From Luxor

Well, Egypt is not very internet friendly thus far on our trip.  We finished our sail on the Nile and will be taking the overnight train to Cairo in two hours.  I was hoping to get wireless, so I could post some pictures, videos, and recent blogs, but the only worker who knows the password is home sleeping.  Hopefully, the hotel in Cairo will have wireless.

We have spent the past three nights on a boat sailing from Aswan to Luxor stopping along the way to look at certain Egyptian temples and tombs.  It has been a very interesting experience.  I do not have the time to write more and it will be better with pictures and video. 

Anyone know of a good website that sums up American news in a week or month?

Excursion: Day 1 and 2

Well..It is kind of embarrassing to admit, but we went to the airport one day early.  When we were booking the trip a month ago, we were looking at departures on Saturday and Friday. I booked the Saturday, wrote Saturday on the itinerary, but we still went to the airport on Friday. All said, it was for the better as we got to finish some things before we left. 

We started our trip with a 9 hour lay over in Toronto.  What is weird was that it was cheaper to fly from Cleveland to Toronto to Spain vs flying from Toronto to Spain.  I still do not know why that is.  But we took a day trip into Toronto from the airport via subway.  They have a very residential feeling downtown.  We spent most of out time on a bus tour of downtown to get a quick low down on the city, its history and see its sites.

Our flight from Toronto left at 9:50 pm direct to Madrid.  At least half of the plane was filled with high school kids returning to Madrid from a summer trip.  Not a bad flight in all.  I did have to regulate three girls who were crammed into two seats a few rows behind us as I could not handle one more giggle. However, they were polite and calmed down.  I think we both got maybe 3 hours of sleep before arriving in Madrid.  Great flight as we had access to all sorts of movies.  We watched Date Night for the first couple hours while we ate dinner. Why in the world do they not have internet on flight yet?  There must be some FAA reason.  First class has access to telephones.  So why can't we get wi fi on board.  There is satellite TV and radio, so I know it can be done.  Speaking of first class, I really want to be a bollar and eventually fly first class. They had beds!!!

We finally got our luggage at the airport and made our way downtown via train.  We are navigating our vacation cities with a few Frommer's Day by Day books.

 Let me take a moment to let you know that my computer knows that I am in a spanish speaking country as my google search has turned into Spanish.  Kinda cool...kinda creepy.  I need to change this ASAP. 

Anyways, we spent the first day in Madrid doing a traditional Madrid walking tour. We are got what I think was an unusual experience as it was a Sunday in August.  They say that many business close down for the month of August to go on vacation.  Also, many stores were closed today. Therefore, it was not crowded at all.  Some tourists, some locals, but not too many of either.   Walking around Madrid, what sticks out to me is the amazing Spanish architecture.  You either like or hate it. I think that it is nice as long as it has been renovated.  The buildings range from being recently renovated, to no renovation in a LONG time, to current renovation.  The city seems to be fairly clean. I did not see any stray animals (Athens will be another story).   The roads were not crowded with cars either.  However, there were no places to park them, so I am not sure where people park around the city. 

We are thinking about heading to Barcelona for a few days as it is pretty hot here.  95 degrees tomorrow. Plus we kind of feel that we dont want to leave Spain without visiting Barcelona.  Not sure exactly what we will do.  It is currently 2:43 am and I have already woke up, so I am not sure if I can fall back asleep.  We went to bed at 9:00 pm as we were exhausted from the overnight flight. 

I am going to to post all of our pictures on facebook and provide the link to all non-facebook readers.

Click here to see pictures

Buenas noches!!!!

Life after residency

It has been awhile since I have blogged.  Lots has changed since then...

I have been running around visiting people and moving to Elmira.  Check out pics from my pre-vacation vacation.

Denver
San Diego
Manhattan

Elmira pics when I return

With that being said, Kristen and I are leaving tomorrow for our month long trip to Spain, Egypt, Turkey, Greek Island, and Athens.  I will be blogging on here (with pictures) about our trip
the whole time, so read if you may. 

I have a job! I have a home!

Well as I hinted during my last post, Kristen and I will be moving to Elmira, New York.  I am officially the Associate Director of Pharmacy for United Health Services in Binghamton, NY.  UHS is a four hospital system and I will be responsible for all pharmacy operations at three of the four (and maybe all four after today) hospitals.  I am very excited for the opportunity.  My boss, the director of pharmacy, has done an administrative residency, so he will be a very good mentor.  The position will be challenging and allow me many diverse opportunities.

