Optometry's Meeting 2012

I went to Chicago June 28th-July 1st to attend Optometry's Meeting 2012.  It's where all of the AOA and AOSA get together to learn (CE courses), attend the product expo, and have lots of fun.  I love Chicago, so I was pretty excited about this trip.

Four of my close friends came with along with about 50 other students from my school.  We had to leave at 4am to make the flight in NYC that was at 7am.  The plan was to wake up at 3:15am, get ready, and go.  I was already packed, so all I really had to do was shower and go.  Thankfully something wakes me up at 4:15am, and I realize I have five text messages and two missed calls telling me that my friends were at my complex waiting for me.  *GULP* You know in cartoons when the character's eyes bug in and out really fast because they can't believe what they are seeing?  Well, I'm pretty sure mine did that to my alarm clock.  I'm never late.  Ever.  I text them really fast that I'll be down in 5 minutes.  Throw my hair into a ponytail, throw on a shirt, jeans, and shoes, grab my bag, and I'm out the door.  I was having heart palpitations from the stress of knowing that I might not make my flight, and I might cause us all to miss it.  Thankfully my friend that was driving has a lead foot.  We made it with time to spare. 

Now that that's out of the way, we get to Chicago, and all of us are dragging.  First order of business: Caffeine.  There was this cute little Cuban restaurant that had cuban coffee that you get in little shot glasses because it's so strong.  Let it be known that it kept me going until 3am the next night.  It's strong, no joke. Good thing too because every single night there was a party for students, so I had to stay awake!

Oh, side note, when we left the east, we were at the end of a "heat wave".  I say it that way because it's been more like a heat tsunami, not a short wave, but I digress. Anyways, we leave the east and it's 100 degrees.  We are all excited because we all think we are flying over this so-called wave, and that we would miss the rest of it.  Lo and behold, when we get to Chicago, our pilot proceeds to tell us, "It's going to be a hot one folks, heat advisories are just entering the Chicago area until Sunday."  Mind you, we were going to be leaving Sunday.  So not only did we just experience that last of the heat wave in the east, but we flew right into the beginning of one in the Midwest.  Awesome.

We decided to do the traditional touristy stuff the first day we were there.  We went to the Bean........and then decided we were all going to melt so we went back to the hotel.  I chased a bird to get it's picture on the way back to the hotel.  It didn't do much to help me cool off, but the bird smiled!  That was also when my friends realized they were hanging out with an infant.

We hung out at the hotel until it was time to go to the Student Quiz Bowl, which is where each school sends one participant to compete against the other schools.  We didn't win, but it was a blast, and I loved the t-shirt we got!  I even made it work with the skirt I was wearing.

The next day we decided to chill out at the expo.  We tried massage chairs, food, wine, and of course optometry related things as well.  They even had the FIFA 2014 World Cup there.  I got my picture taken with it, but only after I spent about three minutes moving all around the glass case it was in to please the guard.  First I was too close, then I wasn't close enough for the picture, then my hand got too close, then my shoe was too close, then my purse was too close...it went on and on.  Apparently my hand couldn't be in front, behind, within two inches, or on top of the case.  I made all of those mistakes before the picture you see now was taken.  The security guard who was guarding it seemed like she hated me.  The people in the line were making snarky comments about  how I was holding up the line, but I just told them to pay attention because I just helped them from making the same mistakes!  They didn't think I was very funny. 

The next day we finally got to the Sear's Tower, where we went up to the sky deck.  The glass floor that extended out from the building was pretty popular.  It was creepy, but it made for some pretty cool pictures from 103 stories up.  While I was in the box, I noticed a spider just chilling on the outside of the box.  I decided to make him attack Chicago.  I started a trend too.  Three days after I get home from Chicago, I noticed a friend from facebook went to Chicago, and he took the exact same photo I did.  I can't help but think that my facebook posting of the photo a week before his didn't "inspire" him...maybe...a little bit...? Thanks for the credit, "friend". 

We also went on a sail boat cruise which gave me some amazing photo opportunities, and we went to the Field Museum for the presidential inaugural ball.  That was awesome.  Sipping cocktails next to Sue (The T-Rex), eating cheesecake bites next to mammoths.  It was quite the experience.

We left the next day after a loooonnnnngggg night out.  I think we only got about 1.5 hours of sleep before our flight.  Let's just say we all completely crashed when we got home. 

