We marked our decade-long marriage together this past Friday with some sparkle. My planning for the occasion began as early as February, when I sought to replace the engagement ring that Melody had lost a few years back. After many covert trips to Roseville and downtown Sacramento to browse diamonds from various vendors – Shane Co., Bianca’s, Santillan, and Sharif’s, I ultimately chose a Blue Nile stone that nearly matched the original diamond’s specs, and worked with their custom department to recreate my design. Having failed to score a French Laundry reservation from our concierge service due to their change to a new ticket system, we instead booked Date Night at 3-Michelin-starred Benu in San Francisco, asking our in-laws to cover baby duty at home. Corey Lee’s Asian-style tasting menu provided a unique take on very familiar flavors as we smiled at each other over Melody’s new ring. We started with delicacies of 1000-year old quail egg, tuna marrow, oyster and pork belly foam, squid on a blood sausage, barbecued abalone with abalone liver, and “shark fin” crab egg custard before finally getting to the bread course featuring the Best Bread Ever. Then the real journey began: foie gras xiao long bao, seasonal caviar and uni, geoduck clam, fried eel with lip-numbing pepper leaf and szechuan peppercorns; a fat juicy barbecued quail with a steamed truffled bao, a lobster-stuffed sea cucumber, and a beef course featuring steak, a galbi-jim-styled riblet, and banchan. We cleared our palates with an omija sorbet before the chocolate acorn dessert and a pricey vintage pu-erh tea. But things weren’t over yet – a final anniversary cake was presented within a music box playing Love Me Tender, which we enjoyed with a sweet rice water drink. After another marble-hunting trek with some Korean food in Rancho Cordova on Saturday, we celebrated Mother’s Day over hot pot and another cheese trip for Melody. Recounting our journey over past 10 years, and with Westley now finally walking, we look forward to many more adventures ahead.

This year’s ARVO meeting took me back to sunny Baltimore. My last visit to the city was 10 years ago when I spent a month at Wilmer for an Ophthalmology rotation that left me with memories of Subway sandwiches, sketchy neighborhoods, and unsatisfying blue crabs. I departed last Friday on a red-eye after dropping Melody off for her 7am flight and blasting through afternoon clinic, leaving me exhausted by the time I arrived. Rather than taking a nap as I should have, I decided to get breakfast with my roommate in nearby Lexington Market for chicken & waffles, which provided a rather authentic Baltimore experience, but was no match for Dame’s. We returned to our hotel for a 6-hour-long Allergan meeting before I took a breather over small plates at Salt Tavern with some Duke friends. I presented my poster on Sunday, but overall felt that the meeting was less satisfying than previous years perhaps due to the meeting location and lower turnout. I also caught up with friends from residency, and ended the evening at Cinghiale for a delicious 4-course prezzo fisso, and nearly 3 hours of waxing philosophical with colleagues over our careers as clinician-scientists. On Monday, I spent the morning interviewing a post-doc candidate, interfacing with industry leadership, and lunching with an old lab mate over harborside crab cakes, then hosted an inaugural networking dinner with sponsorship from Alcon for clinician-scientists in Ophthalmology. Continuing our prior night’s dinner topic, we had 30 participants from different career stages share their advice for succeeding in an academic career combining research with clinical practice. Afterwards, I hung out with some students until the wee hours that night. Despite a late start next morning, I joined the CAOS folks for a crab feast luncheon at Bo Brooks before my flight home. I made use of my Priority Pass again at BWI, and was glad to see my new Sapphire Reserve really starting to pay for itself. With all my upcoming travel, I’m hoping to get more use out of it this summer.