Ultimate Coffee Date: November 2014

How has everyone been doing? Come pull up a chair and enjoy some [virtual] coffee with me (hosted by Coco at Got2Run4Me)!

It’s weird to think that there are just 2 months left to this year!

If we were having coffee/tea this morning, I’d tell you that as of last night, I’d had about 15 hours of sleep since Tuesday. I have not had a single drop of coffee. How I still managed to spend most of my 14-16-hour shifts still standing, awake, and mostly alert…I’m still not sure, but I think I have the beginnings of a cold. :[ Lack of sleep/food and being around sick people for most of the day probably hasn’t helped this very much. (For the record, my shifts are actually only supposed to be 12 hours, and the fact that I stay longer is entirely self-induced.)

Isaac is doing his Internal Medicine rotation in the same hospital right now and is interested in Emergency Medicine, so he comes down to the ER a lot to visit and to take care of the patients we admit. We frequently tag-team patients in an effort to help out our preceptors (or at least not slow them down), and I’ve gotten to do/learn a lot so far. I’ve seen everything from hip fractures (tripping over pet dog :[ ) to Kentuckybola (people who get a mild fever and think they have Ebola) to drug overdoses. We also saw a woman snorting powder off of a table in the cafeteria on the security camera tape. (Never a dull moment, right?)

I’ve gotten way more comfortable with suturing! Remember how I almost passed out on my first day? I think I was probably super dehydrated then. I’ve since sutured up someone’s cheek (drunk altercation that led to her being stabbed in the face), performed a digital block and sutured up a mangled thumb (sawing accident), and one other face (due to a drunken fall; this was the worst of the 3 and took 20 stitches, but considering that we at one point could see pretty much see her skull, it’s been vastly improved). I love that I get so much hands-on experience, and it’s been awesome getting to hang out with Isaac too!

If we were having coffee/tea this morning, I’d tell you that it’s actually been a good while since I’ve done anything to celebrate Halloween. I’m fairly uninspired when it comes to making up costumes and this year wasn’t too different (especially since it’s my first night off). I opted out of two parties and was dubbed “the second worst phone-answerer ever” by Mike (in my defense, I was working).

But! A bunch of us went to the famous Pumpkin House in Kenova, WV last week to help carve pumpkins! There are over 3000 pumpkins there, and most had already been carved, so we finished off the last of them. I may never be able to carve pumpkins by hand anymore. It’s so much easier with a jigsaw! :O

If we were having coffee/tea this morning, I’d tell you that the autumn here is absolutely beautiful. It even makes the cold slightly more bearable. These pictures were taken outside my gym!

If we were having coffee/tea this morning, I’d tell you that it appears that I’ve turned Lewisburg into my “other Davis.” Back in the day, I’d sneak back to Davis while my parents were on vacation to volunteer at PHAC, visit friends and professors, teach piano, and participate in research studies to pay for the gas it took to get there. It worked out well, because I’d pack as many activities/things on my to-do list as humanly possible into each trip to justify the travel time/cost. I’m employing the same philosophy here too!

• Volunteer at Please Save A Cat & hang out with Linda!
• Pick up Princess Muffin
• Help out at the soup kitchen
• Hospital Day!
• Visit church friends!
• Visit Larry & Trey!
• Print a billion things at school + perhaps get my laptop fixed
• Return library books + borrow more
• Hopefully earn some money at the ring girl competition!

A couple weeks ago, the sports promoter for said event from above contacted me to see if I’d be interested in participating in the ring girl contest again. I had a lot of fun there last year, and since I was actually planning on being back that weekend anyway…who says no to free stuff and potential free money to throw towards my student loans?

Upon hearing that I’d set a couple state records in powerlifting, he asked if I’d be interested in fighting too. I entertained the idea for a couple days, but with less than 2 weeks to train and no prior experience, I felt like I’d be at a severe disadvantage. (I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that an opponent who’s willing to drive 4 hours round-trip and happens to have a fight gym in the town that she lives in probably has at least a bit of experience. Just maybe.) That being said, I might enter both somewhere in the near future, because badassery points would be full of awesome!

The ring girl contest is essentially a popularity contest, and since I’m from out of town/refuse to tell anyone from school about it, I’m going it alone again. Thus, the chances of winning first place are very slim, but it’d be pretty awesome, because I’d be able to split my winnings with my favorite animal shelters. <3. That being said, however, 2nd-4th place would still feed me for 2-4 months, so I’m a-okay with that too. I hope the super-cute kid (aka my biggest/most adorable fan ever) from last year is there again!

If we were having coffee/tea this morning, I’d tell you that…sign-ups for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap end tomorrow, November 2nd, at 12 midnight EST! (I almost missed the deadline!!) I participated in this last year and although I never got any cookies sent to me (I only had one match since I requested cookies on the healthier end of the spectrum, har har; mayhaps it got lost in the mail?), the donation goes to a great cause (Cookies for Kids’ Cancer), and also served as inspiration for a fundraiser I organized at school last year!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a wonderful month! :] Stay tuned on the first Saturday of December for the next coffee date!

• What’s the longest amount of time you’ve gone without sleep?
• What’s your favorite fall activity?
• Favorite thing about fall?
• Do you have any festivals in your town throughout the year? What are they?
• Favorite cookie?