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Adventures of an Atherton: Doubles with the Pros

Adventures of an Atherton: Doubles with the Pros

Doubles with the Pros

Yesterday, I got play in a Pro-Am tennis match with two of the worlds best tennis players. Jimmy Arias and Aaron Krickstein (former # 5 and #6 in the world). I played with Aaron (on the right in the photo). It was so much fun...and so much pressure. There were about 250 people watching, we were being videos and the commentator was the worlds leading tennis coach, Nick Bolletieri. And, to boot....I was the only woman in a mens doubles match.

The pros took it a little easy on us amateurs, when they served, but these guys were so competitive, they weren't really taking it easy after the serves.

I had a few great net rally's, but the nerves really got me at service time. Very hard to serve with hundreds watching, serving against people who have won major titles and played the worlds best. At one point, I double faulted and Jimmy Arias (who is hilarious and a total kidder), said that he was sure something got in my eye and I should take another ball! I did, and managed to get it in.

Aaron and I lost in the tie breaker at the end 7 - 11. What a blast! My coach told me afterwards that after all that pressure, no pressure I feel in a match will ever feel bad again. He said it was great prep for my upcoming team matches....as I'm now on three official USTA teams.

Here's a bit of info on Aaron...of course now he'll have to add me to this list of people he's played against. He beat Ivan Lendl (world #1) in 1990, Michael Stich (world #2 and #4) in 1994 and 1991, Stefan Edberg (world #3) in 1988 and Boris Becker (world #3) in 1992, Mats Wilander (world #4) in 1984, and Jimmy Arias (world #5) in 1984 and Sergi Bruguera (world #5) in 1994. He also amassed wins over Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.

His big claim to infamy is that at Wimbledon one year, he played Jimmy Conners and was up two sets to zero, and it was 5-0 in the third set. Seemed like a no brainer....but then he totally lost it, and he ended up losing the match. Yesterday, fortunately, he held up his end of the team!

Did someone request an epidural?

I am still doing my hospital rotation at Methodist but I spent November in the general OR and now I have moved on to labor and delivery!  We put in spinals and epidurals for laboring moms who are delivering the natural way and for mom's delivering by c-section.  Here is a picture of me giving a spinal to a mom who is pregnant with twins:

L to R: Paige, giant needle, pregnant lady's back

Eric's Bday

One of the other Columbia nurse anesthesia students, Eric, had his birthday last week.  We started the night out at a karaoke bar in Korea town and then the plan was to go see an 80's cover band called Rubix Kube.  Since the theme of the evening was 80's, Eric requested that we all dress accordingly.  Chuck had a friend (Nick) visiting from out of town so he wasn't planning to come but then he realized that his friend was flying out from one of the NYC airports early the next morning so they made the trip!  Sorry Nick, we aren't always that weird...

That pic doesn't do my leg warmers justice.  We made a strong showing at karaoke but I had a cold coming on so we went home instead of going to Rubix Kube.  Oh well, there is always next year.  Happy Birthday Eric!

Shooting at the Lake

A few weeks back you may recall that Julie posted a 'guest blog' from her friend about a Shooting Party that dad and Jule had at their house.  Well I was up at Put a few weekends ago and they had some leftover ammo so we set up a few targets at the lake so I could have a go:

Those targets never knew what hit them:

If you look closely you will see that the second target from the right (it was the red bird in the first photo) is flipped upside down because I ACTUALLY HIT IT!  In fact, I had hit the red bird on the previous shot.  In that photo I am hitting an even tinier target - the black diamond to the right of the bird. The wonders never cease.

Thanksgiving

Mom came up for Thanksgiving again this year!  She flew in and, after navigating the subway from the airport to my apartment, met up with Katherine at her office.  They had dinner and then, when I got off of work, we went to see the balloons being blown up for the Macy's Thanksgiving parade:

The next day we packed up all of our groceries and headed uptown to Emily's apartment to cook Thanksgiving dinner!  Mom was referring to us as Meals on Wheels.

