Holiday Season= Less Blogging

  Greetings, fellow citizens of the blog world. I have come to you to kindly share a message of progression revolving around the Pollock family. If the above sentence does not make sense to you, I shall slap thy face.

Yeah, so pretty much we've been busy. Due to the Christmas season, work has been nuts (as you can imagine). I have a long shift ahead of me rather soon. Oh the joys!

Speaking of joys, why does the holiday season always seem to fly by so quickly? We got all of our Christmas shopping done and most of the gifts have been wrapped. Gary not only received his Christmas bonus, but a third paycheck. We were able to put a nice chunk of money into our savings account we have been building for months now and were thrilled to do so. Ah, savings.

Besides that, we have been spending our time drinking hot chocolate, watching movies, and spending time together (when I'm not studying). Oh, and let's not forget snuggles. My favorite part of the evening is sipping hot chocolate with Gary, wrapped in a warm blanket and having two kitties curled up with us. It's an incredibly peaceful moment and these moments I will never forget. I can't even begin to express my gratitude for everything and everyone surrounding my life. I have been truly blessed.

We were hoping to bust out random holiday shopping trips, tours and sightseeing before Christmas, but due to work schedules, it's been rather hard. But, like mentioned about, just relaxing at home is just as wonderful (and free!).

I could so use a nap right now, but must continue to get ready for work. Tomorrow, my shift begins at 5am. Lucky me, eh?

I will post you more updates and photos another time. As for now, I have a job to do! Farewell.

PS- I totally forgot to blog about our anniversary. I shall do so later as well. 4 years married!

We Are Busy!

 We have been one busy family lately (thus the reason I haven't been blogging). Over the weekend, we had the opportunity to visit my family in Bakersfield. We had a surprise graduation party for my older brother Devonn (congrats to him!) and got to see my super gorgeous niece receive her baby blessing Sunday morning. It was nice visiting family and seeing everyone. I wanted to hold little Lexi, but I've been too nervous about getting her sick (since I wasn't feeling 100%).

 Since then, we both have been working a lot. These past couple of weeks, Gary has been going to long meetings like crazy for his job. They needed a programmer from the department to show them how they'd work out some of their projects/whatever and they chose Gary out of all the others. People outside of the department were requesting him and when he went to his meetings today, somebody introduced him as "the best programmer in the world". I'm proud of my man! He works incredibly hard.  As for me, I've been working long shifts myself (yesterday I worked over 9 hours). A couple of months ago, Gary bought me new shoes that fit so well with my high-arched feet. I started wearing those to work, but was informed they weren't "brown" enough. Bummed, I started wearing my black leather boots. Bad idea! I knew they'd be uncomfortable, but my goodness. After my long shift yesterday (and the day before), I was practically dead when I got home. Luckily Gary rubbed my feet before bed. I wanted to cry. Today, I stuck those same shoes back on and worked another long shift. However, my feet hurt so badly I wanted to puke and I was dizzy. When I finally managed to make it home, I grabbed my expensive arch support shoes that weren't "brown" enough, grabbed a black permanent marker, and colored them in. There, now I can wear them (dark brown or black is the policy). My feet are NOT happy with me. They are so painfully sore (not to mention the plantar fasciitis I suffer from as well) I swear I feel a jolt in my central nervous system when I take a step. Nice job, Emilee.

 Besides work, I've been scheduling in school as well. I received my transcription foot pedal so I could practice. It's harder than I expected! Sometimes it's really difficult to understand what these doctors are saying! Especially the ESL ones. Some of them mumble into the recording, some speak so quickly their sentences are run-on...man! I almost gave up just from practice. But I must not quit! I pulled through and received 100% on the following exam revolving around dermatology, otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose & throat) and ophthalmology (eyes). It was tough. I learned and studied everything from terminology of those subjects listed above to the disease processes and pharmacology associated with them. At least now I know I suffer from irritant contact dermatitis every time I touch the Buckeye disinfectant at work as opposed to allergic contact dermatitis (the range of symptoms appear at much different times). What I love is the CD that came with my text book. Now I can just shortcut my way onto the program from the desktop and read everything from the computer instead of directly from the text book. I can search for words as well as play learning activities and practice transcribing. Way more easy and convenient. It also shows lots of pictures of the different diseases and such (even catch Gary every now and then reading along, then proceed to ask me questions about it). I just received my new section a couple of days ago: pulmonary medicine, cardiology and hematology, gastroenterology, and endocrinology...one of my faves. Well, mostly because I have hormone problems so I know a lot about them. Time to schedule in study sessions! I'm really starting to grow a bigger love for medicine and the human body. I've always had an interest, but I really enjoy this. I'm tempted to take my studies further in the medical field. I know I mentioned engineering, so it's not actually tossed aside. Biomedical engineering or being a health physicist is always an option. If I do turn completely to medicine, I was thinking along the lines of an occupational therapist, or something similar. My goal now, of course, is to finish this transcription program.

Onto a new subject. On Friday, Gary gave me great news and told me he received a Christmas bonus. Not only was this exciting news, but I was able to finally plan out and shop for Christmas gifts for everyone! Yay. Because I have been working a lot as well, we decided to splurge a little. I came home from work about a week ago and saw Gary had bought me a cute purse (I had been needing one since my old one was starting to fall apart). I was thrilled! I felt so bad when he told me he spent 3 hours going to different stores to find one for me. I'm not that picky! But it was very sweet of him. Tonight we did a little more shopping, and finally bought something he had been talking about for some time now- an eReader! It's the NookColor by Barnes & Noble.

 

 I'm personally an old-fashioned reader who likes books with paper and a cover, but Gary really wanted one of these, so I'll give it a shot. Besides, it should be nice to just download a book at home and read it without going out to find the book. Not to mention I love magazines, so I'll be able to subscribe to and read magazines from there. It's touch-screen, has internet (so you can go online and download) and a few other cool features. I especially like the part where you can tap on a word, then define, and it will give you an automatic definition. I also just told Gary I haven't touched the thing since we got home (he's been going nuts with it).  Tomorrow's finally a day off, so I'll have all day to have fun with it.

 Anyway, after our shopping trip, we went out to eat at TGIFridays, and now we're here-relaxing at home. Time to steal the eReader away from Gary and have my turn. Bye!