Where in the World is Dan this Week?

It occurs to me that even though he's one of the most important people in our lives, Dan doesn't really show up in my blog all that often. With some determination and plenty of good studying, he finished up his third year of medical school last week. Woohoo!

The PLAN was for him to take off the two weeks between his academic years to study and take the next step in his licensing exams, the step 2 of the USMLE. However, due to flooding at the test center in Chicago, the testing folks canceled his appointment and have promised to fit him in at one of the other eight testing centers some time between now and the new year. Ummm... yeah, not the greatest of news. For whatever reason, NYC is not one of the testing centers so as it stands whenever someone cancels anywhere else in the country, he needs to be at the top of his game and ready to pay an exorbitant fee to fly at the last second to wherever to take the test. He's a student and must start his fourth year rotations, where he doesn't get sick days or anything, so he'll catch grief when he takes off to take his test. Plus, as a foreign medical student, he's at a bit of a disadvantage to the folks who attend schools here in the US. He thought perhaps some really good test scores would help him as he headed into interviews with potential residencies. Those interviews start as early as September, but should be pretty much done by January or so (I think). So much for having those nice scores under his belt when he shows up.

Now, since the reasoning behind the time off was creamed, he contemplated just starting fourth year a bit early and maybe being able to take off those two weeks later. But, thankfully, he decided that everybody needs a break some time. It's true, right?! So he has been interspersing studying with some down time. Among his many pursuits, he has brought out some of his Lego collection and enjoyed recreating scenes from various movies. Here we see the emporer greeting his troops. His conclusion from setting up - either he needs a lot more troops or a smaller baseplate to arrange them upon. I voted for the latter, but I don't know if my voice was heard over the music.

So it has been fun having him around a bit more for a short while...even contemplating the occasional excursion or night out. We have mostly enjoyed nights in so far, but even that is a more than welcome change of pace. There may have been a higher proportion of baking projects occurring in the house over the past week to encourage such behavior. But he has recently restarted his gym membership, so that all works out just fine. I believe this opportunity has brought home the extent of the collection and the daunting task of finding the right venue for sharing it with others - we're going to HAVE to have a whole room for where these go. Someday.