I should probably go to bed, but it's been a while and I thought I'd recap last year a bit.  If you look at things in perspective, we had quite the year.  It definately wasn't the worst year ever if you think about it.  There are those who believe that back in the day, maybe in an era like the Cretaceous Period or something, the earth was hit by a monster asteroid that killed pretty much everything except some select bacteria or one celled organisms or something like that.  That was obviously a pretty bad year, but if you don't believe in that kind of thing, then I suppose this last year was probably one for the books. 

Lets see, we had the oil spill, that was fun.  It only took the top engineers in the country 3 or 4 months to put a cap on the leak.  I mean honestly, it seemed like they were trying everything from sticking a giant wad of ABC gum  in the ruptured pipe to covering it was the equivalent of the Vikings dome to try and contain the oil.  The US government, true to form, did it's typical disaster relief routine full of showing up at tar ball covered beaches in a tux talking about how they will stop at nothing until it's all cleaned up, and lawsuits. 

Unemplayment remained high all year.  And the Obama administration in their infinate wisdome decides that the best thing to do would be to borrow money from China to create government jobs (most of which must have been collecting tar balls off the gulf beaches), then when that didn't seem to help matters, they decided that the next best course of action would be to borrow more money from China, which has proven to work about as well as the first stimulus did.  While most people were worried about getting jobs and wondering what the US was going to do with our little economic crisis, the Obama Administration, once again displaying it's wisdom and keen awareness of what's important to the American people, decided to focus most of their time trying to socialize our healthcare industry, because that system obviously works well for the rest of the world.  The way our system is set up now is just far to complicated for the average person, therefore they passed a bill that only took one redwood tree worth of paper to print out for everyone to read, which nobody actually did before they set the motion to pass the bill, which oddly enough it did pass. 

Lets see what else can I write about.  Oh yes the tea party movement.  Well this is actually a good thing in my opinion.  People started to realize this country was going down the tank because Obama actually got enough minorities, twenty year olds and a fair number of people who enjoyed the 60's a little too much to vote for him (I know not PC, but true).  I suppose there were some good things that came out of this year.  The Yankees didn't go to the world series.  The Rams were one game away from making the playoffs, which doesn't sound much like a victory, but when you take into consideration last year, and the fact that now they'll get a much better draft pick then if they would have played one more game next week and gotten smashed by the Saints, it's really not a bad year.  Oh yes and Apple came out with their new Ipad, which, after playing with it for about 30 seconds, I decided it was basically just a large version of the itouch, which is basically an iphone without the phone.  So if you didn't follow, they came out with a large version of the iphone, without the phone.  I can only imagine why people would go nuts over such an exemplory breakthrough.  Everyone must have this device immediately.  Oh yes, and I just read about this today, get this.  Iran apparently launched some space rocket with a rodent, two turtles, several worms, and a partridge in a pear true (ok minus the last one).  They said their space program is "peaceful."  Hahaha, most excellent.  Lets see...  Vancouver held the winter olympics, which is odd seeing as how Vancouver is a coastal city with a temperate climate that doesn't get a lot of snow...  Nonetheless it was there. 

On the downside again, there were lots of terrorist attacks in the US, even a guy carrying some explosives in his underwear (or was that 2009?).  Anyway, rest easy because you can guarantee that the guy sitting next to him surely didn't have any shampoo or toothpaste in his bag.  There were enough terrorist attacks that TSA decided it needed to do more than simply be a hindrance to good hygeine, but to start using full body scanners that they promise will only be used in a professional manner for security purposes without saving any images, and are completely safe as long as you walk through them quickly. 

Lebron James decided to move to Miami to join Bosh and Wade to form a team that could never ever ever be beaten by anybody.

Greece went bankruped and decided to try and sell their islands.  Then decided to raise the retirement age, which means all those people have to protest and go on strike for a couple years longer. 

Oh yes, the mosque controversy was quite a stir.  President Obama thought it was a good idea, most others thought it was a slap in the face.  This couldn't be the same president who wanted to meet with the middle-eastern leaders face to face without any bodyguards for a nice, civil and rational conversation was it?  Weird.     

