Two weeks ago, Jill and I cashed in a gift certificate we had received from Brent and Maggie to take a cooking class called “summer dinner under the stars” at the L'Academie de cuisine in Bethesda. What makes cooking classes fun? Someone else shops for and buys all the ingredients, measures everything out and takes the dirty dishes away as we use them. We, on the other hand chop, mix, cook and eat this wonderful summer meal (BBQ Pork Tenderloin, Asian slaw, guacamole, mango salsa and white chocolate mousse). Most of the recipes seemed to be variations of Americas Test Kitchen ideas, but we still learned some good techniques and I enjoyed it immensely. And I thought Jill was going to bring the dishwasher lady home with us for the school year. I’m determined to do it again, even if it’s not until next summer.
Since June, Jill and I have been training for the Marine Corps Marathon, which is Oct. 29th. (I went for a couple of runs at Bushmaster, but at Kerkeschner they recommended against running through woods with an M16.) The long runs (Saturdays) are getting to the point where they eat up a good chunk of the time that we have together, but it’s been a lot of fun to get out and explore with her- running through Acadia National Park, in Freeport, etc. These last couple of weeks we’ve been tromping along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C & O) canal towpath (running along the Potomac) and the capital crescent trail (which runs from Bethesda down into the national mall). And we’re becoming experts on energy gel flavors. If you’re in the market we can tell you what flavors to buy (and more importantly which to avoid).
Summer certainly came to a screeching halt when school started last Monday. Based on the speed with which we’re covering material it feels like they added an extra gear to the “transmission of learning” for the 2nd year of medical school. Three days into classes I realized that if I was going to try and complete even half of the assigned reading for pathology and microbiology/immunology I wasn’t going to be able to attend very many classes. It’s felt like a difficult start in many ways. Contrasted with that, the amazing things that have been happening in our Christian Medial Association chapter at USUHS have been miraculous and encouraging. Part of my summer was making a website for our group (www.usuhs.mil/cma) and during the MS1 orientation week about one third of the incoming class has signed up to be involved with CMA; something we’ve been praying about for the last six months. Really, although it’s dense, the course work this year has definitely been more directly applicable. We were also issued (at no cost, of course) our “doctor bag goodies” (otoscope, stethoscope, BP cuff, etc) and one of our classes is just learning how to do a thorough physical exam which is practical and a lot of fun.
And then there are the memories of summer fun…
