Switching Banks

Besides moving, I have never switched banks. I've had a different one for each phase of my life and where I was living, but I've never actively switched a bank in the same city. And by switch, I mean everything: all accounts, money, direct deposit, EBT setups, etc.

Let me tell you: it's a pain.

It takes some planning to go smoothly. I wrote out the many bills I pay through direct EBT, then figured out what time of the month would be best to switch my accounts based on when they were due. Once I opened the account, I straddled my money between two accounts for the 2 weeks in between my paychecks, which also required some planning. But now it's smoothing out.

Why did I switch? I was a member of a national bank chain, and it just got silly. In order to "keep" my checking account free, I had to do one of the following: pay $5/month, transfer at least $25/month to a savings account, or have the bank transfer $1 to a savings account everytime I use my debit card. The way I structure my finances and savings, it was impossible to do any of those options. I was always transferring stuff back and making sure my budget was in line after I let the bank do whatever magic they had to do to satisfy themselves that I was worth their time. Sheesh.

I switched to a local credit union, and I LOVE IT. I applied online, which was mostly a product of me not having time when the bank is actually open to go talk one-on-one. I received several emails with super-helpful information. I also actually went into a branch today to get a letter for my direct deposit at work, and OH MY they are nice! And they explain things so simply! I have a tendency to get lost with financial jargon, so it was very refreshing to experience simple terms and no funny rules. The lady I spoke with was super great.

I feel like this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

(Bonus points for guessing which movie that quote is from).

Day in the Life

I'm sure you have some idea of what I do, but after explaining my job about 30 times this past weekend at homecoming, I realized a description from the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn't quite the key and a better descriptor would be a day in the life blog post. I must give a caveat in that MWF and T/R are quite different, but this should help you nonetheless. Here we go!

5:30 AM This is when my alarm goes off.
5:45 AM This is typically when I actually roll (literally, roll) out of bed
Eat breakfast, spend time with Jesus, shower/get ready
7:00 AM Leave, make a monotonous and boring drive up I-35 (on MWF, I leave at 6:15)
7:30 AM Arrive at work, turn on lights, check crash cart, glucometer tests
Pull inpatient orders off the printer, research on Meditech (online medical records database), update acct numbers, answer emails
8:00 AM Interns arrive, plan study and activites for the morning, fill out eval for one intern who's advisor I'm meeting with tomorrow
8:30 AM Finally get up to the floor to see inpatients! First patient: stent
9:15 AM Documentation - this is the bane of my existence as an EP, I just don't get it! Very redundant
9:30 AM Meet with a patient in cath lab holding area who needs CABG surgery but is anxious - very sweet and touching. Success! She agrees to surgery.
10:30 AM Return to floor, see another stent patient & document
11:30 AM Type up outpatient schedule for next week on Excel (I like this stuff - organized, neat, planning!)
12:30 PM Lunch outside in the courtyard! So nice!
1:00 PM Afternoon outpatient clinic - sit at monitor while intern takes BPs, talk to pts, review charts
2:30 PM Write reports from outpatient clinic, answer more emails
3:00 PM Potential intern for Spring 2012 interview, on the phone from GA
3:30 PM Copy patient charts to be sent over to HIM - read: boring!
4:00 PM Leave!

On MWF, there's more outpatient clinic, interactions, teaching pts weights and how to use machines, as well as performing exercise evals. And then this week, I went to a health fair two separate days and did body fat/BMI and BP screenings. I definitely love the variety of my job and the contact I get with people everyday. There's always something new, some new challenge, and some new person to connect with and encourage in their life. LOVE IT!

Vegan Update

It's been approximately 19 days since I went vegan. I say approximately because I had to cheat while on vacation in Arkansas and there have been a few times here and there where I've not been a vegan purist. But overall I'm only eating plant-based foods, which mainly include vegetables, fruit, grains, and Dr. Pepper.

Okay, DP isn't really plant-based, but it's not animal-based!

On to the update.

What have I eaten?
My breakfasts aren't that different from before - cereal and (soy) milk, or waffles with peanut butter and syrup, etc. Really simple. For lunch, I usually stick with a salad of spinach, grape tomatoes, and cucumbers, topped with raspberry vinaigrette. One of my FAVORITE creations is a sandwich with sliced tomatoes, avocados, and cucumbers. Or I'll just eat leftovers from whenever. I've found that I'm not particularly putting meals together that make sense, and I think that's okay for now!

