Birmingham Adventures - Red Mountain

Last weekend we marked another to-do off of our Birmingham list by hiking a little through Red Mountain.  There are several trails to explore, but we only did about half of them. We took Maggie, and she was tired before we veered onto trail #2 less than half way through. Poor dog - she's an inside girl. We went from the South side to the North to see one of the overlooks. Not the best view of Birmingham, but pretty in the distance. And we also went to the SkyHy Treehouse. It's a small park, but perfect for a short outdoor excursion.

High Five for Friday

Well guys, this has been quite the week!  My summer session has officially started and nearly worn me out. I got a little used to relaxing in a cozy hotel bed until about 10am each morning last week.

1. This summer I get to ditch the books and focus on patient care. I (along with my classmates) will have Primary Eye Care clinic, optical, community eye care, and vision therapy. My favorite so far was working with the kids in vision therapy. This helps kids with different problems, like eye turns or lazy eyes or focusing problems retrain their eye systems to strengthen their eyes enough to fix their problem. Some kids (or parents) start noticing problems when they start school or learn to read and they can't keep their place on the page, wind up hating to read, which can lead to problems in school, and often lead to behavioral issues. But really their original problem was that their eyes just can't do it. So 12-15 weeks of vision therapy can really change the lives of these kids, which is amazing!  

2. Jesse made it home from Pennsylvania Friday! So happy to have him back, as usual.

3. Wednesday was our 3rd wedding anniversary. Although we were miles apart he still sent me flowers to celebrate our special day.

4. After a week away and previous weeks of studying for finals, I finally made it back to community group and Dave Ramsey group this past week, which was wonderful to hang out with friends and talk Jesus and finances.

5. I also came home this week to a couple if post cards from my cousin, Carissa. She is venturing through Austria ans France with her job this summer. Definitely the opportunity of a lifetime, and I'm really glad she took it!

Pittsburgh 2

I'm obviously behind (yet again) on blogging. But I wanted to fill you in on the rest of our Pittsburgh trip.

I thoroughly enjoyed my break, not having any schedule to follow, and lying around in a hotel room for several days.  I did venture out and explore the town we were staying in, and did a little shopping. I realize it sounds rather boring, but it was just what I needed to relax and recoup from this past semester.

On our second trip into the city we had quite the fancy dinner. Fortunately, Jesse's company covers his meals while on business, so we decided splitting the bill would be like a half-price fancy dinner, and declared it our anniversary dinner (which is next week!). We went to an amazing restaurant that resides on the top floor of an apartment building, which has a perfect view of the city. We arrived during the daylight hours and got to watch the city fall into darkness and light up in all of its glory. I love how cities look at night. It's funny how a city like Pittsburgh - decent, but not the cleanest and best looking city by day, can be so beautiful shining at night. And it's reflections off the adjacent rivers make it even prettier.

Back to the fabulous meal. Because, as you can see, we pretty much just eat good food on vacation. It's our thing. Everything was presented so beautifully, but I tried to refrain from being one of those people that photographs their food. (Although, I am that person.) I mean, I was trying to be a little more fancy than usual. So I just snuck out my phone every now. It seems to be a more accepted and inconspicuous way to capture snapshots of the yummyness before you.
We began with a trio appetizer of shrimp, crab cake, and a skewer of various fish. Then clam chowder, poured table-side into a bowl of the tiniest julienned potatoes I've ever seen. Followed by a house salad with fresh citrus dressing. Finally the entree - Hawaiin Nairagi with a mango chutney with rice and grilled bok-choy (aka - the most expensive fish I've ever consumed).

(I also ate the flower, because I could.) 

And it was on this very day that I ate the most delicious dessert I've ever had. If you know me, you know that says a LOT about this dessert. I sent a picture to a friend, and she questioned my judgement- there was no chocolate - how could this be?! Rightfully so, I told her, but it was true. This decadent dish is apparently "award winning" in this neck of the woods. It's called an Angel Food Cake Grilled Cheese. Which sounds disgusting, I agree. However, it was a "sandwich" made of angel food cake and mascarpone cheese, topped with fresh berries, sliced almonds, vanilla bean ice cream, and a swirl of raspberry sauce. I'm pretty certain the angel food cake was grilled in butter and sugar, which resulted in a nice, thin crunch with every bite.

Across from the restaurant is a lookout point, so we stopped and took in the city one last time.

We also found a local frozen custard shop nearby our hotel. We might have visited it twice during our trip.

One night we were invited to Jesse's friend's house, who he met through the company that is doing this training last time he was in PA. He grilled us steaks and let us sample his homemade wines, then required us to leave with 2 bottles. Not a bad deal.

On Saturday I drove all the way back to Alabama by myself, leaving Jesse to return behind me. It was a long trips, but fun and I was a little proud of myself by the end. And sweet friends made dinner for me upon my arrival, so it was a good day!

