The Beginnings of Fall Semester

First of all, I apologize that this is the first time I have written since the beginning of the semester. It feels like a lifetime of things have happened since then, but I suppose I have been too busy living my life in order to document it. Please excuse the catch-up.

To be somewhat chronological in my narrative, let me tell you first what happened at the end of summer but before school started. I spent some time with those of my friends who were back in Baltimore during the weekend before school began. One friend of mine, Chris, and I went to get some ice cream along one of the hip avenues here in Baltimore, and as we were strolling along, we noticed a high concentration of police cars and a police helicopter, which is out almost every night in Baltimore, shining its light directly in front of us. A hysterical woman walked past us talking to her boyfriend about seeing a knife, and we realized that we were in the middle of some kind of police chase! We quickly went to our car and decided to eat our ice cream somewhere locked and indoors. Baltimore is, unfortunately, not nearly as safe as Portland, Oregon or Laramie, Wyoming!

Anna and I overlook part of Baltimore up at Druid Hill
Park.

Another friend, Anna, and I have been growing really close. The weekend before school started, she and I went for a long bike ride around Baltimore and ended up finding a park with a beautiful reservoir and a nice view of Baltimore's downtown. After our ride, we stopped at a coffee shop for a blueberry buttermilk froth, which was as tasty and bizarre as it sounds. We talked about our goals for the semester, how excited we were to be back in Baltimore, how our summers had been, and everything in between. I felt so close to her and so enthused for the semester. It was a beautiful afternoon of internal peace and a strong sense of connection to an amazing person. I couldn't have asked for more!

Two other really fun times with people in my program stand out. For one of them, I biked downtown with my friend Joey, enjoyed the nice view of the downtown area and harbor, and then went to the American Visionary Arts Museum, which is a museum that houses the avant-garde, eccentric artwork of people with mental health disorders, people who are incarcerated, or people who were just generally considered to be ahead of (or behind) their time. We saw things like an exhibit all about farts (which satisfied my inner twelve-year-old to no end!) to intense, apocalyptic paintings with imagery and words from the Book of Revelation. It was certainly an experience not to be forgotten, and it was fun to spend more time with Joey.

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you Baltimore's
downtown and inner harbor!

Lastly, I've been growing really close with a guy in my program named Tim and his roommate, Noah. Tim reminds me of Shelby in many ways, which is part of why I felt so close to him right away. In my personal life, I had been thinking a lot about my friendships with straight men and how, even though I value them tremendously, I sometimes withdraw from them since I worry that straight men will have an adverse reaction to me as a gay man. As part of personal growth, I encouraged myself to reach out in a natural, Bob-style way to some of the guys in my program who have reached out to me in their own ways in the past. To that end, I had Tim and Noah over for a dinner of sweet potato and black bean enchiladas (with salsa, Spanish rice, and arroz con pollo to compliment/complete the meal) that I made. We ate and talked late into the night, laughing and sharing so deeply, and it was amazing. After that dinner, all three of us have grown closer, and it feels really good to have guy friends on whom I can lean and with whom I can be fully myself. In general, I am so grateful for the people in this program and for how inspirational, brilliant, and amiable most of them are. I feel so fortunate.

Though a low-quality photo, it at least shows the entire class
eating together. I'm with the rest of the guys in the back right.

The Friday night after our first week of school, the post-baccalaureate premedical program hosted a "welcome back" dinner at an iconic city restaurant, Cafe Hon. I got a delicious plate of crab cakes and enjoyed talking with the people that I had begun to grow close to in the summer. After dinner, we decided to go dancing at a a once-a-month event at Baltimore's Lithuanian Hall, a strange private club in Baltimore that hosts a large dance party the first Friday of every month. We danced our little butts off, knowing that that weekend was probably the last one where we could afford to stay out late and sleep in the next day. At the dance, as I was jamming with some of my friends, I noticed that John Waters entered the club. Yes, the same John Waters that directed Hairspray! I confirmed that this was him with one of my Baltimore-native friends, and she told me that, indeed, he often came to the Lithuanian Hall. Believe it or not, just a couple of days later, as I entered a chic movie theater to see what times it was playing the One Direction movie, I ran into John Waters again! I tried hard not to gawk and look totally starstruck, but I'm sure he noticed how flabbergasted I was. Being from Wyoming, it is so rare and cool to me to run into such high-profile people like John Waters! I guess I'm really not in Kansas anymore.

John Waters is almost impossible to miss, with his
characteristic pencil moustache and his tall, slight frame.

My clinical practicum in maternal-fetal medicine (or, in less lofty words, the time I spend each week shadowing Dr. Henderson, an OBGYN who did a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine to become a perinatologist) is one of my favorite parts of each week. I have had some of the richest, most motivational experiences under her tutelage. I have shadowed her multiple times in a "nutrition in pregnancy" clinic that she started for her obese, high-risk obstetric patients. Seeing how well she engages with her patients has been so inspirational. She started this clinic because she wants to pay more than lip service to preventive medicine and because she wants to do her part to eliminate racial and socioeconomic disparities. She's an amazing woman. I have also been able to shadow her a few times on Labor and Delivery, and those are always my favorite days. I got to check out a clean pair of Hopkins Hospital scrubs and then follow Dr. Henderson as she does rounds on admitted patients and helps women give birth. I have witnessed two deliveries to date, and both were such powerful, unforgettable experiences. I will admit that I got a little teary-eyed at the first one because of how overwhelming an experience it was. Being an obstetrician looks like such a privilege, and getting to tie the surgical mask on one and hold a woman-in-labor's legs (which I got to do during the second birth!) is equally great!

Dr. Henderson also walks for a couple of hours with the greater Baltimore community on Wednesday evenings, and I have joined her for that twice since she and I live not even 5 minutes apart from each other. (Incidentally, Dr. Henderson drove me by John Waters' house on her way to dropping me off, and he is just 3 minutes from her! I live in a pretty awesome neighborhood, if you can't tell. And John Waters is becoming a theme of my life here in Baltimore.) The walk is always a fun time to meet and mingle with new people. One guy, an MD/PhD student named Matt who researches with Dr. Henderson, has become a friend and role model to me. I am surrounded by amazing people here in Baltimore. Every time I'm finished shadowing Dr. Henderson, I feel so full of energy and excitement for the future. However, when I attend conferences with her (like two I went to last week, one on neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia and the other on twin anemia polycythemia syndrome), I also realize what a long, arduous road I have ahead of me. But I'm loving it so far and have no plans to derail this train!



