Well my New Year’s resolution has not been very successful over the past few months. To say the least, it has been a very busy few months. Let’s start with the most important stuff. As most of you already know, I asked the beautiful and awesome Kristen Thomas to marry me. Lucky me, she said yes. This happened over Easter weekend. It was the perfect weekend. She had no idea. I proposed to her on my front porch where we had our first date. A few good stories from the day. We got Greek lunch and were eating it on my porch. A front was coming through, clouds came out, and the wind picked up. This was unacceptable. I was not going to let the weather stop my master plan. So we sat outside like I planned. The wind picked up and literally blew the lettuce off my plate. Kristen then asked if I thought we should just go inside. I stated that I didn’t want the lettuce anyways and that I thought we should stay outside. However, since the wind picked up, the temp dropped. I was done eating and she was cold. Perfect, an easy way to get the ring. So I went inside to get her sweater. I closed the door, got my “speech” and the ring. With the door closed, I turned on my video camera, so the moment could be captured on video. I turned it on and left the door open this time. After a few minutes of my heart pounding while Kristen finished eating, I finally said my deal and proposed. To say the least, she was shocked, but she said yes!! And I got it all on video! What a great way we will be able to recreate the moment on our anniversaries.
With that big life decision in place, we have been trying to lock in the next big decision. Where in the world to live and work. We can live anywhere in the country which is not good for two people who could be happy just about anywhere. So we have spent the past few months interviewing from Ft. Myers, FL to Asheville, NC, to Mattoon, IL to Elmira, NY. The interesting thing is that each of those places at some point we said, ok, lets go there. We start to make plans to finalize our choice and something came up and made it not ideal. It is really amazing how many times we have said, let’s go here and we have not gone there. However, through it all, we have gotten to meet a lot of great people and see a lot of great places. I write this blog as I am flying to New York where I hope that we will be living. I am not going to write more, because I believe in superstition and I don’t want to jinx our plan that we are excited for.
So hopefully when I post this blog, we will both have a job and a place to live. I cannot wait for that weight to be off our shoulders.
I have 23 days left of work at Nationwide. Time has flown by. The month of June will go extremely fast as I try to wrap things up at work and say goodbye to everyone in Columbus. Lots going on in June. Three day work week this week with a round of golf with Tony on Friday, followed by two days at the Memorial Tournament. Go Tiger!! Kristen comes to town the second week of June with graduation that weekend. This will be an awesome week as Kristen and I don’t get spend more than 3 days together very often. Plus, all of my family is coming into town for graduation. Patti, Tim, TJ, Hannah, and Brett have not met Kristen yet. We will be having a cookout all day Sat. June 12th, so if you are in Columbus, you are invited. Followed by a weekend of work with my b-day weekend and work graduation party the final weekend of June.
The best thing about finishing residency is that I get to somewhat control when I start my next job. The plan is to take July and August off. Kristen doesn’t finish until the end of July. This works out great as I will be able to spend sometime in Sullivan for the 4th of July, followed by a week in Denver with Matt before Ben’s wedding at Keystone. Finally, get some time to visit Hopeton in San Diego the second week of July. Kristen has the last week of July off, so we will be moving to hopefully Elmira, NY.
We are trying to figure out how to spend our August. We want to take advantage of the time we have off and fly somewhere that is not easy to fly to when we take vacations from work. We are still in the process of trying to find the best place. We wanted to hike the Inca Trail in Peru, but we booked too late as all hiking permits have been sold. We then thought about hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro. We think there is a travel warning for Kenya, so I am not sure if this will work either. So if you are ready this and have ideas as to where to spend four weeks in August, please let me know. The hard part about August is that a lot of the places we want to go to, it is Winter (Argentina) or deadly hot (India and Egypt). My plan for our trip is to blog everyday about our experiences. I am not sure how real time I will be able to blog as I doubt they have wireless signal on the side of a mountain, nor do I want to carry a computer while hiking. So that means that I will for the first time in my life try to write in a journal, yes pen and paper style.
Trying to think what else I need to write about to catch everyone up. Most of my time outside of residency has been traveling to find a place to live and work. Lots and lots of stories there, but I don’t want to bore everyone with the ups and downs. The good news is, I am excited to hopefully be flying to a place where we will both have great jobs and be living in the Finger Lakes. Google it. Beautiful place. A bit more slow pace, which I cannot wait for.
Hopefully within the week, I can blog about confirmation on a job and maybe even a place to live!!!!!!
All electronic devices need to be shut off as we are approaching LaGuardia. Bye for now!