Dinner has been: pasta & tomato sauce, broccoli and carrot stir fry, bean burritos, smoothies and sandwiches, or whatever I can find in the fridge to put together. Again, my meals don't make a lot of "sense" or look pretty together, but they fill me up and keep me eating healthy!

What have I learned?
I'm a rule-follower, so having boundaries and instructions are the best ways to produce obedience in me. I eat rather healthy, but have the propensity to eat junk a lot, justifying it by saying that I eat healthy other times, I work out a lot, I'm young, etc. I've learned a whole bunch about being creative with vegetables, that eating healthy tastes AMAZING, and that it's not as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, it's fairly simple. When you only have 3 food groups to choose from instead of 5, it tends to simplify things a bit!

On a more TMI note, I've learned that a major increase in fiber has drastic effects on your GI system. I've apologized profusely to my roommates and coworkers, but no one seems to fess up that they notice. Yay! :)

Will I keep doing it?

I will continue to eat a vegan-style diet as long as it is convenient. Before you snicker, here's the rationale. I'm doing it just to eat healthier, and if a situations arises in which I have limited choices on food (eating with friends, family outings, vacation, etc.), I'm not going to be in the pain in the butt who requests plant-based stuff only. I'm doing this solely to feel better about my dietary choices and have more energy, and "everything in moderation" is a great phrase to use here. I'm not sure how well this will work into winter when fewer vegetables are available out of season, but we will see. I have no moral motivations, so cheating every once in awhile is fine with me!

Homecoming

I spent this past weekend in and around Siloam Springs, AR and my alma mater's homecoming. I flew into and out of Kansas City because it was cheaper and my ride was leaving from KC, so I got to spend some time with my family as well. I had been back to AR last fall for a wedding, but we were literally there for 16 hours so I didn't have time to look around or meet up with people in the area. But this year was my FIVE YEAR reunion since graduating college, so I figured it was time.

I drove down with my roommate from junior year, and was able to reconnect with a lot of old friends. The funny thing about homecoming is that you don't really know who's going to be there until you show up. There were a few people I knew who were still in the area, but it was really a luck of the draw for those I wasn't sure about. This being my first homecoming, I wasn't sure how that would work - should I call the people I wanted to hang out with? Just show up?

I met with another of my former roommates this morning and we were talking about how sometimes it's just okay to not be as good of friends anymore. It's okay to catch up and leave where you left off with friends from college. Going into it, I think I felt a bit guilty I hadn't kept up with ALL of my friends. But leaving, I understood that (1) that's literally impossible, and (2) I moved twice and developed two new communities since graduating, so my social support and friendship-keeping energy was mostly spent locally. And that's okay!

Another thing that struck me this morning as we were talking was that perhaps keeping up with one another is more complicated now because we have SO MANY options to do so that we didn't before, like texting, FB, email, etc. It's still being worked out in the social realm which ways are appropriate and which aren't.

This weekend was also great because I got to visit two of the places I consider home. And that always feels good!

Going Vegan

Whaaaaaaat? Seriously?

I thought your front license plate says "EAT BEEF." I thought you're from Kansas and your father grew up on a farm? I thought you consider a plate of food without meat a non-meal? And milk? I thought you loved milk, drink it all the time?

All of the above are true. What's also true is that I've been reading a lot lately and learning about what's good for you in the long run. I just want to TRY the whole vegan thing out. Just for 2 weeks. I promise.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. I'm always interested in how to make my diet healthier. Since I work in healthcare, I feel the responsibility to pass on only the best and most helpful information to my patients.

2. A few blogs I've been reading from cancer survivors have let me realize that eating a plant-based diet isn't that hard. They usually post great recipes and I've tried a few!

3. I'm reading the book The China Study. It's pretty hard to argue with. Basically the research has shown that people who eat plant-based diets live longer and have less disease than people who eat animal-based diets.

4. I just went grocery shopping and it was a breeze! I spent most of my time in the produce section, and very little in the other aisles.

5. I've also recently seen Dr. Sanjay Gupta's (CNN medical guy) documentary on heart disease and in it, he talks about plant-based diets, including the hometown Austin Engine2 diet.

