2006

Welcome to the New Year. New year, same old blog.

The holidays were upon us, then made a casual exit. The tree is down and in the yard waiting for the big truck. Erica worked seven nights in a row in the PICU, so I saw her on occasion. She made it to Christmas Eve service but missed Christmas celebrations with both sides of my family and hers as well. All in all, it was a great Christmas nonetheless. We didn't give or get too much. Our biggest gifts were to the church and Heifer Project - all is well with that.

We went to New Year's Eve at the Peabody Hotel, an event preceded by fancy dinner at our house with Jessica and Meredith, who were Sydney-less. What a nice night! The Peabody was a blast, but way too crowded. Ran into several people we know. Then a cab ride to their house, during which our cabbie was subjected to lots of talk about LH surges, ovulation prediction kits, frozen sperm, etc. Both families going through fertility attempts! He laughed good-naturedly. I got up early to head in for another 24-hour nightmare known as call.

Menu:
Shrimp pasta
Broccoli
Green salad with almonds and fresh raspberries
Brie and jam toasts
Cranberry chutney/cream cheese/crackers
Champagne fruity drinks
Espresso/Au laits
Amaretto Cake

Pretty impressive, huh? The decorations were still up, and I totally FORGOT to take pictures.

I have had a LOT of call lately. For some reason, they were all jammed together at the end of December. So now I'm recovering and getting things done around the house. We also went to Beauty and the Beast at the Rep, which was the BEST show I've seen there.

Erica woke me up this morning screaming my name from the front door. I stumbled out there in my PJ's to see a house (across the street and down three) totally engulfed in flames. We were in total shock. The fire trucks were already there and spraying from atop the big ladder on top of the truck. Firemen everywhere, sirens, lights, people outside watching. I at one point mentioned my camera, but it was way too weird for that. There are only bricks left. We watched them tear down the garage door as everything was still burning, and there weren't any cars. It was surreal to watch the three firemen go inside with oxygen tanks as there were still flames burning. I'm still hoping no one was home, but there is no news that I've heard about it. Katy called me from Fayetteville to say that it was on katv.com. Apparently it started burning a little after five, but we didn't go out until 6. It seemed to be at its pinnacle when we got there, because we watched almost an hour as it died down. All day today, there have been cars driving on the street. The trucks were still there when I went to the dentist at 11. I guess Erica was able to leave okay around 8 to go to work.

Anyway, that's the exciting news. I'm off to my local law enforcement agency for fingerprints (one of the joys of medical license application). I guess it's good that licensed physicians can't be criminals. Right?