It Was a Good Week

"Just waking up in the morning, gotta thank God

I don't know but today seems kinda odd

No barking from the dog, no smog

And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog

I got my grub on, but didn't pig out...

...Today I didn't even have to use my AK

I got to say it was a good day"

Ice Cube had it right. I did have a good day. In fact, a good week. After a busy, snow filled road trip last week, I was expected to be sleep-deprived and cranky all week long. Instead, I came back to work refreshed and excited about getting people back to health. 

Tuesday evening came and with it a wonderful little bundle of joy arrived into our lives. My brother somehow managed, with at least a little help from his wife, I suspect, to produce, in my humble opinion, the cutest little darling daughter that you could ever want. Or more likely, this baby was mistakenly dropped at the wrong hospital by an wayward stork. Haha I've got to heckle the eldest brother even in his time of glory:) Luckily, I was able to go down and visit my new niece the very next day in the hospital and I can tell you it was tough to hand her back to her parents. All of my plans now seem to revolve around when I can next go down to visit her:)

Find me a cuter baby! I dare ya!

14 hour old Olivia! 

That same night I met up with my cousins Joey, Ben and William to celebrate Will's return from Afghanistan. It was great to see him healthy and we have made some plans to get some skiing in this winter if the weather will cooperate a bit.

I am sure I bored my patients the rest of the week talking about my new niece but it made the week fly by. Soon Saturday arrived. This Saturday was one Amber had been training for for months. No, it was not a race. It was Concord's Dancing with the Stars. She had diligently been rehearsing every Monday night with her partner and friend, Jay Hauser. Tonight was the night to finally see how all that preparation would pay off. I had also been doing my own preparation, since I knew that all of the best Concord area restaurants would be there with food.

I can tell you this. No one in the audience was let down. The food was AMAZING! I had greek turnover, bison sliders, pulled pork, awesome cannolis, sushi... oh wait. You probably care about how Amber did. That was pretty good too and the audience certainly was not let down on that front either. Amber's parents and sister were also in the crowd and we all thoroughly enjoyed and were impressed with how well they put it together. They did a good enough job to win most entertaining as well as best choreographed dance routine and I think they were robbed for best overall. I put together a little video of their whole process. You can watch it below:

It really was a fun experience for Amber and I hope she and Jay know how well they did.

As Ice Cube mentioned above, sometimes not having something bad happen is enough to warrant a good day. That was what today(Sunday) was like. My sister and I were planning on running the Boston Prep 16 miler in Derry this morning. She had been having some hip flexor issues the last week or so but she was hoping that she could push through it for the race. After four miles though, it was clear that she wasn't having  a good time. As her kindergarten teacher wrote of her, she is scrappy and opinionated and probably would have toughed out another 12 miles if I had not, nearly forcibly, made her stop. She was annoyed with herself but she, begrudgingly, did make the right decision. By cutting out early from this run, she likely didn't do any lasting damage to herself physically, but more importantly, I hope it left her hoping to run again, instead of hating running.

On our way back to the car, we skipped, retro-ran, and side-shuffled because even walking made the pain worse while catching on things which we hadn't had time to talk about before. Breathlessness which may be good for your health, isn't always good for conversations so taking our time afforded us an opportunity we may not otherwise have had. We did get over the novelty of this after a while, but luckily just as we were getting cold and tired(at least her of my jokes), a nice spectator offered us a ride which we gladly accepted.

We then met up with our parents for a delicious lunch at a local Italian restaurant before we parted ways. So while it would have been great to have reported that she had run the full distance at faster than expected time, I am happy that we had time to spend together and that she came out of the day, no worse off.

Up Next: I thought I could qualify for Snowshoe Nationals at Sidehiller on Saturday, but somewhere along the lines it got switched to today so I couldn't make it. That means I'll probably drive down to Northfield for Dave Dunham's race next Saturday. Or I might just go visit Olivia. She is far cuter than Dave anyway. As for Amber's dancing career-I think she's putting it on hold for a while... at least until the next wedding we attend.