Untitled

This past weekend was my last “golden” weekend for the next 4 weeks. For non-medicine types, a golden weekend is a FULL weekend off – the kind that people with “normal” jobs get. Yes, its tough but true; I’m back in the hospital life this month with a HOSPITALIST month. The hospitalist month is sort of like a watered down ward month. I run one of the four teams on the wards, but my team only has myself, a nurse practitioner and a staff. There are no interns. The upside is that I take no overnight call. I do take ER call once a week (Wednesdays from 7 am to 6 pm). I also take every other patient that comes in overnight from the night float team (night float = team that is on at night for the month during the week and “hands off” (gives) their patients to one of the ward teams each morning). So I take patients Monday through Thursday and on Wednesday I take a full day’s worth of call but no overnight. Confusing enough? Good. Let’s review: Downside: It’s essentially a watered-down ward month, I take patient’s 4 days a week (mostly from night float but ALL day on Wednesday), and I have no interns to help me do all the ward CRAP. The upside: No overnight call, and I only have to deal with the ER once a week for 12 hours.

In essence, the hospitalist month is not quite as bad as the wards – but its close. Ugh – not fun, regardless. I only get one day off a week. For this month I will take Sundays pretty much off. Any guesses why?

So, this WAS my last golden weekend, and I spent it with one good old Jonny P “Y” and the Yarris clan. It was good fun. Jon and the team (to include Lainie, 3-year-old Jake and 7-week-old Ella) drove up on Friday afternoon.

Gwen and I met Jon et al for dinner in downtown Seattle and caught up. I’ve sort of known this for a while, but it still amazes me to see how much having kids changes everything. A simple dinner out turns into a full-bore chess match involving the parents and the kids. Keeping Jake, who is honestly a pretty damn well behaved boy, occupied for an hour or so at a single table was a significant task for team Yarris. Put lil’ Ella in tow and you’ve got a parental team that needs to be in mid-season form to keep a mere dinner from spiraling out of pasta-flinging control. Luckily, team Yarris was up to the task.

Lil’ Jake is the coolest. He’s 3 years old and quite incapable of merely walking anywhere. He loves to run. Sprint, sprint, sprint. He’s a good kid, and I can’t believe how much he looks like a little Jon. His favorite move? The high-five. I must have given that kid about 50 high-fives over the course of the weekend. And he’s fired up EVERY time. Which made me fired up. It was basically a vicious cycle.

On Saturday I met Jon et al down at the Seattle aquarium. The aquarium is pretty neat. Watching Lil’ Jake run around the aquarium in wide-eyed wonder? The coolest. Following that we went on a 1 hour boat ride around the Puget Sound. Given the benevolent weather (nice and sunny during this famous Northwest transition period to gloom), it was a nice ride, full of gorgeous views and narrated facts. On Saturday night we went to dinner again, this time again accompanied by Gwen.

Saturday night after dinner we retired to the Yarris hotel room and we had some dessert. Lil’ Ella “activated” at this point (she had been so quiet the entire rest of the trip) and apparently the only soothing remedy is deep knee bends. More than you’re average rocking motion, deep knee bends are required to soothe her when she’s pissed.

Gwen pulled the whole “can I hold the baby?” routine which Lainie was happy to oblige. Funnily enough, Gwen was all sorts of into that kid, rocking her back and forth, looking into her eyes. Gwen, who likes to ignore the old mommy clock most of the time, was definitely schooled by mother nature that night.

Anyway, the whole weekend was a success. After leaving Jon and the team in the hotel, Gwen and I met up with George and a female “friend” of his in the city and had a few drinks. Sunday I watched my Giants light up the Cleveland clowns and all was right with the world. Today it was back to work and that isn’t so much fun.

This Friday my friend Cameron from med school and his girlfriend are rolling into town for a while. The key word is “while”. Cam is staying for nearly two weeks, and his girlfriend is with him for the first 8 or 9 days or so. What hotel did they book you ask? Why, it’s hotel “My apartment”. I have mixed feelings about it. It will be great to see Cam, for sure, and meet his woman, but I do like my space, I will be busy, and my apartment is tiny. Luckily, Cam is easy to live with (I have experience) and it should all be fine. They also promise to take multiple field trips for days here and there so I may yet retain some me time.

(I just hope Cam’s girlfriend understands my need for online Madden at certain critical times during the week (essentially nightly). It may also not be fun stepping over the two of them at 6 am (when I leave for work this month) on a daily basis.)

In other news, I’ve updated my blog to the right. That “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” book was a great sci-fi sort of novel, for anyone who’s interested. More on it later. I’ve just picked up the old “Bringing Down the House” of which everyone has raved about and so far am enjoying it well enough. I have trouble putting it down each night, to be quite honest.

That’s enough blogging for now, I suppose. Here’s the list of things still to write about (to keep me reminded):

-Full book and movie reviews from the past 4 months
-The DRAMA
-That damn story with Pete and I (I started writing that thing a week and a half ago. I started it so involved, really detailed, and am about a third of the way through. Now I don’t know quite how to finish it, I want to half ass out of it and just tell the story simply, but the “full treatment” would be way more entertaining. So now it’s essentially buried under a massive stack of other stuff to do. We’ll see if it ever sees the light of day. It essentially involves me, Pete, a LOT of alcohol, a free hot dog, a girl’s huffy bike, four street bums who potentially sell drugs, over 100 dollars, and….POT. More later. I’m honestly still shaking my head about it every time I think about it. Aw nuts.

Anyways, only 6 more days until the NFL resumes again.
I WISH I WAS A LITTLE BETTER BLOGGER...

