Thanksgiving Extravaganza

Thanksgiving was awesome this year because I got to host in my tiny little apartment. With Mom and Dad in my room, Chris and I got to have a sleepover in the living room with air mattresses. Awesome. It was so nice to cook with my Mom. Homemade rolls (of course), stuffing (thanks Martha Stewart), mashed potatoes, and roasted turkey (salt and pepper are all that is needed). Then there was the exploding gravy incident because dad decided to make gravy on the stove in a pyrex pan. Chris decided to strain the glass shards from the gravy and eat it anyway (and I tried a few spoonfuls on my potatoes because, well, why not?).

After apple pie, we went to see Lincoln. If Daniel Day Lewis doesn't get the Oscar, there is no justice. Who would have thought a movie on parliamentary procedure could be funny and profound. I loved that there was actual debates about important issues on the floor of the House - and the congressmen were actually there participating! After all this history, we decided to make it a Lincoln weekend. First there was Ford's Theater and the Peterson House

Stephen Colbert Raises a Good Point

Only 4 American women have become Supreme Court Justices, but 8 American women have married princes or kings to become princesses. Why is being a princess so fascinating to young girls? What are the traditional jobs for women: nurse, mom, teacher. But seeing how 57% of college students are female, it will be interesting to see in twenty-five years what top three professions for women come to mind. Secretary of State seems to be a top choice in recent history.

But Grace Kelly sure is gorgeous in that princess wedding dress. Maybe there is no hope. Or maybe we can accept that the princess fantasy will persist outside of reality for the foreseeable future.

The MI Guys

While I'm blogging I'm watching the show Spy which I love because it involves all my favorite things: 1) mistaken identity, 2) people that are secretly geniuses, 3) spy agencies! and 4) very tall, well built actors with a sense of humor. It doesn't hurt that all the action is done with a British accent.

So that covers the boys at MI5, now on to MI6. Saw James Bond's Skyfall last weekend which Joy describes as a chick flick. And really there's nothing more thrilling to a chick than Daniel Craig checking his cuff links after jumping onto a moving train while chasing the bad guy. I like action movies, especially when accompanied by clever dialogue and dexterous fighting scenes that are beautifully filmed with continuous camera shots.

Fun Fact: MI means military intelligence and had many divisions which were basically consolidated into MI5 and MI6 after WWII. Conspiracy theorists still think there is a MI17 head office dealing with extraterrestrials. I am eagerly awaiting British Scully and Mulder.

Into the Wild(life refuge...)

This weekend Joy and I celebrated veterans and America by visiting 3 wildlife refuges. 1) Back Bay W.R. of southern Virginia had a great stretch of beach that was home to huge pods of dolphins, which were clearly showing off for us. They were surfing the waves and hunting fish as if they owned the place. Which of course, they do.

2) Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge on the Delmarva. Recently 'renovated' by Hurricane Sandy, the road to the beach was closed to cars, but still walkable. This was the site of kite flying and sand castle building. Confession: all my sand castles look like Dome of the Rock because it's the most stable sand structure I can build. Afterward we went looking for birds and found ruddy ducks, great egrets, snowy egrets, blue teals, and great blue herons. The egrets were especially good at catching fish. Joy and I also did a scavenger hunt in the local Chincoteague Museum.

3) Blackwater Wildlife Refuge also on the Delmarva. Great bike trail and home of bald eagles (and other birds of course like banded hawks and your assortment of wading birds and gulls). We saw 3 bald eagles today. It was really beautiful estuary in the middle of pastoral fields. Turns out the refuge is right next to where Harriet Tubman was born, worked as a slave, and then escaped into freedom, only to risk it all over and over again as a conductor on the Underground Railroad right through the Delmarva. Someday I want to be a "nurse, scout, and spy."

Lastly, Joy and I stopped in marvelous Cambridge where the High Spot Gastropub had changed my mind on oysters. I have now come to the conclusion (along with Joy), that oysters do not totally suck. Especially when fried, covered in buffulo sauce and dipped in blue cheese. And then chased with chicken and waffles lovingly doused with jalepeno enhanced maple syrup.

And now fun facts: 1) Horseshoe crabs have 10 eyes, but still can't see very well. Females can get to be over 3 feet across! Females have "scissor" legs and males have "boxing" legs. We had a very enlightening presentation at the Delmarva Discovery Center. 2) 25% of Chincoteague has Mediterrean features because a little boy from a Spanish shipwreck washed up on shore hundreds of years ago; he was named James Alone (because he was the sole survivor). 3) Again - because it's important - oysters do not totally suck.

Since this isn't Facebook...

