The title of the blog deserves a bit of explanation. The other night, for date night, Casey and I went to one of the most expensive restaurants in the Upper Valley for dessert. We went to Simon Pearce, which is a glass making company where they still have actual people blow their glass products. This, of course, makes everything there ridiculously expensive. However, they do have reasonably priced dessert and a tour that you can take with all kinds of information that would keep a ceramics engineer entertained for hours. On one of the signs it showed the progression of training of a glass blower from Apprentice, to Journeyman, to Craftsman, and finally to Master.I got to thinking that I feel like I am currently in a seemingly eternal training which could be likened to that of a glass blower. In that system, I would currently only be a Journeyman. Hence the picture here to the left, which happens to have been taken on my first day of medical school, my Apprenticeship. I suppose that makes residency my Journeyman period, Craftsman my fellowship (if I do one), and Master a real physician. Would you trust this man with your life? Dont worry, I looked so much more safe on the first day of residency. My beard was probably only three quarters that long. You can see that on the right even though that wasnt actually my first day.
Speaking of Craftsmen and Masters of their trade, a few weeks ago Casey and I got the chance to visit some good friends we met in Tallahassee who have since moved up to New Hampshire. Ryan, with his wife Jacci and two kids Sage and Caleb, moved here to head up the maintenance team at a ministry/living facility called His Mansion about an hour south of us. This place is pretty sweet. It is for people with any type of addiction to come and live in tight, Christ centered community with the obvious goal of freedom from addiction and growth in their walk with the Lord. Ryan is a carpenter by trade and has some pretty impressive accomplishments under his belt including multiple major projects at Brigham and Women's and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston prior to moving south to Florida where we met him and his awesome wife Jacci. Needless to say, I feel very inadequate as a man around him, especially when Casey constantly seems wowed by everything that he has made around the house and camp (which is just about everything).
This past Wednesday, I had a surprise day off so we took full advantage of the beautiful summer day and traveled an hour to the furthest Southwest peak in the White Mountain National Park, Mount Moosilauke. The Dartmouth Outing Club (I think the largest student/alumni outdoor club network in the US, but dont quote me on that) owns a large portion of land and maintains a cabin and trails up to the peak. It is pretty awesome to find peaks here above treeline at only 4800 feet. We were fortunate to have a clear day where we could see all of the presidential peaks to the East of us. I practiced a bit of my martial arts and we lounged a bit, but unfortunately had to leave shortly after peaking to make it back to town for a Bible study with our new church, for which we were late, again.
As far as church goes, we have been going to one called Riverbank Church which is a small non-denominational church that is pretty different from any Casey or I have ever attended. The pastor and several members of the leadership moved up from Florida in response to a pretty clear call to come minister to the heavily un-churched area of New England. It is a pretty evangelistic church which is fairly outreached focused, but I would not put it in the category of 'seeker friendly' church. We have really enjoyed being a part of it, so much so that we haven't tried either of the other two churches in New England (that's a joke, sort of). So last, but definitely not least, we have had all sorts of developments with the newest Hammer, Little Hamlet. We had an ultrasound last Thursday and will have the images scanned and digitalized soon. Casey should have them up on her blog soon at www.thehammerherald.blogspot.com . But, aside from the anatomy that everyone wants to know about, all the baby's parts look great, 10 finger, 10 toes, brain, etc. It must be one of the most active babies ever because it was constantly moving and flipping for more than 30 minutes. It really did not want the tech to look at its cerebellum and nuchal fold because it kept shoving its head as far down towards Casey's cervix as it could, away from the ultrasound probe. But we eventually got beautiful pictures which will be up soon!
Ok, now lastly, this past weekend we took a relatively spur of the moment trip to NYC. This was my first trip to the big city and I felt like I only got to experience 1/1000th of all that there is to see and do there. We stayed with a friend from Young Life Gainesville Mike McVicar in Brooklyn who was a fantastic tour guide and personal minstrel (musician, comedian, etc). We hit up Times Square late Friday night and a local Mexican place; it was so nice to have real Mexican food again. Saturday we woke up so late (11am) had brunch (so NY) which had a tap beer as part of the set price, so awesome! Then we hit the Metropolitan Museum, Central Park, SoHo, dumplings in Chinatown, the Brooklyn Bridge, then an apartment party back in Brooklyn. Sunday we had another brunch (so NY), the High Line, Chelsea Market, and then had to head out. The only bad part was driving in and out of town. So terrible.
So thats about it. I guess we've been able to do quite a bit for intern year and for that I am thankful. Just trying to suck the marrow while the sucking is good. Hope you are all well, look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at Octoberfest on the 1st-3rd!
