The BIG Blog Update

Hello all. I know I have been very negligent in my duty to update whomever reads this on my life. Passover and all the work I had is now over, so I will return to our regularly scheduled discussion of my life.

Lets start with the usual suspects:
Family: I am doing well - aside for Allergies that have been destroying me the last 2 weeks... like worse than I have ever had! My eyes were killing me (bright freaking red all day and all night) for 2 weeks - until we came back to the Bronx and it started pouring - torrential downpours!
Shosh is doing well as well. I think she enjoyed her vacation, and is not looking so forward to going back to work today. If you want to see a good picture of us from Josh and Sara's wedding (which I will get too) go here enter 8769 and look at picture #300. Ain't we cute = )
And speaking of cute - Sammy, that big round bundle of joy is the damn cutest thing ever. Just check out the picture below! Anyways, Sammy has 2 teeth on the bottom now (which means it hurts when he chomps on your finger or nose or forehead. He has began using his pincer grip and actually fed himself Cheerios for the first time today! Quite amazing! He supports his weight standing if you put him next to something and while has yet to master crawling forward, he can push himself backwards, away from what he wants. Very cute, and very entertaining. He shakes his head no if prompted and actually has a real laugh now. It's Crazy! Anyways, here he is:

8 month old Sammy at Einstein Playground

So - we spent the first days of Passover at my parents house in Monsey - everyone there is doing well - we saw my grandmother and aunt and cousins. Pretty relaxing. We went to Shosh's parents house for the second half of pesach - we missed spending yom tov with my new niece (did I mention that? her name is Jordana Rachel), but we did get to see her a bit - she is getting big and is almost a month old.
My grandfather was in the hospital recently - he had a SBO, but thankfully is out and all better now. Phew. He was pretty sick.
Also, just found out that my cousin, Laurent, got engaged! Mazel Tov! Very exciting!!!
Alex is going to University of Maryland (2006 NCAA women's basketball champs!) for college next year... pretty exciting stuff!

School: Well, I've been on vacation this past month - not really vacation, the 5th month of my 5 months of research. Sadly, my real project - the one I complained about for months on end in this blog, is on hold and will be continued next year (by me and others) during bronchiolitis season. So.. I had no paper to write, and instead I spent the last several weeks updating and re-organizing my Halacha and Medicine paper from after first year. I totally reorganized it took a LOT of time, but I am happy with the way it came out - I think it flows much smoother now.
My side project - the anesthesia and LP project produced some interesting data, and we actually wrote an abstract and submitted it to the AAP for the annual conference in October. Of course, this year, it is on Sukkot - so I am unlikely to be able to go anyways, but what can you do?
I graduate in 5.5 weeks - crazy, no? I'm going to have an MD in a month and a half. All I have left is 2 weeks of geriatrics. Crazy!

Oh yeah, I actually found out over Pesach that I won the award for Excellence in Pediatrics. I'm really excited - it is awarded to 1 student a year, and I was chosen! Pretty Sweet! It is especially rewarding since a lot of the people who nominated or picked me for this are people I will be working with at Monte - it is nice to know they think highly of me already = ) I sort of feel like a Rookie who got drafted high! I can't wait for minicamps!!!!

Friends: Well, some pretty big things have happened to some of my very good friends over the last month. First of all, Josh Korn (my roommate for 3 years at MIT) got married! I was at the wedding with Shosh and Sammy and we had a great time -we saw a bunch of old friends of mine from MIT (including Elie, Garret Barter - who is getting married this summer, and Anna Leos Urbel, who is also getting married this summer), ate some damn good food, and had an amazing time at their wedding. Sara was beautiful, the ceremony was beautiful, the party was awesome and Josh and Sara look so happy together. *sniff sniff* my roomie is all grown up now! *sniff sniff*
Lets see, what else? Jeremy and Jessica Rosenblum, good friends of ours from Einstein (who also happen to be good friends of Josh's!) had a baby boy - Nathaniel Joseph! Quite amazing! Jeremy will be doing his pediatric residency with me at CHAM as well, so Nate and Sammy will get to grow up together - pretty neat!
Anything else? Another friend from college, Drew Starr is getting married in June in Boston as well, I hung out with Stevie and Celia over the first days of Pesach, which was nice since I hadn't had a chance to do that in a while, Eagle is coming for shabbos (more on that later), and I'm meeting Jason Broder (another friend from MIT) for dinner tonight, followed by the Billy Joel concert! I also went to the Mets 2^nd game (their first loss, Billy Wagner’s first blown save with the Mets) with Paul – we bought $5 tickets, got there and sat in $30 seats since it was empty. Perhaps it was so empty because it was below freezing? It was fun though, despite the blown 4-0 lead.
I know, I never introduced a lot of these "characters" - I will, soon. promise ; )

Hobbies: Well, this is the first year I am doing fantasy baseball - we only had 6 teams so we each have an AL and NL team. My AL team is horrible and is 0-3, meanwhile my NL team is doing great and is 2-1 and in first place. I play Elson in the NL this week, so I am really hoping my guys come through for me. Had a decent first day.
The draft is this weekend, and I am very psyched for it - Eagle is coming for Shabbos and we are gonna watch the draft after shabbos (the miracles of TiVo)... it should be a LOT of fun. We are doing our FFL auction/draft on June 4th this year - all in one day - first time in 4 years we will be doing it like that - THAT should be fun as well.
As for books - I have read quite a bit recently - The Dante Club and Prince of Fire are the last two books I read. LOVED the Dante Club, and highly recommend it, Prince of Fire was good as well. I tried Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but coudn't get into it, and just started Zodiac - which is so-so. I need to find something good to read. Anyone have any ideas?
I've also seen a bunch of movies as well. I watched Collateral last night - VERY GOOD movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Saw some pretty bad movies lately like Alien Vs. Predator, Assault on Precinct 13 and Catwoman. Saw the 40-year old virgin, which was hysterical and saw V for Vendetta which was very good as well. It's almost time for summer blockbuster movies - MI III comes out next week, followed quickly by X-men 3 and The Da Vinci Code (links to those after I see them).
I also happened to be at the final concert of Billy Joel's tour last night. It was phenomenal. I saw him 3 times and he played 45 minutes longer this time than any other, they were taping the show for DVD AND MSG 'retired' his number (12 - record number of sold out concerts in one tour). Quite an amazing show - he played 31 songs including have Chainsaw, a roadie come out and sing Highway to Hell. Quite amazing! It was great.

I actually think that is all that is going on now. I've been workin gahrd on the sequel to Shattered Alliances (gonna go write some right now!), so hopefully I will finish with it before I start residency.

i will be posting qD.