My Mind: Lifesized

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 ...

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 ...

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

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

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...

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...

Merry Christmas to all you out in blogland. I haven't posted in a bit and I owe a long rambling summary of the past few weeks, but I also owe an apology to a certain person out there. You see, one of my prior posts (I deleted it this morning) aired some dirty laundry that probably should have been kept in the closet of my mind. You kknow who you are. I'm sorry.

When my friends Phil & Julie Gardner used to live in Indiana, there home was tucked away south of Indianapolis is a beautiful wooded area near Martinsville. They called their home the Waydownback and it was frequently the jumping off point for our weekend adventures in the hills of southern Indiana. Phil & Julie moved to Missoula about 7 years ago and now have a home, nestled in the pine forested mountains, about 30 minutes south of Missoula...they've affectionately named their Lolo, Montana home the Wayhiup. The Wayhiup sits atop a ridge and is surrounded by both logged and unlogged forest. Their land butts up against land owned by the timber conglomerate Plum Creek. Because of the reforestation methods of logging companies, fast growing and invasive species of pine have crept onto the Gardner property and they let some of their friends come up each year to help thin away trees that crowd out the native trees. This year, I got invited and it was a super fun time. ...

Wow, what fun. Sunday, Karl & Lori and I headed up to Lolo Pass for some cross country skiing. Lolo Pass is on the Montana/Idaho border, about 30 minutes or so from town. It was a gorgeous day and the Snow was fine. Karl & Lori are in great shape and are much better skiers than me, but they humored me into thinking I could keep up. Here's me in an action shot on the 3 mile loop course. We also had their dogs Sarah & Sydney with us, so we went on an ungroomed course across from the pass that was fairly strenuous. All big fun.

Hard to believe a whole week has gone by since I last posted. Thanksgiving was a blast on my end. I flew home last Thursday morning, arriving in Indy at 3:30 PM. I'd hoped the trip would be full of holiday cheer, but most of the travelers were down right grumpy. The bad weather in the Eastern and Southeastern parts of the country ran roughshod over travel plans and left people stranded from Wednesday trying to get home. The higher prices this year also seemed to affect families so many were flying on turkey day to get better deals, so both my flights (Indy to Minneapolis and Minnie to Indy) were chock full-o-grumps. No worries, I just kept right on wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving night my Mom, Dad and brother hopped in the car for the ride up to Carmel, Indiana...my sister's Mother in-law hosted Thanksgiving dinner. The O'Connor's are used to eating the holiday meal around 2:00 and then again around 5 & 6 & 7...we compromised and ate a...

You may be wondering where I've been hiding the past few weeks...my posts are becoming less frequent and not as full of juicy details. I've been a busy boy this , working more than usual trying to get 4 reviews completed and preparing for the holiday. I've also been stepping up my workouts, trying to speed up my conditioning so I can try a move to a different workout regimen being used by my friends John and Rick. It's called Crossfit and it's used by the military and police forces as a total body conditioning program. It is very difficult and challenging and to date I've only been able to do a few of the exercise with any degree of success. So I'm now working out daily and I've also started to change my diet to accompany the new regimen. I'm hoping my renewed focus on my physical condition will spill over and keep my mental condition positive. This is always a tough time of year for me, Winters onset (at this stage the theme is cold and grey...

This song, Mean Flower, by Joe Henry (from the Album Scar )has been dancing around in my head for days. So much of my idle mind has been filled with it that I had to make a new mixed CD with Mean Flower as the centerpiece. What a gut wrenching and beautiful song. I have to admit though, it's added to the mood of melancholy I've been in ever since the election ended and the skies over the Missoula Valley turned grey...if we see the sun in the valley again before March it will be marked with great joy. The elections...yuck, yuck and yuck. We've probably all had enough talk about that but for me, it's not that I even liked Kerry that much, it's just that I don't like Bush at all. And my fears about what will come next are only heightened by the nomination today of Cond0leezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as the Secretary of State (SOS). I fear for the future, if her nomination is approved. Anyone who is a student of history, especially since the war of 181...

Today is Veterans Day here in the USA, a day where most people only know something is different because the banks and the schools are closed. I put my flag out this morning to honor the soldiers who have served and lived. I'm always a little self-conscious about the act of putting my flag out...but I do feel it is the appropriate thing to do, especially on a day like today. We celebrate Memorial day as the day to honor fallen soldiers, but we don't pay much attention to the ones who survive the messes we put them in. I have tremendous respect for those who are willing to serve in harm's way, who work for terrible wages and who suffer the mental wars long after the physical ones desist. In our medical practice we deal with a population that is overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly over the age of 50...we have many veterans. Today we made a sign thanking them and put cookies out. It's the least we could do. I called one of our doctors, who was a Navy surgeon in V...

