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.