Merry Christmas!

This is a fantastic time of year. Christmas is quickly approaching and the end of school (for at least a few weeks) is within sight. We will be spending the break in Arizona this year. I am willing to trade in the traditional snow and cold for some sunshine. Columbus hasn't seen the sun for weeks it seems. I've heard that Columbus has more cloudy days than Seattle, and I'm beginning to believe it. I'm cramming for my last test (as shown by me posting this...). Brianna is getting adjusted to her new job, and is really liking it. She is an ophthamology technician working in an office in the OSU medical center, just around the corner from the medical school. We get to carpool and eat lunch together now, which is really nice.

This week we experienced the joys of making Christmas treats together for the first time. I've found that only a few things can ruffle Brianna's feathers. Unideal cooking results happens to be one of them. We (Brianna) had decided we would make carmel and chocolate dipped pretzel sticks garnished with holiday sprinkles and crushed candy canes. Unfortunatley, we made the mistake of buying the cheap pretzel sticks. Several pulled a Liberty Bell and cracked during the dipping process. For their treachery, they felt the full wrath of Brianna. Luckily, the majority of the pretzels were smart enough to stay in one piece and they turned out beautifully. As we went and distributed them to our new friends here in Columbus, we realized how many great people we have met since moving to Ohio. We have been extremely lucky to live in the complex we do and to be in such a great city for medical school. So in this season of Giving, I want to Give a big cybernetic thanks to all of our friends and family that have made the transition into a new city and life so easy. May the Holidays be filled with joy and peace. Merry Christmas!

Conjugal Bliss and The Holidays

With a whopping four months of marriage under my belt, I have noticed that there are several unexpected perks associated with conjugal bliss. Of particular note is the increased fun level of "The Holidays" that we have shared together. Prior to marriage, I had heard rumors that The Holidays suddenly have more meaning when you have someone to share them with. Turns out whoever started those rumors was right. Officially recognized days of celebration have become exponentially more enjoyable now that I have a significant other. In fact, we like The Holidays so much that we've decided to extend them beyond the customary Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yep, Halloween and Valentine's Day made the cut, and everything in between, including Veteran's Day. (We left out Columbus Day because it is so anticlimactic, even here in Columbus).

To kick off The Holidays, we made a Halloween pilgrimage to Pumpkin Fest in Circleville, OH. We saw the world's biggest pumpkin pie, as well as the biggest pumpkin ever grown in the state of Ohio, weighing in at a hefty 1524 1/2 pounds. We celebrated Halloween itself in a traditional fasion. We scrounged up some costumes after raiding Salvation Armani, got together with friends, ate good food, and had a grand old time. My costume was an 80's butt-rock groupy with a "Tom Cruise-from-Cocktail" look. I think both of us really got in touch with our inner 80's child. The pants were a bit tight, but sometimes you have to be willing to make sacrifices for authenticity's sake.

Veteran's Day was an official OSU holiday, so no school for me. This means it was automatically fantastic, regardless of how it was celebrated.

Thanksgiving was also filled with family, good food, and bucket loads of fun. We made the five hour road trip to Illinois and met up with the rest of my family for the extended weekend. Highlights included an amazing selection of pies, the revival of the Thanksgiving Pinata, winning a turkey at the 40th annual Turkey Trot run, and making the traditional graham cracker and icing houses (our lean-to was meant to represent the starving medical student lifestyle, while my architect brother took the cake with his Frank Lloyd Writesque "Falling Graham Crackers").

Finally, we've embraced whole heartedly the pre-Christmas Holiday (post Thanksgiving until December 1st) by setting up our very own artificial Christmas tree. It is a beauty as far as fake trees go. We snagged it online back in August for dirt cheap, and only now are we realizing what a good deal we got. Having our own place to decorate is pretty cool too. Our stockings are already hung by the lamp shade with care, and now we're just waiting for December to arrive so we can officially start the real Christmas season.

