Henry Horton State Park - Take 2

What's better than camping?! Camping without Draco! Last year, Tim and I vowed that our next camping trip would not include Draco.  Draco, you're a great dog but a really terrible camper!  Our friend and Tim's fellow 4th-year intern, Sol was nice enough to take care of him while we spent some time outdoors this weekend. Saturday morning we packed the car, left Draco, and headed south of Nashville to Henry Horton State Park.    

                                         

Last year we discovered this great campground and this year we decided to return and do a little more.  This campground has 75 camp sites, but you don't know it while your there because they are so spread out.  It is very clean, quiet, and has some nice walking trails along the Duck River.  Beautiful!

We spent all day Saturday playing around, enjoying views of the river, and discovering the outdoors. Check it out, did you know that tree bark starts out looking like this?

                                            

Totally forgot our camera on our walk, so we had to borrow this pic from Google images - we're still camping / semi-hiking newbies!  Anyways, we had no idea that bark started out this way on some trees.  I thought the trees I kept seeing had cancer growths on them. But turns out, they're healthy young trees growing bark. Nature is so awesome!  

Let me take that back, nature is awesome until it falls from the sky and hits you in the chest.  Yes,there I was... sitting, reading, minding my our business when this hard-as-a-rock nut falls from the really tall tree above me and hits me in the chest/neck!  Ouch!  Scared me more than anything - definitely got my fill of "nature"!

Tim built an excellent fire with no trouble at all!  I remember the first time we went camping in Bellingham. We had purchased some wood from a neighbor. As it turned out, the wood he sold us had not been sitting for very long.  You couldn't really tell by feeling it, but we knew as soon as we tried to build a fire! The wood not dry inside. In case you're wondering, wood that isn't completely dry hisses, bubbles, and generally doesn't burn. So yeah, that fire was really hard to light and ever since our confidence in fire building has been a little low.  But not this trip! Tim had the fire going in no time!  "Man make fire"!

We roasted hot dogs for dinner over our excellent fire and relaxed as the sun went down. We ended the evening with some s'mores and listened to some tunes on the ipod. 

Sunday morning we packed the site up in a jiffy and headed out.  What did we do for breakfast you ask?! We ate out!  That's right the campground has a restaurant / breakfast buffet!  I know what your going to say, "That's not camping"! Well, that's our kind of camping.  If I'm going to sweat all day in the Tennessee summer heat and sleep on a far-too-rapidly deflating air mattress in a tent, I deserve to have a really yummy breakfast waiting for me!

This weekend was really a great time for us to spend together, relaxing and enjoying each others company.  We do these things so well! And we're getting better at camping each time!  Maybe next time we'll try winter camping!  

Just Funnies!

Hey all!

As many of you saw, I posted earlier this week to mark a very special date. Our 4-year anniversary was this last Wednesday. We didn't do anything too crazy this year, just went out for a nice dinner. We have already made a deal to spend some money on each other next year. For our 5th anniversary, Heather said she will buy me a gun if I buy her another band for her wedding ring. Not a bad deal I think! The rest of our week went by somewhat slowly but sure enough, the weekend showed up just in time. We had a very nice weekend with friends as per usual. We went out for dinner and drinks on Friday after work, ran our errands and went to a Nashville Sounds game on Saturday, and hung around the house on Sunday (and watched the closing ceremonies of course!) Now Heather is asleep and I thought I would just put a little something together to keep the posts coming. Here's my plan. I don't have any other outrageous stories from work right now, so I thought I would just post a few pictures from around the internet that brought a smile to my face for one reason or another. Enjoy!




Snooze...I dare you

Double Rainbow? Yeah, not impressed...

So true

Parents Adapting

And now, Chuck Norris Jokes!

Big Finale!!

4 Years and Counting

Here we are! 8/8/12. Watching the Summer Olympics. It was just 4 short years ago that Heather and I were watching the opening ceremonies in our hotel room after a great dinner at Whitehouse-Crawford following an exhausting day full of vows, rings, guests, and parties. Four short years ago, today, I married my best friend.

Yeah, the two of us go back a few years! I think we were both 14 or 15 in this picture... I don't want this post to get too sappy. Rather I just wanted to take a few minutes to share a few pictures of us, and tell you that we love all of you dearly. Living in Nashville has been a blessing, but hasn't been without its difficulties. We do not yet know how many more years we will be here, but we know that having each other makes being so far away from you all a bit less difficult.