I can say whatever I want and don't have to get involved in a pointless Facebook war. So YAY! I got to vote and my vote mattered because I'm in a swing state. We've really got to do something about this crazy electoral college because it really is ridiculous. Fun fact: the easiest way to find out who people want as president is to add up votes and then use this equation A > B. This is the face of my 2012 election:

Nate Silver uses facts and math to report on the election. He presents things logically to let the number speak for themselves. Someday, I want to be as statistically savvy as Nate Silver. To the results! President Obama has another 4 years to get universal health care up and running. The only rational, practical way to improve our health outcomes as a nation is to have coverage for everyone with an emphasis on preventative care. My hope is that with this new system that the insured middle class will no longer need to fear bankruptcy whenever they are hit with a major illness or unemployment. I hope Congress and the President can come together to enact Simpson-Bowles debt reform and that Elizabeth Warren (new Senator from Massachusetts - YAY) will take on wall street and banking reform. Just say no to credit default swaps. I was also very excited to hear that Utah voted their moderate, practical Congressman Matheson back in. Also, Tim Kaine won in Virginia. Double YAY! His opponent employed my old, crazy boss (who shall remain nameless) and that's all the information I needed to decide he's not the candidate for me.

A Day at the Museum

I love the National Gallery of Art. I hadn't been there in awhile, but one visit and I remembered all the reasons why it is awesome. First of all, there are fountains in the middle of the museum. Second, a DaVinci. Amazing. Third, they have portraits that help us remember our history, like when George Washington had background scenery disguised as a black person.

Fourth, we can see the original emo 19th century teenager. Or Liberace's great great grandfather.

Fifth, they have this amazing painting by Wyeth.

Sixth, there is the fantastic tunnel connecting the original museum to the funky east wing. The tunnel is a big highlight, I'm not going to lie.

And seventh, they had a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective which helped me realize the power of polka dots.

Fun fact about the National Gallery Art: it stands on a former railway station which is where President James Garfield was shot in 1881.

Happy Halloween - Or why I got scared on the way to work

Arriving at work on Halloween revealed 7 ambulances in the ambulance bay. Seven! And it wasn't even 11 AM yet! The picture only shows 4 of the 7, but trust me it was scary.

My favorite part of Halloween/fall is the explosion of pumpkin based foods. LOVE IT. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin stew, pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin bread pudding, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin mouse, pumpkin spice cake, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin chai latte, pumpkin ravoli, pumpkin soup, pumpkin zombie decorations (Joy made them, and they are awesome). Fun fact: the world's heavist pumpkin was 1810 pounds which was grown in 2010.

Hurrication

I stole that title from Joy. We are nesting. So far I've cleaned the dishes, the living room, the floor, the bathroom, and now have started on my room. Everything must be done before Frankenstorm knocks the power out. In case you haven't met Frankenstorm, let me introduce you.

Just kidding, she's scarier that Gene Wilder. Here she is:

Now it's just wait and see. The hospital is going to be crazy when this whole think blows over because no one is going to venture out until tomorrow mid-morning - right in time for my shift to start.

Nursing Fun Facts

While precepting a new nursing school graduate today I was reminded of the most worthless part of nursing school: The Nursing Diagnosis. Unlike a medical diagnosis which is actually based on objective reality, the nursing diagnosis is some fluffy nonsense created by some organization that really believes they are actually doing something useful. Unlike a medical diagnosis of "diabetes" or "congestive heart failure", nursing diagnoses include such gems as "Disuse Syndrome, Risk for"; "Diversional Activity, Deficient"; "Energy Field, Disturbed"; "Environmental Interpretation Syndrome, Impaired". Yes, these are actual things never used by real life nurses. Below I found a picture of what a disturbed energy field may look like:

As a matter of principle, I refuse to engage in this aspect of nursing. I vow to never, ever, ever waste my time looking for approved nursing diagnoses to include in my patient's chart. Something else I vow never to do: grade poop.

Someone spent a lot of time on this chart. And probably never ate sausage again.

Burger Master

Today was a quest to find the best burger in the area. Well, at least between 3 different burger joints because one can only eat so much ground beef in a day. I think the 3 of us (Abby, Joy, and myself) agreed that the perfect burger had a toasted bun that could contain the juice of a burger done to a medium perfection, topped simply with lettuce, grilled onions, tomato, and pickles. So here they are: 1st Ray's Hell Burger. Great toasted bun, delicious beef - no ketchup needed, encrusted in peppercorns, and done to perfection. It was so good, we can only show the empty plate and a picture of satisfied customers. The only disappointment was a pumpkin cheesecake shake which turned out to be a banana shake.

2nd The Shake Shack. The most disappointing burger in that it tasted better after doused in ketchup and mustard and someone forgot the toaster. But as a bonus, they have a Chicago Dog that's pretty amazing.

