As promised - PICTURES!

• House: ~ 65% painted (somewhere between 1-3 coats)

• New Color/ Blue Tape / Old Color / 1/3 of our dining room windows

• Job: still rockin'
• note: all of these pictures were taken for our new brochure advertising the Phoenix Program
• Afternoon Recreation Groups - Sorry, no faces, but I thought this was a good shot. Jamie and I are helping with designing aprons
  
  
• We are most definitely playing bingo!
  
  
• Music Therapy - even though you don't see ME playing music, there is a pretty sweet picture of a beaded maraca. Plus, streamers are wicked fun.
  
  
  
• Bike rides since insurance kicked in (8/4): 3

• My friend (defined as MY friend and not someone I became friends with through Ben or my housemates) tally is up to: 1 - Jamie!
  
• picture taken for the Summer Lakeside Newsletter
  
  
  

Now that I have finished the 7th,

I need another book to sink my brain into. I have my Paste magazines to tie me over for the time being but I just feel so empty going to bed without settling into a good book. Plus I have 5 days at the beach coming up...
Any suggestions?
Much thanks.

International Forgiveness Day...

...was yesterday.

But in recent news (of no particular order):

• House: ~ 65% painted (somewhere between 1-3 coats) - I will post pictures soon
• Trips to Home Depot: ~ 7
  
• Job: still rockin' - again, I will post pictures soon
• Bike rides since insurance kicked in (8/4): 1
  
• My friend (defined as MY friend and not someone I became friends with through Ben or my housemates) tally is up to: 1 - pictures soon
• Ben: had lasik surgery and is slowly recovering - do you really want to see a picture of Ben laying around while wearing sunglasses at night?
• Traveling: sweet, but I'm ready to stay home for the next two weekends - sorry no pictures to accompany my most recent trips to PA

Too-da-loo

Sisters

It's official. After over a year of trying to mate Sobe and Tang - it turns out they're sisters, not lovers.

No baby geckos this year *sniff*

Self-Titled Week Two

June 10th - After a tiring day of unloading, obstacles, throwing out my shoulder on an antique chair probably worth more than my life and spraining my ankle, we finally got a good night's rest at our new peachy place of residence. Yes, our house is peach. It also has a pretty rose out front that Ben insisted on taking a picture of:
Begins week two: I freakin' love my job. I started putting together a proposal at the end of last week for a purchase order containing music therapy items adding up to almost $500. Jamie told me to star the items that are needed more than others because she wasn't sure how much would be approved. We met with Pat (head honcho) today, who seemed very excited about the newly added Music Therapy program, and he approved my proposal, plus another order of activity/rec. and leisure supplies. Woohoo!

Tuesday was another fun-filled night of Salsa dancing. Ben mastered the turns, very smooth.

The remainder of the week I completed most of my clients activity assessments and monthly scheduling. Next week I'll be able to begin my Music Therapy sessions.
We've also been unpacking the never-ending piles of boxes. We actually started to form some sort of order for our attic (office) and desk supplies. (No pictures until it's all said and done).

So I guess that pretty much updates everyone on the last two weeks of my new life.

Job is great
House is great
Ben is great

Self-Titled Week One

June 3rd - I arrived at 114 Ferris Place (Ben's apt) just in time to relax and settle in prior to my first day with my new job. Ben was off camping with his PhD buddies in the Adirondacks. Peace and Quiet. After re-reading a couple chapters from The Order of the Phoenix, I tapped out.
June 4th - First day at Lakeside. I met up with Jamie and she gave me another tour of the huge labyrinth of the facility. I also met a bunch of the clients I would be working with and observed a few groups in the Phoenix Behavioral Health program. <---- That is the new program in which I will be the Recreation Therapy Director/Music Therapist. Ben arrived home Monday night and took me out to dinner at Aladdin's. It's a fine eating establishment catered to veggie hippies. Welcome to Ithaca!

I had training all day on Tuesday. It was a bunch of the same stuff I went through with Devereux the first time around. The part that cracked me up was when a few of the CNA's freaked out about the FBI background check Lakeside administers. What kind of people are they hiring here?
The rest of the week was more observing and reading through medical charts.

Aside from working, Ben, Rich, Erin (Rich's girlfriend) and I started Salsa dance lessons. It's a 6 week session class held on Tuesday evenings at an extremely fancy and overpriced gym. If anyone knows what the ACAC in West Chester is, you'll know what I'm talking about. But the Salsa classes seemed pretty reasonable and Ben definitely laid down some pretty sweet moves.

Over the weekend Ben and I drove down to P-Ville/Chester Springs to load up my life (and some of Ben's) belongings into a U-Haul plus two cars:

Before heading out of town we stopped over to visit with J.D. for a second to deliver the last of his nerf gun supplies, then made our way back up to Ithaca to unload.

Highlight of the weekend = Renting a ladder to hoist my full size mattress through the second story window since it failed to fit around the sexy curves of our stairs. Ben and Erik climbed up the ladder while my dad and I were at the receiving end. Sorry no actions shots - it was actually quite a quick process of about 20 seconds.

Pirates:Stabilizing:Testing:Success:
Erik's mattress went up the stairs just fine, after we folded it like a taco.Phew.


Week Two: Coming REALLY soon

For all those devoted Transmogrification readers out there:

I have so much to write - but so little time. Just know things are going swell and there will be a ginormous post (with pictures) coming very soon.

Love,
~L