friday five: tall trees, summer breeze

I don't know if it's the gorgeous weather we're having (75 and sunny, y'all) or the fact that's I'm finally out of the ICU, but it feels like summer.

Dinners outside. Long evening runs. Weekends in the mountains, or at the beach, or at a vineyard. I'm still busybusybusy, but it's the sort of busy I thrive on (research! clinic! meetings!).  It feels like summer, and I want to soak it all up.


1/ out of the hospital, into the trees
This past weekend was my first true golden weekend since March. I've had a handful of pseudo-golden weekends (combining a post-call day with a day off, or switching from nights to days), but this was my first Saturday and Sunday off in a long, long time. 

Ben and I headed north to Redwoods National Park, and it was glorious. Tall trees (tallest in the world!). Misty trails. Walls of ferns. Everything felt so fresh and clean and quiet, and there were absolutely zero telemetry monitors, fluorescent lights, or middle-of-the-night pages.

Just us and the trees.

It was glorious.

heading out for a 15 mile hike.
 happy happy happy. 

2/ aw, shucks.

Trail mix and bananas make for great post-hike snacks. So do delicious and creative flights of oysters.

oyster flight at the humboldt bay oyster company.
my favorite? cucumber, lemon, dill, delicious. 

3/ wedding planning: it's happening! 

After two, erm, years of being engaged, we've finally started wedding planning. We have a date (what!) and a venue (what what!). This past week, we interviewed three possible planners, chatted with two possible engagement photographers, and I discussed shower/bachelorette plans with my BFF/MOH. As someone who is taking a super Type Z approach to wedding planning, these were big moves.

4/ badgers make good scientists. 

This past week, I went to great dinner on preparing for a career as a physician scientist. The speaker herself took a slightly non-traditional route, and was very candid in where she felt her mistakes were and how she would advise young doctors to do things differently.

My takeaways:
1. The funding landscape may not be as scary as it looks. There are still grants available, and many academic jobs have enough clinical time build in such that obtaining grant funding isn't absolutely critical to having a salary.
2. Work hard. In the Hogwarts of academia, it's often the Hufflepuffs that ultimately succeed (BOOM. As someone who gets Hufflepuff on every single sorting quiz ever*, this was basically the best thing she could have said. #puffpower).

fear the badger.  (or not).

5/ this made me smile. 

spotted on my walk home last tuesday.
lovely. 

*What, like you haven't taken multiple Harry Potter sorting quizzes? Just me?