It was a great trip all around!

xoxo

Travels

Summer is finally here, well not really, but at least it feels like it. High 80's and full humidity make for some very stuffy days.  I've been running like mad around here lately.  Trying to keep to running at least five miles per day. So far, so good.  When I was back home, I got a ton of running in. I love being able to walk out my door and go on for miles. It's a comforting feeling. Running in the warm air, and my body warming from the inside out is just a great feeling.  Now, when the temps hit 90...that's a different story.  I actually have a couple stories about running in terrifying heat.  One that comes to mind is when it was 90 degrees out, and 100% humidity, and I was hoping to run ten miles, give or take depending on how I felt.  I was convinced I was going to pass out, but I kept talking to myself, literally speaking to myself, saying "You aren't going to die if you keep running, if you stop, you will die."  Guess my mind games worked, because I ran the entire ten!

I've started back up at school again for the summer.  That week-long break sure rejuvenated me....yeah...right. I remember when I had the entire summer off....oh boy do I miss that! The one good thing about this summer, is that I have a pool!  It opens Monday, and you bet your bottom I'll be there!  I've always been a little fish during the summer, so I can't wait to spend the entire summer running, swimming, and studying....wait that last one doesn't fit.  I'm looking forward to running an insane number of miles with my swimming suit underneath my shorts and t-shirt, and crashing into the pool when I get home. Cannot wait.

I've recently read Born To Run by Christopher McDougall, and boy if that doesn't motivate someone to run, nothing will! I also started eating chia seeds, the supposed miracle supplement/food to ultra-marathon runners, and now me! Mike and I first got them at night, and eating them was a mistake!  I was up until 2am. They are a super food that packs a serious energy punch.  Great for running, and great for tired students that don't want to see 3-year-old patients at 8am, i.e. Me. Here's my chia seed recipe that I've been using to consume them.

Rach's Chia Fresca

1-1.5 cups of lime juice (I use "Simply Lime")

1 cup of water (to dilute the juice a tad)

1 tablespoon of chia seeds

Just let the seeds soak in the water juice, and stir every five minutes for about 15 minutes.  Then you can let the juice sit in the fridge for up to a couple days.  The chia seeds get a gel exterior so drinking them is super easy, and the texture is fun.  If anyone ever drank Orbitz, it's kind of like that. Worth trying, plus they have a super amount of antioxidants and omega-3's in them. Side note: Consult your physician if you are taking blood pressure meds before trying them.

And before I bid you all adieu, here's my weekly wrap up of what I've been doing besides running, relaxing, and getting back into the swing of school.  *Warning: tons of photos ahead!*

R-L, top-bottom:
Obligatory cat picture
My Broad Street Run 10 miler medal, nicest one yet!
The most colorful set of packed luggage I've ever had, spring is here!
Beaut-i-ful clouds on the flight home
Family farm love
Pearl Ice Cream, best vanilla bean ever
Granddad's Bluff tourist shot
Beautiful valley, i.e. My home.

R-L, top-bottom:
Good ole Wisconsin cheese curds
Goose Island at dusk
Chia Fresca
My favorite running road
Grandma's teacup
Sunset in Wisconsin

-I hope you all get to travel a lot this summer, even if it means running the furthest you've ever run in a place you've rarely been to!  That's still traveling to me!  

-xoxo

Busy Bee

Hello again folks! It has been awhile. Sorry about that! I’ve been busy with finals, then moving, then my clerkship, then my wedding. Whew!

We’ll start where I left off! Finals. Dun dun DUNNNNNNNNN..... It wasn't that bad ;) They went well. Grades came back very good, so I’m pleased with that. I’m now officially a second year optometry student!

The day after finals (and a very fun night out in the city I might add ;) ) we moved back home for the summer. We stopped in Ohio for our half way rest stop with the boy’s family for a day, which is so totally needed. A seventeen hour drive is zero fun in one day. The gas prices were also ridiculous. It was $4.53 in one city!

Of course the kitties came with too! They were just peaches. They both slept almost the entire way in their cute little kennel situation.

So precious.

They have also been getting along at home as well. They both sleep on the bed with me at night, so they must love each other more now than ever. I think the drive helped them bond. Lily is still eating Tip’s food, so we’re trying to put her on a diet. If anyone knows anything about how to keep a cat from eating, puhleeasssee let me know! She’s turning into a large lump of fuzz. Yeesh.

