Catch Up: Work, Disneyland, Mexico

So we're about a month out from my internship graduation. I am scheduled to take the RD exam on Tuesday, July 3. I really feel like I can't enjoy myself or make any plans before that date because all I want to do is study. Tomorrow is my birthday and I still haven't set any plans. Aside from studying...I know I want to get my nails done and go shopping. Other than that, I have no clue! Jeff and I will probably go out to dinner once he gets off work, which is just perfect for me.

A lot really has happened in the last month. The week after I graduated at the VA, I interviewed for a per diem position at Kaiser hospital and I got it! That was just the per-diem position I was hoping for too because I really would like to transition to full time at some point.

Jeff and I also went to Mexico for a week with my friends Sarah and Sylvia. That will have to be saved for its own blog post full of pictures, but in summary: We stayed at an all inclusive resort in puerto aventuras and did a lot of activities like kayaking, riding a catamaran, going to see dolphins/manatees, went on a tour of some ruins (Coba, Tulum) and a mayan village, got to hold a baby lion, toucan and squirrel monkeys, and ate a lot of good food and got a decent tan. It was great!

Here is a little sample though:

When we got back Jeff and I just worked a lot. Jeff is in charge of a test at work and has been working long hours and some weekend days. Poor guy works so hard!! I have been trying to work as much as possible all while trying to re-learn/study for the RD exam. I am enjoying my work at Healthy Dining though. I am doing more blogs and writing content for the site. I have to come up with little tag lines and headlines for all of the articles on the site. Here are some samples of things I have written.:
Ask the RD: Cheese, Italian Food
Birthday Blog, Date night Blog (coming this Friday)

I also had a trip to Disneyland with my friend's Chris and Heather since I graduated. It was a lot of fun! We have all been close friends since our junior theatre days in high school. I realized while we were there that I have been friends with Heather for half my life (and then I calculated that I have known Jeff for a quarter of my life!).  We went the day before Cars Land opened at California Adventure, so there was a lot of press in the park. Apparently that means the characters are out in abundance. I have never been able to take pictures with this many characters. It was a lot of fun! A lot of the pictures I was tagged in facebook, but in case you didn't see that:

Jeff had to work that day, but we are going again on July 6, and Jeff will be coming with us!! (Heather, Chris and I have annual passes...Jeff says he only needs to go once every year...or every couple years. Haha!) So I am sure I will have many more pictures to share then.

I'll work on the Mexico post (probably after I take the RD Exam) and maybe get a disneyland post up soon!! Until then...

Internship and Work and Stuff

I am less than a week away from graduating my internship...I can't believe it! The past 9 months have gone by so fast, its hard to believe I thought it would never end only a couple months back :-) Right now I am in the middle of my staff relief. I spent one week in the hemodialysis unit, which was a good way to ease me into being on my own. Last Friday we had oral exams, where the intern is in a room with all of our preceptors and they ask us questions for an hour. It is really intimidating and I definitely wasn't thinking my best...but I some how passed! This past week I started my two weeks of staff relief in the ICU/DOU. I really love my preceptor that I am working with, she has been very supportive of me throughout the entire internship. HOWEVER, it is a really intense floor to work on, and I have been very busy. But it is worth it because I love nutrition support (ie. parenteral and enteral nutrition) and I think that is the area that I want to focus my practice.

Here are some pictures from the internship:

Interns: Jen, Sylvia, Hai Van, Sarah, Kritstin and Me

Interns in the Healing Garden

The interns at our Wellness Fair booth

Me, Sylvia and Sarah at the Farmer's Market during National Nutrition Month

My cooking demo during National Nutrition Month. Won't miss having to wear a hairnet!!

So, what will I be doing after my internship? Since the middle of March, I have been working at a company called Healthy Dining Finder as their web manager. It has only been about 10 hours a week during my internship, but is going to increase to about 20 hours per week once I graduate. Healthy Dining Finder is a great company that has a team of registered dietitians look at restaurant menus and pick out the healthiest items. We also do nutrient analysis for restaurants and have daily blogs about the different restaurants or health topics. It is a great company that is doing great things in the field of nutrition, and I am happy to be a part of their mission. 

I also am looking for a per-diem or part time position as a clinical dietitian, so I will keep you posted on that. The next step is taking the RD exam, which is a little intimidating. The interns took a practice RD exam the other day and I didn't do as well as I hoped - Which pretty much means that I have a lot of studying in the next month!

Jazz Clippers Game at The Staples Center

Back in December when we heard there would actually be an NBA season, Jeff and I decided we would go up to The Staples Center this season and watch a Jazz Game. Our neighbor, Michael (who is also from Utah) often comes over and watches Jazz games with us, so we all devised a plan to come up to LA at the end of the season and watch The Jazz vs lakers or clippers. Since Clippers games are much less expensive than Lakers games, we decided to go up and see the Blake Griffin and Chris Paul show.

