More things I'll miss about this city...

1. Vespers, the quiet, meditative mid-week communion service at my church. I've always appreciated how compact this service is--short, yet full of great liturgy. It's an often much-needed pause in the midst of a busy week. And I love it when autumn turns into winter and the evenings get darker and the air becomes crisp...still, week after week, there's Vespers.
2. Watching the meteor shower my first year of med school, with friends, in the back of a truck. Sure, we should have been studying for our anatomy finals...
3. The opportunities to spend time with the homeless at the downtown shelter and the one where my church visits. It was in these places that I came to realize how approachable these people are, and that despite the differences in our education or what we wore, we really had a lot in common.
4. Ethnic shopping. This ranged from the Vietnamese grocery "V-T Mart" down on Maple, to the local Carnival with more choice of tortillas than bread, to Chinatown with its dim sum and milk pearl tea.
5. The toll road. First off, it feels luxurious to take it as a fast route between points A & B. And secondly, it provides a change of perspective on buildlings and places I frequent from the streets.
6. The fact that it's close enough to my parents' house in the country to caravan out to G-town with friends. We've done this several times, and people seem to enjoy everything from the dog Shacor to the ducks and the pond, to visiting the festival on the brick-lined streets by the railroad tracks in historic downtown.
7. Smoking a cigar with friends on the balcony. This works well with a short tumbler of Scotch.
8. The county hospital. Dirty, inefficient, difficult nurses, lots of babies. On the medicine wards, we were bound to have interesting cases. And we could count on nearly 3/4 of our patients' medical histories including diabetes and hypertension.
9. The ice storm during our second year. An extra credit question was given to the medical students who braved the roads. Clay stayed over at our place since it was closer to school. In the morning I made my famous "Flour-n-water" biscuits.
10. Our Family Practice rotation. Flora, Clint, Amber. Working out, cooking, Smallville, turning the A/C down as low as it would go, running around the college campus, studying at the law school. Those were the days!