Whiskey Chicken

Eric, my brother, was in town this weekend and treated everyone to dinner at Claim Jumper. It was a nice treat especially since we could order everything our hearts desired. Going to restaurants is stressful for me since I'm a fairly picky eater and I usually can't decide what to eat. When the waiter came around I quickly decided on Whiskey Chicken. It looked delicious and I love BBQ sauce. The plate came and instead of BBQ sauce I had apples marinated in whiskey as my sauce. Apparently Whiskey Chicken doesn't mean Whiskey River BBQ sauce Chicken. Next time I go out to eat I think I'll read the entire description and not just assume that it will be what I want.

When's the last time you visited the dentist? I went yesterday and I'm still feeling it. It's been a while since I slobbered all over myself while eating dinner; good thing I was alone. Although I work in the OR and deal with shots, etc daily it's still different to have those things aimed at me. Sadly enough, the fun has only just begun. I'm going back soon for a root canal and new bridge placement. Sad day. Until then, I'll nurse my bruised lip and missing tooth.

Fish Tremble When They Hear My Name!

Last Saturday Scott and I went fishing with a friend of his from school. We went off a really long pier in Pacifica and it was super fun. It was incredibly foggy driving over but once we dropped to ocean level the fog lifted and it was beautiful. We had so much fun but only caught things that had to go back. I guess the crab season doesn't really begin until this week so we had to throw back the crabs we caught. It was still so awesome though.

The pier we went fishing off.


A crab that Scott had to throw back, minus a leg. Scott wasn't holding it far enough back so the crab tried to pinch his fingers. When Scott dropped the crab a leg fell off. Woops!
(Good luck Sebastian! I hope you find Ariel.)

This is my idea of fishing. Sleeping works out best for the group anyway,
it's about the only way I sit still and stay quiet!

(PS Anyone know how to make the photo rotate so I don't have to put sideways ones up again?)

Halloween Celebration

In April Scott and I dyed Easter eggs with Rachel and Westin. It was a fun disaster. We waited until the last minute to buy the supplies and then drove to 3 stores to get everything. Once we started it was almost 10 and we quickly got bored. (Scott was happy to have egg salad sandwiches for the next week though.) For Halloween we decided to do better. We bought the pumpkins in advance and even got a book full of patterns to carve. Everything went great until we started to work. If you've never used a pattern before be warned: they're hard and a LOT of work.
Scott chose the hardest pattern but also probably had the best turnout. He spent almost 3 hours to get his haunted house just right. I chose a much easier pattern and it turned out alright.

Rachel carved a spider but Westin decided to make his own pattern and ended up with a scary Jack-o-lantern.

In order of appearance: Rachel, Westin, Scott, Cecilie
And here's our pimpkins! (I realize I spelled that incorrectly but it's too funny to edit.) Hope you had a spooky Halloween!

ABCs

So I just spoke to my brother's kids and we had an awesome time on the phone. While 'speaking' to my niece Maren, age 2, I started singing the ABCs for her. The next thing I know: Maren (2), Caleb (4), and Parker (5) are all taking turns laughing while I sing to them. It was hilarious to hear them laugh so hard. However, do you think it's a reflection on my ability to carry a tune?

One Fine Day

I went to the grand opening of a shoe store tonight and saw Michelle Pfeiffer there. It was basically life changing. She came out of a back room, walked by me and never looked back. I think I'm one step closer to the American Dream of fame and fortune. My friend works in the shoe store and said that Michelle is a 'regular'. I'm thinking that I'll shop there more often. Now, it's time to watch her and George Clooney in One Fine Day; I can reminisce of when I almost talked to her in a shoe store...

P.S. Hannah, next time you see her can you tell her how fabulous she was in Stardust? I love that movie even more.

A Foggy Day in the City

This weekend was the Blue Angels airshow in San Francisco so Scott and I went out on the Golden Gate Bridge to feel the vibrations as they flew over. We got there about 30 minutes early, saw them fly by twice, waited another 30 minutes, and then left. Apparently it was too foggy for the big show. I'm surprised that the show was cancelled because of fog; it's always foggy in SF. Whatever. We met up with Scott's old traveling buddy Mike and went to dinner and ice cream. It was really fun. I love living near the City where I can go in for an afternoon, have a good time, and then drive back to my quiet neighborhood.

Can I live in the closet?

