Summer 2010

With a few weeks off from school this summer, my wife and I drove... a lot. In fact, this much:

I don't recommend that many miles in five weeks to anyone, but we did have a ton of fun. Though we are somewhat terrible picture takers, we did get some from Boulder, CO.

While there we got to see a lot of my old haunts, a few friends, and the Pearl Street Mall.

Along the way, we put the car over the 100,000 mile mark.

The place seemed somewhat apropos give the dozens of times that I have seem this mile post over the course of that 100,000 miles.

Through the whole of the trip, we got to see a lot of friends, both mine and my wife's families, and just generally enjoy a lack of schedule for 5 weeks. So, nothing terribly exciting, but a really good break from the mental exercise that is the first year of medical school. Oh, and for those interested, I did shave the osteo-stache.

Some Huge Thanks

The open house last Saturday turned out very well, thanks to some really great help. So first off, thanks to Paul & Laura for letting us piggy back on their Costco membership and knowing exactly where to find everything we needed; secondly, many thanks to Patricia at Patch Tailoring who did fantastic work on a rush order; next, Aubrey for taking a 3am emergency text in stride and hunting down missing items of importance; and last but not least, Ashton and Zarah for showing up first and asking if there was anything they could do! Thank you all!

A little explanation about the tailoring is in order. A friend of a friend had been asked to sew a shrug for Christa's wedding dress, with a specific fabric and theme based around a yellow (One of Christa's favorite and therefore wedding colors) shirt and tie combo of mine. This was a few months ago and it seemed the easiest solution to getting the exact right shrug without spending eons hoping to find it shopping. Well, it turns out the friend of the friend is a procrastinator that will not be recommended by us and the shrug was not yet completed the day before the open house. Christa went down to the fof's house and spent several hours there while sewing was hastily done. In the end, Christa walked out with a shrug that had a passable body, but the sleeves have thus far been best described as 'balloon animal sleeves.' The material was cut completely straight, so the cap sleeve became a tube and cloth was folded back over itself with no seem at the end of the sleeve to keep the fold in the cloth from making the sleeve balloon. The world came very close to ending that evening. Not even a slight exaggeration. Fortunately, when I started calling tailors, Patricia was still at her workplace and answered my phone call, despite it being after her regular hours. We did pay extra for the rush order, but Patricia gave Christa exactly the right shrug the next morning at 10:30 and world got to live another day.

I Bet Your Job Isn't This Cool

Since we had so much snow today:

Doba's owner decided we needed to have a snowball fight at work, which he announced by coming into the building with an armload of snowballs and throwing them in the cubicles, through office doors, and on the pool table. You so wish you had my job.

Four For Friday

Everyone should go over to the BeliBlog and do the Four For Friday.

Q1 - Names: Here in the U.S., the parents of a three-year-old boy have branded a supermarket "intolerant" after it refused to decorate their son's birthday cake with his name: Adolf Hitler Campbell. The couple, from New Jersey, asked ShopRite staff to decorate little Adolf's cake with his name, which he shares with the deceased Nazi dictator, and were outraged after staff refused to on the grounds that it was inappropriate. Do you think the supermarket's bakery staff made the right decision or does every little boy deserve to have his name on their birthday cake regardless of what their name is?

Q2 - Grumble: What are your top five beefs?

Q3 - Layaway: As everyone knows, it's shopping season once again, but we all know times are a little tough this year. A new ABC News poll this week found that many Americans are feeling the financial strain, resulting in a lot of us spending a lot less on holiday gifts. So perhaps it's not a big surprise that we would see the resurgence of a more conservative way to shop... the layaway. If you could put one item on layaway for up to five years that you absolutely intended to incrementally pay for in full, what would you choose to put on layaway?

Q4 - Memories: How will you remember 2008?

My answers are over there, and yours should be too