Blaine here, I am going to chime in to give a little update about a couple of things.  First, my birthday.  Second, the career path.  

The week before last was birthday week.  Now for the most part I don't always make too much of a occasion out of my own birthday but since I was turning 30, and since Megan knows so well how to make anybody feel pretty special on their big day, I went ahead and partied as much as I could.  We started on Wednesday morning with a birthday breakfast, after which I spent the rest of the morning and day at school (as usual).  Once the evening came along Megan continued the celebration with a birthday lasagna that I had specially requested for my birthday dinner.  She made chocolate cake and some friends came over and helped us get started on it while I opened presents.  

Received:

1 nice T shirt that fits

1 safety flag for use on the lake

1 life vest

1 large refrigerator magnet with a photo attached of me in the canoe

1 box set of Seinfeld season 7

Not a bad birthday.  The party actually continued for several days.  Thursday Megan treated me to nine holes for our now annual trip to the golf course (which we actually did last year on the day of my birthday), Friday we celebrated at the Orem Owls game while the stadium announcer wished me a happy 30'th over the loudspeaker.  Saturday, with some friends, we got into our boat and floated down the Provo River and had a BBQ birthday party out in the backyard.  Sunday, after having finished our original birthday cake, we went over to Steve and Tricia and family's house for more cake and birthday dinner.  Finally, after I thought the week had blown by, I arrived at school thursday morning to teach class and my classroom had been decorated and adorned with yet another birthday cake and a card from the thoughtful staff at Ameritech.  

Another few days has now passed without any extra celebration so I'm now under the impression that birthday week is over.  

As for the last few months of my 20's and now carrying over into my new 30's, most of my time has been taken up with attempting to get a foot in the door of what looks like a future.  I spent quite a bit of time preparing for the MCAT which I took in June.  It was fun to take a big test.  Its like running a marathon, a race that you know you'll never survive without a lot of consistent training and prep, all of which brings you to race day, where after the gun goes off, you basically just continue doing the same thing you did every day ...run.  I did prepare and train quite a bit with a lot of review materials, studied for many hours every day.  On test day, I sat down and gave five more hours of the same mental workout that I had done before.  And it was all over.  A month later they told me my score was a little above average among test takers, and a little below average among accepted medical school applicants.  What this meant to me was that my strategy of applying to as many of those schools whose students' average scores were still below mine and keeping my fingers crossed might still work.  

As for now, the first mountain of tests and applications are over.  Secondary applications are trickling in and I'm getting ready for the next major push to get into school by working on those and submitting them to schools.  I hope that over the next six months or so the direction we'll take to school might begin to materialize.  For now we work, and wait and see.