I wish I was a baller... Long time, no blog. Same old, same old. The reason this time? Well, its most likely tied to a time-sucking new pastime I’ve discovered. Online Madden. That game has me hooked. A week or so ago I went out and bought a network adaptor for my PS2, a router, and some cable. Now, I’m playing video game football against yahoos all over the country. It’s a total blast.

Kurt Warner and the rest of my Giants now face off against other teams all over the place. I’m matching wits head to head with other online Madden coaches with names like “Dahedbussa” (Say it phonetically), “Pugsplayas” and the like. Good stuff. My record is currently 3-3. The Giants are not a great team in this year’s Madden, and I have limited experience playing against other humans. One of my losses was an unlucky system disconnect (my internet went down). The other 2 were legit. I’ve had some nice wins as well. All in all it’s good fun. And man does it suck some time.

Other than that, life has been busy. Last weekend I went to Canada with George and Pete’s taint on Saturday. We stayed over in a hotel in Vancouver on Saturday night and went out on the town and got absolutely smashed. Sunday we woke up and headed to a Canadian sports bar (yes, it’s a funny phrase) and watched football hungover all day.

Vancouver is a fun city in a multitude of ways, but the best thing about it is the sushi. Some of the best and cheapest sushi I’ve ever had. All Nigiri come at 99 cents per piece. And that’s in Canadian money, which is essentially monopoly money. That translates to about 60 or 70 cents US for a piece of fish. It’s about 1.30 or so for 2 pieces. You do the math – that’s about 5 orders of Nigiri for under 10 bucks. And the fish is amazing.

I love me some Canada. CFL football is also the coolest. Why I haven’t started a CFL fantasy league yet I haven’t a clue.

Oh there’s so much more to tell about the past few weeks but I don’t even know where to begin. In order for this blog to work, I should really be posting stuff daily. I still owe the story of Pete and I from TWO weekends ago. I still owe the story of my life in terms of the female situation. (It has settled out quite a bit, thankfully). I still owe a lot of book discussion and some movie discussion. The whole of it feels so overwhelming that I don’t even know where to begin. So I think I won’t – it’s Friday after all. We’ll see what I get to actually explaining. Though this blog is starting to feel more like work than anything. Yet another series of unwritten documents (so much of my work life is mired in documentation). It’s hard to sit down and type anymore. Clinic notes, commish notes, blog entries, emails. I’m behind on all of them with the possible exception of clinic notes from work. Apparently I’m supposed to keep up on those at the least.

Hmm, what else. This weekend the one and only Jon Yarris is rolling in with his family. I haven’t seen old Jon and the team for awhile, so I’m pumped to do some hanging out. I can’t believe how much having kids changes everything. I’m psyched to re-meet Jake and see the new little girl and Lainie as well. Should be good stuff – a full report to come later.

More football on Sunday – this time I will watch another nerve wracking Giants game against the Cleveland Browns. Watching the Giants may lead me to start chain smoking. Did you see the Giants almost lose despite forcing SYXX turnovers last week? That kind of stuff is taking years off my life. Intolerable.

Oh, this post is all over the road. I’ve definitely lost a step in the entertaining writing portion of my life. Too many clinic notes.

This is a 28 yo male who comes in to clinic today concerned he can’t keep up with his blog responsibilities. Pt’s past medical history includes….

Yada yada. Friday afternoon. I’m out. I’ll try and keep up more.


ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE

It’s late Tuesday night and there are reports of Gulf Coast residents fleeing their homes and heading north as “Crazy Ivan” looms near. After living in New Orleans for four years it’s crazy to think back at some of those crazy storms I experienced while there. I think I went through about 5 hurricanes, 2 bad ones.

I think that the worst two such hurricanes were during my first year. I distinctly remember driving home once from school in about 2-3 feet of water while praying my car didn’t stall or flood – all this while driving through some horrific projects where I stuck out like a serious sore thumb. Why was I in the projects? Because the main roads were clogged with traffic and I decided to pull of and take my chances. Foolish move.

Every time I got the old Pathfinder over 5 mph, the waves of water would lap up into people’s homes and they were none too pleased about it. Undergoing intense death stares from behind dilapidated windows, I drove about 2 mph and slowly, ever so slowly got home. I’m not sure what would have happened if that car had stalled…

Another time I remember leaving the city on one of the last planes out as a hurricane hit. This was also during my first year of med school. The plane was headed for San Diego, and the airport actually closed mere hours after my flight took off. It was one of the (many) times where I ended up extending my trip – this time I did it actually because the New Orleans airport still wasn’t open on the day I was supposed to return.

I shall have to give old Cameron a call and see how he’s faring…

In other news I’m still working on a written piece about the wild Saturday night Pete and I had. I thought I would complete it tonight but other things here at home prevented me from doing so. I also need to mop up a story regarding THE DRAMA. Look for both of these things on the old WCD soon, hopefully tomorrow night or by the weekend.

I also owe this blog some serious book discussions. (And, I owe Mick Flicks the same for movies). I’m also way behind on my emails. So much to write, so little time.

I watched some Monday Night Football last night featuring the Green Bay Packers. It always astounds me how much John Madden wants to have sex with Brett Favre. It really is out of control. But it’s hilarious to listen to the commentary. There’s a new feature on MNF this year in which they ‘get personal’ with each the 2 starting quarterbacks at some time during the game. During last Thursday’s game we learned about Tom Brady. Last night, we learned that Panther QB Jake Delhomme was into “mucking stalls with the best of ‘em” and that he “hated celery”. Brett Favre, on the other hand, really enjoys Toby Keith and actually wanted to change his name to “Gator” when he was a kid. (The mention of the “gator” name, of course, set Madden into another verbal sexual frenzy regarding Brett).

“Nobody throws the ball…and nobody makes love…like a Brett Favre. Brett Favre can really do it all…”

He sure can.