Signing Off

I thought having movers move us this time around would simplify the whole process. But alas, complications have arisen. We are only moving effectively one room's worth of furniture, plus probably 15 boxes (half of which are my kitchen stuff), so we went with movers that do small moves. Small moves = small company. They only do one run a month up the coast, and this month's run leaves today. And since the soonest we would be ready to have our stuff picked up would be tomorrow, it's all going on next month's run. We will be without our stuff for about a month. This means shipping clothes and other essentials (which is actually cheaper per pound than sending it with the movers, but also means schlepping it to the post office). It will all work out, it's just frustrating that we missed the move date by 24 hours!

In other annoying moving news, the internet company decided that when we said we wanted our service cancelled on 6/15, we really meant 6/8, so they turned off our internet yesterday afternoon. Despite sitting on hold and dealing with (surprisingly very helpful) technical support only 4 hours after our service had been turned off, we still have to wait until tomorrow morning for them to come turn it back on. So, you may ask, how are you posting to your blog without internet (and it's not via one of our neighbors' connections, they all secure their internet, the bastards)? Apparently the blackberry can function as a modem. I love technology. Sure, it costs $30 per month, but I can get the first month free and it will probably come in handy on our trip. As long as I have a network signal, we will have internet.

Of course, you may have heard about my frustrations with my blackberry. How I would get stuck with the hourglass spinning and spinning. How it would freeze at the most inopertune moments. How I couldn't answer the phone because despite pushing the send key over and over, the phone didn't seem to care. How I would have to remove the battery at least 3 times daily, sometimes hourly, in order to get it to function. I finally had enough of all that, and after uninstalling unnecessary software without improvement, I reinstalled the entire operating system. It took about an hour, and some minor frustrations with trying to figure how to make the email work again, but now it works beautifully. Just in time for its debut as a modem.

And I have my beloved google maps back. This is the best application ever created. Those google people are geniuses.

I finished my last internal medicine clinic yesterday. I'm not working at all this week. I am essentially done with residency. We have our road trip through Utah coming up, and I'll have a week in Seattle before starting fellowship. At this point, I think I'm ready to be done with this blog. It seems a good time to end. Done with residency, done with San Diego, moving back home. We'll still have our other blog, to share our adventures. And pictures of Wylie. And knitting. So you can still check up on us.

Change your bookmarks to: tracyandadam.wordpress.com and stay tuned for our Utah adventure!

Moving and Shaking

My days in San Diego are coming to a close. I can't believe we are moving in only 13 days! I've packed 4 boxes. Our goal is to get rid of as much stuff as possible before we actually leave, and so everything went up on Craigslist this week. I'm fascinated by Craigslist and the people who shop there. We sold a futon for $150. The guy came, paid and took the futon. Done. We sold two cheap side tables from Ikea for $5 each (they are $13 new). The lady drove 16 miles and then bargained them down to $3.50 each. I think she spent more money on gas driving over here than she saved. But I do love that people come to my house, take away my stuff and give me money. So while we wait for people come to take our stuff, I'm busy packing boxes and finding ways to get out of work for the rest of the year. I'm also trying to finish baby gifts for all of my spawning friends, and figuring out how to make dinners for two weeks with only the food in our cupboards. It's going to be a busy 13 days.

As for getting out of work, we discovered that a friend and I have both been scheduled for the same rotation these next two weeks. Since it is a notoriously slow rotation (for instance, I was at work for all of 2 hours this morning), I am working the first week and she is working the 2nd week, so we each get an extra week off. Take that extra week plus my two weeks vacation at the end of June and voila! Tracy gets 3 weeks off before starting fellowship! Mission accomplished.

Baby gifts... I'm knitting. I have lots of knitting to do as there are lots of babies being born. Gift #1 is almost done. It seems to be a never-ending project, but I guess that's what I get for trying to make a blanket. It's a very nice blanket though, if I do say so myself. And since the mom-to-be has already had a sneak preview of her gift, I can share it here:

Gift #2 was actually completed quite awhile ago, and has been waiting for the proper baby. And gift #3 will likely be completed on our upcoming road trip. They will be revealed in the coming months. I promise.