Every since Thanksgiving 2008 (my first Thanksgiving after graduating from college) mom has made the trek to wherever I am to cook a huge meal for me and my friends.  We have since named this the annual Orphan Feast because she is cooking for everyone who can't make it home to their own families (they are orphans! get it?)  I am happy to report that my old California roommates have carried on the tradition - they sent me an invite to their 4th annual Orphan Feast this year :)  Here is a pic of our Thanksgiving dinner this year:

L to R: Katherine, Mom, Adeel, Emily

Not pictured: Paige, Eric

The day after Thanksgiving, mom and I took a monstrous bike ride up the Hudson River to the Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washingtong Bridge.  Then we headed up to Fort Tryon Park for brunch at the New Leaf.  A few bloody marys later mom lost her geocaching virginity.  That sentence sounds much dirtier than it actually is.  I had a big test on Monday so mom spent the remainder of her visit hanging out with Katherine - I have no pics from that part of the weekend! (hint, hint, Mom)

TSwift

Katherine and I saw Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden.  We do not feel the need to explain ourselves or justify the fact that we spent the evening singing louder than every 13-year-old at the concert.

Best part of Jeff's recovery

A little gift from a Diageo friend!

It started out as the perfect ride...

We started out for a sunset ride with Paula and her girls. The horses were all a bit antsy, as it was a cold day and a full moon, so the horses were not on their best behavior. Even in the shot below, you can see that both horses ears are back...not a good sign. And, the ride hadn't started yet.

As the ride progressed, one of Paula's daughters who is an expert rider had to turn back because her horse kept bucking her. On we went...

I then had to gallup ahead because my horse, Cloudy, was getting to be uncontrollable and I didn't want him to stir up Jeff's horse or to run with me in the woods. So, I took off and let Cloudy run to get the craziness out of his system. At this point, Jeff was with Paula and Cody just calmly walking their way back to the barn.

The next thing I knew I heard galloping behind me, as I was walking with Cloudy almost back at the barn. I figured it was Paula. I looked back and saw Jeff galloping up to me. His horse was not in a calm run, it was shaking its head and shaking its rear end as it ran. It got to my horse and they both started running, out of our control. I yelled to Jeff to pull on the reigns, stay low and hold on to the saddle horn...but just as he was passing me, his horse head butted mine and his horse lifted his rear end and threw Jeff off at a full gallup. I looked over and saw Jeff falling, and I couldn't stop the horses. I was no running away from Jeff with his horse (sans rider) and Cloudy. Now we were on blacktop...which is like being on an ice skating rink for horses with metal shoes. I knew I couldn't help Jeff, and I prayed I could stay on and not fall on the blacktop. At last the horses slowed to a trot. I jumped off Cloudy and saw Jeff not moving on the ground. I yelled to him but he was in shock and couldn't hear me. I pushed cloudy into the barn, and ran to Jeff just as Paula and Cody caught up with him.

Jeff was in shock and thought he was OK. He did decline the pumpkin pie and whiskey offer from Paula and got into my car...looking very grey. He was nauseous and could barely speak. Then he said his chest hurt even though he fell right on his back. He thought he was having a heart attack....so he agreed to go to the ER. I called all of our doc friends on our drive to the ER to let them tell the hospital Mr. VIP was on his way and I wanted immediate service. Usually Jeff likes to sneak in and not let them know who he is to the hospital, but that day he agreed to be treated like a board member.

Well, by now his chest was really hurting, and were both scared. The hospital took him in right away and ran all kinds of tests. Heart was fine! But, after 3 hours of tests, and NO pain pills they finally told us he had 4 broken vertebrae, 3 broken ribs, a ruptured adrenal gland (sits on your kidney) and a bruised lung.

He was in the ICU for two days, then to a regular room (well more like a corner suite at the Hyatt) for another 4 days. No permanent damage, and he'll just need time to heal.

He's already walking without a cane just 7 days later, and his rib and back pain is very minimal. This is a good thing, because along the way he's developed an allergy to something he's taking...so now we are managing the hives that are covering his body.

Been quite a week here at the Manor. We are just taking the recovery one day at a time.

