Willie's Night and Gifts for Friends

I was going to take pictures every day this month, but I failed to take any photos yesterday. Along with that, I didn't blog about yesterday either, so I decided to put yesterday's and today's stories all in one post.

It wasn't particularly busy day. In fact, I was off from work, and as such, I usually pack my days off with all sorts of errands. Patrick and I went to exercise at the gym after dropping Alex off at school. We went home and took quick showers then headed out for a quick lunch at Schlotzky's. Nowadays we will split a medium Original Sandwich rather than each getting a small. I went off to my hair appointment after that.

When I was done with my hair appointment, I went to the grocery store to get a few things for dinner for today, and other staples like milk, Dole pineapple orange juice (one of Alex's staples), bananas (Alex's favorite fruit and a necessary ingredient for the smoothies he likes to make himself and the family), and more frozen Tropical Fruit mix (another common ingredient for Alex's smoothies).

Ironically, none of us saw Alex after he went to school. He went to a friend's house after school where a bunch of them were going to study AP Physics. Once there, he realized that he had a long worksheet where he only knew half of the questions. He got home some time after Patrick and I both went to bed.

I took Natalie and Eric to piano lessons, then I dropped Natalie off at home while the remaining three of us went to Willie's Icehouse and Grill for Eric's school's fundraiser night that they have on the third Tuesday of each month. When we were there, Eric and Patrick both got interested in something on the TV about the sport Kendo and how it related to lightsaber battles on Star Wars. There was no sound on the TV, only closed captions, so I didn't get the whole story. The whole day wasn't remarkable, but one of these days I'll want to remember these types of days.

Today was so different. I had an interesting morning doing OB Anesthesia with a very nervous patient getting a Cesarean section. Our second patient was so young that she was born only shortly before I graduated from med school. That made me feel old. At lunch, the operating room staff had their Christmas Party during lunch. My resident and I just picked up our meals since we had the second Cesarean section to do. This is a picture of the meal catered by Bill Miller Bar-B-Q. I ended up splitting my meal in half and giving the other half to my office mate. I chose wisely since I was very full after eating just the one half. It wasn't a low calorie half anyway, especially with that apple pie, which I ate with the little bit of ice cream that I've had in my work freezer for months.

Usually the OR Christmas Party is scheduled for the Friday before Christmas, before we go to a half-schedule for the holidays. This time they are redoing the floors in the COTO building again, so they are moving all the equipment to the other building on Friday the 18th, so they had the party today the 16th.

After work, I went to Starbucks to load a couple of gift cards that Natalie had picked out this weekend for two of her friends. I then picked up Alex. Patrick had picked up Eric early from school then picked up Natalie from her school because Natalie had a physical therapy appointment at 4pm. He dropped her off but then had to take Eric to Jiu-Jitsu class at 5pm. Alex and I went directly to physical therapy to pick up Natalie after her appointment was done.

After that, the three of us went to Starbucks (again). Alex wanted to get a gift card for a secret Santa gift. The name he drew was his friend John's girlfriend Lilly. She apparently likes coffee, thereby the reason for the Starbucks gift card. He then wanted to get her a bag of Doritos because she loves Doritos. John doesn't like Doritos and doesn't like the smell of it on her breath, so Alex would end up giving Lilly gum daily, so he got her some gum too.

Natalie got a couple of different types of sweets/candy for her certain friends (Sour Punch and Jolly Rancher Candy, Pizelles, Milano cookies). She also got a three-pack of some lip balm that she loves (Eos) so she could keep one and give two to one of her friends. Natalie also bought one banana to give as a joke to one of her friends (as in giving that to her and then giving her the real present). Of course I can't go to the grocery story with Alex without him picking up some snacks for himself, like cheese crackers, some sort of guava juice, and sour cream and onion Ritz Chips.

Alex's hand is in the picture because after we got all of that stuff on the moving belt thing, the lady in front of us, who looked like she was done and all she had to do was pay, wasn't done. She paid in cash and credit, she asked some questions, and then she decided to add thirteen gift cards to her purchase. It was way faster to move to a different cash register.

I'm sure I was rambling during most of that post, but there were at least a couple of interesting stories in there, I think. I'll definitely take more pictures tomorrow.