Orthopedic Rotation

Tonight starts Sam's Orthopedic Surgery rotation at UCI... It's 9:23pm as I start typing and he is still not home yet.  Oh what a wonderful 12 days of Christmas this is going to be!  I jest, I jest.  In all seriousness, as much as we've been pleasantly surprised by the lack of crazy thus far in Sam's intern year rotations, I think all our worst thoughts are about to come true.  

So what will I do?  Well, for starters, I am going to try to get together a group of folks to watch the Newport Beach Boat Parade sometime this week.  I've made plans to go every year, and every year I cancel because it's raining.  This year, I'm going to try to get a group of friends to commit to dinner and make a reservation along the water where we can watch the parade from the warmth of indoor seating and delicious adult beverages.  What can I say?  Ya get older, ya get wiser.

On the flip-side, I am apparently still a novice at online shopping.  I wanted to buy Sam a fancy Christmas stocking so that mine didn't look so snobby- I should mention that mine is not diamond-crusted or anything, as you can see in the photo, it's an embroidered/cross-stitched picture of a bear on a rocking horse and a Christmas Tree with presents beneath it and it has my name sewn on it.  Nonna Santi got it for me when I was born and it's always had a very special place in my heart because stockings continue to be a BIG part of my family's Christmas tradition.  Anyway, I really wanted to include Sam and his family in the magic of stockings, so I went online and found a bunch of really cool ones.  Rather than going over the top, I figured I would see how this year goes before I bought everyone in his family a new stocking.  So I took some time and really considered what would be a nice, non-denomenational stocking scene that wasn't too girly or child-themed.  I picked out one that was really fancy and ornate, like an idiot.  When the stocking arrived, it turned out that I ordered a DO-IT-YOURSELF cross-stitch stocking craft kit.  Oh.My.God.  The reviews online, when I looked closer, said that it took one woman 4 months to finish.  FOUR MONTHS PEOPLE.

Of course Sam wants me to begin work right away, but I have never cross-stitched anything in my life.  I tried to watch a you tube video but that only further convinced me that I'm screwed.  Hopefully over the weekend I will have some time to sit down and focus my energy on beginning this project.  If I fail, my Mom said she will look around and find the perfect one for Sam next year... talk about having a great plan B.  I mean honestly, just looking at that jumbled spaghetti-looking mess of threads makes me anxious!

So anyway, as the 12 days of Christmas kick off tomorrow, I will be channeling all of my crafty talents and getting ready to undertake the project I am affectionately referring to as: "Make Sam's Stocking By December 2012."  With all the time I'm going to have alone in the evenings perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing to have ordered a do-it-yourself stocking kit.

End of November

Tonight we had Sam's medical school roommates over for dinner and cooked chicken on the new BBQ. We got to have leftover pie from Thanksgiving, and veggies, and some rice.  It was very nice to catch up with the guys, and the apartment is SO festive that it made the whole evening all the better. 

Sam had the day off finally, and he got to go golfing and play tennis- which was great!  Tomorrow he goes on the Night Shift until Monday morning, December 5th.  Poor guy.  He'll have to work nights on his birthday and that means no celebrating after today.  

My childhood best friend is coming to Irvine this weekend after her residency interview at UCLA on Saturday- I can't wait!  Michelle hasn't been out to visit in a long time because she's been so busy with medical school in Texas.  I have been out to see her once, and I'm going to Dallas for her graduation this June.  

I can't wait for December to get here, so that we can officially have the countdown to Christmas!

Interns

Last night Sam and I hosted dinner for his co-interns.  Unfortunately, Minau, who is the girl intern, couldn't make it.  She was a practicing lawyer before returning to school to obtain her MD, so I am fascinated by her life path and was bummed I didn't get to meet her.  But I did get to meet Duy (pronounced Zoo-ee) and Sohrab.  Duy grew up in Anaheim Hills (he was a UCI undergraduate) so he is living with his parents while he gets acclimated and starts paying back his loans.  Sohrab was born in Sweden and moved to Palo Alto when he was 16.   He graduated from UCSD undergrad and medical school, and he's living near the hospital.  

It's funny, meeting 2 of Sam's co-interns made the whole "Residency" thing real to me.  Until this point, my social interactions have centered on people I know from medical school- either students who've have yet to graduate or alumni who are now UCI residents.  Hearing Sohrab and Duy talk about their surgeries and which attendings they like/dislike was great since I've old had Sam's opinion so far.  I also noticed that I am completely immune to medical conversations. I believe at one point they were talking about gangrenous wounds in the diabetes clinic and suddenly Sohrab turned to me and apologized for the horrible dinner conversation.  I put his concern to rest and assured him that I had once asked Sam to tell my dad & grandpa about his anatomy class dissections during a dinner at the Outback Steakhouse.  Not a great venue for said conversation, let me tell you.

I must say, I really liked both Duy and Sohrab and I'm excited to get to know them better in the next several years.  They obviously won't take the place of the Santa Barbara boys, who are more like brothers to Sam and I than friends, and they certainly can't replace the med school friends we've lost to non-UCI residency programs, but they are definitely solid guys with great senses of humor and hopefully they will find some equally entertaining significant others in the next few years so that I have a new set of girlfriends to hang out with.