December 9th, 2007

I am in the Chicago O’Hare airport waiting for my connection flight to Harrisburg, PA for a dermatology interview tomorrow in Danville, PA, about 1 hour north of Harrisburg. My scheduled flight to Harrisburg was cancelled due to bad weather out there (I think), and I got rescheduled for a flight later on tonight and put on standby for one later on this afternoon. So I get to spend the afternoon in the airport. :) Hopefully I get there ok.

Our family is now in Boise for the month of December and has been there for a week now. I am doing a month-long rotation with Dr. Randall Burr, a dermatologist that I know here, and I started with him on Monday. This week has been really fun as I have been able to follow and learn from him and help out from time to time. He has a very busy clinic, with regular clinic days on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and then surgery days on Wednesday and Friday. He sees about 70-80 patients/day on his regular clinic days and does about 15 procedures on his surgery days – probably the busiest dermatologist I’ve seen. He loves what he does and is very good at it, so it is really nice to learn from him. Mostly I have been shadowing, but sometimes I take patients back to the rooms and get the history of why they are there, and then on the surgery days I have helped with cutting sutures and have even had a few chances to suture myself, which was really fun.

Tuesday after we finished with clinic I went with Dr. Burr to a monthly dermatology conference that is held at St. Luke’s in downtown Boise with all the local dermatologists. Several bring in patients with really hard or odd skin problems, and the group talks about suggestions of what those patients might have and how to treat and help them.

I also got a few more dermatology interviews this week – to University of Rochester in New York and University of Florida in Gainesville – so now I have 10 total dermatology interviews. We are so excited. Steph and I have spent a lot of time this week working on flights, hotels, and rental cars for all of these interviews. I also wrote my thank you notes to my interviewers at Scott and White in Temple, TX for the interview I had there last week. This next week is pretty busy with interviews: I am flying today to Danville, PA for a dermatology interview tomorrow; to Spokane, WA tomorrow for a transitional year interview on Tuesday; to Milwaukee, WI on Wednesday for a derm interview on Thursday; driving to Chicago, IL on Friday for a derm interview on Saturday; and then flying to Los Angeles, CA next Sunday for a derm interview next Monday – whew!! After returning to Boise for a couple days, I will have a transitional year interview in Salt Lake City, UT, and then I will be done with the interviews I have scheduled so far for this month, and will have a little break before the interviews start up again in January.

We have also had some fun this week with friends from Boise. Last Sunday we went to Layne and Debbie Bennion’s house (an uncle and aunt) for toffee and hot chocolate after the First Presidency Christmas devotional. We met with Neil and Becky Wall (one of my cousins) and decided to play games together this week. We ended up playing Cities and Knights of Catan with them at their house on Friday night after putting the kids to bed. It was really fun. Earlier that afternoon, we took the kids to the YMCA to swim. They have an awesome toddler pool at this YMCA, with slides and fountains and water at a perfect height for our boys. They also had a waterslide that I could go down with the boys on my lap (one at a time) that was so much fun. We’ll definitely be returning there to play some more.

Thursday night we went over to Bryce and Emily Christensen’s house for dinner and talking. Bryce and I went to high school together. They have two children as well, so our boys had fun playing with them. Kolby and Eli are usually pretty good about not getting into too many things. Camden is our baby now who loves to get into everything and either try to tear it up or eat it, so we had to watch him. Kim Woodings (another friend from high school) showed up after dinner, and we all had fun just catching up on each other’s lives, since it has been two years since we had seen any of them.

Yesterday we took the boys to the dollar store so they could get little Christmas presents for each other. I took Kolby with me and Steph took Eli with her so that the presents they chose could be a surprise for each of them. They really enjoyed that. Then we ended up at the mall and found some really cute sweaters and hats for the boys (using their Christmas money from my parents and Grandma Faun). I also found some new shoes for work. The brand is Dansko, and several people over the last few years have recommended them to me because they are so comfortable to wear, especially when you are on your feet all day for surgical procedures, and especially for someone like me with plantar fasciitis (pain in the bottom of my feet). The only reason I hadn’t gotten any before is because of the price – about $120. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than $30 on shoes before, but my feet have been aching so much lately that I need something. The salesman said I can wear them around the house for the next few weeks to try them out and see if I like them, and then return them if I don’t, as long as I don’t wear them outside. And he said they are supposed to last 10-15 years, so we’ll see. I tried them around the house last night and they were really nice.

My parents took us and our boys to see The Bee Movie yesterday afternoon. It was cute and I think the boys really liked it. Then we went to dinner last night at Cass and Marci Smith’s home. They used to live in Milwaukee and recently moved out to Boise for him to start his first job as a pediatric gastroenterologist (a gut doctor). They have a beautiful home and we had so much fun catching up with them and our kids had so much fun playing together.

Well, I'd better go check and see if any of the flights or gates have changed – they seem to like to do that at the Chicago O’Hare airport. Hopefully I get to Pennsylvania in time for my interview tomorrow.