And the final task of our remaining time in San Diego--cook using only ingredients in the cupboards and freezer. This is defnitely a challenge. Last night's dinner was bean and cheese taquitos made with my famous homemade refried beans. As for the rest of the week, it will be a mystery. I can't actually remember what most of the things in the freezer are, so we will defrost them and then eat them, whatever they may be. It should keep things interesting.

We've had some out of town adventures the last few weekends: LA over Memorial Day and Phoenix last weekend for a friend's engagement party (the whole ceremony was in Vietnamese so we had no idea what was happening but it did end with lots and lots of delicious food, which made the 12 hours of driving well worth it!). We'll post pictures of that on the other blog shortly.

Family Reunion

We had an unexpected family reunion this weekend. While your grandmother's funeral is never an enjoyable event, it was wonderful to have the chance to spend time with the family. Dad and his sisters and their families were all down for the weekend, and we spent most of our time at Grandpa's house. My cousin has been doing research on the family's history and had an old scrapbook from the turn of the century with articles and photos of my great-great-grandfather. We also went through boxes of pictures from the last 100 years, figuring out who everyone was, and putting together a digital record of all the pictures. I have boxes of photos and slides from Mom's side of the family back in Seattle that we're going to have to do the same thing with once I get back home. It was so interesting reading about my anscestors and learning a little more about where we're from.

The long weekend finally came to an end today. Dad and Marcy are on their way up to Seattle, driving Grandma's Buick. Wylie is pouting because we have reinstated the house rules now that Dad and Marcy have left (no more sleeping in the bed, no more jumping on the couch, etc). But we did take him to the beach today, in an effort to cheer him up. I think it worked. I give you some very poor video footage of today's adventure at Fiesta Island:

And for those who aren't Wylie's friend on Facebook, here is my favorite Wylie video--he's very suspicious of anything new, including treats:

The end is near

Today I finished my last in-patient month of my residency. And someone decided to use this opportunity to truly test my abilities as a physician. We admitted eight patients to the ICU yesterday (we normally average one new patient a day). We had 15 patients on our service, most of whom were actively sick all night, one of whom died at 7 am. I did not sleep last night, and I am so glad to be done. I start a two week dermatology rotation tomorrow. I am not very excited about that. It's two weeks of nothing but clinics and that can be quite dull. I also find skin very uninteresting. But at least I will be home by 5pm every night, won't have to work more than 8 hours a day, and don't have to work another weekend for the rest of my residency.

So what is up next, now that I have some free time again?

Babies. Everyone I know is having a baby it seems, so my knitting is in full swing. I'll share pics as the gifts are completed. I know you miss seeing my knitting.

Travel. Adam and I are going to LA for Memorial Day. We needed a little vacation, and Wylie has a dog-sitter in the OC who loves to have him come visit. We're going to drop him off, swing by a baby shower, and spend the rest of the weekend in LA being tourists. We're also going to Arizona for a friend's engagement party in May. Rumor has it we will be the only caucasian people at the Vietnamese engagement ceremony. We'll probably be the tallest too...

Moving. We are leaving San Diego on June 14th. We're spending the first few days in Utah, visiting Zion and Bryce Canyon. Then we're going to work our way up to Missoula, visit my nephew (and Tom and Kat too, but honestly, it's all about the baby), finally returning back to Seattle around June 21st.

And something completely unrelated... I made my mom's friend socks for Christmas. They were very nice socks if I do say so myself:


We mailed them January 6th and by the end of the month they still hadn't arrived. I had given them up for lost (partly because the guy at the post office had tried to send them to Australia rather than Austria) until this week. April 29th, only 110 days later, the socks arrived. They apparently took a detour through what I'm guessing was Israel. Anyone know how to read Hebrew?

