ScrappyDoc

A beautiful NC day

A day to remember... Jenny and Rob had their baby early this morning (a little after 5 am, I think), it sounds like everything went well and the little peanut is doing fine. I'm pretty sure they named her Kassandra Estelle (spelling???), but it was hard to hear my dad over the phone when he left the message. We'll have to check on that tomorrow.

That was certainly a great way to start our fantastic, relaxing day in Beaufort. We got up at a reasonable hour to make sure we didn't lose half the day sleeping, and we headed down to breakfast. After that we got ready for the beach and headed out. On the way to Atlantic Beach we stopped at the Duke Marine Lab, where Nick spent the first semester of his junior year in college. They were having registration for new students and it was really fun to see his dorm and the dining hall and the dock where he used to drop off of to go kayaking around. The location is great, with a terrific view of Carrot Island (the home of a wild horse sanctuary). After that we headed out to the beach and grabbed a beach towel at a local store (along with a little baby tee-shirt for our new niece).

The beach was great, it was so nice to just lay on the sand and relax and people watch and then go play in the ocean. Nick did some body surfing and I just splashed around, the water was just the perfect temperature. We stopped for lunch on the way back, at the Sanitary Fish Market, and yes I know that is a weird name, but it is a Morehead City landmark having been in business since 1938. They have super fresh seafood and we had a great meal. After that, we came back to the hotel and lazed around and took a nap, then we got ready to go to dinner and walk around downtown. We had a great dinner at a newer restaurant in Beaufort, called Aqua. They have tapas and yummy seafood and everything was very tasty. The best part was probably dessert, though, we had bananas foster, which was homemade and delicious. It came to the table and then the waitress lit it on fire, sweet! We'll here's a pic from tonight taken before we headed out to eat.

A quick hi...

...from Beaufort!! Nick and I got here yesterday afternoon and it's just awesome. It is so good to see the ocean again. We didn't go to the beach a ton when I was a kid, but you always knew it was right there if you wanted to go. We had dinner at the Beaufort Grocery Co. which was just amazing, and then walked around downtown for a while, looking at all of the yachts and deep sea fishing boats. Wow, some of those are just amazing! Here are a couple of pics from dinner last night.

We're going to head down and get some breakfast, and then probably go back downtown in the morning. This afternoon we'll head to Atlantic Beach and check out the new aquarium, which is supposed to be awesome. Yippee for vacation!

Heading to you NYC

Tomorrow I fly to NYC to do wedding stuff and go to my sister's baby shower. So so excited!! I can't wait to see Jenny and her cute penguin waddle and her big belly. My flight leaves at the crack of dawn, but it will really give me two whole days in the city to get wedding things done. We've got a tasting at the Penthouse around noon, and hopefully I'll be able to get to a few dress appointments after that. Friday evening, we are heading out to see one of the bands we might book. They are playing in a club/restaurant somewhere in Jersey, and my folks and I will go check it out. Hopefully I'll be able to nail some important things down.

For those of you who don't know, Nick and I officially fired Stella (our former wedding planner) a couple of weeks ago. Or rather, I should say that we have been trying to fire Stella for more than 2 weeks. We got super fed up with her failure to deliver on many (most) of her contract duties, and since the budget for our wedding is already stretched, we couldn't see any good reason to pay her money for services we weren't receiving. The wacky thing is, and this just seems to fit in perfectly with the way things have gone with her from the beginning, we can't get her to actually acknowledge that we've fired her and ended our contract. We've sent her a formal letter both through UPS and registered certified mail through the USPS, which have both been delivered. She continued to call like nothing was wrong, and then we finally re-sent the letter via email. Since that time we've only heard from her once, but she did go around and cancel all of the appointments that I had made weeks ago with both the caterer and one of the wedding dress stores that I planned on visiting. Good thing both places knew me well enough to call and make sure that I wasn't coming, which of course was not the case. Isn't that the shadiest thing you've ever heard?? What a disappointment. Oh well, the owner of the venue we booked has been doing this for 35 years and seems to have all of his ducks in a row. He reassured us that he'll be able to help with whatever we need. So hopefully this will all work out OK. All I know is that it can't possibly work out worse, and at least we've save ourselves a pretty penny.

950 miles later...

...we have arrived in Winston-Salem. Hooray! I am so excited to be here and even more excited to see our house tomorrow. But even more than that, i am excited to hit the pillow and sleep in a real bed. I promise more fun stuff tomorrow.

In limbo...

Total out-of-sorts today. The movers got hear early (who ever heard of that) so Nick and I were stuck rushing around packing the last few things up. Of course they couldn't start in the basement or downstairs where everything was ready, they decided that they had to begin in the study, where we still had our computer and printer out, etc. So after an hour or so of running around like a lunatic, now I'm sitting here on the floor, itchy from our wool carpet, listening to the cats cry because they are tired of being cooped up in the bathroom. That was a precautionary move to keep them from running out the door (since they are all open at the moment). The fuzz balls totally know there is something up, and they are not happy about it whatsoever.

Not quite sure what we're going to do for the rest of the day. We've got a couple of more errands to run, but Nick and my dad have been taking care of most of that this morning while I stayed back to help the movers (translation: answer any questions and fetch water for them since it's already 90 degrees out). I was going to run, but now it's just ridiculous out, so I'll either have to wait until tonight or run once we get to NC.

All of this sitting around is a bummer too because I was totally on a creative kick lately. I got super inspired after making the Cancun albums for the girls, so I started on another album project right away for a special little someone... but I can't say anymore because it is supposed to be a surprise. I'll be sure to post some pics once I'm done. But anyway, it's too bad because I actually kept out all of the stuff I need, since we'll have a couple of weeks in Winston-Salem before we move in to our new place and I figured that is as good a time as any to be creative. Well, I guess I'll just chalk it up to a day to relax and take a load off, something I'm sure I'll be wishing for come mid-July.