So life and "The Holidays" have been good to us so far. I am confident that conjugal bliss will continue to bring added excitement to life, and I can't wait to see what the rest of The Holidays have in store, especially MLKJ Day.

Adventures of Ohio

Here are a couple of shots of our adventures so far.


Our Apartment
















Niagara Falls, Canukistan Side

















William McKindawg and us in front of The Ohio State House

The Journey Begins

This picture pretty well sums up the proverbial "How I spent my summer vacation". Yep, I got hitched to a vivacious and beautiful woman, moved to THE state of Ohio, and started medical school. The exciting journey of real life (sort of) has finally begun. So many stories to tell already! I'll start with medical school.

I was excited to begin my first year of medical school. Then class started. After the first week, I came to the conclusion that medical school is war. I was trapped in a less deadly version of Remarque's WWI novel All Quiet on the Western Front. I was bogged down in the grueling study trenches of the Prior Science Library for hours on end. Massive assigned-reading bombs were unexpectedly exploding around me, with an accompanying barrage of new vocabulary shrapnel from the pages of medical education. The carnage accumulating in the anatomy lab tissue bin was impressive, strange, and stinky. Then came the reckless and daring week-long study offensive before the big unit test. The insanity and confusion was followed by an inexplicable lull in the action. Life slowed down again, and I was able to partake in the finer things in life....like sleep.

Well, it turns out that medical school isn't so bad after all. Remarqueian intensity has been replaced with an interesting, engaging, and comical Catch-22-esque experience (minus the disenchantment). Sure, life as a medical student isn't a cake walk. There are moments of sheer terror when faced with a nerve on the anatomy exam I don't recognize. But there are also Yossarians to keep life entertaining. And there is time for the finer things in life, most recently...square dancing with a bunch of 55+'s.

And so the journey begins. We'll see how I feel when MedII roles around.

I'm Going to Med School!

I was digging through a box of old assignments the other day and I found a paper I had written during the first semester of my freshman year of college, way back in the days of the Y2K scare. Amidst memories of midnight runs to Denny's and enduring sub-zero temperatures of football games with a big "Y" painted on my bare chest to show my school spirit, I found a worksheet that caught my attention. I contained my responses to questions my English 200 teacher had posed to us new freshmen. One question in particular jumped out at me. He had asked, "Why did you choose to come to BYU?" I had written something to the effect that I chose BYU because they had a good biochemistry program and that chicks dig biochemistry majors. Of more interest and slightly more intellectual substance, I had continued by saying that I had the goal of someday going to medical school and that BYU had a good track record of helping undergraduates get accepted. I reflected on the feelings I had had seven long years ago when I wrote that response. That was the beginning of the daunting journey of chasing my dream to work in the field of medicine.



(I know what you're thinking...."A lot of people go to college for seven years... yeah, they're called DOCTORS...")



I am the first member of my family to go into health care. My grandpa, great-grandpa, and great-great grandpa were home-steadin', dirt-diggin', snot rocket blowin' potato farmers in Southern Idaho. My Dad was part of the first generation "off the farm", and started his career in grounds supervising and landscaping before finishing his bachelors degree. Going to medical school seemed to me like a break from a long and proud tradition of manual labor. Acceptance to medical school always seemed like a nebulous, impossible feat. It was my pie-in-the-sky goal. I halfway believed that the only way I could get in would be to bribe, trick, or slander an admissions committee into letting me in, just to see what happens.



This past week I finally achieved my goal. I got the email I had always dreamed of getting, a letter from THE Ohio State University College of Medicine advising me that I had been accepted to their program. I was ecstatic. It is interesting to finally achieve a long standing goal. The deep sense of fulfillment is real and irreplaceable. I have been reveling in my excitement ever since. I would rank it up there with finishing the Boston Marathon, having a paper published, and traveling abroad for the first time. So six months from now when I am completely stressed out and overwhelmed by having to distinguish the sphinoid from the ethmoid, I will look back on this week and remember, "Justin, this is what you want". And it still will be true.