Fall 2018 Update - Groove

Okay, so the coolest thing I did in 2018/2019 was get my Groove certification! I've been watching Body Groove videos by Misti Tripoli on YouTube ever since my sister showed them to me, and when they said they had training classes to lead Grooves with kids and families, I realized that my calling is to dance with my patients and inspire kids to get moving, and this will fit the bill much better than the Dr. Fun dance channel, so I pulled that big ole trigger. I also invited my sister to keep me company in San Diego, where the training was.

Just a shot of Atlanta's underground jungle - there are fake birds flying overhead and fake rain - so cool.

So we arrived Thursday afternoon, had some drinks to get ready for 1.5 hours of dancing with complete strangers, and headed to the resort where the Community Groove was. It was a packed house and definitely culture shock, but kind of liberating. After that, Tracey had to sit in the lobby another hour and wait for me to finish the first official class.

Our room looked over a lagoon with cool fog every morning, and Tracey stitched and read while I was in classes for 19 hours over the weekend.

This was the epitome of training - putting in your earbuds, firing up your playlist, and grooving around the resort in public - yikes! We got lots of weird looks but had so much fun.

After that I had to do 6 practice classes with at least 5 participants each and send one in for evaluation and certification. This entailed lots of research into sound systems, speakers, receivers, headsets, etc. Totally out of my wheelhouse.

This is my first Groove party at the hospital, and they even had an Azalea Trail Maid come! Unfortunately, I only had 1 patient and her grandmother show up, but the 3 of us danced anyway. The second party was even more interesting, as an elderly couple showed up by themselves, and I talked the husband into dancing with us instead of sitting in the car waiting on his wife. They were completely willing to come to another class, but I broke it to them that I'm only certified for kids and their families, not adults. So I moved on from the hospital to the Crichton Boys & Girls Club, and danced with 40-50 kids over this past summer - lots of funny stories there. The sweetest was having kids run up and hug me when I walked in and one girl telling me I was her best friend. Another was having a couple of the older boys roll their eyes and yell, "Not HER again!" And there was that one escapee who ran out of the gym after the coach broke up a fight and when the coach went after him it sounded like I was in the middle of a prison riot. I'm still working on the appropriate location for future Groove parties.

Okay, this is Halloween at the office...

I made my fake fur wrap out of fleece and the black dress is the first one I ever made back in about 1996 or so. Still fit in it - booya!

This was at the American Heart Association national meeting in Chicago at the employment fair trying to hire a partner. I think I looked more like a cougar on the prowl...hmmmm.

And this was for "Couples' Weekend" in New Orleans. We bowled, so Dean went all out and found us matching bowling shirts!



And this was just a funny moment while Jake and I were watching Bruce Almighty.

More updates on the way so I can look back and remember what the heck I did all year.

I Survive a Spartan!

But actually, Dean and Drew went first, and did the Spartan Beast (14+ miles and 30+ obstacles) outside of Fort Worth, TX, on Saturday. Drew appears contemplative after slogging through a lake with fish dying from all the mud being stirred up by thousands of participants. Sad situation.

But he was happy to finish in one piece, 7 hours later. Yes, let me say that again - 7 hours of obstacles and hauling sandbags and buckets of rocks up and down the only mountain in Texas, apparently.

They got back to the hotel at 8 PM, we had a carbalicious dinner, and got up at 6:30 to do it again. Well, Drew caught a plane back to Auburn, but Dean did it again with me in the Spartan Sprint, which was about 4.5 miles and 20+ obstacles. And this would be the only picture they caught of me, in the barbed wire crawl (roll). They did not catch my final leap over the fire at 2 hours and 7 minutes, making me #19 of 48 women in my age group....or as my friend called it, the Top Twenty!

But it's okay they didn't get more pictures, because we took a selfie:

Yeah, just trust me, you're destined to see more bruises and scrapes as they appear. I even have fingerprints on my left forearm where some dude helped haul me over the final edge, after I rope-climbed up the 45-degree wall. So then we came back to Halloween, and I had the creepy mummy lit up in the window again - love this thing!

And my resident and medical student dressed up with the rest of the office....and yes, I forgot my yellow duckbill quacker.

We're all Disney characters, but there wasn't really a theme this year. (Star Wars is Disney, now, right? And the one in the middle is Tinkerbell.)

And now to leave you with my Mardi Gras dress fabric - stretch velvet in Royal Blue from fabric.com - LOVE! Look how rich!

Compare it with the $1 swatch of the stretch velvet from Mood - I'm so happy with the actual fabric being darker and richer, which is a good thing, since I bought 4 yards of it based on the reviews!