Home has been nice and relaxing. It’s been somewhat warm weather, and not too humid yet. Let’s hope it stays that way for the wedding! No rain or may flies! ICK. The only real weather problem recently was a tornado. That old native American legend “where three rivers meet, no wind can defeat” decided to stop working a couple weeks ago. There was an EF-2 tornado here in the city no less, and it definitely defeated a few blocks. I’ve never seen tornadoes in the city, only in the country, so it was surreal. The worst part was that we have no basement here, so when the siren went off, we had to drive to the boy’s house for safety. I honestly had no idea what was going on, and my mom had to inform me that there was a tornado siren. (The same siren signals a fire truck leaving the station in PA, so I was confused for a moment.)

We get to his house, and he was gone. I immediately start getting scared. Mom was gone all morning, and I was left without a car, so he came to rescue me from my unsafe location when the siren went off (thinking Mom was still gone). Little did he know that she had come home, and we were already on our way over. I was freaking out a tad because the news had just spotted a tornado about a mile away from where I live coming towards my house. No phone calls were going through either. I stayed upstairs waiting for him to get home, but I knew he would go inside my Mom’s to find me which would take even longer. About five minutes later, I see him speeding down the street into his driveway. He noticed the cat carriers were gone, so he figured we went to his house. The kitties bonded during the storm too. J

We stayed upstairs, along with his dad watching the storm pass. It was crazy windy and really scary outside. Later we found out that a tornado ripped apart a couple blocks close to downtown. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Speaking of storms, right now in my hometown in IA and NE, there is some serious flooding of the Missouri river which is impinging on my Aunt and Uncle’s house, and might possibly affect my Grandma’s house. I’m very scared for them all. My Aunt and Uncle live right on the river, so they have already sand bagged the river side of their house. I guess it could last all summer which is tragic. I talked to my Grandma today, and she said it could affect her house as well which is far away from the river. I really hope it doesn’t get to either, especially my Grandma’s. I love her house. I’m hoping the boy and I can still make a trip to see her this summer. I’d swim there if I had to.

I’ve also been doing my summer clerkship for school. It’s three weeks long, and 105 hours of work. I have one week left. Woo! Then I can finally have a summer….sort of. I also have 18 optics lectures to finish before July 25^th for our summer optics course. Well, I’ve already done four. Of course I’m trying to get them done a.s.a.p. Blah. What happened to my “summer”?

What else is going on….oh yeah…the wedding! I can finally let my life be consumed by my creative ideas and wedding planning! I love it. We’ve gotten almost everything done. I can’t wait! We are both incredibly excited for everything! It’s coming quite fast, which can be good, and bad. Good because we can’t wait! And bad because that means I almost have to start my summer semester on the East again…

I’ve been doing a lot of wedding prep too. Floral appointments, dress fittings, finding shoes, make up practice, hair practice (soon), skin care, exercise, etc.

I run a lot so fitness isn’t really an issue, but I’ve started doing Pilates. Phew! It is so hard. I actually use videos from YouTube because it’s free, and I can get a full 40 minute workout from them. After the first day I could barely move. I had no idea I was so out of shape! There is this one move that works your shoulders. You barely move, but man, does it work! Hopefully I don’t have man shoulders by the wedding.

Also, as I’m sitting here I have white strips on and a green mud face mask. I look quite attractive I must say. I would take a picture but....no I wouldn't take a picture. It’s funny how ugly you have to look in order to look good later on. Ick. This mask smells weird too. And how about these little white strips. Does anyone else have the problem where it seems like once they are on your teeth you start salivating like mad?! I mean come on! They are only on my teeth, and I definitely don’t want to eat them, so I have no idea why that’s my body’s reaction to them. A couple more weeks of these, no longer. The boy is also doing his boy beauty routine, which so far consists of nothing different than normal. ;)

Oh! I almost forgot! The boy, one of my bridesmaid’s and I went to a festival this past weekend. Her boyfriend was playing in a band at this fest, so I finally got to meet him which was awesome. We also ate tons of fair food (yum!), and watched the locals. It was about an hour and a half away in the middle of nowhere USA. The main attraction of the night was a “burn out” where you have 15 seconds to burn out your car’s tires. Whoever makes the most smoke, wins. Just burning tires…for the fun of it…ruining tires…for the fun of it?....I don’t think I’d ever willingly sign up for that contest. Of course I can make a fool out of myself anywhere, and I thought the smoke was from a chicken-Q (chicken barbeque), and I really wanted to eat some chicken. A nice couple at our table set me straight, while laughing a little. The boy said they probably thought I was some silly “city girl”. Cue pouty girl "humpf" right now.

