The first day of summer: July 4th

This week was the wonderful start of summer for us in Tacoma—the fourth of July. I know that it’s a sad joke that we have around here, but it seems to be true: it really isn’t summer until the fourth of July rolls around. And, summer has rolled around alright! It was fantastic to have a day off in the middle of the week and we spent nearly all of our time outdoors! 

 

We headed down to the waterfront for the annual Freedom Fair for the smell of fatty fried food, tons of happy (albeit scantily clad) people and a lot of fun! 

 

 They had the old classic cars out for show, which are always fun to glance at.

 And there was also pole vaulting, which I thought was a bit random, but cool to watch anyway!

 

The air show was spectacular, as always. The photos never do justice what these planes can really do! This one was the "Raptor" and it went INSANELY fast and was also incredibly loud (but it travels faster than the speed of sound, so you don't actually hear it until after it goes past you...crazy).

Of course there was pickle ball to be had (you’ve probably seen photos on facebook of that). 

And lastly, we had the best view of the fireworks that I can ever imagine in Tacoma. Thanks to Gary and Judy-Ann  Rank and their family for always offering up their home for us to enjoy!

Oh, and a week before the fourth, we celebrated Allison’s birthday by going paint-balling! A few bruises and a lot of smiles and laughs later—Al turned 25 :). We “old” adults then headed off to red-robin for a much needed feast! This photo captures the moment beautifully I think, but it also kind of looks like an ad for Red Robin (it was not the intention, I promise you).

I’ve got two weeks left of class and things are getting serious. Our TA is a big fan of graphs, tables and charts like this one (below) full of details that will be on the final exam. I'm not sure they are the best learning tool for me personally, but I take pictures of them on my phone to upload to my computer just in case I want to reference them later.

You should see the technology running around our classroom by the way. I don't know what people did in med school before the 21st century. We've got people taking notes on their ipads (several with a homemade stylus from a marker, tape and a gum wrapper--an idea they got on YouTube). They are sharing wireless hotspots from their smart phones when the internet on campus goes down. We are creating shared documents on dropbox.com that we can access from any computer anytime and are also utilizing flashcards online that are available on an app on my iphone. So, I have 45+ minutes of built in flashcard time twice a day while I'm on the bus--all on my phone! The best part, while I'm sitting in lecture, annotating the lecture slides in powerpoint, I'm also popping over to the flashcard website and adding in new terms/concepts that instantly cross over to my phone so I can study them on the way home. Maybe this is old news to you all, but I've never used this kind of technology in my studying before and it's blowing my mind! 
It’s getting to the intense part of the course but on July 20^th (the same day as the final)  we’re headed off to Hawaii for 10 days of bliss! But before all that, we will be moving (perhaps in stages) up to Seattle. We’ll probably need some help with all of that, so we’ll be sure to keep you posted! We are going up this week to sign the lease and do the walk through, then we'll have the keys to our new home and the move can commence.

Oh—and for those of you that are curious. I haven’t settled with the insurance company just yet to deal with my totaled car, but I’m working on it. They are knocking $1,300 off the actual cash value of the car because apparently in 2004 the car was totaled before I bought it! Ug. I HATE insurance companies. Considering that $1300 is about 1/4^th of the value of the car, I’m trying to fight to get that amount dropped down, but I don’t know if that’s even going to be possible.