banquets and hiking and bears, oh my!

we attended my grad banquet last friday. every year the first years, the second years and the preceptors all put on skits. if making the skit happen was anyone's responsibility this year it was mine, but only 2 of the second years were even in town. the night before the banquet i was starting to get a little stressed about being able to pull this thing off. my friend shawn and i ended up tooling around chilliwack filming footage with my office digital videocamera until about midnight so we would at least have something to show. fortunately 3 other residents showed up the morning of, and we quickly wrote something up. it had the potential to be quite slick, but we ran into AV probs and had to shut down for 10 min to figure it out, and then still had to stop a couple times. huge bummer b/c it was a lot of work and we ended up looking like idiots. i had a song to finish off with though, and that was received really well.
the exciting news from the banquet was that my family preceptor (who is crazy busy all the time) put a huge amount of thought and effort into a video lampooning me and my "relaxed" approach to clothes, self hygeine and life in general. It was almost 10 min long and absolutely hilarious. my preceptor displayed a knowledge of comic timing that i had never guessed at, a dramatic flare for capturing and accentuating my mannerisms and speech patterns and a depth of knowledge of my personal foibles that i had no idea he possessed. It was spectacular, unexpected and strangely moving. kylie and i havent laughed so hard since kylie's realization involving genitourinary anatomy on mayne island (different story).

i am still enjoying emerg. last night was great for procedures. i repaired an extensor tendon on an electrician's index finger, dissected a barbed nail (nail guns are dangerous) out of a welder's thigh (vastus lateralis to be more specific), stitched up a few people and put on some casts and splints. i am still scared about the cardiac stuff and major trauma though.

here are some pics of a hike we did with our friend ang on sunday. note niko's pretty flower garnish.





this is a new place we found to take niko. you have to walk along the dyke for about 500m then you can access a network of hiking and game trails along the vedder river. to the east of the dyke (left of kylie) is the great blue heron reserve and from the dyke you can see one of their nesting areas with around 50 nests in a stand of 10 trees. noisy.




while we were by the river niko suddenly smelled something scary and put on his big tough dog voice and wouldnt let us past until he deemed it safe. he has used his "manly bark" before when he feels threatened, but saturday was the first day he put on a whole display. he would stand as tall as he could, puff his chest out and bark, then sprint forward, dash back, jump as high as he could (which is getting pretty high these days) and land snarling in a tense crouch, all ready to pounce. he did this several times until he was satisfied that whatever was bothering him was gone. then we were allowed to proceed. kylie and i were just laughing at him, but our friend ang told us that there have been a few bear sitings on the rotary trail about a kilometer from where we were hiking in the past week, so maybe he was doing his job. sorry niko.