Catch up

Sorry for the poor quality pictures. We both forgot our cameras and had to use our phones

I’m sitting here in the “customer lounge” of our auto mechanic with nothing to do. We’re just doing routine maintenance on our car and getting it checked out as we will probably be driving the car across country in mid-December. I figured that while I wait I might as well use my time to update you on the going ons in our lives.

As most of you know we were recently in San Diego for the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon but not before a startling realization, which I’m not allowed to talk about, the previous day.

We arrived to a beautiful sunny day and would soon learn that San Diego is synonymous with beautiful, sunny days.

From San Diego

We ended up staying at the Hard Rock Hotel which was beautiful. Swell being Swell was dissatisfied with our first room – it was a handicap room – and had us moved to a different room on the same floor. The second room was right across the hall from the elevators and we had to deal with very, very loud music 24/7 but were very happy with the room. Swell was especially happy with the amount of lighting the room had. I don’t know why that made her so happy but lighting was paramount in her decision to say “this is the best hotel ever”.

After checking in we ran across the street to pick up my final program and other conference paraphernalia. We could see the conference center from our window and were very pleased that it was so close. Unfortunately (fortunately?) most of my events were at the opposite end of the conference center than our hotel was on so I still did a fair amount of walking.

First night's dinner across from hotel:

From San Diego

When I looked at my final program I was aghast. The program was the size of a large phonebook. It was somewhere around 500 pages. There was so much going on over the four days of the conference it was difficult to decide what to do and what to miss.

I really enjoyed the things I did. Very interesting scientific sessions. I also attended all of the business meetings for the Vision Care Section of the American Public Health Association. These meetings were on the dull side as I had no frame of reference for the discussions but very important people (especially as related to domestic public health eye care policy) were in attendance and it was important to show my face. I’m going to try to get involved with this group over the next year. It was difficult to volunteer for anything while there as Swell and I don’t really know what our coming year is going to look like.

It was very interesting to listen during the general opening session as well as to the tone of some of the scientific presentations. The APHA is a group that promotes public health policy in the US. It is a very liberal organization. It brought a lot of great joy to this Canadian living in the US with a wife who is unable to get individual health insurance when a very large crowd of Americans erupted into applause and cheers when a Thai doctor/policy maker wished that “you too will have a universal single payer health system soon”. This idea resonated throughout the meeting and I am sure the vast majority of attendees are on cloud nine with Senator Obama having won Tuesday’s election.
I’d love to be able to go back to the APHA meeting but as it’s held in November it may be somewhat difficult. We’ll see.

Swell spent a lot of time wandering the streets of San Diego. She was, of course, able to find a mall that she window shopped at.

We also ate out together once a day. We tried very hard to not spend money so we ate at the cheapest places we could find (still not that cheap) and also went to a grocery store to get some snacks for breakfast/lunches.

We did treat ourselves to the cultural phenomenon that is Pink Berry. And we were not impressed. Its just very sour frozen yogurt. Not that good. A little on the pricey side.

From San Diego

I skipped the entire last day of the conference and Swell and I took a ferry across the bay and explored Coronado.

From San Diego

From San Diego

We had a lot of fun and were sad to leave.

From San Diego

Since returning we haven’t been up to much. We created a long list of things we have to get done before we leave Atlanta. We’ve been trying to figure out what the best plan of attack is for getting to my parent’s place and her parent’s place. We’re trying to decide what we need to bring with us and what can go into storage. We applied for the ability to rent our place under the Undue Hardship clause in our HOA documents. We had a phone conversation with some folks that we will be working for/with when we relocate in January.

We’ve both had nights where we haven’t been able to sleep due to concerns with moving. We’ve both had days where we are really excited about moving. I think the excitement outweighs the concern. Our main concern is money. If we don’t get our place rented for a good amount we’re in trouble. If we get it rented for a good amount we’ll be able to pay my student loans and take care of our mortgage with enough money to pay our taxes for 2008 and 2009 and still eat.

Our lives are quite boring and we have very little work over the next 6 weeks.

Looking forward to the Christmas season and visiting family and friends.

Well that’s that.