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.