I love this comic and find it hilarious yet true, since I am enrolled in a math course, physics course
and lab, chemistry course, and a biology course and lab all simultaneously and experience
the interrelatedness of them all yet also the constant arguments over how "hard" or
"pure" one branch of science is over another.

I won't speak about my academic course too much other than to say how much I am loving it. I thought that this year would feel a little bit more like "work" and that I would have a difficult time connecting my studies to my reasons for wanting to become a physician, but I have been pleasantly surprised to learn that I am finding almost all of the material I'm learning riveting. My favorite class is organic chemistry because all of the small pieces of information in the subject add up to explain so many fascinating chemical phenomena. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't taken the course, but it's kind of like playing a really complicated game with lots of rules that allow you to rearrange atoms, molecules, and bonds. I'm also loving biology since it applies the chemistry we have learned so well and explains so many interesting things about living systems. The applications to medicine are totally direct, especially as we learn about cell structure and function, various macromolecule structures (lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates) and so forth. Physics, which I was anticipating hating, is actually becoming more and more fun. The professor we have is incredible (ponytail, nasal voice, obsessed with physics, and only ever uses his 4 children in his example word problems and on tests), and I love how physics addresses the most fundamental questions and concepts of the entire universe. It's a more stimulating discipline than I ever imagined based on my rudimentary, crude introduction to it in high school. Calculus II is great, like I was hoping it would be given how much I loved calculus I, and Introduction to Clinical Medicine is also a highlight of each week since it is a physiology course taught by MD faculty at the School of Medicine. I couldn't be happier with my program, and my only complaint is that the sheer volume of classes and work to be done perpetually exceeds my ability to do it, which can be exhausting and stressful at times.

Let me just mention a few other neat things that have happened in my life over the past 6 weeks. I have been privileged to attend two events hosted by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first a conference about healthcare and homelessness, which is a topic that I feel passionate about after working at Outside In when I lived in Portland. The second event, the Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture Series, was a fascinating symposium in which various people spoke about the impact of the HeLa cell line and Henrietta Lacks, the poor black woman who died of extremely aggressive cervical cancer in the 1950s and whose cells, taken without her knowing here at the Hopkins Hospital, are so proliferative that they have been used in scientific experiments all around the world. For anyone interested, I recommend the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a New York Times bestseller that tries to humanize Henrietta and explain the broad impact of her cell line. I haven't finished it, but the narrative is quite gripping, and it is all more real to me since Johns Hopkins was the place where she received gynecological care and, unfortunately, where her cells were taken from her unwittingly.


I am the post-baccalaureate premedical representative to a group on campus called the Conversations in Medicine Symposium. We are a group of students that bring in high-profile doctors to speak about relevant issues in healthcare. We had our first event, which was a major success (thanks in part to the delicious Italian food that we got catered!), and have another coming up in just two weeks. The upcoming events for this semester will feature Dr. Martin Makary, a surgeon whose work on developing a surgical checklist gained tremendous fame in Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto, and Dr. Deborah Persaud, who just wrote me yesterday agreeing to speak to us about her research and clinical work in which she helped to cure the first case of pediatric HIV infection, landing her a spot as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. The Conversations in Medicine Symposium has been so neat, and being at a school known for its medical experts makes Hopkins the perfect place to be for this kind of symposium!



The Conversations in Medicine Symposium committee members. Yes,
I am about a head taller than all of these adorable, hard-working
undergraduates. :)

Much more has happened, but this post is long enough! I will try to write again sooner next time, but free-time being at something of a premium, my next update might be once the semester is over! Wish me luck, and know that I love and miss all of you. 

The Rest of the Summer

 

Another summer has come and gone, and this one has been a really great one.

I spent July taking Inorganic Chemistry II and Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory II. After really feeling the learning curve of being back in school after a couple of years out during my first term of chemistry, I found this second class less overwhelming yet still very challenging. One of the units of the class was quantum mechanics and its applications to atoms and molecules, and I found the material riveting. I especially enjoyed reading the entire chapter of our textbook devoted to the scientific phenomena and experiments that led to the development of the quantum theory of nanoscopic particles and matter. We studied Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Werner Heiseberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Planck, and other fascinating European figures whose insights into the behavior of particles in the natural world led to the revolutionary realization that our everyday, Newtonian understanding of the physical world cannot also describe the world on the scale of atoms, electrons, and photons. All of this is to say that I found my second term of chemistry very engaging and, though I was happy to have a summer break for a few weeks, I am fired up and ready to begin again in a few short days because of the interesting things I get to learn.

The morning after my final exam, August 3, 2013, I was privileged to get to meet Dr. Janice Henderson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist obstetrician, in the Johns Hopkins Hopsital. After I observed her on rounds with her residents and then met with her over coffee, she agreed to let me be her student mentee this year in a clinical practicum tutorial. I was so elated to have been given the chance to shadow and work with this fascinating physician who does everything from emergency deliveries to a clinic on pregnancy and nutrition for her obese patients. With the help of my mother, I searched for and found some research articles that Dr. Henderson has authored with other OBGYNs about fetal development, the hormonal intrauterine environment, and the factors that influence the decision of how to deliver a child. I am so excited to get to work with this woman during the upcoming year, and you can rest assured that I will write about my experiences once I begin having them. I will shadow her for the first time a week from yesterday and will give a full report.

Josh and I toast with our Qdoba drinks, which allow you
to create a large number of combinations of mix-ins and
sodas!

Just a few hours after meeting with Dr. Henderson, I was sitting in the Baltimore Washington International Airport waiting to fly home to my beloved family. It was so wonderful to see the people that I love the most for three fun weeks in August. I was able to do so many things that I love while in Wyoming. My brother Josh and I spent a lot of time together talking about medicine since he is interested in becoming a doctor and is pretty sure that he'll choose neurosurgery as his speciality. We watched an episode or two of Gray's Anatomy, watched online surgeries (a C-section, an appendectomy, and a heart dissection in a cadaver lab), and had a great time fantasizing about the day that I'm an OBGYN and he's a neurosurgeon. :) He also spent his hard-earned money to buy me a meal at Qdoba, a favorite restaurant of both of ours. It has been so neat to see how much he has grown up and to see how brilliant he is. He also has a heart of gold--when his Sunday school teacher taught him some homophobic stuff in a church lesson about the Mormon Church's "Proclamation to the Family," he came home, talked to my wonderful parents about what he was taught, and ended up writing out his frustrations in a journal. Fortunately, he has my parents, who are open-minded and phenomenal, to teach him that being gay is okay and that it's part of God's plan for me. Anyway, Josh is an amazing kid!

