Medical Illustration:

Natalie Dee-style.

Disclaimer: this illustration is not anatomically correct, however detailed and excellently-rendered it may appear to be. Among other things, the large intestine actually wraps in a clockwise direction starting from the cecum, thus the sigmoid colon (just proximal to the part of your large intestine that has the smiley face on it. Obviously.) is on the anatomical left, which means it should be on your right as you view this anteriorly-oriented illustration.
Booyah.

Oh, and Aunnee...this one's for you. It's not Natalie Dee--nor is it web comic medical illustration--but it makes me think of you. Love. :-)

How To Work Yourself Into A Deep Blue Funk

In five easy steps.

1. Say goodbye to friends.
2. Board plane. (An evening flight is best.)
3. Sit in window seat. (If the plane is of the smaller variety with one seat on one side of the aisle and two on the other, choose the solitary window seat.)
4. Gaze moodily out window. (this is where the evening flight comes in handy - especially if you're flying west. You'll end up chasing the sunset for an extended period of time, whereby you can spend the lengthy twilight drawing metaphors between the setting of the sun/impending blackness of the night and your life.)
5. Brood.

Ok ok, I'm joking...ish.

I had a great Thanksgiving vacation! It was very relaxing and I got to spend time with two of my very favorite people - key ingredients for a good time, you guys. Pyeahtriuck and I Bordered it up, (28,391, 53,175, 49,532, 1), watched a large chunk of Scrubs Season 4, and were generally pretty much awesome. Keffy and I also did the Borders thing (she working on her storyboards, I on my portrait), shopped more than I normally care to, ate way too much tapas at Bee's Knees (I think our waitress was frightened...), and talked and watched movies a lot while Keffy worked on her project. I got to see a couple of my old professors on Wednesday and a lot of the VCC people on Sunday (great message, Oteros!). Yay friends. :-)

A highlight of the plane ride home was reading SkyMall magazine. My Christmas shopping is DONE, y'all. Among my favorites were the portable backyard ice rink, the pop up hot dog toaster, and the wristwatch that emits "a gentle electric current" to rouse you if the microphone in it hears you start to snore. They're all such practical items. The best one, though--the one I don't see how I have thus far lived without--is the iPod dock/speaker system that is also a toilet paper roll holder. I am not kidding.

And here is a mini cell phone photo collage.

The Day After Tomorrow

And no, I'm not talking about the mediocre movie with the craptastic CG wolves.

I'm talking about the point in time when I get to see Bea and Keffy and all my Georgia peoples. I'm so excited! It seems like for-flippin-ever since I moved from the hills and trees of Georgia to the Valley of the Sun. Five months is a long time for sure.

Here are some random photos for you. Just 'cause.

I took this from the roof of the parking deck at the hospital a couple days ago.

This is a pretty pretty road near Waubonsie State Park in Iowa a few weeks ago.

And this is Pops climbing trees at Waubonsie. I love my dad. :)

The Office

No, not that Office.

Ok, maybe a little of that Office.

Pam: I suggested we flip a coin, but Angela said she doesn't like to gamble. Of course by saying that, she was gambling that I wouldn't smack her.
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Pam: Jim cannot speak until he buys me a coke. Those are the rules of Jinx, and they are unflinchingly rigid.
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Michael: 'Hug it out, bitch.' That is what men say to each other after a fight. They hug it out. In doing so, they just let it go and walk away and they're done. Not a good idea to say that to a woman, however, I've found. Doesn't translate.

Anyway, I finally got my own office last week. It's so nice to have my own space to work in. I actually have a surface to draw on that does not involve creative and precarious placement of my computer keyboard. Now when I draw on my Wacom tablet, my left and right arms are at the same level instead of the left one resting somewhere between elbow and shoulder height and the right one sitting near my waist. I have an actual shelf to put my books on. I have a file cabinet for my files. I have my own bathroom. A window. A nameplate, even.

Drawback: I only get to keep it for a month or so, until the department down the hall turns it into a sleep room. Gotta love working in a hospital.

Oh, and just in case that wasn't enough to keep my ego in check, here is my view:

"I can handle it. Handle's my middle name."

"Well, actually, it's the middle part of my first name..."
--Chandler Bing

I love Friends.

So, I went to Mexico on Saturday. Oh, I mean "fui a Mexico el sabado pasado" (I don't know how to add in the accents in blogger...) Some friends and I made the three hour drive on down to Nogales, Arizona--which, coincidentally, sits right across the border from Nogales, Mexico. We walked across the border and had a day o' shopping.

Now, shopping's not really my thing in the first place. I'm a "go in knowing what you want, maybe browse for 15 minutes" kind of girl. So hours and hours of shopping is a stretch for me. Also not my thing: big, bustling crowds of people. So, take those two things and add in a constant stream of "Hey, hey Barbie, come in my store! Almost free, only today! Just for you! It is free to look! Are you from Hollywood? What do you need? You need a Mexican boyfriend! Come back!" and you have what would be described in the world of Kristen as a very wearing day.

But! We did have a good time--it was fun watching Rachel (who is fluent in Spanish) haggle with the vendors. It was fun eating authentic Mexican food at this little restaurant we ran across--tacos con carne asada y avocado and pumpkin empanadas. Mmmmm. It was fun trying to spot new things in each of the amazingly similar shops and stands. It was nice to be in a whole different culture for a day--I love that about traveling. New experiences, new people, new places. Makes life richer.

