Moose Watch

Another highlight of the Duluth trip was Claire's first moose-sighting. It occurred while paddling across Allen Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, when we stumbled upon a female moose. It let us get reasonably close and allowed us to take some good pictures (including an outstanding movie from my sister's fancy digital camera which I unfortunately can't figure out how to dowload onto blogger.com) which are shown here. Hopefully you can tell this is indeed a moose, and not bogus Loch Ness monster sighting photos.

Alas, the French team came up a bit short yesterday. In my opinion, they played a better game than the Italians (particularly in the 2nd half), but just couldn't put the ball in the net. Also, Zinedane Zidane's shameful head-butting incident cost him a red card and potentially even a victory, who knows. Oh well...there's always 4 YEARS FROM NOW to try again...

For the next several months, I will actually be doing a fair amount of studying. I have 3 main projects to work on:

#1: Learn French. I am doing this with the aid of my "Rosetta Stone" language program and am about 1/4 done with the entire thing. I think I'm improving some, but still am a far cry from where I need to be.

#2: Study for the Internal Medicine Boards. I take my board exams at the end of August...all I have to do for that is review the entire body of medical knowledge that I have supposedly accumulated over the past 3 years. In my opinion, it's not really the kind of exam that you should need to "cram" for--for the most part, I should have picked up the right answers along the way. I'd like to think this is basically true, but I nonetheless have invested in the MKSAP 13 series, a set of books & practice questions covering all the major topic areas that are tested on the boards.

#3: Familiarize myself with the scientific literature regarding my lab. My job in the French lab starts in a little over a week from now, and I will need to brush up on my kidneys, nephrons, cysts, and tubules. Currently, goal #3 is taking a back seat to the first two, though hopefully not for long.