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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.