Cold Day!

I'm freezing, Martin is "boiling" and so goes our typical weekend. I thought I'd write quickly about the last two weeks. Last week was my final week in Ventura County. It was marked by several farewell lunches with colleagues and friends and a special farewell at Camarillo Health Care. I took them a large sheetcake to thank the staff for all their hard work and they presented me with a lovely wall clock with a plaque. It was really touching and a bit extravagant. I will miss them. My friend Ruby presented me with this wonderful photo in a frame and she had many people sign the frame with little goodbye notes. Very sweet. I will especially miss Dr. Anu Maganti and the lovely relationship we built as friends and colleagues. I learned so much from her over the past two years.

On Monday I started at my new place. It is quite an adjustment to be in one single place all day long and have an office, with a desk, where I can leave things permanently and not carry my entire professional universe in the pockets of my lab coat. It is also odd to be working with several other Kaiser people on the premises all the time. The doc I work with, Samuel Lim, is a very different person and has very different approaches than Maganti. That will take some adjusting. But overall the relief I feel and the reduction in my stress levels being away from that horrible Lisa and in a department that will get out of my way and let me do my job is palpable. I have had a couple of phone calls from Li-Chym and Halimeh (two of the NPs from the west side) to tell me of continuing antics by Lisa. All confirming that I made the right decision in making this move. I will be at Country Villa Sheraton in North Hills until August at which time I will probably be moved over to CV Woodman when Shayam Randeria finally makes his move over to the east side. Then he and I will be a team. I know he's anxious to join me on the east. He already called me this week to see how things were going. I told him GREAT!

Tomorrow morning I leave for a much needed vacation. I am headed up to Asilomar for my quilt week. This time I will be in a small group of personal friends and we are not participating in the Empty Spools Seminar, but instead we're just on our own. I'm excited about this. I will bring Andrew's turtle quilt up with me and hopefully make some headway on that. I will need to think about another project to bring. I would really like to do another small story quilt - even using the black and white palette I used for Nana in Waiting. I don't have a story in mind, but that doesn't matter. I just like having a story quilt to work on. So I need to pack and I'm procrastinating. I've been working on some of my school work and have more to do so I can spend the week up in beautiful Pacific Grove without worrying too much about homework.

I've really fallen off the diet wagon and have gained several pounds. The weather has also interfered with my new running program so I have lots of excuses. A week in Asilomar is not going to make it better. I'm having to reschedule my sessions with Troy the trainer to 6 AM with my new work schedule. Ugh, the price of trying to stay trim and healthy! None of which will stop me from eating popcorn at the movies tonight :)