Wow! One week down and 5 to go!

It's hard to believe that I have worked one week at Oregon State already. This weekend seems to be the time to check out the Oregon coast since they are still getting record snows in the Cascades. Just like Wyoming had the wyoroad.info to show the road conditions, Oregon has "tripcheck.com". Check it out to see how many road cameras they have. I'm going to include a few here to give you some idea of the extreme conditions just a "few" miles apart. We came through Detroit on our way in in the dark and it looked about like it does here today. This was just before we descended into the "rain country". If you can imagine that the cameras are supposed to show the roads like in the Detroit picture, The shortest way is through the Santiam pass where today the winds were 80 mph. The camera is apparently covered with snow, but just up the road it looks like this at Tombstone. Yeah, there is supposed to be a road there. I did find a picture that today looks like it did where we came across on road 22 except that the snow was deeper along the roads in the McKensie pass than it shows here in the Willamette pass. Anyway, these pictures were taken just before dark Friday nite, so you can see that we're heading for the coast in the morning. Lots of locals have given us hints, but you might know that there are different opinions as to what not to miss. Good thing we have a few more weeks to check it out.

Have we mentioned the "New Morning Bakery"??? Well, Panera is McDonalds in comparison.

http://www.peak.org/~newmorning/

I'm convinced you could eat there every nite and have something different each time... and Gooooood!!!. Last nite I had a Ham and Pinapple Panini and Georgia had a corn and roasted tomato soup.. Hmmmmm! Oh and a few other things including some deliceous cherry pie. The first nite we ate at Iovino's Italian Ristorante. Sorry Brianna, the Olive Garden is no match. You will notice that neither of these places is a chain. This town seems to have a number of "real" restaurants.

So what did I do in my first week at work. I ran into no less than 5 people I had known at the University of Illinois, in addition to meeting some more really nice people. "My" technicians (the people who keep me in line), Fuge, Carol, and Becky have made me feel welcomed and at home from the beginning. The faculty and students have made me feel needed. I have seen some cases that I haven't seen before. That's the fun in my business... there's always something new. I learned a new dictation system. I dictate into this little digital machine then e-mail the files to a stenographer in Eugene, Oregon. She puts the typed versions back on the Oregon State hospital system where I proof them and finalized them for the hospital record. I have 5 great senior vet students. The funny thing is that only one of them is from Oregon. One is from New Mexico, one from Montana, and if I remember correctly the other 2 are from California. (hope I got that correct.) We have spent several hours discussing x-ray cases some which we are working on in the hospital, some from an archive that previous radiologists have saved for study, and some that I brought on my laptop. We are using a 52 inch LCD screen so we can all see. Monday, I have to monitor lectures coming from Illinois for the sophomore class and will most likely start delivering lectures in addition. These poor students will have about 4 weeks of "double radiology". But we'll get through it. Boy am I rambling??? The big difference here is that rather than the Standardbred racehorses I saw in Illinois and Michigan, most of the horses here are Quarterhorses.... surprise, surprise, right???