Things I did/learned on this trip:
- Turnpike = toll road. Be prepared with lots of change. Then pray you find a toll booth with an actual person to break your only 20-dollar bill so you can continue on your way.
- Kentucky is among the most beautiful states I've seen (plus it has a castle). Miles of green pastures with perfect white fences, horses, and lovely homes in the distance.
- West Virginia is a close second with it's lush, green mountains.
- However, you cannot hold your cellphone in WV. Thanks to one road sign and one concerned citizen who honked at me.
- I drove across the Appalachian Trial somewhere along the way.
- I drove through two mountains (tunnels) as well.  One in West Virginia, then you pop out the other side into Virginia.
- I successfully tried not to get pulled over, carrying two bottles of wine in my front seat cup holders. Not sure if that was unlawful at any point along the way...
- If you look like a cute couple, you might just get your tab picked up. Yep, that happened. A sweet couple at a local pizzeria decided to treat us to dinner one night, unexpectedly, for that very reason. We explained it was a "business meal" and they should not pay, but they insisted. Then the lady told me I had I lovely accent. :)
- I cannot survive a 11.5 hour road trip without gum, water (which leads to frequent pit stops), and Christian radio (gotta keep it positive) or NPR. And phone calls to curb the boredom.

Pittsburgh 1

Yesterday's ventures:

 Enormous sandwiches...

 Cool street art...

 Ice cream...

 Old architecture...

 City-scape views...

 Hassling passersby into photo taking...  

Birmingham to Pittsburgh

Today I'm writing to you from Pittsburgh, PA!  I have joined Jesse on his current business trip while on my week off from school. We started our drive on Saturday morning and made a few stops along the way to enjoy some good food (of course) and some sight-seeing.

After a long detour around some wrecks on the interstate in Nashville we arrived at The Cookery, a small cafe in Nashville that has an amazing mission for the homeless in their community.

We arrived and placed our order, only to realize that we had walked into the middle of a senior citizen trip from a local church. The head chef came out to greet them and tell his story, then brought all the guys out of the kitchen and introduced them. Chef Swayn was homeless himself at one point in his life, and through desperation and brokenness found Jesus. He started reading the Bible and other Christian books at the public library and would pray for food when he was hungry and God would provide. He was amazed that Jesus would love and give to him. While in Texas, someone invested in his life and helped him get a job and eventually he came out of homelessness. He learned various culinary skills along the way and became a chef. He moved to Nashville and now uses his restaurant as a mission. He hires homeless men in the community and teaches them how to cook. And I don't mean flipping burgers. These guys were serving various international, made-from-scratch meals. Chef Swayn is originally from Australia, so he had incorporated some of his native flavors and dishes into his menu. He would literally go out in the streets and hunt these guys down, giving them small tasks at first to see if they would come back and actually receive his offerings. But he doesn't just give them a job, he has a mission center that houses them and they are all in a program that teaches them about Jesus and works to teach them other skills besides culinary skills so that they can work in whatever field they prefer once they make it to the end of the program. They work to find them jobs later and keep up with each of them to ensure that they haven't turned back to alcoholism, etc. that would turn them back to homelessness. He was amazing and it was beautiful to witness his passion for these men and his community. He is living out true servant hood and the love of Jesus!  At The Cookery, I ordered the Moroccan Chicken Salad and Jesse had the Australia Meat Pie. Both were delicious, but the meat pie was amazing - it was like the best, tender beef stew you've ever had wrapped in a flaky pie crust, served with thick cut fries sprinkled with a yummy spice mix.

Onward we drove, through beautiful Kentucky, then Ohio. We stopped in downtown Cincinnati for dinner at the Senate. It was obviously a popular place when we arrived. They are known for their gourmet hot dogs among other things. Jesse had the Korean dog (with kimchi, braised short rib, sesame seeds, and pickled cucumbers), while I had the Lindsey Lohan (with goat cheese, caramelized onion, bacon, arugula, and balsamic) - maybe named because it was a hot mess to eat.  Both were delicious, and we followed them with Pretzel Beignets and Caramel Marscarpone.

Back on the road, we made it to Columbus, OH to stop for the night. We awoke the next morning and went to their zoo and aquarium. It was a huge zoo with many impressive exhibits to enjoy, but there were a LOT of people there. We found out after the fact that moms got in for free for Mothers Day. We still had a great time even though we had to dodge a million strollers along the way.

We also paid tribute to Mother's Day since we were not with our own mothers on their special day.

Unique to their zoo was a flying bat exhibit. It was a little creepy but they were hanging close to the viewing glass so we really got to take a close look at them wrapped up sleeping.

They also have an Australian exhibit which has a walk through kangaroo area. They were rather sleepy animals, but one Joey did come out of his mama's pouch while we were there. It was precious!