3rd the local BGR Joint in Old Town. They came in 2nd place overall with a very delicious basic burger, the best tomatoes by far, and an incredibly juicy ground beef. And of course the best coke machine in the world that has a crazy number of options including raspberry diet coke (not to bad), strawberry sprite zero (amazing), and lemon coke zero (so much better than it used to be).

Why Ann Perkins is TV's Best Nurse

I'm obsessed with Parks and Rec starring the world's greatest nurse, Ann Perkins. Why is she so great? 1) She took a couple of meetings for the Parks and Rec Department and turned it into a health clinic for crazy people who have "weird things" and need to be assured they are normal. 2) She diagnosed the mumps from an inappropriate penis photo forwarded by a creepy city employee. 3) She became the resident city hall expert on penises (Peni? What's plural for penis?). 4) She never lost it with the world's most annoying patient: April Ludgate. 5) She's Ann Perkins! (say it with the world's chirpiest, most optimistic voice like Chris Traeger and you will understand why she is Literally the embodiment of Awesome Sauce. Way to represent Ann Perkins.

Speaking of awesome sauce, I got hit on tonight at work by a patient's friend. Apparently, I am irresistible after 12.5 hours on shift. Well, at least he wasn't drunk. Ann Perkins would have probably froze him with a single look.

Things I Notice While Running

The leaves are changing and the fall breeze is a welcome addition to my run. I'm definitely faster when the ambient temperature is 70 degrees. Just 2 more weeks until the Marine Corp 10K. Running playlist today was Adele. I'm not a pop kind of girl, but I love Adele's voice.

Fun Facts about running: 1) There's a National Running Day on June 6. Who knew? It's now going on my calendar. 2) When we run, the human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet! 30 feet! That's like a touchdown from the 10 yard line. And 3) Running burns about 50% more calories than walking.

Spine Awareness Day

This is a picture of me before I go to my chiropractor and after I've been massaged into flexible nirvana. Ahhhhh..... But true confessions, I lie to my chiropractor about how often I do my prescribed exercises at home. I think it may have become a pathological lie. In fact I may have endangered my immoral soul.

Sadly, after the chiropractor, I went to work where I proceeded to lift, pull, and adjust old people, sick people, and sometimes just plain crazy people in an attempt to get them into a comfortable position on a slippery stretcher. Needless to say, Aleve is my best friend. As is Hulu and chocolate chip cookies at midnight after work. This is my torture chamber. It may look innocent, but beneath it's heart of darkness lies the Spanish Inquisition. At least my back believes it to be so.

My Sunday

First, I finally got up to 3.5 miles - just have to hit 6.2 miles before the 28th when I do the Marine Corp Marathon 10K. Second, some of the neighbors have gone crazy with the Halloween decor. However, I still went back for a second look, so it must be good.

Third, what a great day to hang out on the Potomac and watch the planes taking off from DCA. I need to plan a trip!

A Month of Martha

Martha Stewart - you have made Thanksgiving exciting again. No more Stovetop Stuffing, no more boring mashed potatoes. In commemoration of pre-Thanksgiving, tonight we had Cherry Pecan Stuffing and Scalloped Potatoes with grilled chicken and steamed broccoli. So who cares if everything is butter based and I doubled the stuffing calories by adding pecans. It's pre-Thanksgiving. Thanks Martha!

Joy and I will be cooking Martha all month long and blogging about it. Should be fun - at least for our bellies!

Things I'm Obsessed With Today: Project Runway

Lifetime - Television for Battered, Raped, Kidnapped, and Cheated on Women - has actually managed to do something positive for humanity and has put Project Runway FULL EPISODES!!! on their website. First of all, the world needs more chicken with egg outfits. If only Tim Gunn hadn't talked him out of the jodhpurs! I think the website would have short circuited with Ecstasy to see that outfit walk the runway.


Now just imagine the outfit above, with the "chicken thigh" inspired jodhpurs below. A Disasterpiece!


And a Project Runway all star challenge! YAY! Another episode of Sweet P (a biker chick sweater than molasses), Uli (the Eastern European explosion of rainbows), Korto (a designer who actually makes lovely things), Santino (hell on heels), Jeffrey (a douche, but a talented douche), Chris (the narcoleptic costume designer), and Danny V (melts like butter in your mouth). I really think Uli got screwed, but how delightful was it to see Jeffrey not even make the top four (his stuff was douche-ilicious). Also, anytime anyone thinks "jumpsuit" they should be voted off the island. And if that jumpsuit comes in metallic lycra, the island should be surrounded by shark infested waters.

