Laminin

I'm feeling very off today.

I got off of work at like 8 (because report took an hour this morning) and came home to eat something. Then I went to the bank to deposit my paycheck. It wasn't as big as it will normally be, because it only has one week on it, but it still gave me enough to boost my savings and establish my checking account. I can now use my debit when I go somewhere (aren't you proud Robin?) instead of always having cash. So, I went to the bank and caught up with my sister on the phone. We barely talk now that I work nights and sleep during the day. :( Then, I came home, showered, and went to bed. I only slept about 4 hours, because I want to be able to sleep tonight so I can go to church in the morning. I miss my church family! Then I will HAVE to take a nap or rest in the afternoon, because I will never survive two nights of work in a row without it.

Well, I am not feeling well rested, and I kind of had a headache when I woke up, so that wasn't a good way to start. We had Monical's Pizza for dinner, and I was still feeling kind of hungry. With my new work schedule I am missing meals or don't eat very much for a meal, so my stomach is still trying to adjust. Anyway, I decided that ice cream sounded good, so I went and got the fam some ice cream. Well, when I got home and went to lift my dad's strawberry shake out of the bag the cup cracked and the lid snapped off. Luckily the shake just dumped in the bag, but I still felt bad that my dad's shake was not saved. He had like two drinks from it (because that's all that was left in the cup by the time I got it tipped right side up. Sorry dad!

He really wasn't too upset about it. He still hadn't eaten supper, so he happily decided to just eat his pizza. As I was try to cool down (from being so steamed) and go down to my room he all of a sudden says, "Megan! I have a medical question for you!" He startled me, because he made it sound like something was wrong. Stopped both me and mom in our tracks. Well, he posed the question, "Do you know what Laminin is?" I thought for a second and said "No, I've heard of Lamella." He kind of chuckled and said,"Every medical person I've asked that to hasn't known what it is." * "Well, what is it?" * "It's a protein molecule, like rebar that you put in cement." * "..... okay. How did you hear about it?" * "My junior highers told me about it on Wednesday night." * "How did they hear about it?" * "They found it on the internet I guess." At this point I'm thinking, is this for real? I don't think I've ever heard of this before. So I continue downstairs and dad pulls up this video on youtube.



Here I was 2 seconds away from becoming unglued and he brings this up. How crazy is that? God really is the glue that holds us together. My dad was just so excited to share that with me. :)
Now that I've shared it with you I need to skidaddle. I'm trying to upload pictures to my Myspace and Facebook (as promised) from our trip. The internet is being a little screwy so it's taking longer than I would have liked. I'm determined to finish it though. And if all goes well with that I will work on another trip post for here. Plus, I need to post on my online discussion. Goodness gracious! If you can't tell, I'm trying to do everything tonight so that I can have a free day tomorrow before I go to work.

Until............................

Say it Ain't So!!

The Hockey Night in Canada theme song may be benched!
How sad! Let's sing the Canadian National Anthem in solidarity shall we?

O Canada!

Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

One of my favorite parts of hockey games, and I'm not even Canadian!

Until...........................

NYC Recap- Day 3: Part 3

Well, tonight is the night that I stay up as late as I can, so I can sleep in as late as I can, so that I can stay awake as long as I can for work tomorrow night. Did you catch that? I'm listening to a little Legally Blonde the Musical soundtrack in honor of this part of the recap. :) Enjoy.........

Day 3: Part 3

We arrived back at that hotel around 4 o'clock and my feet were so sore from all the walking we had done that day. Here's a little bit of how I was feeling....

Along with this death stare I also had this to say....

I also have a video of Lisa, but I think she would seriously injure me if I shared it with you all. :)

It was shortly after we arrived back in our hotel room that delirium set in. We were giggling like crazy! It didn't matter what it was. Whether it be talking about how almost all of our cab drivers had the name Mohammed, Hol and I laughing at Lisa's near comatose state during the musical the night before, Holli spontaneously breaking out into song ('People Get Ready' to be exact by Crystal Lewis I believe), the fact that I thought there was an image of a face in our cupcake filling, or Holli reenacting the Lite Rock 107 tv commercials (I'm cracking up even as I type that and only people in our area will know what that commercial is). Oh yes, we were having a good ol' time during our "rest period".

We started getting ready around 6, and Holli came out of the bathroom laughing. I asked her what was so funny and she showed me her neck. She had gotten sun burnt and the outline of her necklace was on her neck. My nose was a little pink, but otherwise that was the only sun we got.

