Before Friday I worked seven full days that were long and difficult. As I mentioned on the moderately insidious Facebook, I'm officially tired of working every third weekend. Landstuhl currently has seven internists, with only 3 permanent party, and only 3 of us currently do the primary ward attending. As such our call on day shifts for the wards, which runs seven days at a time, is precisely every third week. And though on the weekdays we use a much needed second hospitalist, the weekends are all our own.
That means every third weekend (on average; occasionally it's every other, occasionally every fourth, depending) I'm on call all weekend, taking admissions from 7:30 to 4:30 and also rounding on all the current inpatients. Our census is in the double digits, averaging about 12 these days I would guess, and has steadily increased in my time at Landstuhl.
Last week was very busy, and excluding Sunday where I got out of the hospital at a reasonable 5:30 pm (and saw 'Valkyrie' - see last post), I never left before 7 pm and on two nights I think I was there until after 9 pm. In those seven days of 'wards' I easily put in 85 hours. Lame. Doing this kind of thing every three weeks? Very lame.
This sort of schedule gets fatiguing and so while I enjoy working at Landstuhl in many respects I'm also looking forward to a new thing, presumably with a slightly better lifestyle.
Only five months left.
SUPER BOWL SUNDAY
Today is a national holiday, of course - Super Bowl Sunday. A year ago on this day I was lucky enough to watch my G-men dismantle the vaunted (and up until then undeafeated) New England Patriots in what was personally the best Super Bowl I've ever seen. Today I'm a little sad that the Giants won't be defending their title, but what can you do?
Gwen got me a nice Giants Super Bowl DVD for Christmas which has 612 minutes of footage including the season finale against the Patriots, all the playoff games, and of course the Super Bowl of Super Bowls.
Today, I rewatched the Giants victory with a cup of coffee in my hand and a big grin on my face. Last year I watched the game in Man Room with a ridiculous combination of stress and exhiliration, and it was cool rewatching the game today thinking back on both the game itself and my reaction to certain plays.
When Tyree made the "Helmet Catch" I was jumping up and down so wildly that I landed on a PS3 controller and crushed it. I'm pretty sure I'll be framing that thing and hanging it someday - in a future Man Room in California perhaps - beneath a glossy 8x11 photo of said catch.
Eli Manning was selected the Super Bowl MVP, but aside from his never-say-die fourth quarter antics (which were not as impressive as I recalled), his performance was actually not that great. As typical for Eli, he missed some key passes, forced some balls into tight coverage, and actual passes which even resemble spirals are few and far between. He was aided by great line play, some tough grabs by the receivers, some dropped picks from Pats defenders, and most of all by a defense that played out of its mind.
It's tough to award the MVP to a defensive player but in watching that game again I think they should have, at least to symbolically reflect the defensive's performance. Justin Tuck would have been a fine choice - in the first half alone he had six tackles, two sacks, and a forced fumble. By the early second half Brady was starting to throw erratically even when there wasn't pressure, and by the end of the fourth quarter I'm pretty sure he was tired of wearing his helmet sideways.
Thinking back, the Giant defense somehow held the Best Offense in History to just 14 points, a remarkable feat and I think the MVP should have awarded in that general direction. Perhaps a generic D-line MVP would have been most appropriate, since those boys were constantly up in Brady's smug grill.
This year the big game will feature the Steelers and the Cardinals. Most years when the Giants aren't involved I have an interesting choice to make as to who to root for. I get no such luxury this year, and even though Gwendolyn isn't near me as I type this, I can feel her glaring eye from afar, an eye which would begin to pulsate with rage should I even consider rooting for the Cardinals.
In seeking to find good reason to root against the Cardinals, I'm finding it is a difficult thing to do. They don't have annoying players, I love Larry Fitzgerald's game, and I'm a Kurt Warner fan from way back - he's a good man and the guy won me a couple of fantasy titles in years past, and that's not something I'll easily forget.
If there's one reason to root against Kurt and his boys today, it's because if he wins he will launch into his horrifically tacky "This is all thanks to Jesus" speech which is something I cannot stand in the venue of sports. I know it is probably intended to be a "selfless" act of thanks, but I actually find it on the contrary to be incredibly selfish.
