pumpkins and pygmy hippos

You know on Friends when Joey is trying to like Janice for Chandler's sake and endures "Joey and Janice's Day of Fun!"? Well, every once in a while, Carlisle and I take an afternoon off from studying for "Erin and Carlisle's Day of Fun!", only we actually enjoy ourselves. Here are a few of our adventures together.

A little before Halloween, we decided to take off one Friday afternoon, which culminated in us carving the greatest pumpkins this world has ever seen. Are you ready? I don't think you are.

First, Carlisle chose some pumpkins. Beautiful specimens.

He began to carve.

I was a little more aggressive.

Carlisle might have failed Circle Day in kindergarten, but it gets the job done.

We both enjoy cleaning out the pumpkin brains, though.

It took some time for us to decide what we wanted to carve. We considered classic jack-o-lantern, decorative fall things like leaves, and other poor ideas. But then, we went to the Internet.

We both wound up finding examples that we liked, but we didn't bother printing off templates. Oh no. That's for amateurs. We took dry erase markers and free-handed our designs based on some pictures. Little did we know that we were unleashing an artistic force upon the world. We also chose images that represented significant portions of our childhood. Here is the finished product.

We're pretty proud of ourselves. I like to think Ariel would be, too. When asked which ninja turtle was represented on his pumpkin, Carlisle responded, "I'd like to leave it open to individual interpretation. He can be whoever the viewer needs him to be." He's so deep.

Unfortunately, the pumpkins had mostly dried out before actual Halloween night. I went to Carlisle's to talk through the material for our test the next day, but since the pumpkins couldn't be lit, we had not bought candy to give to trick-or-treaters. So here's what happened. Carlisle accidentally left his porch light on. Trick-or-treaters show up at his door. Carlisle wants to give them granola bars. Erin says, "No! They will spit on you! Kids hate granola bars, especially when they're expecting Snickers. Don't talk or make any noise." Carlisle freezes in the kitchen, then wants to give them Pop Tarts, broken up so there would be enough to go around. Erin whispers, "No. Shh." Children go away disappointed, but not as disappointed as they would have been had they gotten granola bars.

A couple weeks ago, I was feeling homemaker-y and decided I'd like to try cooking steak in my cast iron skillet. Once again, to the Internet! I read about how you make the pan really hot, test it with a couple drops of water, then throw the steak on and leave it. What I did not read, however, was that this method would produce COPIOUS amounts of smoke. Like, seriously. Smoke filling the apartment. We opened the balcony doors, the front door, turned on fans, and popped the battery out of the smoke detector (which disturbingly only beeped once, but I was comforted because I had just received an apartment handout saying they would be checking the batteries that very week). Another source of concern was the fact that the fire department was rather nearby, so I just prayed the the smoke that was surely billowing out of my apartment did not alert them. Once I had committed to this style of cooking, I carried it out for the one steak, but I chickened out on the second. It was a rather disconcerting five minutes that probably took five years off my life. Or at least five months. It was traumatic for reals. Incidentally, this method of preparing steak is recommended for outside cooking.

Yesterday, Carlisle and I had another Day of Fun!. After lunch we went to the Jackson Zoo! I was super pumped about this. It's a small zoo, but it has some cool stuff, like peacocks walking free (I really want a pet peacock; I hear they're good guardbirds). A lemur fight most definitely went down while we were there. In the Wetlands Habitat Building, there is a beaver exhibit with this little cave-type thing you could go in that had bubbles in the ceiling. It's hard to describe, so here's a picture of Carlisle peeking up at the beavers.

The mama and baby beavers walked right by my face! It was neat. I like their tails. Their teeth, however, are grody.

When we went into the African Jungle exhibit, there was a habitat for a pygmy hippo. We could not find it, which made us sad. I called to the hippo, asking her to come out to play. After we finished our circle through the jungle, past Chimpanzee Island and a lot of monkeys, we wanted to go back to find her. We got distracted by the carousel on the way.

Carlisle rode a mountain lion, which he named Frank. You may also notice he has a mustache. Yes, Movember is upon us! It's a happy time of year. I rode an ostrich that I named Eleanor. Anyway, we went back and found the hippo! She was hiding in a corner. I named her Henrietta (she was too cute not to have an alliterative name), and she looked sad. She looked right at us in a mopey, hurt kind of way, so we tried to talk to her nicely and give her some encouragement. I think it worked because she was holding her head a little higher when she started walking away.

You may have noticed that I like to give things older names. This is not the first instance. I have a wooden bird named Millicent, and I named my friend's nameless cat Winnifred (or Winnie, for short).

After chatting up Henrietta, we were almost done with the zoo, but we made a pit stop in the Discovery Zoo for Carlisle to hang out with his leopard friends.

After the zoo, we went shopping for ornaments for my Christmas tree! Mama has kindly offered to donate our old tree to my apartment, so I thought to myself, "That money I would have spent on a tree can go to more ornaments, right?" "Right!" I don't know if I bought enough, but I'll evaluate, shop some more, and show you a picture when I finish it. But after much ornament/angel for the top/tree skirt shopping, we ate at Soulshine Pizza (so yummy) and came back to my place to make wreaths. I had bought ribbons and pine cones and berries, so I hot glued all these pieces onto empty wreaths for Carlisle's and my apartments. They turned out well, so I'll share a pic with my tree. It was an exhausting but happy, happy day.

By now you're probably thinking, "Hey, Erin. Have you dropped out of school? Tell us a funny medical school story!" Well, I hate to disappoint, but I spend a good portion of my time at school studying in the library. This is not a situation conducive to much humor, except for when you see someone just give up and put their head down in defeat (sad, but funny). We have, however, started our preceptorship, which is a huge deal. A pair of students gets a preceptor who teaches them how to take a history and do a physical on a patient, the most critical portion of medicine. I'm really excited, partly because I have an oncologist as a preceptor, so I get a closer look at what they really do. Plus we sometimes get to see cool stuff.

The best thing about school right now is that next year my dearest friend Katye will be here! Katye and I have known each other since we were seven, and we're still going strong. I think I'm more excited about her coming than I was about my own acceptance. She has an incredible heart, a dog named Baxter, and will be a magnificent doctor. You can read about her future adventures here.

The biggest thing on my horizon at the moment is my first year of two Thanksgivings! That's right, TWO. Are you jealous? You should be, because it's going to be amazing.

If you can get over your overwhelming jealousy, please accept my thanks for all your prayers and support. Medical school is hard, but God is good and has blessed me with the greatest set of friends that encourage me and laugh with me and keep me sane. So thank you. I love you all very much.

Now, go laugh at this.

cheers
Erin