I was also privileged to spend a lot of quality time with Amy. She had her wisdom teeth removed while I was home, so we spent one entire day watching nothing but chick flicks, which I got a lot more out of than poor Amy who was still suffering from the numbing effects of the anesthesia and the delirium of percocet. She begins her first year of university at Brigham Young University on September 3, 2013, and has declared elementary education as her major. She is going to be a complete rockstar. Though I won't divulge her standardized test scores on the ACT and AP tests, they are the highest I have ever heard of in my entire life, and I have some pretty brilliant friends all around the USA. Amy and I also had fun talking about boys and debating whether or not Niall or Zayn is the hotter of the One Direction guys. (It's quite clearly Zayn, in case any of you were wondering.) Amy, Josh, and I also made a point to laugh our butts off at multiple episodes of Scrubs just about every night while we were in Laramie.

From left to right: James, Laura, Paul (the Pensive), and
Carmella.

Since Laura and Paul live in Cheyenne, I was able to see both of them, as well. Laura planned a really fun get-together up in Vedauwoo so that Paul, Carmella (Paul's partner), and I could all meet her boyfriend, James. We all made a campfire in beautiful Vedauwoo, ate delicious s'mores (with a variation on the normal theme by using Reese's cups instead of a chocolate bar!), and had great talks in nature's beauty. It was great to meet Laura's boyfriend and to hear about Laura's adventures as the right-hand man (or woman :) ) for Congressman (and not Congresswoman) Cynthia Lummis.

Paul and Carmella pose with our Italian meal of calzones
and a nice chianti for my first viewing of The Godfather

Paul, Carmella, and I decided that it was finally time for me to watch The Godfather movies since they are favorites of both Paul and Carmella but completely uncharted territory for me. We made some of the most delicious calzones I have ever eaten and watched the first Godfather movie, and I can honestly say that I loved it despite my original hesitance and prejudice. My expectation was that it would be an old, black-and-white, shoot-'em-up style film, but I was so impressed with the acting, the plot, and the cinematography. It was a fabulous film, and I look forward to watching the rest of the series.

From left to right: me, Laura, Amy, Carmella, and Paul
in front of the dry wheat farm of our great grandparents in
Rockland, Idaho.

Maria and Clark brought their family out to the Utah/Idaho border to join the rest of the Weatherford clan for some fun at Bear Lake, one of our family's favorite spots. My dad spent the last year researching and writing the biographies of both of his parents, both of whom are buried a couple of hours away from Bear Lake in a small town in Idaho called Rockland. My own parents own burial plots in a small town named St. Charles right along Bear Lake, so the place is very important to my family and our ancestors. My dad sent us all copies of the biographies of his parents that he wrote, and we had the chance to ask questions and discuss their lives during two different nights in Bear Lake, which was really beautiful. By day, we went out and had tons of fun on the lake. There were many rounds of jet-skiing, knee-boarding, boating, and inner-tubing. There were also lots of burgers, french fries, and raspberry shakes. It was a few days of heaven!

 

From left around the table clockwise: Josh, Amy, Mom, me,
Paul, Carmella, Maria (holding Adalyn), Clark, Will, and Dad.

 



Paul, Carmella, and Mom in Super Mable, the inner tube.
Will and Rosie look after them, and in the distance, the
wave runner enjoys the boat's wake.

I also had the chance to go with my mom, dad, Amy, and Josh up to Jackson Hole for a couple of days of hiking and exploring as my dad had various meetings with the faculty and students in his MBA program at the University of Wyoming. My mom, Amy, Josh, and I went on some stunning hikes and were privileged to see the following landscapes:

Bradley Lake in Grand Teton National Park

I think this is also Bradley Lake, but it might be Taggart Lake,
another beautiful lake on the same hike.

A small cascade near Taggart Lake

We are lucky to live in such a beautiful world, and Wyomingites in particular are so privileged to have such natural pulchritude in their state. On the last day there, my dad was able to join us for one more hike, and we even got to see a female moose, much to my dad's delight.

After three incredible weeks with my family in the West, my mom dropped me off at Denver International Airport for me to return to Baltimore for some more school. Even though it is always really hard to say good-bye to my family, I am so excited for my classes this year and to keep working towards the long goal of becoming a physician. Here's to a great school year, made possible by a wonderful summer with my family!

Chemistry at Johns Hopkins, Chemistry with Baltimore and My Colleagues

I am writing you all during the free weekend between Inorganic Chemistry 1 and 2, and it has been a glorious weekend. It has also been a time of reflection and gratitude, and I would like to share with you all what the past 5 weeks of my new life in Baltimore have been like.

To begin, I must say that Baltimore as a city is much better than I imagined it to be. When I told people in Portland that I was moving to Baltimore, the universal response was one of concern. "Oh," people would tell me with a sort of disheartened tone to their syllable. I knew it was crime-ridden, impoverished, and the ugly stepsister of DC, but I knew little else. The reality, therefore, has been so pleasantly surprising for me. For one, I got very lucky in the location of my housing. Living just north of the Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus, I fortuitously and unwittingly chose to live in a neighborhood that is extremely wealthy. The streets are quiet and safe, and the houses are stunningly beautiful. I have seen some of the largest mansions of my life that I just find gorgeous in their stateliness.

This Tudor-style house always makes my mouth water.
Though the picture doesn't do it justice, it is enormous!

 

Many houses in Baltimore look like this--made of
brick, with beautiful exterior shutters on their many
windows and white trim to top it all off.

 

Baltimore as a city is also much cooler and quirkier than I imagined. Two days ago, for example, I participated in "Biker Party," which is a city-wide event in which hundreds of Baltimoreans ride their bike all around the city on a designated path with a theme for each time that the party occurs. The theme is last Friday was the 80's, so you can imagine the Madonna and David Bowie look-alikes. It was a hilarious event and a total blast. I've also participated in Honfest, Baltimore's yearly street festival. The word "hon" is apparently special to Baltimore because of how much the locals use it when addressing other people. (It's already happened to me, and it is quite endearing, if I do say so myself!) Honfest was a big street event with lots of local vendors, live music, costume-wearing, and fraternizing. I went with some people in my program and thoroughly enjoyed the people-watching and the sampling of the food.

