Blown Away!

If you've been reading this blog since before the pandemic, you probably know that Dear Husband and I have a fondness for art glass. Pittsburgh has been home to the Pittsburgh Glass Center since 2001, but it got famous thanks to the Netflix competition called Blown Away. They hold classes and (free!) exhibitions as well as train professional artists. DH and I had stopped by the gallery just down the street from the children's hospital a few times, but I very much wanted to take a class to make my own, squat, blown glass pumpkin with a curly-que stem. I was able to schedule a group session in between stints on service in the hospital in the fall, but forgetting our vaccination cards and a flat tire put the kibosh on that. So I rescheduled for a private lesson with another couple in January, when work got a little quieter. We pretty much had the shop to ourselves, our teacher was amazing, and we had FUN making two pumpkins each. One pumpkin she blew and we shaped, and the other we blew and she shaped. I like this photo because it makes it look like I have pink hair.

One of our favorite parts was definitely picking colors to mix and match. After Christa picked up a blob of molten glass from the central repository and cooled down the pole, we dabbed it in the crushed fret to add color.

You have to heat the glass in a glory hole in between steps so it doesn't cool off too much, then it gets blown into a mold to create ridges. There was a larger mold for the pumpkins and a smaller mold for the stems.

Then the glass is blown into--if you push too much or too fast, it makes a weak bleb off the bottom that, however, can be fixed.

Meanwhile, the neck of the pumpkin is narrowed with an enormous pair of tweezers.

After that, you knock the pumpkin off the stick with a bat (it was literally one of those mini Louisville Sluggers). Our other favorite part of the process was watching the instructor put on the twisty stems: so satisfying!

 Tada!

Colors: orange with lime green stem; supposed to be teal but came out green, with green stem; purple with black stem; medium blue with light yellow stem (could have been darker)

These ones are golden with a black stem;  white and tan;  blue and white with a red stem; and mottled black with a golden stem. 

"Sew" excited!

In the first year of the pandemic, I played a lot of Settlers of Catan online. (A LOT.) Since there was a lot of swearing at the other players, or the computer, or our internet connection, in the second year I dropped that and picked up DuoLingo, in order to improve my German. I kept that up for 366 days in a row (give or take a few freebies). That eventually began to feel like a chore, so I'm taking a break. Also last year I decided to return to a childhood hobby of cross stitch, which I recently realized is so satisfying because it's a lot like coloring, but slower. There's also a geometrical angle that satisfies the Tetris-lover in me.

Anyway, one reason I decided to cross stitch was because I could do it quietly during Zoom meetings, and the other is that I found a cause to which I could donate the final products, the annual student auction to benefit the Birmingham Free Clinic. This way I get all of the fun of making them without having to figure out how to display or store them!

Here's the entrance to the clinic and the view of the South Side from the porch. The administrator who accepted the pieces was very excited and thinks the students will bid against each other for them.

The canvas for the "wash your hands" signs held up pretty well, so I just set them in hoops hung with some red ribbon. The anatomical body parts I have stuffed with cotton batting with brown velvet behind. I'm working on the lungs right now, which are even trickier than the eye ball.

I've also finished a golden honey bee, which I framed and gifted to a local friend who keeps bees, and I sent syphilis (aka Treponema pallidum) through the U.S. postal mail to a senior historian of medicine in Massachusetts who spent her career researching the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

What have you made during the pandemic?

Winter Wonderland

 

It's been a snowy January here in Pittsburgh. I took these photographs on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, while tramping through Frick Park with Dear Husband. It was a marvelous way to spend an hour on a Monday, avoiding the work we had to do. It wasn't as deserted as you might think, however, thanks to the number of dog walkers (and one cross-country skier). I had originally drafted this post with the photos in case I wanted to flesh out the tragedy I began composing in my head while sitting on the bench overlooking the ravine: two young lovers, just married on New Year's Eve, take a walk in the park to enjoy the beauty of the surroundings but, each not wanting to spoil the moment for the other, continues to sit in silence through a snowstorm until they freeze to death, and the sun comes up on New Year's Day over their still and lifeless bodies. DH told me I was no O'Henry, so maybe I'll leave it at that.

I hadn't realized this post was still in my drafts folder, so it's nice to come back to now that those paths are blocked off on account of the bridge collapsing just to the left/west of what you see here. Better to have nice memories until the mess is cleaned up, the weather warms, and we take our long walks through and over Fern Hollow again.

2021 Rememberlutions

Birthday flowers for both of us from a dear friend

The rememberlutions jar isn't as full as it has been previous years. Part of that is me forgetting to write things down; part is having a list on my old phone that didn't make the transition with other files to the new phone; and part is the on-going pandemic providing far fewer ticketed opportunities, although goodness knows there are enough free Zooms to fill in the void!

