it has been awhile

since i've posted. i've been back in seattle for 2 months- one where i was crazy busy and one where i worked nights so my sleep schedule was wacko (and still is, hence why i'm blogging now instead of sleeping...).

part of my blogging problem is that sean pretty much details everything we do on his blog within minutes of its happening (especially now with his "work" phone). so when i am inspired to blog, he's usually beat me to it.

anyway, last tuesday was sean's birthday. i only saw him for 1 hour before i had to go to work. thankfully, we both had this weekend off, which was great. yesterday we went to check out the salmon spawning on the cedar river in renton. here is sean wearing the special polarized glasses for better viewing. the salmon in cedar river are at the end of their run, so there were very few left.



today was my birthday and we spent most of the day with rachel. we went to eat and then had tasty cupcakes and ice cream.


we went looking for salmon today at piper's creek in carkeek park, but apparently they don't arrive until next weekend.

we had a fun trip to walla walla earlier this month. we drove through some of the remaining parts of washington we haven't already visited, like potholes and palouse falls. sean already posted a bunch of pictures from the trip, but here are some of my favorites.

here are some cows we encountered on the trail. they kind of freaked me out (big surprise). the big one in the front mooed at us. sean wanted me to pose with them, but its one of the few times that i actually rode faster than him on a mountain bike trail.


here's one of the lakes in potholes near othello. i saw sandhill cranes not terribly far from here.



this is downriver from palouse falls. so pretty. it would be awesome to canoe here.


the palouse from inside the car.


well, i'd better try to get some sleep. work awaits in a few short hours. its raining cats and dogs right now which will probably cause me to wuss out of riding to clinic tomorrow. we'll see...

don't forget to vote!! its almost over!

home for the weekend

i had a 3 day weekend so i went home. i took the ferry at sunset, which was quite pretty.

saturday we rode our bikes to the zoo. i haven't been to a zoo on purpose since i was in college (and forced to go for an anthropology course). my feelings about zoos have changed somewhat since my militant vegan days. i used to think that they all should be closed, no discussion. now i realize there is almost no black and white. about anything.

i used to think animals were better off in their own habitat, regardless of the fact that many zoo animals' lives are arguably healthier than they would be in the real world.

now i think that reputable zoos have animals' best interests in mind, which is good, since no one else does. it would seem that the way things are going, zoos will become the only places we'll see polar bears, african cats, frogs, etc... this makes me very sad.

this is coming from someone who can't watch nature shows. i can't handle poachers killing lions. i can't handle lions killing gazelles. i can't handle lions starving to death because there are no gazelles. i can't handle that there are no gazelles because there is no water. i can't handle that there is no water because the climate is changing because of us. and on and on.

anyway- here's a funny picture of me, sean, a tapir, and some family.

sunday i drove back to port angeles. i didn't have to wait at all for the ferry, which was great. sean would have had a super long wait had he come here instead.

across the hood canal yet again

have a good week!

i saw a bear yesterday

and i was very excited.

i went to hurricane ridge after work. the road is quite scary, especially now that it is under construction and covered in loose gravel. i hiked as much of the short, paved hurricane hill trail as i could before it got dark. i spent a lot of time looking in the meadows with binoculars and finally saw a black bear wandering around. very cool. i also saw lots of deer and a flock of flickers.

here's a bunch of pictures from the evening. it is so beautiful here!

halfway done

today is the halfway point of my time on the peninsula. because of housing issues, i've ended up going home the past 2 weekends, and haven't had as much exploratory time as i'd expected.

taking the 6 am ferry back to sequim on monday morning. who would've thought you'd get decent coffee on public transportation?




sean is coming to visit for the weekend. not sure what we'll do but potential items on the itinerary before i'm done include:

1. ferry to victoria
2. rafting the elwah
3. camping at the hoh
4. backpacking into the lowlands of olympic (i doubt i'll convince him to do this...)
5. renting kayaks and going into the strait (i doubt i'll convince myself to do this...)


we've had some fun adventures so far. we went to lake ozette, a place sean has wistfully spoken of multiple times. we went hiking in the elwah. we went hiking/biking at the middle fork of the snoqualmie river.

we went to one of the local wineries and enjoyed their view.


i got to be in a sailboat race- my first time ever on a sailboat. sean was quick to point out that the boat wasn't that big and that we didn't actually go that fast. nevertheless, i was still afraid and excited. it was very cool. you see, i have very little boat experience. i've been in a canoe, on a few ferries, in 1 whitewater raft, and on a dinner cruise into beautiful lake erie (that made me sicker than a dog!). sean and his family have lots of boat experience. oh well. you have to start somewhere.