Jeff and Michael . We tried to get Stockton and Malone Jerseys for them to wear up to the game, but they were pretty expensive...next time..

Me and Jeff

Our seats were directly across from Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal).

We were also directly behind Matt Harpring and Craig Bolderjack. At halftime, we caught Matt's attention and he came over and introduced himself, asked where we were from and said that he would try to get shots of us because I was wearing a Utah shirt. As suspected, he was a super nice guy.

When the cameras came over to Matt and Craig at half time, we could see the live feed on their computers, so I tried waving to everyone watching in Utah...but I had to kind of bend over a rail to wave. On my end, all I could see was my hand, so I bent down a little bit. I guess it worked, because this was the screen shot Katie got:

Not the most flattering angle, but hilarious none-the-less.

Surprisingly, it was really fun to be one of the only Jazz fans in attendance. There was an 8 year old Clippers fan sitting a couple people away from us who kept heckling me. Next to us was a really sweet older Filipino couple who kept talking to us about how we should have never traded D. Will and Carlos Boozer. We told them "just wait and see...give this team 2 years and they will be in the finals..."

We also got some great shots of the players:

Tyrone Corbin and Devin Harris

Big Al Jefferson

CJ Miles and Paul Millsap

Little Gordie Hayward. I yelled his name and got a wave. Pretty cool!

It was just so exciting! Michael and I kept taking pictures of every thing, and Jeff kept saying to me "Ok, i get it, you're at a Jazz game." (as in, "you don't have to take pictures of everything" haha!) Our seats were perfect and surprisingly weren't too expensive. It was a fun time, even though the Jazz got WORKED. The only thing that would have made it better would be if the Jazz won and if we were at the Energy Solutions arena.

After the game was over, we walked down and asked Matt Harpring if I could get a picture with him.

I just love getting pictures with famous people. I can add it to my collection of me with the guys from 2-live-crew and Rupert Gee from The David Letterman Show.

Lastly, on our walk back to the car, we came upon a ridiculous high end furniture store, where they sold very interesting lamps.

Anyway, that was our trip, and it was a lot of fun. If the Jazz make it to the post season and play in LA again, maybe we'll come up again.

I'm a star!

Haha, kind of...

I know I haven't posted in a while, and I really should update everyone! But for now, here is a link to a video I was in at the VA. It is going to be played at 6 VA facilities on the West Coast in all of the waiting rooms and patient rooms. The whole thing is very long, and I am only in about 2 minutes of the video (if that!).

I come in at about 7 minutes an then again at about 19 minutes. Not much, but it was a lot of fun!

Vitamix and Breakfast

I don't know if you all have noticed that I haven't really been posting much on my cooking blog. I think the last post I made was in 2009. It isn't that I don't cook, I do. Often. But I have been in a little bit of a rut. I find that for dinner, I make a different variation on the same thing every night (usually a piece of meat/fish/poultry and a side vegetable).

That is until I got my Vitamix...

I have been wanting one for a long time. I saw demos at the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo and fell in love with it. This blender is an industrial blender that is used at Jamba Juice and Starbucks, so it makes incredibly smooth frozen drinks. It also serves as a food processor, so it is really easy to make salsa and pesto. It also will liquify whole vegetables, so you get a lot of flavor, fiber, and phytochemicals in very few calories. You can either juice vegetables or blend them for a longer amount of time and turn them into a soup. The interesting thing about this machine, is that if you let it run for a long enough time (about 5 minutes if you start with cold water, 2 minutes if it lukewarm) it will heat up the soup with friction.

Here is a link for some demos:

http://www.vitamix.com/household/infocenter/livedemo.asp

Anyway, point of the story is that it really has inspired me to make new dishes and try new things. Interesting how one new kitchen appliance can inspire you to try so many new things. I actually might go blog about the breakfast I made this morning (without the vitamix even!)

The most successful creations I have made are the pineapple salsa and roasted red pepper hummus. I also made some walnut basil pesto that I put on top of walnut crusted chicken. It was pretty good! Another big success was the chicken tortilla soup (which was really the reason that we purchased the appliance).

One of the things it does is make is ice cream and sorbet. Here is the vanilla ice cream that I made with the vitamix. I thought it was pretty good, more of a frozen yogurt taste.

Below are pictures of the very first thing we made with the Vitamix...cream of broccoli soup. The recipe calls for so many vegetables, and all you need is non-fat milk (or soy milk or whatever your choice is).

