The weather (and a bit of other stuff too)

It's 8:50am on Saturday morning. Rachel, this post is a little late, but it's "in the morning" just for you and the other fellow morning people out there.

I thought today's temperature was bad enough that it should get a posting on the right side of the blog AND here in the middle of my post. So here it is:

Kristen, if you'd like to steal it, go ahead! It's so bad that I think we non-Minnesotans need to stick together and "spread the word". This temperature is the type of temperature which causes even the hearty Minnesotans to say something like, "Hmmm, better plan something indoors today" or "I think I'll walk in the underground."

Normally I can encourage myself by looking ahead, however, as you will say from the pictures below, looking ahead only causes more weeping and gnashing of teeth. Here is the rest of today:
So, to comfort ourselves, let's jump ahead to tomorrow, shall we?

Hmmm, for some strange reason, tomorrow didn't bring me much comfort either. Unfortunately, weather.com doesn't go into more than 6am on Monday, but that temperature just says -15 (feels like -35) so may be that is why they just gave up on stopped. Maybe the weather.com people said to themselves, "This is too hard for folks to bear. Let's just not tell them anymore." Maybe that's what happened.

All right, so now that I have officially evoked sympathy, let me move onto some other items of importance. Truly, this blog was not going to be entirely about the weather, but when you get up in the middle of the night to make it warmer because you are so cold in your bed and you visually see sparks as you touch your thermostat, well, that gets you a little fired up.

Shoot, there I go again. Okay, enough already!

I, instead, was hoping to give you some updates on our life.

JB and I are very proud that since we have been back from Florida we have successfully gone to the gym to run every other day. This is a major accomplishment. As much as I love to run, the cold usually commands that you retreat under covers and not outside into the harsh and bitter Polar North. (Is that another complaint?!) But seriously, I am running about 2.5 miles every other day. Not too shabby.

In job news, both of my jobs are going very well. I would tell you more about them, but they are pretty much the same thing every day. A little bit of writing. A little bit of editing. A little bit of PowerPoint. A little bit of Endnote. A little bit of other odds and ends. As I have mentioned previously, I am definitely doing RLSF from Florida. Hopefully, I will also be doing Mayo work from Florida, however, it doesn't appear that my boss can give me twenty hours worth of work -- which means I won't have insurance. We have, however, discovered that I can get COBRA insurance to cover me for up to 18 months. It is pretty expensive but cheaper than paying for our transfers on our own. If I don't get pregnant during our May transfer, we will keep COBRA and do our probably two remaining transfers. If I was to get pregnant in May, we'd have to let COBRA go and pay for our transfers straight up, somewhere down the road.

In JB's world of work, he has just completed a three week pediatric outpatient rotation at Olmsted Clinic. He now has two weeks off. He plans to use this two weeks to finalize things for our Nigeria trip and do work around our Condo.

Speaking of our trip, I have found someone in Capetown, South Africa who is willing to let me ship my refrigerated shots of lupron to her! This is such an answer to prayer. I have to start taking lupron while we are in South Africa. However, travelling with the medications for a month before we get to Capetown and trying to find a refrigerator that is consistent (apparently the electricity in Nigeria is touch and go) would be difficult. So, through my online support group: Hannah's Prayer, I found a woman who said I can ship them to her. YAY! We plan to do this in the next few weeks.

I have also been looking into keeping my teaching license current when we move to Florida. Being as my Minnesota license is good until 2009, I don't think this should be a problem. It appears from their website that I just need to pay $57 and give them a copy of my teaching license and official transcript. Since my Kentucky license has now expired, my goal is to always keep a current license active depending on which state we live in. My Minnesota license requires 125 hours of "additional teacher crud" which I, of course, have not been doing. So as long as I get a new license before that one expires, all should be well. I have heard Florida's requirements are much more lenient. In order to get my five-year license in Minnesota, I had to take two tests and a $500 course on not being racists against Native Americans. Now that that is done, all should be well when we move. Do I plan to teach in Florida? HECK NO! However, I am considering subbing a day or two a week when I have the time just to keep my feet wet.

Okay, I actually have to go to work at Mayo at 10am. My boss is going out of town for the week so we have to get a bunch of stuff done before we leave. I'm a little angry this will require me to walk outside. Dangnabit.