A manly update...

Hey everyone, it's Jason and this is my first attempt at a blog "post."  I didn't even do text messages until about 6 months ago and now I've moved all the way to blogging.  Feels a bit odd but I thought I'd give you guys an update from a "manly" perspective (assuming there is any manly angle on blogging!).  Well, things are actually very good up here in Aberdeen.  It's not as small as I expected but there are lots of places and things we are missing.  Apparently up here you either eat fast food or you go to a place where dinner for two is around 30 to 50 bucks.  Tough for a cheapo like me who thinks that a 20 dollar dinner at Newk's or Taziki's counts as a big night out.  The place we're living is very nice on the inside but the neighborhood around it is a bit interesting with as many bars as regular shops and very little open past 2pm.  When you venture away from this part of town (only about a mile or so away) you can find tons of cute older houses and churches and parks which is very nice.  We have tried to take walks in some of those places and have been successful except for all of my mosquito bites.  It turns out that mosquitoes are such a big deal here that the local news has a "Skeeter Meter" and reported that some net they have nearby caught 6000 mosquitoes last week, 500 of which had the West Nile Virus (don't know how they can know that but yikes!).  As for work, the other doctor is very nice and helpful and the nurses are out-of-this-world good.  They are an excellent resource and fill in all of the gaps where I'm a bit rusty as an outpatient doc.  Home call is pretty stressful and I don't sleep very well because of fear of missing a page.  I don't know how country docs do this all of the time.  Hopefully I'll get more used to it and more confident that I can sleep and still care for patients if they need me.  Anyone who is up for praying for my sleep during call would be greatly appreciated.  Daily clinic is very nice and not as busy as most of the places back in Birmingham.  I really get the time to talk to people and sit down with them and think it definitely helps form a good trust and makes my job much easier.  People are so nice around here both at work and around town.  No one even talks about our accents.  Oh well, I think that's all I have for now.  You probably won't hear that often from me but I think that's good since my sweet wife is cranking out the nicest blog west of the Mississippi or north of the Mason-Dixon or whatever else describes our entirely new location in the country.  Talk to you all again soon and please feel free to call and keep in touch.

-- Jason