<p>I agree with you Moda. The process doesn’t seem to make sense and it is intimidating. I am sure your S will do well. </p>
<p>Sending modason the med school mojo 
</p>
<p>I have to wonder a little about some of these seeming “hooks” in terms of Med school admission…whether they actually produce better docs What I DON’T wonder about is the imminent doc shortage. If we can give full funding fellowships to philosophy majors, why on earth can’t we give docs a free ride?</p>
<p>For me, the number one character trait for a doc wouldn’t be whether he or she fed orphans in Guyana…it would be that he or she has the mental acuity to recognize that “you don’t know what you don’t know” :)</p>
<p>DTE, happy anniversary! Sounds like a lovely trip!</p>
<p>Last day of work until the 7th! Yeah!!! H and I will be spending out 30th anniversary on the 30th in Alaska. Leave tomorrow morning. I can’t wait!!!</p>
<p>As we have had a variety of issues through the years that haven’t been easily treated my understanding of medicine is it’s a science that is truly an art form. One treatment doesn’t always work on everyone and sometimes things aren’t understood - no answer for what caused something but the patient slowly improves. That being said I think the biggest thing that I think should be looked for in someone that wants to be either a dr. or nurse is listening skills. H went into his old dr. once for a physical. Dr. said – oh your weight is up 10 lbs. If you just watch your diet and exercise a little you can get that back down. Now my H exercises on average 2.5 hours a day. He is a nationally rated duathalon. Really doc – did you even read his chart? Did you listen to him? Also at that time my H weighed a 145. At 5’7" I don’t think he was really over weight! H has since changed dr. to someone who listens to him!</p>
<p>Vacation can’t come soon enough. :)</p>
<p>Happy anniversary dte! Bermuda is so lovely.</p>
<p>Bon voyage RM!</p>
<p>Just had a fantastic Beatles tour in Liverpool. Weather in France England and Ireland has been perfect so far. Hope that continues in Scotland and Wales before we head home.</p>
<p>RM…you so deserve a lovely vacation!Enjoy!</p>
<p>dte…So happy that you had a great time in Bermuda. Time on a beach with H would be great!</p>
<p>sevmom…What a line up! Can hardly wait to hear the highlights of the tour through the United Kingdom!</p>
<p>Wow. Lots of traveling this summer. I hope you all had/are having/will have a great time.</p>
<p>Been reading, but a little behind on the posting. S’s graduation is Sat , in laws are here,parents arrive today and D arrives tonight. CBB I keep meaning to mention that while I have no advice for you re: your S, I am sorry to hear that he is not in a happy place right now and hope that changes soon.
The med school app posts are fascinating, I had no idea how complex that is.
Sending anniversary wishes to RM and also dte. Sounds like some good trips.
Sevmom I want to hear about the Beatles tour. ( my uncle’s wife is a cousin to George)</p>
<p>Hope all the graduation festivities are fun!</p>
<p>I’m looking forward to a trip report on the Beatles tour, sevmom (when you get home)
Enjoy the graduation, FallGirl. What are his plans post-graduation?
Bon Voyage, RochesterMom. (And how ridiculous that a doctor would suggest that a 5’7" guy weighing 145 ought to lose 10 pounds.)</p>
<p>The recommendation thing sometimes differs. Like Harvard wants one from any your lab supervisors - all of them. Fortunately, those were who S was getting recs from anyway. Some say no more than five individual letters or three and the application allows you to assign recs to individual schools. That’s not the option in a committee ltr/dossier; there are five and I guess they get the option to read as little as they want? not sure.</p>
<p>As for the Art of Medicine… I think that’s essentially what S’s personal essay is about without being cliche or overly literal. We’ll see in 6-8 weeks…</p>
<p>PS - made it the nook in one piece in 15 hrs and 45 minutes. While I didn’t drive through any truly nasty weather, it was kinda of a heavy mist a good part of the way and my rain sensing windshield wipers were horrible… either taking forever to start or then wiping really really fast and not stopping. It wasn’t raining hard enough for continuous wiper use, but enough where I was constantly giving it a manual swipe. While I realize it sounds incredibly spoiled, 15 hours of it was definitely annoying!! The Cat was the best behaved he’s ever been and I think he was just as excited as me to get somewhere with a little direct outdoor access. The painters took down my curtain screens… you drop them down when it rains really hard and stuff - you can see out, but you can’t see in. They run on this pulleys and just roll down and tie off on Cleats. But when they redid the porch, they seemed to have lost all my cleats!! And then the painters took them down and left a big pile of rope and pulleys in a pile and another of the actual screens. And yes, they put these in my living room. This doesn’t even address my concern for the very real likelihood for spider eggs in the rolled up screens. </p>
<p>I had no idea the Nook was such a distance from you; glad you got there safely Moda.