In any case, I'm sure I could go on and keep looking up happenings of the year and then writing about them, but I should get some sleep.  My glorious last Christmas break ever has come to a close, along with 2010.  What shall 2011 bring?  Who knows, but I'm guessing about 12 more surprises as each month the Obama administration expresses it's shock of how the unemployment rate is higher than expected and doesn't seem to be improving.  I, however, am currently searching for my first real paid position that isn't a summer job in the form of a residency.  If I get one, it will be about a $60,000 raise for me, which isn't a bad year I suppose.  Mind anybody who may not know, I'm paying about $30,000 a year for school right now, so I'm taking that into account:), but it makes me feel better to think of it as a straight up raise since I could be making a whole lot more money if I went straight into practice:).  Who knows, with money actually coming my way instead of going the other way, I might actually splurge and join the rest of the developed world by getting a smartphone, but I admit it will be harder than I think getting rid of my 4 year old LG flip-phone, it's been such a champ for me and I've grown quite attached to it.  Such decisions in my future.     

Happy new year to all, and God bless you all in this year! 

This weekend I plan on heading to a place where the bear flows like wine, and where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  I'm talking about a little place called Aspen Colorado.  It's a bit of a drive for me which I will undertake immediately after getting out of clinic tomorrow.  I was kinda hoping that I would be able to leave a bit early tomorrow because as it stands, I won't get there till around midnight, and that's if I put the hammer down, but I sneaked a peak at tomorrows schedule today and the chances of that happening are slim, oh well.  As of how things stand currently, it's just going to be Nate DeGraff, and friend from Dordt, and who I also lived with during my summer in Denver, and myself.  I guess this trip isn't set in stone yet (as if they ever are), because apparently last night it was snowing on the mountain which made us both a bit nervous, but it's supposed to be gorgeous weather there all weakend long and the Aspen trees are supposed to be stunning this time of year, so we'll see what happens.  I'll meet Nate somewhere along the road heading up to the trailhead South of Aspen where he'll have a tent set up, and I'll arrive late and throw a bag down, crawl inside for about 3 or 4 hours of slumber before we'll get up and head out in the middle of the night to hopefully reach the summit by early afternoon at the latest to avoid the potential of thunderstorms that frequent high mountains.  (wow was that an amazing run on sentense or what?!  Haha, ok so I don't even know what a run on sentense means but I felt like that may have been one;).  Anywho, this hike is supposed to be a killer according to what I read and according to Nate.  I think if I was in Utah or Idaho or one of these states it would just be an amazing hike that's a fanny kicker, but when you take Colorado's elevation into the mix which I'm really not used to, it makes me a little nervous.  I'm not really one to get nervous for a hike, but it's been 3 years since I've climbed at anything higher than 14,000ft, and 2 years since I've been above 12,000ft, but hey I gotta give it a go right?  Just gotta bring tons and tons of water to avoid altitude sickness I guess:).  I think my legs and lungs are strong enough to get me there because I've actually been working out fairly often since I've been in Salt Lake here, I just gotta make sure I don't get sick, especially since I'm not getting much sleep to begin with.  Maybe I should ask one of the doctors tomorrow if I can "borrow" a couple diamox tabs in case either of use starts to feel nausious from the altitude:). haha, that's a good idea actually, I know when groups go on Amigos trips to Peru they often take some diamox with them just for that reason.  In any case, it's going to be an amazing adventure!!!  I'm actually really excited, I think it's going to be a cool mountain, with my only regret being that I'm probably going to miss the BSU game on Saturday, which is kinda a big deal, but this is going to be my only chance in a long long time to do something like this in Colorado, so I'm taking advantage.  And yes, I'm going to remember my camera this time so maybe I'll even post a couple pics next time:).  hahaha, I actually remembered my camera when I went down to Moab last weekend, but the battery was dead!!  Hahaha, what luck I have, I actually remember the stupid little thing, then I pull it out to take a picture in the middle of my bike ride and wouldn't you know it gives me the low battery sign, which was pretty much worse than the california howdy if you ask me.  In any case, I have the battery charging as I write this, and now I need to head to Walmart to pick up some batteries for my GPS and a little miniature lightweight flashlight to supplement my headlamp for the hike. 

