High Five for Friday

Helloooooo everyone!  I realize I've been a little MIA lately. Please excuse the lack of posts; it's been a little crazy around here, with many 10pm nights at school (see #3).  Let's catch up though with this week's high five!

1.  Saturday we had a wonderful visit from Jesse's parents. They came up on Friday and took us to dinner at the Fish Market downtown. We then gave them the Birmingham experience of going to the top of Vulcan, which was beautiful at night; and of course a trip to Steel City Pops!  Saturday morning, Jesse took them to his work where the pond was open for fishing (an annual occurrence). You had to keep what you caught, so they returned at lunch time with several fish, which was just enough to feed the fours of us. It was SO good to have them here with us and to share some of our city with them. :)

2. On Sunday, after church, we stopped by Railroad Park for lunch.  They were having "Trucks on the Track," where all the different local Birmingham food trucks set up for the day, and 10% of the proceeds went back to Railroad Park.  For you non-Birminghammers - Railroad Park is a new-ish park in the downtown area. It's a beautiful place to picnic or go for a walk, with a beautiful backdrop of the city.  It's part of the hope to revive certain parts of downtown Birmingham, and is located just across from the Baron's stadium (Region's Field). This was actually our first time at the Park (go figure... food was involved in bringing us in).  The whole idea of food trucks really drew in a lot of people, as the lines were pretty long. Jesse and I split up to get our grub.  He was on the hunt for fish tacos, and found his way into line for Cantina, while I waited for a fresh off the grill grilled-cheese from Melt.  His cuban and fish tacos were amazing, as was his side of grilled corn with cilantro butter and crumbled fresco cheese. My grilled cheese was no ordinary grilled cheese - it took two hefty Texas toast slices to hold together the brilliant combination of pulled pork, BBQ sauce, and homemade mac and cheese!

3.  I survived my first practical in my clinical evaluations course!  And by that I mean, I don't know if I passed, but I didn't die of a panic attack in the middle of it while my professor watched my every move, and graded me by checking off every little possible thing I could do (or not do, or forgot to do).  Whew!  We were all at max stress this week, because all of our little over-achieving minds probably thought deep down somewhere that this first clinical checkoff would secretly pronounce if we can indeed be optometrists one day. But, we were all stressed for nothing. (Well maybe a little something.)  I tried to give myself a little pep talk before going in. It went a little something like this, "You just gotta go in there and show 'em you can do this. Because you can. You can take a case history. You can determine their visual acuities. You can check their pupil sizes and reactivities to light. You can do confrontation fields. You can check blood pressure. So don't stress... just go do it!"  So I did. You get timed on everything, meaning you have a certain number of minutes to perform each skill, which was the hardest part. Somehow I finished them all in time; definitely with a few flubs here and there. But, I finished it and can now move on.... to the next exam.  It's nearly midterm time, which is absurd, because it seems like we just started this semester!

4.  Last night, after I returned home from my practicals day at school, Jesse and I declared it movie night, and invited Mike and Kelsey up to watch. Movies + popcorn + friends = the best way to unwind after a trying day!

5.  A couple of weeks ago I sat for third year students to practice evaluating contact lenses. Mostly I did this because they were giving American Express gift cards out to the participants. I had had my eye on a few makeup items I wouldn't normally chunk out the dough over, but I decided if I participated and got the giftcard, it would technically be like getting this makeup for free! So, that's what happened. I finally got around to going to Ulta today. They were having 40% off several drugstore makeup brands, so I combined that with coupons to stock up on the foundation I like. (Score!) Plus my splurge (think with me: free!) beautiful Naked palette! I love all of the neutral colors it has inside, and I am SO excited to put it to use!