Let's learn more about Dave

I think it's about time to update everyone about me, partly because I've got things to talk about, and partly because everyone else has gone to bed early because of school and work. Fortunately for me, I don't really have either of those. (sigh...) Well, I do have a "job," but I'm an on-call interpreter for medical appointements that only gave me about 5 hours last week. But I'm not complaining...loudly....

Anywho, Kathryn just got a job as kind of a receptionist at a job here in El Dorado Hills, which she's really excited about. She also helps take care of my grandma several times a week by helping her get in/out of bed, make food, and other things you don't want to read about. I'm sure she'll write a blog post about her job and everything soon.

So while she's bringing home the bacon...again...I'm out surfing. That's right, I am now an official Californian. I've lived in CA my entire life, minus the 6 years I was gone for BYU and Ukraine, but I have never gone surfing until yesterday. My good friend Chris Pritchett took me down to Santa Cruz yesterday and we surfed like you wouldn't believe. Chris actually knows what he's doing, so he managed not to embarass us. I, on the other hand, could hardly even sit on the board without tipping over. Sitting on that thing is harder than it looks! It doesn't help that the first thing you do is make yourself exhausted by paddling out to the waves. Once I got out there, I had to just lay on the board to catch my breath. My first attempts at surfing were a miserable failure. When I finally caught my first wave, I was lying too far forward on the board, so the tip dove into the water and I promptly flopped on my face. My next few tries weren't much better. I did finally manage once to stand up for a second, but the board got ahead of the wave a little bit, so when the wave caught up to me it knocked the board from under my feet, causing me to do a sweet scissor kick in the air that would have had David Beckham drooling. I then decided that the problem must obviously be with the board, so I switched with Chris. His had wax on it. Unfortunately for me, my wet suit only goes down to the knees, so the hair on my legs was constantly being pulled by that sticky wax. Quite uncomfortable, and I now have some sympathy for women (and those freakish men) who wax their legs. After taking a breather/warmer-uper and switching boards back, I was back in action, but only after exhausting myself once again by just swimming out to the waves. The waves started getting bigger (about 5 feet or so), so they were easier to catch, but there were quite a few surfers out there. I had a local guy give me a little lecture about cutting people off after I almost caused a collision. I was trying to play it cool while he was talking to me, saying chill surfer stuff like, "Yea bro, sorry, I totally know better than that," but then a small wave came and knocked me off my board while I was sitting on it, which eliminated any and all remaining respect that that gnarly brosiff may have had for me. My next few tries were actually a little better, and I even stood up for a full two seconds and was definitely moving in a semi-forward direction. I was quite proud of my accomplishment. Our trip was sadly cut slightly short though when a wave crashed in on me and flipped me and the board over, causing the fin of the board to slice my arm open just behind the elbow. It was like hitting your funny bone, except twice as painful. My pinky and ring finger instantly went numb and I couldn't move them for a while. They're ok now, but I looked pretty bodacious rockin' the bloody arm on my way back to the car.

All in all, the trip was quite fun. My only regret is that I really wish I had not watched anything on shark week before I went. Of course, the only thing I saw on shark week was a show about people who survived awful shark attacks but lost limbs in the process, so whenever I was sitting on my board waiting for a new wave to come, my thoughts would instantly turn to my extremities. I was preparing myself mentally for what would happen if I started feeling the teeth of some frisky aquatic monster. I know to go for the shark's eyes. Sharks always let go when you nail them in the eyes. I really wished that I had some sort of a shark tasor though. I would have felt safer. I just made sure that I wasn't ever the furthest one out from the shore, and that I could swim faster than those who were near me. Chris told me, "Don't worry if you see a fin out there. I've seen a lot of dolphins in Santa Cruz." Yea, don't panic. Right. I bet dolphins have sharp teeth too.... Fortunately for everyone involved, (especially for the dolphin's eyes), there were no sea creatures to be found.

In other news, on Thursday I got to interpret for a guy in the operating room! He was having an angiogram, which is a silly little term that means "We're going to stick a giant catheter up through an artery next to your *sensored* and into your heart, then inject some dye in and have a look around." Despite how unpleasant it sounds (although I think I would take it over a colonoscopy any day!), it's actually quite painless since arteries have no nerves, so the patient is awake for the whole procedure. Hence the reason I was invited to join the OR party. I got to put on the booties, a cute little suit, the mask and hair cover, as well as a ginormous lead vest. I sat next to the lady who looks at all sorts of monitors and interprets a bunch of numbers that don't make sense, sort of like in the Matrix. It was interesting, and all I had to do was interpret some things like, "Don't move," "You're going to feel this a little bit," and "How do you feel?" Unfortuantely they found out that the guy I was interpreting for needed a triple bypass surgery and was forced to cancel his upcoming anniversary vacation to Cancun with his wife, but who needs perfect beaches and hot bodies when you can have someone cut open your chest and play with your ventricles? Oh yea, and not dying of an imminent heart attack is a fairly good incentive as well.

Well, that's it for now. Sorry that I can't put spaces between my paragraphs. That annoys me. Peas.