Fourth year of medical school keeps chugging along. I'm finished with all of my interviews for residency, and I'm working on my rank list (which is a huge relief!). I'm currently doing a rotation in Portland, ME focusing on Child Abuse and Neglect, so understandably, the last two days have been really tough as I've listened to some of the terrible things that these kiddos have been through. As I'm realizing more and more each month, running has become an important coping skill for me, so I went to the gym yesterday to run out some of what I was feeling. In addition, since I completed the Goofy marathon and a half challenge last month with my sister, and I'm currently training for the 2012 Boston Marathon, I thought it would be an appropriate time to debut the race medal rack that I made in December.
Basically, I got tired of seeing all the medals I've been collecting over the past four years end up in a box on the top shelf of my closet. As it turns out, the medal rack was extremely easy to make. First of all, I went to IKEA and purchased one of the utensil/towel racks with a 10 pack of hooks. At a craft store, I got a plank of wood (it was called an "inn sign") that would accommodate the length of the rack, as well as a wood burning kit. Using a power drill, I made two holes on each side of the wood plank, as pictured on the right. The top hole was drilled about half way, and the bottom hole was drilled all the way through the wood. 
This allowed me to attach the rack to the wood using short screws through the top holes, and to attach the rack to the wall with long screws through the bottom holes.Then I used the wood burner to make a design on the top -- it took me a while to get used to the burner, but my penmanship wasn't too bad...Lastly, I stained the entire wood plank with a neutral color, let it dry for 24 hours, and eventually attached the utensil rack to the wood plank. Voila! No more hiding for those medals!