Crabcakes are a special here given Baltimore's proximity
to the Chesapeake Bay.

The people in my program are truly incredible, and even after 5 weeks, I already know that I have made friends that will stay a part of my life for as long as I'm given to live on this earth. We all share so much in common, yet we are all so different. Our commonalities are that we all studied something unrelated to medicine, yet we have all decided that becoming a physician is what we want to do with our lives. None of us were certain that this was the path for us when we were 16, yet all of us now desire this dream deeply and can articulate our attraction to the medical field in neat, diverse ways. Some of my closest friends in the program so far include Tim, a hilarious guy with a background in art that reminds me a lot of my best friend in high school Shelby; Dave, the most organized, spreadsheet-making, and ambitious person I've met since Dad; Chris, a former English major from Harvard with a wicked wit and a panoply of interests; Joey, a New Yorker interested in environmental conservation; and Anna, a woman with a masters in French literature. These people are driven, mature, and fun-as-all-get-out. It's been one heck of a ride with them all. Perhaps because of how intense our program is and how much it demands of us, we've all bonded very quickly and very well, relying on each other for morale, support, and friendship. I have few pictures of these folks yet, but I will begin to post more as I collect them.

Lastly, I want to tell you all about the program itself. All that I can say is that Johns Hopkins students don't get to tack that pretty name to their resume for nothin'. The academic coursework here is unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere, including Professor Kearl's economics course at BYU and Dr. Hind's intense upper-level Spanish literature classes. Part of what was so difficult about the semester was that it was condensed and that we took it concurrently with chemistry lab. The material itself was rarely exceedingly difficult, but what was so hard was trying to find enough time to do the hours of effective studying necessary to get the concepts to sink into your brain between all of the pre- and post-lab quizzes and write-ups, the homework for the lecture class, and the weekly tests (the average rate of tests, given that we had 2 lab tests and 3 lecture tests over the course of 5 weeks). The pace was dizzying, and it became impossible at points to do everything. It was very stressful at moments, and it was super humbling. Nevertheless, I survived, and I know a lot more chemistry on this end than I did coming in. I learned some fascinating things about the chemical make-up of our world. I learned about the special properties of the intermolecular attractive force called "hydrogen bonding" that makes solid water (a more dense phase of the compound) lighter than liquid water and that permits life to exist. I learned what entropy and enthalpy are and how to calculate them in myriad situations. I learned how to diagram molecules with Lewis dot structures and how to predict their molecular geometries using the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion theory. It was kind of amazing, even if massively stressful. The best thing about those stressful weeks was knowing that all of this material really matters and will become relevant as my medical education continues. This class was not just a hoop to jump through or a grade to earn. It was about absorbing material that will inform the rest of my education and enhance my ability to care for my patients one day, and that was a powerful feeling.

I'm off to go enjoy the rest of my Sunday before summer term 2 begins tomorrow! Wish me luck, and know that I think of all of you all the time.

Au revoir, Portland!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my time in Portland has already come to a close! It was a fast 10 months, and if it weren’t for some incredibly exciting opportunities ahead, I would be very reluctant to leave the beautiful West Coast. Nevertheless, I think the only thing better than living in a progressive, gorgeous city on one coast is being a premedical student on the other coast, so I’m calling it a net gain and putting these roots down in Baltimore, Maryland for the next chapter of my life.



It was a perfect, sunny day in Seattle.

My final couple of months in Portland brought with them many pleasures. For one, Susannah and I were able to go up to Seattle for our fourth visit in order to celebrate her uncle’s birthday. Every time I go to Seattle, I am blown away by its beauty, and if I have my druthers, I will settle there one day. The weather was absolutely perfect, meaning the snow-capped Cascades that surround the city were lucidly visible, the green foliage looked sun-kissed and resplendent, and the denizens of the city came out in hordes to sunbathe in the local parks. We enjoyed the company of Susannah’s family and ate delicious food (an Italian salad, a mushroom and asparagus salad, shrimp in shallot sauce on small pieces of toasted bread (sorry, Dad!), pasta Bolognese, and then strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream for dessert). It was such a feast both gastronomically and socially. Susannah and I always stay at another one of her uncle’s houses when we’re in Seattle, and this time, since I woke up earlier than either Susannah or her uncle Topher, I started reading a book called Work as a Spiritual Practice: A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job. Topher ended up letting me keep the book, and I really loved it. It helped me to feel calmer, ironically, by learning to accept my anxiety, among other things. It was a great read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in being thoughtful about how they make a living and how to integrate work into your larger life.

The elegant tables at IRCO's Asian Pacific Islander
fundraising dinner

I was also able to spend a good amount of time with some of my friends and acquaintances in Portland before I left. Margaret, Susannah and I went to a fancy fundraising dinner for Margaret’s non-profit organization, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. We dressed to the nines and hobnobbed with some of Portland’s bigwigs, which was a blast. I went to another such fundraising event for a non-governmental organization that my clinic, Outside In, partners with called Project Access NOW. Project Access NOW is an organization of specialist doctors who donate their services to the sick and uninsured. Since my clinic is a primary care clinic only, you can imagine how invaluable it is for us to be able to refer our sicker and more complex patients to medical specialists when necessary. The event was another large gala event with fine dining and a few touching stories of patients with debilitating illnesses that were cured thanks to the generous doctors who donated their time and skills, such as a sweet Hispanic father who became unable to use his legs and was therefore unable to work because of spinal stenosis who was then given a donated surgery and rehabilitated back to his productive family life. It was very inspirational to attend both events.

From left to right, Susannah, me, and Margaret enjoy
a day at the Oregon coast.

