The Return of the Scott

The past two weeks have been a blur. After our super-relaxing Christmas break, Scott's last residency interview trip sneaked up on me. Perhaps it was because it required looking at a whole new (2012) calendar? Or maybe I was in denial that life could get so crazy after being so laid-back? Somehow I just didn't register that Scott was leaving so soon.

Scott headed west and interviewed at four more hospitals. The interviews were spaced apart by a few days, so we could either pay to fly back and forth across the country 2-3 times or Scott could live on the cheap and play a bit between interviews. We chose the latter.

First he headed to San Francisco and interviewed at a few places, hiked the Redwoods, and generally enjoyed the 65-degree weather. He called me when he was hiking and told me how beautiful it was; I envied him as it was 9 degrees that day in Boston.

Next, Scott headed to Salt Lake City for an interview. He stayed with his sister Leslie, who ended up hosting a family reunion (again) as Lana, Nancy, Mark, and his parents came to visit. Scott got a solid dose of mountains and skiing before heading to the next interview in Seattle. He didn't have time to play in Seattle, but said it was actually clear enough to see the mountains when he was there (every time I'm there it's typical Seattle weather - overcast, rainy, depressing).

Scott finally came home after nearly two weeks on the road! He made it back on Saturday morning, just in time for me to pick him up and drive to New Hampshire for a half-marathon. I did this indoor half-marathon last year as it's one of few longish races on a Saturday between now and the Boston Marathon. This year, the organizers moved it from March to January and landed a local beer company as the sponsor. Naturally, it turned into a beer-fest. Perhaps one of the timing officials had a few too many because despite having computer chips on our shoes, they somehow lost track of how many laps we'd run. The track was an odd distance - 317 meters per lap - making it about 69 laps we had to run. I went with the strategy of looking at my watch for the first mile, then not checking at all and trying not to pay attention to the laps so I wouldn't be discouraged by the, "48 laps to go" announcement. I sure wasn't counting. But when I was told I had four laps to go, I was wondering how I could feel so awful and yet run so slow. I went across the finish line at 1:27, my slowest half-marathon ever. Maybe I did eat too many Christmas cookies this year. The results page says 1:26 (and a few days ago, I swear it said 1:23) and says another female wasn't far behind me (even though I passed her at least twice during the race), so I guess I'll never know what my half-marathon time was. I won a six-pack of beer, a shirt with the logo of the beer company, a hat that says "WILL RUN FOR BEER" on it, and a beer bumper sticker. Another runner was happy to take the beer off my hands, and Scott claims he's going to wear the hat sometime. "It's a nice hat," he argued.

We spent the rest of the weekend watching the Patriots pound the Broncos (poor Tebow), facing my needle-phobia by giving blood, going to church, assembling a shelf for Scott's ever-expanding textbook collection, and building a stomp rocket for Bruce.