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Showing posts from 2005

My Christmas Tree-eating Dog

Allie Taru, my year-old Aussie shepherd mix, is a pretty good dog overall. Having said that I will also say she is one of the biggest sources of anxiety and frustration in my life. In the past three days she has caused me to lose hair and sanity. It started on Saturday, when she apparantly shat in one of the offices in our building, while I was creating a Winter Mix 2005 CD template to give away to friends for Christmas; I didn't know of her dasterdly deed until I arrived to work on Monday and was informed I had a mess to clean up. She also decided to poop on my spare bed...not under the bed or off in a corner, but ON the bed...meaning she was angry with me for leaving her in the house this morning rather than leave her out in the 11 degree weather. Then the coup de grace happened sometime between 9:30 AM today and 11:30 AM today, when I returned home to meet the plumbers about the leak in my basement (ah, but that is another story)and had a hard time opening the door. The rea

Utter Despair, Horror and Fury

That is what I feel. The complete feeling of hopelessness sank in yesterday when I realized there is nothing I can personally do to help all those starving and dying people in New Orleans and surrounding areas. The stories and photos coming out of the gulf coast are horrific; people dying by the droves after being trapped in hotels, convention centers and in their own homes. This will surely go down as one of the worst mishandling of a disaster in our nation's history. We knew the storm was coming, we knew it was bad and yet a full 4 days after Katrina devastated coastal communities from Alabama through Louisiana we still don't have a coordinated effort to relieve the cities and people. I find it despicable that our elected officials have been absent from this until today. Didn't they manage to call a special session of Congress to decide the fate of Terry Shiavo (the comatose woman whose feeding tube was to be removed) in something like 3 hours? And yet until late las

Starting Over

That's what it seems to me, as if I'm starting over. My blogging life took a sabbatical this summer as my real life and times kept me from keeping up my online journal. I've been on small planes, jets, and in boats...I've ridden in cars and on bicycles....I've traveled throughout Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Utah and Michigan...just about the only thing I haven't done since my last post is leave the country. My folks came to visit and brought my two niece's, neither of whom had ever seen mountains before; we hunted for sapphires, watched bison in rut, fished the Alberton Gorge and explored Missoula together. My annual trek to the shores of Lake Michigan was especially memorable. I rode in RATPOD , a one day 157-mile bicycle ride in the Big Hole to benefit Camp Mak-a-Dream. I traveled to Portland, Moscow (the one in Idaho), Park City and Bozeman for ultimate Frisbee tournaments and got to spend the 4th of July at Flathead Lake...a pretty b

Catching Up

It is unbelievable to me that I haven't posted since the end of March; I've started to post numerous times but found myself lacking the energy to write or ramble. I can't possibly write about everything and I doubt anyone would be interested in it even if I could. I'll make a feeble attempt to at least catch you up on the main high and low lights: I just returned from a three day conference for work, the Montana chapter of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA)...the significant event being I was elected to the leadership board. I also found out my presentations were accepted and I have now achieved the certification CMPE (Certified Medical Practice Executive)...whoa Nellie, I'm on fire now! Basically this means I have reached a certain level within the field of healthcare administration and I suppose I'm proud of that. I've also been very busy with all my duties as a board member for the Missoula International School, a unique Spanish immersion sch

Why NOT To Lose Your Car Keys

Yesterday I thought I was a real man of leisure....I skipped out on work at noon and headed up to Snowbowl (our local ski hill 20 minutes from town) with two of my doctor buddies (who both take Fridays off) for an afternoon of snowboarding. We were all in great spirits and kept throwing quotes out like, "boy, it's really winter up here" as we drove up the mountain on perfectly clear dirt roads that normally would still be under plenty of snow. "Man, I'm glad I layered" and other such sarcastic comments abound...but it has snowed up in the mountains off and on all week so we thought it would be fun to slide down the mountain on a flatboard. And we had a grand time....the snow up top was actually pretty damn nice, and these guys are both much more advanced than I am so it was a hard day of fun and learning for me....we'd do one groomer run and then one tree run; the first tree run was actually just my style, nice wide open areas to turn in and great powde

Big Sky Fun

This winter has been a rough one in Montana...our snow fall is well below what is needed and the lack of snow hasn't helped the economy either (Montana's number one industry is tourism). You see, Montana is extremely dry in the summer, even arid,and so we depend on the slow melt of high altitude snowpack to keep the water flowing. Unfortunately the mild winter combined with early warm weather all but melted the snow pack around here and left other high altitude areas in Montana and Idaho also in perilous positions. Knowing all this, I was worried about the annual Big Sky Urology conference that took place last week down in Big Sky, Montana; Big Sky is about an hour south of Bozeman and 4 hours or so from Missoula. Even before I moved to Montana I came out to play at the conference because my friends (two of which are now my employers) attended the conference sessions in the morning and afternoon with skiing sandwiched between. Big Sky is a beautiful resort and about as clos

