Update, yet again

So yesterday I had a check up for my foot again and now it's not a stress fracture. The Doctor said the MRI indicated a stress fracture but being off of it for a month should have made it better if it indeed was a stress fracture so now we are trying something new. She said that there's definitely swelling on the bone but the pain could be in the joints so she sent me to physiotherapy. 2 or 3 times a week for the next month and then to come back in 4 weeks. She gave me a boot (the new must-have accessory I'm telling you) to wear on my foot which is supposed to help a little.I was OK with it yesterday during class and I'm hoping it will help me with my back also. Crunching over the crutches is NOT fun nor is it good for my back. So hopefully all this will come together soon! I want to be able to do black Friday shopping! That is the craziest most fun you'll ever have! People get on their serious shopping mood and it's the survival of the fittest! And there's no room for limping that night! So I need to get better.

But back to my boot...I am wearing it at work but not outside, not today anyway. It started to rain late last night and it hasn't stopped since. I came to work an hour late because I wanted to wait it out but it didn't help so I had to suck it up and put on my rain gear...jacket, pants and what T calls, my ugly boots. They're rain resistant and rigid like Doctor ordered, is all I'm saying...

I need to go back to work now. Later peeps!

School

School is SO difficult. I got an "A" from my paper in my environmental health class. And I wrote it the day it was due...Now should I try to evolve and do them a little earlier or just do what I do now?
Some of the things I've learned in this class:

• You can't give a child under the age of 2 honey. They will get sick and possibly die.

• Little children shouldn't touch small turtles. Turtles have salmonella in their shells which can make your kids really sick. Also, if somebody brings bats or other wild animals, even a wild kitten to the school room, tell your kid NOT to touch it OR kiss it! Rabies baby, rabies!

• You're Chinese food, at least here, is most likely not coked by a Chinese person but a Mexican or someone else from central-America. My Chinese place has an all Chinese personnel. How I know this? You can see right into the kitchen.

• Doctoral students are the most difficult people in the world. They ask irrelevant questions, they have NO logic and the focus on unimportant things. If a professor says he has 17 topics for a paper and he only presents 16, is that REALLY worth asking or mentioning about? If your presentation topic is riparian areas in NJ, do we REALLY need to get into Mayan culture? If the time limit for your presentation is 15 minutes, do you REALLY need to talk for an hour? My experience is that those are the people who can't cope in the real world. They stay in school and get a degree after degree because they would not do well in a real job.

• People in NJ don't recognize their wild mushrooms.I guess that's good since there are more Superfund sites in NJ than in any other states in the US. Even if you find a wild edible mushroom it could still be toxic! Speaking off...I miss mushrooms! Kanttarelli, where are thou?

• You should never cook thanksgiving turkey in parts! We just learned yesterday how a woman was having lots of people over and got a BIG turkey for thanksgiving. She thought it would be a good idea to cook it in 2 parts. Let's say it took 7 hours to cook. She cooked it for 3,5 hours on Wednesday, and another 3,5 on Thursday. The outside of the turkey was cooked on Wednesday but the stuffing inside only got warm. When she put it in the fridge overnight, the bacteria on the stuffing multiplied (in room temperature it takes about 15 min for a bacteria to multiply). The outside of the turkey cooled but the stuffing stayed room temp. When she took it out on Thursday and put it in the oven for the remaining time, the outside got warm again but the inside, the stuffing was just warm. Killed 3 people including herself!

I'm surprised I'm eating anything these days. It seems like no matter what you do, you are bound to get a food poisoning here. Or that's how my professor makes it sound. He's the health officer of a municipality in north Jersey so he has first hand knowledge of a lot of these things. The things he tells us! ALWAYS WASH YOUR HANDS! Even if you're not eating. I guess petting the cats in the middle of cooking is not a good idea, huh??

I read this yesterday and thought thank god this isn't me!
A woman in Australia is suffering from over production of trimethylamine which makes her breath, sweat and pee smell like...rotten fish! EECH!
Have a good day! I'm gonna do some work now...

Time management

I'm bad at it. In fact, I suck at it!

this semester has been the first ever when I have school and work at the same time and it's a bit challenging. Going to school full time and getting homework and all the presentations done on time is hard as it is, add work to that and it's almost impossible! LOL!

Being on crutches is making me slower than usual, so that takes time but it's not the challenge. The challenge in the morning is NOT to surf the net...NOT to watch the shows I taped...NOT to blog when I could be doing my homework or research for presentations or papers. And before you know it, it's time to leave for work. In the spring when I started I was told that I could do homework at work. Since the director change, we are a lot busier than anticipated so I have less time for homework. If at all. Obviously during class you can't do homework.

I have classes from Monday till Wednesday and I work the whole day on Thursday. The classes are night classes so I don't see T all that much those days. When she picks me up we might have a dinner together and watch a little TV before it's bed time. On Wednesday's we're home (after she picks me up) at 11pm which means NO time together. So the few hours I do get to spend with her those days, I don't wanna do homework.

