Time for an Update

It's been awhile since I last wrote an update, and a lot has happened. First of all, I graduated from the dietetic internship on June 9. It's really nice to be done. I now have to take my board test and then (assuming I pass) I'll be a Registered Dietitian. Here are some pictures from graduation.















I also had a change in plans for a job. I was originally going to be working as a graduate research dietitian at the GCRC in the hospital, but a few days before graduation I found out that they had a budget cut and there was no longer any money to pay me. The GCRC, even though it's a part of the hospital, is funded by research grants from the federal government. I was pretty bummed, since I'd been looking forward to starting that job. But the good news is that my old "boss-to-be" referred me to another guy at the university that was doing research and needed a study coordinator to work part-time. It's pretty cool how God worked in this. My new boss is a doctor who works with obese patients who are about to have bariatric surgery (aka, gastric bypass). He is wanting to use this high tech activity monitor called the IDEEA while the patients are following their diet before surgery to make sure that they are able to follow a diet. (After gastric bypass, you can only eat very very small amounts at a time and you have to chew everything to pureed consistency. It's very strict so they want to make sure that people will follow it and the surgery isn't a waste). The interesting part is that when I worked as an undergrad at Iowa State, we used this activity monitor in some of the studies we were doing, so I'm familiar with it. But it's so new and so high tech that he had not even met anyone who had heard of it, so he really wanted me to work for him! So I'll be starting in July as study coordinator for him. I'll be working 20 hours a week part time so it will work really well with my class schedule.

In other news, Capanna is really coming along. I know we've been saying that for awhile, but we're within a couple weeks of opening! The website is now up too, so if you haven't seen it, go ahead and check it out. Mike has been super busy lately, with 11 interviews on Friday and the delivery of 1100 pounds of green coffee and many random errands and meetings. The walls and celing are pretty much painted, so now it's really just getting everything installed and hiring and training the staff. It's pretty exciting, but we often find ourselves asking "Are we really doing this?" It still seems surreal at this point. I have a feeling that the summer will fly by!