So the 4th annual GCGS&KW is set for December 17th, and I hope to have a modifed pattern for this stretch velvet by then. In the meantime, I'm off to Las Vegas for a work meeting - any suggestions for shopping? Las Vegas doesn't strike me as the mecca for home sewers and knitters, honestly, so I'm taking my split-neck sweater to work on. I did get it re-needled, but am working on the marker placement before starting up again - bleh! I need to go get another private sock lesson so I can finish the ones I started...What have you accomplished lately that made you feel great?

The Sweater is Finished!

But first, here's our Halloween at work. We even got the medical student rotating with us to be a scarecrow - she did her best on short notice.

And now........without further ado.........TA DAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Ooh, that neckline is very ripply, but this is pre-blocking, and amazingly, it disappeared with blocking - who knew?! Here's the back.

And because I'm so proud of that Trinity stitch (or Blueberry stitch)...

And yes, I sewed the button on with 5 minutes to go before Pure Barre, and it was just a little chilly, so I wore that sucker to class! (I had thoughts of them asking me where I got it because they'd love to sell it in their store. They sell all kinds of weird drapey tops to warm up in....yeah, they didn't ask.)

And here it is with a collared shirt and work pants.

And here it is with an untucked shirt and jeans - that's okay, right?

So I'm deliriously happy today, but now it's onto a fuzzy pink hat! Have a great weekend!!!

Stream of Consciousness

This is my neighbor just before his big recital. No, it was just Halloween, but you see I'm not the oddest one in the neighborhood. (You see that, right?)



And a HUGE shout-out to my shoe idol, Sheila, who recommended the Nine West Nuncio to me for pointy-toed bliss. Check out her website, but don't jump out of your chair - she's much more sophisticated than I am and has music on her blog. I love that woman! Sheila, the shoes are divine - wore them to my anniversary dinner last night and they were soooo comfortable and soooo hot! They're SUEDE!



And the fleece jacket is almost finished, Junior, but look at this tragedy. Please note the shiny tip of a needle amid the seamline I'm holding. I broke a needle for the first time in my life - pulled too hard to get it over a thick seam while applying the zipper. At least the machine was fine.



Here's what it looks like zipped - my seams are even! My seams are even! Drew has requested one for himself in blue, and my neighbor (not the ballerina) thought it was a North Face jacket at first glance (probably not at second glance) - could there be a better compliment? I just have sleeve cuffs and collar to finish.



Lastly, in Books a Million tonight I saw the strangest display.



Am I the only one who finds it odd that Justin Bieber is under "Kids' Education" right above Anne Frank and Abraham Lincoln? And I know my sister will be incensed that the Today show is doing a special with Lindsay Lohan's mother tomorrow morning. What up, America?

Halloween at the Office

Our Halloween was a lot smaller this year since there were no medical students or residents this month. Could it be that they actually avoid rotating with me because they know I'll coerce them to dress up? Here's one of my nurses, who's pregnant...does it send the wrong message that Hannah Montana's got a baby bump?



Here are Dora the Explorer, and Woody from Toy Story - she decided SpongeBob would be too hot.



Our room decor was really realistic this year - watch me mount this horse!



You can check out previous Halloweens at that tab on the sidebar. (I missed my black nail polish this year - I kinda prefer being Cap'n Jack Sparrow to being Cinderella - much easier to roll around on a chair without a giant skirt, and nobody tries to pull the fur off your dress.)

Halloween at Work

Here's the yearly Halloween crew - it was Fairies this year, so everybody was a different fairy. It's amazing that we all got different wings and were different colors. Some of the pediatric residents and medical students dressed up too - made me want to cry when they walked in to my lecture! One of them had the day off and still dressed up and came to the lecture - now that's a good doctor! And another attending dressed as Road Kill with some kind of wolf mask, but he didn't make it into the picture.

We did have a couple of patients dress up for their appointments, but HIPAA guidelines prevent me from posting their pictures; otherwise I'd have to kill you.

Halloween!

Well, here are the initial pictures from Halloween at the office. There should be more later when somebody emails me some pictures, since I forgot my camera. These were made after the patients left. Don't we have fun decorating the rooms!!!!! This year was "Disney movies" in case you didn't get the underlying theme. Don't forget to click on the picture to get the full effect of black nail polish, which I rather enjoyed wearing! I'm thinking about a lip piercing next.....

Another Bad Dream

Lucas woke me up at 5 AM Friday morning because he had yet another bad dream. I walked him back to his room and he told me that dinosaurs and mummies had been chasing him. (Real good idea going in the Halloween store to buy decorations with the kids. They had a special section with a life-size mask-wearing, strait-jacketed Hannibal Lecter and other scary things, like the monster whose head lifted up to show you his brain. Real nice.)

Anyway, I tucked Lucas back in and said to think about great things like camping Friday night at the beach, and wouldn't he like his music on? So what would be the greatest song to be on the radio at that moment for a scared kid to listen to lying in the dark?

You got it....Hotel California! "What a nice surprise."