Just Numbers??

I do not like math that much; however, numbers seem to rule my life. Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but they do have a huge impact on how smooth my days go. Let me give you few examples. I, like many other women, worry about the numbers that show up as I step on the scale. I time my runs religiously so I can track my mile times and my training process. I'm also very frugal so I calculate money related things very often. The most extreme example of the impact of numbers is my grades. I calculate and re-calculate my grades and GPA throughout the semester and I always know exactly what grade I need to get on my finals to get the grade I want for the class. This was a source of great humor with my BYU roommate and best friend; she would make fun of my obsession all the time. (However, she knew who to come to when she needed some calculating done:))

I get in a terrible mood when I feel like I didn't do too well on my tests. Troy always prays for me when I have a test because he wants me to do well, BUT more so to have his wife around and not the "i didn't do well on my test-monster" to deal with for the rest of the day. 

So today was my first medical/surgical test and what have I been thinking since 9:10 am when I was done with the test...."did I miss #26?" "if i missed 6, I will still have an A and with 7 missed questions, it would be high B." Ridiculous? Yes! But I have not been able to change that about me, no matter how many times I have tried to "relax about grades".

So numbers are never just numbers...

Double Post Today!

So I meant to post about this last weekend, but somehow I didn't get around to do it. I decided that Troy should take me on a vacation as a graduation present...yes, it might be little bossy but once I'm done with this nursing school business, I feel very entitled to some pampering.
We are planning the vacation for the upcoming August since it is hard to know how everything is going to be once I graduate. So here are the three options that we are thinking of, let me know which would sounds the best:)

1. 10-day Alaskan Cruises from San Francisco.
2a. Hawaiian Cruises-probably a roundtrip from Honolulu
2b. Just saying in Hawaii for a week or so.
3. Train ride across U.S-start from San Francisco-Chicago-NYC-Washington D.C-New Orleans-Home

Sick and emotionally unstable

That is exactly how I would have described myself in three words yesterday. Mondays are long exhausting days as I start school at 8 am and I have lectures until 4 pm. Yesterday, we also had the "externship fair" at the College of Nursing so I went to talk to few hospital representatives. Then the fun really started....I drove to NMC Orovalley(about 15 miles from school with afternoon traffic it was like 40 minutes) and printed out all of the patient information I needed. Then it took me about 45 minutes to get home. After eating a quick dinner(Thank you Troy!), I started the process of doing a nursing care plan. Those of you who are not nursing students or involved in nursing, we need to research all of the drugs that the patient is on, the pathophysiology of their diagnosis, their lab values, diagnostic tests and come up with nursing diagnosis such as "Risk for Infection" or "Excess Fluid Volume" and then pick the interventions that we are going to implement. Around 11 pm and after I had worked on it for 4 hours, I just had to go to bed. I was so tired and I was sick and just wanted to cry and wondered "Why do I want to do nursing?"

This morning, I woke up and I am still sick with cold and started my 45 minute drive to the hospital. ANd I got through the day!!And I actually even enjoyed it and I got to put an IV in this little lady.(My very first time!!!) Well I got the needle in her vein and then her vein rolled and the needle wasn't in the vein anymore...oops! However, my instructor commented on my great technique and she couldn't even get the IV started. So this is little bit of bragging, but when you are feeling as miserable as I have been feeling in the last few days and the amount of school work weights on your shoulder like a herd of elephants, little accomplishments sure make a difference:)

This cartoon is a classic example of nursing instructors and the variety of advice on"right ways of doing things" we receive as students and they wonder why we get confused sometimes!

I'm not a slacker after all:)

I would like to say that I did go running after Troy got home from work yesterday. Though it was definitely not a "I'm so glad to be running" run but I logged in my 4 miles for that day.
I'm hoping to run a half-marathon in mid-March and a marathon on August 3rd in San Francisco.
If anyone has any tips about training for a long race, I would love them. I used to be a sprinter and 400 meters was my longest race so this is quite the change.

Too dependent on my iPod?

