Has it really been ten months, Ray? I suppose it has. The last two months, I don't even have an excuse for not posting. I graduated at the beginning of August. After that it took seven weeks for my certification, licensing, and credentialing paperwork to be processed, so I have been sitting at home since graduation. Many in my class, as has been the case in previous years, used this time to travel, a deserved respite before starting work. One classmate (now co-worker) went to Paris for ten days and got engaged at the Eiffel Tower. Last year one new grad spent a month in Europe before starting work. But, my kids started school the week I graduated, and since I haven't worked in two years and student loan money ran out in early August, I have been sitting at home since graduation, not posting.

Now I am finally working as an anesthetist at Emory University Hospital. Not my original plan, but I am very happy with it. I'm happy to be doing something, to feel productive. I'm glad that I am finally finished with school. At least for now. (That's like the final shot of a horror movie, where we in the audience see the slain killer's hand protruding under a pile of rubble. Just before the cut to black, the hand moves, accompanied by a horn blast. Will there be a sequel? Who can say?) It's great to finally get to where I've been heading. Instead of training under someone's supervision, I'm working on my own. Because I'm at Emory, they even started giving me students my second week on the job. It's a pretty sweet job too. I enjoyed anesthesia as a student, but now that I'm doing it for real it's even better. And eight hour days are a piece of cake after working twelve hours a day my last six months in school. It's challenging, scary, rewarding. And now I'm getting paid. Not that that is the only important thing, but it is very important. Now I feel like I can get everything else in my life back to where I thought it should be by now. I've still got a lot of changes coming up and things are looking good.

I've had this video up on my myspace page for a while, but I'm going to put it here as well because I think it's great. I think this is what most people really think I do, especially surgeons.

I never really considered my wife's family to be rednecks, but here's a quote from Thanksgiving dinner:

"Where are the other paper plates. I didn't want to use the nice ones."

You judge.

I know it's been a long time since my last post, but it's been a busy year. I finished my first year at Emory. It seems like I've gained more than a year's worth of knowledge about anesthesia. I met some of the incoming students while I was working on some things at the program office last week, and it just feels like ages since I was in their place. Tomorrow morning at 5:30 I start my first senior clinical rotation in cardiothoracic surgery. So much for easing into things. I was planning on spending my six day break between semesters refamiliarizing myself with some of the details of cardiothoracic anesthesia, but as always, there was a lot going on. I had to prepare a sermon for Wednesday and get ready for our camping trip. Thursday morning we left for North Carolina where we met my parents, sister, and brother-in-law who were joining us for a white water rafting outting with our church youth group. We went up a day early and enjoyed a slow couple of days before the rest of the group showed up Friday night. After rafting Saturday, my family came with us back to Georgia to see my daughter Hannah baptized on Sunday. We spent the afternoon showing them some of the sights in Atlanta before they left. Today we finally got around to getting our camping stuff put away, after setting the tent back up to wash it and let it dry because it was rainy and muddy while we were camping. Also, at some point during the weekend we got a new car because our old one was broken, only 8000 miles short of 200,000.

Orbital and facial fracture in addition to the obvious black eye. Who would have thought a water balloon could cause so much damage?

This week Kelly and I started taking the kids hiking. The plan is to hike three days a week and do something like climbing on the weekends. Sounds like a fun plan to me. Wednesday, by the time we finished I didn't have time to go home, take a shower, and eat lunch before time to leave for work. So we swung by Blimpie and Kelly dropped me off at the hospital because there is a shower in the locker room. I was in such a hurry I didn't realize that I didn't have any of the basics for taking a shower other than the water. I got a handful of liquid soap from the restroom to use as shampoo and body wash, then had to undress without spilling it or getting it all over the inside of my shirt. It wasn't until after my shower that I thought about how I would dry off. On the changing bench there was one of those 15" dia. toilet paper rolls, and because the restroom is in a different location than the shower I reasoned that the toilet paper roll had been brought there for a reason. Perhaps somebody else had found themselves in the same predicament? I gave it a try but, as you could probably guess, the t.p. fell apart and rolled up on my skin. All I could find to dry off with other than my dirty clothes were shoe covers. They weren't absorbant at all, but I was able to squeegee the water the off. Today we were late again so I had to take another shower at work. This time I called ahead and had a guy I work with bring me a towel from the O.R. The soap was still an issue however.