Over the bar

We re-discovered something in our house the other day. It's something that we haven't seen in over a month. It's been hidden in plain site and inaccessible to us. What could it be? It's our dining room table!

 Tom vigilantly studied for the bar and now it's over. We won't find out the score and whether or not he passed until May. It's ridiculous, we can't really believe it. But, it's over!

We celebrated in a few ways, one of which was to go out for burgers and milkshakes. We went to this burger bar in Providence that allows you to pick your burger down to the very last detail. It was sort of ironic I guess, because after Tom had spent an entire day doing multiple choice questions he had to do it again for dinner :)

 

 But it was worth it!

A few days after the bar I had the day off and we were able to escape reality a bit with a quick day-trip to Newport. We discovered many signs of spring there. It was an abnormally warm day (topping of almost at 70!). The crocuses were out in full bloom.

 The sun was so warm and the views so spectacular, we almost forgot that it was February!

 I loved seeing mansion after mansion on the cliff walk and looking back to see all of them in a row.

 

 The end of the cliff walk is this beautiful sandy beach, completely empty on this random February week day.

We went back into town to join the crew for a night of adventure. To celebrate, I figured Tom would want to do ANYTHING but sit down and look at a computer screen. So, obviously that meant we were going to go play laser tag! I selected a venue, reserved it for the group and we were set. We joined everyone for dinner. We also happened to be dining at the same place and same time as one of the second year residents with his wife and baby, Beau. 

 Dinner was wonderful and we left the restaurant in good spirits and we quickly questioned whether or not we were making the right decision when we drove through the town of Warwick in the industrial district toward this abandoned warehouse. Almost all the lights were off and it looked incredibly sketchy, but we ventured indoors. 

We got more and more concerned as we were given a tour around the 15,0000 sq foot building that was decorted as a "house of terror" for their haunted house. The website gave no indication that this was going to be the case, so it came as quite a shock. We were guided around the large building passing by skeletons, clowns, creepy dolls and ghost figures in order to be able to decide which room we wanted to play laser tag in. You don't really want to know all the types of things they had on display in the haunted house. Everyone agreed that they had taken it one step too far and we were NOT interested in playing there. To give you an idea of how creepy the rooms were, we as a group settled on a room with bloody clowns because, if you can believe it, the bloody clowns were the least frightening things about this place. I kid you not, we all thought (just a little bit) that we were in the start of a horror film, or that perhaps we weren't going to make it home exactly the way we came. I don't have any images, but I'm sure you can picture a disturbing warehouse filled with horrors.

Now, this place I chose for us to play prides itself on having the most realistic looking laser tag guns than any other place on the market. No plastic, neon colored guns here! They are heavy, metal guns of all different sizes. 

 We split ourselves into two teams and decided to give it a go.

 Here's my team, the scary cats. The looks on our faces kind of summarize the range of emotions we were feeling about playing in this creepy room.

 Once we got going we had a blast and it wasn't nearly as creepy as it started. And, it turns out that the residency program actually came to this same place to play for a residency wide retreat in the past. So, despite what everyone was initially thinking, I did not find the sketchiest place on the planet to play, it just looked like it when it was all dressed up for their haunted house. 

We made it out alive, sweaty, and quite happy. It definitely gave us all a big laugh because of how the experience started --- thinking we were quite possibly in physical danger --- and how it ended, with us playing laser tag as a group with Johnny Cash blaring in the background. You think it's weird to have Johnny Cash as our soundtrack? Well, our music selection was either heavy metal or that, so we went for it.

 Needless to say, the excitement of the night ended up being a great way to cap off the painfully long experience of prepping for and taking the bar exam. Monday then arrived and it was time for Tom to head to Boston for his first day on the job at FINRA! As tradition would have it, we took a photo of Tom on his first day.

Day one was full of introductions, tours, passwords, badges, new hire forms and figuring out logistics. Tom is incredibly excited for the new opportunity and will be spending the next month figuring out the new routine of commuting to Boston each day. Towards the end of March he will be traveling to Dallas, Tx for more training. And for about 25% of his time there, he will be on the road for the job. This could mean he's in NY, CT, ME, or MA (or sometimes he "travels" to Rhode Island for work. It's going to be fun to see how this evolves, and we're so excited to watch it all unfold! Stay tuned for the next adventure. 

Oh, but i might not post for a month because I'm on to my night shift month (round 2 for the year). This means I'll be working around 6 pm - 8 am for six nights per week for the next month. So, Tom and I legitimately might not see each other except one night per week (because I'll get home from work well after he leaves for work, and he'll get home from work well after I leave for work....sigh...). One month and counting!