Weeks 47-51: Summer Vacation and China Trip

Well I'm hopelessly behind in my blog, and out of time to do much updating as my 5 weeks of summer has wound down. But needless to say I had a great summer, 2 weeks of which I spent with a classmate David, and his wife Meghan in China all over the place. I'll fill in the details as I revise this post eventually, but in the mean time I wanted to include the pictures (note I'm still filling in captions so eventually they'll be all updated) that I took for everyone to get an early look at prior to my eventual detail filling. Enjoy!

Summer Contest Wrap Up

Well it's official, another summer, another summer of contests over, and as their 6-8 week delivery times wrap up I'm getting in the haul. This year, the top of my winnings was probably the Toshiba HD-A2 Drive and Matrix Trilogy HD-DVD set I won from Expo TV for making a video on a HD-DVD product for their summer contest. You can see my over the top review video at Expo TV. Last year's Expert Gamer contest at ExpoTV was a little better (32" Sony Bravia HDTV & 5.1 surround sound system) but I can't complain this year either. If you or anyone you know is in the market for an HD-DVD player, contact me as I don't intend on keeping this one as I have a hard time watching DVD's as it is.

A couple more wins include an iPod Nano, some Xbox 360 games, an Xbox 360 faceplate, and possibly a GPS system and and Xbox 360 bundle which are yet to arrive. If you're reading this and thinking - how can I win this stuff too? There's a great forum at slickdeals that has a whole kaboodle of contests and instant win games popping up. Enter as many of them as you can and as often as you can and you're bound to be a winner too!

The Last Days of Summer

We've been enjoying the last days of summer for me as school officially starts this upcoming Monday July 23, 2007 - but more on that as it begins. We just most recently came back from camping at Whitewater State park this past Monday.

Whitewater State park is the closest park for camping from Rochester, it is about 40 minutes away by car on a paved road that passes farms, farms, and nothing but farms (corn and soybeans), and seems to exist only to get to Whitewater.

Whitewater is a conservation project that started in the early 20th century that was mediation from erosion caused by local slash and burn farming, as such everything was re-vegetated. For less than a hundred years it's done a good job becoming dense and green again and features 12 miles of hiking and even a man made beach (although nothing to compare to our California adventures - I mean it's on a river).


We picked a bad night to go camping though as it was muggy, rained, and our campsite wasy, raided by raccoons (two families of 3 each I think) every hour on the hour from 12-4 am. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep. We enjoyed a hike though, and Mikey seemed to like the beach, and drinking the river water to our chagrin. We'll have to redo the camp in the winter and I think it'll be a lot more fun!

Mikey's First Birthday

We celebrated Michael's first birthday on June 28, 2007. He didn't have too much pomp or circumstance as he has hmm about zero friends his age currently here and I think the birthday concept still eludes him. He nevertheless got a fair share of presents and a cake all for himself. After a little crying during "Happy Birthday" he dug in face first to his personal cake and has never forgotten it since. Everytime we pass one at the grocery store he still points and motions towards them. Of white or chocolate Michael picked out his chocolate cake.

Hectic But Happy

Well we finally arrived in Rochester, MN on Friday June 15 and it's been a week of unpacking, moving stuff, setting stuff up (namely garbage, water, gas, cable, telephone, sewer, recycling, internet, etc.), and buying stuff that we've found ourselves deficient of: ie a dinner table and chairs.

The move itself was rather uneventful - except to the 6000 or so bugs that ended up dying against 5 tons of steel smashing them to smitherines - I thought I even got some small birds against the windshield although upon closer inspection they were bugs the size of small birds!

We stopped in North Platte (yeah if you don't know where that is I don't blame ya), Nebraska for a night on the way out - and for some reason the entire city was booked. It turned out Nebraskaland Days was going on - whatever that is. Other than that Nebraska really is a terribly boring state to drive through.

The drive was scenic, but not very interesting. When we arrived in Rochester it didn't really feel like that long of a drive despite it being about 18 hours total. I attribute the monotony of the scenery to lending that illusion. What did feel like a long trip was paying the credit card gasoline bills of our truck that did sub-10 mpg, and at about $3 a gallon and 1400 miles that added up to a pretty penny of ~$500 worth of gas. Ouch.