From left to right, me, Gabe, Bridget, and Emily,
Outside In's referrals coordinators

My final days at Outside In were also really nice. As I trained my replacement, a sharp, wonderful girl named Jamie, I came to see a lot of areas where I could have been more thorough and more hard-working at my job, and that was somewhat disappointing. I always gave my job all that I had, but I realized that I didn’t always have the best systems in place for my work and that, like all humans, I have a tendency to delay or put off the less pleasant parts of my job. It was neat to get to train someone who will undoubtedly do better than I did at my job but at the same time to recognize the small impact that I had at that clinic. One of my patients wrote me a thank-you card for the work I did to help get her a free mammogram and breast ultrasound to rule-out breast cancer. Another one of my patients, a severe alcoholic who we sent to the emergency room because he was vomiting blood due to bleeding esophageal ascites, has been sober for a month and thanked Outside In for “saving his life.” The clinic has a much improved system of tracking Pap smears among its female population as a part of preventive services thanks to the autonomy they gave me to build and implement such a system. All in all, I think I left Outside In a little bit better of a place then it was when I entered, though as the cliché goes, I received so much more from them than I gave. I learned a million and a half medical terms and abbreviations. I made friends with fascinating, bright folks in the healthcare world. I got to use my Spanish daily in a medical context. I got to meet doctors doing great, interesting work and hear their advice for me on my own path. All in all, my job at Outside In was a total godsend. I was in the right place at the right time to have an epiphany about wanting to be a doctor and then to apply and get a job working in a medical clinic doing work that I really believe in and admire. I couldn’t have been more blessed.

A beautiful pond in a park in Ashland, Oregon

Other fun things that I did included seeing two more Shakespeare plays, The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear, in Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with Susannah. She and I will always love the Bard and the way that he so wittily writes about the complexities of human life. My coworkers all threw me a good-bye party at my supervisor Bryan’s house, and we had so much fun. The party was very Portland—almost everyone brought a kale salad that they had made with vegetables growing in their own yard. The first half of the night consisted of conversations, hugs, and reminiscing. The second half of the night was dancing in Bryan’s small living room to a playlist that I had designed with other coworkers that included everything from Whitney Houston’s "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" to Swedish House Mafia’s "Don’t You Worry, Child." When the night was over, I hugged my friends good-bye in the pouring rain and thanked them for inspiring and challenging me. It was a very cinematic moment, with the rain and the heartfelt embraces, and it was a perfect send-off before I left for Baltimore.

Laura, one of my amazing older sisters, also spent her money and vacation time to fly out to Portland to come visit me, and together we explored so many of the city's little treasure troves. We ate weird flavors of ice cream at Salt and Straw (I got an olive oil flavored scoop), had curry-batted fish on the 31st floor of a downtown skyscraper with Mom and Dad's friends Peter and Paula Johnson, watched The Great Gatsby in 3-D, walked around a neighborhood of beautiful houses in the light, drizzling rain, ate Mexican food at the most beautiful of Oregon's beaches (Cannon Beach), danced to a few pop songs at a downtown club, and perhaps most importantly enjoyed hours of conversation about our lives during the gaps in between and all throughout the activities that kept us busy. Spending three days with Laura completely rejuvenated me and recharged my batteries to get me ready for my move. I'm lucky to have such a wonderful sister.

Now I’m here in this new city, a Westerner on the East Coast, a humanities major studying to become a doctor. I couldn’t be happier. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the fact that I get to go back to school to study something so fascinating and practical. My loving, supportive, stable family and best friends are my foundation, and I can only hope to be successful and become a loving, bright physician to make them proud and thank them for their consistent efforts to helping me out. Wish me luck as I go back to school for the first time in a couple of years!

Baltimore and Johns Hopkins

Life has been a little tumultuous since I last posted, but I unfortunately don't think I have too many good stories to tell from the last month. Work has been a little stressful, since my medical clinic (Outside In) began a 4-year long project funded by a grant in which we work with a mental healthcare non-profit organization to try to improve health outcomes among the mentally ill. I was hired in part to be the care coordinator for this grant, and since February was the month that we officially "went live," there have been lots of kinks to work out and lots of small tasks to do. February also happened to be the time when I was finally able to implement most of the steps for our clinic to track Pap smears among our female patients and make sure that we have a Pap smear from within the last three years on file for every patient aged 21-64 with a cervix. This project has been wonderful since I was given a lot of autonomy regarding its organization and now implementation, but I still have my normal load of referrals and English-Spanish interpretation work, so the addition of the new grant and the Pap tracking have meant that I'm just way behind in my work, which is stressful when my clients call about the status of their cases and I haven't even touched them for a week. I don't mean to complain about work here, but it's been too hectic for my taste lately. I would happily work more hours to get all of my assigned tasks done, but due to funding (AKA since non-government organizations had limited budgets and can consequently be cheap skates), I'm strongly discouraged from working more than 40 hours a week so that I won't get paid 150% of my normal wage. Despite my griping, however, I really love my job and still feel so grateful that Outside In took a chance by hiring me on.

Baltimore was spotted with beautiful churches that were
reminiscent of European ones I've seen.

The most exciting thing that has happened to me since my last blog post was indubitably my trip out to Baltimore, Maryland. In deciding that I want to go to medical school, one of my decisions is how to fulfill my premedical requirements. The fastest and most efficient option is to enroll in a post-baccalaureate premedical program, of which there are a few in the country. After looking at a fair number of them, my top choice became Johns Hopkins for a number of reasons, including the reputation and rigor of the program, the unparalleled options of being at a school with such an enormous, established hospital, the price, and other things. I was fortunate enough to be granted an interview at Johns Hopkins after applying (but not fortunate enough that they paid for my airfare!), so I flew out last Saturday to Baltimore, Maryland, a place I honestly never really thought I'd go.

Isn't this a quaint block? Baltimore, Charm City, really
does have its own charm.

All right, it's not that bad at all! You can see some nice
tall buildings and the harbor from this vantage point.

I spent all day on Sunday exploring Baltimore with one of my best friends from Spain, Ali. In the craziest of coincidences, it turned out that Ali, who is from San Francisco, and I, from Wyoming, were both scheduled to be in Baltimore at the same time. Ali had an interview there with an immigrant rights organization where she applied for a job, and I of course had a campus tour, a lunch with a current student, and an interview at Johns Hopkins. So Ali and I spent the entire day catching up and exploring the city. I started my day by listening to "Good Morning Baltimore," the opening song in the John Waters musical Hairspray. It just seemed too appropriate for the moment not to.  Ali and I then walked around downtown, walked around the historical Mt. Vernon district, walked along the harbor, and even went up to the top floor of the highest building in the city to get a view which, I hate to say, wasn't very impressive. (After seeing the high-rise view of Barcelona with my parents, I'm pretty hard to please with these top-of-building views.) Nevertheless, despite the fact that most people have negative things to say about Baltimore, I was pretty impressed with the city. Much of the architecture was really beautiful and reminded me of Europe. There were more quirky shops and restaurants than I thought there would be, and Ali and I ate sweet pumpkin with yogurt and spicy okra at a really delicious Afghan food restaurant called The Helmand. The city was much better than I was anticipating it being, and I could definitely spend a year of my life there quite happily.

