The Long and Short of It

*alternate title* :

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I did it! It was time for a change and its so exciting now that its happened. I love it.

<---Here's what it used to look like.

<---Bye-bye Hair!

<----Hello Shortness!

(Please excuse the scrubs...its a school day)

It's so fun! It's like I have a new car or something. Thanks Emily. It's fabulous.

Made My Day

If you haven't look at Toothpast for Dinner today, go do it. Right now! Click it!

Lick. Lick.

COM...Y (yard).

Our yard is slowly but surely coming along. We've got several things starting to sprout all around the yard, so I may be posting more of these COMY instead of COMH over the next few weeks. I spent a little time this afternoon playing photographer with the tulips that are blooming in our front yard. Take a look at some of the good ones:

Salad makes the world go 'round.

Walking club was much fun last night. Thanks for hanging out girls. Here's the recipe for the salad that I served with dinner. The girls liked it so much that they asked me to post the recipe. It's a nice summery salad with a tasty dressing. It's easy to make and is a good thing to take to potlucks or bbq's. Enjoy!

Southwestern Layered Salad with Cilantro-Jalapeno Dressing

Dressing:
1/2 c. white wine vinegar
1 generous tbs. chopped jalapenos
1/2 lime
1 tsp. salt
2/3 c. olive oil
1/2 c. packed fresh cilantro

Salad:
1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 c. chopped purple onion
2 c. loosely packed chopped lettuce (I used romaine, iceberg would work too)
1 c. seeded and chopped tomato
1 15-oz. can corn, drained
1/2 c. chopped green bell pepper
1 c. (4-oz.) shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 ripe avocado, peeled and diced
1/2 lime

1.) Once avocado is chopped, squeeze lime juice over avocado and toss until coated. This prevents browning.

2.) Prepare dressing: Process first four ingredients in a blender until smooth. With blender on, gradually add oil in a slow, steady stream. Process until thick and smooth, stopping to scrape down sides. Add cilantro, and blend until finely chopped. Cover and chill.

3.) Place lettuce in bottom of salad bowl. Toss beans with onion and place on top of lettuce. Drizzle with one or two tablespoons of the dressing. On top of beans place the following ingredients in the following order: tomato, corn, green pepper, cheese, avocado. Drizzle a few more tablespoons of dressing over the top of the salad and garnish with a few cilantro sprigs. Serve remaining dressing alongside the salad.

(If you want to make the salad a little naughtier, you can put some crisped, crumbled bacon on top just before serving.)

What happened last week?

Yeah, I was a little MIA last week. It was mainly due to p-school (3 tests in one week= blahhh!), but some other stuff happend too.

First of all, I'm now part of the working world once again. I've been hired by St. Vincent hospital to work as an intern/tech. I'm not sure when I'll start, but when I do I'll be working second shift one day a week, that is until summer starts. Then I'll pick up a lot more hours (hopefully) because I have to start accruing interns hours (I'm responsible for getting 500 hours) so that I can take the licensing test when I graduate. All I know so far is that I'll be making I.V.'s in the clean room. It actually sounds like fun to me. We'll see.

In other news, and another reason I was not all here last week...My old back injury (two fractured vertebrae and a herniated disc in 2002) reared its ugly head again. It happened on Thur. m0rning in the shower without any provocation. There was just this pop all of a sudden and then I couldn't stand up straight for two days with pretty serious pain. I'm on the mend now just taking it easy around the house (luckily I'm on break this week). You can still feel the lump on my spine, but the pain is slowly subsiding. All this said, my public service announcement for the day is "Take care of your spine. It's important." Oh and here's a visual of what's going on in my back for your viewing pleasure:

Ouch!

