Wed Sep 01 15:12:57 MST: Nothing exciting has really happened lately. My watch has gone out a few times since I wacked it playing Basketball, and now I think I will have to get a new one. I have also organized all of my folders and I am ready to learn. I don't know how challenging this semester will be, but I am willing to work hard to make the marks.
Louise and I are in a really interesting Political Science class that talks about racism and multiculturalism in the west. The other classes are going all right, but I'll get back to that in a month or so to see if that is still the case.
Tue Sep 07 19:43:48 MST Rough Weekend: For the world, and all the while I am living quite comfortably her in my padded and protected little community here in Provo. Let's see, this Labor Day weekend we had Hurricane Francis (no relation) and the massacre of Beslan in Russia. It is so easy to just not think about the problems of others, isn't it. And as for Beslan, even though it is so far away, the salient, poignient fact that People can do that to other people is astonishing, but unbeleivable as the madness of terrorist can be, it is what the world has to deal with.
An attack of that sort on any nation is an attack on human dignity.
The future is exciting for me, however, and I hope that I can just contribute to the wellbeing and happiness of others.
Louise and I have been doing great. Our first week at school went by with no major problems. Labor Day Weekend was also exciting for Mom (Anne) who got hitched on Friday. Last I heard they were in an undisclosed location in North Carolina. May they have all the happiness that they deserve, as well as at least half the happiness that they don't. Louise's Mom called on Saturday, and we talked to her a bit. Sounds like we will have a new neice in a week or so. Paul and Rebecca in Brisbane are having their Second Girl.
We also spent much of Saturday night with Omel and Sarah Contreras. Since there were two of us out of the four that are currently applying for U.S. Citizenship, we decided to watch "In America". It was a good film (except for a little portion that had to be skipped) about Irish American Imigrants as well as the general human condition of poverty, sickness, death, birth and enduring the jolts and jarrs of life. It was a well rounded film, and it made me want to go to New York for Medical School!
Life is great in america, and I hope that we just don't forget the other 70% of the world that lives below our poverty level.
![[Comments]](/nb//themes/Default/comments.png "1 comment")
(1) Fri Sep 10 14:21:41 MST: It has been a good week. Basketball in the morning has intensified. We played a game of 4 on 4 today, and we had a good time. It was a good work out. It is still hard getting up at 5:30 every morning, but I always feel more energized when I am up and excercize than when I don't.
I think that we will have to take a little bit of a break tonight for some R&R as well. Schoolwork has been busy, and we are a little tired from all of the week's activities. Louise took her first spanish test today. She got 100%, and was quite happy about that. It is certainly a much steeper learning curve than her japanese classes, (which she really didn't learn a whole lot). I am amazed that she is so open and interested in travel and people. I think that will serve us well in the future. Louise certainly is adventurous in ways that I have never been.
(5) Tue Sep 14 19:54:33 MST Babies everywhere. . . ,: and why are we not having any? That is the question of the week for us. I just found out yesterday that a friend of mine is going to have a new delivery within the next 9 months. A little while ago another friend told us that they are going to have their second child. Furthermore, today as we went to dinner in the cougareat we saw Kara, another friend who after a summer in New York with her husband has come back pregnant. Now, not many of our friends are married without children.
Those circumstances have been germaine to much thought and discussion about children and everything that comes with them. I suspect that we will have children in about three years (when I am in my second year of Medical school), but we have been thinking about the subject.
It will be great to have children once it is the right time, and I think that the time will come soon enough. It is suprising, however, that in one short year nearly all of the married people my age with whom I associate regularly have started having children. Of course, there is no hurry, and once that time comes I think (hope) we will be ready. Life is really wonderfull, though, and there is much for us to be grateful for.
Fri Sep 17 20:19:44 MST First test: Physiology. . . and I would have liked to have scored higher, but that is OK. Back to the books.
(5) Tue Sep 21 21:35:17 MST The muddle of the week, and The controversy continues.: About what you might ask? Well, being around pre-med students who are glazie-eyed dreamy about the future with all its money and prestige I see many of them come across the crossroads of getting into medical school. I am in an interesting position myself looking at the road I will take my family down for the rest of my life. The controversy is over how will I pay for medical school???, and the options are 1) Loan it and be a slave to the interest rate (which are pretty low right now), 2) go the military route and have the government pay it, and 3) do an MD/PhD.
Well, my curiosity has been aroused as I perused the different medical school cataloges out East (Georgetown, George Washington, Albert Einstein, Jefferson) amoung others. The concern, all of these schools would cost me more than $30,000 a year in tuition alone. Well, I have been thinking about the military as an option. Almost all of my peers have looked down on that option for some reason or another. My logic is -- If I wanted to be rich, I would go to a two year program of how to extract wealth from others in a purely self-interest maximization way and then I would put it to practice.