On Thursdays I usually am really tired after getting home from work. The night before I just come home and crash. My co-worker Aditi picks me up on Thursdays at 7:15 so I wake up and basically leave. By the time I get home, I'm ready for a nap. Thursday is usually also our dining night out so neither one of us has to cook. During the weekends we are usually pretty busy, our dance cards are filling up fast and unless T needs to go somewhere by herself, I'm not doing much homework then. Sunday is reserved for football so unless there's really boring Jets and Giants games on, I'm not doing homework. Occasional article reading but nothing too heavy.

This leaves me with Wednesdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays I have the whole day till about 6:10pm when I have to leave for school. You would think that 9 hours prior to that would be enough? I'm sure it would be but my focus doesn't last that long. Friday's I have totally off but after the 4 day week at work and school, I need to unwind a little before getting into it. Surfing, catching up with my shows, domestic duties...And everybody knows how much I love TV! Since I'm not seeing my shows when they actually air, and when me and T are home together I want to spend that time doing things with her, it's only logical and natural to watch those shows when I have time alone...

So what should I do? Make a timetable for myself for those days? 1 hour for surfing. 2 hours for TV. 5 hours for homework? Combine these with cooking, eating and laundry...?

I/we obviously have very little time for friends during the week which is one of the reasons weekends are so busy. Unless T sees her friends in the city before coming home, she doesn't have the time or the energy to drive around after work. If you exclude one of her cousins and few of her friends from work who live about 20 minutes away, it takes almost an hour to see anybody else or more! So you need to plan these things in advance or like we did on Sunday with Shari, Dre and Brad, meet in the middle. Well, middle for us and Shari, Dre and Brad were over 7 hours away from home. We met for brunch in Lambertville, NJ for few hours before we came home and they went back to Shari's. Andrea and Brad live in Virginia so it's not everyday you get to see them. Last time we saw them was in June when they came here to celebrate pride parade with us.

We might not see them often but it's always good times! We were laughing through the brunch! It's not about how often you see each other, it's about how much fun you have when you get together. I have met most of the people I call friends here through T and they have been very open and accepting towards me. My friends are back in Finland and I obviously don't see them as often as I would like or even get to talk with them all that much because of the time difference and how much it costs to call but when I here from them, it always makes me smile. But I have my life with T, they have their lives with their significant others, kids and work and that's how life goes. Things change all the time, you just have to adapt and make most of the time you have with your friends and loved ones.

I miss my family back in Finland.
I miss my friends back in Finland.
I miss my friends here in the states.
Hope everybody has a great day.
I'm going to work now...for few!
Later

Attention!!!

Beware of the pigeons! Nuclear power plant workers in Iran have caught 2 pigeons accused of espionage. They were said to have carried metal rings attached to some cords. If you have lost your spying pigeons, please contact Natanz power plant in mid-Iran!

I read this today and thought it was funny. In today's world of paranoia, this tops the list! Just make sure you are behaving in public places with lots of pigeons such as parks, market places etc. The pigeons could be working for the police!

Thursdays=payday

It's always awesome every other Thursday to go to the payroll office and collect your check. Today was my last check collection day though. I have stepped up in the world and will have direct deposit starting in 2 weeks. I might actually have to learn how this checking business goes here, or I could just go to the ATM and withdraw the money...We shall see. T will be my checkwriting/checkbookbalancing teacher. You learn something new every day...

I have apparently made my presence known on campus. 2 weeks ago when I thought my foot was healing and I was feeling all better and stuff as I was going to pick my my check this girl who I didn't know, said to me "So you're off crutches?" I was totally taken back by it since I had no idea who she was and also, when I am walking around, I'm looking at the ground because if you are not looking down, you'll be on your face pretty quickly! And that's something you DO NOT want to do...anyway, I had my crutches today and people were not asking question or commenting.

Thursdays are nice for many reasons. The payday obviously is one. the other reason is that it's the end of my "campus" week. No more school, no more work for that week. I always think Thursdays as I would Fridays. YES, it's weekend. I can stay home and relax with T. NO!!! Every Friday morning I have a cruel awakening. T is getting up at the crack of dawn to either go to the gym or get ready for work. Either way she's not staying home with me to enjoy the start of the weekend. My weekend at least. Sigh. It's just me and the cats. And homework. And my computer.

Happy weekend everybody. Mine starts in 20 minutes.

Thanks Oscar!

Yesterday when I got home there was a gift bag waiting for me/us. On Saturday we had told Oscar and his family that we didn't have any Halloween decorations so they went and got us some! We now have trick or treat door mat, a hand towel and a drink mixer (shaken, not stirred) and shot glasses with pictures of spiders on them and best of all...skull straws! T made up this whole thing about me not letting any straws in the house because I was afraid or something (which OBVIOUSLY I'm not) so they got us straws with skulls in them. As a retaliation I told them that T is afraid of bugs and spiders so they got us shot glasses and a mixer with spiders! It's a win-win situation! So thanks Oscar, Bernadette, Jeremy and Elizabeth for our gifts! They will be used!

