The Curious Adventures of Scheer and Eck: October 2010

October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeen!!!!

My pumpkin and our pooping cat candle :)

Kitty witch and not very happy about it!

Danielle, Kia, Alex and I decided to drive down to Washington D.C. yesterday for the Rally to Restore Sanity. The drive took 4 hours, the metro was jammed, but when we finally got there it was amazing!! There were over 215,000 people who showed up to listen, show their rally signs, or just watch all the crazy people! It was insane!!

There were people in trees

People on porta potties... ew

People on the National Art Museum

People everywhere!

After the rally was over, we walked around D.C. looking at all the people in Halloween costumes and reading all the rally signs. Keeping with tradition of getting ill or injured in DC, I got a horrible migraine and had lie down for a little while amongst the craziness. When I was feeling better, we went to the Museum of American History.

On an old bus in the museum! We went to dinner at Legal Sea Foods afterward and it was amazing!!

DUCoM Halloween Party 2010

Friday night was the 2010 DUCoM Halloween party! It was held at the Reading Terminal Market downtown. The decorations were spooky, the food was to die for, and the costumes were a howl! Alex and I went as pink puffer and blue bloater... completely nerdy but we loved it!

Pink puffer and blue bloater are descriptions used to define what patients coming in with emphysema and chronic bronchitis would look like. The pink puffer, with their emphysema, has destroyed alveolar walls, trapping air in little pockets in the lung. This leads to the characteristic barrel chest. The pink puffer has to purse their lips in order to get enough pressure to get some air out during expiration and hyperventilate (puff) to overcome the loss of surface area for gas exchange. For the major part of the disease, the pink puffer is oxygenated well enough to remain pink because of their "puffing".

The blue bloater has chronic bronchitis. With chronic bronchitis, the mucus glands undergo hyperplasia, producing lots of mucus, and there is inflammation around the bronchi. The blue bloater has obstructed airways from all of the mucus and has less oxygen and more carbon dioxide. This obstruction leads to increased residual lung volume making them look bloated. Their low oxygen state makes them look cyanotic.

Pink puffer and blue bloater! Alex is carrying his diagnostic 2-3 tablespoons of mucus produced for 3 consecutive months in 2 consecutive years!! I have my disease causing cigarettes :)

Costumes!

Danielle was Sweet Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Krista was a gatorade-sweating tennis player, Jay was a Pinata, Rohini was Audrey Hepburn, and Hilary was a crazy cat lady!

Kia and Emily, or should I say, Optimus Prime and Mikaela from Transformers!

A bacteriophage!!!

Visish and Rohini

The girls

The guys and Hilary

Where's Waldo?

Pumpkin Carving Time

Last Thursday at Drexel, a few of us carved pumpkins for the DUCoM Halloween party! I have not carved a pumpkin since I was at UNC so I was really excited. They also had apple cider and ginger snaps at the event so there was no way I was going to miss it!

Danielle carving away!

Our pumpkins!

Carving a masterpiece!

October 24, 2010

Jeff's Philly Visit

Jeff came from North Carolina to visit us this weekend!! We have not seen Jeff in forever so we were super excited to spend time with him. We have also been dying to see the inside of the Eastern State Penitentiary in downtown Philly, so we decided to take a scary tour with some friends Thursday night. The old prison was turned into a haunted tour for the Halloween season. The history, the already scary setting, and the super creepy actors made the haunted tour amazingly scary and fun!!

Eastern State Penitentiary

Waiting for our tour at the bar across the street!

They had scary people walking around out front to scare visitors in line. Some were definitely scarier than others!

On Friday, Alex and Jeff played frolf at a local park. Later, we went on a walk with Hilary and her pen-pal doggie Mistie in Manayunk. Jeff had his first Philly cheese steak for dinner from our favorite local place, Dalessandro's. You can't visit Philly without a cheese steak :)

We took Jeff to all the touristy places downtown on Saturday.

Ben Franklin's grave!! I threw a penny for every class... I need all the luck I can get!

Betsy Ross' house!

October 20, 2010

Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Pumpkin!

We were in a pumpkin kind of mood today so we decided to make pumpkin soup served in a pumpkin for dinner and pumpkin pudding for dessert! The soup was amazing, but about half way through dinner, our tummies, still a little queasy, had had enough. Jeff is coming to visit tomorrow so we saved the pudding for him :)

Pumpkin soup with croutons and bacon!

Alex likes soup

Danielle's pumpkin pudding recipe!

October 18, 2010

NC and Back in 38 Hours

This weekend was the perfect weekend to go back to NC for a quick trip. We just finished another round of exams at school on Friday and Alex could scoot out of work a little earlier now that his substituting job is coming to an end. It was also Teresa's 60th birthday party this weekend, which gave us the ultimate excuse! Bay and Tessa were in NC this weekend too for a tour of UNC :) It was nice to be able to see so many people in such a short trip!

Tessa, Baby Lily, and Lisa