MIA

I'm in the ICU this month, so you won't hear much from me. Not only is the schedule keeping me busy, but I'm trying to get all my paperwork together for my fellowship in Seattle, planning a weekend get-away to L.A. for memorial day weekend, figuring out how to move our stuff to Seattle and how to see what we don't want to move, and planning on week-long road trip back to Seattle via Zion and Montana (I should probably check with Tom and Kat and make sure they are around the weekend we are planning on being there!).

So with my day off today I'm going to Costco and getting a haircut. Unfortunatley, this is about as exciting as my days will be for the next 4 weeks. So forgive the lack of posts. I'm sure Adam will keep you all up to date with his exciting weekends on the other blog. I'll be back in May!

Forty Hours in Seattle

I had a free weekend so decided to come up to Seattle for a weekend with the girls. We crammed as much as possible into the 40 hours I was here. I am now at the airport and exhausted but had a very good time. The highlights:
- wine with Kate at the Sitting Room on Queen Anne rto catch up on things after she picked me up at the airport
- breakfast with the Tylee girls at the Portage Bay Cafe before Kendell heads off to Belgium for the next 3 months
- high tea at the Queen Mary, which was over the top lacy and frilly but so much fun
- watching the Zags win inglorious fashion while hanging out at dad's
- cocktails in Ballard at BalMar
- and perhaps the most overwhelming aspect: fighting off the Japanese tourists at the Coach outlet store to get my fabulous bag for 50% off! Those tourists do love their Coach bags. There were people buying 5 or 6 bags at a time. Nuts.

Now I'm on my way home. Back to work tomorrow. But really excited to move back home in a few months!

Keep on Keeping on

I've been enjoying the free weekends I've had these last 6 weeks.
You can read about our most recent adventures--flying and camping--on our other blog.

Life is more normal these days. I go to work in the morning, I come home in the evening, Adam takes Wylie to the park, I make dinner, Adam cleans the kitchen, and we enjoy our evenings. It has been nice. But not very interesting, thus not much to write about today.

This weekend I'm off for a girls weekend in Seattle. It will be nice to see some rain for a few days. And great to see my family and friends.

Counting Down the Weeks

I have had a fairly easy schedule the last few months. In reality, I only have one hard month left, and two different 2 week rotations that will actually require any amount of work. It's kind of amazing to think that after all this schooling I've subjected myself to, I can see the end coming. In only 13 weeks (I think) I will be done, and heading back to Seattle. I'm so happy to be going back to Seattle, for many reasons. I will definitely miss the predictably wonderful weather we have here, but this has never felt like home. Part of that was probably my doing. I always knew this would be temporary, so I never tried to set down roots. I'm looking forward to finally feeling settled. I want to have a home. I want a yard that is mine. I want to finally unpack all our wedding gifts. And I want to stop moving. Dear Lord, do I want to stop moving. I was fairly stable through high school, only moving a few times. But since then? I lived in one dorm my freshman year, three different places my sophomore year, two places junior year and one apartment senior year. Not counting all the off-terms spent at home in Seattle. After college? I lived at home for about a year, sub-let a room in a house with Kate for a month or two, lived with Emily for about a year, moved into a house with a bunch of random people for about a year, then moved out with one of those roommates for about a year. She got married, and moved out, so I moved in with a friend of hers who needed a roommate for another year. Then, during my 3rd year of medical school I lived in Anchorage, AK for three months, back in Seattle living at home for 6 weeks, spent 6 weeks in Sheridan, WY, six weeks in Buffalo, WY, six weeks in Great Falls, MT and then back to Seattle. I think I moved in with Kate at this point, with another 6 weeks stint in Great Falls, MT. After Kate went back to law school, I moved into another room found on Craigslist. But the passive aggressive notes of my roommate got to be too much, so I moved in with Adam until I came to San Diego. Here I had my little studio for 9 months, we house sat for 2 months, and finally have been in our current place for almost two years. I think. So in 15 years, I have had 24 different homes.

