Colorado Springs

Becca and I are in Colorado for the week. Saturday we flew into Denver, got our rental car, then drove down to Colorado Springs. On the way down from Denver we found ourselves in the middle of a pretty heavy storm with balls of hail that slowed traffic and resulted in another shopping spree at Kohls to pass the time. But then we got down to my grandparents' house and had dinner with the two of them and Amy. After dinner we went to Amy's house, met her roommate Amy, and got Becca situated in her room. Then I was back to Granmom and Grandad's for the night. Sunday we went to church with Amy then went to pick up my grandparents and go to lunch. Grandad, who is on a special diet and doesn't eat out much, had been dressed and ready to go to the restaurant hours before we got there and was headed out the door as soon as we arrived but we managed to sneak a few pictures in first. Here is a picture that he grudgingly allowed us to take. For lunch we went to Texas Roadhouse where we met with Aunt Sarah, Uncle Jim, Aunt Lori and Uncle Tom. After lunch Becca and I went to Garden of the Gods where there are many pretty large rocks. Sort of like Sedona in Arizona but not as nice. There is one rock called the Balancing Rock, which is really cool until you realize it is cemented in place. Next was Manitou Springs, a fun old town nearby that had an old school arcade. We finished off the day at Seven Falls, which is a beautiful waterfall with seven parts that would have been much nicer if it wasn't highly commercialized and cost $10.25 each person to see.

On Monday we went Pikes Peak on the cog railway which was beautiful. The view from a mountain top is breathtaking, at is the air considering that we were at 14,110 feet above sea level. On the way up we sat across from a couple, Sherry and Kurt, who are motor homers from Indiana that drove all around the country. In fact they had been through Albany where they unfortunately took a wrong exit and got into a bad part of town. They were spending a month on the road but needed to get back home in time for the Michigan-Notre Dame football game. Great people except for being Michigan fans.... While talking to them Sherry noted a person behind us wearing a Michigan hat, so we started talking to them too. That was a friendly family, again with unfortunately misguided loyalties. However, the family dad asked me where I was from and I told him Albany. So he proceeded to tell me that he had done his radiology residency at AMC where I am now and had worked with some of my attendings when they were residents 20 years ago. Small world.

After Pikes Peak we drove down to the Royal Gorge, the highest suspension bridge in the world just over 1000 feet above the bottom of the gorge. People have bungi-jumped off of that, can you believe it? Not for me. The gorge was great though.

Then we had dinner with the grandparents again at Mimi's Cafe, which was really good. Grandad again followed his low salt-low fat diet by ordering Fish and Chips. Hmmmm, probably not what the doctor intended. I stole the bill and paid for the meal, which I'm not sure they were too happy with but made Becca and me happy. On the way home we let them treat ut to desert at McDonalds which further improved Grandad's diet with a milkshake. After returning Granmom and Grandad to their house and chatting with them some more, we went back to Amy's and the 3 of us went to see Hairspray. A manly movie? No. But hey, John Travolta was in it, that counts for something right? No, he played a woman. But he did get highly flattered when his character (a woman) was told by her husband "You are old and fat, but you're never boring." That was funny. Actually I really enjoyed the movie and laughed to whole time. Not manly, but enjoyable non the less.

Tuesday we went to the Olympic Training facility and took a tour of the grounds. The funny part was when we were at the part of the tour looking at the pool, 2 of the male swimmers got out of the pool, flexed their muscles and posed.

Slightly off topic, I borrowed a GPS device for my computer from a classmate at AMC, at it's been pretty fun. We get into the car and can easily get directions to wherever we want to go. I highly recommend it. The main problem we've had with it is that when Becca was navigating with it she got car sick. So if you're prone to motion sickness that may not be the best bet.

OK, we're off to Basalt, near Aspen, where tomorrow we are going whitewater rafting. Very exciting.

Sweet on Geeks

Becca just introduced me to a website I'd never seen, sweetongeeks.com. Apparently it was set up by a geeky couple who wanted to help other geeks meet each other. How romantic. :)

It has cool stuff on it including links to places like thinkgeek.com, from which Jenna has a shirt. There is also their blog, which among other things includes a list of reasons to date geek girls.

1. They are generally available
2. Other men will tend not to steal them
3. They can fix things
4. Your computer will love them
5. They're smart

Now seriously, are the first 2 items (aka she's undesirable to most people) really a selling point?

Too Fat to Fly?

Today at 1 pm I got a page from Dennis, one of my chief residents. I called him back and he asked me how heavy I was. I told him 160 pounds, to which he responded "Good, you're flying to New York City." There was a child with severe cardiomyopathy (heart muscle not working) who needed to be flown to New York and Dennis was too heavy for the flight so I was going to get to go. I was pretty excited as I've been looking forward to flying in a helicopter at some point this year. Additionally, I would be flying over the Catskill Mountains and over New York City which would both be incredible views on a clear day. So I went over to the PICU, only to be told the helicopter crew had said now that the resident had to be 147 pounds or less. Apparently this was an extremely heavy child, who was needing heaving equipment to help him stay alive, and thus did not leave much room for extra weight. Very disappointing. Maybe next time.....

