Aloha! This is our first post to the world wide web blogosphere. The question is always when to start from. Rather that reminisce about the past 10 years of marital bliss, it's probably best to start with the recent past and go from there.
Nikole and I took a nice trip to Hawaii April 29-May 8. We went there under the auspices of my attending a couple pediatric conferences, but we still had plenty of time for the sights. Mayo paid for my part of everything (airfare, hotel room, ground transportation, and per diem), so we really only had to cover Nikole's airline ticket, food and souvenirs. My mom, bless her heart, flew into Rochester to stay with the kids while we were gone. We missed them while we were gone. But, knowing they were in good hands, we didn't miss them too much.
The plane ride into Honolulu was much better than anticipated, primarily thanks to Northwest's Airbus A330s, which have individual television screens at each seat in coach. You can choose and watch a movie from about 30 choices, some of which are edited. I watched The Great Debaters and X-Files, as well as an episode of The Office ("Phyllis' Wedding"--very funny).
After an 8 hour flight, we touched down around 3 pm in Honolulu. To get to our hotel, we grabbed a cab, which turned out to be a circa 1986 limousine, complete with VCR player and mirrors on the ceiling.
Despite being quite tired that first evening, we just had to go to beach. There was a Hawaiian band playing at the hotel's beachfront restaurant, which created a very nice ambiance. A native Hawaiian came up to us and gave us lei's, saying "Take one for your wife and for you!" Just as I was thinking that Hawaiians have got to be the nicest people in the world, she said, "For only small donation...". Anyway, we got our flower lei's and felt good about giving $10 to the Boys and Girls Club of Honolulu. [By the way, I am fairly certain that, if not the nicest in the world, Hawaiians are well near the top of the list].
We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Ali'i Tower. Mayo's policy is to cover hotel rooms up to $325/night. Our room was $324/night. It's all about toeing the line, right? Here's a view from our balcony:
We actually never went swimming in the pool pictured, because our tower had it's own pool on the second floor. Even then, when you're 50 yards from the ocean, why settle for a pool?
I spent a chunk of my time at the conferences, at least for the first several days. I was part of a couple workshops about public speaking. The first conference was primarily a residency and fellowship leadership meeting (Association of Pediatric Program Directors--APPD). Our workshop at that conference focused on teaching public speaking skills to pediatric trainees (i.e. residents and fellows). It went really well and we received very positive feedback. The second conference we presented at was the Pediatric Academic Societies' (PAS) Annual Meeting. Our workshop this time focused more on the attendees themselves becoming better public speakers. Specifically, we wanted to teach people how to help their audience not fall asleep during their lectures. We planned for as many as 45 people attending, but we ended up with about 56, more even than the room was set up for. It went very well, we think. We are hopeful that we can continue to conduct these workshops at future conferences. The APPD and PAS meetings next year are in Baltimore, so it won't be quite as exciting as Honolulu. Unless, of course, we get mugged. That would be very exciting.
I also attended a few scientific sessions, some of which I was peripherally involved with. Those are always hit-and-miss, usually miss. The titles of some of the presentations can be quite misleading. I went to one session about the recent advances in Kawasaki disease. I was interested because of the cardiac implications of Kawasaki's. Mostly, though, I wanted to catch a glimpse of Dr. Kawasaki, who would be presenting the closing remarks. They introduced him at the beginning to a round of applause. The first talk was actually very good. It went through recent breakthroughs in finding the cause of Kawasaki's (it looks like it'll turn out to be an RNA virus). After that, though, it went down hill. Way too many small details and very boring PowerPoint slides. I couldn't last until Dr. Kawasaki's remarks. So I left and went to the mall. I called Nikole up, she met me, we had lunch, went shopping, then went to see Iron Man. It was sweet. Sorry, Dr. Kawasaki.
I was able to meet Dr. Noonan of Noonan Syndrome fame. She works at the University of Kentucky at Lexington. She was incredibly nice and chatty, was interested in us and our aspirations. It's nice to see you can stay down to earth even when you have a syndrome named in your honor.
Outside of the work part of our trip, Nikole and I had a good time exploring Oahu. Our first full day there, we hiked up Diamond Head State Monument. It is an extinct volcano, from the top of which you can get a nice view of the island and of Waikiki, in particular:
It was, as we had been warned, not a casual stroll, but a legitimate climb. Still, well worth the time. We recuperated with a mango smoothie and passion fruit shave ice (not "shaved" ice) once we got back to the bottom.
There is plenty more to tell about, which I will do another day. It's 10 o'clock and basketball is at 6 am. Aloha and mahalo!
