I love long weekends

But I don't get nearly enough of them. I love that going to bed on Sunday night knowing that you get one more day to sleep in and not have to work. Even though we didn't do too much this weekend, it was still nice and relaxing. We rented a bunch of movies on Friday night. I highly recommend Deja Vu with Denzel Washington. The rest of the movies weren't quite as memorable (and included the Justin Timberlake film debut ...Alpha Dog). Saturday we lounged around, barbequed with the neighbors, and just generally did nothing much. Yesterday I got up early, but felt like ass, so went back to bed until almost eleven. This never happens, so to say I was shocked at what time the clock read when I finally woke back up is an understatement.
We caught the late morning showing of the new Pirates of the Caribbean, which I was pretty disappointed in. Part of my disappointment comes from the fact that the kid behind me kept kicking my chair, but the largest part of it was that the movie just really wasn't that good.
Today we slept in, then took the dog to a new park near the house. We thought the park would be really crowded since it's a holiday weekend, but there were only about a half dozen other people there. It was a pretty nice park, kind of off the beaten path. Most of the park is still under construction, and the rain from last night had closed the main trail. The poor dog was exhausted after visiting the park. He was so tired he actually slept in the car on the way home. Normally he's a barking, whining spaz in the car, so this was a rare treat. We took the long way home, down these little two lane country roads, instead of taking the highway. We found some really nice pieces of property...if only we could afford to buy.

Thank God for this

The rib pain that I've been experiencing pretty much nonstop for the past week seems better today. Now granted, today is only the first day that it's been better, but it was so much better today that I can't help but be encouraged by this. I actually didn't have any soreness until around five this evening. Usually it kicks in by lunch time.
I'm a little more sore now, but I also just got done with my three miles on the treadmill and have been sitting here at the computer for the last thirty minutes or so...using less than stellar posture. Huh, maybe there's a connection? Nah.

A different experience

Yesterday we were searching for something to do. That is, we had a ton of stuff that we needed to do around the house, but wanted to find something kind of fun and definitely outside since it was only about seventy degrees here yesterday.
I'm not sure which one of us came up with the idea, but we decided to check out the Renaissance Fair in the local town. My husband had been to one of these as a kid, but I'd never gone. From the way he described the one he went to as a child, it sounded pretty cool.
The woods of the county fairground have all of these wooden "huts" in them. Permenent structures built specifically for the six weekends of the year that this fair is here. All of these structures house merchants, crafters, and food vendors during the weekends of the fair. We thought that they'd also have blacksmith strations, sword making demos, and all kinds of other "medival" crafts.
Instead, it was like a giant craft show, with entertainment dispersed in between. Some of the entertainment was pretty cool.
We caught a juggling act, a belly dancing troupe and the high joust. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Two men, in armour on horses trying to knock the crap out of each other. Pretty good stuff. Especially considering that it was a "joust until the " and the losing knight had bladders concealed in his clothing which he popped open as he was "stabbed".
So, although the booths and vendors were disappointing, the entertainment was pretty interesting. The crowds in attendance were also interesting, as apparently there is a huge subset of the population that likes to get dressed up in period clothing and pretend that they're in medival France. There were definitely some unusual characters there.
Oh well, I've been now, and don't ever really need to go back.

That pretty much sucks

Yesterday I got a letter at work stating that the VA had been using my employer identifier number (which is also my SSN) and my birthdate in connection with Medicare services to do some type of research regarding how veteran's seek healthcare. Wouldn't you know it, the doofus supervising the project used an external harddrive to back up his or her work and then proceeded to lose the harddrive. So...they're not sure, but they felt obligated to tell me that they'd misplaced enough information about me to potentially allow someone else to steal my identity and potentially ruin my credit. Happy Wednesday to me.
So last night we had to run off a copy of my current credit report, which looks fine. Then this morning I spent about twenty mintues on the phone trying to place a fraud alert on my accounts. Fun stuff. Once I figured out exactly who I was supposed to call, it was pretty easy, but it took me at least fifteen of those twenty minutes to figure out who to call.

I can't seem to keep up with the whole blog thing...

