I’m finally home from 4 days in LA, away from my wife :-(. My mom says that’s longer than she and Dad have ever been apart. Well, it’s not like I was free and enjoying myself constantly… I was working three 12-hour days supporting a hospital that was “Going-Live” with Epic software. It was a little overwhelming at first… considering I haven’t really seen the apps I was “supporting” since I went through training 6 months ago. But after awhile, I became a little more comfortable and could sucessfully answer most of the questions I was asked. I spent the first two days working on a general med-surg floor, but on the third day, I weasled my way onto floor three: Labor & Delivery, FCC (Post-Partum care), and the NICU. I didn’t get to see a ton of babies, but I saw a few! I guess I also feel thankful that we’ll be having ours in a smaller hospital with (hopefully) less competition for attention. With 12-hour shifts, I really only had time to get up, go to work, come back to the hotel, grab some food, and fall asleep. So I kept pretty busy, but I did miss Amanda a bunch.

On Saturday it was snowing pretty heavily in the midwest. Since we flew through Minneapolis, I was prepared for the chance of a possible delay. What I didn’t expect was an hour delay for “maintenance to fix something in the cabin,” a thirty-minute delay for a group of seniors from Honolulu which had apparently not “checked in,” and then two hours of sitting on the plane while we backed up, returned to the gate, shifted luggage around, connected to the building’s generators for power, and then wait forever in line to get de-iced before we took off. Once we were airborn, however, it was just a 37-minute flight to Madison. I think I watched one, maybe two chapters of Return of the King between “you may now use portable electronic devices” and “prepare for arrival.” Once in Madison, the roads were terrible and it took me a frightening 90 minutes to get home, stopping a couple of times to see if people in the ditch had been helped. Thankfully, Amanda’s “holiday” parade in Darlington had been canceled, so she didn’t have to run off to that.

I don’t think Baby Flessner got the message that she wasn’t supposed to grow much while I was gone. But Amanda’s looking more pregnant than ever. It’s really awesome. 🙂