workin' hard for the $$

so i've been avoiding my own blog until i could properly update with pictures, and slideshows, and basically a spectacular multimedia presentation of life since the wedding.... but like so many other things in my life since i started work, i've decided that i just have to LET GO of my foolish ambitions. so here i am.

i'm on my lunch break currently, sitting here in a small office at the VA mental health clinic, counting the hours until i can leave and check out some of the local Korean markets. it's not that i don't enjoy my time here... it's just that i have whole city to explore, and dinner to cook, and there are only so many substance-abusing depressed vets you can see in one day before things start to get repetitive.

i shouldn't complain. residency is awesome. i got my first paycheck yesterday, and was stunned because i spent most of my first week of work surfing the web in this office, because patients weren't showing up or weren't scheduled... surely that didn't warrant ALL THIS MONEY??!! (ok, it's really not that much, but heckuva lot more than i used to make in med school = $0) i'm just so happy to have an income. and now, when i'm done seeing my patients at the end of the day, i feel no guilt whatsoever about just leaving.... no more checking in with the attending, or waiting for things to be signed, no more frustrating periods of limbo and wasted time... i do what i need to do, and i go home. WORK ROCKS!! ;)

newlywed life is similarly awesome, if i do say so myself. andy's living it up on a fairly chill rotation right now too, so we're definitely enjoying the time we can spend together before we're thrown into the chaos of the inpatient rotations. we've also been doing quite a bit of "home-making"... i'm beginning to understand what that term really means- it's been amazing to watch the empty house we moved into a few weeks ago shift and morph into our home. my goal is to make the place presentable for the many dinners and get-togethers i'm hoping to host in 2 months. a few more pieces of furniture, a lot fewer cardboard boxes littering the family room, and we'll be there.

and now, back to my regularly scheduled programming : "tell me about the voices in your head... when was your last drink? ... how does that make you feel??..." gotta love it.

teaser...

sorry, sorry, this is not a real post... but thought i'd throw out a link to a fabulous album of wedding pics that eli kim, one of andy's groomsmen, took in between his wedding party duties...

here's a sample pic- click on it for the album :)

video of the month

...aaand.... exhale

the past and future few weeks...
may 20- wedding.
may 27- graduation.
may 29- honeymoon in hawaii (as pictured above).
june 3- fly back to la.
june 4-9- pack like mad monkeys.
june 9- fly to orlando for jason&sharon's nuptials.
june 11- fly back to la.
june 13- move to sacramento.
june 15- fly to michigan for wedding reception part deux.
june 17- fly back to sacramento.
june 18- INTERN ORIENTATION.

as the inimitable shirley manson once sang... the trick is to keep breathing.

p.s. more pictures to come!! now that i'm on elena's hip "blog friends" list, i feel the need to raise the caliber of my posts ;)

dr. & mrs.

i became a "mrs." last week. i became a "dr." this week.

it's all over. my wedding was everything i could have ever hoped for, and more. i'm so humbled by the love and generosity i experienced on that day. truly, i am a woman of so many blessings - amazing family, amazing friends, and an amazing new husband.

graduation was all a blur - it's just hitting me now that i'm done with medical school. it all seems so surreal. a self-defense mechanism, perhaps, because the reality of moving away from MY HOME and family for the next 5 years... of saying goodbye to my OHANA, my community that has been so good to me these past 4 years... is too much to bear right now. i hate moving. and goodbyes.

so instead, i think i'll take a vacation. specifically, a honeymoon. i'm off to hawaii on tuesday, for a week... and maybe i can postpone living in real-time for a little while longer.

the wedding season marches on...

another weekend, another wedding in this craaaAAzy summer of luuuuv.
this week's lucky couple?

david and angie... david's our 4th year classmate, and boy don't they make a lovely pair?!

girls' pic... hannah, evelyn, moi & susie - med school classmates & med school classmate's wife, respectively

twas delicious. the desserts, the hanboks, everything. what a way to celebrate the beginning of a beautiful marriage...

new digs

our new home for the next 5 years

downtown disney pda

ok, so we're not really a pda (public displays of affection) kind of couple... so twas definitely awkward to pose intimately in front of our photographer (from whose blog these pics were snatched) AND the hundreds of tourists milling about downtown disney. but hey, a couple's gotta do what a couple's gotta do. and here is a sampling of the results ;)

pb blossoms... oh so delicious

One of Erica's gifts to moi for my bridal shower was a kit for her favorite cookies... peanut butter blossoms. She's a woman of great taste...

et voila! pb blossoms to DIE for...

merci erica!!

pre-wedding insomnia

omg. someone knock me out. i just spent waaaaay too much time surfing this eeeevil and enticing thing that is the www, and stumbled across a blogring of brides-to-be who have decided to take their planning to the blogospheres. one particular bride, who happened to get married at the ritz carlton laguna niguel, painstakingly detailed the trillion-and-one details that SHE personally oversaw for her wedding. she also proudly displayed pictures of the 8+ binders (color-coded and labeled, of course) she had compiled, filled with pages from magazines, ribbon samples, and pictures... all lovingly placed into sheet protectors and organized into 8+ categories of wedding STUFF.

the work paid off. the wedding looked amazing. i would have LOOOOOOOVED to be a guest. i'm thoroughly humbled. definitely envious of her abilities/ambition/willingness/wealth. and yet, somewhat disgusted at my envy.... because even though my wedding is very important to me and i have obviously found it worthy of quite a bit of time/effort/money... it's still just a wedding. one day. and certainly not worth time in the wee small hours of the morning that could be spent in blissful, non-wedding-obsessed slumber.

in any case, to assuage my troubled conscience, i then spent quite a bit more time poring over nytimes and bbc articles. to read about something "real".

i'm really not as tortured as i sound. but yes, every bit as neurotic.