Four Little Letters

Okay I know it has been quite a while since I posted anything. I have been relatively busy lately. After graduation we moved to Salisbury, MD. Then a few days after moving we went back to Idaho for Christmas. I came back to MD before Cassie and Drostan and got a start on studying for my board examination. I have been studying everyday since for 6-8 hours a day, it is worse than having a job!! So the day finally came (today) for me to take the test. For those of you that have never had to taken a computer adaptive test let me explain. After having to remove everything from your pockets, all jewelry, all piercings and all clothes except for your underwear (I might be exaggerating just a little). They take you into a room sit you at a computer and the test begins. You have to take a minimum of 100 questions and max of 180. You have three hours to take the test, and if you don't pass you face certain shame, mocking of your peers and worst of all you have to take it again (which is the worst part). Then the questions begin, questions that you would never contemplate in a million years. Let me give you an example. "if you were in the backwoods of West Virginia and you had to do emergency surgery on an 80 years old man with aortic stenosis. liver failure, renal disease and multiple gunshot wounds what would you use to intubate (intubate=putting a breathing tube in the trachea). A) a clean stick B) your finger C) your hunting knife." Are you kidding me????? Somehow I made it through all the questions and went to get my "unofficial" results. Just bear in mind that my entire future rests on the results of this one test. Four little letters P...A...S...S or F...A...I...L so which will it be. It was so nerve racking waiting for that piece of paper to print. So what do you think it said???

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See for yourself

Drostan's First Snowball Fight

We had a wonderful storm this weekend. It rained for the first few hours and then turned to snow. Of course, at first, the snow melted as soon as it hit the wet ground, but after several hours enough snow had accumulated to actually cover the ground. So we decided to take Drostan outside and play in the snow. We felt like he was old enought to learn to properly enjoy snow. So first we taught him the basics.

After he had the basics down we went to the advanced round.

We're still working on his aim.

We also tried to teach him to build a snowman. We built the bottom for the snowman easily enough. Then we put on the middle (stomach) of the snowman and..........

The snowman was so fat(or rather the snow was so heavy) that the middle crushed the bottom. I guess the obesity epidemic is even worse than I thought.

After all that playing in the snow we also taught him how to enjoy being out of the snow. Hot chocolate with marshmallows. Yummy.

Check

So right now life is a little busy for Cassie and I. I am set to graduate on Dec 19 (32 calendar days and counting). We have an 18 month old, crazy, energetic little boy. That keeps Cassie busy morning, noon and night. In addition to all that Cassie and I will be moving right before graduation. So running through the checklist: Apply for graduation, check; boxes for moving, check; moving van, check; employment, check. It seems the only thing missing is a place to live. That could be problematic.

Luckily, I have been completing my indentured servitude at the Veteran's hospital in DC. The OR was closed on Veteran's Day and I did not have clinicals on Tues because of class. So Cassie and I took Drostan for a road trip to Salisbury. My company put us up in a hotel and took us out to dinner. Cassie and I set up appointments to check out some houses to rent. (For those of you who don't know Salisbury has a university so many of the houses for rent are geared to college kids.) We looked at several places but most of them were small with little living space and even less storage space. A couple of places were okay and looked nice, they were all much cheaper than out current rent. However, the last appointment was for a real house in a nice neighborhood. The first time we called about it the lady said that she had some renters, but she called us back on Mon and asked if we were still interested. So we went and checked it out. It is a little older house that has not been updated since it was built, but it has some space. The link has many pictures of the house, some are kind of fuzzy but the pictures of the outside are pretty nice. http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/20581881. For those of you that have not come to visit (you know who you are) or anyone who wants to come visit again and hit the beach, we may actually have some room to spare. The best part, rent is still less than we pay now.

That's all for now, I have to go and study to make sure I do indeed graduate.