My little house has a detached garage that opens onto an alley, well sort of opens into the alley. The garage, like my house, is quite old; but unlike the house there doesn't appear to have been much of an effort made to at least keep it functional. The roof is sagging and the shingles are only half there, with the remaining ones curled up like a snarled lip. There are two sets of swing-out doors, one I've made permanently unusable after a break-in and the other is barely hanging on...I've sort of rigged them to stay shut. There were two couples that lived here between 1920 and 2001, and then the yay-who who bought it as a rehab before selling it to me after one year (he is supposedly a contractor, but based upon the quality of the work he did in here I would say he will be out of business soon). Until today I only knew that the last couple (before the yay-who) lived here for about 40 years. But today I learned a whole lot more from an 83 year-old German man named Ot...

Wow, what a feeling...I arrived at the old Lowell School, the polling place for precinct 89 (my precinct) this morning shortly after 7:00 AM; that's the time the polls opened and there was already a line. The electricity in the air was evident the minute I stepped inside the building. People were EXCITED to vote. And what an important election this is. No matter which of the aisles you fall beside, this election matters more than possibly any other since Hoover v. FDR and the New Deal. In Montana we have 5 choices for President/Vice President...5!!!!!! Personally, I think that is awesome. Nader is on as an independent, we have a Constitutionalist candidate, a Libertarian candidate, a Green candidate and the two major parties. In Montana we're also electing a Governor/Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Three Supreme Court Justices, a Congressman, School superintendent, State Auditor, District Court Judge, County Commissioners and City Commissioners and cho...

Tonight I got and sent an email from Pete over in Thailand. He's busy with his life, his new wife and trying to start his bronze business. Anyhow, i'm trying to connect Pete with my new friend Hossein, who is Iranian. hossein has some friends who make and sell pottery and I thought he and Pete could somehow cross-network. Here's a glimpse at how my twisted mind works when I have too much time on my hands. While daydreaming about how all this could lead to some sort of adventure in iran for me, a Greg Brown playing in the background made me start day dreaming. my thoughts of Iran floated to Turkey and thoughts of beautiful rugs and wonderful people and then my mind floated to a dusty corner and the name of Ela Aktay popped out. Ela was the first girl I thought I was in "real" love with and that would have been about 20 years ago. I have some funny stories about meeting her parents (Turkish emmigrants to the US) but I'll save that for another time. ...

I haven't posted for a week or so because I've been mad at Blogger. See, I wrote this very wonderful review of the third day at Yellowstone...quite detailed and blogger lost it. I know that sounds absurd, but I posted the damn thing and it just never appeared. no search found the glitch and this isn't the first time. But I heart blogger and I heart my little corner of the owrld, so I am back 9but I'm still mad). I'll write another 3rd day review soon.

Sorry for the hurdy-gurdy approach to my journal these days, but I wanted to put the final touches on the Yellowstone National Park adventure I had with Mom, Dad, Chris & Nicole. If you haven't read the prior posts, you may want to before reading any further. I awoke bright and early Sunday, as Dad went outside for a smoke and the sound was just enough to roust me from my slumber. It had gotten cold the night before, and the morning sun was already busily melting the frost on the Hoosier's Hotel roof, which was plop, plop, plopping onto the sidewalk. Cooke City was quite tranquil, either because the locals were sleeping off the Saturday night fun had at the Miner's Saloon or perhaps they were already up and out hunting or something. As I said before Cooke City is an end of the road sort of place. We had breakfast at one of three places open, and the Chinese waitress (with a wedding band on...I'm thinking international matchmaking) was also serving as cash...

I am somewhat of a history buff, including military history. Over the past 10 years or so I've tried to learn more about the history of various parts of Asia, Europe, Africa and the United States. I've also read quite a few books on various wars and conflicts, both modern and historical. From the moment the United States invaded Iraq, comparisons to the US involvement in Vietnam began to surface. And as time has worn on, the comparisons to me seemed to merit some sort of personal research. My friend Rick is also an avid reader, especially of military history and he suggested I read A Rumor of War, which has been touted as one of the defining pieces on Vietnam. This book is brutally honest...not only in detailing the often surreal events in Vietnam and the consequences suffered by soldiers and civilians alike from often farcical decision made somewhere far off, but also in the depiction of what can do to perfectly sane and otherwise moral individuals. It can be disturbing a...