Quick Update

Hello! Andrew and I have both passed two tests now!

We are our on way to certification. Right now Andrew is learning all about QA and I just finished the basics of Inpatient care. Now I'm learning about our coding software and using the database to build customer's systems. It's fun! I love learning something that's totally new to me, plus I've really loved learning more about the daily workflow of hospitals, as my wonderful momma and sister Laura are both nurses.

I also found out I will be going on my first trip on August 22nd! It's just a shadowing trip with my mentor, as part of my apprenticeship, but it will be fun to get a glimpse into the traveling world. It's nowhere exciting, just a random city in the midwest, but my mentor says it has a great candy store!

It's been a crazy week! I have a ton ton ton of work to do for all these classes. I think I'm on a good pace though!

Last night we went out downtown, but tonight we are having people over to our place for a poker night! We have been busy all day getting the place spiffed up. We will try to take some pictures and let you know how it goes! Hosting parties is a really good way to make yourself get the house clean :)
Also, although going out downtown has been fun, a lot of the places get totally packed and I just can't fathom how crazy it will be once the 40,000 undergrads get back here. Hopefully we'll get our friends to come out to our part of town more often!

Alright.. back to work! We've still got some cleaning to do!

Love,
Michelle

Hello!

I know it's been a while since you've heard from me.
We're trying to get used to this whole "real world" thing. It seems like all we have time for is- get up, go to work, come home, rest our feet, make dinner, eat, meet some friends/study for tests/enjoy each other's company, and then it's time for bed!

I just got assigned 8 hours of "pre-req" online classes and quizzes before a training class I'm signed up for, on top of all these interviews and research for Implementation prep and 3 tests I need to take this week. Nuts!

Well, I have a test in exactly 51 minutes so wish me luck!

I promise, soon we'll get a schedule down and I'll get better about upating and calling.

Love,
Michelle

Just Training Away

I wish I had more exciting news to report, but alas, this week has just been lots of training, shadowing other QAers, going to meetings, and studying. I do have a test tomorrow though. Things are going pretty well, starting to settle in, and all that jazz. That's all, folks!

Although, on Monday, Michelle, myself, and a bunch of friends did win bar trivia for the first time ever! It was very exciting! We got $30 for it, so that adds up to just about two free beers each for our team of 8 next week, same time, same place, and hopefully same result!

The one exciting thing I have to report about work is that my TL (team leader) pointed me in the direction of this pretty cool book, Oncology Nursing Secrets, a hefty text all about the functioning of an oncology department. I'll be able to get refunded for purchasing it, and hopefully I can make a bit of a niche for myself by teaching from it to the whole team (a niche besides my bi-weekly recipes, that is).

Hope all is well with you!

Cheers,
Andrew

Location:Madison, WI

Monthly Staff Meeting

Just a short post about today. Lots of early training things, intro classes, and the like. It's pretty exciting to be starting my role, but nothing too interesting to share.

Except that today was our first monthly staff meeting. As I mentioned in the last post, all employees are required to be there, in one room, so that's approaching 5000 employees in one auditorium. I think it's pretty cool that we do that still. We all get popcorn because it used to be held in a movie theater. I guess it's basically like having a shareholders meeting since we're a private company and it's all CEO/employee owned.

Anyway, obviously I can't say everything about it, but we got to hear about all of our newest customers and what they would be paying for our software, and several of them had videos about themselves, some quite funny (in a good, intended way). Plus, Epic just had its first European Users Group Meeting with our three clients in the Netherlands as well as prospective clients there. That's obviously our exciting new frontier.

We also spent quite some time talking about Joplin, MO and the tornado because the hospital in Joplin is our client. They had been live for only three weeks, so it was really amazing to see how our software made the disaster a little bit easier for the patients and staff there. With paper, all patient records might have been destroyed, but now Epic was able to print out all the current patient records within a few hours and have them sent immediately to the rescue workers and staff there on the scene.

Finally, we had a good one hour of speaking and Q&A with our CEO, Judy Faulker, who seems like an incredible woman. We voted as a company on certain things, and anyone could just get up and comment on anything. It was a pretty incredible atmosphere.

