Last weekend, Melody drove up from Boston for one last visit before the end of my rotation in Maine. With the subzero weather, we decided to forgo trekking out to Camden or Acadia as originally planned, but cozied up indoors instead, venturing out only to dine at the local digs. Over the two days, we filled our bellies with meatloaf and short ribs from the Liberal Cup, shrimp scampi and sausage spaghetti from Pastaz, french toast and lobster benedict from Slate’s, and most memorably, Laura’s Seafood Stew from Red Barn– an amazingly simple but delicious concoction of fresh lump lobster, scallops, haddock, and bay shrimps in a creamy milk and butter broth that showcased Maine seafood to near perfection. The rest of our time was spent catching up on TV shows like Glee and SNL, chasing wild turkeys and deers around the house, and engaging in such geeky pastimes as RC car racing and BB gun plinking. The rest of the work week was quite chill (pun intended). I even picked up a quart of the seafood stew on my drive back to Boston on Friday. For the holiday weekend, my parents visited from NYC, so we treated them to the gammut of Asian cuisines in Boston, from shabu shabu and Northern Chinese dim sum to Indian buffet and hearty home-made meals courtesy of Melody. I even learned my mom’s recipe for flan in exchange for a new Harvard cap for dad and smiling for family photos. I wish all holidays were as relaxing as this!

This year’s fellowship Match Day was an emotional roller-coaster that fortunately concluded with a happy, albeit bittersweet, ending. Even just days before the match, I had heard through the grapevines that my chances of matching to my top choice were slim, as our residency has been regarded to have less surgical training than other programs. Last night, on the eve before the match, I received a Facebook friend request from another applicant, which misled me to thinking that I had matched to his program. Even as I was driving back to Maine last night, I was on the phone with my wife discussing potential living arrangements depending on where I end up. Fortunately, I heard the good news early this morning from the program director at Duke herself. Phone calls, e-mails, and text messages came pouring in to congratulate me even as I was cranking through the busy clinic. By the time the day winded down and the dust began to settle, it was still hard to believe that I will be leaving Boston after 12 years in the city. Sadly, Melody will most likely be taking a job on the West coast, which will make us bi-coastal again for another 2 years. It was a tough decision, but one that will hopefully give us the best chance to be together afterwards.

After our vacation last week, I drove back to Maine late Sunday night, only to realize that I had left the house keys in Boston! Fortunately, I also found out that I had left the house unlocked all week, so I was able to get inside and avoid hypothermia. Now who said two wrongs don’t make a right? My Nook Color also came in the mail this week, which I proceeded to overclock and flash with the CyanogenMod of the Android OS, essentially converting the refurbished e-reader into a snappy Honeycomb tablet. That’s not bad for $120, especially since the HP Touchpad fire sale turned out to be a disaster, wasting me 30 minutes of my life on Ebay and still leaving me empty-handed. Luckily, the Nook performed well in a test drive during our Chandler meeting. This year’s conference featured retina guru Glenn Jaffe, and kept me well fed with both a pre-dinner at the Chart House and a reception at the Millenium Boston Hotel. I spent the rest of the weekend with Melody playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a prequel to the acclaimed game in 2000 which is set in a beautifully-rendered dystopian future reminiscent of that in Blader Runner, and mimics the stealth tactics from the MGS series. Despite the fun of climbing through air ducts, hacking computer terminals, and silently taking down guards, we hope to crank through the game quickly to get to Skyrim by Christmas.

It’s been years since Melody got to spend Thanksgiving with her folks back home, so our trip to Cali this week has been long awaited. Our plan for this “stay-cation” was simply to relax, eat, and sleep – a welcomed break after the exhausting fellowship interview season. Much of our time was spent hanging out with our niece and in-laws in Sacramento and Stockton, exploring nearby restaurants and shopping at strip malls. I also caught up on data analysis for a research project while getting addicted to Property Virgins on HGTV. Last Saturday, we drove to San Francisco to pig out at the Ferry Building Marketplace. There, we got to feel young, hip, and epicurean while waiting in line for fresh oysters, Korean tacos, bacon-infused hotdogs, and porchetta sandwiches; washed down with some chai tea milk, an ice-cream sandwich, and pan au chocolat. We ended our week off with Melody’s 2-day job interview at UC Davis, which gave me plenty of time to sit in a hotel room and ruminate over my fellowship rank list. On the flight home, we found out that our flight attendant was also an enthusiast of Skyrim, the long-awaited sequel to Oblivion from the Elder Scrolls role-playing series. We loaned him our game guidebook in exchange for a free airline snack box and eager anecdotes of his adventures as a dragon-slaying wood elf. It definitely kept our neighboring passengers listening in utter confusion and thirsty for their beverages. The exchange got us all hyped up and eager to embark on our own adventures there.