Before Blending

After blending

It is a great way to eat healthy. Not only is the food chock full of vegetables, but most recipes have salt as optional and encourage you to try the food before adding salt, which leads to lower sodium food items. It is a nutritionist's dream :-)

Internship Update

Interns with Internship Director (Left to Right): Amanda, Sylvia, Hai Van, Kristin, Jen, Tere, Sarah

Hello! Just thought I would let everyone know that things are going very well in my internship.

It started in August with about 2 weeks of orientation and learning the policies and procedures of the hospital. After that, we started our administrative rotations, which go from September to Mid-November. In that time I have had rotations with the supervisors, cooks, diet aides, diet techs, chief and assistant chiefs, and the administrative dietitian. I also went to San Diego Hospice for a week and the San Diego Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo. In that time I have done SO MANY projects and it is pretty awesome to see what all I have accomplished.

My favorite rotation so far has been with the Administrative Dietitian, where did a sensory presentation for 4 new food items. We also made a theme meal for patients in the community Living Center. My partner, Sylvia, and I were in charge of a "happy hour event" and we made it a fiesta theme. We made mini empanadas, chips, salsa, churros, watermelon balls with lime and cilantro and then "virgin strawberry margaritas" (which were delicious and made of just frozen strawberries and 7-up). That is also the RD that we created menus for, did costing for them and made procurement sheets, which is pretty fun stuff.

Serving patients at the CLC theme meal

Our decorated cart

I also have done a business plan on the new domiciliary facility, a plate waste study, and a massive evaluative study on one of the current procedures. The internship has a concentration in Patient Centered Care and this year we have a special project that relates to patient centered care. My project that I will be working on all year is creating a newsletter about patient centered care. It is pretty exciting because the department doesn't have a newsletter, so I get to design it and create the content for it.

This week I am doing my staff relief in the kitchen, which basically involves making sure the food service workers are doing their job and checking on temperatures and keeping different areas locked. Nothing major, but the hours are 11-7:30, which is a little late for me. Jeff and I wake up at 4:45 every morning, so after I get home at 8, there isn't much time for anything else. Today is my last day of that schedule though. Next week I am going to be at the School District, working with the RD there to develop nutrition programs for elementary school kids. It should be a lot of fun!

Also this week, I am giving an in-service to the food service workers on Consistent Carbohydrate Diets. Tomorrow, I am giving a 45 minute administrative seminar on Motivation theories and strategies. Hopefully all will go well and I don't stumble over my words too much.

I really am enjoying my internship. It is a lot of work, but so much fun at the same time. Also, every week and every day is different, so it never gets boring. I was a little nervous to start in the kitchen, because I don't have much experience outside of my own kitchen at home. But I am now super comfortable now and get along with the staff really well. I also LOVE the girls in my internship, we have all bonded so much in a short amount of time. During the admin rotation, we have a lot of rotations together, which is very comforting. In a couple weeks, we start our clinical rotations, which will last all the way until May. I am really excited to start that section of the internship, but the interns won't be all together anymore, which is a little sad.

Anyway - That's what's been going on for me since August. There isn't a lot to post about, and not much time...but things are going well!

Until next time...

Anniversary and Jeff's Birthday

Here's a quick little post about our anniversary and Jeff's birthday. We took pictures with our nice camera, which I will post in another post later on, so you can see Jeff's skill at mastering our camera...The ones you are about to see were taken with my iPhone :-)

For our anniversary, we rented a beach house on the bayside (the best side!) of Mission Beach. It was so peaceful and serene there. Such a nice get-away/escape for a couple days. We didn't have any agenda or plans, not even dinner reservations. We ended up going to a steak restaurant in Mission Beach called Saskas, and then went back to the beach house. We went in the spa and then walked up, about a mile to Blockbuster to rent a video...but the blockbuster was closed! So we got frozen yogurt instead, and walked along the bay back to our beach house. The next day, we just hung out on the patio practically all day, got really tan/burned and read a lot. So much fun!

Last night was Jeff's birthday. I made him a vanilla almond cake with vanilla frosting and blueberries in the middle. It turned out pretty well, but he came home from work in the middle of me making it (and the Kitchen looked like a war zone)! So much for my surprise...

I also got him some clothes and two Neil Young CD's. Oh, and a Bonzai tree to replace the two that recently died on us.

We went to Mazara's Pizza on the corner. Apparently every other restaurant in South Park is closed on a Monday Night. But dinner was delicious and we had a good time.

Well, Wednesday is my last day at Dr. B's office. It really is the end of an Era. Will probably post about that. My "going away party" was a month ago, so we are just going to go to lunch. It will be a sad day, but I am definitely very ready for it.