So here we go. I wanted my menu to not be all vegetables and grains - I wanted to try some substitutions and see if they measure up. I'll let you know when I make sloppy joes out of the meatless meat grounds I found. (It's really just fungi.)

Here's to the next two weeks!

Lost and Found

Sorry for the hiatus. I moved to a different house, then started D-School at my church, so I haven't had much time to blog. I've had countless stories to tell, but just not enough time to type them out. Here's the latest:

This past weekend we went to a conference in Waco called World Mandate. We decided to leave after Saturday night's session, so it was about 10:00 before we headed out to the cars. I had looked in my purse for my glasses earlier in the evening, but not finding them, assumed they were in the car. I also had noticed that my Bible reading plan (on cardstock) was not in my journal - I assumed this was in the car as well. However, when I got to the car, I didn't find them. Either. We were eager to get on the road even though it's only a 1.5 hour drive, so I got super frustrated that I couldn't find them and we had to leave. So, Dawn said a prayer and we got on the road.

I started calling everywhere I could think of - the hotel, Jason's Deli, Pei Wei, etc - but no one had seen them. My frustration lasted until Sunday morning church, where I finally decided to TRUST that God would either restore the glasses to me (at this point I was thinking they were lost for good), or provide financially for their replacement. I was still bummed about it and during work on Monday was really not doing well with the whole eyesight-without-glasses thing, but I knew God would provide.

This is turning into a long story, but I have to tell you how at loss I was when I didn't have my Bible reading plan. That's all I've been doing this year during my devotional time - reading once through the Bible - and so I had no clue what to do. Fortunately, God did! In D-school, we've been reading through my pastor's book on prayer, so I decided to go with the new and try something different. It was amazing! All I did for 45 minutes was write out all the reasons I'm thankful. At the end, I thought it'd be good to read a Psalm, so I opened my Bible up and BAM! there's my reading plan! I just laughed! God has such a sense of humor and knows what's best for me. I'm still not sure if He wants me to finish the plan this year, but I know that I'm enjoying my devotional time A WHOLE LOT more.

I also got a sense on Tuesday morning that today was a day of restoration; I was going to find my glasses. I went through most of the day still bummed and trying to think where my glasses were. Around dinnertime, before my small group arrived at our house, I texted a friend who's car we had ridden in for like maybe 20 minutes. It was my last thought of where they could be. Knowing it was a long shot, I left my phone on the kitchen table. After our group finished, I was chatting with my small group when I noticed I had a text. Not expecting much, I opened it up and in response to my "Did you see my glasses in your car?" she had said "Yeah, I saw them earlier." That's it. Casual. Yeah, they're in there.

I FREAKED! I started jumping up and down and yelling! Then I called her and asked hurriedly, you have my glasses? Really? Really really really really?!?!!?!??! It was great! I finally had both the items that I lost.

I realized later that while the conference was really good, what God really wanted to teach me was through what I lost and gained back. What I learned was to trust that He will provide, no matter what. And He can take away things that aren't healthy for our good. See, I was meeting with the Bible instead of meeting with God in my devotional time, and He wanted desperately to talk to me, listen to me, hear my heart, etc. Throughout the whole ordeal, I could just picture God smirking. I knew He was up to something.

Books That Changed My Eating Habits

1. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

(reviews taken from Amazon)

Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions, where the business was born, to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike, where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.

My review: I loved this book. It basically exposes the effects of a fast-food culture on our nation: obesity, worker's rights, farming industries, etc. It also made me never EVER want to go to a McDonald's, Burger King, or the like again.

2. Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

I loved this book because it made me so much more aware of where my food comes from. Gardening, farming, and writing about it was all she did for a year, so it's a full-time job. Maybe someday I can do that - even just a small garden.

3. South Beach Diet by Dr. Arthur Agatson

I love several things about this series of books, cookbooks, and guides. First off, Dr. Agatson is a cardiologist, and created this diet out of need for a lack of heart-healthy diets for his patients to follow. As a cardiac rehab employee, this really resounds with me. My patients are constantly asking about which diets are safe, effective, etc. This diet is not only healthy, but also it tastes amazing. My second reason for loving this diet is that the recipes are very simple, but also elegant and cater to a more foodie crowd. I used the cookbook for ideas for salmon glazes, quick snacks, and healthy desserts. I need to buy the cookbook because I keep checking it out from the library and have to return it!

So that's my list. What's yours?