The Reverend Still Kicks A**

This past weekend Bill took me for a very early birthday celebration in DC. One of my favorite bands, Reverend Horton Heat, was playing at the 9:30 club. We started the evening watching the VT/Wake Forest game at Irish Times-- in a packed bar and 3 big TVs showing various NCAA games, Bill and I were the ONLY 2 people in that bar watching football. It was awesome!
Next we headed on over to the 9:30 club-- this is when I learned to appreciate going out drinking in Blacksburg--Bill ordered a guiness (that he had to drink out of a red solo cup) and I got a bottle of Mich Ultra.... $13! Thankfully I was fighting a major head cold so I was only able to drink 2 $5 beers.
The opening band was someone we had never seen or heard, The Legendary Shack Shakers. The first couple of songs were alright not fantastic, but was still enjoyable. Then somewhere after the 3rd song the singer rips of his shirt. This dude was super skinny and pale as hell...not exactly anything to get arroused over. Anywho this is when the FREAK show began. He proceeded to rip clumps of his red chest hairs out and throw them in to the crowd, this was later topped with a fist full of pubs. After the end of one song he SPIT into the audience. BLEH. From then on the water works continued to out of his mouth and even better the snot rockets. It was disgusting. But the folks in the very front didn't waiver from their posts they just kept on getting spat and snotted on. To each their own, but I ducked everytime I saw something coming in the off chance some of the fluids had some extra oomph behind them.
Finally the freak show ended and we got to totally jam out to the Reverend. It was a really great show, he played nearly all my favorites. What makes seeing this band live SO incredible is the fact that how they sound on CD is pretty much how they sound live. Totally rocks!!!! If you ever get a chance I recommend checking out RHH. Thanks Bill for an awesome B-day present :)

Going to go see the Reverend!

Just wanted to let everyone know how psyched I am for this weekend.
Bill is taking me to the 9:30club in DC to go see Reverend Horton Heat for a really early b-day present. RHH is a rockin' ass band from Texas. The music is described as "country-flavored punkabilly." If you ever get a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it! The bass is an upright bass and the dude whales on the thing like it's actual bass guitar (see the photo on their website... blogger couldn't upload the photo here, sorry). Not to mention the Rev' himself usually wears a suit with flames on it through the whole show.
Maybe to entice you a bit to check the music out... one of the songs is called "Big Red Rocket of Love" :)

Not many folks actually understand what I've been doing for the last two months so here is a recap.... I'm doing the dietetic internship through VT so I can become a registered dietitian. The question that always follows-"what will you do with that" Well it could be a number of things: -

-The first two weeks of rotations I was at Catawba Hospital (1 of 5 state mental hospitals) where I gave diet instruction to schizophrenic's that were getting discharged, checked on the Alzheimer's patients that were there to ensure they were eating alright, and tried to explain to a few mentally ill people the importance of their low something or diet while in the hospital. For sake of brevity and HIPPA violations I can't go into details. Needless to say I saw some pretty cool stuff and wish I could have been there longer just to observe.

- Next I headed on over to Salem for three weeks to work with outpatient diabetes patients. This is more my cup of tea. Folks need your help on keeping their blood sugar under control, how to monitor, etc... and you help them for an hour and you move right along. Taught a bunch of group ed. classes on various aspects of nutrition. Who knew you could keep 12 adults entertained for 2 hours talking about fiber? I didn't think it was possible 'til I did it... turns out I should really reconsider my disliking of teaching.

- Since I left Salem I have been at good ol' Montgomery Regional Hospital. This is more clinical rotations whereI'm learning how to help mostly old folks that have congestive heart failure, COPD, renal failure, pneumonia, lung cancer and poorly controlled diabetes with their specific nutritional needs while they are in the hospital. Many of the people that get admitted here are old, overweight and most likely aren't going to do what they need to do to stay out of the hospital. It's sad, but I'm already recognizing the "frequent flyers." Every once in a while I get to help figure out how someone is going to get fed through a tube. If I were at a hospital in Roanoke or other bigger town I would have some pretty cool diseases to learn but for now I'm stickin' with the old folks and the people that get half of their colon taken out.

- For one day a week during November I head down to Pulaski Hospital and work at the NRV Cancer Center, mostly dealing with the patients receiving radiation, not so much chemo. I got to watch how they set pts up for their radiation - involves grids and tatooing, patients actually getting radiation treatment (lining up the tatoo points on another machine's grid), and talk to the folks getting the radiation to make sure they can still swallow their food after neck treatments or keep the food in the system after pelvic treatments.

'Bout sums up my fall... I have 5-6 weeks left of clinical rotations before break and I head out to do community rotations.