And, Jeff and I have both been instructed to "get back on the horse" as part of the psychological recovery process. So, within two months, we will be back up there for a walk.

Birthday!!

WARNING: guest post by Paige's sister Katherine...

Today was my 25th Birthday!

Yesterday the festivities started with Sheldon making me an all out gourmet home cooked dinner. Growing up, my mom always made me my favorite meal for dinner on my birthday - mashed potatoes, something green like brocolli or zuchini, and meatloaf (I was SUCH a normal kid). So Sheldon decided to put a spin on the traditional b-day dinner for me. He started the meal with a golden beet salad with cumin raisin dressing, followed by bacon onion roasted brussel sprouts, homemade butter and mashed potatoes, and a bacon turkey-beef meatloaf. Everything was AMAZING (you can even ask Paige, since she took home about 10 lbs of leftovers). Then after dinner Sheldon surprised me with current favorite dessert - banana pudding from Magnolia of Sex and the City fame.

This morning, Sheldon took me on an adventure deep into the west side for Trapeze School (! - only in NYC - am I right?) We each got to go up about 5 times - this was my final attempt:



It was a ton of fun! We got to try a bunch of different moves and hang out with a few other groups of people, all of us were there for someone's birthday which made the atmosphere even more exciting and fun.

Then we met up with Paige for lunch at Sullivan St Bakery, where we all ate wayyyyyyy too much of really delish bread. I highly recommend the artichoke, yum! We decided to walk home since it was a beautiful day. Paige was planning to make a cake but we were so full that we decided we needed to wait a few hours. So we vegged out on the couch watching I Shouldn't Be Alive on Netflix (thanks Chuck!), drank a bottle of red wine (thanks Julie!) and played a game of Ticket To Ride (thanks Sheldon!) before our cake making. The final result was well worth the wait. That, and Paige shouldn't be allowed to use sprinkles:

Dad and Julie looked like Angelina and Bond last night

Julie: A post from my friend Rick on his blog.

I went to my very first skeet shooting and wine tasting party at Julie’s farm last week. You never know when your first skeet shooting and wine tasting party is also going to be your last. I wasn’t listening that closely when I was invited and heard something about shot this or shot that, and I thought it involved Alabama slammers, kamikazes, or maybe, sex-on-the-beach with an orgasm chaser. But this thing actually involved a fairly large arsenal of handguns, shotguns, rifles and of course a pink BB gun. It seemed like everybody in the place was packing. Mike had a .357, a police special .38 and what looked like a Kevlar vest just in case someone else had outgunned him. I thought I saw him pull a taser when I was reaching for the last chicken skewer.

I brought an appetizer, my shotgun and a couple of bandolero bullet belts. I was wearing a duster to affect a slightly menacing look, and also in case the place was dusty. It looked like we had barged in on a gun amnesty program. I thought I saw a hand grenade on the buffet table but it turned out to be a pineapple.

Lew and Rob ran the target shooting areas with safety in mind, and no one was killed or seriously hurt. Or even humorously hurt. I shouldn’t say no one, since I tripped up the stairs twice at the barn. Everyone had earplugs to use against the noise, and I noticed several people even wore them later on as I was talking to them, I’m not sure why.

Many guests had never fired a live weapon, and seeing so many women with guns was both exciting and unnerving. I myself had never shot a handgun, so I stepped up to the target area. I waved off the instruction, since I had watched the beginning of every James Bond movie at least 50 times. The target said to me, “So, Mr. Bond, we meet again- and this time, the cards are in MY favor. HA HA HA HA HA!” I wryly responded, “You had better check your hand once more, my friend… perhaps you hadn’t counted on THIS!” I spread my feet, lifted my sidearm using both hands, and emptied the clip. The target did not go down, so I threw the gun at it, momentarily confusing James Bond with Superman. Lew pried the gun out of my hand, saying something about having to re-sod the lawn now.

