July 21, 2005

Hey Everyone,

Here’s the rundown on how rundown the family is after a few weeks in San Fran/Sausalito. There’s a sign on the inside of our door which says, “Chaos is O.K…. for July”. Anj wrote that to help remind us to keep relaxed in the midst of the mess here at home. We’re almost done unpacking, but 3 bedroom 2 car garage stuffed into 2 bedrooms and a storage closet doesn’t leave much room for crap in the sack, if you know the colloquialism... huh? Those of you who’ve had the distinct pleasure of living with me in the past know my predilection for crap collection, so it hasn’t been easy. Luckily we have 2 bathrooms in our apartment…

We live on the “south side of the tracks”, which, for Sausalito, is still pretty nice. Pretty ethnically diverse neighborhood, which is cool considering that just about everyone getting this email is almost as fishbelly white as me. Haven’t had the full welcome wagon treatment yet, but we’ve managed to hook up with the Javadi family. Cyrus is also a dental student at Pacific and we carpool in to school together with a couple others every morning. I originally met him online in a student doctor website and found out about our apartments from him. He’s a bit older than the average student (still 10 years younger than me) and has a pretty diverse history as well. He has a wife, Annie and three daughters, which is no end of joy for Aubs, but Dane’s yet to hook up with a kid his age. He’s signed up for a skyhawks sports camp in a couple weeks. Jeez, I just started misting up thinking of my little guy having fun on the field…

As for school, we spent the last week being welcomed to Pacific, and most of the Friday and Saturday before that in one orientation or another. We were issued pretty nice PC laptops, got a chance to bust out our handpieces and do some carving, and are in the midst of handcarving a #9 permanent maxillary central incisor out of piece of wax this week. That’s the left one of the top front two in your mouth, for those of you who haven’t gone to dental school. Gross Anatomy starts in earnest later this week, when we get to meet our cadavers. Heard about a group last year who got a 400 lb cadaver. I guess his organs were really enlarged which was nice for dissection, but they had to cut through a lot of fat to get to them. We were also issued a rental skull and two 60 lb boxes of books which will last through this year. Everything from Fundamentals of Operative Dentistry to Pathways of the Pulp (a root canal textbook). The entire 143 member class of 2008 goes through all of our classes together, so it should be pretty easy to get into a decent study group. I know it was helpful in my undergrad and comeback tour to have that kind of support.

Anyway, gotta go study. Thanks for all the support and well wishes at the multiple Bellingham farewell parties. It feels like we left a bit of ourselves back there (especially on the floor at Cap Hansen’s) and we can’t wait to see family and friends again.

Mick