I started out with a full-body workout. I did 2 Cindy Whitmarsh workouts on Exercise TV: one for lower body and one for upper body. I was done in 30 minutes.
I did some homework after that, and then I got my hair colored and trimmed, since I am premature grayer. Hooray! I went to a new place, and my hair has never been so soft and de-frizzed in my entire life. I may have left with a bunch of new hair products....
After that, I quickly got ready for a dinner event at my dad's hospital. They just built some innovative new bed towers, and Friday night was the unveiling. I went as Patti's date, a coworker of my dad's, because her husband was out of town.
When we got there, we went on a tour of the new bed towers. They are unbelievable! They look more like hotel rooms than hospitals. Everybody kept saying that nobody will ever want to check out!
There were some very smart ideas that went into the new towers. This below, for example, is a new nurses' station. Instead of having all the nurses gathered together in the middle of the floor and making a lot of noise, one nurse now sits in between two patients' rooms. They have all of their information on their computer, and they can press a button on either side to check on the patients. The glass that looks opaque on either side becomes transparent, and the nurse can see into the room.
Another nice feature is that the chairs are attached to the desk. The nurses get very frustrated when people take their chairs away and don't put them back, so now that's not an issue. The chairs are also ergonomically designed so that they are comfortable to sit in for long periods of time.
- The rooms and doors are designed so that you can never see a patient in their bed while you walk down the hallway. This ensures privacy for the patient.
- All rooms have couches that turn into foldout beds for family members
- Family members have their own TVs in their rooms
- Every floor has a different "theme" so that it's more difficult for people to confuse
- The nurses and doctors keep all of the patients' medicine in locked drawers by their bedside. The nurse only has to swipe his or her card to open it if the patient needs medicine instantly. It eliminates the need to run to another location on the floor.
- All walkers in the room are red so that they can't be confused with a patient's personal walker.
The lighting was very, very bad. I still managed to take pictures of my food. We started out with an Heirloom Tomato Salad with buffalo mozzarella, mixed greens and balsamic reduction. We also had brioche, millet and caramelized onion dinner rolls at our table.
I got a mini banana cream pie, a chocolate blob (the cookie), Door County Cherry White Chocolate Chip Cookies and a chocolate cheesecake skillet.
I also spent the day and night yesterday celebrating my birthday with my friends. Stay tuned for a recap!