We're finally getting setup to some degree, although most of it will be temporary as we have a construction crew set to finish our basement for the next few weeks, so hooray to more clutter. At least when the gauntlet medical school schedule begins we'll have some more habitable space to live in... more on the gauntlet Mayo schedule in another post, let's just say - since when were schools allowed to schedule overnight stays, Sunday instruction, and 3 weeks of your life in 15-minute increments including bathroom breaks?!

We've Bought a Home in Rochester!

We've just returned from a trip to Rochester, MN looking for a place by the Mayo Clinic and after searching for two days and seeing countless properties we found one that we like and are closing the place this week!

It's a short 6 minute drive to downtown Rochester (Mayo Clinic), and is situated on a nice bike trail along the Zumbro River that will allow me even to bike to school (if there isn't two feet of snow). Otherwise a bus line runs in the back of the house too!

Enough of the chit chat, I know the family's eager to see some of the pictures of the place so here you are for your viewing pleasure!

So Where's it Gonna Be? It's Mayo not UCSD!

Well today's the big decision day for all medical applicants everywhere as post May 15th if you are holding onto multiple acceptances you can get threatened by each individual medical school that you are holding to make your mind up -- and fast. As such to people like me who were struggling between decisions like UCSD and Chicago, the May 15th release of acceptances also magically finds new opportunities and new offers like: The Mayo Clinic

We were actually out hiking yesterday up Provo Canyon again and this time saw a 3' diamondback rattlesnake that was out sunning. It was about 5 feet away before I noticed the bushes rustling and caught eye of the snake (we were both listening to The Wild Trees on audiobook on our iPods so we didn't hear it earlier). It wasn't too big and it only spanned about 1.5" across at its thickest portion, but 2 hours up the canyon was hardly the place where we wanted to get bitten by a rattlesnake. It had a nice 3" long rattle but didn't seem to notice us nor need to use it.

So by the time we returned home we were hardly thinking about medical school decisions when Jane, the friendly admissions correspondent at Mayo popped up in the answering machine messages. Both excitement and despair hit me at the same time; excitement that I now had the Mayo Clinic as an offer, despair in that just as we had finally acclimated in our minds for San Diego would see a drastic change in the next hours.

Sure enough after relatively short consideration the table was turned in favor of Mayo and now my summer's been cut short to a start date of July 23, 2007. Not to worry though, we're headed out next week to find a condo, and hopefully will be moved out of Utah by the end of June! This summer may see some excitement yet beyond summer hiking not that I mind either.

I won again this week and also $120,000†

†So I won another $20 in Bajio, $15 in iTunes, and another t-shirt from playing Tetrix again this week. At this rate I think I'll win this prize 5 times before summer's out. What about the cash I'm mentioning? No I wasn't on Deal or No Deal, I'm probably dumber than a Fifth Grader, I haven't made it to Jeopardy--yet, and I don't think any other gameshow awards that much money these days after their ratings drop. So where'd the $120,000 come from? University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

So someone between the Financial Aid office and my mailbox goofed as I was apparently supposed to get notification about this scholarship months ago and just got a message this morning after inquiring about financial aid that I had a three-quarter tuition scholarship there all along! The catch is I have until Tuesday May 15, 2007 to decide what one and only one school to keep. It is now a battle between University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (Shown to the bottom right) or University of California San Diego School of Medicine (Shown in the top left). Both are great schools and San Diego has already offered me a great financial incentive for going there, but with Chicago's new ante this drop tuition at Chicago to about half of San Diego's. Housing is financially comparable in both places and academics are par between the two with perhaps a little more respect from residency directors for Chicago over UCSD. The key thing here is can we forgo the amenities of a city like San Diego to save a bit in Chicago with a marginal benefit to my education -- or is keeping the wife and kid happy with prospects of the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and the beach worth the marginal cost of "name brand" recognition? I think it's a very tough call and sometimes wished I didn't even have this choice to make between the two - let alone only two days to make it.
I determine the fate of my future, my education, my career within these next 48 hours.

