All About Dr. Bloom

Dr. Bloom’s interests away from the office are diverse, eclectic, and to some extent, unexpected. 

Both of her children, Zach and Margaret, are West Virginia University alumni and that state and the school (and its sports teams) each still has a special place in her heart.  So much so, in fact, that Dr. Bloom is a season ticket holder for both West Virginia football and basketball.  She bought a patch of West Virginia land and a 200-year-old one bedroom log cabin that she and her husband, Eric, have been renovating in their spare time.  Dr. Bloom enjoys spending time at the cabin and hiking through the woods with her dog, Daisy, who loves to roam around, sniff, roll in stinky things, and chase deer and turkeys. Not surprisingly, part of Dr. Bloom’s time in West Virginia is spent giving Daisy baths.

Dr. Bloom loves music and still plays the piano at least once a year.  She will also, with little encouragement, switch on the karaoke machine to belt out some of her favorite tunes.  Her musical tastes span a unique spectrum that includes Doris Day, Carpenters, Talking Heads, Buck Owens, and Merle Haggard.  In fact, the few lucky people that have heard her rendition of Merle’s Swinging Doors were rendered (in their own words) “speechless.”  She is still brought to tears by the West Virginia University Marching Band’s pregame show version of Aaron Copeland’s Simple Gifts (even though she no longer has a kid in the band) and loves to sing Take Me Home, Country Roads when the Mountaineers win.

Checking out new restaurants (especially when she’s in New York City for the annual Vision Expo) is high on Dr. Bloom’s list, as is cooking, and trying out new recipes.  She’s a big fan of Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, Ree Drummond, Lucinda Scala Quinn (the spurtle lady from QVC), and more recently, the Maman Cookbook (Check it out. It’s a good one!). 

She also has a bit of a compulsion for MacKenzie-Childs merchandise and is expert (with daughter Margaret) at navigating the company’s annual barn sale in Aurora, NY.  While the salespeople might not know her at sight, Dr. Bloom’s husband is convinced that the shipping department folks can recite her shipping address from memory.

Finally, Dr. Bloom loves travelling and has had a few opportunities to test out her high school French skills in both Paris and in Normandy, where the locals marveled at her amazing command of rudimentary and grammatically tortured phrases combined with pantomime.  That experience has no relationship whatsoever to her planned trip this summer to the Scottish Highlands and London. 

No matter how far she travels, though, Dr. Bloom always loves returning to the Weber Vision Care premises to work with the best optometric staff in the world taking care of their lovely patients!