10 Favorite Things About Our Trip to California
The main purpose of the trip was an anesthesia meeting, but since we were going all the way to the west coast, we decided to make a trip of it. We spent the first couple of days on Coronado Island at the Hotel Del Coronado. Then we drove up to LA and spent 3 days at Disneyland. Last, and certainly least exciting, was my meeting back in San Diego. Though the fun continued for Rick and Will, who visited Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.
1. The smell of the air
Words cannot describe how fresh and lovely the air smelled in Coronado. When we walked around, I noticed several varieties of flowers that I had tried to grow in my flowerbeds back in Ohio, but they all had inevitably scorched in the summer or died with the first frost. The grounds of the Hotel Del looked like Paradise.
2. Sitting on the balcony in the morningOur room that the Hotel Del had a balcony overlooking the beach. On the first morning, Rick took Will for a walk on the beach. Watching Will chase birds down on the beach under Rick's protective eye was some kind of wonderful.
3. When Will told me I was the princess of the sand castle we had just built
4. Explaining to Will that the men and women jogging along the beach were exercising because they are in the military and staying in shape so they could keep up safe is part of their jobRick was thrilled to be back on his old stomping grounds. He was stationed in San Diego for many years, including the time he spent as a Supply Officer for Special Warfare Group 1 (they oversee the Navy SEAL Teams). We saw a lot of military activity from the beach- ships, helicopters, and submarines. Rick was always pointing out that ships were doing anchor drills or that it looked like some group was getting underway. One morning we saw some people swimming back and forth between buoys. Rick said he was pretty sure it was a SEAL class training for their 2 1/2 mile ocean swim. He said it must be a pretty new class, because there were still a lot of them. Yikes- I saw the movie 'GI Jane'.
5. The surrey rideI had just asked Rick not to wear his Ohio State sweatshirt to go golfing because I was worried he would look like a tourist. Then Will got his heart set on renting one of these. Truthfully, it was fun.... and, boy, did we look cool.6. The fruitGetting back to the Paradise thing... You know that song from Camelot-
"The rain may never fall till after sundown
By eight the morning fog must disappear"?
I'm sure that somehow the same laws apply to Southern California. And the beautiful weather grows beautiful fruit. At every meal we ate huge strawberries and plump grapes, juicy melon and sweet pineapple. For some meals, Will ate nothing but fruit, but that seemed okay. 
7. Our EarsWe spent most of the week in our Will-assigned-personas. Will was Mickey Mouse, I was Minnie Mouse and Rick was Goofy (hee hee). When we got to Disneyland, we each got hats to match our characters and Will made sure that everyone wore their hats at all times. He addressed us as 'Minnie' and 'Goofy' and insisted that we call him 'Mickey'. Again, we were at the height of cool.
8. Fireworks
We could see the Disneyland fireworks from our hotel room. The best thing about that was that we could watch them with our shoes off and our poor, puffy, tired feet elevated. There was a station on the hotel TV that played the music that went along with the fireworks show. They really thought of everything.
9. Will's crush on MinnieWe saw a lot of characters, but the only character Will got really jazzed about seeing was Minnie Mouse. The first time we saw her, Will ran up to her and she picked him up and twirled him in a circle. Then they sat down on a bench and chatted for a long time. We spent a lot of time at Minnie's house in Toon Town. Watch out Mickie Mouse.
10. My child was complimented on his manners
We were in one of the gazillion gift shops. Will was doing some "shopping" and I was telling him to put things back. One time a mother and her child were standing in front of the shelf where Will needed to return his latest item. As he walked away, I heard the mom say, "Did you hear that little boy say, 'Excuse me'? He has very good manners." Huh. I didn't know that he knew that 'Excuse me' was good for anything other than saying after he burped.
I was a first year student in dental school and taking my basic science courses over at the medical school. At Harvard they have this really wonderful case-based system where the students are broken up into tutorial groups of about 8 people with a physician tutorial leader (my first tutorial leader was Judah Folkman who had recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for figuring out that tumors can grow quickly by recruiting blood vessels to grow toward them. Seriously- how humbling is that). So a case would be presented at the beginning of the week- a patient description, vital signs, symptoms, history, etc. The group would develop a list of possible diagnosis and "order" tests. The next day we would have our test results and we would discuss how this changed the possible dignosis and maybe order more tests or procedures. By the end of the week we would have worked toward the final diagnosis and there would usually be some ethical or social issue worked in there along the way.
There was a lot of buzz about this new show coming on, so on Thurday nights a bunch of us would get together in the dorm and watch 'Friends' then 'ER'. We were a little surprised when the cases we had just discussed in tutorial started showing up on 'ER'. How fun was it to watch the show, then someone would shout at the TV, "That guy drank antifreeze" or "That kid wasn't abused; he has osteogenesis imperfecta" or we would just laugh when the actors mispronounced the medical terms. After I graduated and started residency, I stopped watching because it made me feel too tense and anxious. Tonight was no different-
