Christmas Happenings

Since January is almost done, I figured I should post Christmas pictures!  I'm really not doing to well at this blogging thing lately.  Anyway, Christmas season was kind of a bummer because (1) I had to work the whole week and (2) didn't get to see any family or any of my husband.  But all of us residents had to work so we were in town together and toughed it out together.  Espirit de corps!

Since Stuart couldn't be around, he was sweet enough to send me some Christmas flowers!  He sent my friend Hayes some as well because we pretty much lived together for a week to prevent Christmas blues from developing.

Here's Winston's Christmas photo in front of Hayes' Christmas tree.  He was quite dapper with his special-occasion bow tie on.

Here's a photo after I came home from work on Christmas Eve.  Winston got to snooping around the presents under the tree, and sniffed out Hayes' Christmas stocking stuffer from her mom.  You guessed, it had chocolate in it.  I had maternal panic for a while, but everything turned out okay.  Dogs need Christmas treats too!

Robbie, my intern from the MICU, decided he wanted to test out his family's egg nog recipe.  Hayes had a gathering at her house Christmas night, so we whipped it up before that.  And by whipped it up, I mean beat 12 egg whites for a long period of time until fluffy.  I was hesitant about trying it (you know, salmonella and all), but it turned out to be delicious!

Me and Hayes by the tree in our Christmas finest.

Cyndi, Sneha and Lisa enjoying the festivities

All the boys wanted a picture, and Winston even tried to get involved

Thanksgiving

This last weekend was fabulous.  I was supposed to be on call; however, one of my colleagues owed me a favor.  So instead, I got to have the weekend off and spend the only weekend of the month with my sweet husband!

He came in town Friday night and we met up with some friends for our weekly Supper Club.  We had a great dinner at Pasture, a new place in town specializing in dressed up Southern Comfort Food.  They encourage you to get small plates and share, so share we did: pimiento cheese, fried pickles, chicken livers (mostly Stu ate those), Brussels, and a great Charleston chicken dish.

Saturday we (grown-up alert) met with our financial advisors before a quick hike.  The weather was beautiful!  I've had the blues lately, which I think is party due to the fact that I've spent the majority of daylight hours the past month in the pearly white walls of the hospital.  So since we got a 60 degree sunny day on Saturday we decided to make the most of it!  There's a nice trail called the Rivanna trail that goes around my apartment, so we walked/ran a few miles of that.

Afterward we headed out to a couple of vineyards with some work friends.  The first is called King Family, where they have polo matches in nice weather.  The other is my favorite here called Mountfair - we're thinking of becoming club members!  Fancy, I know.

Speaking of fancy, we headed out to watch Anchorman II after the vineyard hopping.  We got a few good laughs, but it definitely wasn't as funny as the first one.  But the company was pretty nice!

Well, enough talk about the weekend.  Since it's Christmas tomorrow, how about I finally post some Thanksgiving pictures?!  Both our parents came into town for Thanksgiving, which was absolutely wonderful.  I cooked Thanksgiving dinner #3 (Friendsgiving, mine and Stu's thanksgiving, and the family one).  Unfortunately what I don't have pictures of is us (me in particular) freaking out after AUBURN WON THE IRON BOWL!!  That was awesome.

My first roast (from mine and Stu's thanksgiving), pretty nice looking even if I say so myself!

Our friend Molly joined us at Thanksgiving because intern year kept her from family time.  She and Stuart were Googling how to carve a turkey.  It worked!

Ms Patsy, another neighborhood friend, joined us in the food too!  She and Winston are friends.

The dads

The cake!  I think this will be my new Thanksgiving staple: spiced pumpkin cake.  I also learned a new trick - icing just the tops looks cool and is a lot easier than doing the sides too!

And of course, just in case you were hibernating in a cave and missed the greatest football game ending in the history of the world, here's a clip of Auburn's awesome finish against the Bammers.  I lost my voice after this one, folks.

Friendsgiving!!!

There's really not much I love more than cooking for people and them having a good time in my home.  It just really doesn't get better than that.  And what better time to do it than Thanksgiving!!!  Last year I hosted Friendsgiving for the first time for about 20 of my co-interns.  This year most everyone was in town and not on call, and there was a record 30 people packed in my little apartment!

I pretty much started cooking 2 days before the event.  I baked and creamed 15 pounds of sweet potatoes into a casserole, roasted a 14 pound turkey, and made Gruyere and bacon mac and cheese (yeah it was pretty good).  As the guest list kept creeping up, I also got a ham and had my friend Hayes bake it in her oven.  I keep reminding Stuart of my future kitchen designing plans including at least two ovens!  Haha.

Anyway, the rest of the meal was pot-luck style and included hasbrown casserole, green bean casserole, regular ol' green beans, bread, a fall salad, and mashed potatoes.  The crowning accomplishment was one of the guys making a from-scratch pumpkin cheesecake!  We were all very impressed.  Most all the food was gone after a few hours, and my turkey was pretty much picked clean!  Most importantly I think everyone had a good time.  Stuart even got to join us for a bit via the technology miracle of FaceTime.  Can't wait for my next excuse to throw a party!

