Hartford Coffee Company

So I stumbled across a new coffee shop the other day on my way home from school.  It’s called the Hartford Coffee Company and they serve coffee-shop drinks (duh) and a variety of yummy looking sandwiches and salads (all fresh made when you order).  It’s open and airy with lots of windows and plenty of seating… and there’s even a kids section off in the back with a chalkboard and a play table for cars and stuff.  They have wireless internet (for free) and a nice tall workbench-type table with power strips for people’s laptops.  Apparently they have live music on the weekends in the evenings – maybe I’ll check that out one of these days.

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Snow!

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It was snowing this morning when I woke up.  This is a picture of my street, and the bottom one is a picture I took out the window of my truck while I was waiting for it to warm up – it looks like I’m trapped in a snowbank or something. 🙂  It’s supposed to snow the rest of today and some tomorrow too… if it’s going to be this cold, I might as well have something pretty to look at.

Exploring Berkeley

So, yesterday I had a day off from my San Francisco area residency interviews, and I decided to go check out the city of Berkeley (home of the UC Berkeley campus and infamous Telegraph Road).  When I discovered that the original very first ever Peet’s Coffee and Tea was in Berkeley, I had to make a visit… and here are a couple of pictures.  It’s in  a cute little area with shops and cafes all around.  (FYI – Peet’s is a place I first learned of while doing my rotation in Portland.  Berkeley reminds me of Portland, but a little more "out there" when it comes to the different types of people you see.  Still, very Portland-esque…)

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I had lunch at a palce called Jupiter.  It was quite nice out, so I ate in their courtyard right next to this pretty fountain:

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I had a house salad (with red peppers and kalamata olives, yum!):

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And also a pizza… that was plenty big enough that I had the leftovers for dinner.

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Then I went and sat at a Starbucks and used my wireless internet to look up lots of information for my upcoming interviews.  So far now I’ve done UCSF and Oakland Children’s.  UCSF was alright, I thought I really liked it until today, when I was at Oakland Children’s and totally loved it and it just out-shined (out-shone?) everything from UCSF!  Anyway, I’m trying to keep good track of all the information I’m gathering so I can keep all the programs straight when it comes time to rank them.  I want to put little summaries up here to help me with that, but it’s a little much for me to do right now, so maybe over Thanksgiving, when I have a little more time (and 5 programs under my belt).

In San Francisco

I flew into San Francisco this morning to start the first leg of my interview trip.  I got in kind of early, so after picking up my rental car (this fine looking PT Cruiser)…

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…I decided to drive out to the 3 programs I’ll be interviewing at this week so that I have an idea where I’m going and hopefully won’t get lost.  UCSF was first, and it’s located at the top of a hill right by Golden Gate park.  The Children’s Hospital is actually a few floors located inside the general hospital – we’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow.

Next I headed out toward Oakland where the other two programs are located.  I stopped by Oakland Children’s, which is a stand-alone, community based hospital (meaning, not a big academic center, no general hospital affiliated with it).  Then on to Kaiser Permanente – Oakland, which is a smaller campus of buildings.  I have those two interviews on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

And now I’m sitting in my hotel room at the Fairfield Inn Oakland, which is pretty darn nice for a Fairfield… at an airport location… I have 2 beds, and a little sitting area (it’s really cute, see)

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… and I also have this little kitchenette with a microwave, a little fridge, a sink, and counters/cabinets.  That’s totally more than I expected and very cool.

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Anyway, so now I’m thinking about heading out to find a grocery store so I can get some things to put in my kitchenette.  Probably some milk and cereal, some fruit, some soda or tea or something and maybe some snack-y something or other.  Then I will resume preparing for my interviews – practicing answers and reviewing the questions I want to ask and making sure I have everything ready for the morning.  I’ll update again sometime this week and talk about how everything is going.

Until then….

Randomness


Drum set at Costco

         
It’s a Billiken, the St Louis University mascot.  What’s a Billiken?  Good question.  🙂

         
A.J.’s birthday dinner at the Outback Steakhouse (do-dah-dah-dah-do-do-do).
Building architechtural materpieces with coasters is one of his favorite "waiting for food" activities.