Plus, I'll just note that one client went live with Beacon, my application [oncology], in Hawaii, so.....let's hope for an immersion trip.

Alright, time to cook dinner and go to trivia. Hope all is well with you.

Cheers,
Andrew

Location:Verona Campus

Epicnic

So this Saturday was the Epicnic, that is, that Epic company picnic. And it was pretty freaking cool.




First off, the meal: free steak and lobster! And it was legit. I wish I'd gone back for seconds. So we got there, hung out and ate, caught up with some people, and then the main event of the afternoon was the annual Epic Tug-o-War tournament. It seems that tug-o-war is a big deal around here because we also have a big customer tug-o-war tournament at the Users Group Meeting in September.




If you look closely, you should be able to see the winning team there in black. Apparently they win every year: it looks like they're the Epic weight lifting club or something. No joke, they pulled an entire team to the ground, straight out of slapstick comedy.

After that, we enjoyed some time swinging up on the porch at Voyager Hall.




Definitely a beautiful afternoon. It's still hard to believe that we actually work at this place. It's so beautiful. Here's a quick look back inside Voyager Hall at the posters with the themes from all our past Users Group Meetings (UGMs).




Finally, we enjoyed some ice pops, and we took at a stab at the climbing wall.



This was the difficult side, and no, I didn't make it up. But I didn't see anyone else get any higher, so that's pretty cool.

Now it's bright and early Monday morning. We're trying to get to work by 715 to avoid traffic because today is the third Monday of the month, so we have our monthly Staff Meeting and home day. The entire company meets together for two hours at the Epicenter (our big auditorium in Voyager Hall), and no one is allowed to miss it, hence the home day designation for no travel. Should be exciting! It'll be our first chance to hear our CEO, Judy, speak.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Talk to you soon.

Cheers,
Andrew


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Madison, WI

Catching Up

Hello, everyone!

We're both so sorry about failing to blog this past week. It has been so busy, with classes, our first test, and also making sure we meet lots of new people and build our relationships with them. So, I hope I haven't lost all of y'all, and here's a catch-up!

So, it's been since last Thursday that we updated y'all. On Friday, we finished up a successful first week at work without much ado, and went out that night to a downtown bar, and it was basically populated by the entirety of our orientation group. It was great fun, and we met even more cool people. We've gotten really lucky in meeting some great people really quickly.

On Sunday, we went down to Chicago to celebrate Michelle's birthday, which was this past Monday. I'll let her talk all about that and her day at work Monday though!

As for this second week of orientation, it's been another really successful week. Lots and lots of background on the healthcare industry, and we had our first test in that Thursday. Other basic orientation stuff all week. I've had several meetings already with my team, and everyone seems great. I brought in some of our family bean dip to bribe them for friendships today :) Success! And I've already scheduled two more tests and much more training time to keep up with my team leader's (TL's) expectations. Next week I start actually learning about my specific role, which will be nice after lots of basic stuff that often felt like a waste of time.

Tomorrow is the company wide family picnic, so that should be fun too.

That's a brief overview of what's been going on. I promise to be better about it from here on out. Always feel free to email with questions.

Love y'all! Talk to you soon!

Andrew

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Madison, WI

Fete de Marquette

It was so much fun! They festival is all this weekend up on Willy Street which is the hippy part of town, and this event did not disappoint. They had a "green bar" that gave you reusable mugs and the whole place was filled with dreadlocked dancing hippies hula hooping and grooving to the music. There were so many hippy mamas in their hippy sun dresses dancing with their little babies in their arms. It was very cute. This city just feels like a bizarre time-warp sometimes.

The festival is a celebration of French culture, so the whole line up is French influenced. The first band we saw was from New Orleans and the second was all the way from Niger! They were so awesome. Two electric guitars and the lead singer/guitarist was so into it. We loved watching him dance as he played. The first band was great too. I am a sucker for some good saxophone, and when paired with guitar and a hilarious front man with a solid jazz voice? Please.

We're thinking we'll head back there tomorrow night! Weekend finally!! It's my birthday on Monday so Andrew surprised me with tickets to Medieval Times on Sunday night and I could not be more excited. I've never been and I've been aching to go for years!

