Car Break-in

Thursday was supposed to be a perfect or at least a busy day. Our daughter had a doctor's appointment, I was scheduled to shadow a surgery and the rest of the day was to be spent working. The race of morning caught us all leaving our house, me ahead with Ben and Laura following close behind. As I descended the stairs, I looked out at our car sitting just in the parking lot with the front hood up. It took about 10 seconds for me to realize what had just happened, I thought someone had parked a similar car in parking spot and was doing maintenance on it. Once the connection was made that this was indeed our car, I noticed the smashed window and the missing battery. I'll called up to Laura that our car was broken in to and the next 5min was chaos.

I immediately called the police and I set about surveying the damage. The driver's side rear vent window was broken in and appears to be how they got in. The glove compartment was open, but from all appearances nothing else was damaged or taken from inside the car. The engine compartment was another matter. The battery was gone, which, if that was all that was done would have been a great blessing. Unfortunately, to remove the battery, the thieves decided to cut all the wires to the battery, so a simple replace the battery was out of the question.

About that time, the policeman showed up and did his thing. I called insurance about the glass and I was very grateful that we had just put complete glass coverage on our coverage. The replacement glass would have cost $617! As it was, it did not cost us a dime. The battery, however, is another story in and of itself.

Since the battery was cut out, we needed to replace the cables. Well, GM decided that the cables needed to be Original Equipment stuff, so a quick drive to Checker's was out of the question. We eventually found the cables and set about to put them in the car. Turns out 3 of the 4 cables were pretty easy. The fourth, however, turned out to be situated behind an engine mount in an extremely inaccessible place. There was no way I, with my feeble selection of tools, was going to get this cable situated. This is where our incredible ward members came to the rescue. An incredible auto mechanic in our ward was able to get the last cable in place in about an hour. If anyone needs a really, really good mechanic and are in Phoenix, let me know, I'll hook you up!

All told, the whole event set up back $150. Not bad, it could have been a lot worse, and, of course, I can think of an infinite number things to spend my $150 on, but none of us were hurt, which is the most important thing of all.

There is an end in sight!

Two weeks, I am down to two weeks of my first year in medical school. Granted there are 10 tests between now and then, but I like to be optimistic. Yesterday, we had a our annual Student Choice Awards that helped participate in. It is a general "thank you" to the staff and faculty and a chance to poke a bit of fun at some of them. There was food, skits and a video to round-out about an hour of some pretty funny stuff. The video ended up on youtube. I'll post a link later as youtube seems to be having a bit of trouble.

My plans for the summer are pretty simple. I'll be doing some cancer research at a local clinic. To pull in even more money, I plan on fixing computers, as well. Hopefully, the economy hasn't tanked too badly to prevent me from at least doing a little. I also hope to shadow my uncle in Washington, where it will be a lot cooler. The biggest thing that will happen this summer is an addition to the family.

Oh, where to begin...

After so many years of hearing about blogs and some of the more interesting ones. I've decided to piece down and create one of my own. I have never though of myself as a great writer, but maybe, with a lot of practice and blogging, I will improve myself to actually be mostly coherent. It will probably mean there is no blogging while I'm just waking up, as I am now. Not bad for a start, but enough of the mindless jibber-jabber.

Presently, I am pushing my way through my first year of medical school, which is an endeavor in and of itself. The material I'm learning is overtly difficult, just a lot of it. For example, by Monday I am supposed to have memorized about 16 some odd pages of material for immunology. Most of the material is composed into lists and, to be quite honest, I hate memorizing lists. There is no point. Within 15 minutes after the test, I will have completely forgotten the tested material. Oh well, that is another subject for another time. Overall, though, I am very impressed with medical school and I have found it to be a very fun and engaging career choice.

Just the other day, we were involved with TOPS in downtown Phoenix. TOPS is a program set up by local physicians to allow high school athletes to get physicals, but also to have medical students practice on some rather unsuspecting victims. Usually, there about 2500 students who come throughout the day. It was a load of fun, I actually wished I could have stayed for more than the required 3 hours, but we have this test on Monday. I participated in 3 devisions; male and female physicals and EKG's. The EKG's were pretty much the most boring. All that was involved included attaching wires to the leads and pressing a few buttons. After about 30 seconds, the machine spit out the EKG and that was it. The physicals, on the other hand, were awesome! It was great to finally take some of my knowledge , apply it and finally interact with someone/something other than a book. The poor boys had to do testicular exams and hernia checks, but, for me at least, there was never an issue. Overall, I did about ten physicals in the 2 hours I did physicals. I know in comparison to actual doc's who have done this for years that is slow, but this is my first time ever doing this. I really look forward to next year to do this again.