Fun Weekend In Eugene

When this intrepid test-taker last posted, I had just finished tramping about the University area of Eugene in search of good eats. Now For the rest of the story... On Saturday morning I walked the three blocks to the offices of Agate Resources, the proctor site for the early 2005 ACMPE certification exam. The exam consisted of two parts, a 3 question essay exam and a 175 question multiple-choice exam. The essay exam went first and it was fairly easy, three situational questions requiring an outline, assumptions, an opening, body and conclusion. I took all three hours allowed and was very satisfied with my responses. Although the test was conducted online, as soon as I pressed the 'submit' button, my responses were put into a database, my contact infomration was transformed into a numbered ID and then the results were sent to 9 different human graders (3 for each question); it will take 8 weeks for me to find out if I passed. the second part of the exam was a different

Roaming the Streets of Eugene

It's no wonder my life is still unsettled, I can't even decide where to eat dinner! I arrived in Eugene, Oregon this afternoon at 4:00 PM, a day ahead of my certification exam for the American College of Medical Practice Executives. After a $22.00 taxi ride I arrived at the Best Western New Oregon Hotel, located directly across the street from the University of Oregon campus. I can't wait to explore the campus, which I hope to do late tomorrow afternoon. But tonight the mission was to find a cool and unique place to eat...something I always like to do whenever I hit a college town. There is something about the atmosphere and the energy of a college town that is attractive to me and so I left my hotel room set on finding an out of the way culinary surprise. I walked about a mile into the old downtown area, skirting the campus and walking past several beautiful sorority and fraternity houses. There was a tasty looking Thai place called Sweet Basil, a wood-fired pizza

I'm A Daddy!

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Yesterday I got a puppy! She's an 8 week-old Australian Shepherd mix (read: Mutt) that is cute as a button. She came from the Life Savers Animal Rescue organization out of Polson, Montana, a really cool goup that saves animals ready to be euthanized. I've been thinking of getting a dog for a long time, so when I saw her cute little mug on the internet, the deal was as good as done. Her foster family lives in the Mission Valley, outside of St. Ignatius, a beautiful area surrounded by mountains in the heart of the Flathead Nation. Amy and her husband Jovin have helped to rescue about 80 animals in the past year and their yard has dogs, horses and donkeys in it, all happy to be loved. They live on a road named Allison, so i might just name my new puppy Allison

I'm So '80s

The other day I was bantering with some friends about the recent movie, Napolean Dynamite...one of my buddies (we'll call him Mr. Grumpy for now) just loves the movie and from the osund opf it he has seen it multiple times. I bought the movie, a strange thing for me to do, at Costco of all places on a complete whim. I'd heard so many *good* things about it that I decided I had to have it. The movie is funny, but the hype was such that it did not live up to my expectations. Anyhow, there is a song on the soundtrack titled, The Promise by the band When In Rome and it is this song that led to all the banter between a bunch of nerdy 40 year olds. That song immediately triggered a memory for me and later that night I dug through some boxes and found a whole box of cassette tapes, most of them from about 1980 - 1990. The tape I was looking for was part of a series made for me by an old girlfriend, Ela. She made me tapes while we were going out and we continued to exchange

Tsunami Coldiron

Tsunami Coldiron

Relief Effort Results...So Far

Wow! What a wild and terrific 72 hours! What started as a small idea to help a local person get to Sri Lanka to aid in the relief efforts has turned into a massive outpouring of support and assistance. Bjorn and the folks at Big Sky Brewery had to literally shut down operations to handle the influx of donations, telephone calls and volunteers. In the past 72 hours the idea of sending one person has taken off; Big Sky is committed to sending 8 and possibly more! For my part, all I did was send out a couple of email and make a few telephone calls...the rest all goes to those who responded. The amount of antibiotics, over the counter medicines, bandages and other medical supplies donated is astounding. From individuals to doctor’s offices & surgery centers, we collected IV tubing, sutures, syringes, gauze, antibiotics, nipples, gloves, sterile wipes and more. On Thursday, the local Dollar rental donated a full-sized cargo van to transport the supplies to Spokane, Washingto

Tsunami Aid Locally

The last two days have been a whirlwind for me and I'm really excited about a local effort to help the survivors of the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. It all started as an idea a guy named Bjorn Nabozny had and steamrolled into what it is and will become. Bjorn works for Big Sky Brewing here in Missoula, a local brewery that has met with some success in the past two years. One of their part-time employees is a paramedic and firefighter and Bjorn had an idea to send him to Sri Lanka to help the American Red Cross there...he thought it would be worthwhile for Big Sky to pay his expenses to get there and called our office to see if Dr. Guth would be interested in donating some medical supplies...I happened to get the call by happenstance and thought it sounded like a good idea. I sent an email out to about 50 people, including 15 doctors or so and asked them to consider donating supplies, water purification tablets and medicine. I was hoping to get a few items. Within 24 hours I had so ma