So the lovely Jess and I went to Stanford yesterday to visit the even lovelier Lauren, Jenn, Victoria, and Rebekah. They invited us to eat dinner at their house but we had to go last night though since their chef doesn't work Tuesdays. (Yes, you read that right, they're in college and have a chef.) So they live in a house with about 40 other girls and it looks so cool. Dinner was tasty and we ate in a dining hall that made me feel like I should sing for my food or something. I wished I had a camp counselor and cheer to go along with the lasagna. Afterward we got the grand tour. There are 3 levels, a computer room, piano, chef, fully stocked fridge, M&Ms (my personal favorite), and basically anything else you can imagine. Oh yeah, they don't even have to pay for laundry! Their rooms are enormous too! The top picture was taken in one of the many closets. Seriously? Where did I go wrong in choosing to go to another university? I seriously missed out on the sorority lifestyle. Maybe I should go back for a masters...

How many women does it take...

to fill a car with gas? Three: one to bring the gas, another to hold the tank open, and a third to 'supervise'. So I was at my parent's house, dinking around on Facebook, when my mom called to say she was on the off ramp of the freeway and out of gas. I rushed to our small canister in the backyard only to find it empty and then hurried on to buy some gas before saving my mom. Once I got to her car she informed me that the gas tank door wouldn't open. (Mind you, it had just been fixed for $300 last month.) We both tried a few tricks before my mom stuck some scissors in the door crack while I pressed the button: SUCCESS!! The hard part being done, I held up the gas canister and started pouring. No good. There's a little door just at the mouth of the tank and the nozzle on the canister wasn't long enough to open that door. How do you fix that? At first I thought if I just shoved the canister in farther then it'd work. No such luck. Instead, my mom held the scissors against the door while I poured the gas in slowly. It was pretty difficult to get the gas to go in at the correct angle and flow because we were both laughing so hard. How hard can it possibly be to get some gas in the car? As for the supervisor, my grandma kept the front seat warm and was sure to check continually that my mom knew where she was. Hilarious.

Grandma Lee got married!

This weekend I went to Utah with Scott for his grandma's wedding. We had a blast. She met a nice old man in the retirement center and decided that being friends just wasn't enough. We had such a fun time at the wedding Friday night and the party didn't stop until we landed back in California on Sunday evening.
Before the wedding we went on a beautiful hike in Little Cottonwood Canyon:


On Saturday we went to Snowbird and participated in Oktoberfest by going on the zip line and taking the tram to the top of the Hidden Peak. :Saturday night we went salsa dancing with Scott's sister but we looked painfully out of place. She's a natural and has all the moves but Scott and I looked like we belonged at a high school football game instead and I'm not sure our moves did much to convince otherwise. It was so much fun though. Sunday we went to church, visited Grandmas and sisters. Thanks to the Lee's for such a great time and congrats to Grandma on the wedding!

Livin' in the South

This is a special post for my sister Laura. She's moving to Georgia today so that she can do a dietetics internship and be a real registered dietitian. I read the paper during breaks at work and I loved this story. I hope you packed your riot gear. Good luck. (I'm not sure how copyright works but this was over the Associated Press on 8/25/2009):

MARION, Ala. - Two Alabama families that had been fighting for years turned their feud into a full-scale riot Monday outside a small-town city hall, with up to 150 screaming people hurling tire irons and wielding baseball bats. Eight people were arrested, and at least four were hurt, Trooper John Reese said. Two were taken to hospitals. The town's police chief was hit in the head with a crowbar but was OK.

The two- or three-year-old feud apparently prompted a fight earlier in the day at a high school, after a window was shot out of a home Sunday night. Then, "all hell broke loose" later in the day, said Sgt. Carlton Hogue of the Perry County Sheriff's Department.

"It was a full-scale riot is what it was," said Tony Long, mayor of the town of 3,300 about 85 miles west of Montgomery.

Hogue said the rioters were "throwing jack irons, throwing tire irons, anything they could get their hands on." Some people carried baseball bats and brooms.

Reese said two people were arrested at the high school during the initial disturbance. Relatives of the people who were arrested followed officers to police headquarters at city hall, and then the melee erupted.

Six more people were arrested at city hall, Reese said, and police called in reinforcements from surrounding cities. Some officers wore riot gear, and many planned to stay overnight to help maintain order.

The mayor said he wasn't sure what sparked the fracas.

"Everybody's trying to point the finger at everybody," he said.

Judson College, a church-affiliated women's school with about 300 students in downtown Marion, issued an alert asking students to stay out of the downtown area for 24 hours as a precaution.

