Germy

Must have been twelve years old, thirteen at most. It was before I started skateboarding. The majority of my childhood had annual highlights, one of them being having my cousin and his family travel from Edmonton, Alberta -- The "Wild Rose" Province of Canada. Generally they would travel down for Christmas and then again in July, where our extended family had a beach outing. And this year was no different, my Canuck Cousin was staying with me and after an exciting night out on the town, with some older Cousins (I think) we stopped at McDonalds. I think it was McDonalds, we were being driven home. My cousin was in the driver's side back seat, I was in the passenger side backseat. Someone was in the middle. I don't remember who. For some reason I had picked up some nutritional pamphlets. For some reason, while in the backseat of the car, travelling due east on Powell Blvd (AKA State Highway 26) in the left land, somewhere between 60th and 92nd street, I was holding th...

Good friend of mine introduced me to this podcast around a year ago while helping drive a moving truck down I-5. We made it almost all the way through a very intriguing episode called "The Prophets of Doom," an exploration of Martin Luther's reformation and the Anabaptists and the colorful and murderous exploits of one German City . Of particular fascination was the fact that the church I grew up in and that a large number of family and friends still attend hail from an Anabaptist heritage via Samuel Frohlich -- a trivial piece of information that, if you aren't familiar with, thankfully you will not find your edification compromised while listening to this. A luxury of being so darn busy all the time is that consumption of media is lessened and when faced with some free time there is a pile of entertainment to pick from (a Stockholm Syndrome kind of thing to say, to be sure!) and the same stands for the available episodes on this podcast. However, I started list...

Post #113. July 25th, 2011 was the date of the first post. 2450 days since first post. An average of 1 post every 21.68 days. Like our brains are wont to do, 7/25/11 in some ways feels like yesterday, and in some ways it seems like a different person typed out the words of the first post. I remember one of the first lectures in medical school from one of the more insightful professors included a thoughtful discussion about the process we were about to undertake -- one that I'm still going through and in essence, will continue to have as long as I practice clinical medicine. Specifically he spoke of the propensity of this process to bring forth and manifest the vulnerabilities that each of us have. Not completely earth shattering in that people under pressure and stress show weakness where their biggest weakness lies -- of course they do! But this sticks with me, and I remember sitting in the lecture hall thinking about what my biggest weaknesses are. For me, there are ple...