To Heather, I love you entirely. I've never been happier in my life, and I'm so thankful every day that you chose to spend your life with me.


This picture is clearly made by the lady behind us...   :)

Seeing each other the morning of our wedding.

I swear I wasn't trying to look cool with the jacket thing. It was 100 degrees outside!

Wedding pictures were taken by Wilton Photography: http://www.wiltonphotography.com/index2.php#/home/

4th Year Funny!

Here's another installment in the 4th year funnies series. I'll bring them to you as often as I experience them! I've already shared this story with some of you. For the rest, know that this is the single most ridiculous thing I have seen in clinic to date.


Last week I saw a Veteran who said that since he received his repaired hearing aid in the mail, it has been squealing in his ear. I asked him to put the hearing aid in his ear so I could figure out how bad the problem was, and sure enough. As soon as he put the aid in his ear, the thing started screaming at me! I looked in his ear fully expecting to see a wall of hard earwax blocking the sound, but he had a hearing aid dome in there!! No wonder the thing was feeding back. This alone wasn't the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I have probably seen this happen on 2 or 3 different occasions. We took the dome out and I took another look in his ear to make sure there wasn’t a bunch of wax behind it or anything. I saw some wax, and just solid black down in his ear. I’m thinking, great. Starkey makes black domes. This guy has TWO domes in his ear!? 


Yup. So we took him to ENT so they could take this one out with their scope since it was pretty deep. He took that one out and said he had some squamous debris in the canal so he was going to clean it out. He started taking the junk out… and says, “Guys, I think he has another dome in there…” No way! We couldn’t believe it. But sure enough, the ENT pulled a THIRD dome out of the guys ear. We couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous the situation was! So the ENT said there was still some debris in the canal and he wanted to get everything out. He resumed cleaning and then realized that there was something linear in his ear. “Guys, I think there might be a 4th one in there.” We seriously thought he was kidding. NOPE. HE PULLED OUT A 4th DOME FROM THIS GUY’S EAR!!!!


“Wow, I can hear!”  Mhmmmm.


My supervisor had never seen anyone with two domes in his ear, and this fella had an entire ear canal full of domes. How he didn't notice the 4 domes that went missing is beyond me. I seemed to not be surprised by the first one, but was definitely a bit embarrassed about the other three. I'm sure he'll be more careful and suspicious when he pulls a hearing aid out of his ear that doesn't have a dome attached.

I got back to the clinic and called the next patient back. He said, "Well, my right hearing aid doesn't work, and..." after pulling the left hearing aid off his ear, "this hearing aid doesn't have a dome on it."

NOT AGAIN!!!

I immediately took a look in his ear. Thankfully, this guy didn't have any domes in there. Phew. I don't think I could have held back the laughter at that point!

Until next time...

Casaba Melon

Have you ever heard of a casaba melon? Me neither. One thing I have enjoyed doing for a long time is picking up a piece of produce that I've never heard of and seeing what it is like. Today, the opportunity struck on our trip to Kroger in Bellevue. The sticker said "Variety Melons". What I saw were a bunch of these things.

The sticker said it was a casaba. I am adventurous, but I still had to look the thing up on my phone to make sure it would actually be food. The main thing I wanted to know is how to tell if one is ripe. The good people at www.produceoasis.com informed me that a casaba melon should be large and firm with a good amount of softness at the stem end. It also becomes ridged when ripe. A YouTube video suggested that the melon is similar to honeydew.

So I got the thing home and cut it open! Here's what I found inside.

After removing the seeds

This is just one half of it!

I haven't eaten much of it yet, but it has a nice honeydew-like aroma to it. This thing is juicy like a watermelon! I found the flavor to also be similar to honeydew but with the texture of an overly ripe cantaloupe. The flavor is slightly less pronounced than a honeydew, and it feels like it needs a little something extra. I'm going to put it in with some apples and grapes later for a little fruit salad. I was also curious to see how it would go with some middle eastern flavors. I mixed up a bowl of the fruit with some cinnamon, all spice, and honey. It was really good! It may be even better with a little greek yogurt or creme fraiche.