What would I ever do without KitchenAid?

Some of my herbs got smushed in one area under the skin, but otherwise she crisped up nicely!

Isaac is one of the hunters in our class, and best knows his way around carving a bird.

Everyone watching Isaac carve.  Kind of like city road workers!

Part of the spread

Resident besties!

This is Hayes' mom, Carol.  She joined the fun and loved on Winston (as did everyone else).  See the bowtie?!?!

Lola was guest of honor #2.  She's hanging out here with Sunny and Tri.

And here's the cheesecake!

Stephanie (white shirt) traveled all the way from Seattle for the party!!!  So glad to see her again!

As the night got late, some flexing started.

And as always, Winston was the center of attention.

November

November so far has been full of a lot of fun, and a lot of food!

Starting off, last month I finished the MICU alongside a great group of folks.  It was a tough rotation, but in my opinion at least, a lot of fun.  After we were finished I had them over for a celebration!  Even some puppies attended.

I assume that everyone enjoyed my Southern accent, because someone asked me to make "something Southern".  I, of course, whipped up some pimiento cheese with bacon.  It was rather popular.

Winston was happy to meet a new friend, Max, but he was a little jealous that he didn't get all the attention.  They ran around a lot and eventually little Max pooped out.

And of course you can't finish working 30 hours every fourth day and taking care of the sickest of the sick without a champagne toast!  Congrats to everyone for a job well done!

You know the phrase "Virginia is for Lovers"?  The story behind that is some folks were trying to come up with a slogan for what people would want to visit Virginia most for.  For a while there was "Virginia is for Mountain Lovers", or "Virginia is for History Lovers".  Then they figured out Virginia just had too many wonderful things, and simplified it to "Virginia is for Lovers".  One of those wonderful things is Virginia wine.  Somehow in the many times Stuart has come down here, we've failed to visit a vineyard.  So when he came a few weeks ago we decided to check out a few.  We headed out on the Appellation Trail (pun, anyone who's a wine lover out there?).  

It was a lovely fall day, and we spent a few lazy hours at a few wineries about 20 minutes west of town.  Fortunately there were a lot of leftovers from the above-mentioned MICU party, so we were able to have a picnic (or two) as well!

We went just at the back-end of fall, and still got to enjoy some beautiful colors.

The best part was I got to enjoy my day with this stud-muffin!!!

Vacay!

I just successfully completed a month's stay in the MICU.  When I phrase it like that it almost makes me sound like a patient; however, I did pretty much live there the entire month - working 30 hours every 4 days, with a 12 hour day in between.  It was exhausting - but great!  I think the MICU is my favorite place in the hospital to work; I'm still trying to decide if that means anything for my future career.

Now I'm well rested and am lucky enough to get a vacation week right after I got finished.  Stuart and I didn't have any big travel plans, so I decided I'd come up to Pittsburgh and be a housewife for a week!  Here's what I've done:

- Cooked 9 meals for freezing so that Stuart doesn't just eat chips and salsa (this has been known to occur)

- napped (yesssssss)

- finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma (changed my life)

- started and finished reading Salvation on Sand Mountain (highly recommend!)

- was flabbergasted at a man who thought my t-shirt was from Auburn, NY rather than Auburn, AL (oh, the humanity!)

- cleaned Stuart's entire apartment and even organized the closet (I can only stay around the house so long before I start getting really bored)

- went shopping at the outlets and didn't buy anything (once in a lifetime)

- went to dinner with Stuart and some of his friends at an Indian restaurant (I had goat!)

Fortunately now it's pretty much the weekend, meaning Stuart doesn't have to work and we can spend more time together rather than just me hanging out here and seeing him in the evenings.

Prior to me coming up here, Stuart actually came down to C'ville for the weekend and we went on a great hike with our friend Hayes.  Hayes is my residency best bud, and she's been on a "get healthy" mission for the past few months.  This has in turn motivated me to do the same, and I've been running several times a week.  I've gotten up to 2.75 miles, which is really quite miraculous considering before I used my asthma as an excuse to not be able to run more than a couple of blocks.

Anyway, I say all that to say that I'm in much better shape, and therefore felt ready to do this hike!  It's called Humpback Rocks.  It's a pretty short, but very steep, hike to some awesome views.  We only stopped for a few seconds on the way up for some water, and almost stopped once because we passed a lady Hayes and I thought was having angina.  She turned out to be ok.

40 minutes sounded deceptively easy

The rocky ascent.  Also, Stuart's cool Auburn colored shoes.

Hello, Shenandoah Valley!  How blessed we are to live right next to a National Park!

Stuart made me panic a little bit out that far

Our hiking crew

One of the reasons Hayes and I are friends: planning and preparedness.  You can never be too prepared for when hunger strikes.

We took the long route back down the Appalachian Trail.  In total about a 3.5 mile hike.

The view from the top was amazing.  So glad we went right at the peak of fall so the bright colors were out in all their glory!  Also glad to spend some time with Stu and Hayes in the great outdoors.  Afterward we were all starving and drove over to Blue Mountain Brewery for a 3pm supper.  Great day!