Where did the weekend go?

Although it was a long weekend for us as a family, since Ramy's 9/80 day was Friday, it surely didn't seem like it! Friday, I had my interview at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA in Loma Linda from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. We had three separate interviews with supervisors in the rotations selected as being of primary interest, plus a Q&A with the current interns, a tour, and an overview of the internship and rotations with the Training Director. It is a really great site! My friend Tony is currently one of the interns there, and he has been really pleased with it for his internship. Going to all of these interviews is making my ranking decisions much harder!

Friday afternoon, we took Ramy's Acura to get maintenance done in Diamond Bar. He and Rebecca had gone to visit his dad at the nursing home that morning and she hadn't had a nap all day. That evening, we ate at Panera Bread and just chilled at home. I was exhausted from all of my interviews that week, so I slept in on Saturday morning and awoke to the smell of bacon frying, as my sweet husband was cooking breakfast for us. We spent most of the day Saturday trying to put the house back into some kind of order. I got the rest of Rebecca's Christmas toys unpacked and put away. Ramy made a run to Goodwill and cleaned the downstairs, while I straightened up upstairs. Rebecca took a late nap, and then we headed out to Pasadena for dinner. We had initially planned on going to Brea Mall, but it was so late by the time we left that the mall wasn't going to be open, so we just decided we were in the mood for some good Italian food and headed to Pasadena. We were starving, and we weren't satisfied with the 40 minute wait at Louise's Trattoria, so we walked to Mi Piace to put our name on their list too. They had a 35-40 minute wait, and that wasn't too thrilling to our souls either, so we walked over to Il Fornaio and found that they had a 25 minute wait. By this time, we decided that Louise's was going to be the best bet and we'd already killed most of the waiting time by walking around in Old Town Pasadena, so we just stuck with that. They have the most amazing fettucine alfredo.

Sunday morning, we were at 7:30 mass and then ate breakfast at Panera Bread, before heading over to check out the new market in town. I bought some groceries there, and then we came back home and read the Sunday paper and generally relaxed and played with Rebecca. We also went to visit our friends Ana and Simon and to see their new baby boy, Simon Jr. (or is he a IIIrd?). He's so precious! Ramy bought some rank-smelling fish at the asian market and ate that for dinner, while Rebecca and I stuck to more normal food.

This afternoon, I had a phone interview with the University of California, Riverside student counseling center. I hate phone interviews. It is so hard to tell how you're doing, because you can't see any kind of nonverbal communication, and they try really hard to give you no feedback. I think I did okay, although I felt like I was stumbling over my words more than in any other interview I've done. But it was fine.

This is going to be a really long week, I'm afraid. I have an interview every day this week! This is my schedule:

Tuesday: Interview with Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Community and Correctional Psychology Internship program in South Los Angeles

Wednesday: Casa Colina in the morning and then interview at The Guidance Center in Long Beach

Thursday: Interview with City of Hope National Medical Center

Friday: Interview with San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health's STAR program (STAR is a component of the county's Mental Health Court, which diverts mentally ill individuals from the regular court system).

Thanks for all of the prayers on my behalf during this internship process. But even more importantly, thank you for the prayers of intercession for all of the people I've listed before in this blog. Please redouble your efforts on behalf of Caleb Gill. He has gotten some poor reports about his cancer progression and will be having more and different chemo.