I fared a little better with the shotgun, since I have shot skeet before. Luckily, most of the clay pigeons broke coming out of the thrower, and if I shot quickly and winked I could create the illusion of success. Most of the birds fell harmlessly into the lake, and when I say harmlessly, I’m not counting all the fish who were beaned in the head. I asked Julie if she could put some of the fish into a barrel so we could shoot them and see if it was as easy as people say.

The estate was spectacular and beautiful. The grounds so big they could only be navigated by Segways with knobby tires. If you have never ridden a Segway, it’s quite a treat: you simply get on, and after you chase it about 20 feet trying to get on, you just lean in one direction or the other to turn or go forward or backward. The property slopes to the west, so several Republicans fell off the thing trying to turn left.

The wine tasting was also lovely, except for a tense moment when somebody popped a champagne cork and everybody hit the deck, still a little gun-shy. The venison was quite tasty, and it turned out that the boys had killed it themselves. No one would actually admit that they ran into it with their car, but I did see an antler-sized dent in the fender. There was a beautiful duck on the table that the menfolk had shot and stuffed. They said it was a hooded merganser, but I couldn’t tell one way or the other with the hood on.

Everyone brought an appetizer, and my wife made a delicious chicken and ginger offering. I kind of wished we had shot the chicken ourselves, but it was already dead so it seemed pointless. I did however empty some lead into the ginger.

I hope Julie doesn’t mind, but on my way to the party I took the liberty of stopping by the neighbor’s house to feign asking directions, and I let them know our two families were having a nasty blood feud and we were still pretty pissed off that the North won the war. When the gunfire started I pictured them shivering under the bed pretending to be dead.


Incidentally, the Puckle gun was unveiled in 1718 by James Puckle. Some say that “necessity is the mother of invention,” but it’s possible that having a name like Puckle is, instead. It fired square bullets, an upgrade over his previous design, which fired bullets in the shape of a parallelogram. Samuel Colt was the first to apply modern machining and mass production to the manufacture of firearms, his patent for the Colt revolver issued in 1836. Muzzle-loaders went out with the Crimean War in 1856, with the exception of my dog.

Methodist

On Tuesday I started my fourth clinical rotation at New York Methodist Hospital. (recap: one, two, three) I will be spending my first month here doing a general rotation (meaning that I am in an operating room doing general-type cases, as opposed to a specialty, like trauma). The second month I am going to be doing OB! I am really excited for this rotation, the only downside is this:

Methodist (point B on the map) is in Brooklyn, about an hour away from my apartment (point A on the map) by subway. This isn't ideal but it is doable, especially if I only need to take one train (the first option) but for the next three weeks the 3 train is not running due to construction (this is the busiest time for construction on the subway because the summer tourists have left and the holiday Thanksgiving/Christmas tourists have yet to arrive) which means I need to take three separate trains to get there. The unfortunate part about that is that if any of the trains is late, I will miss my connection... and when you are riding the subway that early in the morning the trains only come every 20 minutes or so. To give myself a cushion, I have been trying to catch the trains in that third option (the one that gets me there at 5:34) but I have yet to make them all so I keep ending up getting there around 6... so by the time I get in and get changed, it is 6:15 and I have already been up for two hours before the day has really even begun! Enough whining. I have a cool video for you from the OR yesterday. I spent the day giving anesthesia for robotic procedures - the way the robot works is that the surgeon sits at a console (picture a video game in an arcade) where she controls the instruments connected to the ends of the robot's arms. The instruments are inserted into the patient's belly through tiny little incisions, the idea being that this type of surgery is much less invasive than having your whole belly cut open. In theory this will make for faster recovery times for patients (since they have less healing to do) which will translate to lower costs to the hospital (because you won't have to stay as long). Since the robotic procedures are still so new, the surgeons are still getting used to using the robots. This means that they are much slower at doing the surgery (than they would be if they just cut the belly open) and, since OR time is so expensive, that is negating any money the hospital saves by getting the patient home sooner. First take a look at this picture so you can get a lay of the land:

