What we've been up to...

The last two weeks have flown by! I had my preceptorship, where I work with a doctor in their practice doing as much as they are comfortable and I'm capable. My first week in Milan, MO (45 minutes away, Pop. ~5000) was interesting...I ended up not returning for the second week due to the physician I was following getting fired. Overall I enjoyed working with the patients, and the other physician and nurse practitioner were great and very willing to have a student around. I spent one afternoon with the nurse practitioner doing well baby checkups at the local health department which I really enjoyed but it was also sad since the majority of the kids are living in less than desireable conditions to put it mildly.
Then for the second week of my preceptorship they scrambled to find a place for me and I ended up working with two of my professors at their clinic in town (only 1/4 mile away!). They were terrific! I was able to practice all of the physical examination skills and many other skills that we learned over the last few months. The patients ranged in age from 6 days to 98 years old! It was interesting working in their practice where I actually knew a few of the patients, I saw what a small(ish) town practice is like. KCOM is one of a few schools that offers first (soon to be second) year students the opportunity to get hands on clinical experience so early in their medical school career, quite often they have to wait until third year. I enjoyed my clinical experience and as silly as this may sound I look forward to classes starting up next week:)
Since the last couple weeks have been so busy trying to squeeze in workouts, puppy walks, and relaxation at the end of long days we decided to take it easy on Friday night. After a quick dinner at home, Mike and I went to go to see the movie Wall-E. We had heard it was
a pretty good movie even though there is no dialogue for the first 20 minutes. It was really cute and since it is Disney it was the perfect movie to watch after a hectic week!
Saturday morning we slept in until 730 and then headed down to Columbia for the day. We had to take the RAV4 back to the dealership, nothing major, we wanted to change some factory settings and the radio had been acting up. It took about 20 minutes for them to change the settings and let us know they were going to order a new radio and we can come back down (again) when it comes in for installation. Since we were in Columbia we hit the mall, Target, Linens'n'Things, Old Navy, an indian restaurant, a cool sporting goods store, and a bike shop. After a big indian meal we HAD to go for a walk, we walked around to a few shops (wine & coffee, of course!) and then ended up at a hidden outdoor patio of a restaurant for iced tea and a beer. When we got back home we changed into swimsuits and took the dogs out to the lake, even though it was 6pm it was still 86 out and humid. Lucy as usual LOVED it and Linus tolerated us dragging him in and letting him swim back, twice. We swam for about an hour then came home, had dinner, and went on a 3-4 mile walk with the dogs.
Sunday was another busy day, we were out the door by 8am headed to Des Moines for a Iowa Cubs v. Nashville Sounds AAA baseball game. The I-Cubs are the Chicago Cubs AAA team and the Nashville Sounds are the Brewer's AAA team. We hit Jimmy John's for lunch (not a huge fan of stadium food...) and then killed some time by walking around Drake University campus. We didn't waste quite enough time so when we got to Prinicpal Stadium and parked we had over an hour before game time, a quick check of the GPS and we headed to a coffee shop a little over half a mile away. A delicious iced decaf coffee (me) and an espresso malt (Mike) helped keep us cool briefly in the sweltering heat. We even hit the Science museum giftshop on the way back to the park. We got back in time to see George & Vel (Mike's grandma's sister) on the screen during one of the fan cam moments! We had great seats five rows up by the Sounds bullpen along the first base line. We recognized a few names Tony Gwynn, Jr, Derrick Turnbow, and a few other less known but most hadn't been called up to the majors yet so we didn't recognize the names. It was a really fun atmosphere and they have a ton of fan giveaways and ways for the fans to be involved. It was HOT and just sitting still the sweat dripped off of you, we had to reapply sunscreen a few times, but we each still burnt one shoulder. The I-Cubs started the game off with a homerun and the Sounds never caught up, although it wasn't a real high scoring game with the I-Cubs winning 2-1. During the 6th inning we walked around looking to see if George & Vel were still there, they weren't, probably headed out due to the heat, smart! We were half way to the car when Mike says "Do you have my phone?", um no, you do...yup, he left it sitting in the cup holder of our seats and it was still there when he went back, lucky boy!
After the game we ran over to Babies'R'Us to look at a few things, ok a LOT of things:) Then had some supper and headed back to Kirksville...not quite the end of the night, we took the dogs for a walk to Mike's work so he could get a few things started for Monday.
All-in-all a really great weekend and it even felt like a long weekend!
As you may have guessed by our lack of pictures we didn't have our camera along at all this weekend, kind of felt naked without it:)