The enormous and beautiful Johns Hopkins Hospital,
frequently ranked #1 in the nation by the US and World
News Report.

All of which brings me to my big news: I found out a few days ago that I got into the Johns Hopkins Post-baccalaureate Premedical Program! I apologize if this is the first time you are hearing this. I've been trying to call and speak with people personally about this, but I just haven't had much time and opportunity to do so yet. I found out on Thursday during my lunch break that I got in, and I can't describe to you how excited I am to go. The day before I found out that I was admitted, I had received two textbooks that I bought online, one called Principles of Human Physiology that I will use in my Introduction to Clinical Medicine class at Hopkins, and another a calculus textbook to help me brush up and prepare for Calculus II coming fall semester. I was reading the physiology book on Wednesday night, totally enthralled in the body's intricacies and chemical wonders, hoping with all of my might to get into Hopkins. The following day, I learned that I did. You can imagine how ecstatic I was.

Me in front of the original building of the Hopkins
teaching hospital. Can you believe I get to study here?

I won't go off for too long, but I just feel such overwhelming gratitude that I have the opportunity to continue my studies in this way. It is such a privilege to be able to get educated, and I've learned through my own life experience and education that I really value education that gives people practical, applicable skills, which is how I view medical education. I know I'm going to be extremely busy (I have 20 credit hours of math and science classes each semester) and likely quite stressed out and tired at points, but I honestly see this as the opportunity of a lifetime. I'm so grateful to be an American who can learn from scientists and doctors of the past and study things like how luteinizing hormone begets ovulation and how enzymes break down proteins into usable amino acids in the intestinal lumen. I am so excited that Johns Hopkins is giving me the chance to get the education I need to become a doctor. I can't wait to join a field of people endeavoring to ameliorate or at least understand human illness and suffering. (Speaking of which, an article in The Economist called "Cured of HIV?" talks about the research of a Johns Hopkins scientist, Deborah Persaud, who may have completely cured an infant of human immunodeficiency virus thanks to antiretroviral drug therapy. Can you believe it? Isn't it astounding to see how science and medicine have taken what was once a devastating plague in the US (and is currently affecting millions globally) and potentially reversed it irrevocably?) Thank you all for supporting me as I totally change direction and pursue something new. I will likely call upon support from all of you, and I thank you in advance for giving it to me. You are the reason I love life and want to make it better for myself and others. I'm about to embark on this path, and I couldn't be more grateful that life has brought me to it.

The elegant, matching brick buildings surrounding grassy
quads of the main campus of Johns Hopkins, where
I will begin my studies on May 28, 2013.

My Birthday and the Rest of January

Life has been good up here in the Pacific Northwest, and I can't believe that I am now 24! Even though I'm still in my twenties, I'm aware of my increasing age. Let me tell you about the last weeks of being 23 and the first weeks of being 24.



 With the Christmas money that Mom and Dad so generously give us every year, I decided to buy a pair of shoes that I have long wanted--the Vibram Five Fingers minimalist running shoes. Yes, they are ugly and bizarre. But after reading about them in different magazine clippings, journal articles, and blogs, I decided that they were the way to go for improved running form and general body posture. I had to go to a couple of different running shoe stores before I found the right pair--the perfect size, the right model, and conveniently in my favorite color (a nice shade of teal-like blue). Enjoy this photo (and laugh to your heart's content about how ridiculous they are aesthetically if you need to). I had promised Laura that I would show her this picture, and I thought Mom and Dad might like to see their son's appreciation for their hard-earned money in photo form! Thank you both.

Lady Gaga decided to grace Portland with her presence on January 15, 2013. Because of the almost prohibitive price of her tickets, I had decided awhile ago not to go. However, when the executive director of Outside In told us that Lady Gaga had chosen Outside In as the non-profit organization that she would donate money and free tickets to, I felt like I should purchase one to support her in supporting our organization. (I also love lots of her music and heard that she was a great performer, so it's not like this required someone to really twist my arm.) I bought the cheapest tickets available, which still totaled around $100 after fees and taxes were added, and showed up to the show after work. Upon scanning my ticket to check-in, I was told that I would need to wait in another line in order to be "reassigned." "Oh great," I thought. "Maybe the ticket I bought online is counterfeit." However, the "reassignment" ended up involving moving me from the horrible nosebleeds into what were arguably the best seats in the house after the standing-only general admission right around her stage. I literally had no seats in front of me with a perfectly centered view of her stage! It was incredible. The show was also spectacular--Gaga wore many different outfits and used so many effects, not a few of which I found unsettling or controversial (like women's legs coming out of meat grinders). She had a group of lithe, talented back-up dancers that she used strategically in many ways to enhance the show, once to make a horse that she entered the stage riding, in another song to represent gay rights and equality by having pairs of men dance together, carry each other, or hold hands and circle her stage. She made multiple announcements about being courageous, being yourself, and about how LGBTQ issues are a leading cause of homelessness amongst youth. It was a phenomenal show of great music, all live singing, and social justice shout-outs, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Though a bad photo, you can dimly make out the funeral
procession to the left with Gaga on the black horse
 whose limbs were back-up dancers.

The little flame in the cupcake at my desk on the 18th.

I was also privileged to celebrate my birthday on the 19th of the month of January. Many people showered me with love, and it was a beautiful weekend. On Friday at work on the 18th, the people with whom I share an office purchased a decked-out cupcake and lit a candle while I was away from our office on an errand. I work in an office with some amazing people, one of whom coordinates a tattoo removal program, another who runs the lab at the clinic. I'm lucky to have such interesting, nice co-workers. That night, I came home to the delicious smells of Italian food, and Margaret, one of my roommates, had made a dish of perhaps the tastiest lasagna I've ever eaten. We enjoyed that with a fresh salad and then some brownies and vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. It was amazing!

My two beautiful roommates, Susannah and Margaret,
and some tasty grub on the birthday table!

