Tonight’s wine selection: Hermann J. Wiemer Johannesburg Riesling, Semi-Dry, 2003.

This wine is a very faint yellow color when poured, with a sweet grapefruit and pear aroma. It’s reminiscent of many other rieslings I’ve tasted. A mouthful of this wine rolls around the tongue with just a hint of viscosity, probably from the relatively high sugar content. There is a noticeable tingle, but no actual bubbles. There is a sweet, fruity taste that reminds me of Red Delicious apples and grapes (oddly enough), with hints of honeysuckle and nectar as the wine grows warmer in the glass. A surprisingly tart and non-sweet grapefruit finish rounds out the experience. The grapefruit nuances fade away ever so slowly, leaving behind a tantalizing balance of sweet and sour on the tongue.

This is an excellent, excellent white wine with enough body to stand up to bold food flavors. I can see enjoying a glass of this stuff with any sort of spicy, savory dish, or perhaps choosing a milder flavor to focus more on the essence of the wine itself. It should be noted, however, that fans of German rieslings should be prepared for a very different taste. The grape variety may be the same, but I’ve noticed that most American rieslings feature a very fruity taste while the Germans introduce more of a mineral nuance to theirs. One is not necessarily better than the other.

During my senior year at Cornell, I spent a couple of afternoons visiting wineries up and down the Finger Lakes. I’m therefore sentimentally biased towards New York wines, but objectively speaking I’ve not always found them to be so great. Not in this case; I would put this wine right at the top of anyone’s list. I’m not even a big fan of sweet wines, but this one has won me over. Speaking of sweetness, be aware that this is a Semi-Dry, but not a late-harvest. You should expect this wine to be sweet, but not cloyingly so. Wine Spectator apparently liked this $15 bottle enough to give it one of their highest ratings, proving that I’m not so crazy after all.

Welcome to the newly revised blairlee.com. My goal is to make the blog section easy to read and content-centric, with just a splash of color. Let me know if you can’t stand it…but I really like it.

There are currently two links in the upper-right corner of this page. The “Gallery” link will take you to a collection of some of the better photographs I’ve taken; it’s a bit empty at the moment, but expect it to fill up soon. There are plenty of good shots from the past few years, and now, having just bought a real camera two days ago, I think there will be many more to come. The “Cars” link will take you to my old car pages. I haven’t updated them in a while. I plan to make a couple of summary updates on the pages that need them (most notably my E30 M3 project), but they’ll remain pretty static after that.

There will be more changes to come, I’m sure; for now, feel free to look around.

The new site is all but complete. Expect changes soon!

Back to the story. I went on three interviews in September: EVMS on 9/9, VCU on 9/15, and Drexel on 9/22. By my third interview, I’d come to the realization that medical schools are not easily ranked. While there is some variance, every one of the country’s 125 schools has to adhere to the LCME’s standards, which are understandably quite rigorous; as a result, any U.S. medical school graduate is capable of being a great doctor. However, not every school approaches the standard curriculum the same way, and not every school places the same emphases on the same topics. Furthermore, each school seems to have its own personality and character as expressed through their students.

I took some detailed notes of each school after coming home from the interview, but I’ll spare you all the boredom; perhaps I’ll put them somewhere more static for the truly curious. Suffice to say that after those three interviews, and the two that came in October, I haven’t yet found a school that receives high marks in every category. Every one of them has many characteristics I like and a few that I don’t like. In the end, if I’m fortunate enough to have a choice, I know I’m going to have a difficult time making a decision.

…Okay, so I’m being slightly coy in that last paragraph. I do, in fact, have a choice. But I’ll get into that a bit later.

To me, the worst part of the application process is not the money, the essay(s), or the test(s). It’s the WAITING.

I barely spoke of it here, but the eight weeks that passed between the date I took the MCAT and the night I actually got my scores were full of obsessive agony. I went to the AAMC’s testing history site an average of once a day, even though I knew that nothing would happen until mid-June. I spent the first few days after the test trying to recall all of the sections in it, and chastising myself for a few questions that I realized I’d gotten wrong. Kim gracefully put up with all of my MCAT-related conjecture and monologue, but I’m sure she was close to just telling me to shut up and wait. It can’t be helped; the MCAT is such a large part of the admissions equation that obsession is to be expected. I’m just happy that I don’t have to take it again, even though I enjoyed the experience.