There was also a koala bear, and I wanted to hold him. I'm pretty sure I would react to a koala like Kristen Bell does to a sloth. (If you haven't seen that... google it.)

 The aquarium was small, but they had several tanks, with one giant wall at the end. A nice relaxing exhibit after the zoo chaos.

We made it into Pittsburgh Sunday night and have done a little exploring through the city. Stay tuned!

High Five for Friday

Cue the choir, and the angels, or whoever wants to sing a hallelujah praise...

1. We finished second year of optometry school!!! It was literally the most challenging school year of my life (as you have already heard). It was such a relief on Thursday to walk out of our last final exam for the year. Thankfully, Gussie gathered up our class to finally get a group photo of the class of 2016.
And this group of girls I could not have made it through without. They keep me straight, in the right place at the right time, and answer all of my silly questions late at night before exams. They keep me laughing through the hard times and listen to all of my complaints. I am so thankful to have such wonderful friends!

2. To increase the nerd level of this post even further, I got an iPad this week for the single reason of taking notes for class and being able to upload notes from this school year for future quick reference. Many of my classmates use their iPads in class, and I came to realize how convenient and well designed this device is, and how much more organized it could help me to be. All of those binders of notes you see above can be on the iPad to scroll through and quickly search if needed. Plus I can access digital copies of my textbooks at my fingertips any time. Jesse says I've crossed to the dark side by owning an Apple product, but it already came in handy studying for finals, and I can tell it is a great investment for school!

(I just had to share this one. She's just too cute.)

3. This Wednesday our community group had a farewell cookout for one of our members. Our friend Ronda has been in search of a job for a couple of months, and finally received an answered prayer. However, God decided to move her to Eufaula, AL, and away from all of us. We were both excited for her and sad at the same time. I am so glad I got to know Ronda while she was here. She is a strong woman with a sweet spirit and is someone you can truly always count on. We will miss her dearly, but plan to visit her soon, so it was not a final farewell this week!

4. We had dinner with friends Hannah, Adam, Kelsey, and Addy on Thursday night after I finished my final exams. I had to get out of the house, so we had celebratory drinks and Mexican food at Little Donkey. Hannah and I are both in the medical-school related world, so finding time to catch up can be few and far between. We enjoyed our time with them and got to hear all about there wedding plans for this summer. I cannot wait!

5.  I finished second year of optometry school! Did I say that already?... Well it deserves two spots on the list because it felt like quite the accomplishment. Plus, considering all I did was study for finals this week, nothing else interesting happened.

Happy Weekend everyone!

High Five for Friday

1. This week has been a little interesting. We spent Monday night huddled in Mike and Kelsey's downstairs apartment in case of tornadoes. Thankfully we did not have any damages in our neighborhood, and we were glad to have a safer place to stay.

(photo from original blog source, linked below)

2. I made this recipe this week, and it was pretty delicious. I'm not sure if anything with bacon can be bad, so give this recipe a try for a new pasta dish.  I was a little leery of the egg sauce, but it didn't have a weird texture and just made everything nice and creamy (without an overload of heavy cream!). I did also roast grape tomatoes to toss in too, which I think added a nice flavor to the mix. The roasted cauliflower was awesome - I would do that again as a stand-alone side.

3. Yesterday our Clinical Evaluation instructors, who have been with us for both Fall and Spring semesters held a little end-of-the-year party to recognize a couple of outstanding students, and then hand out several funny awards based on things they had overheard or seen us do throughout the year. I will spare you the names of the awards, as they are all corny, optometry-nerdy awards. We have all said and done some crazy things as we've been learning new skills along the way. And it's also been fun (and funny) to see how each other's personalities come out in various situations - whether it's the first time you see the retina with a certain tool and are blown away by what you see and feel like a rockstar, or when you freak out because you are stressed and feel like you suck at every clinical thing you've ever done.  We have a great class and it makes each day better knowing you have people going through this with you.

4. Today was the last day of class for spring semester! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! (Insert any other expression of unbelievable excitement here!) Finals are next week, so keep me in your prayers and thoughts. Jesse too, bless his heart, for putting up with me during such a stressful week.

5. Also today, Jesse took a placement test that sets him up for begging a Master's program in business. He took several business classes in undergrad, but not enough to major or minor in it. He has recently been interested in going back to get his MBA for a couple of reasons 1) it can't hurt to have an MBA on top of an engineering degree  2) it could help my practice one day to have someone that knows anything about business since we get little to no business education in optometry school  3) his current company will pay for it- so why not?!  Since he didn't have all of the required classes to start the program, he could opt to take this placement test and if he passed, he didn't have to make up the courses, which would knock off a year of classes for him.  Well, he pretty much aced the test today and is now just waiting for registration to open to sign up for classes! I am so proud of him!  If all goes as planned he will finish the same year as I do. So from now until then we will be some of the most boring people you know. ;)

Happy Weekend!