6 days left

I have 6 days left of med school - 16 hours in class, to be exact. Well, and the two tests for this rotation.

But, after 25 years of school, that's nothing.

I'm so excited.

And, I'm even more excited because I apparently did not miss the RiverFest art fair this year that I thought was last weekend. I just read that there is a "Riverbank" art fair this weekend.

I can't wait to tell Katherine what she'll be enjoying with me this weekend. :)

It's the final countdown

We have 50 days remaining as residents of Iowa. Egads.

So what am I doing to be productive?

Why, watching Dan in Real Life, of course.

And imagining our soon-to-be life in Rhode Island.

Which is where we are going this weekend. And Cape Cod, of course.

And, I passed the 2nd half of my boards.

It looks like I really will be graduating. Yikes.

Oops.

Kath and I stopped at the famous Iowa 80 truck stop on the way home from ND. Mainly because I have a tiny bladder. I also took the opportunity to purchase a yummy traveling snack of chips. As I told Katherine, one of my favorite things about traveling when I was a child was being able to eat treats in the car. As I was polishing off the last of my chips, I looked down to see crumbs covering my sweatshirt.

"Oops," I said. "I have chip crumbs all over me."

Katherine laughed and said, "I'll avert my eyes to avoid looking at your shame."

"I'm not ashamed," I replied. "I think it's funny, and I just remembered that I was giving up chips for the next month."

Oops.

My favorite football game

Kath and I drove to Notre Dame on Saturday for the annual football spring scrimmage - the Blue and Gold game. It's my favorite football game; Notre Dame wins, it's only an hour long, the weather is (generally) lovely, and we get to enjoy the atmosphere of Notre Dame without paying too much money for tickets. And it was a lovely day - I got a bit red to prove it; Katherine already looks like she spent a week at the beach. Since we woke up at 5 am on Saturday, we were quite tired after the game, so wandering about the campus was enough to completely exhaust us. Our evening plans consisted of dinner at TGI Fridays (because every weekend when Kath was at Notre Dame, she and her friends would go to TGI Fridays, find that the wait was too long, and go to Chili's instead) and watching The Departed in our hotel room (I did not remember that Leonardo DiCaprio's character dies, so we were very upset). We went to church at the Basilica this morning and then drove home through overcast skies and rain.

It was good to get away. I've been in a funky mood - very angry and sad for many reasons. Stress about our upcoming changes, mostly, but also family drama. Getting away helped refocus my energy in a more positive direction.

And, I love Notre Dame. It will be our last visit there for a long time. Annual trips to Notre Dame are not so affordable when one lives on the East Coast.

While we were watching the game, I asked Katherine how much we would have to donate to be eligible for season tickets. She said it was a lot. I asked her if she would prefer to have Notre Dame season football tickets or children. I was somewhat shocked when she chose children; I anticipated that would be more of a dilemma. (For the record, she also said that she loves me more than Notre Dame.)

It's good that Easter is the season of forgiveness and redemption

Katherine is fasting today, as it is Good Friday.

I told her yesterday that my plan was to make a giant, yummy meal tonight that she would not be able to eat so that she could really connect with Christ and His trials in the garden of Gethsemane.

It's bad enough that, during Lent, I get strange cravings for steak on Fridays. And, I'm not a big meat lover, usually.

Sometimes, I am an awful spouse.

But, for some reason, she still loves me.

It's official

We have our cupcakes.

If you remember back to, oh maybe a month to 5 weeks ago, I was practicing making pumpkin cupcakes for our wedding. (Yay!)

Well, last night I was craving fruit crisp. But, since neither Kath nor I wanted to head down to the grocery to buy ingredients for said-crisp, we pulled out two of the frozen pumpkin cupcakes that we had been test-freezing. We defrosted them and ate them.

And then ate the remaining two while watching The Mentalist.

They were still SO yummy.

And, they freeze well!

So, now we know. Sadly, since we ate the remaining cupcakes, I will have to make another batch to test another frosting, as we still have not agreed on that aspect. (I'm really not that sad, though.)

We also have to test out chocolate cupcakes, because Katherine said that if she went to a wedding and they did not have chocolate cake, she would be sad.

I don't really want her to be sad at her own wedding.

Oh happy day!

Vermont's legislature has had its way.

Thanks to a veto override, same-sex marriage is now legal in Vermont.

And, the "faux-family" supporters won't be able to blame this victory on "activist judges."

Alas... *pulls out tiny violin*

Happy sounds

Dory snoring.

Ty purring on my lap.

Katherine laughing.

The themesong for Sex and the City.

It has been a good day.

On my soapbox

"Marriage should be undertaken for the procreation of children . Will the court also gaurentee [sic] this couple have children naturally too."

I'm going on my my soapbox limb right now, and I'm going to expel the voices raging inside my head when I read posts such as this one, from a New York Times debate, on this issue of same-sex marriage.

IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT. IDIOT.

I know that people do not all agree on the topic of same-sex marriage. But still, if you're going to have an opinion, please try to have a defensible one. According to the above-stated (logic?), any infertile, elderly, or simply-uninterested-in-children heterosexual couples should not be allowed to marry under our current laws.

Idiot.

That's all I have to say about that.

(If you haven't guessed, I tend to get riled up about this topic.)

This is why we have 3 branches of government.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled today, on Varnum v. Brien, that Iowa's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. From the ruling:

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification. There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that can affect this
determination."

Hip-hip-hooray!

I told Katherine recently that after living in Iowa City for 8 years, it's become my home. More so than my original home.

This victory makes me love Iowa even more.

The electric car gets its revenge.

Katherine watched a documentary titled "Who Killed the Electric Car?" the other day while I was studying. I didn't catch all of it, but I caught enough to know that GM had invested in research and development of an electric car back in the 90s, but then killed it and destroyed all of its test cars for unknown but undoubtedly political reasons. The documentary was shocking, and I was angered by the shortsightedness of GM's corporate headquarters.

So, it was quite amusing, in a way, to see this latest headline in the New York Times, "China Vies To Be World Leader in Electric Car". Also, one sentence particularly caught my eye.. "The United States has been a laggard in alternative vehicles." I bet that is particularly infuriating to the engineers who worked on the electric car project. They were way ahead of the curve, and GM and politicians destroyed their project.

I find this especially interesting in light of GM's current financial predicament. I feel like the electric cars that GM destroyed may be the ones laughing now, in their junkyard graves.

I also recommend that you watch the documentary. If you are not upset by corporate America already, I can guarantee that you will be after you watch it.