I have been part of various improv groups in Champaign and Chicago since 1998. It has been a major influence on my confidence, my personality, my interpersonal skills, and above all, I have befriended many amazing people I otherwise never would have known.

Last week I made the difficult decision to quit improvising. Something had to give, and this was it. I'm not sure if I'll ever set foot on stage at iO again, so thanks to deBono, Swiss Family Robots, Smarthorse, The Moustache, Solid State, Concept Album, Toast, and The Diplomat Motel, for all the hilarious callbacks, belabored sweep edits, awkward openings, weird initiations, and most of all, the laughs.
And...scene.

For a small town, Arcola has a lot going. Arcola, the Broomcorn Capital of the World, is home to the Hippie Memorial, the Raggedy Ann and Andy Museum, and the World Famous Lawn Rangers, who were chosen to march in the Inauguration Parade in a few weeks.

Julie's family likes to wrap up household things and give them as gifts. I was the happy recipient of this Christmas decoration, which I promptly hung back on the wall from whence it came.

Chicago is such a wonderful place in the summer, and an infinitely frustrating place to live during the winter. It would have taken multiple pickaxes and a jackhammer to free Julie's car for our trip to Arcola, so we had to leave it and pray for a thaw.

Christmas Eve at Aunt Darla's. Appetizers, poker, and a dog that could easily kill all of us if she wasn't such a sweetheart.

These back porch icicles are just waiting to murder me.

2 degrees, -13 windchill = coldest Bears home game ever.

We went to the Anvil Club in Dundee to celebrate Coach's birthday and his recent Ph.D. For years I have been hearing how amazing the lobster bisque is. Indeed, delicious.

Somehow today was the only day that both sides of the family could get together for the holidays. It was a good double Christmas, especially for my mother, who was fortunate enough to get the ShamWow during the white elephant.

Tonight me and the dudes went to DeLaCosta for our annual Holiday Meatscursion. We usually go to Fogo de Chao, but decided on a new location this year.

Trupe: I love Fogo, but after eating 90 lbs of beef I sort of hate looking at your stupid faces and want to sleep for 11 days.

Martin gave me 30 Rock Season 2 for our gift exchange. I drew Jeff, a difficult person for whom to buy a present. I got him a square foot of land in Lochaber, Scotland; now he can officially call himself a Lord.

On really cold/rainy days, I cut through the Medical School to stay warm/dry on my way to the College of Nursing. I know they can't tell I'm not one of them, but sometimes I fear that a medical student is going to look at me and start screeching like a Bodysnatcher.

I've been sitting on a Pompei gift certificate for a while, so me and some of the other Graduate Assistants went out for lunch. I am really lucky to have gotten this job, as I work with wonderful people, it reduces the debt I am quickly incurring, and it allows me to feel like a productive human being a few days a week.

Bowling with OAP. It took 2 hours of snowy driving to get to Diversey River Bowl, something that should only take 30 minutes, but it was worth it.

A little Christmas shopping in Lincoln Square.

Sara threw a surprise party for Liz Friday night. We all did a really good job not talking about nursing.

I stopped by the Northtown Holiday Party last night to see my teacher friends.

Julie: You're not a teacher anymore. When are they going to stop inviting you to their functions?
Me: Never. I'm awesome.

A couple groups of high school kids came in today to learn about careers in nursing. They worked on reading blood pressure, listening to heart and breath sounds, and even drew "blood" from the manikins. Not that I regret my career path, but I wish I would have recognized nursing as an option when I was in high school.

The long-awaited date with my couch, The Shield: Season 6, Disc 1, Angel: Season 5, Disc 2, three weeks worth of The Office and 30 Rock, and the Chicago Bears v. the New Orleans Saints.

Oh couch, how I have missed you.

After our last test Monday, a bunch of us went to Small Bar for food and drinks. I stuck around for a little while, but bolted before anybody could make me do a Carbomb, arguably the most delicious and dangerous shot there is.

Pub Quiz at O'Shaughnessy's with Julie and Walt. We finished in third place, and did surprisingly well in the movie lines category.

Goodbye Fall semester and your endless assignments. So long babies, mommies, and crazies. Hello month of doing whatever I want, whenever I want. In moderation, of course.

This is the cafeteria at the hospital. The Chinese food is terrible, the salads are pretty good, and at 45 cents an ounce, the fried food bar is totally dangerous.

Poker night/Troy's birthday.

The last day of pediatric nursing. When people ask me which rotation I liked most, I truthfully tell them that I have liked them all equally. I guess this speaks to my adaptability and overall positive attitude, but makes the idea of choosing a practice setting difficult. Or really easy.

I am spending my last semester in the ER, which is going to be awesome, maybe.

Laura used her artistic abilities to bring some holiday cheer to the unit.

I met Julie at the Christkindlmarket to kill time before having dinner with her family. I would have loved to buy cuckoo clocks and wooden dragons for all of my friends and family, but I have a pretty tight Christmas budget this year. I did, however, splurge on a cone of delicious cinnamon-sugar almonds and a weird pork sandwich.

Last minute cramming before the Mental Health final. Angie's magic notecards always give me a couple nuggets that I end up using on the test.

I spent the day in the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology clinic. The 3 year old I took care of in my first week of the Peds rotation came in to get his blood drawn. I could tell he remembered me, but he was very shy. I'm sure a few more minutes and he would have been calling me Farty Matt and throwing pencils at me, just like old times.