i like the spinnaker part. my only "job" during the race was to frantically pull it in to avoid getting it wet. i took this job very seriously.



my feet! again!! perhaps pictures of my feet will be my trademark. like the pictures sean always takes of himself riding.

my trademark. clever.


his trademark. nerd!!





pretty.




i've gone on a few bike rides. here's the cool train bridge.




it is lovely here. going back and forth to seattle has really helped me experience and enjoy the contrasts. while home last weekend, we went to the boring- oops, i meant boeing plane museum and to the art museum and enjoyed the hustle and bustle of downtown. we went to the seafood festival in ballard where i saw more people on 1 square block then i encounter in one week here. both are good things. i'm lucky to have this experience.

sean at SAM



nobody in sequim

alone on the peninsula

today i went to the elwah valley of olympic national park. sean and i went there years ago and i have been itching to go back.

it was a gorgeous day to go hiking. of course, my choice of trail was influenced by my fears of being eaten by a cougar (to my credit, there were signs everywhere saying not to hike alone, you're in cougar country, etc...) and driving on dirt roads. so i stayed close to the main road and went hiking along the river. all i could hear was the roaring of water and the creaking of trees. i didn't see anyone on the trail.


pretty waterfall


pretty tree canopy

pretty trail



i got back to sequim with several hours left in the day, so i went to the dungeness spit for a little walk. it was crazy windy, so i only spent about an hour there. i was surprised to see a lot of people braving the weather.

i have to admit that the beach bores me after about five minutes (unless there are tidepools or exciting animals to observe). i feel, though, that i need to make the 5 mile hike to the lighthouse at the end of the spit before i leave. today was not that day.


tomorrow my man comes. hopefully he'll get here sooner than we both think, because i miss him like crazy.

sequim-ish?

6 days in sequim, spent mostly in the confines of my retro motel room. salish it ain't.

the two of you who read this already know about my incident on the way over. my trip was great- with the exception of having to pay an overhead fee for my bike. once i found this out, it was too late to do anything because i had too much crap in the car and not enough time to situate the bike in it. a certain someone told me it would be just fine where it was. harummph.

little did i know that this was just the beginning of my bike troubles.

i was in the same class as this crazy truck. can you even see my car?

anyway, the ferry was fine, i read my david sedaris book and laughed out loud lots of times. i drove over the scary bridge, into town, and straight to the clinic. i had some orientation, then went to my accommodations. on the way to parking my car, i drove right under the awning.

which ding do you think is mine?

anyway, the bike appears fine. the rack is fine. the car isn't- thankfully no broken glass. so sean is taking it to the mainland for repair and leaving me with the element. we may need to take yuri's advice and get a hitch mount.

i only worked one day and then had the long weekend off. because i am an idiot, i had to drive to olympia on thursday to get a current copy of my medical license. turns out you need that to do certain stuff, like seeing patients and writing prescriptions. anyway, the drive was lovely, along the coast.

sean came for the weekend and we had fun. he rode some crazy trail. he and i rode around town and found a beautiful park involving an olde tyme train bridge.

we went to some tidepools. i LOVE tidepools. i'm sure sean would rather pull out his fingernails then hang out at them, at least for the amount of time i require. i didn't grow up near the ocean, and find them fascinating.



we saw a bald eagle getting its ass kicked by a crow.



we went to the spit. upon arrival, it started raining (in the town that gets 12 inches of rain a YEAR) and got all foggy, so we left. went to walmart twice. haven't been since kirksville, have now been there several times.

we went to hurricane ridge today. it was still too snowy to hike there, but it was nice to see the mountains.



i did join the SARC ( for those alias fans out there, i'm not searching for a rambaldi artifact...). it has an enormous olympic size pool with exactly one lane for lap swimming. in any case, i can't remember the last time i swam for fitness. after about 30 minutes i felt like an enormous piece of jello. now i'm "home".




i'll try to post a little more frequently these next two months, while i'm lonely and with internet.

ciao for now.

spok-tacular!

its been a glorious couple months. 2 months of easy rotations with weekends off followed by a mini vacation.

my intern year is now officially over and i am considered a "senior resident". its sort of the same feeling i had at the transition between medical school and residency. yesterday i was a lowly intern. today i am a senior. i feel no different or smarter, yet the job changes.