I like Wednesdays. I can stay home until 6:10pm when I need to start making my way to the bus stop. I can sleep late if I want to, take it easy for few hours, have few cups of coffee and catch up with my shows. I can be kicked by the cats and do some homework if needed.T says I'm a pushover when it comes to the cats...well when it comes to Sox anyway. Bailey is easy to handle, any loud(er) noise or movement towards her and she leaves/follows...Sox...Sox is the queen. If she doesn't want to move, she doesn't move. If she doesn't want to follow, she doesn't follow. If she want to lick the couch, that's what she's gonna do. Nothing you can do or say except remove her from the spot.

Yesterday I settled on the couch, my feet up on the table, a computer in my lap and started watching my shows. At this point Sox was on her OWN couch, the one that she hogs all the time. I got up and when I came back Sox was right on the spot where I had sat. Her head was resting next to the mouse and remote like she was surfing the net and controlling the TV. We had a little discussion as to whose place it actually was and it ended up with me having to pick her up and moving her a little. Which made her stay next to me in a smaller than small place and kicking me...Sox is very good at showing her emotions when she doesn't get her way. She was probably just mad that I put the computer back on my lap and she couldn't sit/lay there.

Finland lost 3-0 yesterday to Russia in football WC qualifying. 2 own goals doesn't really help the cause. After few better games when we were given little hope that maybe we still can make the qualifying happen, it was taken away once again. Good thing is the under 21's made it to the EC-games next summer so hopefully some new young blood can come out and help the team. The core of the team is getting old. We need new Jari Litmanen or even someone better. Chances of that happening: very small. Will I see Finland in EC or WC games in my lifetime? I doubt it. Thankfully there's always ice hockey.

We have a surprisingly low key weekend coming up. T's spending Saturday visiting her mom, they're having a mother-daughter day while I'll be home doing homework and research for my presentations and papers. I don't really like all the work academia throws my way. It's great I'll only have one exam this semester but there's so many papers to write and read and presentations. I don't like presenting. Yuk! Saturday evening we have tickets for Red Bulls game but we are not yet sure if we will go. For Sunday we have nothing. It's awesome. We'll just stay home, watch football and possible cook like couple of crazy people again! It's great we can now do what we want. All the obligations are behind us we can focus on what we want to do. If it's nothing, even better!

American traditions

Halloween is HUGE around here. Basically any kind of holiday, whether religious or other kind is a cause for celebration and in some cases, going overboard. People have ghosts, lights, zombies and other stuff on their front and back yards. There are pumpkins everywhere. Since this is our first Halloween together, at least living together, we decided to do something about our place.

On Saturday we went pumpkin picking with T's co-worker Oscar and his family. We met them at the Demarest Farms in Hillside, NJ, about 20 minutes from our place after driving in circles for few minutes. Our directions were not exactly trustworthy but enough about that. I've met Oscar once before, briefly and this was the first time meeting his family, wife Bernadette and son Jeremy and daughter Elizabeth. They were all really nice and we had fun with them. Jeremy is a braniac destined for big things, even at 11 years old. While T was parking the car Jeremy and Oscar pulled out their list of Finnish things to say and Jeremy said "Hauska tavata" which means nice to meat you. He had a little bit of an accent so I didn't catch it but I thought it was really cute! and nice. Who does that? Other than T's best friend CJ who had the Finnish national anthem as T's ring tone the first time I met her, no one has done anything like that for me!

We started out with lunch, the farm had a salad bar where I got my lunch from and the others had burgers and hot dogs. After checking out the store, we bought our tickets for the hey ride which took us to the pumpkin and apple fields. We roamed around in the field of pumpkins looking for the perfect pumpkin. Since I was not able to carry anything we decided that me and T would be OK with just one. Unlike T's blogs suggests, I did NOT choose a big ass pumpkin...(and besides, even if I did, shouldn't all those hours with Adam help with that problem?!?!) I believe it was T's finding and she carried it around until I found a smaller, more perfect one. :-) I was only thinking about her well being...

After we all chose our pumpkins we thought we would go apple picking. We tried the first few trees but all apples were gone. We so a lone apple in one of the trees and Bernadette decided to climb the tree...she did not come down with an apple though! She almost fell which had her and T hysterical laughing!

We didn't want to go all the way to the end of the farm to get apples so we decided to take the hey ride back and go roam the store one more time. Me and T found this cute cat decor for our pumpkin which was just perfect for us since neither one of us was sure we could carve the pumpkin, so now our pumpkin looks like a cat. T has a picture of it in her blog and I will add one to mine when I have a chance. After the store we had some ice cream and then left to go play WII at their house. Jeremy and T had some intense games going on...T won the Madden NFL football game and it looks like it was a sign of things to come as the Eagles won yesterday their own game! Now if tonight the Giants could lose... We had a great Saturday with them and as soon as my foot gets better, I will kick some as in WII bowling!

Now it's time to head to class...later