as requested by LaHender:

Here is a link to the trailer in HD, just scroll down to the teaser trailer download links and choose your size.

Neti Pot

Let me preface this with: I've been sick for the last few days and (besides the fact that being sick is absolutely no fun) I am going on vacation next week so I have been willing to try anything and everything to get better as quickly as possible.

Hollywood Bowl

Tonight I convinced a couple people to drive over to the Hollywood Bowl to see the LA Philharmonic perform Mozart Under the Stars. I know I have been going a bit overboard on the videos lately but they just give you such a better idea of what it was like to be there! I posted the picture too because if you look in the distance on the hills to the right you can see the Hollywood sign...

Ashmad Rocking Out

Last night Ashley and I went to the Key Club in Hollywood with one of the other nurses on our floor, Jen, and her roommate to see an 80's cover band called Steel Panther. Jen and her roommate had been before but Ashley and I didn't know what to expect especially after some questionable opening acts. It turns out we had nothing to worry about, when the Steel Panthers came on I felt like I was inside a Guitar Hero concert - I honestly think I knew every song they played. I also managed to bring along my camera and I would like to point out to you that as the evening progresses my filming gets considerably worse while Ashley's vocals and dance moves get considerably better... weird.

Dream Dinners

Here are the Dinner Prep links she sent me:
Dream Dinners
Super Suppers
Supper Thyme
As I said, I chose the first place simply because it had a location so close to my apartment. I was in and out, with 12 dinners (36 meals), in an hour and a half and there was only one other lady in the store with me (they said business slows down in the summer because so many people go out of town). The other customer had discovered the store when she received a gift card for a months worth of meals at her baby shower and she said she has been back every month since. She said it can get crowded, to the point where you are waiting at each station for someone to finish, but since it was just the two of us that night we leisurely prepared our meals while snacking on brownies and lemonade/tea/coffee and listening to music. Even in this utopia of dinner prep, I still managed to injure a knuckle while grating a lemon rind... some things never change.

If You Walk Without Rythm, Then You Wont Attract The Worm

For those of you who don't know me, and I know there's probably a few of you even though Paige insists her entire readership consists of family members, I'm the elusive little sister know variously as either Katie, Katherine, Kit or really, honestly, any other K name you can think of...

Paige has been on me for a long time to write a blog post, and I keep insisting that I've been planning to write them and end up getting busy/lazy etc. So to date, this is only my second entry.

In my defense, my last semester was pretty intense, and I subsisted off of a lot of Red Bull... err, healthy full meals Mom I promise... This isn't all that unusual for the girls I live with. As it turns out, everyone in the house is busy and has a similar schedule - who knew?

If you've been reading Paige's blog for a while you might know that I like to dance, and was in the musical Cabaret last summer. So this year, when some girls in the house expressed an interest in dancing for AXO's fundraiser "Lipsync" I was really excited. But, unfortunately, with all those nasty tests, labs, etc, getting in the way, we found ourselves one week before the deadline with no dance choreographed and no rehearsals under our belts. As luck would have it, all of us were pretty darn busy that week too, so seeing as the show was next Saturday things weren't looking too promising.

Fortunately, it seems the Lipsync board is used to busy schedules too, and the dress rehearsal/last day to drop out, was the Saturday of the performance (nice). Five of us were sitting in the living room, psetting together when we decided that we could give up our Saturday to do the show in true MIT fashion - by cramming all day, after all there's a reason why our motto is "Sleep is for the weak." One of the girls who was working full time and overheard us even agreed to choreograph some of it in advance!

So we six got up at 8am on Saturday, learned the whole dance, and took the stage. It will make more sense (Dad) if you've seen the Fat Boy Slim music video - Weapon of Choice and the prom dance scene from the movie She's All That. The title of the post is from a line in the first song - it's also a reference to the uber-nerdy sci-fi book "Dune," you know you're jealous.

Christopher Walkin is yours truly ...



[PS: see Paige, I told you I would do a video sometime]

July at Put

Four consecutive camp seasons at Illahee and then school last summer means it has been a few years since I have been to NY in July... so this past Wednesday I exercised my right to a three day work week and flew to Dad and Julie's for five days. Katie and Sheldon came up Saturday afternoon for a BBQ and then we visited Dan, Nancy, Ben and Nate (uncle, aunt and cousins) in Connecticut on Sunday - it was a very productive vacation! I have apparently gotten lax with my picture taking and so I managed to come away with about 50 pictures of Dad and I burning stuff and not a single group shot... instead of choosing whose picture will end up on the blog, I am just posting multiple:
at Date Night with Don and Carla
picking blueberries (for Sal) ker-plink, ker-plank, ker-plunk
in the lake with Katie

Best in Show

Snazzy

New uniforms for a new hospital:

July 4th at Crystal River

Loooooong time friends, John and Marilyn Samaha, have a wicked cool river house in/on Crystal River - north of Tampa about an hour and a half (okay... don't expect me to be any more detailed than that.... they don't call me "Rand McNally" for nothing, ya know..). Further, it is a happy confluence of good karma that the start of scalloping season coincides with the long July 4th weekend! For the uninitiated, "scalloping" is something akin to underwater easter egg hunting - only you're snorkeling about hunting sea life hiding in the grasses of the bay. When you spot one of the little devils you gracefully execute a surface dive, juggle the unhappy little feller into your mesh bag, return to the surface and attempt not to inhale a snorkel full of seawater. (This apparently is easier for some than others. And if you're wondering... I am an "other".) After filling the coolers full of scallops the real fun begins! An onboard assembly line of opening, de-gutting, and scraping forms - fueled by beer, Pringles and the promise of a mountain of garlic, butter and lemon nirvana. Once the hard work is done (finishing all that beer) we return to the house and flop in the spring to rinse off the salt water before making dinner, toasting our success and falling into a food coma.