My car is in the shop until tomorrow for new tires, alignment and other goodies to make it good to go when we head down to the (Colorado) San Juan’s next month. </p>
<p>Whoo-hoo, Rochmom! Have fun!</p>
<p>Moda, I saw an ad for NY travel the other night and your town was in it. Just beautiful! Fingers crossed for no spiders…</p>
<p>Congrats to fallgirl’s S. You certainly have a full house!</p>
<p>My nephew graduated form HS the other night. There were four student speakers - 2 Vals, a Sal and Class Pres. I couldn’t believe how disrespectfully snarky the boys were and how insanely saccharine the girls were.
…maybe I just haven’t been around too many 18 yo lately and am a bit sensitive to it. But to say you can get an easy A by buying a teacher a coffee or saying that you only started to work on the speech last night was a bit much. (PS - That was obvious!)</p>
<p>Woody - Sometimes I can’t believe who we give a mike to in life. At S and D’s school, while the speakers can say anything they want, since the school doesn’t do the whole Sal/Val thing (they don’t rank), potential speakers submit their speech for consideration. It’s not like they only allow speakers that “agree” or put forth the school’s message because they don’t, but you’d have to be an idiot to not think it plays some sort of role. Still, standing in front of your classmates as representative of the best and brightest to say I didn’t put much thought into this or whatever would be pretty insulting if I were a classmate having worked my butt off for four years. </p>
<p>All the abroad travel plans make me slightly jealous, but again… unless someone is packing for me I’d have a hard time knowing what to take for such multiple stops. My sister does it all the time though and says the key is to pack in those packing cubes. Does anyone here use those as religion when it comes to packing?</p>
<p>My friend’s son - who just finished his freshman year at S’s alma mater - came over yesterday after his regular summer job of putting in docks and rigging sailboats (he’s a sailing instructor) to empty my car for me. I love this kid. The job was done in about 15 minutes, but saved my back hours of pain. He loved his first year and I couldn’t be happier for him - and I knew it would be a great fit.</p>
<p>Today I have to oil my new porch, but I have to say I can’t figure out if some boards weren’t nailed/glued down enough OR if it just hasn’t been walked on enough to settle it because it creaks and has what feels like a “soft” spot. But as of 5pm today, all hammering, sawing etc has to stop. Beyond a painter or other quiet work, there is no construction during the season. As you can imagine, that is ALL you can hear today as people hurry to finish projects. So any redo of my porch will wait until fall - and honestly? I bet by then I will have completely forgotten about it (or at least I hope I do). Mostly I need to get this porch in livable condition if only so I can get all the furniture that belongs out there out of my interior living space. At this point, I can’t even get into the second bedroom. So I guess it’s time to get back to it!!</p>
<p>Happy Weekend everyone!!</p>
<p>Enjoy the settling in, Moda. I think it is kind of cool that they set a date after which there isn’t allowed to be construction noise. Never heard of that before, but it makes sense.</p>
<p>Happy Solstice everyone! And happy vaca for those of you hitting the road, or in Moda’s case, nestling into nooks ;)</p>
<p>Moda, please send my new neighbor-up-the-hill that memo about the summer construction moratorium ;)</p>
<p>I realize the guy is excited about his new house. He may not know that incessant scalping of his lawn, felling trees, yelling at his dog, and the irregular patter of an air nail gun aren’t soothing to me during dinner on the deck or an evening swim :)</p>
<p>As mch said …“I really WANT to like our new neighbor, but I don’t think i like his relationship with trees and things that are green…”</p>
<p>Mch is leery of all who wield a chainsaw, because he really does love his trees. Fortunately, most of the significant screening trees are on our side of the fence, though there’s a tall aspen I’m saying a little prayer for every day. I predict if new neighbor touches those or suggests even a trim, it will start a war…</p>
<p>My deck and terrace, of course, are like a sound bowl. Which he will learn in about a week when mcson arrives and his musician friends stop by to welcome him </p>