Kristen and I are even more excited to be moving to Elmira, NY.  We have found a home in Elmira to rent for the next year.

Elmira, NY is in the Finger Lakes region.  It is about 30 minutes south of the biggest lake, Senaca Lake.  Senaca Lake has numerous wineries surrounding the lake.  It is also about 30 minutes from Ithaca, home of Cornell and Ithaca College.  The region is very hilly/mountainous.  We are excited for the numerous outside activities: hiking, biking, laking, kayaking, skiing, etc...

For some weird reason, I am actually excited to buy a riding lawn mower, some tree prunners, and a snow blower.  I am getting old.  I miss having a nice looking yard.  I actually miss yard work.  I am excited to finally have a garage!!  I am looking forward to slowing down and being able to enjoy some down time and not feel like I always have 100 things to do.  All in all, I am very excited for the future.

Last weekend, I graduated with my Master's in Health-System Pharmacy Administration from The Ohio State University.  Emails say it is the biggest graduation ceremony in history.

Can you find Waldo?  (Hint: I have white paper on the top of my cap)

Me getting my diploma:

Pictures with the family:

(How do I rotate this picture?)


I have nine more days of residency!  It is very strange to even think about that.  Single digits days of work left at NCH.  It has been a great experience, but I am ready for the next chapter.  Next post will probably be during my 74 day vacation before starting my first "real" job in the "real world!'

Catch up!!

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 12^th, 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 4^th 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!

Airplane thoughts

Well tomorrow marks the final countdown until the end of my residency. T-100 day!!!  What does that mean?  Well that means I have to staff 8 more weekend days! I have less than 100 days to find a job, hopefully to start in September!  I need 60 days off from residency before I enter the real world.  :) However the bulk of my remaining work lies in the next 40 days. I have to finish my Master's project and present it at the end of April. I am very excited to get it done as it has turned into a very time consuming activity which is preventing me from other fun things at work. I also have another clinical rotation in April. All in all: I have a very very busy 40 days. However, I am highly anticipating my trip to Paris which conveniently falls the day after I present my Master's project!!!  Additionally, Kristen and I are trying find a place to start our careers in the next 40 days so I am very excited to explorer the possibilities.

All of these To Do's have me typing about them on my iPhone as I fly over Illinois back from Vegas. I am usually asleep before the plane is at top altitude. Vegas was a blast. It was Ben's bachelor party!  We watched more basketball in our days than I have in months. It was great. Vegas is nuts during march madness.

It was really cool flying here on Thursday. We flew right over Sullivan. I could see the high school, wyman lake, lake Shelbyville, etc...  It was a clear day. How ironic though that I had a window seat and that I was paying attention and that we actually tracked over the big town of Sullivan. I wonder what the 2010 census will be for Sullivan. What's the odds on over/under of 4400 people?  I didn't see the odds while I was in Vegas. :)

Damn that reminds me, I forgot to put $20 down on Illinois winning the NIT!  I did put $20 on OSU after Kansas got upset yesterday.

Not sure what to title this blog as it is probably the most random one to date.

Well my thumbs are starting to hurt from typing on this little screen. Maybe I can grab a 45 minute nap.

Car wash!!

Today was a great day...After months of getting in a salt encrusted car everyday, I was finally able to get my car washed!!  This usually takes me hours and hours after a harsh winter as the car needs a complete wash down, wax, carpet shampoo, floor mat cleaning, etc...  However, I finally got smart and decided to pay to get it washed.  I am usually against this for a few reasons.  1st: no one washes it good enough to my liking, 2nd the extra cost isnt worth it.  But after thinking about it, I realized that this was only true once I clean my car routinely.  After three months of no cleaning, it was most definitely worth the $35 to have it cleaned and waxed.  They did everything for me (except shampoo the carpet, but that would have cost me an extra $100 and all I need to do is the front floor board).  Have you ever gone camping for 3 or 4 days and you finally get to come home to shave and shower?  Well that is how I feel now that I got to clean my car.  And I got new floor mats with a gift certificate too.  Also, Mother Nature, I went ahead a packed away my ice scrappers so Columbus cannot have any more snow until I move. 

So within 25 minutes tonight, I got my car washed and waxed while eating a Chipotle burrito.  This was way better than spending 2-3 hours in the car wash parking lot doing it myself.  I do look forward to the day when I can wash it by hand again.