UC Irvine

Our transition out to California has been pretty eventful.

It began with our flight into San Diego being redirected to LAX about 40 minutes from landing because the San Diego Airport got shut down due to fog. We landed in Los Angeles at about 8pm and decided to rent a car with the guy sitting next to us on the plane who seemed like a friendly guy. Minutes later the guy across the aisle jumped on our idea and the four of us staked out a plan to grab our baggage and get a rental car together as quickly as possible. While waiting for our bags I saw our long time family friend, Jim Kermott, who we invited aboard. About an hour later, Derek, myself, Jim, and the two guys we had met on the plane were on our way down the 5 South in a rental minivan. The guy sitting next to us turned out to be a furniture salesman from Pacific Beach and the other guy was a professional snowboarder who has worked for Burton Snowboards for 10 years. By the time Derek and I had dropped off all our fellow riders we arrived at my parents house a little after midnight.

The following day we picked up my parents from the airport at 3:30pm (with both our car and theirs), went to dinner with them, and then went on our way up to Orange County to Derek's parents house. We got there about 7pm and Derek started his first day at UC Irvine the following morning at 7am. I picked up the dogs that afternoon from the kennel only to find that they had contracted some kind of doggie flu that made Bear cough and have explosive diarrhea. After a night of being up every couple hours from Bear coughing or having to take him outside to go potty, I found it slightly hard to remember what it was that I had missed so terribly about them!

It didn't help that the following morning Bear had diarrhea all over my in laws white living room carpet. It was pretty traumatizing. It was at that moment that the severity of our entire schedule hit me pretty hard. I will say that my mother in law handled it quite well...especially when I started crying hysterically!

Things have settled down a bit now. Stanly Steamers came and the carpet is now cleaned. The dogs are on medicine and doing better (and the kennel paid for all their vet bills!). I have been able to catch up on some sleep. Derek is adjusting to work and will have his last medical test over with tomorrow. Things are good. Now we just have to cancel some of these residency interviews as he has received more than we can go to! A good problem to have!