Sabino Canyon

Well, before I get ready to go back out to see Becca again I guess I aught to first write another blog as promised from the last trip.

One of the other things we did while I was in Arizona was go hiking at Sabino Canyon in Coronado National Forest. It's pretty close to Becca's house so it's a good place to go for a hike and has trails that are not so challenging that we'd die. We decided to hike about 3.7 miles, which we finished in about 2 hours. It was really quite pretty, as you can see from the pictures.

Other things we did included my cooking a wonderful dinner for Becca including but not limited to Tiramisu which was especially tasty. Only about 2/5 for originality but 9/10 for taste. We also spent quite a while at Kohl's and bought me an insane amount of new clothing, but it was for an average savings of 70%, so I couldn't complain except that I was tired of trying on pants by the end. :) Guess that's what happens when I go 3 1/2 years without buying new clothes.

Monday and Tuesday of this week I take Step 3 of the USMLE, which is the US medical liscensing exams. They'll be long, tiring, and most certainly difficult but it'll be good to have them out of the way.

Skiing in Arizona

Hi! I'm back from seeing Becca in Arizona so I thought I'd get back to blogging. I'll start with our opening weekend in which we drove up to the White Mountain Apache Reservation. There we went skiing at Sunrise Ski Park. It was great. Neither of us had been skiing for years so we were at fairly similar skill levels.

We did a good job staying on our skis and not falling with one exception. In my infinite wisdom I decided that we were doing so well that we could go ahead and try a short stretch of blue hill called Crown Dancer (if you don't know, the slopes are color coded, from green to blue to black in increasing difficulty.) After all I'd done blue hills in Ohio without difficulty so I thought it would be ok. Well, I now appreciate the idea that at better ski resorts the slopes are harder. We fell a lot. Actually, we fell so much that we gave up and ultimately walked down until getting to a green section. The other picture is looking back up at the hill we walked down. If you don't think it looks too bad, try it :)

After that we stayed in the green slopes and were much happier. We had aspirations of going snow shoeing the next day but we were both so sore we instead swung over to Phoenix on the way back to Tucson and stopped at Ikea to do some shopping, which was safe as well.

There's more to my week down there but I'll describe it later.

End of PICU

Here I am, finally doing another post, it's only been a month since my last post. But as I said in my first post, I'm still doing them more often than Erik :).

Last month I was in the PICU and was regularly busy, that is why I haven't been posting lately, that and I was having a tough time thinking of things to say up here. During the PICU month I was on call overnight every 3rd night, which means I spent a lot of time at the hospital recently. But it really went well. I learned a lot about intensive care medicine and am continuing to feel more confident with time. We had many sick children to care for, including a few post op from cardiac surgery to correct congenital heart defects, which were good learning experiences. I was in my first code blue, which was both a good experience and bad because the child died. I am glad to be finished with the PICU for now and am certainly enjoying my current cardiology rotation, but it was a good experience and I'm glad to have done it.

Even though I was in the PICU for the month I did have the chance to be up at my parents when Erik and Gina were up there. I always enjoy seeing them and playing games, and now that Jenna is more interactive and talking more its a lot of fun to be around her. She's pretty smart, and as you can see from the Christmas picture of her she's cute as well. Also, they brought this great book called the brick testament in which some guy had inllustrated Genesis with Legos. If you want to see it go to http://www.thebricktestament.com/ It's pretty funny.

Ok, thats all I can write for one day. Remember everyone, GO BUCKS!!!

BCS

Today was BCS Selection Day, when we found out that OSU will be playing the Florida Gators in the BCS Championship game on January 8. 2007. I'm excited. This will be the first time the two schools have played against each other in a college football game, and it's for the national championship. I don't really know how good Florida is. They play in the SEC which is a good strong conference and came out of it with only 1 loss, so they have to be pretty good. But I still think OSU is going to be able to beat them, hopefully at least. Guess we'll see in a month or so.

Also important in my life, I just finished my month of senior resident on the floor and am now moving to the PICU. That'll be pretty tough. I'm on call 27 hours every 3rd night for the month, which I think will get quite tiring. I do however have some time around Christmas that I'll be off and be able to stay with my parents, and Erik, Gina and Jenna who will also be up there for the holidays. That'll be fun.

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.

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.

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. :)