Mustard

I apologize for not updating much lately. I actually don't have much of an excuse since I've had more time on my hands, but I guess I've just been enjoying it in other ways.

My new job is going well. I am learning a lot and finding out where my weaknesses are. Every week to every other week I have a residency class. These are at the development center for usually a little less than eight hours. It's all new graduates and we watch presentations on different subjects (Friday's class was focused on medications) and I have compared it to a "support group" for new grads.

Brice judged a fifth grade science fair on Tuesday this past week. He enjoyed talking to the kids about their projects (though he stated he was challenged by how to hear them--crouch, stoop, or bend) and challenging them to think beyond their experiments.

Yesterday we went out to do a little clothes shopping for Brice. We found a fantastic end-of-winter deal on a microsuede jacket for him and Calvin Klein sweater--he looked very sharp last night at a dessert party we went to with the marrieds group.

We're not attending a Superbowl party, or hosting one, but we are having the food. We're making boneless Buffalo wings with celery, chorizo queso dip, and our "healthy" onion rings I posted about recently.

I didn't try any new recipes this week, just old stand-bys, but I did already start planning ideas for our meatless Fridays. Don't try to Google "meatless meals" though and have much success if you have a husband who won't eat fish. Does anyone have any unique ideas? Anyone giving up anything particularly interesting for Lent?

Happy birthday to Ramona!

Recipes

As suggested, here are some of my stand-by recipes:

Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meat Loaf

Balsamic glazed pork tenderloin

Others that we don't have real recipes for include chicken quesadillas, chicken fajitas, chicken parmesan, and chili. If you're interested in those, comment with your e-mail and I'll pass them along.

Free weekends

This month, I am in possession of two work-free weekends. One just occurred and started with a nice evening of going out with another couple from our small group and another couple they knew. We went to an event called "Martinis and Imax" at the natural history museum. It was a beautiful museum and they had a bar there with a band playing some Sinatra and dancing. Very fun and nice to spend time with new people.

We finally got to sleep in and then we went to the library and grocery shopping on Saturday. I made chicken pesto quesadillas with roasted red peppers--an idea we got from something I ordered on our honeymoon. We invited Brice's friend from school over for the evening to watch the football game.

Sunday night we made our Friendly's sandwiches again. We didn't have tenderloins this time so I had to cut regular breasts in half and they were more difficult to cook through. The bread was more appropriate though since I picked up some Italian to keep in the freezer and use PRN (hehe, as needed). We also tried making these "healthy" onion rings we saw on Rachael Ray. Here's a link to the recipe.

Special congratulations shout-out to my cousin Megan and her new fiance, Gerad! We'll be celebrating during the "summer of weddings" on July 2nd in Cooperstown, NY.

Coffee

This is my first post for this Friday coffee thing since I just came to Home Sanctuary this week. For any of my regular family readers, feel free to check it out. I mentioned it a couple of posts ago.

I may not have done all of assignments this week as they were set out (I'm a rebel, what can I say), but it's mostly because I feel out of the ordinary and unable to complete them as assigned. I just started my new job on Monday and I've been on a day schedule. I went from being up all night (and even on nights I didn't work I was up until 3 am usually) to being up at 5:20 am and falling asleep on the couch at 8:00 pm. I told my husband last night we're just going to have to eat earlier, do dessert earlier, just do everything earlier. Hopefully, I'll get more used to this and won't be so exhausted, as I was this week.

The reason I feel I am exempt from completing my housekeeping schedule is because I am a nurse. I work 3 days/nights each week. I am only on a day schedule until my orientation is up and then I'll return to nights. If there are any other Company Nurses out there, please share your housekeeping wisdom with me. (For those of you that don't know, when one works nights they kind of lose two days. You have to sleep the day before you go in, and you sleep the day after. Then you're up late, but no one else in your house is, so you can't exactly go about your household chores in the manner one would during the day.) *Editor's note: I love being a nurse and I am not upset about this, I just want to explain myself.*

The best thing about being on days this week is that I got to cook. I made chicken fettucine alfredo, balsamic glaze pork tenderloin and mashed potatoes, and ham and Swiss turnovers and I have whole list of new things I want to try over the weekend and next week.

6 months

I forgot to mention that we've been married for 6 months now. I can still very clearly remember how cool I thought it was when we'd been dating for 6 months (7 years, 1 month and 1 day ago). While I'm sure none of our readers are impressed with how long we've been married, I'd like to say that the time has gone as quickly as I would say our dating years went after the first 2. At any rate, it's been great so far :-)

Our first days

Yesterday was Brice's first day back to class and my first day in my new job. It was quite amazing to find myself getting up at 5:20 in the morning, rather than thinking, gee, it's almost time to go home. The commute was much easier, but since so many more people work during the day there was quite a line to get into the deck and I had to keep driving around to find a space.

It was a good first day; my preceptor was nice and I didn't really find myself too overwhelmed. It boggles my mind how slowly we were working though since I'm so used to a much faster pace and not planning out when I will do things but just doing each task immediately upon knowing about it. I just did 8 hours because I had worked Saturday night so I was pretty tired and it's a good thing I did because I don't think I could have made it to 7. (I ended up in bed a few minutes before 8:30.) I'll be back next week Monday Tuesday Thursday. I have to take a medication exam and another open-ended questions exam (5 hours!) that is apparently extremely hard on Thursday and Friday this week.

Brice just had one class yesterday that was typical of a first day, he said. Today he had to get up early for an 8:00 that will be the class he is TAing for. He told me he thinks this will b e a better semester than last as far as that goes. He has a large gap of time and then a class in the afternoon. Tonight he also has a meeting at 8 so he'll only be home for a little while to eat.

Since we're both on a day schedule now and getting up earlier, you won't need to worry as much about calling during the day. Still, we do like to sleep in on certain days so post 10am calls are always better :-)

Being girly

At right you will notice this new "I'm a company girl" icon. After reading about online friends and all the blogs my sister-in-law reads, I decided to try reading a stranger's blog. My only reason for reading them in the past was to keep up with my various family members and while I may not have time to really keep up with a stranger, being included sounds fun.