So I am ready to go back to Seattle and hopefully stay put for awhile. Currently, Adam and I are trying to figure out the best approach to take with moving back. We have his house in Ballard, which is a fine house in a great neighborhood. It is not our dream house. The kitchen is small, and I suspect will frustrate me when it comes to cooking. The yard is small, and doesn't lend itself well to exercising Vizslas or growing tomatoes. There's only one shower. But it has 4 bedrooms, it has a big basement. It is close to the Burke-Gilman trail, making bike commuting easy. Do we move back into his house, perhaps invest in a kitchen remodel? Build a fence? Do some landscaping? Or do we keep renting out the house and find a new place for us? If we go that route, do we buy another place (assuming someone will loan us money after looking and my income to debt ratio)? Or rent a place that has what we are looking for, with the knowledge that after I finish fellowship, we might not stay in Seattle? My mind is overwhelmed trying to figure out the right approach here. I keep going back and forth. But it always come back to my need to feel settled. I can't keep moving like this. I seriously have boxes that I haven't unpacked in 2 or 3 moves, because I know I'm only going to have to pack them up again.

But regardless, we will be back in Seattle. And that will be good.

Rainy Weekend

Several storms moved through over the weekend, bringing lots and lots of rain. What is one to do on a rainy weekend in San Diego? Well, I baked, and cooked, and drank beer. All in all, a nice way to pass some time. First, the baking. My mom has a recipe for Dilly Bread, which I haven't had since I was little. She had posted about the bread on her blog recently (yes, my mom has a blog) and I decided I wanted to make it. So I got the recipe, and set to work. I had been making bread with my kitchen aid and the dough hook, but the motor is somewhat wimpy, and can really only handle making pizza dough. Any significant kneading sends the mixer shuddering across the counter. I also have a significant lack of counter space in my kitchen, so kneading by hand is challenging. Thus, I put the bread maker to work. I let it knead and rise the bread for me, then baked it normally. I think it turned out lovely. And delicious.

The trouble with baking bread is that I'm always faced with leftovers. I could sit and eat the entire loaf in one setting, but that kind of goes against this whole eat less exercise more thing I'm working on. So bread always goes stale before I can make it through the loaf. Sunday morning it was still raining, so I deicded to make breakfast. Utilizing the Dilly Bread (and a lot of cheese) I made a strata. It was tasty, although certainly not part of a low fat/low cal diet. I only ate two meals Sunday to make up for it:

After breakfast, we drove up to Escondido to visit the Stone Brewery. As far as breweries go, it was your typical brewery tour. They mainly brew bitter beers--IPAs, pale ales and their signiture Arrogant Bastard Ale. Strong, but tasty beers. Adam had the cask ale, which was the smoked porter with chipotle pepper. Very unusual, but I liked it. We also ate lunch at their beautiful restaurant. Then drove home in the rain. Now the sun is back, but the rain is supposed to return this weekend. We will be in Connecticut though, so we'll miss the rain. And I'm ok with that.

Religion

I have not been a religious person for most of my life. I did go to Catholic school until I was 7, and we did go to church for the first 7 years of my life, but all that was before I really understood what was going on. My memories from church consist of sitting on the floor near the kneelers with coloring books and being afraid of Father Gould. As I've grown up, I've come to realize I'm really not meant to be Catholic. It's hard for me to be a part of a religion that has so many fundamental beliefs that are contrary to my own. Lately, I've been thinking that I would like to start going to church again. I don't think I feel the need to add religion to my life so much as I would like to have a community that I feel part of. But what religion? How do I find a community that fits with my beliefs? Of course, the internet. After a google search for "how to choose a religion" I found a 20 question quiz, which identified the religion that most closely fits my values/beliefs. And the answer? I'm guessing those who know me won't be surprised...

Unitarian Universalist: basically, you believe whatever you want regarding the existance of God, they tend to believe that the Bible is a symbolic story; the origin of the universe is based in nature; they don't believe in original sin and overall, God (or whatever you believe in) is good; tend to be liberal when it comes to contemporary issues.

They actually gave me a list of 26 religions that match my answers anywhere from 100% (unitarian) to 10% (jehovah's witness). Interestingly, I'm a better match with LDS than Catholicism.