Oh we've been doing this type of thing SO LONG .... Marilyn, Leslee & Betsy must have champagne almost immediately upon boarding the boat - like on the way to the marina for ice. The bonfire is of a magnitude to signal Cuba (kudos to Steve B. for the brilliant idea to add the bacon grease). We have food for hundreds and scallops by the dozens. Next year Betty has promised a sparkler routine that will "make you wet your pants". (We have had children - this is not difficult, but still... ) There is laughter, conversation, love and foil.

There will always be foil.

Shutters Wedding

You are just going to have to use your imagination for this one... Jeff and I went to a wedding last night in Santa Monica at a hotel called Shutters on the Beach. Back in February Julie had suggested this hotel as a good place for drinks at sunset and I have unsuccessfully been trying to work it into my schedule ever since. Jeff was a groomsman which means I at least had an opportunity to meet the bride and groom the night before at the rehearsal dinner, but also meant that I was flying solo for about 90% of the evening. Julie was right, the sunset was BEAUTIFUL - so beautiful in fact that the wedding party took pictures for the duration of it! I didn't actually see Jeff after the ceremony until about two hours later when we sat down to eat, so the only pictures I have of us together are in the dark after he has shed both jacket and tie. This is where your imagination is going to have to come in, you have to combine the view (above), with us (sweaty on the dance floor, below) and picture us a few hours earlier clean, pressed and posing in the late afternoon sun... don't we look good?

4th of July Paddle

I started my 4th off with an ODC kayaking trip in Long Beach (the same group I went rock climbing and played ultimate frisbee with a few months back). The way the Outdoors Club works is they send you emails for genres of events that you indicate interest in (like climbing, camping, mountain biking, etc) and then you are free to sign up for as many events as you want, as often as you want. Somehow four days off a week has suddenly become an insufficient amount of free time for me and so I haven't signed up for anything lately but when this invite came through my inbox it reminded me so much of Florida that I couldn't resist. I tried to get a few friends on board but everyone was either hung over, working or home for the holiday so I said screw it, decided to chalk it up as a good scouting trip for a possible future group activity, and went anyway. Long Beach is further south than I have been so far, about 45 minutes away on the 405 freeway (our apartment is star A, the kayak rental place is star B):I had to get up relatively early to make it for the 8:30 launch but we were well rewarded with a waterfront Starbucks stop at the midway point of our paddle. I remembered my camera but didn't know anyone well enough to hand it off so I put it on a timer, set it at the front of the boat and ended up with a crotch shot... oh well, at least it nicely highlights my festive shorts.

Sand Dune Park

from the bottomThese L.A. workouts are really starting to affect my self image. Apparently The Stairs weren't bad enough, so now I have The Dune to contend with. It is the same general idea as The Stairs but will a little sand thrown in for good measure, and as if sliding back a half step after every step you take wasn't painful enough, look at the orange cones dividing The Dune in half... the right side is for "adult recreation" and the left side is designated for "children's play" - so imagine yourself about two thirds of the way up, lungs burning and your heart dangerously close to exploding only to look over your left shoulder to see some five-year-old repeatedly sprinting up past you while giggling! I knew better that to even try and do this at a run and I was still huffing and puffing every time I reached the top. When all was said and done (I don't know how long we were there, I stopped when I felt like my face was about to melt off) I had only been up and down four times... ouch.
from the top

Scotch-O-Roos

Just when I was starting to get comfortable at work they had to go and switch it all around on me... on Sunday June 29th we officially made the move from our old hospital building (the UCLA Medical Center) to our new hospital building (the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA). I worked the night shift on Saturday the 28th so I was involved in getting ready all night... even though the new building (outlined in blue on the map) is just right across the street from the old building (outlined in green on the map) every patient had to be transported by ambulance. This means that by 4am we had to do all baths and dressing changes, send the family out, gather patient belongings and medications, transfer over their IV pumps from the ones we used in the old hospital to the ones we will use in the new hospital, and basically get the patients as stable as possible so that they could be moved. For the day of the move every patient was assigned double the staff because they needed to have a sending team (who would be in charge of the patient in the old hospital and during the ambulance transport) and a receiving team (who would be waiting to help settle the patient in the new hospital). My shift ended at 7am and our unit was scheduled to start moving at 8am so I am curious to see how smooth the transition was and I am excited to start using all the cool new toys in the new unit ;) As part of our good-bye to the old building we had a little going-away dinner party on the unit, I went to my old fall back, scotch-o-roos, because they take about 15 min to make, they don't require refrigeration, they are always a hit and I thought they would be nice to snack on all night... well as soon as I got my patient settled I went in to get one and this is what I found:So much for snacking.
PS: I almost forgot my favorite feature of the new hospital, look back at the map and you will see a red line - this is fraternity row and our 7th floor unit puts us at the perfect height to look down over the fraternity houses and see their roof-top parties as I toil away on the night shift, maybe I really am becoming an adult... nah.