New Favorite Thing To Do

Sunday, July 29, 2007
10:39 PM

• Get to a far off beach via canoe
• Play Bocce ball on said beach once arrived
• Canoe back to car after fun day in the sun

This past week we went up to Jacksonville, NC to visit my brother John, his family, and my mom. It was really good to be around my family and I wish we all lived closer by so we could get together more often. My brother is a Marine and is stationed right there on the NC coast. On Thursday, we headed to the beach on the Marine base and body surfed/boogie boarded the waves for a good 3 hours. It was awesome. I couldn't believe how big the waves were, especially for the east coast. I get the feeling that the waves aren't always like that because later when I told a local about our trip to the beach (we were buying shrimp from the guy) he laughed when I mentioned that the waves were pretty decent. I kind of got the feeling that the military might have "claimed" the best beach in the area for themselves.

Friday morning, Haley and I set out to find a local seafood market. Down in Snead's Ferry, NC, there is a place out in the boonies (yeah, most of NC is probably out in the boonies, but this was really out in the boonies) that has 4-5 local seafood markets. After driving though back roads to finally get to the water, we pulled into the last seafood place we found, Everett's Seafood. The things that surprised me most about the little place:

• Shrimp that cost $3/lb for the smaller ones and $5/lb for the jumbo ones
• The extraordinary niceness of the guys running the place

Later that night, we cooked up a bunch of the shrimp. We ate more shrimp than we should have, but even non-shrimp lovers, Haley and John, were loving it. We looked up a coconut shrimp recipe, and then my mom had requested a Pina Colada dipping sauce from Red Lobster that we were also able to find. We also skewered a ton of shrimp and added some Zataran's Creole Seasoning before putting them on the grill. It was awesome food. The fact that the shrimp had been caught the same day made it taste all the better.

On Saturday, our last day there, we took a couple canoes (including our new one) to Hammock's beach state park. Somehow we were able to fit both canoes on/in our truck to haul down to the ocean. Once there, Haley and I went together in a canoe with Gob and John, Ashley, Mom, and their 7-month old baby Jack were in the other. We had a couple lifejackets and in retrospect Jack probably should have had one of them on. We got some funny looks from other people on the 2.5 mile trail to the beach who were donning lifejackets. Oh well, we all made it. Jack and Ashley ended up riding the ferry back. The last half mile or so of the canoe trail was really shallow water, so we all got out and hiked the canoes in. Gob really liked this part because we let him run free for the most part. He enjoyed terrorizing the millions of small crabs that covered the shore and didn't quite know what to do when they pinched him. After finally docking our canoes, we hiked a short distance over some dunes to reach the open ocean. It was nice because the place where we ended up was pretty much deserted. We ate a quick lunch, got in the water for a while and then played some wicked Bocce Ball right there on the beach. I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth it to carry the Bocce set along the 2.5 mile canoe trek, but once we started playing there in the sand I knew it was. After a couple hours at the beach, we headed back. By this time we were all really tired, including Gob who slept most of the way back.

I don't know if this last day ended up being so enjoyable for me because of the canoeing/beach or because I did it all with family that I love. It was probably the most fun I have had all summer, Pacuare river included.

After getting home, we had to make the trek home because Haley had an engagement she had to be at the next morning. We ended up not leaving town until 8:00pm and with a 5-hour drive ahead of us, I decided to start consuming vast amounts of caffeine early on. Between the 3 cokes, Exedrine (both for caffeine and to tame my sunburn), and energy drink (my first foray into the world of energy drinks) I was pretty hopped up on caffeine. All in all, I think I had about 400+ mg of brain electrifying awakeness going on. After the day at the beach, I needed all the help I could to stay awake. My plan worked and combined with listening to the final Harry Potter on audio book we made it home safely (and wide awake--it took me an hour to get to sleep).

Things I learned In Church

Thursday, July 26, 2007
10:32 AM

This past Sunday, this kid gets up to give a talk in front of the entire congregation. During his little speech, he talked about how grateful he is for all the things he had at scout camp that pioneers didn't have a hundred and fifty years ago: Things like "rope and pocketknives." All they had were "sticks and stones." I think he was a little confused. I think Adam and Eve probably had knives and rope. I could tell by the look on the bishop's face that he too was confused at this comment.

Later, in Sunday school this guy was teaching about faith. He tried to compare faith to electricity and explained something to the following effect: "we know when we flip a switch that the electricity will cause the lights to come on. Nobody knows how electricity works. It is all just theory. When we flip the switch, we have faith that this magical thing called electricity will work to turn on the lights." I was actually pretty sure that I learned in high school and then college how electricity works. True, there are some things that we don't get, but I'm not sure I would refer to electricity as a "theory." We have sure gotten quite far in the information era with computers and electronics based solely on theory.