Hope all are doing well

Cheers     

Today at work, the day ended short due to an unexpected illness of the doctor right around lunchtime.  He actually ended up going to the ER was the latest we heard, not really sure how that all turned out though.  All of us interns stuck around for a little while to go over some of the equipment that the interns who just arrived this week didn't know how to use yet, and also to practice punctal plug insertion on each other.  It has been so long since I've been a practice patient for all that stuff, I forgot how much some of the stuff we do to patients sucks for them, oh well.  After that we were free to go, leaving me with a lot of time on my hands for the rest of the afternoon.  I figured it would start getting dark a little after 8pm here, which gave me about 5.5 hours to go climb mt. Olympus...  One of the more prominant mountains right next to salt lake.  I looked online really quickly, and it said the hiking time should take about 6 hours to complete, so being young I figured I wouldn't have any problems, so I went hiking and marched up and down in plenty of time.  It was quite the difficult hike actually, but the views ontop were amazing.  I could see all the surrounding mountains to the east, more mountains and the salt lake valley to the north and south, and Salt Lake City itself withing the valley west, along with the great salt lake itself.  It was a perfectly clear day with nothing but blue skies and hot temperatures, which made for a great hike.  I, being the planner that I am, decided it would be a good idea to wear jeans:), and not take any food along, so needless to say I regretted the decisions, especially the no food decision.  I was getting really close to the top, when I noticed I was having a particularly hard time.  There were some class 3 scrambling sections and it was tough going, but it seemed like I was just a little weaker than normal when it finally hit me that I was starving and had quite low blood-sugar!  I realized that all I had to eat today was a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and some tortilla chips at lunch that they had setting out for grabs, so I never really ate a real lunch.  My hands were shaking a little bit, but being the stubborn person that I am and being so close to the top, I wasn't about to turn around then, so I pressed on.  At the end of the hike there weren't any trails, it was kinda a free for all make your own way to the top because it was just rock climbing and bouldering basically.  I quickly discovered that the route I decided on was definately going to be "the fun" route as I got about 50 vertial feet from the top and I reached a dead end where things got a bit sketchy.  I figured I could manage to get up, but didn't really think I was going to be able to go down the same way.  I went up a few pretty sketchy places when I was in colorado a few summers back, a couple places where there was some class 4 climbing (meaning pretty sketchy, but you don't really need ropes...  although some use it for safety), and this little section was definately a class 4 section...  but again, not ready to give up, I made it up in hopes of finding another way down.  When I got to the top, I met one other person who was up there, an guy probably about 55-60 years old who said it took him all day to get to the top:), but he came up a much better way, so I was glad to hear there was another way down and I wouldn't have to die because I am stubborn.  I stayed at the top a little bit, then the other man and myself started to head down together.  We got to talking and it turns out he is an optometrist, which was rather random.  He also was nice enough to give me an apple, which instantly gave me more strength and made me feel enourmously better, so I felt obligated to hike down with him for a while at least:).  He sounded like he was lds with his 5 kids etc, and seemed like a nice guy.  He said he shot a rattle snake along the path on the way up, and proudly showed me the rattles he cut off of it.  hahaha, he was kinda a funny guy.  I never did see or hear any rattlers myself, but Melisa tells me that she sees them pretty much everytime she goes hiking there or anywhere around there (ok so I can't remember exactly what she told me, but bottom line there are a lot of rattlers around there).  When we were probably about 1500 vertical feet from the bottom, he wanted to take a break, but I was getting really hungry again:), so I went on ahead and went the rest of the way down at my own pace.  I probably could have made it down about an hour quicker than I did, but he gave me an apple, and was also a fellow optometrist, so I didn't mind hiking at a bit of a slower pace and hanging out with him and talking for a while.

That was my adventure for the day, so we'll see what this weekend brings.