Do any of you have exciting plans for the weekend? We'd love to hear from you!

Much love,
Michelle

The Loft!

Finally, the camera is charged and we have some time.. so I'll give you a little tour of the place!

The front door is in this picture, so you walk in and the kitchen is to your left. It's not too big. Just a stove on one side and the sink on the other with counter space next to it. We're already replenishing our wine bottle collection!

 We have an open floor plan, so from the kitchen you can look over the breakfast bar (we'll get stools soon!) into the den. The door there leads out to our balcony.














Here's a closer view of the couch and balcony.















And here's the den from the dining area. Andrew's family gave us two pieces of art for his birthday. It's the text of the Iliad (bottom) and the Odyssey (top) printed and readable, but it creates negative space in the words to illustrate a scene from the work. SO COOL. You can see better detail at Poster Text.














Here is the dining area, as seen from the couch.

A close up of the table.. little cow cheese servers that we bought here in WI, our little birdy s&p shakers, and cookies!!















Here is a close up of the bookshelf against the other wall in the dining area. We have all our nice hardbacks here. And, of course, our TJ bust from Katie and Chairman Mao from Julia! We also have our signed Chipper Jones and Joe Torre baseballs.

Now, you can see the loft! Andrew's sitting up there getting papers ready for our first day of work. That's the edge of the breakfast bar and the couch in the photo, so you can get a sense of the space.

Oh, and just for good measure, here's a better shot of the guest bathroom you can see in the photo.
I didn't take a photo of the guest bedroom because the bed wasn't made (the Jehls just left and we haven't done laundry yet) and it's still got a bunch of boxes. That will be our weekend project.

 Here is a close up of the loft as seen from the kitchen. Hello Andrew!
















The loft is the other space we haven't quite polished up yet. It usually looks better than this, though. Andrew was copying a bunch of materials we needed for our first day of work so he moved the chair out from the desk. We have a ton of office supplies but not enough places to store them. A file cabinet will have to be our our list of furniture to purchase.

Here is the view from the loft down into the living room!

And here is the kitchen from the loft!

Our bedroom is in a separate room  off from the loft.

Here's another shot showing more of our new furniture from Andrew's aunt. We need a lampshade and light bulb on my side!

Closet and window. The bedroom is HUGE. We really don't know what to do with all the space.















And this is just to show you that the bedroom has vaulted ceilings too!


















And finally, the master bedroom up in the loft.



















I hope you enjoyed the little tour! Maybe I'll make a video this weekend.
I had a great day at work today. Andrew and I are off to some French fete Festival thing downtown tonight with a friend of mine from Monticello who is up here visiting family. Andrew read that Madison does it every year around Bastille day. Have a good night!

Love,
Michelle

Disclaimer and Request

Hello everyone,

As you may have gathered from the invite, we decided to make this blog private. We created this space to keep in touch and give you a sneak peak into our lives here in Madison and our new jobs at Epic. Although we are going to be careful not to post any trade secrets, we want to be extra careful when it comes to sharing information about our work experience. We would really appreciate it if you would refrain from sharing anything we post about work without our permission. If there is anyone you think we missed in our blog invite, please let us know and include his or her email.

Thanks!

Cheers,
Andrew and Michelle

A View of Epic

Just thought I'd share some pictures from Epic on the blog. It's gorgeous!

This is the porch outside the cafeteria (which is delicious AND cheap):




This is also outside, facing the cafeteria:




Here's a view that is right outside the door to my office building, which is called Fomalhaut:




Here's us in the quad of the old campus (The one I'm on. Michelle is in Isis, on the new campus. By old and new, we mean building time. They're still connected):




Finally, here we are by the visitors' entrance with Humpty Dumpty:




That's all I've got for now. Will post more and tell more soon!

Cheers,
Andrew

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Madison, WI

My First Day

Up early again this morning with some extra time, so I thought I'd share about my first day.