I also want to be with my family. The military (contrary to popular understanding) allows a much greater time to be spent with the family than the average doctor would normally have. There are many other reasons, but I think that at this point in my life I would like to graduate next year, and start getting paid for doing what I love right now as well as have the flexibility of taking up to five weeks off for my family throghout the year. Louise also wants to go to Australia more often and in the military we will be able to. It is an exciting time for me, and whatever I choose, it will be nice to start on my professional track.
As for this week, Louise and I were a little tired and worn down yesterday. ...Flu like symptomes... The weather is beautiful and rainy, but the change wears me down. I also have some pretty important assignments due tommorrow, and that has caused a little stress (not too much though). I will be glad when thursday comes around and I will have some rest time.
(4) Fri Sep 24 13:57:28 MST Getting better: After a couple of days of a sniffling nose and a head cold, and now I think that I am better.
Two stories of note.
1) LIFE IN THE ER!
Well, wednesday was the first of many exciting times at the ER. You really meet some interesting people. I arrieved right in the middle of a huge emergency. A patient came in who had severe chest pains and who said that he just took a pill an hour before (mabey he took Frances' drug cocktail). Shortly after coming in, he started having severe bleeding, and had to be taken to the OR room and endoscopy to see what was going on in there. It just so happened that he somehow opened up a hole in his esophagos as well as his Aorta about 7 mm wide, and he was bleeding all over the place. The hospital gave him <b>50 UNITS</b> of blood which is roughly equivalent to 25 liters. I know what you are asking me... "so Joe if the human body can only hold 5 liters of blood where did all the other blood go to?" You guessed it!,--- on the floor for the poor sanitary workers to clean up. The blood was just pumped right in and then right out again. He also received 20 units of plasma.
Well, I was in and out with the records and biohazard bins. My first sight of him was in the dark OR lieing with his head toward me and with blood soaking his sheets and gurney. If he would have been just minutes late to the ER, he would not be around to tell the story of how his life was spared. As far as I know he is doing OK.
It was good to be there in the ER. The later it got, the stranger the visitor to the ER, but in the afternoon/evening I guess that you get a fairly good cross section of society.
2) Wells Fargo "the money tree"
We go to Wells Fargo sometimes to use it's ATM for Louise's Aussie Banking. They have free withdrawals. Well, as I drove up to that ATM I noticed that there was a large sum of cash sitting in the cash slot that was from the Blue Jetta that was in front of me. I removed it and proceeded to make a withdrawal. The machine spit out my card and as I was waiting I was thinking, "is this thing going to give me my money?" It took about 2 minutes after I had tried to reinsert my card that my money came out. I took it to the Tellers inside, and they thanked me. I asked if they could get a record of the person who withdrew that money, (surely I thought that they could), and they said that if somebody comes in they have the day, time and discription of the car.
I went back to the ATM (it being on the way out of the parking lot) and lo and behold there was some cash sticking out of the ATM from another person who happened to have been bamboozeled by the same machine. All in all I took $240.00 back to the tellers. I got much the same response "if they come in we will know who's money this is," but what if they call in a month and try to dispute their statement that says that they were deducted $200 for no reason. I can just imagine them saying "sorry those are the records that we have" not "We are incompetent and our ATM is defective but we will not place it out of order because it is not our problem". One of the tellers even said in a nonchalant way "oh, it's just spitting out cash". Great... get me signed up with this bank right away!!!!
That is compounded with my own bad experience with THAT BANK and how they added unneccesary charges to my account and held half of every paycheck that I deposited for three days. That is my rant for the month. Boy, I wish that I could exact some altruistic punishment sometimes, but vigillante style justice often comes only in the absence of the rule of law. I am sure that they will have their just reward sooner or later.
All in all I am doing well and life is good to Louise and I.
(1) Mon Sep 27 21:25:17 MST Midterms are Afoot. . . : And two of them start on saturday. I thought that this was an LDS institution and they wanted to promote the attendance of General Conference. I am in the thick of Biochemistry right now, but it seems that this first test will be a lightweight compared to the next few that are bound to come up.
Kristen, Aaron, and we have planned Thanksgiving holiday. Louise and I are driving down with Aaron for the week. I think that we will have a good time, and it will be good to be with all of the family again.
During this weekend we went to a barbeque at my boss Dr. Dixon Woodbury's home up in Lindon. It was really nice. We played a little game of Bocce on his lawn and ate hamburgers. I was able to see a different side of Dr. Woodbury, and it was nice to socialize. As a sidenote, Louise had just got her bridal portraits done and so she came with her makeup and hair all done up. She really must have made a good first impression! She looked beautiful.
[Main] 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.