Here's a photo I took from the road on the way back. Ignore the blurriness. I did the best I could at 75mph with no flash.


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Oh and Will & Sarah, if either of you are reading this: Remember how I lost my keys that last night I was in Augusta and we thought that maybe Sophia had snagged them out of my purse and then we all spent like 15 minutes searching your house for them? Yeah. Found them today in a jacket pocket. Yep. Turned up nearly five months later in the pocket of a jacket I didn't even wear that day. Naturally.

The Nose Knows.

You know?

Upon opening a box of Cheerios this evening to pour myself a bowl of lazy-ass dinner, I caught a whiff of my past. The smell of that freshly opened box of breakfast (and dinner, mind you) cereal took me back to high school and winter Saturday mornings spent sitting at the kitchen table looking out the big picture window at the geese on the frozen lake and wondering if they were in fact frozen to the ice.

The sense of smell, I think, is pretty powerfully linked to memories. Maybe more for me than the average person. I don't know. But there are all kinds of scents that just bring it all back... Potpourri Scented Windex reminds me of the summer my family moved to Nebraska...we must have cleaned a lot of windows in our new house. The purple scented Febreze (I don't know which "scent" it actually is) reminds me of my apartment in Georgia...I sprayed it all the time trying to cover up that smoky fireplace smell. "Exclamation!" perfume (unfortunately) reminds me of senior prom. Wood smoke reminds me of camping as a kid. Pine needles remind me of living in Flagstaff. That waxy crayon smell reminds me of the old dish cupboard at my grandma's house. Chances are, if we are pretty good friends, then there is a scent that makes me think of you.
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On an entirely unrelated note, my friends Keffy (Kathy)("Clean Cotton" Yankee Candles and that combination of new car smell and dogs that graces her Mitsubishi) and Sean got engaged this past weekend! Yay!

Black Tie Charity Dinner:

Would you like fries with that?

So tonight I went to a charity dinner benefiting the Ronald McDonald House of Phoenix. The theme of the event was "Dancing Through the Decades" and costumes were encouraged. I have no costumes nor money to buy one, so I went as "Girl in Nice Black Dress from Late Fall 2006." The other gals I went with, however, took the costume idea to heart and I believe our group represented all decades from 1950-1980's. It was fun and free - Diana's company bought a table and gave her the task of filling the seats. Done and done.

The dancing was a sight to see. I learned two things:

1. Rich white people just absolutely love to spell acronyms with their arms. There were more people on the dance floor for "YMCA" than any other three songs put together.

2. Apparently, they also embrace music by Usher, Ludacris, and Lil' John. The DJ put "Yeah" on and--I swear to you--I saw a 70 year old woman in pumps and pearls "getting down with her bad self" (you must say this very precisely and awkwardly).

It was a fun evening for a good cause - and nary a french fry in sight.

Here, Take This Cheap Crap With My Company's Name On It.

Why thank you.

They had an Employee Benefits Fair at work today. All the vendors who offer discounts through the employee network had tables set up, as well as the healthcare plan providers, etc. They lured us there with the promise of food and the chance to win a flatscreen tv. I muscled my way through crowds of other employees, carefully avoiding contact with any of the vendors. With just the slightest hint of interest, they were in irreversible schmoozing mode. The kind of intense, hunker-down-to-eye-level kind of sales pitching that I am hard-wired to avoid like the plague. If you want me to buy your stuff, let me look at it and ask you questions. Don't give me the uber-intense staredown, shove pamphlet after pamphlet into my arms, and talk a mile a minute about your epoxy flooring. I live in an apartment. Installing my own commercial-grade epoxy flooring is frowned upon.

Of course, the one thing I went there for--the list of this year's network-approved physicians--was at the very last table in the hallway. In spite of my attempts to look nowhere but the floor, I came away from the brouhaha with these items:

A heart-shaped rubber lid-gripper thingie.
A granola bar.
A giant magnetized plastic clip.
A cup of popcorn.
An eyeglass repair kit, complete with teeny tiny magnifying glass.
A bottle of water.
A blue sparkly toothbrush.
A chip clip.
A brownie.
A coupon for a lake riverboat cruise. (That doesn't make sense to me, either. A lady in a giant hat covered with fake flowers gave it to me. I think she was with the benefits fair.)

The only things I actually wanted were the bottle of water and the brownie. Yum. Brownies.

I Am Procrastinator:

hear me roar...in a little while

I'm supposed to be cleaning my bathroom and putting away the non-perishable food items that have been sitting on my counter since I went to the grocery store after work. So far I've managed to shuffle aimlessly through my apartment (it's small, so there were many turns involved), read a chapter all about the Precambrian/Cambrian period and the wonder of trilobites in my book o' the week, and pull the Windex--correction: Great Value streak-free Glass Cleaner--out of the closet. And blog a bit, obviously.

I'm worried that my hearing is going to deteriorate unevenly. I rolled over one of the earbuds (the left one) for my Little Green iPod with my desk chair the other day. Now I can only hear Sufjan singing in my right ear. For some reason I still wear both earbuds.