It's amazing to me how many ways the Army finds to make my life more complicated. This last week, for no good reason, they transferred command of the residents and fellows from the hospital command to some other arbitrary non-medical command. Whereas I used to be able to walk down the hall to take care of paperwork, submit my leave forms, etc, I now have to find time in the middle of my day to walk a mile down the road to do the same. If there's any population in the hospital that doesn't have time to do this, it's residents and fellows.

This non-medical command has seen fit to impose certain requirements for leave, like mapping out my route if I'm driving more than 300 miles and giving them a copy of my last pay stub. I have to admit, I'm at a loss for why that one is required. Do they want to make sure I can afford to go on the trip I'm taking? But the ultimate move to make me feel like I'm still in kindergarten is this: I have to phone my command just before I leave bye-bye and then again the minute I come back in town...rain or shine, day or night, weekday or weekend. Next they're going to require a hall pass so that we can go to the bathroom.

I suppose that all of this is done so that I can be very, very sure that when my payback time is up in 6 1/2 years that I'm ready to get out of the military. Well, believe me...

But not everything is bad this week. First of all, Mike got an A in yet another of his classes. Our tradition is that every time he gets an A, we get to go to our favorite restaurant: Lemon Grass. This place has the best Thai food in the history of ever. We love it. Since we only go there every 5 weeks, pending Mike's grades, and since this is about 5 times less often than we'd like to go, we feel that we have to make it count. Last night, we prefaced our order by saying to the waiter, "Please don't judge us harshly," then proceeded to order 2 appetizers and 3 entrees. It was a lot of food. We had the first round of leftovers for lunch today.

In addition, Mike's health has taken a turn for the better and he was finally able to go play church basketball.

So sorry for the overall crappy quality of the pictures. I took them with a phone. Sadly, Mike's team didn't advance further in regionals, but it was still a great opportunity for us to get out and meet people in the ward.