Photo Shoot with Paige

Paige came to visit us this weekend and she did a photo shoot of us walking around... Thanks Paige!

UCLA 23 Stanford 20

It was no Gator Nation Domination but it was still nice to be at a gameday...

L to R: Paige, Brandon, Melissa, Melissa's nephew, Ashley, Kim

Halloween Horror Nights

As you know, we only work three days a week at UCLA because we work the 12 hour shifts. Many of the nurses pick up a second part-time job in their free time (I don't really know what I do, all I know is that I don't get nearly enough sleep). One of the nurses on our unit (Bert) works at Universal Studios in the first aid station (which basically means he is in charge of handing out aspirin) which gets him a TON of theme park related perks. This past Friday Ashley, Brandon, Kris, AK, Charles and I (all nurses in the CTICU) went to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal and Bert happened to be working that night. We stopped in to say hi and he ended up giving us front-of-the-line passes (so we got to skip all the huge lines - each one was at least an hour long wait)! We were having so much fun that we forgot to take pictures :(

Strutt Your Mutt

Last year I went to this with Dad and Julie, this year Julie sent me this article:My favorite part is where it says that they "raised dollars for the animal shelter"... it reminds me of this Tom Hanks line from 'A League of Their Own' (right at the beginning of the clip):

PADI Certification

I got my 'Open Water Diver' card while I was in Gainesville and this is the photo (out of the plethora of digital photos that my instructor had) that they chose to put on the back of my certification card... very professional.

LSU Domination

L to R: Patti, Elaine, Laura, Kacy, Brett, Paige, Jay

I went to Gainesville this past weekend to watch the Gators play LSU and to be reminded what it is like to hang out with people who take as many pictures as I do :) I got to see Patti, who is in her second year of law school at UF; Elaine, who took a much deserved break from investment banking and drove down for the game from North Carolina; Laura, who has finished her masters in international business, so she came up from Fort Myers (where she is catching up on sleep and family bonding until she starts a job up in North Carolina); I stayed with Kacy, who is in her last semester of the pediatric nurse practitioner program at UF; Brett, whose driving up from Fort Pierce had everything to do with seeing me and nothing to do with seeing his fiancee; and Jay, who has actually been placed in Gainesville to oversee a project by his building construction firm (which is based out of Tampa)... wow, we sound old! Don't worry though, it only took a couple rounds of beer pong for these new mature lifestyles to vanish completely from memory, and for us all to feel like we were back at school and this was just another game weekend...

Fall in NY. For Paige from Julie

Jumpin Julie On Bullet

From Julie:

I got to live out one of my "bucket list" items this week. I got to ride in a "go get um cowboy" Gynkhana horse show. I've been taking lessons for 4 months, and I was by far the least qualified person there. All the other competitors were either teen age girls or real cowboys. So, while I didn't win any big prizes, I did get an honorable mention just for finishing some of the races while my horse (Cloudy) bucked me while galloping.

My instructor renamed me "Jumpin Julie" and she renamed Cloudy "Bullet". So, everytime I got in the ring to ride I was announced as "Jumpin Julie on Bullet".

It was one of the best days of my life! I lived out a lifelong dream and my Mom came to visit us as a beautiful butterfly that stayed with me and all the Ryder girls for at least 10 minutes...just floating in between us all and sitting on each of us. Very, Very Cool.

I'm still taking lessons...and next years video should be even better.

Oktoberfest

I can't believe this festival lasts 16 days! I'm not sure I would make it out alive... Last night we drove down to Torrance for the 5th Annual Oktoberfest at Alpine Village. I put all of my Kappa Delta social experience to work and convinced Duncan to dress up with me ("everyone will be dressed up Duncan, I promise!") only to arrive and find that there were about 10 people (out of a few thousand) who had taken the flyer up on its suggestion to wear 'traditional German clothing'. However, 10 minutes, 2 giant beers and 50 photo-ops into our Oktoberfest the manager came up and asked if I would like to be a beer girl for the night. This entailed refilling the band's mugs and in return I could have all the beer I could drink and all the bratwurst I could eat - was I interested? Ummmmmm YES!!! I had to work this morning (at my real job) so we didn't get too out of hand but the manager gave us an open invitation to come back as often as possible ;)