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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!