We took our picture before we left, and I tried on Lisa's night mask. Apparently her eyelids are too thin for sleeping in the dark. She gets bothered by even the tiniest bit of light, so she wears a mask. :p


That night we were headed to the Palace Theatre for Legally Blonde the Musical. The theatre was on times square, only a couple blocks away from our hotel, so we decided to walk. This is when I made the ingenious statement: "You have to walk like taxi drivers drive." It is so true! You just kind of have to swerve in and out, cut people off, and you NEVER apologize for it. If someone says excuse me or they're sorry you know they are from out of town. No one is sorry or polite in NY (atleast that's from my experience).

So we arrive at the cute little Palace Theatre and went inside to of course buy our souvenir for the night. I went with a shirt and Lisa bought the soundtrack.

The inside of the theatre was so cute. It had red velvet seats and it was just cute to me. I don't know... It felt very comfortable and personal. We had really good seats too.

The best thing about it was that the tickets were half off. Way to go Holli for finding the amazing deal! We were fortunate to see most of the original cast. Vivienne's character was supposed to have been played by Kate Shindle (Miss America '98), but instead that role was played by her understudy, as well as one of the P.M.S. girls who was a contestant on the tv show 'Grease: You're the One That I Want'. The rest of the main characters were all original though (Elle, Emmett, Paulette, Callahan, Warner, etc). I was so glad we got to see it because soon there will be a new Elle, and everyone knows it's very rare to find someone as good as the original. Anyway, so the musical was spectacular and Laura Bell Bundy was amazing, brilliant, and funny! Here's a little sneak peek. (This is the first scene of the play, so don't worry if you are a spoiler-phobe)

So afterwards we took some night pictures of Times Square, then headed back to the hotel.

We were not even a block away from the theatre when we saw the poster of the winners from 'Grease: You're the One that I Want'. We took a quick picture and were on our way again.

We were walking along 8th Avenue towards our hotel and a woman in a wheelchair was headed toward us. A "nice" man is walking next to her making sure that she has a clear path to get through. So we kindly step to the side and when she gets through he thanks us. This is what ensued after that:

Man: Thank you ladies.
Us: (continue walking, Lisa in front then me and Hol closely behind)
Man: You ladies are gorgeous
Us: (continue walking)
Man: (walking behind us) Man, you ladies are gorgeous!
Us: (continue walking)
Man: Guys (to the men around), don't tell me you don't see these ladies right here!
Me: (calmly) Ok, Lisa pick up the pace.
Lisa: (starts to speed walk/run)

Holli and I were laughing so hard by the time we reached our hotel. If you could only have seen Lisa take off like a shot through the crowd. We were cracking up! I said pick up the pace, not run for your life! Haha! So funny!

We got back to the hotel around 10:30 so we got to go to bed earlier than the night before and we had already resolved to sleeping in on Saturday because Lisa was starting to feel icky from lack of sleep and we were all starting to get a little exhausted by that time. So, that concludes our third day in the city. It was eventful, but if I had to choose I would say it was probably my favorite so far.

Until...............................................

Mistaken Identity

I just finished reading this book. It's both sad and uplifting. It's quite an inspirational read, so I recommend it to all. You're probably already familiar with the story since it got national exposure, but here is a little overview:

"Mistaken Identity" recounts the true story of two college students, Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak — one buried under the wrong name, one in a coma being cared for by the wrong family — and the heart-wrenching discovery five weeks later that their identities had been mistakenly reversed. Now coming together two years later to write about this amazing drama, the Van Ryns and the Ceraks describe the unthinkable agony endured by their two families.

Until................

Rock the Reception

There's nothing like a choreographed wedding reception that conveys this couple will have a fun and lasting marriage. :p Crack me up!



Until...................

NYC Recap- Day 3: Part 2

It feels like forever since I've blogged on my trip. It seems even longer ago that we went, but really it's only been a week. Wow... to type that seems weird. It seems like months since I was walking down the streets of Manhattan. Anyway... on to the recap..........

Day 3: Part 2

Well, we arrived at the Brooklyn Bridge. It looked mighty big, and we were going to walk across. We heard it takes about 25-40 minutes to walk across depending on fast you walk, but really it depends on how many times you stop to take pictures. Ha! I would recommend the walk, because you can see alot, and it was a beautiful day out, so it was especially nice.

Of course we weren't just walking to go say a quick hello to Brooklyn and then turn back around. No, we were on a mission. We were going to Grimaldi's for their notorious brick oven pizza. So after a little over a half hour or so walking across the bridge we came to the other side...Brooklyn.