There was another waiting period after my AMCAS application was verified and before the secondaries started to come back. The rumor was that medical schools were able to access our AMCAS profiles no earlier than 7/5 or so. In my case, my first secondaries started to arrive around July 7, which made for a wait of about five weeks.

Of course, once your secondary application and reference letters are submitted, the next step is to wait for an interview. For me, these started to trickle in in late August. I was emailed about EVMS on 8/22, Georgetown on 8/24, VCU on 8/29, Wake Forest on 9/6, and Drexel on 9/12. Of course, with the exception of one recent rejection, no one else has gotten back to me. I’ve verified that my application is complete everywhere but Duke and UNC, which means that all I can do is wait. If you haven’t been in these shoes, you can only imagine the anxiety and frustration of just sitting around, waiting to hear back from an institute that might be your home for the next four years.

So this takes us through August. I’m not done waiting yet, but I did go on some interviews. I’ll go over them briefly in the near future, but I won’t go into much detail until later, in case the “right” people have stumbled across my website.

Development of my new blog is coming along. Expect the switch in the next week or two.

As far as medical school goes…when we left off, it was late night on June 1st and I’d just submitted my AMCAS application. My file was verified by AMCAS on 6/8, and secondaries started to arrive in the first week of July. Secondaries come in all sort of flavors; some asked for no more than a signature and a check, while others had multiple essays. As of today, I’ve yet to complete two secondary apps. I’ve had Duke’s secondary in front of me for a while, but it’s by far my longest and I just haven’t had the guts to sit down and work my way through it yet. UNC has yet to send me anything beyond acknowledgement that they received my primary app; this, apparently, is not unusual for UNC. The rest of my secondaries have been submitted. This process took me through most of July and August.

In related news, I got my MCAT scores on 6/15. I’m satisfied with the results: 37R total, 13 in Physical Sciences, 12 in Verbal Reasoning, R in Writing Sample, 12 in Biological Sciences. I think I could’ve done slightly better, but 37 already puts me in the 98th percentile of all MCAT test takers. I’m not complaining.

Things started to get interesting in the application process in August, but that’s a story for another day.

There’s a high likelihood that we will be moving within a year, which means that it’s always a good idea to cast off dead weight and prevent the accumulation of junk. It occurred to me that our small wine collection has mostly been gathering dust since Kim got pregnant; ever the good samaritan, I have volunteered to take care of that problem over the next few months. And since I’ve always liked wine, but have never been good about remembering what I’ve drunk, perhaps it would be a good idea to share my tasting notes here.

So here we go: Wolf Blass Presidents Selection Shiraz, 2001. Here’s what the winery has to say about it:

“At the completion of each vintage particularly high quality fruit is set aside by the Wolf Blass winemakers for blending into the Presidents Selection wines. These wines aim to be the truest expression of the philosophy of our founding president Wolf Blass who has always been passionate about three principles in winemaking - quality, character and consistency.”

This is a dark garnet and purple wine with a faint aroma of sweet, prune- or date-like fruit. Overall the nose is pleasant but unremarkable. I also notice a fair amount of oak in the nose. Based on the color of the wine, this could hold up to a few years of aging without problems. The palate is rich, reminiscent again of sweet fruit and a hint of pepper/spice; the oaky aroma gives way to a much mellower sweetness that is well balanced by the tannins in this wine. There is a smooth, slightly peppery finish.

Overall, this is an enjoyable wine that should stand up well to a hearty dinner with friends. My parents brought this bottle to us some time ago, so I don’t know how much it costs; I would estimate it to be in the range of $15-20, rising a good cut above the usual table wine fare but falling somewhat short of excellent. While this wine fulfills its expectations quite well, it lacks the depth, complexity, and elegance of some of the shiraz I’ve been privileged to taste. A good value nonetheless, if my guess is accurate.

Looking back, I see that my last school-related journal entry is much older than I’d previously thought. A lot has happened on that front since then, and I plan to present it in chunks for easier digestion. If I may tease the audience for a moment, though, I will say that my medical school application(s) are in great shape.

On a side note, I’m toying with switching publishing systems from Blogger to WordPress. If things look very different around here one day, that will be why.

Ooops….so sorry for the lapse, folks. I’ve been rather busy, and I feel quite guilty for not updating my journal in so long. Of course, the problem with putting off updates is that the news keeps piling up, which only makes the task harder and makes me feel more guilty.