Scrabble Time

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 34. What is your score? Get it here.

I just found this randomly and thought it was pretty cool. I have the highest scrabble score of anyone in my immediate family. That means I'm special right? :) But of course you can't use maiden and married names, thats not fair. But Gina can do Gina the Shortest of the All Cooper, that scores 49 points. At least being short can be a bonus for something...... ;)

Wait, Judah's score (37) is higher than mine. I'm just going to have to name my kids Zena Xerxes, or something like that, so I can reclaim the lead.

Any case, I've been playing Scrabulous with Joel on facebook.com and it's pretty fun. Anyone else who would want to join in and challenge Joel or me would be welcome. I beat him 3 times in a row, but then he won the last game so now the pressures on.

Potter Completed

I just finished Harry Potter today, after spending too much of this last week reading instead of working on an upcoming presentation. That's OK, I still have 2 weeks to do it.

The last 2 Harry Potter books I didn't enjoy quite as much. Book 5, The Order of the Phoenix, I just got tired of Harry being mad at everyone. While Book 6, The Half-Blood Prince, was good, I wasn't drawn into it like I had been by the earlier books in the series. Subsequently I was a touch guarded in my enthusiasm coming up to this release. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, however, gripped me at the beginning of the book and pulled me through with a ferocity that hardly let me attend to my other responsibilities, like eating. It was great, including lots of intrigue, combat, excitement, mystery, and never being certain how it was going to end. In short, it included everything J.K. Rowling should have included in the finale of the series. She also answered all remaining questions and I believe truly ended the series. In short, an A+ novel.

Outside of the wonderful world of Harry Potter, I'm up at Mom and Dad's for the weekend. They are almost all packed up to move to Morgantown in a little over a week. Once they leave I won't be coming up here any more and will need to find new things to do for weeknds. But I'm glad for them, this church has been really difficult for Dad and at this point they're very optimistic about the new church. Also the Morgantown church has worked it out so they will now be providing health insurance for Mom and Dad, so financially it looks like it'll work out ok.

New Computer

I just got a new laptop, it's pretty cool. I'd been talking about it for a while, trying to decide exactly what I wanted and when I should get it. I did a good bit of research, and compared prices for hours up in the NICU while working the night shift. So much infact that I think the resident I was working with got tired of looking over to see what I was doing and seeing laptop info on the screen. But I ordered it in June, it was shipped June 28, and arrived at the parent's house on July 2. That's what, 4 days transit. Not too bad even for any shipping, but they shipped it from Shanghai, so I was really quite impressed.

My new laptop is an HP and has some cool gimmicky stuff in it. There's a built in webcam and a memory card slot, those are cool. But the best part is the fingerprint reader. I love it :). I now can log into my email with a simple swipe of my finger. I guess it's still a security risk if someone steals the laptop because my passwords are stored on it, but it seems pretty safe unless they cut off my finger at the same time. And in that case I have bigger things to worry about than a few lost passwords.

Otherwise I am happily off my NICU night rotation. I don't have another month of nights until January. My next difficult rotation is in September when I do the PICU again. For now however I'm doing a Genetics elective, which is pretty light.

Weird Al

Tonight Becca and I went to the 'Weird Al' Yankovic concert. Here's a picture of me in rapt anticipation of the upcoming concert. As you'll notice I decided to wear a shirt sufficiently in line with the nerdiness of the event.

Once we got there we went and bought a t-shirt. After all, I needed a Weird Al shirt!

Then we went up to our seats and waited. Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!........Nothing......Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!.......Nothing........This went on for 30 minutes before Weird Al came out. But I did learn something exciting during this time. Becca told me that going to this concert was the single nerdiest thing she'd ever done. And then, to make it better, I asked her to name the nerdiest thing she'd ever done without me, and she said taking the SAT! She's making a lot of progress toward full nerdiness and I find that quite exciting. :)

Then at 8 it finally happened. Weird Al came out. We then were treated to 2 hrs and 20 min of Weird Al. It was heavenly. We went through most of the songs on the newest album, and many of his older ones. In between many of his songs he played video clips, predominantly from Al TV episodes, including many "celebrity interviews." If you don't know what I mean, look on You Tube sometime and I'm sure you'll find some of them. The videos gave him time to change into various outfits during the concert. For example, he had on Obi-Wan's robs for the Star Wars Saga and Yoda (yes, he did it!) I loved every minute of it. Weird Al is seriously the coolest nerd in the world. That and he's especially active and highly entertaining to watch.

He ended the night doing an encore, which was his long song Albuquerque. It seemed like the perfect way to end the concert.

Also, Ive been trying to decide where this fits in my list of favorite concerts. Before this, I'd say my favorite concert was DC Talk. They put on a good show. However, at this point I have to say Weird Al is my favorite concert. There is simply nothing he does that I don't love.

For those of you who will be going to see him later this summer, get excited. You're in for a very good show!