Weekend Update

Whooo! Last week was a mess. I'll probably fill you in on all the details of it tomorrow or something cause today I want to talk about the fun weekend I had. On Friday, I took my little brother who was on spring break and visiting from St. Louis out for some sushi. Its kind of become a tradition to do that when he's in town and what good tradition because sushi is Great! On Saturday I helped Jillian (my littlest sister) get ready for a formal dance. She looked so pretty:

Then that evening we had a little soiree to celebrate St. Patty's day. It was filled with tasty food, car-bombs, a fire (0utside of course), dress-up time, and lots of fun for sure. Thanks for coming out guys. We had a blast! Here are some photos from the evening:

FYI: This was taken during "dress-up" time.

This picture is one of the last ones taken that night and it makes me laugh because its pretty much a bad picture on all of us, but we each look funny in a different way. Oh, St. Patrick's Day! We love you.

Love It!

I feel like I've been a complainer lately, so today I'm gonna list some things that I love:

*Flowers. Yeah, if you read my last post you're probably like, "Duh!" They just make me smile and I'm very excited to start seeing them in my yard in a month or two.

*Garden Parties. I can't say that I've ever actually been to one but they sound like a fun reason to get together. With all the beautification that we're doing in our yard you can bet there will be a garden party at our house some time in the future...oh yes, there will be a garden party.

*"Juice cocktails." This consists of a half a glass of juice with the rest filled with soda water. I am obsessed with them. They are my new favorite beverage when I'm at home.

*Passin' my classes! Though I'm still having to work pretty hard, this semester is going much more smoothly than last semester (so far...knock on wood).

*Almost being finished with my first year of P-school! Self explanatory.

*Listening to Madonna: the immaculate collection while I'm cooking. This is my music of choice lately while I'm in the kitchen and it is so fun.

*Watching This Old House on PBS on Saturdays at noon. This is one of the main highlights of me weekend. Yeah, it might make me a little nerdy, but I can't hide it.

*Reading the Sunday paper. This is another weekend treat that I enjoy. Am I getting old or what? Whatever. The weekend is almost here. Woohooo!

THIS...is what I want my yard to look like:

• I think it can happen people...especially since I've gone a little crazy and now have 176 bulbs to plant (I'm not kidding). This number does not include the aforementioned flowers I ordered a little while back. Now that the weather is finally warm enough, planting will commence this afternoon after......
• I take a really nasty medicinal chemistry test this afternoon at 3:30. It deals with drug metabolism and I'm not looking forward to it. My brain just doesn't seem to want to retian information lately. Maybe it's all this nice weather or maybe it's because spring break is SO close (two weeks away). Or.....
• Maybe it's because there are too many TV shows currently on or about to premier that I want to watch. There is of course the old standby Grey's, but then you add the fact that Survivor and ANTM have started up again, Dancing with the Stars premiers in a week or two, and I regretfully admit that I've gotten sucked into the illegitimate reality TV show that is The Hills on MTV. P.S. ANTM seems like its gonna be a good one this time around (minus the stupid "boot camp" intro they used).
• On top of all of that we just realized that with our Netflix we get to watch movies online for free as part of our membership. Oh, The Humanity!
• Okay...I just realized I'm being a little whiney. Enough of that. I'm this close to cutting my hair. How short should I go? (Don't worry. I won't pull a britney. School hasn't made me that crazy...yet.)
  

God Made Dirt and Dirt Bust Your A@@!

5,000 lbs. that is. Blue had said dirt delivered to our driveway on Monday. As you know, the indigenous dirt down here in the South sucks, so he got some good stuff to fortify our gardens that are quickly multiplying around the yard. We're up to four big "gardens" and 5 flower beds that we plan on planting in. Sheesh! Anyway, we spent Monday and Tuesday afternoon dragging pile of dirts on a tarp to the various beds around the yard. Talk about a work out! Actually it was not that bad due to the beatiful, sunny weather we had. I think we're going to go buy some more bulbs and seeds tomorrow and start planting this weekend or next. Hooray for nature!

Oh and I've finally remembered to post a fun fact I've come across:

Did you know that in 1 oz. (think 2 tablespoons) of poo there are 10 to the 11th microorganisms? That's 100,000,000,000 little crawlies. Ewww!...Gross.