Our First Real Meal

Pretend that I posted this about three weeks ago. Our internet hasn't been working until last night, so it's time to play catch-up.

Since Ross and I don't have jobs yet, we have been cooking much more "real food" than I anticipate will be part of our lives in the near future. Case in point: Indian food. This was the first meal we cooked, so I documented. Cilla and Nance gave us the wonderfully thoughtful gift of a homemade cookbook of their favorite recipes, so we used the chicken tikka masala recipe from there.

Here's Ross checking the rice, only to discover that I had stirred it. Little did I know you aren't supposed to stir rice. But the slow cooker works very well as a rice cooker!












Here's the chicken tikka skewers. These things were spicy! We have a silly little electric grill on our balcony that came with the place.









Here I am cooking the masala sauce... mmm....












And here is the finished product! It was a little too spicy for us (especially me).

House-hunting is exhausting

Ross and I are in Denver for the week, staying with his wonderful cousins Anna and Brian, who were kind enough to put us up (put up with us?) at their apartment. We're looking for a place to live.

We've checked out five places. Two were definite "no"s. One was two floors of a house that were hard to access and smelled weird. One was a house which had about three square feet of floor space in the kitchen and, though fairly clean, had decades of built-up living in it that just made it a little gross. The bathroom and kitchen really could use some remodeling.

We just came back from a row house that would be perfect for the two of us, but since we'll be living with Jess, it just wasn't big enough.

We did look at a house yesterday that we liked quite a bit. It was adorable, nice kitchen, had a great yard, and was decently located. The only drawback was really that it had only one bathroom.

BUT today we found the perfect place. It's a condo (yes, for rent) that's a 5-minute walk from the church we'll be attending, which is also where Anna and Brian live (yes, in the church -- they're the caretakers). It has two bathrooms and a nice kitchen and sufficient space for three people. It's in an AWESOME part of Denver -- easy access to an arts district and a park, across the street from a grocery store, and biking distance to downtown. And since it's a condo, it has free access to a fitness center and a pool.

The best part? It comes furnished for NO EXTRA CHARGE. We wouldn't have to rent a moving truck! Or buy furniture!

Let's hope we get it.

Heart

I got to see my heart yesterday. It was awesome.

I've been having some weird pressure and tightness and occasionally pain in my chest for a couple of weeks, and after a couple of pretty bad episodes on Saturday and Monday I decided I needed to go to the doctor about it. I think it's probably stress-related, and so does my doctor, but still, you don't mess around with chest pain. And if it's stress, the anxiety caused by having chest pain is certainly not helping it go away.

So yesterday I went to the doctor. They did an EKG and a cardiac ultrasound and gave me a 24-hour heart monitor (which was uncomfortable; I'm glad to have it off!). The ultrasound was pretty much the coolest thing ever. I'm a huge medical dork, but I'm a pretty healthy one and I haven't had an x-ray or CT scan since I was a baby, so I've never actually seen the inside of my body. So it was pretty fascinating to be looking at basically a cross-section of my heart.

This is not my heart, but it is an image I found on the internet from an adult cardiac ultrasound and looks pretty similar to what I was seeing:

I could see my heart beating, the mitral valve opening and closing really clearly and the tricuspid valve not quite so well. Whenever I took a deep breath, I could see my lungs come in from the sides and obscure the view. So cool!

I won't hear back if there's anything wrong with my heart for about a week. Like I said, there probably isn't, but you don't want to risk it when you're having symptoms that might indicate a problem. Also, I am not looking forward to the medical bills for this. The deductible is so high on my insurance that I'm sure I'll be paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket. ::sigh::

So close, yet so far

When all is said and done, I'm ready to graduate. I am ready to get married and to have my own space that isn't ugly cinder blocks, corporate carpet, and metal bathroom stalls and food that isn't so questionable (except I'm not really that interested in cooking, so I've come to appreciate the caf in its own mediocre way... at least there's a salad bar). I am out of motivation to study. My seminar is almost done and I can't bring myself to sit down and finish it because it doesn't have a deadline.

But I am sad about losing two things:

(One) the people. I have some close friends and a giant circle of acquaintances here, and I like that. I will not keep in touch with most of those people because I am terrible at keeping in touch in the first place, and I don't have truly significant relationships with most of them to maintain anyway. But I like the people here and I will miss the capability to strike up a conversation with an acquaintance on the way to class or at a meal, or to stop by someone's mod or office just to say hi. I foresee life beyond college being lonely in that way.

(Two) Liberal arts. As I've been applying to medical school and then looking for jobs, it is plainly and painfully obvious to me that I will not have electives in my life. I am a huge nerd and love classes. I am pretty much the poster child for general education requirements -- I adored them. I minored in Bible & Religion because of Intro to Biblical Studies. I loved Gender in American History and Media Analysis even though they were lots of work and not required for my major or minor. I even liked P.E. activity classes. It is killing me that pre-med coursework took so much time and I didn't get to take all the electives I wanted to. And I took at least 16 credit hours every semester except this year (I was at 14.5 and 15.5 and didn't want to overload.)

