And the winner is...

This morning I got an e-mail from Texas A&M's medical school, and am happy to report that they would be happy to have me.  This has made our future a little bit more clear and also taught me that wearing a mismatched suit to an interview is possibly a good thing.

Syracuse makes 4

I finished my whirlwind tour today by interviewing at the State University of New York, Upstate in Syracuse NY. It was very pretty and like all the other schools, was very nice and I think that I would enjoy going there. I am not sure what else to share other than that I am excited to get home, see Maren, and not have to live out of a suitcase.

UT Southwestern, Dallas

I rolled into Dallas just in time to be picked up by Jordan at 3 am. I got a few hours of sleep before I was up, showered, and at the medical school. The day went well though somewhat standard, and I have included a few pictures from the tour. One is of the workout facilities and the other is the model train setup at the children's hospital. Overall I actually really liked the school, and it is higher on my list at this point than I was expecting. I also enjoyed staing with family as I had excellent hosts, and I also was glad to catch some of conference. Now I am off to Syracuse.

Houston, TX 2008

Well, another day an the trail has come and gone, and now I am sitting in a Greyhound station waiting for a bus to Dallas to stay with Marylynn and Jordan Goudy. It should be about 2:30 in the morning and I hope that I have not forever convinced Marylynn and Jordan that they never want me in Dallas again. Here are some pictures from Dallas including a little view of my new suit on the hospital heli-pad and a view of the temple just before I went to a session.

TAMHSC-COM

One down, three to go. These are a few pictures I snapped of College Station on ,y way out. Things went as well as could be hoped, but I do have a funny story to share regarding the suit picture:

I had finished my 3 hour power nap in the car and was getting ready to go to the interview. After parking at the school, I grabbed my suit coat and headed out. It only took me a few seconds once I got out of the car to realize that something wasn't right. It turned out hat wgen I had packed, I had mismatched the pants and the coat, and you can see in the picture how close I was (or wasn't). As registration was to start in a few minutes, I went ahead as I was. I was glad that the interviews were done from behind a desk so they didn't have to stare at my mistake the whole time. Once I finished, I dialed up my new data plan and found a Goodwill in town, and found a pretty respectable suit that actually fits me for $26 and was very happy to buy it. I'll try to post a picture of it with the Houston pictures.

What do these two things have in common?

If you guessed that they are both things that Joseph got on his birthday, then you would be ... RIGHT!!

He is very excited to play racquetball with his new glove, and the other one has already proved immensely enjoyable on a quick trip up to Bridal Veil Falls this morning.

The last summer hurrah

My friend Joseph Creswell and I decided that we wanted to take a "man" trip before the summer was over. We worked on recruiting other guys to join, and at one point we had about 7 guys who were going to join the fun. In the end, they all backed out, the last two the night before, and the two Joseph's were left to go it alone.

We made it up there (Granddaddy Basin in the Uintas) early Thursday morning and blasted John Denver on the way up. Maren's gps and Joseph's guide book got us to the trailhead with no problems and we were off. The trail is a little over 3 miles before you get into the basin and then you have the option to follow several different trails within the basin. We headed west past several beautiful lakes and then found a heavenly spot to camp by a smaller lake which wasn't named on our map. We discovered later that its major shortcoming was a lack of fish in the lake, but there was lots of firewood and was a great place to camp.

That night we did some fishing at a larger lake (Betsy), and didn't catch anything but had fun. We ate dinner and went to bed. The hotdogs didn't sit well with me, and at 2 am I let them decorate the ground outside of the tent. That was my birthday present to Joseph as I had to lurch over him to get to the door, and Friday he turned 24. After that I got to sleep and felt much better. We spent Friday hiking around and did some fishing at Palisade Lake. There I caught the lone catch of the trip and we found some raspberries too that were delicious. We stashed our bags for most of the day, and in the evening we found them and then camped by Granddaddy lake that night. We finished Friday sleeping under the stars after eating the fish and some more raspberries.

Saturday I took the picture of the sunrise in the early morning and soon thereafter we packed and hiked out. It was a great time and the weather was perfect throughout. If any one is looking for a good place to enjoy the Uintas, Granddaddy Basin is a great one!

And the Lord thy God shall lead thee

Well, if the fact that we actually can move around our apartment now weren't enough, Maren ran into our old neighbors from our hobbit hole apartment and found out another reason that our most recent move was divine providence.

The story goes that after we moved out, another couple moved in, and then moved out again, at least temporarily. More specifically, within a few weeks of moving in, the shower drain got backed up. This resulted in sewer water spilling out into the apartment and turning it into a 3 inch deep pond of sewage back fill. Since much of our storage was under the bed and near the floor, we feel very grateful that we weren't the tenants during the great flood of White Gables. We also are glad that we only had to move once instead of move in, move out (with the stuff that wasn't ruined), and then move in again. Overall, we are very happy with how things worked out for us and hope that this experience doesn't kill the new couple so that it will make them stronger instead.