A number of weeks ago I gave a talk on campus on “The Biblical Creation in its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” dealing with the interpretation of the creation story in Genesis 1. In the hopes of reaching a wider audience, today it’s being posted on BioLogos.org, a prominent website dealing with matters of faith and science. If you’re interested, you can find my blog entry [here], where there is also a link to my longer article.

i guess it’s appropriate that we spent the labor day long weekend moving into our new home. joe was recently given the opportunity to pastor our small church here in hyde park while he finishes his phd program at university of chicago. and so we will also be living in the parsonage, which is part of the church building. we will share more in a future blog entry. even though we ended up packing late into the night, we couldn’t pass up the chance for some late night chinese food with our visiting friends james and jana, who were in town just for the weekend. we thoroughly enjoyed the spicy food at lao sze chuan.

saturday morning was moving day. we had some very STRONG movers. to put this picture into context, these boxes were filled with joe’s books. they were so heavy that i had trouble pushing a single box on the ground with my feet. this big guy opted to carry eight on his back.

when it was all over, i felt a bit sentimental as we realized that we were saying goodbye to our very first home together as a married couple.

but onwards to bigger and better things i guess. now back to unpacking…

we’ve been very busy lately. among other things, joe is taking an intensive introductory arabic course, and i wrote my US family practice board exam today, which kind of put things on hold while studying for it. i’m hoping it will be my last exam for the forseeable future, assuming i pass. happily, my mom and sister flew in to visit a couple of days earlier, which has been a treat. mom has been busy cooking (and cleaning etc) and i can already feel the extra pounds creeping on. i wonder how many years of practice it will take before i’ll be able to do everything my mom manages to do…with ease! right now i am really looking forward to my day off from work tomorrow, sleeping in, and then doing some retail therapy with my mom and sister. oh yeah.

today i attended hamburger university. seriously, that is what it’s called; the training facility on the 80 acre campus of McDonald’s Corporation which is located in a suburb of chicago. i was there for a medical conference… not to learn about big macs, of course. however i did pick up a nutrition facts pamphlet and learned that a big mac is 560 calories. if you’re curious about the calorie content of any other mcdonald’s food item, just let me know!

it was time to put away the christmas tree, but our closet was already quite full. i was kind of amazed at how much stuff we had accumulated over a year. in particular, the number of bags i had recycled…it really didn’t look that way inside the closet.

for new year’s day, we fulfilled our snow shoveling duties for church. unfortunately the snow blower wasn’t working so we had to do it the old-fashioned way, but at least it was good exercise!

i felt like an excited school girl today anticipating the end of the work day and the start of my christmas vacation! first we had our office christmas party where we also said goodbye to one of our secretaries, and then finally joe came with my family straight from the airport.

joe and i were invited by my new boss dr. yakoub and her husband to a fancy fundraiser gala for the hospital. i’m not that good at schmoozing, but it was nice being able to dress-up, eat “tall grass fed beef”, and meet some of my future colleagues. now back to work…

today i attended the first of a four day conference: the american academy of family physicians scientific assembly. the lectures i chose to attend seemed to alternate opposite sides of the huge conference center, so it’s a good thing i wore sneakers. unfortunately i think the organizers overlooked the small problem of having thousands of hungry family doctors trying to buy lunch from one tiny food court and two tiny snack stands at the same time. tomorrow the exhibits will be open, which is always fun because you get to pick up free junk in exchange for a short spiel from overly keen drug reps. i’m crossing my fingers for a highlighter and a USB memory key.

So my exams are done now. I wrote my last one earlier today starting at about noon: four essay questions in four hours. It’s hard to say I’m relieved, though, because the reality hasn’t fully sunk in yet.

You know that feeling when you’ve put off so many non-essential things for so long to focus on just one thing… and then that one thing ends and you don’t know what to do next? Should I go out and do something now? Go tidy up the apartment? Or go read that novel I’ve been putting off? On second thought, I should probably avoid any serious mental activity for a while… I feel like I need to go sit on a beach somewhere and just stare at the ocean for five days.