Not getting accepted to medical school this year is already turning out to be a blessing. I'm glad I get (at least) a year off from school. College has been exhausting. So rewarding, but so exhausting. For the first time in my life, I've actually had to study, and at times I've been average or worse. I've stretched myself thin with too many activities and not enough sleep. I've forced my brain into overdrive for four straight years.

I have sharpened my ability to think, to question, to analyze, to manage, to consider, to listen. But I feel acutely this semester how draining the past four years have been. I find myself grasping for words all the time. I can't commit entire botany lectures to memory like I could zoology lectures. I don't remember the content in texts I read earlier in the day, and I am slow to produce answers, even when I know them. I feel like I have lost intelligence, but I think I'm just tired.

What's in a name?

If onomaphile is a word, I am one. Thinking about names is part of my everyday life. But the thinking about names that I've been doing for a while is much less fun than considering what despicable or lovely names people give their children.

I have pretty much decided that when I get married I'll change my name to Allison Margaret Boehm Lehman, with Boehm as a second middle name. I'll introduce myself socially as Allison Boehm Lehman and professionally as Allison Lehman. It will be fine with me if people continue to call me Allison Boehm. But I know that people will drop the Boehm because it will not be attached by hyphen to the Lehman, and I am trying to come to terms with being Allison Lehman because of that.

The problem is that, ideally, I would be Allison Boehm-Lehman. I prefer when women hyphenate their names. The shared last name is practical because it indicates a familial connection to a spouse and children if there are any, but the birth surname being part of a woman's married name also means she rejected the idea that she should give up her established identity and be absorbed by her husband's. (I am happy when couples reject the traditional naming system, too, but most don't--but I do feel that children should be given only one last name or it can turn into a nightmare later). So hyphenation is a feminist issue to me, and I feel like I am a bad feminist for not hyphenating since that is what I actually want to do.

So why don't I hyphenate? For one, Boehm-Lehman is really singsongy and I don't like the sound of it, and I want the option of not having to use it (although I plan to use Boehm Lehman anyway). As a physician, new patients will be more likely to choose me out of a directory if they can pronounce my name, and Boehm is impossible for people to pronounce or spell while Lehman is not difficult.

Also, I do like Lehman. Boehm does not indicate that I am culturally Mennonite to those who find that significant; Lehman does. The mispronunciations of Boehm are boundless; there are limits on the ways you can screw up Lehman. I am not close to the Boehm side of my family, and I adore the Lehman family, am excited to be marrying into it, and feel a part of it already.

But I am Allison Boehm. Many of my friends prefer to call me by my last name only. I like the way it looks in print and in my signature. I have been feeling a sense of loss when I type or sign my name, knowing that in less than five months it will no longer be the same. I get upset when friends change their Facebook pages to a new name when they get married--even though that has nothing to do with me! It is just really hard for me to come to terms with this change. I am okay with being known as Allison Boehm Lehman, but Boehm will inevitably be dropped, and I really don't want to be known socially as just Allison Lehman. It is like 22 years of my identity--all the things I did under the name Allison Boehm--will just be gone.

Interterm

It's January, and here that means one thing: Interterm. Interterm is a beautiful time. Last year I spent it in Mexico, which was especially awesome because it meant I got to skip 1/3 of Kansas winter. But here on campus, it means lots of free time. Sure, the homework load is a little heavier than an average normal-semester day, but having afternoons and evenings pretty much free of scheduled activity creates so much time. I don't have to deal with the Collegian, or evening classes, or tutoring, or those useless 1-hour-between-classes periods during the day. Awesome.

Knowing that, I decided I would finish my seminar over Interterm. Poor choices. I have avoided classes with real workloads in past years (Critical Writing and Public Speaking aren't exactly demanding), but this year I'm taking Media Analysis, which involves plenty of reading and writing each night. So once I expend my academic energy on that, it's hard to work on my seminar, which is also difficult to write because I actually have no idea what I'm doing writing a scientific paper. They should really train you to do that when you are a science major, but I digress. And I can't skimp on the Media Analysis because I love both the subject and the professor, so I am not interested in letting Christine down or losing out on the knowledge. I'm scheduled to present my 'nar on February 5, though, so let's hope I get in gear on that front.

Bohemian!

You may have noticed the title of this blog, which is a play on the title of the story "La Vie de Boheme" (from whence the opera La Boheme came, from which the musical Rent was adapted). I don't know if you knew this, but Boehm (really Böhm) means Bohemian. As in Czech, not an artist-hippie type, but whatever. It is only neat because of the second connotation.

Speaking of Bohemian things, I discovered Bohemian Highway wine recently. I saw it on the shelf and thought, "Bohemian! Like my name! Six dollars! I must try this!" I have tried the chardonnay and pinot grigio and enjoyed them both, especially the chardonnay. It was not too dry, and the pinot grigio was not sickeningly sweet. I like my white wine to be not too dry or too sweet, so I'm a fan of this wine now. Clearly I am not that discerning, but Reba's marks it up from $6 to $21 a bottle and apparently people buy it for that much, so it must be decent. Bohemian Highway also has a merlot which I have not tried.