I have a lot of medical school news to share. In fact, I got an email the other day from a previously unknown reader who was curious to know where I was in the whole process. On the off chance that there are several of you anonymous readers out there, I promise to update you all very soon. First, however, there’s something a little more important that must be made known:

Our first indication was in early March, the way many couples find out — the home pregnancy test. “Wait a minute, there are two lines here!” Kim exclaimed, and there was much jubilation. She’d been ready and willing to start a family for some time, but I had been hesitant for a number of reasons. For one, I had felt supremely unprepared for fatherhood. I barely felt comfortable with taking care of myself; how was I ever supposed to take care of a vulnerable, impressionable little baby? Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, I had no idea what I actually wanted to do with my life. The frustrations of my previous career and the lack of direction for the future convinced me that I was not in a position to have any children of my own.

I promised Kim that I’d be willing to start our family once I knew what I wanted to do — once we had stabilized our finances, started our nest eggs, and all of the other things that people are supposed to do. All it really took, though, was for me to focus on medicine. Once I actually jumped ship and dove into my schoolwork, I started to notice little changes within myself. It was still a very scary experience to see and hold a newborn baby, but suddenly I felt a bit of excitement and longing at the same time. Cheesy commercials — the kind that depict children growing into adults, going to college, getting married — started to pull at my emotions when they’d never so much as grabbed my attention before. The thought that Kim and I could bring new life into this world, experience the miracles of development, birth, and growth, began to look less intimidating and more exciting. I finally realized that, while still absolutely terrified, having children might not be such a bad idea any more.

Of course, financially speaking, this is not the best time to be expanding our family. We cut our family income in half 18 months ago, we’re about to take on massive debt, and the first years of medical school are well known for their intensity. With less money, time, and energy than before, it may not be the “best” time to do this…but there is no “best” time. Part of my delay in coming around was based on the belief that I was not prepared enough for fatherhood. The truth is that I’ll never be prepared for fatherhood until I’m a father, we’ll never have enough money for parenthood until we’re parents, and we’ll never have enough time for our baby until we have one ourselves. What’s more, I don’t see how our financial or time situations will change appreciably for several years. I don’t want to chase after toddlers as a middle aged man, and I don’t want to be wheelchair-bound before they get out of the house. The time to start, therefore, is now.

I’m still terrified. But you know what? I’m also excited, very excited. I can’t wait to meet our baby, can’t wait to watch h__ grow and learn more about the world around h__. I fully expect there to be problems along the way, and I’m sure I’ll wonder why I ever wanted to do this. In the end, however, I know we’re making the right choice by starting now.

Oh, what’s that? Did I leave out something in that last paragraph?

We’re having a girl. She was rather coy about giving up her gender at the 20-week ultrasound exam. Our technician wasn’t able to figure it out; every time we tried, our baby kept her secret to herself — legs crossed, umblical cord in the way, whatever it took to hide her identity. The doctor was eventually brought in, but he didn’t have much luck, either, until the very last minute of the exam. Our baby did a little cartwheel with her legs, and in a split second, he saw what he needed to see. We confirmed it during the 28-week ultrasound and “4-D” ultrasound scan; the picture above is from that visit. She’s due 11/10, with a scheduled induction date of 11/17. Kim’s doing very well; she’s getting tired more easily, and going up stairs is no longer easy, but that’s all to be expected.

So there you have it. More news later; for now, I need to geet ready for the last F1 race of the season. Nothing like staying up to watch a live race being held in China.

“Liftoff of space shuttle Discovery, beginning America’s new journey to the moon, Mars and beyond.”

Welcome back to space, guys. I took a break out of my workday to head over to the bookstore and watch the launch on their large TV. I can’t help it — space exploration is just so exciting, so romantic to me. I love that we continue to push the boundaries of our knowledge and reach for the stars; in this case, I mean this quite literally. I think that a launch is a very visceral, very tangible symbol of our human nature — our desire to reach out, explore, learn more about ourselves and our universe, both despite and because of the risks. We do this all the time in the sciences and the arts. But few breakthroughs are as visually stunning and emotionally swelling as a fire-charged escape from our planet’s gravity, a quite literal release from the traditions that we once thought were impenetrable. Our explorers are our future, and I hope to be one in my own field some day.

Hmm, been a while since my last post.

I have about 10% of an essay completed about Kim’s reunion weekend over a month ago. I hope to finish it at some point, but we’ll just have to see. At the moment, I’m consumed with completing the first of my secondary applications. I suppose the downside to applying to 15 schools is that I will eventually have 15 secondaries to fill out, some of which have a number of short essay questions. It’s going to be a fun summer….