T-minus 1 day

The movers come tomorrow. Holy crap!

I think we're ready, but you never really know until they're here loading everything up and you start realizing all the random stuff that is still lying around that now has to fit in to our two cars. There are several good things, compared to my move from Boulder: first of all, we have 2 cars, which will be a huge help, second, we actually got some mild kitty sedatives from our Vet, so Kazoo doesn't howl for 14 hours straight. Hopefully everyone (or rather every feline) will just conk out and go to sleep.

We have a bunch of errands to take care of tomorrow in between the movers coming and packing up the house. One last recycling run, cancel the cable and the internet, one last trip to Stuff, sell back the last of my textbooks, and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff that will pop up at the last minute. It's been super helpful having my dad here. His packing style may be a little unorthodox (he endorses the stuff as much as possible into each box, add lots of tape and don't look back method), he has certainly kept us on track and helped us get a ton done.

I probably won't be able to update from the road, since we're going to try to bang out the 14 hours all in one day (mostly for the sake of the fuzzballs), but I'll get on the wagon as soon as we're settled in our lovely Marriott Residence Inn suite... I can't remember if I said that before, but our closing date was pushed back again because our front door is backordered. We're now slated for June 28, so hopefully, hopefully we'll be in by then.

Be careful what you wish for...

Well, I am still sitting in the MSP airport, and if you are one of my oh-so-astute friends, you'll deduce that is because I either missed my plane or it was delayed/canceled. It's the later, and we're delayed until 12:40. Poor Nicholas, he's got to be at work tomorrow morning at 7:00, and he's still coming to pick me up at 1:30. I knew I should have driven myself, but it is always nice being met at the airport after a long travel day by your favorite person in the world. And that goes double after my last 30 minutes at the airport.

"We need a doctor at Gate C8"

CRAP!!

"Immediately"

DOUBLE CRAP!!

I had been in the search of food, which considering the late hour was becoming quite the adventure, when those words came over the PA system. As I was running back towards the gate, I was thinking to myself, "There is most certainly another (real-er) doctor somewhere in this place, so there is no way it will just be me..." I kept thinking these reassuring thoughts to myself as I hoofed it over there. As I ran up there were 2 nurses giving CPR and an Army medic helping out, and someone was running for the AED. We threw the AED on him and gave 1 shock, and then we got a pulse back. SWEET! Recovery position, check a pulse (fast, irregular, maybe 120??), now Fire's on scene, get a BP (160's over 110's), get their LP 12 hooked up, rhythm looks OK, some ST depression on the strip with some PVCs, but not awful. Get some suction, do we have an IV set up, has anyone checked his blood sugar, is he here with anyone? OK, has Barrett's and is on a new med, no idea what it's called, no cardiac history, was running from a connection and got really short of breath, then just sort of fell over. ACLS on scene, IV is in, now I'm in the way, whew...

I guess that is how the system is supposed to work, right? Early CPR, early analysis, early defib, early ACLS. He was awake and talking, albeit quite confused as the crew loaded him up and took him to the hospital and more definitive care. Hopefully that will have a happy ending.

OK, now about that snack I was in search of...

Visit to Utah

So I had my interview at U of Utah on Friday the 12th, and got to spend some time with Nara and her whole fam. It was great to see Pat, Janice, Cal and Abe (or Abu...). I don't think I've seen them since graduation, which all of a sudden feels like a very long time ago. Here are a couple of pics from my trip.

Here is the pic from my window at the hotel. The reddish building at the base of the mountains with the two tower-like things at the ends on the left side of the picture is the U of U hospital. Talk about a primo locale.

This is Nara and I at the yummy Thai place we went for dinner. We weren't quite sure about the money taped on the Buddha but figured it might be some sort of good luck, so we sidled on up while Pat took a picture.

So I got to see Nara at the little pre-interview dinner on Thursday, which was very fun. I was a little discombobulated and didn't realize that there were faculty there in addition to residents. That is pretty atypical for other programs and it had been a while since I had looked at the program website. I was sitting next to Nara gabbing and a nice gentleman came and sat down next to me. I introduced myself and he rattled off a bunch of things from my app and of course I just thought he was a very interested resident who had looked carefully through the files for the next day. Little did I know that it was Steve Hartsell, who is the program director. Good thing my comments weren't too off base.

I guess everything worked out OK, since we really hit it off and had a great interview the next day. All in all it was a great couple of days and I was really impressed by the residency program. One completely random thing; so as we were all at lunch up in the cancer center caf, which has an amazing view by the way, I actually saw Ryan Murray, who must have been interviewing also (for medicine maybe), he must have looked right at me and then right on by at least 3 or 4 times, but I guess that would be pretty weird for him to actually recognize me since the context was completely off. But anywho, I thought that was pretty amusing.

Where in the world are Cari and Nick??

OK, so I know we've been all over hill and dale these last couple of months, and actually the end is in sight, but just in case you wanted to check up on where were are, here's our calendar.

What becomes funny when you're alone on the road

So after uncountable nights in different hotels, long waits in airports and so many different cities, certain things just become humorous. For example, the picture below was actually taken in the handicapped stall at the Denver airport while I was waiting to fly out to Salt Lake City.

Anything to lighten your mood when you're trying not to put your eye out because your flight has been delayed once again, your sitting in between a crying infant, a strangely smelling Asian guy jabbering away in a foreign language and very, very obese trucker, hoping above anything else that that isn't guy whose in 3B next to me. If you look very closely at the picture, you can see next to the letters that there is a little person actually in a stall.