February Recap

Hello to all!

I decided to take on this recap, and the first thing I want to say is that I have such a wonderfully sweet husband.

Because of his work schedule, our sleeping schedule is chaotic and the weekends don't always feel like weekends especially when most places close when we are getting up for the day! Occasionally we are able to go to a late movie or run a few errands, but mostly we are just in the apartment which can get pretty boring. Which is why, for no other reason than to surprise me, he planned a sunrise drive to a lake about a half an hour's drive away. It was so pretty so early in the morning! Didn't I tell you he was sweet?

We took pictures for you guys, I'll put them below. It was pretty chilly out--we're definitely going to have to come back when the weather is warmer. :)

Another couple activity we decided to do together is re-read the Harry Potter books. I had a bit of a head start and gave myself a handicap that was apparently too effective because he won--finishing the seventh book about twelve hours ahead of me.

For Valentine's Day this year we each got each other cards, while I got him candy and he got me an embosser. We are currently stamping and reorganizing our bookshelves in our library.

Lastly, I took some time to visit my family in Ohio and help prepare them to move. My mom bought herself a gorgeous house in Dublin and is finally ready to get out of the rental house they were in. Good thing too, because between my one sister's anime collection and my other sister's musical instruments, I bet my mom felt like she couldn't breathe. Because the closing took a bit longer than expected, I was only able to box stuff up and get the ball rolling while I was visiting. I'll be going back out to Ohio in April to help decorate and unpack boxes. We also went out to a nice dinner to celebrate Cambrie's seventeenth birthday a bit early.

Here are some pictures from our day at Fern Ridge Lake!

I think that is it for February...thanks for reading!
-Courtney

January Recap

As quite a few of you know, we had an exciting holiday season and were very happy to spend time with both sides of the family. First, we went to California to get in a quick weekend of sunshine and exchange presents. We were able to see everyone at Grandma and Grandpa's, church, and for dinner with Ron, Marlene, and Steve. Then we had a day back in Eugene before Courtney's mom and sisters came out to see the apartment for the first time (and exchange gifts! Could that large one be a guitar for Cambrie?) and take a tour of the University of Oregon.

Before the Cherry's plane landed in Oregon, Courtney sliced the tip of her finger off making dinner. We waited in the emergency room for four hours before the doctors gave her medicine and bandaged her properly. Since it was the tip, it was unable to be stitched. But it would heal on its own given 3-6 weeks.

That was definitely scary and Courtney was disappointed she'd be unable to make the Christmas/New Year's dinner she'd been planning for weeks. But the good thing about it all is that, under Courtney's supervision, Cambrie was able to make the dinner almost completely by herself and it was a delicious learning experience!

Courtney really loves this time of year when it comes to music and movies. She played our Christmas albums (favorites this year were our vinyl 'That's Christmas to Me' by Pentatonix and 'Joy to the World' by Pink Martini) and watched Christmas movies (Love Actually, Elf, and many Rankin-Bass classics) and drank tea and hot chocolate from our special holiday mugs. Here are some pictures of our apartment decorated for Christmas!

Two miniature trees in the entry-way 

The wall of Christmas cards! 

To end this recap post, I'd like to say that in lieu of traditional "New Year's resolutions" we like to make a list of our top ten highlights and one of Courtney's is the amount books she read. There's a list of them below, although she says she thinks she forgot to record some of the non-fiction books since they were in her old planner.

Books read January 2015-December 2015

-Elizabeth Warren's 'Fighting Chance'
-Michael Hasting's 'The Last Magazine'
-Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D Levitt's "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything"
-Amy Poehler's 'Yes, Please'
-Brady Udall's 'The Lonely Polygamist'
-Takuji Ichikawa/Terry Gallagher's 'Be With You'

