Happy New Year!

To celebrate the New Year our friends Evan and Chris came to visit from Colorado. It was so great to have them here, and they brought their darling cats and dog. We weren't sure how the animals would get along, but it all went well.

Flying Star New Year's Eve Breakfast

This is the Tofu-ritto but I asked for quinoa instead of a tortilla.

We rang in the New Year at home but went out earlier in the evening.

Luna did surprisingly with cats in the house.

Jokers!

Dog walking through campus.

For Christmas we gave them Powergrid. It is so fun.

More dogwalking.

Obligate midnight selfie. Happy 2014!

Happy New Year!

They had to leave early on New Year's Day to continue their road trip, so we spent the day relaxing.

We miss you already, safe trip!

Weekend Biking and the Elevation

Today I went on the longest bike ride of my life.

At least I'm pretty sure. I've never been a distance biker, just a commuter and then there were all those bike rides with my family as a kid.

Anyway, today John and I went out for a ride and came back 22 miles later! I know cyclist people out there might not think anything of it, but I'm proud, and I'm on a fairly heavy hybrid bike, not a zippy road one, so it's safe to say my legs are going to be exhausted tomorrow. Of course I love Nora (yes, the bike has a name). Remember when I first brought her home with my tax refund? 

Hard to believe it was over 2 years ago. I don't think I have those jeans anymore.

So here's the loop we did: 

We headed through Downtown, up the Bosque trail next to the Rio Grande, over on Paseo del Norte and then back down the Diversion Channel - which was flowing well because it was raining on the east side of town, but not so much on us. 

The box beneath the map has the elevation info. Sometimes I forget, but as you can see we're at almost a mile of elevation here in Albuquerque. As exercise has sort of fallen off in the past couple months I can't say I've noticed a difference. I blame all my difficulties on being woefully out of shape.

The day was full up with other activities too. 

We started with a brunch with the Chiefs in my program which was really fun, then went to a new church. The message was on Esther and I really liked it. We had Chipotle leftovers for lunch:

If you slice a burrito in half, it makes a perfect 2 meals. And yes this is like the 3rd time I've used this same picture on the blog. Not sorry.

Then the bike ride was in the afternoon. Afterward we found a dog that had run away and returned him to his happy family. Shortly after that kids came to the door asking for donations for some weird program that seems to be in every neighborhood we live in. 

Sometimes I wonder, if I put a sign that says "We are hundreds of thousands of $ in debt" on the door, will people stop knocking and giving us a hard time about not donating to their bizarre programs? Probably not.

We had potato and corn soup from the slow cooker for dinner (I didn't take a picture, but it was very, well beige anyway, not exactly appetizing in appearance.) Tasted great though.

This week I'm on nights in the Intensive Care Unit starting tomorrow, which means 5:30 PM to 6:30 AM, and I have to try to sleep during the day. I'm up typing even though John's already asleep in an attempt to shift my clock a little, but I think it's just going to be rough. 

Also I'm going to try to register my car tomorrow so wish me luck as I have to brave the DMV. 

Settled In

The Children's Hospital.

We moved here to Albuquerque over a month ago and I think it's because of the long work days that it feels like even longer. I'm now a Pediatric Resident and John got a job as a Structural Engineer at a firm here in town.

All the free time of the fourth year of medical school is long gone and being a Resident is starting to feel real.

For my first rotation I worked on the Hematology-Oncology service and it's hard to believe that month is already behind me. It was a busy month full of all kinds of new challenges of learning the new hospital and being tested emotionally as I figured out my new role and dealt with lots of remarkable kids with cancer and blood disorders.

The schedule of the month was pretty great in that I had all but one of my weekends off. This let me spend plenty of time with John and getting finished settling in here. The weekday hours were pretty typical for inpatient, usually from 6:30 AM - 5:30 or 6 PM every day. I had great senior residents who did their best to make sure we got out on time or early.

During the month we got a chance to explore the area, and we made an addition to our family:

This is Luna!

We adopted her from the shelter here and she's about 2.5 years old. She's already house trained and we've had no trouble with her chewing things up - it's been a remarkably easy transition. She does like to pull John's socks out of his drawer and carry them around. We'll find them in the oddest places.

Albuquerque is a very dog friendly place so we often take her with us when we go out and walks/hikes are her favorite thing in the world.

Satellite Coffee is the local favorite coffee shop. On the day before my first real day in the hospital we went. I was nervous and cracked open the hematology-oncology section of one of my books. It's much easier to study in the context of the real patients I see, but the outing did help. Maybe it was the coffee.

We also had a great time checking out the local baseball park with some of John's coworkers. The Isotopes are a AAA team that feeds into the Dodgers. I'm not that big a fan of baseball as sports go, but it's fun to go and hang out in the local community. 

Some nights of the week they have concerts at the Botanical Garden or Zoo. We went to one with Max Gomez and had a great walk around the garden. 

In other news, I have portable access to all my internet needs because John won me an iPad Mini in a raffle:

He came home from a conference and told me he got me a little present. I assumed it was a hot air balloon trinket or something because that's where his conference was held. He then wrapped it up, hid it and I had to find it. All the buildup was worth it because it's been really useful. I use it at works to look up labs etc. while we're rounding and of course it's great for blog reading, note taking and playing games. (I'm so stuck on Level 135 of Candy Crush Saga).

Now for this month I'm working in the Urgent Care. There's a rare Saturday shift and sometimes late clinic until 7:30 instead of 5 PM, but I have most weekends and don't start until 8 instead of 6:30 like last month. Since I cross-covered nights last weekend yesterday was my first real day off in 12 days - that certainly won't be nearly the longest stretch in the years to come, but I was ashamed to find how tired I got and Saturday came like such a blessing.

We went hiking in the Sandias yesterday and it was beautiful. We've been wanting to go all month but it's been closed because of fire danger. We finally had some crazy rain storms so they opened it up. There's an amazing view of the whole city. Of course Luna loved it.

We've also been meeting new people and trying to find a church. It's been a transition for us both professionally and geographically, so the settling in still feels ongoing. 

Thanks for reading such a long update post. I big "We Miss You" to those of you we moved away from.

Know anything about Albuquerque? I'd love to hear about your experiences or ideas.