The remainder of the top 5, for the curious:
Liberal Quakers: generally believe in individual spiritual truths, God is love, love is eternal, and our actions in life should reflect love for all of humanity rather than the idea of heaven/hell; all will be saved because God is good and forgiving; pretty liberal when it comes to contemporary issues
Neo-Pagan: Wicca, Shamanism, etc falls into this category; God is all and within all; The Great Mother Earth, or Mother Nature, is highly worshipped; many believe in reincarnation; evil occurs when we "forget" that we are one with the great spirit--an imbalance in nature; probably a little too out there for me.
Secular Humanist: most are atheists or agnostic; evil can be explained through psychology, etc.; working for the betterment of humanity through ethical consciousness and social works are considered paramount, but from a naturalistic rather than supernatural standpoint; I think I need a bit more spirituality than this one would offer.
Liberal Protestant: view the Bible as a witness to God rather than the word of God; includes include some churches within Anglican/Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ; God controls the processes (e.g. evolution) that created life; no original sin and God is good and made people inherently good

Anyway, maybe once we move back to Seattle I'll start searching for my religion. I think I'll steer clear of Neo-Paganism, but Unitarian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and UCC are all possibilities. We'll see. It's all about feeling like you are somewhere you belong. I'd love to hear other people's experiences with any of these (or other) religions.

Relaxing

There are times when doctoring isn't the horrible time consuming adventure it can be. Like this month. Right now I'm on rheumatology consults, which is actually very interesting. We have clinic 3 half days per week, and the rest of the time is spent seeing in-patient consults. However, there aren't many in-patient consults right now, so I've been hanging out at home in the mornings, working on presentations, doing reading, and playing with the puppy. I only live 5 minutes from the hospital, so the fellow pages me if I need to see someone and I can go in. It's definitely a nice change of pace.

So I'm trying to take advantage of this down-time to get my life in order. It seems like I'm always trying to get something in order. I don't know what I would do if I had nothing to organize. I think a part of me thrives on disorder. It gives me a purpose. In addition to organizing my life, we have some travel coming up. We're going to Connecticut in a few weeks for our east coast wedding reception, then I'm going to Seattle in March for a girls' weekend with Kate and Emily. After that I'm back in the ICU for a month, but then the home stretch... I can't wait to head back home again.

I leave you with random pictures and links:

My most recent socks, comepleted.

Wylie's online photo album on PicasaWeb:

Puppies

Adam's birthday, documented on the other website
My favorite recipe of the week: "fried" chicken
Enjoy!

Time to Spare

For those of you keeping track, I have approximately 4 1/2 months of residency left. I am now in the midst of a fairly easy stretch. For the last two weeks, I was on a dermatology rotation. Of the 10 possible days there could be clinics, I worked 5 of those days and I don't think I worked a full 8 hours on any of those days. Now I am on rheumatology consults for the next two weeks. Again, I was home by 2 pm today which was lovely. The rest of the year is hit and miss, with a week of the ED, and week of nights at the VA, a month of ICU, but interspersed with those rotations are more dermatology! More consults! And lots more weekends!

So today when I got home at 2 pm I thought I would take advantage of that spare time and make something exciting for dinner. But I was not very inspired. I went through my files of "recipes to try" and found some turkey burgers from Cooking Light (after the weekend of eating with Kate and Ben we will be on a Cooking Light kick for awhile). But they were going to take all of 20 minutes to make. I needed something more exciting! More involved! That's when I remembered the cookbook Kat got me for Christmas: Montana Cooking, and its recipe for homemade hamburger buns. Yes, I spent 20 minutes making turkey burgers and rather than just picking up some hamburger buns while at the grocery store, I spent 4 hours making my own. They were ok. I still have problems with my bread (it just isn't light and fluffy) but it was fun. When we move back to Seattle however, we're going to need to get a chest freezer because I have filled up our little freezer here with rolls, pizza dough, chili, chicken stock, turkey stock, waffles and now hamburger buns.