You can see my anesthesia machine on the right, then there is the patient's head right in the middle (I am at the head of the bed, so picture the patient laying with his feet away from me, towards the back wall), there is the drape separating my area from the surgical field and then you can see the robot arms - they kind of look like big spider legs - covered in plastic to keep them sterile. I took the video looking over that drape towards the patient's belly. You may notice that his belly is blown up like a balloon, the surgeon injects gas into the belly to open up the space so that she can see what she is doing. The sound you hear is the sound the cutting instrument makes. One of the robot arms is holding a camera, I pan up at the end of the video so you can see the camera feed, this is what the surgeon is looking at in the console (only in much higher definition, and in 3D). They cut using electrocautery (heat conducted by electric current) so that is why you see bubbling/smoke when the noise is happening.

Halloween Snow Storm

You may recall that Chuck's birthday is at the end of October so Happy 27th Birthday Chuck! I came up to CT for a weekend of pumpkin-flavored beer drinking between clinical rotations (I finished at STC on a Friday and started my next rotation the following Tuesday). Chuck brought some pumpkins home from work and we had an evening of carving while watching Hocus Pocus (on my laptop which is set up in front of the TV because Hocus Pocus wasn't available for streaming on Netflix but I insisted that we watch it). Here is the scene:

Now, while I am a fan of pumpkin carving I don't go all out. I am happy with a simple face. Chuck decided that, if we were going to be carving pumpkins as 27 year olds, we could set the bar a bit higher - so we went to work:

Chuck settled on a Boston College mascot theme (they are the BC Eagles):

I went with a ShopRite theme in the hopes that Chuck's parents would put it at their front door for all of the trick-or-treaters to see:

Pretty good eh? I'm sure my plan for pumpkin displaying would have worked out but then this happened:      

Alas, since it is still supposed to be fall all of the trees still have leaves on them so when the snow storm hit the trees couldn't take the weight that built up on their branches so they started toppling left and right. Here is a picture of Chuck and his dad on his dad's street:

They are standing at the top of his dad's street (the plow couldn't get through during the night for obvious reasons). Aside from it being sad/scary to have trees falling down all over town, it was crippling because they were falling on phone and power lines. The storm happened Saturday evening/night. I was supposed to take a train back to the city on Sunday (I had class and a test on Monday morning) but all of Amtrak was shut down in the state of Connecticut because they were without power. Instead, I went to ShopRite with Chuck (we picked his dad up on our way, that is when I took the picture!) where we tried to salvage their perishable goods by moving them into refridgerated trucks. It was quite a disaster. As I write this (a week later) one of their stores still doesn't have power so it is running off of a giant generator and Chucks apartment (along with 75% of homes in Connecticut) still doesn't have electricity - remind me again why we left California?

Flexible Fiberoptic Bronchoscope

This past Monday we had a difficult airway lab where we practiced anesthetic scenarios with patients who have difficult airways. This means that for some reason it is hard to get the breathing tube in - maybe the patient has a really tiny mouth or a fat tongue or a tumor (or a knife!) in their throat. In this situation we can use a fiberoptic bronchoscope which has a camera on the end that allows us to see into the mouth/throat/trachea and then, once we are sure we are in the right place, we can slide the endotracheal (breathing) tube over the scope into the trachea. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done! The camera lens can get blocked by spit or blood and it requires a good bit of hand-eye coordination to maneuver it where you want it to go. The best way for us to get good at using it is to practice in non-emergency scenarios (like, before you realize that you just put someone to sleep and now you can't pass the tube into their trachea). In that first picture you can see me putting the scope in - I am passing it through the mannequin's nose (because sometimes putting it through a patient's mouth is not an option - what if their jaw is wired shut?) and if you look closely you can see the endotracheal tube loaded onto the scope. In the picture below you can see the screen where the view from the camera on the end of the bronchoscope is projected (don't worry, the picture is MUCH clearer in real life). I have gotten the scope where I want it and I am sliding the tube in over it.

Fall Party at the lake

We decided to have a little "welcome to fall" party at the lake. We provided the ammo, guns and champagne. Everyone else provided the food. Great day!

