Sunday, July 26, 2009

beginnings

Well, I saw my first real client at 6:00 on Friday. And I was expected to do real therapy. In a real session. I guess you could say that the reality of the situation was what struck me.

He's an adolescent male who does not want to be in therapy. He did not make eye contact with me for the entire 50 minutes. He also did not say a word. We passed the session in awkward silence, broken only by my futile attempts to engage him every few minutes. Awesome.

On the plus side the whole experience inspired me to create a new drink upon arriving home. I call it the tequila sec. It's equal parts tequila and triple sec, which is pretty much all I had on hand It's surprisingly good, though ... at least I was surprised at its goodness. But maybe at that point my expectations had been lowered to the point that clam juice and diet slice would have seemed fantastic to me. It's hard to say.

It's all right though. If that's all he's got in his arsenal I can handle it. And if it's a battle of the wills that he's after I'll be up to the task. I'm confident in my ability to wait him out. Hopefully healing can be found on the other side.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

update time

First I'd like to wish a very happy Screw England day to my readership. Stupid Redcoats.

Wow. A lot sure has happened since I last posted three weeks ago.

1) Darcy defended her dissertation. (Wooooo!)

2) We took a brief vacation to San Francisco, the first time either of us made it up there despite living in Pasadena for the past 4 years. We had a great time, although it was a bit of a struggle to balance our need for rest after a particularly stressful end to the quarter (see point 1 above) with our desire to see as much of the city as possible while we were there. We did what we could, and everything that we couldn't do, well, we left those things undone.

3) Then we both got right back into the swing of things with an intensive class (Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Clinical Practice) that just ended on Thursday. Which also marked the official end of Darcy's coursework at Fuller.

So it's been a three week flurry of nonstop activity (I didn't even mention my preparations for the beginning of practicum, Tracy's wedding, or Danny's pick up three-on-three basketball tournament) and - aided by a holiday weekend - I've finally had enough time to catch my breath and punch out a blog post.

An aside: Congratulations to Al Franken. Now let's get to work on healthcare or cap and trade, shall we?

Here's a few pictures from our trip:

Here's me thinking about something or another at Fisherman's Wharf. Let's say that I'm thinking about Ghirardelli chocolate ice cream. It's quite good.


AT&T Park, home of the best stadium food I've yet encountered. There's also some team that plays their home games there that I'm not especially fond of. We got to see the Angels complete their sweep of the home team :)

A large orange-ish bridge that is apparently quite popular with the locals.

The wife and I in front of said bridge. We walked most of the way across it. Then our feet started hurting. Then we had to walk all the way back. Which left Darcy in a fantastic mood.