YA books

-Colin Meloy's 'Wildwood Imperium'
-Veronica Roth's 'Four'
-Louise Rennison's 'Withering Tights' and 'Midsummer Tights Dream'
-Jane Yolen's 'Briar Rose'
-Elissa Sussman's 'Stray'
-Suzanne Selfors' 'The Sweetest Spell'
-Sarah Pinborough's 'Poison'
-Rainbow Rowell's 'Landline' and 'Attachments'
-Trenton Lee Stewart's 'The Mysterious Benedict Society' 'TMBS and the Perilous Journey' 'TMBS and the Prisoner's Dilemma' 'The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict'
-Mary Rose Wood's 'The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling' 'TICofAP: the Interrupted Tale' 'TICofAP: the Hidden Gallery' 'TICofAP: the Unseen Guest' 'TICofAP: the Unmapped Sea'
-Emily Carroll's 'Through the Woods'
-Renee Ahdieh's 'The Wrath and the Dawn'
-M.A. Larson's 'Pennyroyal Academy'
-Aaron Starmer's 'The Riverman'
-Kathryn Littlewood's 'Bliss' 'A Dash of Magic' 'Bite-Sized Magic: a Bliss novel'
-Angelica Bank's 'Finding Serendipity'
-Glenn Darkin's 'The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance: The Candle Man Book One'
-R.J. Palacio's 'Wonder' 'Julian's Story' '365 days of Wonder: Mr Browne's precepts'
-Soman Chainani's 'The School of Good and Evil' 'A World Without Princes' 'The Last Ever After'
-Kimberly Griffiths Little's 'The Time of the Fireflies'
-Nikki Loftin's 'The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy'
-Django Wexler's 'The Forbidden Library' 'The Mad Apprentice'
-R.C. Lewis' 'Stiching Snow'
-Jonathan Auxier's 'The Night Gardener'
-Shannon Hale's 'The Princess Academy'
-Merrie Haskell's 'The Castle Behind the Thorns'
-Kate Milford's 'The Greenglass House'
-Diana Wynne Jones' 'Enchanted Glass'
-Heather Vogel Frederick's 'Absoluetly Truly: A Pumpkin Falls Mystery'
-Margi Preus' 'Enchantment Lake: A North Woods Mystery'
-Natalie Lloyd's 'A Snicker of Magic'
-Ingrid Law's 'Savvy' 'Scumble' 'Switch'
-Megan Frazer Blakemore's 'The Friendship Riddle'
-Gary D. Schmidt's 'Orbiting Jupiter'
-Holly Lisle's 'The Ruby Key' 'The Silver Door'
-Jessica Spotswood's 'Born Wicked'
-J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' 'HP and the Chamber of Secrets' 'HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban' 'Beetle the Bard'

Format Change

Just a quick post to indicate a format change to this blog. When I started it, I planned to post something about each week here in Oregon. It wasn't long before I realized that I didn't do enough in a week to warrant making a post on it, and I grew inconsistent.

So, I've decided to make this more of a monthly recap. Hopefully that's a more realistic goal. We'll see how it goes.

Weeks Sixteen Through Nineteen

Not too much to report from the last month. We signed up for the free trial of HBO now, and enjoyed catching up on John Oliver and Bill Maher's shows. We also watched Family Tree, and rewatched Flight of the Conchords, both of which were very good and funny.

We also tried a new grocery store, Safeway, and liked it. We're still figuring out which places to go to for the best deals. It's all part of our continuing exploration and familiarizing ourselves with our new town.

Thanksgiving was quiet, with just the two of us, but it was still a great dinner. Courtney stayed up all night making it. We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, corn, sweet potatoes, rolls, stuffing, grapes, mac 'n' cheese, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. And to help serve it all, she used the very last of our unopened wedding gifts, a three-pot warmer. We're still working on the leftovers.

After dinner, we took a nap and then went out for some Black Friday shopping. It was nice to have stores accommodating our schedule for a change. And, since we were out so much later than most of the other shoppers, it wasn't even that busy.

This weekend we went out to see the last Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay Part 2. It was a really good movie, though a bit surreal to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman's last performance. He was in so many of our favorite films; it's sad to know he won't be in another.

Work has been going well. I've taken over the reference department's evening shift now that my trainer has gone to days. It's a lot of responsibility, and it's been somewhat overwhelming at times having to handle things on my own. But I've received some positive feedback on my work from my fellow reference workers. So I think I'm doing well.

That's all for know. We're looking forward to our upcoming Christmas trip. We'll see you all then!

P.S. Stay tuned to the next post for Courtney's 2015 reading list!

Weeks Twelve Through Fifteen

Hello to all!

I thought I'd take a stab at blogging and give Derek a break. The past couple of weeks have been a flurry of work and mostly I've been covered in paint or food or both.

Since coming home, I've been cooking quite a bit and enjoying the space in this bigger kitchen. I've made spaghetti, pot roast, and a variety of Meatless-Monday inspired dinner options. And after visiting Sunrise Asian Market in town, I've been able to make Japanese dishes like gyoza (potstickers), onigiri (rice rolled into balls with shrimp and seasonings), and takoyaki (skewers of diced octopus breaded and covered in thick BBQ-like sauce). It has been extremely fun and allowed me to flex my creative muscle. Not to mention it's nice to have Derek around to eat whatever is in front of him.

