Back to the world of blogs. I should say that at night the whole blogging process is eerily reminiscent of that horrid Doogie Howser TV show. Perhaps, like he, I can start by writing a quick re-cap of the day's events and follow it up with an indispensable life lesson along the lines of "...I was still pissed at [best friend], but I wasn't going to let a little money issue get in the way of our friendship. The important thing I learned is that some things are truly more valuable than gold..." With that, I'd turn off the light, get under the covers, and we'd roll the credits.

But I digress. So last weekend was fun. Friday night there was no one around. All my friends were pretty much on call working or taking it easy to get ready for call the following day. So I headed up into Seattle and went to the movies, all by myself. I saw "House of Sand and Fog" which was solid if not perfect. Great acting. For some reason, I always enjoy going to a movie solo-style. Its one of my best cures for a bad mood, actually. (Bowling and golf - NOT good cures). Prior to the movie, I had an hour and a half to kill in downtown Seattle. I got some coffee, walked around, and once again noted that Seattle has got to have my favorite downtown of any city I've spent significant time in. Its sleek looking, clean, walkable, hilly, beautiful, and has a great mix of restaurants, bars, and shops, and book stores. I really wished I lived up there rather than 30 minutes south. (Hopefully I'll be remedying this soon).

Saturday I putzed around the house most of the day and then went up into the city again. I was supposed to meet my friend John, a med school friend doing his residency at UW, for dinner. He got delayed, however, and thus I went and ate sushi all by myself in one of my fav places, "Wasabi Bistro" - a fairly expensive, dimly lit, chic sort of place with great fish. I went to the sushi bar and read "The New Yorker" making me some sort of sassy pseudo-intellectual. My waitress was absolutely stunning and she smiled at me - ALOT. I tried to see if she was smiling that much at everybody or if she was saving that extra something simply for our interaction. It was hard to tell, but I like to think the latter...

[modified]

Sunday I woke up late and went into Tacoma (the lesser city) for a good egg breakfast. I love a good breakfast place. (In this regard, New Orleans will never be topped). "The Harvester" is my place in Tacoma and its solid if not spectacular. Ate a little breakfast, then got some (more) coffee at the local shop, did a little reading, and finally headed home. On the way home, I decided to stop at Best Buy just to "browse". Four hours later and a thousand plus dollars later I was walking out with a brand new computer (I'm typing on it now). I definitely needed one given my previous purchase was 4 years ago. I'm not so sure I needed a high-end "gaming" system, though, but somehow that's what I ended up with. (A phone call from the store involving Eryn may or may not have been involved). Worse, within a single day Eryn had me buying and playing Battlefield 1942 - a game with all the makings of a highly addictive first person shooter. This is something I do NOT have time for. All this after successfully not playing any online games for over a year and a half. I suspect that there is a real test of will coming soon....

And that's that. This week at work is stressful. This is the mid-year "review" week where every resident gets sat down for 45 minutes with the chief resident and the program director and they all talk about your performance over the past 6 months. I hate this shit - always feels like I'm going to the principal. Anyway, mine is on Thursday, and I am NOT pumped about it. Besides clinical issues, residency is wrought with a million administrative tasks which I don't keep up well on and I suspect this is where most of the conversation will center. I'll never forget last year's review when I told them all I was thinking about quitting and probably would if it meant anything besides me going to Iraq. (See I was very, very depressed then). It won't be like that this year, but its weeks like this where I wish I could just run away from my job sometimes - the baggage never ends. Some day there will be a long blog entry about residency and medicine and what I think of it all. Not today, but some day.

And that's when I learned that some things are even more valuable than gold....