great friends came to visit and we had fun. i didn't realize how much i missed john and eithne until i saw them. it was just like old times. we stayed up late, drank too much wine, hackeysacked a little. i hope we see them again relatively soon.

here they are at pike place mark.


we've definitely gotten rusty. but still- ski jumps, beaver shots, and leaping stags abounded.

we just got back from spokane. sean and i went there for the weekend and stayed at our friend's parents' house. it was my first time back in almost 2 years. we ate at my favorite restaurant, gordy's. it hasn't changed a bit. which is good and bad, i guess. spokane in general hasn't changed since we moved there 11 years ago.

we went riding a few times in the park where i learned. it was so refreshing to be in open space. i encountered less then 10 people over the course of 3 different bike rides. of course, my mountain bike skills continue to regress. i walked things i used to ride and continued to walk things i used to walk. i'm at a place now, though, where i really don't care. i'm not trying to impress anyone with my riding. i just want to have a good time. and i did!

spokane is always on the short list of places to live when sean and i grow up. after visiting, its higher on my list. we'll see.


mmm... butter.... (note my feeble attempts to utilize picassa's tools)



cool barn.

tomorrow i start back to work. i'm going to sequim, wa for 2 months. i have to go on a ferry AND drive on the world's longest floating bridge in a saltwater tidal basin all by myself to get there. i'm looking forward to it (except for the driving, ferry, and floating bridge), but i'll miss jub jub tremendously. i'll miss sean, too.

check out that tongue.



well, i'd better get packing. come see me on the beautiful olympic peninsula.

intubating ferrets and the trauma of trauma.

its been a challenging month for me. i spent 2 weeks on the trauma team at the largest center for many, many miles. lots of grossness and stress. these were people who were just living their lives until some very bad, bad thing brought them my way. their stories were varied, from mundane to unbelievably spectacular, from just plain stupid to tragic. i can see why people like trauma, but i know its not for me.

i then spent 2 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. on the first day, i had to intubate ferrets in an attempt to get a feel for intubating a neonate. having now done both, i can say the ferrets are quite different.

i don't ever want to be on the receiving end of either service.

now life is calmer and i have a lovely outpatient month with most weekends off. i couldn't be happier. sean's dad is coming to visit soon. hopefully other friends are coming to visit as well. the weather is gorgeous.




here's jub jub, trying to help with taxes.



check this out- likely my biggest claim to fame.

Post Call

just woke up after my first call night on the family medicine service, a seemingly schizophrenic combination of obstetrics, pediatrics, and adult medicine. there's nothing like running from a delivery to admit a 90 year old with heart failure then running back to examine the new baby. oh, and then another delivery, another baby, followed by some pneumonia. although combining moms, babies, and adults is, like, the whole point of family medicine, it is very challenging to combine them seamlessly in real life. delivering babies has yet to be an even remotely unextrordinary experience.

it is so good, though, to be back on days. last weekend my sleep was so screwy that we got up at 3 am and went to the crazy local 24 hr breakfast joint, Beth's. there was the typical combination of drunk people singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs (bop! bop! bahhhhh! good times never seemed so good!...), crazy people who were totally annoyed by the drunk people, and greasy, greasy food.


note the gentleman in the background. he was wearing a top hat, cummerbund, and pirate shirt.




sean, being a good sport about the whole thing.




then we went to watch the sunrise and i saw a sea otter!!!! so exciting! you see it, don't you?


here's jub jub ignoring ira.

Nights Suck.

i have a new found respect for my aunts and uncles back home who have spent their entire careers working midnights and swingshifts. i've been working 5:30 pm-7:30 AM for the past 2 weeks, and it is very disorienting. i haven't seen sean, or daylight, for that matter. i feel like i've been run over by a truck. my ongoing cold isn't helping. i have today off. i got to see sean last night, a belated valentine's day. we went to an early dinner and opened one of our fancier bottles of wine. he's gone now. skiing in canada with star. i'm jealous.

something that doesn't suck is truffle salt. i had this for the first time at the pike brewing company with radishes and butter. although my dinner mates (sean, his mom, and his grandmother) were less impressed, i found it to be a sublime combination. it is ridiculously expensive, but i did indulge in a jar from whole foods. the ingredients are salt, truffles, and 5% truffle flavor. i have no idea what 5% truffle flavor means, or how this percentage is determined. would 7% be too much? in any case, it is a tasty, tasty item.