Belated birthday lunch at the family friendly O'Donovan's. I got some sweet CDs and DVDs, including Billy Idol's Happy Holidays, which is not nearly as bad as one would think.

After Thanksgiving Part II featuring my dad's side of the family and a phenomenal mushroom casserole, I went to Genoa to hang out with the GTBs and play the new Guitar Hero. What a stupid, awesome game.

My grandma is staying with my parents for a few days after taking a fall at home. Luckily she was wearing her Life Alert bracelet. It was really great being able to spend a couple days with her.

Granny: I was so weak from having that cold or flu that I couldn't move. I laid there for an hour before I remembered I had this thing.
Me: What did you say?
Granny: (laughing) "I've fallen and I can't get up."
Me: You didn't.
Granny: Yes, I most surely did. What else was I supposed to say?

I love Thanksgiving at Chef Brandy's . Somebody should pass a law mandating that all turkeys must be brined. Kevin is a pretty good turkey cutter as well.

Corey's wife Mary made me a cake for my birthday, which he brought to class and everyone ate

Somehow turning 31 is infinitely worse than turning 30.

When people find out that Julie is a massage therapist, they usually ask if it's like the Seinfeld episode, to which I reply "Yes". She was nice on my birthday though, and gave me a massage and some kind of sugar scrub that smelled like lavender and heaven.

Today when I bought my new camera, the Best Buy salesman laughed when I told him my old one was a Samsung.

Salesman: I didn't even know they made cameras. Ever.
Me: Yeah, it wasn't a very good camera.
Salesman: I've been selling cameras for years.

From the archives.

A look back to warmer times.

Pictures of papers = boring, but sometimes I have to make do with artifacts, especially with a broken camera and photos taken many days after the fact.

One activity for the Pediatric rotation is a teaching project. We have a topic and a target age range, and we present it to our clinical classmates, who act like members of that age group. This was kind of funny for a few minutes, but the novelty wore off quickly. Adults acting like kids is really irritating, especially young kids. It's a stupid assignment, and I'm not sure why we aren't actually teaching pediatric patients, but whatever. Today we were toddlers, and Michelle gave each of us a toothbrush and we colored pictures. In a couple weeks I have to teach "adolescents" about drug abuse. So dumb.

I wish you got well too.

This is the last picture ever taken by my camera. I was on my way to the Alternative Birthing Center at Illinois Masonic Hospital for a class about the benefits of using a Nurse Midwife, and it totally crapped out on me. The class was informative, and it was kind of fun to be around all of the expecting parents. But I was distracted the whole time, mourning my camera, wondering when I would be able to get a new one, and if I should trust Ashton Kutcher and his apparent love of Nikon.

Good night, Samsung Digimax 430, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

As part of my position at the College of Nursing, I occasionally get shopped out to do odd jobs. A few weeks ago I was recruited to clean up two new ICU beds that were acquired by the Clinical Simulation Lab. There wasn't as much dried blood and unidentifiable fluids as I thought there would be, but definitely enough to be gross.

Up close, you can see that the sign used to say "OPEN 24 HOURS". In my opinion, once you reduce your hours of operation to less than 24 hours a day, you shouldn't advertise how many hours you are open. But maybe it's important for wayward teens to know exactly how much time they have each day to buy cigarettes.

Kristen and James had a benefit in her father's auto shop to raise money for an orphanage in India. The unnamed band, which included Kathryn, James, and Novick, people with whom I used to teach, was very good. James is now the Assistant Dean at Northtown; friends have begun to refer to him as the Ass Dean, which I think would be a fantastic name for the band. If I saw in a newspaper that The Ass Deans were playing, I might be at least intrigued enough to look them up on the internet.

My patient this week was a three week old baby boy who had come in with seizures, hypocalcemia, and presumed meningitis. I had to give him a bunch of oral medications, and based on his facial expressions, phenobarbital must be the nastiest tasting stuff on earth.

It might seem easy to squirt a syringeful of medicine into a baby's mouth and have him successfully swallow it, but not so. On the second day with him, a nurse told me to gradually mix a little medicine with a little formula in a rubber nipple, which worked brilliantly.

He was very cute, and I learned a lot about babies, including the fact that they often urinate on you and themselves when you open the diaper. I got peed on twice before learning this lesson.

The Teen Room is for patients 13 and up, but who could say no to a sick twelve year old who desperately needs to update their Facebook status.

The playroom on the peds floor is pretty sweet. Lots of games, toys, books, and Play-Doh must make a hospital stay a little more bearable.

Apparently someone had some extra wheat bread, biscotti, and seed corn laying around. This pigeon stood motionless in the midst of this feast, probably dreaming of Doritos and discarded Italian beefs.

PRN is an abbreviation for pro re nata, which in Latin means "for the thing born". In the medical field, it means "as needed", and is used to indicate medications and treatments that are not regularly scheduled, but may be administered when the patient needs them.

Because this car was parked in the nursing home lot behind my place, I'm pretty sure it means "Love as needed". If I would have seen it in the parking lot of The Pleasure Chest, I might suspect otherwise.

I went to the Bears game today with Kevin. Alas, a disappointing loss to an overrated team.

My parents drove in to have dinner with me and Katie and her boyfriend Eric's family. Julie and I tagged along.


Julie: Where are we going to dinner?
Me: L. Woods. It's in Lincolnwood.
Julie: Is that that Legally Blonde themed restaurant?
Me: Yes.