Here was what I pulled out of the jar:

Every time someone told me they wanted to take my nutrition course. I've described it in more detail here. We're halfway through the month, and I'm hoping a) to get a poster and eventually a medical education publication out of it, b) that the course will be offered regularly at least once a year, and c) that it might give me enough teaching credits to drop a half day of clinic. TBD!

"The best teaching we've ever had." Both interns on one of my inpatient teams told me this during feedback, and it was very gratifying. I am not an expert in clinical reasoning, and I can't cite the latest drug studies, but I can teach other people about the language we use speaking and writing notes, break down concepts into simple terms, and of course broaden someone's horizons through medical history and humanities.

This was the same team of residents that was excited to play hooky from a lunchtime lecture in order to attend my Grand Rounds lecture on the history of polio vaccination. Hey, I gave Grand Rounds as a second-year faculty! You can watch it on YouTube here.

I finally got my own desk and renovated my office space.

Rafting on the Lehigh River with my parents in June, even though I got a wicked sunburn on the front of legs (blog post). Drizzly hiking pic above.

I want to remember every pretty sunrise (or rainbow!) if I happened to be commuting that early, and several lovely sunsets. 

Christmas brunch with Dear Husband was a truly special occasion, a rate date in this time of pandemic that we were able to squeeze in amidst the holiday bustle, work, and COVID (blog post).

The time when a colleague liked my answer to a medical student question about standards of knowledge so much that he said aloud, "Wow, I wish that had been recorded."

A cold if beautiful autumn daytrip to Ohiopyle Falls and Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob.

Every time a patient told me how happy they were that I am their doctor. One of the office staff even said that she would come to me if she didn't already have a PCP. 

I've also had a couple coworkers comment on my "style"; I don't think of myself as a naturally fashionable person, but over the years I have accumulated a few signature pieces, and it's nice to be noticed if I put in a little more effort than usual.

Carrot cake for Easter

Watching Rosamunde chase a string around in the evenings. She truly is a fierce huntress!

My ticket to Die Zauberfloete at the Pittsburgh Opera. When it looked like the pandemic was lifting last year, I purchased us season tickets to the PO. The other four shows are in 2022, and I've just invested in some KN95 masks for the both of us. ::sigh::

A really nice walk on the Frick Mansion grounds one fine evening (blog post here).

Hosting Easter dinner for a father and his daughter, complete with plastic egg hunt and ukulele concert.

Everything about our family vacation to Lake Anna: from the location to the company to our 16th anniversary celebration to the model rocket launch to the fishing!

I did a lot of cross-stitch. I even gave another historian of medicine syphilis (below)!

Our weekend stay at the Gaylord Opryland Resort for Thanksgiving/Christmas was the first time I got on an airplane since March 2020.

There were also a couple of older things: the slip that said, "my very last graduation ever--by Zoom/Teams (thanks, COVID)!" was from 2020. (Here's the blog post.) The ticket for our Frank Lloyd Wright tour of the Florida Southern College grounds from 2019, a blog post I neglected to write because we traveled home the next day. I also found a sweet handwritten note from two medical students, also from spring 2020, thanking me for being a good senior resident.

Light During Dark Days: Phipps Holiday Show 2021-22

The Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens puts on a holiday display every winter that combines themed gardens and a model train set indoors, and lights in the outside courtyards. I am sure it is a money-maker and probably enables the Phipps to stay open the rest of the year. Dear Husband and I skipped the show last year due to the pandemic, but this year a colleague organized a group trip on the last night. It COLD but delightful and not too crowded.

The space-age glowing orbs outside are one of our favorite features.

We think they multiply while in storage between holiday shows.

The greenhouses seemed extra colorful this year.

Can you spot the Chihuly glass sculpture hanging over the foyer?

The Sunken Garden was bright in blue, red, and green.

The centerpiece of the Victoria Room this year was a traditional fir tree decorated in white lights and red ribbons in white gazebo at the center of the pond.

This wreath impressed me with its simplicity: a "pearl" in an oyster shell surrounded by dried branches.

Above, the Rachel Carson and ?Hot Metal Bridge. Below, the Pittsburgh Bus Sinkhole, the infamous incident that spawned many Halloween costumes in 2019.

Their summer show had been "troll" themed. Here, they've been re-dressed for Christmas.

In the Children's Discovery Garden, DH and I slow danced in this gazebo to the music that was playing.

Once we were outside and I felt comfortable momentarily taking down my double mask, I did try the "hot" mulled wine, but for the 3/4-full cup they gave me, the $8 was more like a donation. We are considering purchasing another annual membership, maybe in the summer when things calm down again. Until then, we hope your holidays were bright and spent in good company.