Of course it wouldn't be us if we didn't get a little lost. Once we were over the bride we didn't know quite how to get to Grimaldi's so we asked a contstruction worker and consulted a map and about 10 minutes later we found it. We had 15 minutes to spare before they opened so we quickly got in line.

Grimaldi's runs their pizzeria in a very organized manner. They line you up outside and then when they open the "head guy" comes out and asks how many are in your party and then takes you in and places you at a seat. They don't sit you according to a certain section though. They just start lining you up and once a section is full they move on to the next. I couldn't help but feel a little like cattle being herded.
Anyway, so we sat down and ordered our pizza with mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. It didn't take long for our pizza to bake and it looked delicious when it arrived at our table. Now, this is the part where I take a picture of our meals, but I was slightly afraid I would be whacked over the head with a canoli if they didn't allow camera inside. (BTW, a canoli was one of the few non-pizza items on the menu.) You should have seen the guy that was "running the joint". He seemed very mob-esque. I didn't want to cross him, that's for sure. However, we noticed a couple of other people with their cameras out, so I felt brave enough to get a couple pictures.

(If you look to the very far right in this picture, the guy in the black shirt in the background (who you can see his profile) is the "head honcho".)

The pizza was YUM! Funny story... so we're figuring out how much our bill is going to be and Lisa comes up with $21 or something. Well, she forgot to add the drinks on or something like that and I look at Holli and as we're discussing it we both decide it will be $24. Well not two seconds later, Lisa goes "No, it'll be $24." ??? Did we not just say that? Ha! It seems like we did that a lot on the trip. In fact, we do that a lot at home too.
So after we ate our pizza we walked down the street to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory (aka a little bitty building).

Well, we must have picked the wrong day to come because there were 7,000 kids around (well not quite that many, but it seemed like it). There must have been an entire school field trip going on. We got in line and started slowly making our way to the counter to order (mind you there are children wall to wall, and then there's us standing there). I was beginning to wonder if we were allowed in or if they had the place shut down for the kids. They were open to everyone, thank goodness!! We all three got chocolate chocolate chunk ice cream (Lisa got almonds on hers) and it was DELICIOUS!

We hung around outside for a little bit and investigated the Telectroscope. It's basically a tunnel that is in NY and London. We can see eachother. How wild is that? Very interesting.... Hi London!

After we were done looking at that and took some pictures of Manhattan we were off to find a cab and head back to the city for our 1:30 appointment at the Sports Museum. Finding a cab should have been easy, because there were a ton at this one intersection. The problem... they all had people in them already! We walked around trying to hail a cab for close to 20 minutes before we finally got one. It was exhausting and me feet were very sore, so it was hard to run back and forth along the streets. We made it just in time for our appointment though and went right in. This was another place you couldn't take pictures. It was so cool too, so it's a shame that we couldn't take pictures. Well, we weren't supposed to take pictures. I snuck 1 or 2...but I felt very bad afterwards. :p Holli made me do it! Ha!

After the Sports Museum we wandered over to Battery Park to see the Sphere there.

(Notice this is off-centered... very unlike me and my photography striving abilities. Hol was rushing me because just as I saw that sign and wanted to catch a picture she said "Hurry up, we got a cab!" Lord knows, when there's a cab you don't mess around. Someone might snatch it right up from underneath your nose, and I think we searched long enough for a cab that day.)

We also encountered some very scary, terrifying, nightmare inducing Statue of Liberty posers.



Gave me the heebie jeebies just looking at them. *shudder*

Then it was off to our hotel for our daily rest before the show that night. We had the nicest driver going back to our hotel. He was quite funny about how slow the traffic was. He had a dry sense of humor, and I liked it. :)

Up next.... Our silliness in the hotel room, Legally Blonde the Musical, and Run for your life!!

Until..........................................

Second time was better....

Work was pretty good last night. I was with two different patients, but still helped out with the patients I had the day before since I was familiar with them. This Thursday and Friday I'm supposed to be with my preceptor, so we'll see what actually happens. I emailed my educator about it since I need to be consistent and not jerked around like the day shift's charge nurse thinks they can do.
Anyway, it was a good night, and I slept kind of okay. I think Sydney was confused because it was daytime and I should be up playing with her instead of sleeping. Now I'm the one awake and she's on my bed sleeping. How come she couldn't have done this 6 hours ago?
Until..........................