Lots of orientation stuff, as you'd imagine, but it was pretty cool all around. First thing we met with our mentors, and mine is a guy I'll call Immanuel. He's been working at Epic for seven years on my application, Beacon--which is the oncology app--and we'll be working on the same team and actually sharing an office for some time. Luckily, he seems to be a really cool guy. By the end of the day, we actually had quite a bit of a rapport going. That was definitely the most exciting fact about the day.

Or shared office is in the building named Fomalhaut (pronounced foh-muhl-hawt), the New York City themed building, and we've got a large window with a view of a rooftop garden. It's pretty sweet. We're a pretty small application, so my whole team is basically in my hall and the one over, and my team lead is just around the corner. I'm the only new member of the team, at least on the Quality Assurance (QA) side, so I'll get to move into an already well-functioning team, I imagine, which I think is a pretty cool way to do it. I know Michelle and others are part of teams adding several members.

Otherwise, we started out the day with the basics you'd imagine, getting to know the companies principles, ten commandments, and it's culture. I can do a post on those later since I don't have much time now. Then we had an overview of how epic worked, followed by tutorials on system access, the training process, our computers and epic web pages, plus good times with tax and work ID forms.

That's about it really, but overall I was pretty stoked.

Hopefully I'll get to pass along more info soon. Thanks for reading,

Andrew

What I Do When Not Working

Cook! So, hopefully to my family and friend's delight, I will often share what I've recently been fixing up. I'm pretty proud of what I concocted last night for Michelle and my parents, so here goes my first post. These recipes both came from the magazine Garden Fresh Recipes, which I just picked up from the grocy store the other day. It's wonderful.

Main Course: Fajita Chicken Breasts with Sliced Sweet Potatoes
Prep: 25 Minutes Cook: 35 Minutes
Makes: 4 servings

4 Chicken Breasts with (or without) bone, skinned [recipe called for 8 thighs, but we had boneless skinless breasts we'd picked from Jenehr Farms on Saturday]
1/2 t. (sea) salt
1/4 t. ground black pepper
1 T. Olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 T. grated fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth [we actually left this out since it's hard to find free range broth, and I just added more olive oil]
2 t. Jamaican jerk seasoning [we substituted fajita seasoning, basically the same]
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, halved length-wise, and sliced 1/2 inch thick (about 1 pound)
Snipped fresh cilantro

1) sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. In an extra-large skilled heat oil over medium heat. Add chicken; cook just until browned on both sides. Remove chicken from skillet. Drain fat, reserving 1 T.
2) in the same skillet, cook onion, ginger, and garlic in the remaining fat. Cook and stir about 4 minutes or until tender. Add broth [oil], stirring to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the skillet.
3) return chicken to skillet. Sprinkle chicken with seasoning. Return to boil, and then reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Add sweet potatoes, cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes more, or until chicken is done and potatoes are tender. Sprinkle with cilantro.

Side Dish: Green Beans with Lemon and Walnuts
Start to Finish: 20 Minutes
Makes: 4 side-dish servings

12 ounces fresh green beans, trimmed
1 T. Butter
1/4 cup chopped walnuts [be generous]
1 t. Grated fresh ginger
1/4 t. Finely shredded lemon peel (much much better if from a fresh lemon)
1 t. Lemon juice

1) in a medium saucepan, cook beans, covered, in a small amount of boiling salted water until crisp-tender. Drain.
2) meanwhile, in a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add walnuts and ginger; cook for 2 to 3 minutes, being very careful not to burn your nuts. Remove from heat; stir in lemon peel and juice. Stir nut mixture into cooked beans.


And above is our finished product, served with a Rose from Saint Laurent vineyards in Washington state. It was delicious, and if you've never had sweet potato cooked in a skillet, you should definitely give it a try. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Andrew

Hello world!

Andrew and I just created this blog so we can share with you all of our adventures in Madison, our work experiences, my travel, and all the rest.

Thank you for stopping in! Tomorrow we say goodbye to Andrew's parents who were here for the weekend (which was waaaaay too short!!!) and we start our jobs on Tuesday! The apartment really looks like a home now that we have real furniture and art on the walls.

BBQ tomorrow! Look for updates soon!

Love,
Michelle