From rainbows to Elk, with yummy food in between

Before I start a new adventure I thought I'd wrap up the last two.

My last full day in Kauai was very nice. It managed to rain all morning conveniently enough for me to mess around on my uke and then finish my book, a Japanese crime thriller called Out. The double rainbow ending in the ocean behind Sue and Irv's condo was fabulous (as evidenced here). Then the skies cleared and we first lounged by the pool and then by the beach, and I may have actually gotten a tad of a tan-line (but only if you're in the right lighting).

As promised, I'm posting here a pic of the awesome Shave Ice I had in Hanalei. Really, really fine shaved ice (but no D, officially), almost like snow. then its totally drenched in tropical flavored syrup (of your choice) with (get this!) rich, creamy ice cream (also of your choice) on the bottom. That's right, folks, this is waaaay better than your usual beach-side crushed ice SnoCone. In fact, SnoCones everywhere should be ashamed, because obviously there is an opportunity to explode your tastebuds and make you writhe in ice-cream headache joy if only the SnoCone it would instead be Shave Ice. *sigh*

On the flight home I read nearly the entire book Life of Pi, which I thought was excellent. My layover at the Honolulu airport was spent reading and playing my ukulele in the sun. A good last horrah before back to birthing babies. (Me, floating in ocean at left)

The last adventure was this past weekend. The "R1 Retreat". We have two retreats in the year.Each class of residents gets their own and then we have a mandatory whole class retreat. the mandatory one has more structured activity. The class retreat is unscheduled, mostly because we're too tired to plan anything and we have no budget. But we can get the days off if we are scheduled to work that weekend (which I was). Basically it's two days where we eat, sleep, and eat some more (note copious amounts of food in cabin's fridge, below). Very relaxing.

We went to a cabin in a place called Packwood. It's near a ski slope called White Pass and in the mountains. We had Elk running around our yard daily and on Saturday most of the folks went out sledding, snow-shoeing, skiing or snowboarding. Me, I spent most the weekend lounging in the outdoor hottub, reading and, of course, eating.



On the trip, however, one of the interns (shrouded in darkness at left, with the retreat's fab view behind him... and Liza) made an announcement that he was leaving to pursue internal medicine. He obviously initially thought FP was the career path for him but realized at some point he was meant to be an internist and is actually starting over (Egads! I can't even imagine being an intern again!) in Portland next year. He will finish out most of his year here and, actually, we only have to find coverage for one of his calls in his last month here. We will miss him as he adds not only another Y chromosome to the residency (we are very XX-heavy), but he also is a pretty cool guy. Additionally, the concern is raised about how we replace him because, being a rather small program where each class of 8 essentially runs Tacoma General, we can't really function a resident short for very long. The Program Director will put out the word and we will interview applicants. I'm crossing my fingers for a cute, single, hard working lesbian derby-girl-turned-doctor but you know what they say about beggars and choosers...

Now, better get out of my jammies and into my flight suit (er, jeans and sweatshirt) because I'm off to San Diego!