One year later....

Whoa- what happened to the time?!  I thought island time ran slower than elsewhere?!?
It was one year ago almost to the day when this blog and my adventures living in Hawaii began, and I can't believe how fast the time went by! Part of that is certainly the lack of seasons on the island- yes, there is 'rainy' and 'dry' seasons, which I can now feel the difference between - but definitely not a quartered year from seasons like most of the states. So I think it becomes a little harder to mark the passage of time when it overall feels just about like the day before =).
Probably another part of how fast the year has gone is a steady increase in volume at work. The hospital is putting out more advertising for our emergency hours, most of our long time clients now make use of the late night hours and several hospitals on the island send their after hours cases to our clinic (especially if it is feathered!!). My work schedule also changed around March of this year and has put me in the clinic an insane amount more than the previous fall- during which time my oldest sister often asked if I was working at all since I seemed to be 'off' more days than 'on', and if all jobs in Hawaii offered that kind of work schedule!
Good news here- the work schedule is changing again in September with the addition of 2 new doctors to our staff. Hopefully this will lighten the load a bit on each of us, and possibly facilitate the notion of leaving work on time! While these new doctor additions should help the other docs, I do worry that it will put a lot of stress on our receptionists and techs as we already seem under-staffed in these areas and they are likely to be put to the test for a while until we find our new groove. Hopefully it will all work out!
The first post on this blog was about traveling West and the stories I encountered en route. Now I'm writing from Las Vegas during an awesome 8 hour lay-over on my journey back East to visit friends and family.  So far not a whole lot to share- other than all flights leaving the islands were over-sold apparently and I met quite a few people who had been trying to leave Oahu for the last several days!!  I figure at some point you shouldn't fight such a strong opposition and just decide to stay on a warm, tropical island instead =).  I should have told them that a year in Hawaii would pass in the blink of an eye!
More to come...