SD Revisited

After having gone through almost 2 straight years of residency without a vacation, I was determined as an attending never to let that happen, again. Why? Because at the end of those 2 years I was so tired, so stressed out, so aggravated with my coworkers that I constantly clenched my teeth until my jaws ached. I think 2006 was the first time I took a cumulative of 4 weeks vacation. Before then, I had always worked for the good of the Rush Rehab program; now I was taking vacation for the good of my family, Richel, and my own sanity and health.

This winter, Richel and I returned back to San Diego. It was the first time we've been here since the wedding, about 7 months. It was great seeing my new extended family. I also got to see my newest nephew, L. He was so happy all the time and cute as a button.




So there he was smiling away, which was quite the contrary the last time I saw him. He's the spitting image of his father, minus the temper and hairy face (quite an intimidating combination).

Unfortunately, we were only able to spend a couple of days with the booger, but the time we did spend with him was great. The rest of the time was spent fulfilling social/family obligations. It's always the same whenever we go home: fly home, rush here to visit family, rush there to visit friends, rush here to see this, rush there to eat at that great restaurant, before you know it it's time to return home, fly home exhausted. What kind of madness is that? The same madness we always live through whenever we go home. But we had fun, though.

One day we drove up to Oxnard to visit some relatives. There's not much to do in Oxnard, which is maybe an hour or so north of LA. The closest thing of interest there is the Ronald Regan Library. I didn't even know he could read, much less have a library.



Looking at the historical artifacts were much more interesting, as I never really was a big fan. The most impressive site at this library was...well, there were two exhibits that were quite impressive. The first amazing exhibit was the room with all the gifts that were sent to Reagan when he was president. I had no idea that people send the president so much useless junk. I mean really. Who needs 12 busts of themselves? Or 20 horse saddles? Or 10 paintings of themselves? Talk about vanity.

The other interesting exhibit was Air Force One. Now that was a fantastic display. True, it's only an ordinary plane, much more ordinary than I thought it would be. I expected it to be along the same lines of one of those jumbo A680 jumbo planes with multiple levels, staircases, etc. But it's not. And they had the plane in a room with a huge window that looked out in to the mountains. It was quite spectacular.



I saw one part of an exhibit that I found quite amusing. For those of us who actually remember, this was a phone. Now, for all the Kaitlyns, and Ashleys, and Madisons that are born to today's yuppies, they would have no clue what this thing is or how to use it for that matter. To them a phone is a small rectangular object that we all clip on our belts and use incessantly to distraction, especially while driving. But back in the day, this is actually what it looked like.