Which brings me to the main point of this long-winded post about cooking. I like to find recipes all over the place. My cookbook collection. Cooks Illustrated. Cooking Light. Bon Appetite. Food blogs. Tastespotting. More food blogs. And I save them, until I try them. If they are good, they go into my permanent collection. When I got married, Kate requested a copy of my recipes as a bridesmaid gift. So I searched and searched for a good way to put them all together in cookbook format and I found this. I love it. I made cookbooks for all the bridesmaids and sisters-in-law. I still add new recipes and figured out that I can share my recipe collection on-line. If they want the new recipes to add to their cookbooks, they can order them. And if they have recipes of their own they want to share, they can set up a Tastebook of their own. I'm working on getting my recipes updated, then I'll be sending the link to all the original recipients. If you are interested in seeing what makes the cut with me, let me know and I'll send along the link. Just a warning, I enjoy using cream, butter and cheese. Things taste better that way. If you're worried about calories, just eat less.

Time for bed. We've finally tired Wylie out. Here's hoping he sleeps past 6 am!

Updates

New posts up on the other blog.
Wylie!
Tylees!

Neglect

I have not meant to neglect my blog. I have many things to tell you about and a camera full of pictures from a fabulous long-weekend with my siblings. But house guests and constant puppy vigilance have kept me very busy, so the pictures are still on the camera and I need to go to bed.

I leave you with Wylie and his newly discovered vices:

Sleeping around:

And drinking:

And him, just being cute:

Later this week... Disneyland with the Tylee clan and hanging out with Kate and Ben and the always enjoyable train game (aka Ticket to Ride).

Knitting, Again.

I'm sure you are all wondering, where are the puppy pictures? I'll get around to posting those on the other blog. I'm working on moving everything over there. Adam has given me permission to write about knitting and cooking and doctoring over there. And I just like the look of wordpress better, so eventually I will be retiring Free Time. Once I get the puppy pictures up over there, I will let you all know. Until then, more knitting. I'm loving sock knitting. It is so much more fun than anything I've ever knit before and the only thing I've ever knit for myself (other than mittens) that I will actually wear!

Starting the "falling leaf" socks

One sock, finished and blocked

Close up of the "leaf" detail

Sock, on my foot

I have the day off today, so Wylie and I are hanging out. He's sleeping, I'm trying to catch up on all my "to do" list items. It's supposed to be 80 degrees today, which is just so wrong in January. I went running this morning, but it was a terrible run. I only made it about half the distance I had planned to go. I'd like to say it was too hot, but I don't think I can blame 70 degree weather for my inability to run more than 2 miles. I was going to make soup for dinner, to try to finish off all the leftover turkey broth I have in my freezer, but soup is not really what you want to be eating when it's 80 degrees out. Kate and Ben are coming to visit this weekend (yay!) and we're going to Disneyland (yay again!). It's going to be nice have weekends again.

Happy 2009!

Hope everyone has enjoyed the first two days of 2009. I almost made it until midnight on NYE, but I'm old, so I made Adam come home and go to bed at 11:30 pm. And then I had to work on the 1st. I was hoping to get out early, but given the unpredictable nature of my job, two of our patients ended up needing to be transfered to the ICU, so that kept me busy most of the day. Today was my (much needed) day off. I only have another week of this rotation, two more call nights, and then life should be better for a few months at least. Adam and I are getting ready for the puppy, who we are picking up on January 10th, although we are still debating names for the pup. And today I have decided I'm going to knit nothing but socks from here on. They are so much fun to knit, and perfect for me. They have complicated patterns, they only take about a week to make, they have a very basic structure so I can make them without a pattern and they are actually practical and something I will wear. Here are the finished Christmas socks:

Lovely, aren't they? And very soft and warm. I'm now working on a pair for me--different pattern, and green, but I'm very excited about them. Sure, I will still knit the occasional baby hat, and I do have three sweaters in various states of completion that I will get around to finishing eventually, but this sock knitting thing--I can't believe it took me this long to try socks!