The following day was a Saturday and my actual birthday. I celebrated it with a delicious French brunch that Susannah bought for me at a restaurant we both enjoy called La Petite Provence. Instead of ordering the healthy option with vegetables and salmon, I went for the caramel-syrup-covered banana brioche French toast, and my, was it scrumptious! Susannah and I then went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) at my request since I really wanted to see the Grossology exhibit they had been advertising, explaining the science of boogers, feces, and the like. (Yes, very 12-year-old-boy of me, but hey, it's interesting, isn't it?) Unfortunately, Grossology had already left, but there were other great exhibits, including one that showed real preserved fetuses who had died of natural causes during all different stages of prenatal gestation. It was truly mind-blowing to see how a spermatazoon and an oocyte form and slowly become a zygote, fetus, and then a sex-differentiated child that can then be birthed and survive without the placenta and uterine protections. Life is such a miracle! This exhibit was so fascinating and made me so excited to (I hope!) one day get to study medicine and maybe even specialize in obstetrics and gynecology and be a part of helping women bring new human life into the world everyday. Human biology is incredible and life is such a precious gift.

My day ended with two films. The first was an IMAX film at OMSI with Susannah about the deep sea, and it was amazing. I am always amazed by how life has evolved for deep sea animals whose living conditions are so remarkably different than those of humans. My favorite was an enormous octopus who ingests an entire live crab, cracks him open to suck out his flesh, and then expels his tough shell through a small, tunnel-like valve that opens on the top of his head! Sheer craziness. Susannah left me at this point in my day for other plans of hers, and I took myself to Les Miserables, which was beautiful. I sat alone, ate my small bag of popcorn, and was all tears by the end of this movie about unbelievable pain and hardship and the redemption of a man who continually chooses compassion and honesty even in the direst of circumstances. After coming home from that movie, I opened up all of the letters, gifts, and voicemails that my family members had sent me, and I was yet again awash in tears of joy for the bounty of my family's love. I have the best family in the entire world, and there is nothing I cherish more. I love you guys! Thanks for making my birthday so special.

The house cat, despite my allergies to her, has taken to
sleeping on my lap at times, like when I read my family's
birthday letters.

The car of my wildest dreams since childhood, though
if I ever had $500,000 of disposable income, there are
at least 100 things I'd do with it before I'd buy this car. It's
fun to take pictures of, though. :)

I'll frame these last paragraphs and my last stories in terms of the men associated with them. The first stories are about a man that I met through another guy I met on a blind date. Because this guy is high profile, I'll keep him anonymous and call him Bernard. Bernard is the executive director of the Legacy Health Foundation, and Legacy Health is the largest system of hospitals and healthcare clinics in Oregon after the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Bernard is 39, rich, and very powerful in the world of medicine, so when he asked me on a date, I said yes just because I thought it would be fascinating to hear about how he got into his line of work. Our date took place at a private club called the University Club. I had to dress up formally for the date and could only be admitted into the stylish Tudor-style building since Bernard had pre-approved me. While there, I spoke with the wife of the CEO of Tazo and Stash Teas, a woman so pretentious that, before knowing I lived on the east side of Portland, said that she crossed the bridge over to the east "as infrequently as possible." The whole thing was almost surreal. Bernard is an interesting guy, but I'm certain that there is no relationship future for us. We hung out one other time and went to the Portland International Auto Show where I saw some of the hottest cars in my life. It reminded me of when Dad and I used to assemble model cars together on Saturday mornings. My favorite was always my Ferrari F50 hardtop, and there was a red Ferrari F50 at the exhibit! I also saw cars worth more than $600,000, including this sexy Lambourghini.

The last stories are about a man with whom I have a much more natural, organic connection. His name is Aaron, and I was introduced to him through one of my co-workers who met him at a medically-related function. Aaron is this brilliant, quirky guy who towers over me at 6 foot 4 inches. He did his undergraduate at Berkeley, his Masters at Yale in Public Health, and is now a first-year medical student at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU). He is one of the wittiest, funniest people I've ever met, and our connection was instantaneous. Ever since we met, we can't stop hanging out, and we've seen each other every couple of days for the past two and a half weeks or so. Last week we went rock-climbing together at a gym that he frequents, and tomorrow we're hoping to go cross-country skiing (if he finishes studying for his cell structure and function test, the poor guy). There's no photo of him yet, but there may be if he and I keep spending time together. I will include a photo I took of Portland while on the tram that takes you up the hill to the beautiful OHSU campus. I visited it before I even knew that Aaron existed just for my own fun and benefit since I'm considering medical school, and it's a gorgeous medical school campus with a neat program emphasizing primary care. It's fun to dream!

A view of some of the south waterfront towers and the
OHSU tram.

Outside In and the Holidays

Outside In Medical Clinic--if you think it looks a little bit
like a painted prison, you're right. It's gated with tall walls
and locked down, even though it's a warm, great place
on the inside.

I promised in my last post that I would write more about my job at Outside In, and I have much more to report now than I did at the beginning of December. My job at Outside In is threefold. The first component is to be a referrals coordinator, and this essentially means that I try to connect our patients (all of which are penurious, or else they wouldn't qualify to be seen by our doctors) to the specialist physicians and elaborate procedures that they need for as low a cost as possible. For this part of my job, I do everything from work with a system that coordinates donated services from philanthropic physicians to walking our patients through the process of applying for financial assistance at the various hospitals and clinics in Portland. The second part of my job is outreach, which means being part of the team that drives our mobile medical van to offsite locations to give medical service to the homeless right where they are. I have been going to one site a week, but the outreach component of my job is about to increase substantially since I was hired in part to work on a new project for which our funding begins in February in which we do outreach medical services in conjunction with a mental health organization here in Portland. I'm sure it will be fascinating and yield many interesting experiences and stories. The third part of my job is to be an English-Spanish interpreter and translator, which is not the same thing. (Interpretation is oral, translation is written.) I do everything from fielding calls to the front desk from Spanish speakers to interpreting for the doctors when Spanish speaking patients come in and translating their prescription instructions on the medicine bottles. Since we serve primarily an uninsured, impoverished population, a high percentage of our clients are solely Spanish-speakers, meaning I get to speak Spanish every day without fail at this job. This is one of my favorite aspects of what I do, and I really love serving our Hispanic clientele.