Speaking of creative muscle, I've also been painting up a storm. My studio, aka the dining room, has been ground zero for my repainting of the dining room table (with leaf), and six completed chairs. The table took a little over a week and the chairs took between three and four days apiece. We also just got a farmhouse coffee table from a cute antique store called The Vintage Industry that I just finished painting.While I've been painting, I've been watching (or listening to) an indescribable amount of TV--especially Law and Order SVU--which I do not recommend late at night when you're all alone. Once Upon a Time has started its fifth season and it is still my absolute favorite show. Blindspot and iZombie are also very good in this new fall line-up.

When Derek is at work and I'm not cleaning, painting, or cooking, I'm researching. This apartment is quite a bit bigger that the little house in Bellflower so we've been gathering furniture bit by bit. Since the little house was short on space but large on storage, we've now needed to find furniture that is functional and good to store items. I scour through craigslist ads and check through Goodwill and several other thrift shops, antique stores, or places like Ross, Home Goods, Marshall's, and Hobby Lobby. We've found some pretty great (and affordable!) stuff including a cute white iron bed frame for our spare bedroom we call the Library. Which was perfect timing since our friends came up to visit at the end of the month.

Which reminds me, anyone who's interested is always welcome to pay us a visit, especially now that we have a room set up to accommodate guests!

I've also decorated the apartment up in Halloween fun, now changed to Thanksgiving decor, and thanks to Costco, we have a big bowl of candy that I'm currently picking through as I write this.

Every Monday we go to the Eugene library and really enjoy it. It's a four-story building, so there's a lot to see.

We also rented a table at the Community Yard Sale in the gymnasium of our leasing office, hoping to meet some of our neighbors and make a little bit of money. I sold several pairs of shoes, clothes, and accessories and made $50. I might have made more or met more people if it hadn't rained though...so that was kind of a bummer. But then I took a few more of my shoes to a consignment shop and made $20 to put back into my furniture search.

And now over to Derek, with the weather.

Thanks, Courtney. The weather's been getting colder here, The days have become shorter, usually in the 70's, and it can get down to the 40's at night. It's been raining quite a bit, too.

Work's been going well. It's been difficult, at times, adjusting to the new schedule (9:30 pm to 6 am). But I'm enjoying the kind of work I'm doing now. It's beginning to look more and more like I'll be taking over the evening shift of the reference department when the woman who currently holds that shift, and who has been training me, moves to days. And, as part of my training, I'm changing shifts yet again starting today. It's just a small change this time, I'll be working from 8 pm to 4:30 am.

For the past few weeks, Courtney and I have been playing around with a phone app called Duolingo, which is a language-learning software. We're both taking the Dutch course, learning vocabulary and some sentence structure. It's been fun to go through the short lessons, which the app makes very intuitive. I'm not sure how much Dutch we're actually going to learn, but it's been interesting to experiment with it.

Last week we had some visitors, our friends Nathan and Nikki. It was nice to catch up with them for a few hours while they were passing through, and we got to take them to Sushi Island, our favorite Eugene restaurant (so far), where the sushi goes around the restaurant on conveyor belts.

I'll end the post with some pictures of how the apartment's looking now, including the furniture my mom and I picked up at Ikea that I (eventually) put together.

Newly painted dining room table and chairs

Library 

 Entry-way, with new shoe cabinet and bench

Living room, with new couch and coffee table 

 Other half of living room, with entertainment center

New bedroom dresser

Weeks Nine Through Eleven

Big changes! First, and most important, Courtney is home! I picked her up from the Portland airport on Saturday the 19th. There was a bad accident on the 5, which on a two-lane highway, meant that I ended up being about an hour late. Courtney was exhausted from the trip, so we went straight home.

Since then, we've spent as much time as we can together. We've done a bit of exploring around the town, and we've been shopping around for deals on things to spruce up the apartment. Mostly it's just been nice to be able to talk, about anything and everything.

Another big change Courtney brought has been in my eating habits. She's a terrific cook, and now that she has the time and space in the kitchen, she's been making a lot of amazing, nutritious meals. Which, suffice to say, is a significant improvement over the way I'd been eating when left to my own devices.

