Friday, December 23, 2011

End of the Semester!

The semester is finally over! I had taken two classes which is a situation where when you’re going through, is awful and horrible, but when it’s done is sweet relief, which can apply to many situations I guess. That’s what she said. Okay, enough. One of them was a statistics class, which quite frankly, I can’t believe I paid $1500.00 for a class to give me ulcers, but whatever. It’s done, and I got an A- in it somehow.

My other class was an awkward mess. My instructor wanted us to have a Skype meeting with him, which is actually my worst nightmare (in all my undergrad years I attended the office hours of my professors maybe 2 times), so having one on one time with an instructor via Skype was not very appealing to me. Adding to the awkwardness was the fact that my instructor is Greek and living in Greece and when I first called him on Skype, I instinctively started speaking Greek, and he assumed that I was totally fluent. Something I failed to correct.

Don’t get me wrong, I can speak and understand Greek, but if you’re explaining learning theories to me and how they relate to distance education, I need you to be speaking English. Alas, it was too late, so I had to pretend I understood everything he was saying in this academic language that I would have a hard time understanding even in English. Needless to say, I sent a follow up email (in English) seeking some clarification.

Then we had group work – I’ve discussed this before, but only hit reply all in an email, if you are in fact sharing information that is important to all you are replying to. Saying “thanks” or “sounds good” doesn’t warrant an email even to one person (I feel that should be implied. No one wants their inbox flooded with niceties.), let alone a group of five people.

But, who cares about all of that because it is OVER! So happy to be done. Until January 9 when everything starts again, but until then, I plan to sleep my brains out and have a marathon Fringe session (I never got into it, but I do love me some Joshua Jackson. Pacey and Joey 4EVA - a shout out to all the Dawson's Creek fans out there)and perhaps dust off that old sewing machine.

Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy the holidays!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Happy December!

Sheesh! Finally, November is over. What a long month that was. I was so busy at work, combined with never ending school work - papers, assignments and group work that was eating up so much of my time. It is over. But, unfortunately, November definitely went out with a bang for me.

Since the summer, I have been a semi regular (3-4 times a week) juicer. Not steroids or something crazy like that, but vegetables! Anything green to be exact. I have developed quite a craving for it and actually really like it (it did take some time to warm up to). Anyway. I had a long day again yesterday, and was feeling really run down so I decided to get my veggies ready and toss them in the juicer for a shot of energy - it was 9:30 and I was going to work on some more school work.

For those of you not familiar with juicers, they kind of look like a food processor (sort of). They have a chute you push your fruit/vegetables/whatever through with a cylindrical press and then pass through a blade circling at 100 km per hour and some crazy centrifugal force stuff happening all at once. It is also very loud and terrifying to small children. Once the veggies pass through, all juicy goodness pours out of the spout and all the pulpy/skin stuff gets tossed aside. My press is MIA because I threw it in the dishwasher and it warped, no longer fitting through the chute. Crafty girl that I am, I have been using the cucumber portion of my juice mix to act as a press and pushing through all my other vegetables, and letting go once I got too close to the blades of death. Needless to say, last night, I didn't realize just how close I was to blades, and once the cucumber got pushed through, my middle finger was next.

So, after realizing that the juice was now ruined since half my finger nail was floating somewhere in it, and cursing the fact that I splurged on the organic cucumbers because they are wider and fit the chute better, I yelped in pain. Rushing to the sink to run my finger under cold water, convinced that I had done irreparable damage and would never be able to type again. Thankfully, my husband was home who is trained in First Aid - both standard and wilderness (for all the time we spend camping and hiking. Which is never) so he wrapped it up properly, applied pressure and we went to the hospital just to be sure that it wasn't more serious.

Unfortunately, the first twenty something year old doctor that saw me did nothing to ease my fears of irreparable damage as literally the first thing he said when I removed the bandage was "oh shit" and then fainted. Okay, he didn't faint. But he did say oh shit. After seeing the look of horror on my face wondering where he got his Mickey Mouse degree from, he backtracked by saying that yes, he's a resident, but in obstetrics and gynecology and "doesn't see stuff like my finger in his line of work." To which all I could think was THANK GOD. I hope you don't see juicing accidents in obstetrics. That would be horrifying.

ANYWAY. He called his boss, a crotchety old man who kind of became my husband's hero when he took one look at it and said "You're fine. There's nothing we can do for you. Someone will come and clean it up and wrap it for you. You don't need a tetanus shot. It's not like you were shoveling manure." And literally turned around and left. LOVE! That is what I'm talking about. Let's cut the chit chat and get straight to the diagnosis people.

I was going to share a picture here, but it is really gross - my niece ran away from me when I removed the bandage and kept staring at her fingers as if it was contagious. So, hopefully my finger grows back (the nurse that wrapped it said it would), and I'll be manicure ready for the new year. Beyond that, I'm asking Santa for a new juicer for Christmas and saying good riddance to November!

Happy December everyone!