Eaze Lock

Tuesday, July 17, 2007
11:55 PM

I like working out. Well…I don't necessarily like the working out part of working out, but rather the lifestyle benefits that come with working out (ie, not being fat, not getting winded when climbing a flight of stairs, and I think I am happier when I get my stress out by moving my legs up and down on a machine that simulates walking up stairs). Haley on the other hand doesn't like the working out part of working out or the other parts. Well, maybe she likes the other parts, but the working out part of working out usually wins and she doesn't want to go work out with me. I understand this and so when she does agree to go work out with me, so I'm not all by my lonesome, I am happy.

Today was one of those days. I asked her yesterday if she would join me and she said yes. So, this morning we head off to the Riverview park activities center for a half hour work out before our day begins. Things go well until we go back out to the car only to realize that the key I had taken off my keychain before leaving the car was actually my truck key. Yup, I locked us out of the car. I felt really bad about this both because Haley was on a schedule to get some school stuff done today and the fact that this would probably not encourage her to come with me to work out again for a while.

Luckily we have the world's best insurance company, USAA. They had someone ("Eaze Lock") out there in 15 minutes and we were on our way. Not sure yet what the ramifications of this incidence will be on our future workouts together, but I'm hoping for the best.

We had dinner tonight with some medical school friends. We had a chance to catch up on school gossip. Apparently some Biochemistry professor was caught in one of the stairwells this past week pleasuring himself and was subsequently fired. Seriously, though. There was probably a bathroom stall within 50 feet of wherever he was or at least his office couldn't have been that far away. What prompts a dude to go to town in a stairwell? Don't really understand that one.

As I try to start thinking about school, I received one of my pathology textbooks in the mail today. Amazing how the previous version of a book can save you about 80 bucks off the current version's price. I don't think that much has changed about staff infections or acne over the past 6 years. I love the internet.

Marking territory

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
12:52 AM

So my dog, bless his heart, went to mark a little territory and instead of yellow pee falling upon the small plant, it received a nice deuce. Yup, my dog lifts his leg to coil a steamer exactly as he does to mark his territory. It is really a sight to behold and luckily it wasn't a one time affair.

In other news, I have been away for quite a while. I have had many good intentions to start back up my blog and now that summer is well underway, it's never too late. I have had so many good stories that will most likely never make it to the blogosphere. For example, my phone went off in church and lets just say that I don't have a "standard" ringtone and that the one I have on it is not exactly "church appropriate." Luckily it was at my parents ward in Spokane, WA--on the other side of the country.

But really, summer is awesome. We are loving life as our summer travel season is well underway. After Spokane, Haley and I (and Gob) headed up to the GSMNP (great smokey mountain national park) for a little Thorpe family camping trip. We nearly burned the place down with what is probably the biggest fire that campfire ring has ever seen (oh, and by "campfire ring" I really mean a giant 12' diameter in the ground pit. The fire was awesome. I'll have to post some pictures.

Speaking of pictures, that is one of my big goals this summer, go through my zillions of pictures. I may take a good one every now and then, but I also take lots and lots of really crappy ones that I need to go through and delete. Up until now I have been too lazy to get it done, but now that we are looking into decorating our house with my photography, I am starting to go through them looking for some of the goodies.

Speaking of printing things out, I just ordered this $800 color laser printer for a mere $140 after a giant $350 mail-in rebate. This thing is supposed to print our fairly good pictures, though still not quite as good as a photo lab. Should be a lot of fun to use, though.

This is such a mumble jumble of thoughts… I really shouldn't blog after being out in the sun all day. But Alas it is 1:00am and I had a crystal light energy drink which contained 120mg of caffeine (same as a cup of coffee) as well as a coke zero and diet coke within the last couple hours. My cAMP levels are all maxed out. Yes, cAMP is a medical term that only describes how technical my life now is as I make my journey through the wonderful world of medicine.

Speaking of medicine, school and the pursuit of a medical degree is about the farthest thing from my mind right now. I mean, I have pretty much totally forgot that I am studying medicine right now as I plan our panama trip, not to mention all the other trips to we are thinking of going on. We'll be in Destin, FL until Thursday. Then this weekend we are headed to Savannah to shoot a wedding reception, then we are heading up to Atl so haley can teach a class on computers. We will probably stay up there for a week before heading down to Costa Rica. After getting back from central america, who knows what we will be up to. Maybe we'll get a little sleep.

go to the travelblog

I haven't been as slack as it appears. I've just been frequenting my other blog: http://egberttravels.blogspot.com