Shock Trauma Center

On October 1st I started my third clinical rotation! (recap: one, two) This month I am down in Baltimore at the Shock Trauma Center (STC) which is part of the University of Maryland Medical System.  This is a specialty rotation which I signed up for - we had to request this rotation because it is so far away, if I hadn't been selected I just wouldn't have gotten a trauma rotation.  To get there I take an Amtrak train from NYC to Baltimore and then I take a bus to the University of Maryland where I am staying in a dorm room that is within walking distance from the hospital.  The trip takes about 4 hours door-to-door which would be fine except for the fact that we are still expected to show up for class every Monday morning in NY - boo!  There are three other students at this clinical site with me, but none of them are from Columbia:

We work 12 hour shifts from 6:45-6:45.  This first two weeks I was on night shift and the next two weeks I will be on day shift (my body hates me right now).  STC is a free-standing hospital but we are connected to the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) so, to differentiate STC staff from UMMC staff (and to discourage stealing of scrubs), the STC gives us pink scrubs to wear:

So far I've seen gun shot wounds, stabbings, car crashes, falls, sports injuries and patients who are already inpatients somewhere but then they have a medical emergency and need surgery immediately (like 2am on Saturday).  All in all it has made me very anxious about all of the ways that I can get hurt!  I don't have any cool work photos but I do have this photo of Eric and I at school last Monday learning how to do cricothyrotomies on pig tracheas:

A cricothyrotomy is a way we would secure an airway in an emergency when, for whatever reason, we are unable to intubate our patient.  Here is a picture of where you would do it on a real person:

This is what they are doing on TV shows when someone shoves a ballpoint pen in a choking person's neck - lets keep our fingers crossed that I never need to do one :)

27th Birthday

It officially happened last Monday!  I spent the weekend before visiting Chuck.  I took a bus up after clinical on Friday.  We spent Saturday tasting our way through a couple vineyards on the Connecticut Wine Trail - it was a fun way to spend the afternoon enjoying fall in CT but it was hard not to compare it to our vineyard trips out in CA (we were enjoying ourselves enough that I forgot to take a pic though)!  Sunday night Chuck drove me back to the city and we had a tasty dinner at a French restaurant in the East Village called Antibes.  On Monday I had class and I walked in to find that some of the other students had done a bit of decorating:

We get out of class around 2pm this semester so we headed out to a wine bar and then spent the afternoon geocaching in Central Park (previously explained in this post; I am now 100% addicted and I am enjoying addicting as many others along the way as possible).  Here is a pic of us after our last find (Eric found it!):

L to R: Adeel, Paige, Emily, Eric

This past Friday was my last day of clinicals at Cornell.  After I got out I met up with Kim who was one of my roommates out in LA., she was in town for a wedding this weekend.  After a few drinks with Kim I went over to Katherine and Sheldon's apartment for dinner.  In honor of my birthday they made spaghetti (the literally made it, they got a pasta maker as a wedding present) and a cake!

You will note that Katherine and Sheldon are wearing scrub pants that I brought them and you will also note that the birthday candle pickings were slim at Duane Reade and thus I have a 3 on the top of my cake - it still tasted amazing ;)

Sheldon's Bday!

My husband (ye-ahh!) turned 30 this Sunday so we had a whole weekend long celebration! We started out with dinner at Daniel - an amazing 3 Michelin star restaurant in NYC that serves delish french food. The food was soooo good and dinner ended with fresh baked madelines and chocolates. The portion sizes left something to be desired... or would have if there weren't so many dishes. We actually were stuffed by the time we rolled out the door.

Then on Saturday we went to Maker Faire 2011 which is kind of like a science fair mixed with a carnival mixed with MOSI mixed with an art show and a craft fair and etc etc. Basically everything we're interested in all rolled into one! Some of the highlights were the giant version of the board game Mousetrap, soldering our own flashlight, and the Periodic Table of Elements t-shirts. Our favorite was the Coke Zero and Mentos performance by Eepy Bird. I even took a video (Paige, be proud)!

