Just to catch up any of my readers who have been out of touch for the last 3.5 years: I graduated, passed my boards and immediately went to work for a 3-clinic non-profit community health care organization, assigned to the clinic in my home town of Priest River, Idaho. It's been a huge learning experience, and I'm happy to say that I had a great mentor in the physician there, JB Fowler, and the best nursing and front office staff around. I wish I could say the same about the corporation's management...so here I am off to work in Alaska, where I've longed to return since I left in 2010. I fly to King Salmon on January 22 and then will be driven the 15 miles to Naknek, which is just about all the road there is. Unless you fly or come by boat in the summer, you can't get here. Well, you could theoretically come by snow machine or dog sled, but most people travel by air. I was planning to take my golden retriever and my malamute with me this first trip in, but then started thinking a little more seriously about schlepping two big shipping kennels, two big dogs, a big suitcase, my skis, and a guitar and decided that I should probably get settled in and get set up before I bring in the dogs. So I'm busy deciding what I really must have up there right away, packing those things into large plastic totes, drilling holes in the edges and securing the lids with wire tires and sending them via the US Postal Service. Not cheap, but the only way. UPS and Fed Ex don't seem to deliver up there. It's kind of hard to leave my patients here, most of whom are also friends, and it's hard to leave my mom who is in assisted living up here, and it's hard to leave my niece. But it's time for me to do this! I will be there at least two years, and who knows? Maybe forever. Everyone I've talked to who has worked and lived there has only good things to say. Stay tuned!