In fact, it's been so long since I've blogged that I actually had to really search my brain to figure out what my login name and password were to write this post. That's sad. In my defense, I've been busy.
We've been trying to get some last minute projects finished up around the house before this baby shows up. So this past weekend we got started on the cedar chest that we've been talking about refinishing for oh, seven or so years now. I wasn't able to do much of the work, as I couldn't be around the chemicals that my husband used to strip the old finish off, nor could I be around the stain that he used to finish the chest. I did get to help with the sanding though. I love that power sander! The chest is finished now, and it looks great. We're just waiting for it to finish drying and then I can put everything away in it. Now we've just got a china cabinet to refinish and replace the glass in, and then pretty much all of our projects will be done.
My student intern is starting to get the hang of things. She's still kind of hesitant to push patients aggressively, and her documentation needs some serious work, but I see improvement from last week, and it's been helpful to have an extra set of hands and eyes in the office, especially since the pregnant chick aches and pains have started in earnest. I swear, my ribs feel like they're broken. Apparently, I've got some instability in my right rib cage due to cartilage softening and ligaments loosening all over my body. Let me just share how painful this is. It feels like I'm being stabbed over and over again just below my shoulderblade. No bueno. I can't get comfortable to sleep so I'm cranky most of the time.
The only thing that really seems to alleviate my pain is a short run. I'm slowing the pace down again, as I've been a little short of breath lately, yeah, even walking up the stairs can take my breath away if I try to go too fast...but at least I'm staying active.
Last week some doofus at our corporate office told me that my kid was going to have shaken baby syndrome from my running while pregnant. I love the random comments that people make now. I was actually so stunned by this one that I didn't even have a snappy comeback.

Busy weekend

Yesterday was the Girls on the Run 5k at Tower Grove Park in South St. Louis. It was a great race. The girl I ran with was actually able to run the whole way...she's one of our kids who's never run much before and we'd not seen any glimmers of this running ability in any of our practice sessions. I was really surprised and pleased by her performance. She was pretty cute, the kids know that I'm expecting, and my belly is starting to be the first thing you notice about me when I walk into a room, so she kept asking me if I was doing okay or if I needed to slow down...we averaged just over a ten minute per mile pace, which is still well within my comfort zone.
All in all, we had sixteen of our twenty four girls run/walk the race and every single one of them was able to finish it!
Yesterday evening we went to see The Invisible. This looked like a great movie in the previews, but actually was pretty disappointing in reality. This is the movie where the kid gets jumped on his way home from a party and his assailants think they've killed him, so they hide the body...but he's not really dead. The whole movie is about him being stuck in this "in between place" and trying to convince people to go find him before he actually does die. It didn't have any big name actors or actresses in it, which was fine by me, but it wasn't nearly as well scripted as it potentially could have been. In summary, wait for the DVD, it wasn't worth the price of admission.
Today we just worked around the house, did the grocery shopping, slept in, and went to the library. Have I mentioned lately how much I love the library? I put in a reserve/request for a book I read a review of in Runner's World or the Running Times (I can't remember which one). It's a semi-factual account of a kid who was on his way back from a track meet when a bus accident took the lives of all of his teammates and coaches. Sounds pretty interesting.
On the work front, things are starting to pick up a bit...knock on wood. Tomorrow looks decent, as does every other day this coming week except for Friday, but that's a long way away still...
I have a student intern who's first day will be tomorrow. Let's hope she's good. This will be her first internship ever, as in, she's never touched or spoken to a patient ever...hopefully she'll learn the ropes quickly and we'll have a good six weeks together.

Just when you thought it couldn't get weirder

My mother in law shared our neice's new baby's middle name with us today. The first name now spelled differently (Amidy versus Amnity) which is totally a made-up name that isn't in the books...but at least it's not the Amnityville Horror anymore, even though it's pronounced the same way. The middle name is almost as bad. This poor baby's middle name is Jolee...yep, as in Angelina, only spelled differently. They're going to call her AJ for short. I repeat, poor kid.
On the upside, she is an awfully cute baby, so maybe she'll get past this dreadful name.