Squaw Peaked

So unbeknown to many a person is the actual location of Squaw Peak. Many people will drive up Provo canyon, see the nice road sign and suddenly decide to venture to a parking lookout about 20 minutes up the paved road. Little do these people actually realize however that they've been conned as have so many countless romantics who go up that same road to woo their dates in the cacophony of chugging car engines and spluttering mufflers - perfumed by the heavenly scent of carbon monoxide.

Here's a tip lover boys: try taking your date to the real Squaw Peak and see if she's all that in your five and a half hour hike up there with her. Our hike today was in the intent to go somewhere new and when we passed by the rock labeled "Squaw Peak Trail" today on our third hike of the summer up Rock Canyon we decided to go for a try. Little did we know that our hike which began at 3:00 pm would last until 8:30 pm before we dragged our broken bodies off the mountain traveling over 10 miles and ascending and descending 2206 feet. Thanks to our friend Google Earth we were able to see exactly where we ended up in our trail of tears.

Our perseverance paid off today though as into the third hour we hit a clearing at the top of the mountain about the size of a baseball field and decided to make a b-line for the west ridge of the mountain where the faint sounds of motorcycles were wafting up in the mountain air.

We trod through a patch of peculiar lettuce-like plants marked "plot 2" and forged our own trail through the brush and growth of the alpine terrain. Not more than fifteen minutes later as we hiked over the last ledge and felt a gust of brisk wind hit our faces, the vast expanse of Utah county revealed itself below the rocky outcropping that we found ourselves on. In the presence of three mountain goats and 2206 feet above humanity this was Squaw Peak --not some paved parking lot drive in.

Google's done a good job trying to simulate the view, but I think I've done a little better.

I didn't realize that our camera could do exposure lock.
We'll make a trip up there next time to get some better pictures for a better panorama

The 2 am 26" monster attacked!

Well this was supposed to be the summer that "Fit Happens" as I gear up for medical school this fall and shed some of these empathy pounds from our last pregnancy that somehow didn't come off of me as easily as the wife Carolyn. We've been doing 2-4 hour hikes up Rock Canyon three times a week as well as an interspersed cross-training on the off days.

The first hike was 4 hours long because we were well averaging like 1 mile an hour and walking yards at a time before keeling over and dying - remember we have a 25 lb pack that includes a kid that we're hauling as well. We improved the same distance down to 2 hours after recuperating last week.

Needless to say Saturday came as a repose for us as we rested our hike-wearied muscles for some Xbox 360 late night Tetris Evolution (hey I need to keep training those warrior skills still!) As 2 am rolled around we heard a rustle outside our front door and went to investigate. Lo and behold the angel of late-night pizza craving had passed by us and our 2 am 26" monster had attacked! It's deadly venom took us down by 3 am but somehow in the commotion of the night we managed to slay the beast as we continue to feast on its remains which lie in our refrigerator to this day.

A Fit Happens redux starts tomorrow.

I've become a Tetrix Warrior Against Tobacco

Hundreds and thousands of hours of practicing Tetris has finally paid off. All those sleepless nights with only the dreams of falling four-unit blocks have come to fruition. Finally I have found a contest out there that can put my mad tetris playing skills to the challenge - and challenge it was my friends!

It was Monday morning at roughly 3:46 am when my parched lips awakened me to a midnight sip of water. The glow of the hibernating computer beckoned me to turn it on. As I did so the dormant website came to life as she sang her siren's cry: "play me again Dan, just one more time." I heeded the temptation with little reluctance, and by 4:30 am I was $20 in Bajio and $15 in iTunes gift certificates richer and more importantly I became: a Warrior Against Tobacco.

So a midnight craving of Tetris has set me on route to another Xbox 360, a skate board, and a prize pack from Salty Peaks. Now as a true warrior I must fend off the challengers of my noble 6865 at least until June 4th. Can this master of the colored blocks prevail? Only time will tell.

Dare you challenge me to become a fellow warrior?