The job has been wonderful, but I would be lying if I said it was carefree. It has caused me a significant amount of stress, noticeable primarily when I lay in bed at night, totally exhausted but unable to sleep because I keep thinking about the work ahead of me or because a work-related nightmare woke me up. I recently had a nightmare that woke me up in which I drove the enormous medical van poorly and got it stuck in a canyon full of rushing water. I can remember other nights over the past month where I've lain awake wondering how I'm going to get the guy with severe epididymitis connected to a urologist, a notoriously difficult resource to find for poor patients, or how I'm going to help another patient who just moved to Washington because of domestic abuse pay for the pelvic ultrasound procedure she got without applying for financial assistance, meaning her radiologist bill is going to be sent to debt collections where she will have to pay it in full or have her credit totally ruined. I worry what will happen if (when!) I do something wrong--with homeless peoples' health on the line, will someone die? Will someone feel like they've been let down by yet another person in their life? Will my co-workers and bosses wonder why they hired me? I do well at school, but  that doesn't mean I know a thing about how a medical clinic operates. Where is the driven, bright scholar that Outside In interviewed and hired? When I make stupid mistakes, I often wonder this.

The flip side of this stress is that my days fly by and I never feel bored at work. Also, I know that I need to learn how to be compassionate and caring without being codependent since this will be a major struggle of being a physician. If I'm worried about making mistakes and harming people now, this will only get worse when I really have the ability to do good or harm. So these are good lessons, even if they cause temporary insomnia and fatigue.

My days are never boring. I had to get a woman out of the bathroom who wasn't responding to my knocks and who, upon entering, I learned was injecting heroine into her thigh. I got yelled at in drunken gibberish by a woman who was crying and very upset with me. Even the doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with her since she couldn't sit still and speak intelligibly, though apparently her head lice infection was so bad that the doctor saw it from far away! I spoke with a young former-Mormon with a horrible skin fungus who is living under bridges as he tries to figure out the next step for his life. Everyone that I meet has a fascinating, difficult life story. Some of my clients are pleasant, grateful, and truly a pleasure to help. Others are taxing, demanding, manipulative, or insane. My job is always fascinating, and I'm always grateful to have my beautiful desk as a haven from the storm. You'll notice the photos of my family members and my world map from Doctors Without Borders, a reminder to keep my vision large and become a physician who donates his time to help those in need anywhere in the world.

A proud chef holds a tupperware of his cookies.

My life, of course, is more than just my job. I've enjoyed the company of wonderful people lately, especially since this is the holiday season. Christmas Eve I spent with Susannah and Margaret over at their Uncle Ryan and Aunt Jean's house, and it was wonderful. We ate a homemade delicious crab bisque that is a Malarkey tradition and enjoyed some great conversations. Susannah's Aunt Jean was raised Unitarian Universalist and wrote her undergraduate thesis on Mormonism, so we instantly connected. One guy at the party had just finished a masters in an English/Philosophy combined program, and since we both love Shakespeare, we instantly started talking about our favorite plays and their meanings. It was a great dinner. The holiday season gave me a great excuse to cook, as well, so I made some homemade whole wheat honey bread, a Moroccan lentil stew, and some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that were, if I do say so myself, quite scrumptious! 'Tis the season to be jolly and to bake and eat as well, I suppose.

Christmas Day, too, was wonderful. I wasn't expecting much for the day other than enjoying talking to my family since I worked a full day the day before and after, but my roommates had done much to make it wonderful. There were gifts and stocking stuffers for everyone, and I got a whole season of Modern Family from my Secret Santa Laura (thanks, boo!), warm socks and candy from Maria, and other great gifts. I then Skyped with my family for a couple of hours, which was the highlight of my day. Knowing that I was going home that weekend, we kept conversations perhaps a little shorter than they could have gone and knew that we would pick them all right back up in person the following weekend.

There's no snow outside (just the Northwest rain), but
indoors all was very Christmas-ready, with stockings
and a tree!

Two other things are worthy of note in my life. One was the amazing evening I spent with Brad Ackerson and his wife Stephanie while they were here in Portland (well, Beaverton, actually) for winter break. Brad and Stephanie came and picked me up from work on Thursday, December 27. We had a multiple course meal that included sushi at Tasting East and the best desserts ever at Papa Haydn's. The conversation was wonderful and flowed from catching up about old BYU friends (most of whom are rocking on in life!), to dreaming about the future (Brad wants to go to U. California San Francisco's medical school) to getting to know each other better, since I had never met Stephanie before. It was more fun and fulfilling than I can describe, and I thank the universe for a friend as good as Brad who's stuck with me for more than 5 years from when we first met as new freshmen at BYU.

Me with my niece Nora, and boy is she a bundle of
pure love!

And lastly, as I mentioned earlier, I was able to fly home to Laramie for an amazing post-Christmas vacation! Thanks to the incredible generosity and largess of my parents, I was able to get a last minute ticket to spend an extended weekend (Friday, the 28th of December to Tuesday, the 1st of January) with the people I love the most on this planet. My days there were unbelievably precious to me. We played a board game called Wits and Wagers. We danced to One Direction on the Wii's Just Dance 4. We went sledding at Indian Paintbrush where Lainey kept asking me to take her down on the sled again and again. We sang Christmas carols while Amy played the piano. I spent one night in Paul and Carmella's beautiful new apartment in Cheyenne. I spent one night having a great heart-to-heart with Carolyn who, poor thing, had to wake up only a few hours later to give her sweet daughter Nora juice first thing in the morning. I just truly had so many stellar interactions and conversations while at home. I just felt perfectly at peace and so incomprehensibly grateful to have as brilliant, compassionate, and happy a family as I do. I truly have the best family in the world, and I finally see and understand that. I had so much fun and so many deep interactions that it was really hard for me to say good-bye. Once I hugged Mom, Dad, Amy, and Josh good-bye, I sat down in Denver International Airport and cried. Even though I love my life in Portland, I didn't want to come back. I wanted to stay and keep enjoying my wonderful family.

Clockwise starting with 12:00 o'clock is Dad, me, Josh,
Amy, Lainey, Kip, Carmella (who must not have known
the camera was flashing), Paul, and Mom. The
beautiful Carolyn took the picture (and I wish she were
in it!), and Laura is unfortunately not in it, either.

Thank you to my family for accepting me and being so good to me. I love you all so much. You made my holidays magical, and you give my life meaning. I love you!