’t received as many letters as I did for colleges after I took the SAT (does that mean I didn’t do as well?), but it’s still early yet, and I don’t care. Kyler is signed up to take the GRE psychology subject test in November, and he’s working on his applications for grad schools. I’m trying to help as much as possible, since he’s going to school, working, doing research, commuting, etc, but I just can’t write his personal statement for him… and I doubt he’d want me to. After all, he got a 5.5 out of 6 on the GRE written portion, and I only got a 5.

Kyler has also applied for a green card, making our banking accounts significantly lighter, and I applied for a passport, which only made a minor dent in our financial assets comparatively. Here’s to hoping he gets travel documents in time for Christmas… and the Olympics! Although, we have yet to find a place to stay for the Olympics… whoops.

I’m trying to think, and I’m thinking that’s about it. The primary program is coming up? I’ve earned a tiny bit extra money babysitting a couple of adorable kids in the ward a time or two? Kyler and I are happy and healthy, though completely unsure of what the future holds? Yeah, that’s about it.

I've also been having strange dreams recently, though I'm having trouble remembering them.
In one dream, I'm at work and it's 4:10 (when I normally leave at 3:30) and I realize I haven't left yet! My co-worker and I discuss how I'll make up that time (since we're not suppose to work overtime), and we come to the conclusion that the next day I'll leave for lunch extra early but come back at the same time. Problem solved!
Another dream was partially based in reality. I realized my soft pillow was no where to be found (in Real World), but I was too asleep still to sleepy to do much about it. Then I dreamt (isn't that a word? Blogger thinks it's spelled wrong) that our apartment management took the pillow away to fix it or update it or something, leaving me with just the pillow case (or, sheet in Real World). I tried to tell them (in Dream World) how much I needed my pillow, or at lease a replacement, but they didn't have much sympathy. Shortly after this, I decided (in Real World) that my pillow was probably on the floor, and then went back to sleep. When I finally woke up, I was right: my pillow was there, right next to the bed, not stolen by my mean management. Thank goodness.
Now, who wants to psycho-analyze those dreams for me? Anyone?

You're all the things I've got to remember

Holy cow, it’s already September? I feel like time is going by so fast, and I’m being a slacker and not updating the blog. Such is life, eh? But, since we’re here, let’s review what has happened during the month of August…

I got to add another skill to my resume! We’ve been practicing making paraffin blocks of solid tissue (like breast), the cutting the blocks into very thin sections, mounting those sections on slides, and staining the slides so the tissue looks pretty. We had never done this before, even though our facility should be able to. Blame it on the massive turnover that has occurred since I started. But, we’ve been practicing, and we’ve officially been given The Blessing, our cuts, slides, and staining look good and we can start doing this on important pieces of tissue! Yay!
This may not seem that cool to everybody, but it’s really cool to me. For one thing, all those slides I taught off of while I was a TA I can kind of make now (assuming I have the tissue to use)! For another, when I was looking at our slides of unknown tissue type before the official-type people looked at it, I pointed out ducts and blood vessels and adipose… and the official-type people noticed all the same things! Isn’t that sweet?

This is a picture of breast tissue (sadly, not cut/stained by me, but by these guys, sorry!)See all the dark purple circular areas? Those are the ducts!

Kyler and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. We went to an expensive Italian place considered to be the best Italian restaurant in SLC and rather enjoyed ourselves. Honestly, we’ll probably never go there again, as there are decent Italian places that are quite a bit cheaper. We definitely don’t regret it, though. Tasty, tasty stuff.

I had a surgeon yell/swear about/at me. He's one of those surgeons that give all of them that stereotype, you know the one: cocky, foul-mouthed, quick-tempered jerks who think they're the center of the universe. He had tissue for us to collect, so the nurse paged us to come to the OR. I rush over, liquid nitrogen and tubes in hand. When I get into the OR, I talk to the nurse, and she tells me that the tissue he has for me is right over there, so I get to work. I'm putting tissue into the second vial when I hear him say, "Are they here yet?" I'm not entirely sure who he's talking about (I can't be the only person they might want in to OR, it'd be selfish of me to think so!), so I continue to put tissue in vials. Then he asks the room, "Where are the damn tissue people? Where is Jan [the research coordinator, and the only name he knows of the TRAC lab]?" I answer him this time, "Jan's not here, but I am." I'm freezing my second vial and starting on the third when he responds, "What took you so long?" At this point, I take a glance at my pager: it's 10:53. I decide not to reply to this surgeon due to his aforementioned magnanimous qualities, and just continue to freeze my tissue and quietly exit as soon as I'm done. When I'm back at the lab, I look at my pager again, and discover that I was paged by his OR staff at 10:47... that's right, six minutes between page and being in the OR freezing tissue, and that's "so long." Self-centered jack... no, I'm polite. At least he gave me tissue. I like collecting tissue.

Kyler started his last semester of his Bachelor’s degree. Okay, this only happened yesterday, but it was still in August and still exciting. He doesn’t seem terribly enthused, but that might be because he had his generals yesterday, with his psychology classes starting today. We'll see how the semester goes for him.

Last, but not least, I am teaching Sharing Time in primary on Sunday. I suppose this isn't August, but I don't care. Deal with my inconsistancies. We're talking about how Bible prophets teach us to strengthen our families. Fun times, eh? If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to volunteer them.

Currently listening to Reel Big Fish - "Take On Me"