Saturday BT, Tasha, and I skinned up the Palmer Glacier on Mt. Hood. It was a warm, sunny, spring-like day, but the snow - if you could call it that - was bullet-proof ice above the Palmer lift. We decided not to carry on to the hog's back and instead enjoyed a leisurely lunch at 8500 feet, talking with other climbers and skiiers.

The hike up from Timberline Lodge was not so bad except for the fact that I did not have heal raisers on my skis. The pitch is pretty steep and one does not ascend with switchbacks. While we were up there we ran into the climbing party that required rescue the next day. These were all of friends of BT and Sasha. People ask "what were these guys doing up there is such bad weather?" The fact is, there is always a weather risk with outdoor activities, and especially so with mountaineering. The weather Saturday was so nice that it was hard to image every needing help getting of the mountain, but in extremely low visibility the simplest operations become very difficult. The rescue stirred a nation-wide media blitz because of the three climbers that died on Hood in December and the "courageous" little Velvet, the black lab that tumbled down into White River Canyon with Matty and the two women.

Anyway, on Saturday the three of had Indian food and saw "Host," a horror-genre spoof/political satire from South Korea about a giant river monster that terrorizes Seoul and the impotent and incompetent response from the Korean government, the WHO and the CDC.

Sunday Naomi and I watched another film from the International Film Festival (it has been really fun seeing the films this year), "Hula Girls" from Japan. The Willamette Week shredded this movie in a short review, which was really a shame as we both thought it was good film. Of course it was not a self-consciously clever indie film or a slick Hollywood production, which is what the reviewer seemed to be expecting.

This week I had a small epiphany. I know that neurosurgery is not a reasonable option considering my diverse extra-career interests, but it is what I really would like to do, and what I would do if I was 10 years younger. Now that I am nearing the end of the neuroscience course I can say with certainty that nothing else in school so far has piqued my interest as much. So I will make an effort to do some extracurricular work with the neurosurgery department, perhaps with trauma, since that will be most useful for emergency medicine and anesthesiology.