Lots going on...

Okay, I thought I would start out by explaining why I haven't posted for a while. We've been really busy trying to get our house ready to either rent or sell. There aren't any jobs around here for us, so we will most likely be moving somewhere, plus we would like to explore "greener pastures", but also keeping in mind that the pastures may not be greener where we end up.

First, does everyone remember these little buggers?....

....The termites that caused a lot of damage here...

...here...

...and here...?

Laundry room prior to complete remodel:

Below: the dogs could hear the termites in the walls and were trying to get to them, so they dug into the walls and floor. This was when we had to lock them up in the laundry room before we built them a doghouse.

So thanks to these little buggers, we started our gutting process:

It was a mess!

We re-vamped the plumbing a little bit. The washer was hooked straight into the faucets of the sink, so Kenny fixed it so it had it's own spigots and we could use the sink too. :)

We had to re-do some of the sub-flooring.

And the insulation (which is not fun to get on your skin!)

And you get....

.....

.....

.....

Our new laundry room!!!!

We have also been trying to whip our basement into shape. Our carpet and pad got ruined from flooding that has happened randomly in the last couple years. We couldn't figure out why we were getting wet spots here and there with no signs of water damage from broken/leaky pipes or water coming in from the foundation and down the walls until last month. Our house had been sprayed for termites previous to our buying the home and thye had drilled holes in the concrete floor to inject their chemical into and then plugged them with a type of silicone. Well, it didn't hold very well and ground water was coming up through those hole when it was especially rainy. So we pulled all the plugs and filled the holes with grout. This was before the last 4 weeks of rain, and it's been holding up really well! :-D Our carpet was ruined and the concrete just isn't appealing, so we bought some carpet to go down there and got a little extra for the stairs (which desperately needed it):

See that yucky yellow, peeling linoleum? Time to cover it up!

Kenny has a mask on because we were glueing it down with contact cement.

And, viola! So much better! I have not posted pictures of the downstairs because I am working on painting it and we've decided to finish the ceiling in the family room down there. So I will post more pictures when we are finished.

We've also tried to have a little fun while we are at it. A few weekends ago we went fishing. Kenny caught the only two fish in the stream I think!

Now, then next few pictures....well...let me explain. We were trying to get across the stream adn there weren't really any narrow spots for me to jump across (Kenny already tried, and didn't make it quite all the way across). So I see this tree...

Yep, I really did think I could monkey my way across...

My plan was working...okay not really...

And here I am--trying not to get my feet wet:

And I failed miserably!

But I still laughed about it...and so did Kenny as he was so kind to take these pictures and I'm dumb enough to post them.

And next are some scenery pics I've taken recently that I like:

Father's day weekend we went up north. We spent Friday night with Grandma Logan in St. Anthony and Saturday morning we took her up to Mesa Falls. We got some pretty good pics:

Here's a panoramic shot of Upper Mesa Falls

Grandma Logan (I really like this picture!)

A yellow-bellied marmot (aka rock chuck). It was so cute I just had to take a picture.

Me and Grandma looking down at Lower Mesa Falls

The rest of the weekend we spent at the farm with my dad's side of the family. We helped my cousin, Morgan, and her family move into their new house (which I used to live in long ago). We spent the night Saturday night at Gma and Gpa's house and then spent Father's Day with my dad for most of the day, and then went over to my Uncle Alan and Aunt Shelley's house for dinner as a big family gathering (thanks Alan and Shelley for hosting on spur of the moment--it was great)! Kenny and I had a great time while up there and it was what we needed for a "refresher" from Pocatello. :)

Microbiology Lesson and something sweet

So, since most people give me blank stares or a lot of "uh-huhs" on the phone about what I do in the lab, I figured I would take some pictures and give you all a little Microbiology lesson. This is me holding up a throat culture (or maybe a sputum culture). Your respitory tract has a lot of normal flora (meaning a lot of bacteria and yeast that is supposed to be there), so you have to pick out the pathogens on the plate from the normal flora and do different tests on them in order to identify them.

Me again working up a bunch of stacks of plates and putting the results in to the computer.

I'm making an "overwhelmed" face because I had to set up 14 senstivity panels (a record according to one of the ladies I work with)...and let me tell you--it was overwhelming but I did it! The sensitivity panels will tell you what the pathogen is and what anti-biotics it is sensitive and resistant to.

Me pipetting for the senstivity panels.

This is Kristine. She is a lot of fun to work with (as you can tell by her waving to the camera) and she has taught me a lot! She not only works seven 10 hour days in a row here at Portneuf Medical, but then she spends a few days up at EIRMC in Idaho Falls. And on some weekends she works down in Tremonton. Whew! I don't know how she does it.

This is Char and she, too, is a lot of fun to work with! She ended up here in Idaho by taking a road trip many years ago from Minnesota and ended up here. I'm glad she did so I could get to know her. :)

Above are reagents for the Gram stain. We use this stain to somewhat narrow down what we're looking for with bacteria. We use it when we first get samples in (wound samples, sputums, throat samples, etc.) and roll it onto the slide, or we do a Gram stain on a culture from the plates that we want to identify.

First we put the sample on the slide and let it dry. Then we set the slides on this bridge and flood the slides with the first stain and let it sit for one minute...

...then you rinse off the slide with tap water...

...then flood slides with the second stain for one minute, rinse, then squirt slides with a decolorizer (the third reagent in the tray), rinse, put the last stain on for one minute, rinse, dry, then view under the microscope.

I took this picture through the microscope. What you see are "gram positive cocci". There are gram postive (purple), gram negative (pink), and gram variable organisms (varies). And then there are cocci (spheres), bacilli (rods), and other shapes that I won't go into (those are just our main ones). Staphylococcus aureus (which includes MRSA), Streptococcus pyogenes ("Strep throat" or "Group A Strep"), and Streptococcus agalactiae ("Group B Strep"--screened in pregnant women) are all examples of gram positive cocci. :)

Above is another picture I took through the microscope. The purple things are the gram positive cocci and the pink things are gram negative bacilli (or rods). E. coli is an example of a gram negative rod. These are some of the things I look for under the microscope to give us some idea of what kind of bacteria we're dealing with.

Above is a culture plate of Pseudomonas aeruginosa--one of my favorite "bugs". It is a resistant bacteria that can cause some pretty serious infections. I like it because I like saying the name and it smells like grape on the culture plate. :)

And this is the three of us. We are holding up plates in which we wrote our names with different bacteria and let it grow:

This plate says "Staph Char aureus". This is a MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) positive culture on a Sheep Blood Agar.

This plate says "Kristine Hodson". This organism is Micrococcus grown on Sheep Blood Agar. It is very yellow! Today I wrote my name in Chinese with Micrococcus and I will see how it turns out tomorrow!

And if you didn't guess already, this says "Jamie" with a flower above it. This culture is E. coli (another one of my favorite "bugs"--I had it once as a kid so I have enjoyed learning about it because of that, plus it grows such a pretty pink!).

So this is the end of your Microbiology lesson. I have moved on to Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine now for the next two weeks. I was sad to leave Micro because it is my favorite department and the ladies are so much fun to work with. But I am excited to learn more about Blood Banking!

Now on to something sweet. Julie called me last week and told me about this AMAZING sale at Winco for strawberries: 4lbs for $2.99! Limited to one per customer though, so Kenny and I each got in line with one. So the next morning before work I made jam!

+

=

I use the Ball brand in the packets because you use about 1/3 of the sugar and it's not as sweet (I actually like it kind of tart). YUM!