Korto's Collection


Uli's Collection

Why I Love Stephen Colbert

Because he did this:


And he somehow hilariously (and classily) brought up the most sensitive military subjects to a military audience. "It must be nice here in Iraq because I understand some of you keep coming back again and again. You've earned so many frequent flier miles, you've earned a free ticket to Afghanistan."

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Formidable Opponent - Don't Ask, Don't Tell
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

Because he interviewed enlisted soldiers, not just generals.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tareq Salha & Robin Balcom
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

And he built his desk out of red, white, and blue sandbags.

Horror

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that some octogenarian decided that the culmination of his life is to shoot up a holocaust memorial. And who does he shoot? The security gaurd who politely opened the door for him. By all accounts, the bastard is truly a mentally bent bastard. I hope he lives to 105 - rotting in prison. And for punishment, he should be made to watch continuous loops of mixed race weddings, speeches by mixed raced presidents, and Israeli television.

Since visiting Yad Veshem in 1999, Dachau in 2005, and Auschwitz in 2007, I've been puzzled how anyone could possibly deny the Holocaust happened. How does one simply deny the million pieces of documentation by multiple sources. The movies? The photos? The Nazi's own papers? The reports from the inmates, the liberators, the gaurds???

The Holocaust History Project explained the problem succinctly: "The denier gambit is a variant on the falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in all things) formulation which claims that if any one fact about the Holocaust can be proven to be wrong, then all the reported facts are wrong and there was no Holocaust." The US Holocaust Memorial website also has some great links.

The deniers seem to fixate on one tiny, technical detail and use it as proof that the whole thing never happened. A denial website called the Institute for Historical Review (which purports to take an unbiased, historical look at the "facts") had a piece that said the figure of 6 million Jews killed was a gross exageration. It may have only been 4.6 million! As if that makes the difference between genocide and a couple of guys slipping on banana peels.

Another detail - there was a swimming pool at Auschwitz-Birkenau! So Auschwitz-Birkenau was really a luxury spa??? In reality, a couple of the long-term, non-Jewish, Polish prisoners put a board over the water tank in Birkenau and used it for swimming. These guys had kind of a wierd history. Birkenau was the work camp; Auschwitz the extermination camp. Some of the Polish political prisoners had been there for so long (since 1938, and before the purpose of the camp was changed into a Jewish extermination center) that they were put in charge of Jewish work gangs. They were called "kapos" and they were a sadistic bunch of bastards.

They also try to deny the Jews were systemically killed by claiming that most died of "natural causes" in the camps like disease and starvation, instead of in the gas chambers. Yet, how can anyone claim the conditions of the concentration camps were "natural." It's like saying that the Bataan Death March really wasn't an atrocity, because most of the American soldiers died of dehydration, exhaustion, disease and from "tripping" into bayonets and "falling" under trucks.

It's mind boggling the number of ways the Nazis came up with to torture, use, and murder all of these people. And even if deniers want to convince themselves that the Jews were never systematically killed, how can they also deny that the Nazis tried to wipe out the Poles, the Slavs, the Gypsys, the Soviets, the homosexuals, the handicapped, etc., etc.? Soviet prisoners of war were treated no better than dirt, and in violation of all the "rules of war" (not to mention the Geneva Convention), they were murdered as well.

I guess I can only finish this post by saying, we will remember. We will honor the dead and we will honor the survivors. Never again.

Memorial for the Jewish dead at Terezin - a "nicer" ghetto for Czech's Jews. Those who survived here at the beginning of the war were later sent to Auschwitz for "liquadation" toward the end of the war.

A memorial erected by the Soviets at Terezin for the countless number of Soviet POW's the Nazi's murdered here.


Auschwitz. It's scale is immense.


The "effecient" gas chambers and ovens at Auschwitz. The train tracks end here and after "selection," the too young, too old, too infirm were murdered. The Nazi's blew up the facilities before liberation to hide what they were doing.

Auschwitz is all conscreated ground because the soil is literally infused with bone dust and bone fragments of the victims. This memorial stands by the gas chambers.


Pawiak Prison in Warsaw. The Gestapo interrogated over 100,000 Poles here during the war, killing 37,000, and sending 60,000 to the concentration camps. All that's left is the foundation because more than 85% of Warsaw was leveled in the war - a large part of it after Nazi retaliation for the Warsaw uprising.
A monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, which ultimately failed. This was after the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where the remaining Jews in Warsaw were killed or sent to the camps. The Nazi's expelled the remaining civilian population and firebombed what remained of the city.

Before the war, there were almost 3.5 million Jews in Poland; after between 180,000 -240,000 were left. Over 3 million non-Jewish Poles died as well. How can one deny it?