Posted in Events and Happenings

Hey, coming up in 2005 is the World Year of Physics! 2005 marks the 100 year anniversary of Einstein's publications on Brownian motion, general relativity and quantum mechanics. An auspicious year in the world of physics, as any physics geek will tell you. And in 2005, you can join physicists worldwide celebrating the event. Start your preparations today!

Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving Day! Not quite as big a holiday as it is in the US, nor does it mark the start of the holiday season. But it is a big holiday, with lots of food and family.

My mom usually baked a ham for Thanksgiving, instead of turkey. Once in a while, we'd do a turkey, but we usually preferred ham. For me, it was mostly a day off from school. It was one of the last holidays we could spend outside before breaking out the heavy coats. As I got older, I tended to spend most of my Thanksgivings on my bike cruising through the bike trails back home enjoying the spectacle of fall. Most of the trees turn colour by this time, and there are lots of nice crunchy leaves that are fun to go stomping through. Of course I'd be back home in time for dinner. Usually it was just me, my parents and brother and sister. Sometimes my aunt and uncle would have a big dinner at their place with even more family.

CBC would air It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! in the evening, which was always fun to watch. There was always a football game to watch in the afternoon.

So now that I live in the US, I get to celebrate 2 Thanksgivings. My regular Thanksgiving in October, and the US Thanksgiving in November. Double the fun and best of all, double the food :)

And while writing this, I also learned that Martin Frobisher, an English navigator, celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Canada back in 1578, 43 years before the colonists at Plymouth Rock did. Betcha didn't know that Canadians celebrated Thanksgiving first!

Getting stuff ready to load up into the car so we can head off to the in-laws for the holidays. Holidays are always an interesting time at the in-laws. There's usually some kind of silliness or drama going on. Our role is mostly as the family caterer, which is just fine by us because it keeps us out of the way, and we can boss people around in the kitchen. Mostly we're telling people to get out of the kitchen though (at least while we're working in it).

A few years ago, the annual family gatherings (Thanksgiving and Christmas) kept growing and growing, until one year we were confronted with cooking for 40 people, when we only expected 25. 40 pounds of turkey disappeared with no leftovers in sight. After that, we drew the line and told the family we weren't cooking for that many people anymore. The next Thanksgiving they were on their own while we took in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York City (a very fun event, but many many people to deal with). Since then, the family gatherings have been much smaller and much more enjoyable.

So, I wonder what will happen this year...we're only expecting 14 or so for Christmas dinner.

My wife has developed a recent and inexplicable fascination with the rodeo. I think it must be related to her current obsession with horses. So tomorrow, we're off to see the PBR Challenge at the North Charleston Coliseum for a rip-roaring boot stomping good time. Or at least to see some guys get tossed up in the air.

I wonder what would happen if I started rooting for the bulls...

In a few days it will be the start of the Chinese New Year. It will be the Year of the Monkey (a Green Wooden Monkey at that). All over the world, anywhere there is a significant Chinese population, there will be celebrations, firecrackers, and dragon/lion dances. There will be feasts, and large family get togethers.

I remember as a kid, going downtown, watching the lion dances, and getting scared by the firecrackers and loud drum noises. So much excitement around. It was a fun time, and something I've missed since moving to the US. All of the places I've lived so far have lacked a significant Chinese population, so I've missed the festivities. Maybe this year I'll find something.

Had a delightful Chinese New Year celebration at my wife's boss's house. Mostly people from the lab she works in, lots of good food. It's become a pretty multi-cultural lab since my wife started working there. Where else can you go to celebrate Chinese New Year, and have a conga line and salsa dancing break out? A good time was had by all I think. It was a good start to the new year.

3 years ago today, we got our marriage license. In SC (as in many other states I imagine), you go apply for your marriage license, and a few days later you go pick it up. And 3 years ago today, that's what we did. That also means our anniversary is coming up. So I guess I'd better start thinking of something to do...

My wife decided we needed to have a big party to celebrate her getting into med school, and tomorrow's the big day. She's been planning it for a couple of weeks now, getting the catering, making invites, and all sorts of other arrangements. She likes doing this kind of thing, planning and organizing things. Should have seen her planning for the wedding.

My job for tomorrow is to pick up the cake and a fruit plate from the grocery store. For tonight, there is more apartment cleaning and lots of cooking. Planning to make up a big pot of greens (still don't know how anyone can eat that stuff) and a couple of pans of macaroni and cheese (mmm, yummy) to go along with the Sticky Fingers catered stuff. Lots of people, lots of food and hopefully lots of fun to be had.

Tomorrow we're off to Charlotte to catch the Verizon Ladies First Tour 2004: Beyonce, Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott concert. My wife wanted to go and I'm just tagging along for the ride. So armed with nothing more than Mapquest directions, a map and some snacks, we're going to hit the road and see how many times we can get lost before getting to our hotel and then the coliseum.

Not quite sure what kind of seats we ended up with. But it seems like with most concerts, no matter what seats you end up with you're staring at a tiny little figure on a giant state really far away. Maybe I'll spend my time doing the Kid's in the Hall "I'm crushing your head" thing.