Roadside Assistance

(This is the beginning of my new commitment to blogging regularly. I'll try hard.) So I'm driving home from another day at work and I see a few cars on the side of the road. I think it's just a normal fender-bender so I just drive by and watch to see what it is in my mirror. As I pass there's a guy lying on the sidewalk and 3 teenage girls standing nearby. I watched for a few more seconds, wondering if I should stop. I decide that it might be a good idea and remember that I bought a first aid kit for my trunk a month ago. I quickly pull over and jump out to get my kit and run over there. My trunk: empty. I cleaned my car a month ago and I guess I didn't put anything back in. Woops. I figure that I can still do some good so I run over there. I ask his name, no real answer, and move on to an orientation question (ie does he know where he is or the day). Just as I get that question out of my mouth 2 Stanford doctors show up on the scene and take over. None of us had gloves and the man was being uncoperative adn I already had blood/dirt all over my pants so we all worked together. The police, fire truck, and ambulance quickly pulled up and completely took over. I was still standing nearby though and helped with some positioning, etc. However, when I went to help move the guy onto the gurney some other ambulance lady showed up out of no where and shooed me away. Something about being in jeans and a T-shirt made me look like just another annoying bystander trying to get in on the action. Moral of the story: doing a good deed doesn't really work out if you don't have the supplies and aren't dressed in proper attire. Until I blog again... (I promise, this is my new try to do a lot better.)

CeCe, RN, OR.

So I have a real job now.  It is a huge blessing and I wasn't sure it'd come but I finally have real employment.  I was working as a secretary at an outpatient surgery center and after no hospitals were offering me a job they decided to hire me to work in the OR as a nurse.  I actually did my senior preceptorship in the OR so I have as much experience as a new graduate can have.  I am so thankful to be working there and I can see the Lord making it possible, starting from my original employment there 5 years ago.  I loved being in the OR as a student but some benefits of me actually working are: money, regular hours (M-F, 7-3:30), and health insurance.  Yeah!  I'm totally stoked.  To celebrate my employment I'm going to Florida tomorrow to visit some friends.  Love taking time off before you even work.  Sadly, with this I'm thinking I might have to change my title.  No longer am I unemployed or living at home.  Dang.  I'd say my next post will be about my new digs but I have yet to take a picture and I'll probably wait until I actually put stuff away in my room.  Life is so awesome!  (Oh yeah, they call me CeCe at work so that's what I'm going to go by in the back.  Nothing better then lots of acronyms!) 

Lovers Quarrel?

(So I realize that Valentine's Day was over a month away but my computer is dead so blogging is inconvenient.  However, today I will make it up to all my fans.)  So for Valentine's Day I went into the City (San Francisco) and attended a big pillow fight.  Those specks you see in the sky are feathers, not snow.  It was actually really fun and made me think back to the good old days of being a kid.  I'm thinking that was the purpose of the whole event because I think most people there were around 25 and some even wore their pajamas!  Oh the trails of growing up...  After we had sufficient headaches we went to Ghirardelli Square for some delicious ice cream.   Maybe growing up isn't so bad after all.  

Cecilie Bain, R.N.

Yeah, I passed. I got permission late Friday (2/6), took it early Monday (2/9), and my license was posted Saturday morning (2/14). [For those who don't know about the NCLEX, basically you take between 75 and 265 questions. Once you hit 75 questions the computer will shut off whenever it has decided that you passed or failed.] I got shut off at 75 and almost cried from relief. As most of you know, patience is a virtue I don't have patience for so sitting through 75 questions was rough. It took me about 1 1/2 hours and I was going crazy towards the end. My formal education is now complete!

As for gainful employment, I'm still doing temp work and I have a second interview on the horizion so I'm praying for good things. The economy is not my friend but something will come as I'm patient. (Yet again, easier said than done.)

Tune in later this month for a post about my Valentien's day... and the new digs I'm moving into.

Gainfully Employed (Temporarily)

Well, I guess that I'm being forced to change my blog tagline.  I now have a job, for the moment.  I'm working at a surgery center as a receptionist.  I actually worked there before and like it so I'm excited.  Also, maybe it will lead to future employment as an OR RN!  Now that would be nice.  Life's great out here in Sunny California.  I actually went hot tubbing the other night.  (Yeah, I know it's winter.)  It was fun.  I've met a lot of new friends but I think I'm out of my league here.  They were talking about books and the only one I could think of recommending was See Spot Run.  Needless to say, I'm going to the bookstore today and I'll only buy books with titles I can't pronounce.  The job search is going well.  I've applied everywhere I can think of so now I'm just waiting for my phone to ring off the hook with interview inquires.  If you could all pray that that happens I'd appreciate it!