<p>Busy few weekends ahead. Writers this morning, then a friend from Canada arrives and were off to a solstice party tonight. She leaves Monday, then my youngest sister and hubby show up Friday and mcson moves home Saturday. Better enjoy my quiet coffee and the sounds of nature this am while I can 
Fortunately, neighbor isn’t an early bird…</p>
<p>Happy and safe travels to all who are out and about in the world.</p>
<p>kmc – I hear ya about enjoying the quiet while you can. As much as I love our beach area in the summer, it does get pretty crowded and, therefore, noisy here. Not all the schools are out yet, so this weekend is probably our last quiet one for a while. Once the summer rental start up, all bets are off. </p>
<p>Our beach area is divided into 2 separate associations – although the actual private beach areas run together. The other association has a construction moratorium from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Our association doesn’t, which worked in our favor 2 summers ago when our house was being built.</p>
<p>H’s sailboat is finally on the mooring, ready to go. He went for a sail yesterday, but has agreed to stay home today to help me with a few remaining gardening projects. The weather looks truly spectacular for the next several days.</p>
<p>Happy (official) summer everyone!</p>
<p>Speaking of outdoors, I don’t know if I mentioned that last week, we went down the road of buying a new house. It is on a swimmable pond in our town --one of something like 9 houses on the pond, though a bigger neighborhood assoc has access. You couldn’t see any other houses looking out the wall of glass / screened porch onto the lake. One surmountable problem. The houses was 60s or 70s contemporary and while well maintained, it was not well built and had lower ceilings (8’) in some rooms compared to 10’ feet in ours. But, it was less than our current house and was like a country house in the suburbs. Plus, we would also sell the lot on which ShawWife’s studio sits for a good price – as a building lot in a desired neighborhood. We would use that to build a studio, pay for renovations, and likely have done left over. Then we’d sell the country house --no need for it. But the second problem was insurmountable-- shawwiife had an allergic reaction to the pond. Like last year’s reaction to the mold. It was delayed because she’d taken Claritin before going in but started to be short of breath and have a puffy face, etc. so, back go the drawing board. In some ways, I have been happy here and it would be easier to stay but I would find that setting really relaxing. Well we will keep looking, probably girls a house on the river. </p>
<p>Enjoying a quiet morning here at the lake watching the loons. Yesterday was a glorious day after too many days of rain and flooding. H, D2 and her fiance are out golfing. Have pork in the crockpot for BBQ sandwiches later today when friends arrive to enjoy the sun and boating. </p>
<p>Moda…Glad you made it safely to the Nook and had some help getting unpacked. What a lovely place to be!</p>
<p>CBB…I spent some time yesterday transplanting hostas and daylillies along the steps to the lake. No garden yet but getting the grass in and installing some boulder walls has been keeping me busy. Trying to stay with a rustic, woodsy and low maintenance style.Hoping to get three large Balsam Firs put in when Fall arrives for screening out views from our neighbor. It will be a work in progress for many years!</p>
<p>The big news around here is that D1 stayed home as she has plans for the weekend with a gentleman friend. She met him at college where they both played soccer. They are meeting other friends to go to the baseball game and then out on the town afterwards. Her social life is slowly coming back.</p>
<p>NM, so glad to hear that about D1!</p>
<p>I enjoyed a day off work yesterday; I’m at “use it or lose it” leave balance so have several 4 day work-weeks/3 day weekends coming up. Slept in, went swimming, met some girlfriends for lunch, watched a movie, read a book. Of course now I’m catching up on a ton of emails and work from being off yesterday. I don’t have to, I suppose, but my schedule on Monday is nuts so I’m catching up now for my own peace of mind.</p>
<p>C-Q, if your D is still looking for a job, I have some anecdotal evidence that English, communications and other majors in the Bay Area are getting jobs in startups and bigger firms whereas in other areas, they are struggling to find jobs. </p>