Headed off to Orlando tomorrow for a little mini-vacation. We're going to drive down there, so it should be an interesting road trip. We're going to hit SeaWorld, Kennedy Space Center, Cirque du Soleil Nouba, and hang out at and Universal Studios Orlando.

Should be fun.

While I'm gone, I probably won't be blogging, and I'll be turning commenting off. Since upgrading to 3.0D, spam's been a bit of a problem lately without MTBlacklist to filter things out. So rather than come back and have to delete several hundred spam comments, I'm just going to turn it off. I'll turn it back on when I come back.

Photos from our Orlando trip are up in my photo gallery.

We had a good time on the trip. Went to Seaworld where we got to pet penguins and dolphins and feed stingrays. Rode on Kraken, one really kick ass rollercoaster and got soaked on Journey To Atlantis.

The next day we drove out to Kennedy Space Center and explored around there most of the day. Very cool place. I particularly enjoyed the Apollo/Saturn V center. It's hard to imagine just how large the Saturn V really is until you see it up close.

Our last full day we spent the evening at Downtown Disney and saw Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba. I love Cirque du Soleil. They're so much fun to watch. And like many shows, it's even better to see in live. Definitely worth going to if you have a chance.

Happy 137th Canada day!

Just about to head out to the beach and grill my face off. The wife decided to organize a picnic/barbeque and invited a bunch of her classmates along. She's completely incapable of planning any kind of event without turning it into a huge production, so I expect I'll have my hands full grilling stacks of hamburgers and hotdogs while she entertains. Her planning skills usually make for memorable events though.

My pulled pork pseudo-barbeque came out very nicely again, but I'm hoping most people will want bugers so I can take most of it home with me :). I've got about 3 dozen burgers and a Sam's Club sized package of hot dogs to cook. That and the 10 pounds of pulled pork ought to keep people happy.

I just hope we don't get rained out before everything gets started.

Yesterday's beach picnic turned out reasonably well. The rain stayed away long enough to get everything grilled, people to eat and spend some time playing on the beach. As expected, I spent most of the time walking back and forth between the two grills we had going to cook all the food. Didn't have quite as many people come by as we expected, so there was plenty of food left over. And just as I planned, setting out the pulled pork a little after most people filled up on burgers and hot dogs ("Oh wait, there's some pulled pork barbeque too!") meant that there was plenty of pulled pork left over for me :). Excellent...

A view of the ocean from the Holiday Inn on Folly Beach.

Tuesday a collective sigh of relief was heard all over campus as the first year med students finished their final exam for the summer Gross Anatomy class. The next sound heard was the screeching of tires as they all took off for the beach.

Tuesday night one of my wife's friends was flying in from Albany, so we picked him up and headed off to spend a couple of nights at Folly Beach. Wednesday was spent doing nothing but loafing around on the beach, soaking up the sun and warmth, and playing in the water. It was an exhausting day. Oh the life. I could definitely get used to it.

Then today for her, it was off to the mall to shop. Sadly for me, it was off to work.

Then tomorrow we've got more friends and family coming in for the White Coat Ceremony, where MD wannabes get inducted into their class.

I think I need a vacation.

Hooray! It's a wedding! It's official!

Two of my very good friends and fellow Hooligans are getting hitched in a couple of months. I am no doubt one of the last to receive the invitation, which was postmarked a week ago. For some reason everything takes a week to get to me by mail.

The wedding is only a couple of months away, and there isn't much time left to make arrangements. Now I'm wishing I hadn't procrastinated on getting a new passport. I wonder how long it will take to get a new one... And I need to apply for advanced parole from USCIS too. And there are flight arrangements to make also.

Oh dear, this could be a bit of a challenge. So much to get organized.

Just about every wedding has at least one memorable moment. Many times, that moment is the climactic 'Throwing of the Bouquet'. Ours was no exception.

I especially love the part when she spikes the remains of the bouquet after getting back to her seat.

Hallowe'en is here again, which means it's time for MUSC's annual pumpkin carving contest. This year there weren't quite as many pumpkins as last year, but there were still a lot of good pumpkins.

I particularly liked the one from the Cardiovascular Perfusion/Life Support Team. Note the contents of the IV bag.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2005 turns out to be a happy, prosperous and interesting year for all of you!

Our first decision of 2005 is to buy a house. After much discussion and consideration we decided that if we have to spend $182k, then it's going to be on a house rather than a condo.

So for the past few days we've been browsing through the online MLS and the real estate section of the paper checking things out and seeing what's out there and the kinds of prices we can expect. Mostly small and expensive or not-so-small and really expensive in the areas we want to live. If we want big and cheap, that means living farther away and a longer commute than we want to deal with. We did find a few places that look interesting enough to check out later this week. The wife's parents are also planning on making a trip down on the weekend to have a look around with us too.

We've also been working on a list of items and features that we want in a house and ranking them by importance to us. I'm sure this will be an interesting process.