Then Sunday we went to Chinatown with Sheldon's parents and stuffed ourselves with Dim Sum, came home, and proceeded to enjoy a home cooked meal by Sheldon's mom. All in all a wonderful weekend!

Cornell

My second hospital rotation is at New York Presbyterian which is the university hospital of Cornell. I started last Tuesday and I will be there through the end of the month! This is rotation number two out of eight...

Frasers at Put

For the last weekend of my summer vacation Jay and Laura came to Put! Laura has been before but this was Jay's inaugural visit so he decided to make a video (fashioned after the many Laura and Paige videos over the KD years). Thanks for sharing JBFIV!As usual, the video is uploaded to YouTube in a format that blogger doesn't yet know how to embed correctly (so the right side of the screen is cut off). If you want to see the regular version, watch it on YouTube!

CT Staycation

We got a two week summer break this year - no classes and no clinicals for TWO WHOLE WEEKS! I didn't know it was physically possible to sleep so much. I spent the first week just re-charging my batteries up at Chuck's and then the first weekend Chuck and I drove down to the city for Katie and Sheldon's wedding! Alas, I did not bring my camera so that is a link to the wedding photographer's blog. I do however have two pictures of Katie and Sheldon from their honeymoon trip to Roma:

The wedding weekend was made even more memorable because it coincided with Hurricane Irene in NYC - what are the odds? We were lucky, most of the guests were still able to get in and get out with relative ease and now Katie and Sheldon have a pretty great wedding story to tell. After the wedding Chuck and I headed back up to Connecticut for a week long stay-cation. Chuck had the week off and while there was a fair amount of sleeping in and watching Mad Men going on we did manage to get out and about a bit! We went to see an Heirlooms concert! (the first picture)

The Heirlooms are a band and one of its members is Ciara Cohen. Ciara's husband, Alex Cohen, is what Chuck refers to as a "next-gen" which means that Alex's dad (like Chuck's dad) owns a ShopRite making Alex a 'next-generation' owner! We have had a couple of awesome dinners with Alex and Ciara (the Cohen's have a store in East Hartford). They are our age, Alex works for his dad and Ciara is a middle school music teacher (who is also in a really awesome band). They just got a dog and named him Sirius Black - I am obviously insanely jealous.

We spent an afternoon learning how to stand-up paddle (or SUP) on the Farmington River (the second picture). We first saw people doing this in Manhattan Beach and then we tried to rent some paddle boards in Cabo this year but that didn't work out so when I saw the local canoe and kayak shop advertising a free SUP lesson we jumped at the chance! We spent an evening working the ShopRite tent at a local outdoor summer movie series selling drinks and snacks to the movie-goers (the third picture, this is Chuck and his mom). All the proceeds went to ShopRite's charity Partners in Caring.

We spent an afternoon hiking to Campbell Falls (the fourth picture) and then searching for a geocache! Geocaching has been described as "a game of high tech hide-and-seek." I first learned about geocaching when I was at UF. I was running through a park on campus on an elevated boardwalk. A hurricane had just come through and a big cyprus tree had fallen over in the storm and the root system had pulled up part of the boardwalk.

I was trying to find my way around the messed up portion of the boardwalk when I spotted a container. It would have been under the boardwalk (I would never have seen it) if the falling tree hadn't exposed it. When I opened it up I found a note that said "Congratulations! You found it!" and a log book with all of these entries of people who had found the cache before me. There was a website listed for anyone who had found the container in error so I went and that is how I learned about geocaching. Basically, someone posts coordinates of a 'cache' online and then you are supposed to use a GPS to find it. The cache can be anywhere and now, since most smartphones have GPS, pretty much anyone can play. It basically turns any walk or hike into a treasure hunt :)

The iPhone isn't the most ideal device for geocaching since it doesn't always get great service. For example, while we were trying to find this cache, one minute my phone would tell me we were 14 feet away and then the app would re-load and it would tell me we were over a mile away - very frustrating. I was ready to give up and go home when Chuck found it! The last picture is of him with the cache (the tiny gray container hidden in the rocks). After reading back over this post I can see why I don't feel quite as rested as I should after such a long break!