There have been significant changes at work as well. Three weeks ago, we had a meeting, at which we were all told that the current schedule, in which all shifts are staggered throughout the day, wasn't working. The current proposal, we were told, was to move to three set shifts that everyone would be on. We were given sheets to fill out with suggestions and elected people from each shift to form a committee to help decide exactly how things should change.

A week later, at another meeting, we were told that the three-set-shift proposal was off the table. Everyone would keep their current shifts. But a committee would still meet to offer suggestions on alternative schedules.

Shortly after, my supervisor informed me that she and my trainer felt that I no longer needed to have my hand held, so I was going to be changing to my new shift - 9:30 pm to 6 am. This would allow my trainer to take a new position as a troubleshooter.

Shortly after that, in a staffing update email, I read that I would be moving to the night shift, as well as "send outs to flex as needed and PTO coverage of reference caregiver." I wasn't sure what that meant. Eventually, I was able to talk to the supervisor about it, and she explained that I would be trained in the reference department, which is the area in the lab that coordinates the specialized send-out tests.

My training, and new shift, was supposed to have started today (for me, it's still Monday). But when I arrived at 9:30, I saw that I was just scheduled for the same processing work I've been doing. So, I guess I'll see. My training may still be coming.

This weekend, Courtney and I took a trip up to Portland and visited the nation's largest bookstore, Powell's City of Books. It was interesting, and worth seeing, but very overcrowded. We also stopped at Ikea to pick up some shelves for our DVD collection.

Yesterday (Sunday), we had a little birthday celebration. We exchanged gifts (since we were apart for Courtney's birthday) and had some cake and ice cream.

I think that just about brings us up to date. I'll try not to wait quite so long between posts in the future.

Weeks Six Through Eight

The last three weeks seem like they went past very quickly. And until the last week or so, there wasn't a whole lot to report. Things at work got a bit surreal. The night supervisor, one of the two people who interviewed me at PeaceHealth before I started, took his own life. I'd only met him a couple of times, but the sense I got from the rest of the people working in the lab was that it wasn't expected. I think he was the first person I've ever known to commit suicide. It's still strange to think about.

My training has been steadily progressing. I've done a few hours of training on the P-Tube, which is not, as was my first impression, a specimen tube of urine. It's what they call the pneumatic tube system that connects the lab to the nearby hospital. Operating the pneumatic tubes themselves is a simple task. You mostly just pick up the containers that drop out, remove the contents, and send them back. But being on P-Tube duty can be one of the most hectic, stressful parts of the job.

Almost everything that's sent through the tubes comes that way because there's a big rush to process it and get the tests run. During the busier times of the day, you have to constantly juggle making and receiving calls to and from the hospital and client services, grabbing containers, processing specimens, spinning tubes in the centrifuge and running everything over to the appropriate lab department for testing.

The other part of the training that I've just started is body fluid triage. Basically, this consists of receiving large containers of things like cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and pleural fluid (from the lung cavity). These fluids, particularly CSF, are among the more contagious specimens we handle, so transferring them to smaller tubes for testing has to be done under a ventilated hood, using sterilized needles and droppers.

Overall, I think work is going well for me. The message I keep getting from people is that I pick things up very quickly, and I'm pretty far ahead of the standard training schedule.

Over Labor Day weekend, my mom came up to visit, towing the rest of our stuff with her. We didn't have a whole lot of time to spend together, as I still had to work Friday night, but I think we had a good weekend on the whole. On Saturday, we took a trip up to Portland to Ikea to pick up a couch, dresser, shoe cabinet, and entertainment center. Afterwards, we were able to meet up with my mom's cousin for dinner at Shari's. I think she really enjoyed it, and I was glad they were able to arrange it. Sunday was a short day for us. We took a walk down the trail by the Willamette River, had some lunch, and it was time for her to start the long journey home. But for a brief while, there were Ornees in Oregon again.

And this weekend, Ornees in Oregon will be reunited at last! Courtney's flight is coming in on Saturday. It's been hard being apart for so long, a lot longer than we'd expected. But during her time in Ohio, she's helped her mom and her sisters through an extremely trying time. And they're in a much better place now, emotionally and financially, because of her help.

And it's funny, without the flexibility of her continuing income, we probably wouldn't have been able to find an apartment or afford the move here to Eugene, where we expect to grow and thrive together.

P.S. No picture ready for this post, but I'll post some of the new Ikea furniture on the next one. I just have to finish getting them put together. It's a lot of work!