Today is my off day from classes and clinicals. So I got to sleep in and after eating breakfast, I went to mapmyrun.com and decided to find a nice 4-mile run for this morning. I got it mapped out and changed into my running clothes and then I realized that there was no way I was going on a run....because my iPod was in my car that was sitting in the Raytheon parking lot. I called Troy few times to see if he was by his desk and check if he could meet me at the car if I would run to his work and then continue my run from there. There was no answer and I ended up changing my clothes. I really do not listen to my iPod very much except when I'm running and I can not run without some music. Does anyone else have the same problem or am I just too dependent on my iPod?

Busy with a Capital B

We have been so busy for the last few weeks that I have not even done my usual blog stalking..I mean reading or updating our blog. School started two weeks ago and life is little different now that Troy is back in school. He has to go to classes twice a week to the campus and since he still works 40 hours a week. We have not seen very much of each other in the past few weeks. I do realize that we are pretty spoiled with our time together since I used to be the only one with a funky school/work schedule and we don't have little ones who require our time yet.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think we are any busier than everyone else. However, school, work and training for a marathon have kept me very busy and I have not even started doing my really long runs. So far, my longest run has been 6.7 miles, which took an hour. So I have some long runs ahead of me and I'm hoping that I will have the mental strength to get through them.

I do have to make a quick side note about running in Tucson or maybe I should say in the Southern part of Tucson. There aren't really any good running routes so Troy and I drove to this Santa Cruz River path that has about 8 miles worth of running/biking path. We get to the path and we are like "where should we park our car?" Well, we ended up parking at the Adult Detention Center because that was the only place nearby. You just gotta love Tucson!

So our weeks go by very fast; however, we have had some fun weekends. Last weekend we played some mini golf with Paul and Heather We did boys vs. girls and the boys won and Troy got 1st place overall and I was in the last place. Nice balance, right?

I also made some delicious buttermilk brownies from scratch. I have never done it before so it was quite exciting.


I went to see "27 dresses" on Saturday and I recommend it to those who like cute chick flicks. Mostly, it was not trashy or inappropriate. I am not any sort of a movie critic so don't get mad at me if you go and see it and find it predictable and lame:)

Troy will be going to Utah this weekend so I will be a loner; I haven't stayed in our house by myself yet so I am little worried about that. Hope you guys won't mind if I make some late night calls to keep me company:) Just kidding!

The Most Punctual Airline of Manchester

Troy enjoying the room service in Manchester, England.

That is what American Airlines claimed in Manchester, England and we found out why they are so punctual. Our flight from Helsinki to Manchester got delayed by an hour due to a snowstorm so when we finally arrived to Manchester, we had about 5 minutes before the flight to Chicago would take off. There were about 20 of us trying to make the connecting flight and they piled us into a van and started driving us towards the departure gate. As we pulled around the corner, we could hear "the gate is already closed" through the walkie-talkie and saw the airplane pull away from the gate. Needless to say, we did not make that flight since American Airlines did not make any effort to wait for us, which didn't make us very happy since they had sold us the ticket with very short layovers. After it was concluded that we did not make that flight, we were dropped off at the arrival gate without any directions on what to do next. After wandering around for a while, we found the right desk and started to negotiate our flights to U.S. We had missed the last flight to U.S that day so we had to stay in Manchester until the next day. Troy was supposed to be going back to work the next day so we were not too happy about this delay; however, they did put us in a nice hotel and paid for all our meals. We took a train to the downtown of Manchester and came back to the hotel with the conclusion that there really wasn't anything worth seeing in Manchester. If we would have been stuck in London or Paris, it could have been cool. We did enjoy some good meals and a good night sleep.

We are used to long travel time since we go to Europe twice a year; however, as our flights went Manchester-Chicago, Chicago-Dallas and Dallas-Tucson, I was almost in tears during the last flight because I was exhausted and sick of airplanes. We got home around 8 pm and I had to go to work at 7 am the following morning. Fortunately, our bodies were still in Finland time so we were able to get up early without any problems. 

Also, I should mention that Troy got into the graduate school program at U of A so now we have two students in the house again. School starts this week and it will be an interesting semester ahead. I will be doing pediatric nursing and medical/surgical nursing this semester and I need to apply to nurse externship programs for the summer. 

I will post some pictures later since I can't do it the way I like on Safari.