I’ll leave you with this. The other day at work flowers were delivered…for me! I’m only there three weeks, but in that time, I got flowers! Of course they were from the boy, reminding me that it was our last “dating” anniversary. Seven years of dating. I guess we didn’t get the traditional seven year itch. Instead we got the itch to get hitched! He’s so sweet.

Boston

Well hello again! It's been a very long time since I've been able to blog. Life got pretty busy. Three exams in two weeks meant that studying was the only thing I was doing. The boy guesses that I probably studied 60 hours per week. Icky.

I had a neuro exam, cardio exam, and clinical skills exam. Did great on them all! Now I've got the same sort of schedule again, except it's three exams in three weeks. Hopefully that makes all the difference! Neuro, respiratory/renal, and optics. After that we have four weeks without an exam. Good news except we also need to study for finals because we have five exams in three days or something crazy like that.

Anyways! What's happened in the time since we met last? A lot I must say. Here we go.

My spring break is currently in session. It started March 4th. On Friday, the boy and I decided to take a trip to Boston to see our friend, we'll call him Harvard. (It was technically Cambridge, Mass because Harvard goes to..you guessed it! Harvard Law). See, NYC is a great quick weekend trip. Two hours and you're there. Boston....not so much. It's definitely within driving distance (especially since before it would be a plane ticket plus rental car away), but trusty google maps told us the total trip time would be six hours. I thought, "Google maps is always a little slow, it'll probably be 5.5 hours at the most."

Driving there was fun. The boy has never seen NYC, and we drove right past it. He got a great look at it, and I think he was a little taken aback at how he was actually seeing NYC. We actually got to cross over from Jersey into NYC using the George Washington Bridge as well! Something I've always wanted to see.
GW Bridge.

The rest of the drive consisted of me craning my neck to see the ocean for pretty much the entirety of the trip. I've never actually touched an ocean yet in my life (saw a few flying to China), so it was going to be an amazing experience when I did. I got excited a couple of times, but all of my "Oh my gosh! THERE'S THE OCEAN!"'s turned out to be bays or lakes. I could always eventually see to the other side. Once I saw on the GPS that we were getting further away from the ocean, I gave up.

The next exciting (not really) moment was when we passed into the "Boston area". See, we went through four metropolitan areas. Philly, NYC, Hartford/New Haven, CT, and Boston. I never really thought about it, but now when I do, we could have never avoided rush hour leaving at or before noon in Philly, so I should have expected it, but I didn't. We were enjoying the lovely Bostonian forests when we notice a bit more traffic. That bit turns into a TON, and this is what we're stuck looking at for eight miles {Read: ONE AND A HALF HOURS} Yes, it took us one and a half hours to go 8 miles, well 7.8 but who's counting now? This is what we got to look at for that amount of time.
We finally made it to Harvard's house after driving for 7.5 or 8 hours. We decided to relax there for the night (after eating some amazing thai food) because we knew we were going to have a big day walking around Boston the next day.

We started the day walking around Harvard Law and Harvard Yard. Pretty normal campus, except they have tours going around at all hours.


After Harvard showed us around his stomping grounds we rode the train into Boston. We followed the freedom trail around for most of the day. Here are some pictures of historical stuff.

Sam Adams Grave. Second Photo: This was the church all the Declaration signers attended.


Good shot of the boys in the church. Second Photo: Boy is obviously the best photographer seeing as he completely misses the statue, but gets most of the cement in this one.


This is the outside of the church we were in.

George Washington on his pony.

We got home on Sunday. It was a great trip. Can't wait to go back when it's not so cold/windy.

Other things that are going on. Rita's opened up again. Rita's is this amazing slushie/frozen yogurt shop that mixes it all together into goodness. It's weird in Philly though because they don't call it slushie, they call it "water ice". In a Philly accent it sounds more like, wooaauuter ice. It's annoying.

I also finished a painting over spring break for my friend. It let me tap back into my creative side for a moment which was nice and relaxing.

School starts again next week. Our friends from my undergrad are coming to Philly tomorrow! I cannot wait to see them. They are staying for a week (while being in D.C. for some of that week as well). That should be fun.

The girls are getting along just fine. They actually sleep on the same bed now, and the hissing has stopped. I knew they would love each other eventually!

I'll leave you with a shot of our new bed. If you look closely you will catch Lily trying to steal Tipsy's food.