Hello blog - it’s me again.

Last week was one of the worst weeks I have experienced in 2004. First and foremost, my lady issues resurfaced in earnest. Decisions were made, and unmade, and the whole undying saga gave last week an air of pervasive stress, the full drama of which was distinctly agonizing. On top of that was work, which picked up ten-fold, and gave me a lot more to do in the setting of a lot less of mind to do it with. The increased patient load made my staff quite irritable as well. Furthermore, I remain in continual debate about what to do with my life, career-wise, and that uncertainty was only further exacerbated. My bad haircut was more fuel to the fire. Also, in times of stress, I tend to break out – by mid-week I had a humongous zit right in the center of my forehead. I had picked at it severely, making it even uglier and scabbed over – the whole effect of which made about half the people I encountered stop me and literally ask, “Dude, what happened to your head?” This sort of thing is NOT a mood elevator. With all this on my plate, I had to end the week by preparing and giving a 15-minute formal case presentation (on “Acquired long QT interval” for anyone interested) in front of the entire Department of Medicine during Grand Rounds while all dressed up in my Class A Uniform. Stress, stress, and more stress.

I’m glad the week is behind me.

The good new from last week is that I have officially signed a lease to live in Seattle. I went ahead and took the smaller (655 Sq ft) apartment located right in the heart of the city. Now all that remains is the sheer pain in the ass of moving. But, I’m really pumped about my new neighborhood. After signing the lease, I spent the day exploring the surrounding area on foot. My favorite coffee shop in Seattle is about 4 blocks away. An entire restaurant row is about 4-10 blocks away. A cool, old school, independent theatre is about 3 blocks up the street (where I saw “Bowling for Columbine” years ago). There are some great breakfast places and tons of restaurants all around. There are several bars, including a sassy little irish bar within view of my apartment window. The bar has a pool table, dart boards, and a decent juke box. (And if I get tired of that place, there are about 4 or 5 other bars around in a 3 block radius, several of them gay bars – so I can finally meet a good man). Finally, it’s about a 7-minute walk into the heart of downtown Seattle, admist all the sky-scrapers, mega-theatres, super restaurants, shopping centers, and the amazing new Seattle public library – which is apparently the coolest. A little further than that is the famous fish market and all my favorite sushi places. Hell, if I was really motivated, I could walk about 20-25 minutes and go to a Seahawks game. So I’m pretty damn pumped about the new digs. Now I have to only figure out how to fit all my stuff into a smaller space. I think I will be getting rid of a lot of crap…

This Saturday, I go to pick up my keys and the place is officially mine. I have my old place up until the end of June as well, which means I’ll be moving piece-meal. I’m finished with cardiology at the end of this week but next week I start the dreaded wards again. The timing is horrible, but this ward month will be a little different in that it will be a 2 resident, 1 intern ward month. (the only such month that exists all year, due to the scheduling and simply how the numbers worked out). The downside of this is that I will be doing more intern type work. The upside is that both the other resident and the intern I’m working with are very strong and so we should be some sort of super efficient team. I’m hoping the overall pain effect is less. It will be nice, on call days, to rotate the pager every few hours rather than have it on and be solely responsible every damn minute of every damn call day. We’ll see how things go, I suppose. But it shouldn’t be as bad as last ward month. And after that, summer baby, sweet summer.

Last Saturday night I went and made the unfortunate mistake of seeing Shrek 2 – Electric Boogaloo. Another title for this movie could have been “Yet Another Piece of Shit, Cash In, Rehash from Mike “One-trick-Pony-with-yet-another-Scottish-accent” Myers”.

Needless to say, I recommend avoiding that piece of tripe.


And now, I’m back to work – this whole week I’m on cardiology nights. 6 pm- 8 am. Ah, my poor, poor body clock.