Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Am I Old?

Today I went to the mall shopping for Christmas presents. I now have bought many of my presents for my family and Becca, but still have a little more to shop for. When I was ready to leave, and just about out of the mall, a lady carrying a clip-board walked up to me. She said "May I ask you a question?" I reluctantly agreed. Her question was "What year were you born in?" My answer was clearly 1977, to which she replied "Holy Sh^$!.......How old are you?" I said 29. She flipped through her clip-board and said there was nothing for me, then asked me if I smoked. When I said no, she said ok and turned to someone else.
Now, what am I supposed to think when I get that reaction upon telling someone what year I was born in? Do I look so old that she didn't think I'd possibly been born as recently as 1977? And is there something about me that looks like I smoke incessantly? I don't know. But she sure made me wonder.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Thanksgiving

This is thanksgiving weekend, and its been a pretty good weekend for me. Thursday I only had to work 6 hours, which allowed me to be home with my parents for thanksgiving lunch before going to the hospital. Then I worked all day friday until 8 AM saturday, and had the rest of the weekend off, which I predominantly spent finishing decorating the christmas tree, watching football, doing my laundry and catching up on sleep.
One of the traditions my mom has for us with thanksgiving is to put 5 corn kernels on each plate, then have us go around and one by one talk about something we are thankful for and put a kernel into a bowl, passing the bowl around until all the kernels are deposited. So in the mood of thanksgiving I thought I'd list off the things that I was thankful for:
1. Becca - we have been apart for the majority of the last year and a half but have continued to keep our relationship growing stronger all the time, and she is a bigger part of my life now than ever before.
2. Parents - especially that I have been living close to them, had their support through my residency, and been able to participate in the events surrounding my grandparents deaths this past year.
3. Game Night - this may sound silly, but I have been very thankful for the way Erik, Joel, Gina and I have been able to keep in touch this past year through the time we spend together every week during our game nights.
4. Residency - I feel strongly that God has put me in the right program for me, and that over the past year and a half that I have been learning the things I need to know to be as good a doctor as I can be, both in medical knowledge and the other personal skills necessary.
5. The Buckeye victory over the hated school up north, and in honor of Erik, High powered stereo equipment - while I am seriously thankful for many ultimately more important things, I always feel its imporant to remember some of the less smaller things in life that can bring much more joy than they really should.
Its amazing sometimes when I sit down and think about it how many things I do have to be thankful for. On that line of thought, its lunch time and I probably should go demonstate my thankfulness for Mom's good cooking by eating.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

My New Blog

Here is my new blog. I decided to finally make one after much encouragement. Yesterday I was on call overnight on the pediatrics floor at Albany Med. I think we admitted 5 children and transferred 3 from the PICU. But it was a wonderful day. Why? Because I was fortunate enough to be able to watch the majority of the OSU-Michigan football game while on call. As the Buckeyes fortunately held on to their victory, they are now slotted to play in the BCS Champtionship game, I think on January 8, 2007. Very exciting. The new BCS rankings came out already and Michigan is still number 2 in the rankings, so there's a pretty good chance there will be a rematch for the National Championship. I don't know how I feel about that. But for the immediate present I'm happy just celebrating yesterday's victory.

Also, as this is a new blog and I haven't had one before, I thought I'd take this chance to post a few pictures from when Becca and I went to Mexico. We went down to Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point) on Halloween weekend. It was a lot of fun. We went shopping through, and I was given an opportunity to completely fail at haggling; an opportunity which I could not pass by. I bought a small chess set, which I actually like, but certainly paid more than I needed as I paid his original asking price. Also, we went to a beach in the mornining and got a few pictures, so I thought I'd post a few of them. During the second picture we we standing in the water and using the camera timer, right when it took the picture we were getting hit by a small wave.

Ok, that's all for today. Enjoy my blog, I'll try to at least update it more frequently than Erik does. :)