If Kurt is a religious man that is fine with me, and if he receives joy from that or acts on Christian principles to enrich himself and others, hey great. But to invoke the Almighty in the setting of a football game just makes me shake my head. Whenever someone does it, I just see it as so ridiculously shallow. When "This is all thanks to Jesus" comes out, here is what else I hear in that phrase:
-"Jesus wanted US to win, not them"
-"Thank Jesus that Ben Roethlisberger missed his open receivers"
-"Thank Jesus that Hines Ward has a knee injury and isn't 100 percent"
-"Thank Jesus that James Harrison missed that tackle - I guess that guy isn't a good person like me, who deserves this."
And so on. It drives me nuts. Something tells me that Kurt's savior Jesus has far more important tasks in front of Him than helping Anquan Boldin break downfield tackles and propelling the Cardinals to a Super Bowl title.
If Kurt finds strength in his faith - great. But don't trivialize such a thing by assuming it to be important in the outcome of what is essentially just a damn football game, especially when the tone of any such "thanks" statement is so "If the other team believed in Jesus just a little more, they would be holding this trophy but since I'm such a big Jesus guy - it's mine". I just think that's ridiculous.
You might as well call for a Jihaad on the other team at that point (like I do on a weekly basis with the Cowboys).
In any event, go Steelers.
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Day Five - Super Bowl "Monday"
Perhaps the thing I hate most about living in Europe is that it makes being an NFL fan a complete pain in the ass.
I watched the Super Bowl last night (Monday here), which kicked off at approximately 1 am in the damn morning. Ugh. Having had a long and exhausting weekend, I shunned a couple of parties I was invited to and decided to watch the game miserably from my couch, where I knew it was likely that I'd be napping frequently.
Sure enough, after a flurry of first quarter turnover-based excitement, I found myself yawning more and more frequently until I finally zonked out by the mid-second quarter, only to wake up in a daze (and feeling like crap) to Prince's shimmying hips sometime near the end of half-time.
Last year, I remember watching the Super Bowl here in Germany, at a similar time, but at a friend's house. For Gwen's sake, I was rooting hard for the Steelers, but I remember it wasn't a very good game, being punctuated by poor quarterback play and horrid officiating. By about 3:30 am, I found myself in one of those "moods" one tends to be in when awake needlessly in the middle of the night - bleary-eyed and with headache - and I was even more pissed because I had stayed up so late to see such a mediocre game.
This year wasn't much different. The game was better, or more enjoyable anyway, but by the end I was extremely fatigued and of surly disposition, and found myself half-yelling, half-yawning things like "Just run out the damn clock so I can go to bed you assholes!" while rubbing my eyes in drained disgust.
I was in bed by about 4:30 am. Luckily Landstuhl was kind and gave us all the morning off - literally a Super Bowl holiday - but it doesn't mean that the game is any more pleasant to watch in the middle of the night.
This sort of thing happens all season long, and for the most part, all Sunday and Monday night football games are out. The one exception I make, of course, is for the Giants, and sometimes I can't even manage to watch them, especially if I'm in for a busy day at work the next day. And should I stay up and watch, and should the Giants lose, the depressed anger is amplified because I realize at 5 am that I basically stayed up all night to watch my team lose a football game.
The only other part of my Super Bowl experience that is worth relating is the fact that, like for ALL games I watch out here, I have to watch it on AFN (Armed Forces Network). So instead of getting all the normal Super Bowl mega-commercials (which I hate anyway, come to think of it), I have to suffer through something worse - hours and hours of mind-numbing AFN "ads", which seem extended somehow during the Big Game because there are so many damn TV timeouts.
So rather than watching hot chicks walk around with Dorito bags, I'm relegated to some Air Force Tech Sgt telling me about "Combat Weather Balloons" or some old hag reminding me, in low-budget video, to "eat vegetables every day". There are also a score of ads especially for the Big Game, which consist of NFL players thanking deployed service members for all they do. This is fine, though in standard AFN fashion, they are shown over and over again a MILLION times. (And I can only take Dallas Clark telling me how thankful he is for all that I do - at 3 in the morning - so many times before I want to punch him and every other player right in the face.)
I shouldn't complain TOO much (even though its fun) - I should be thankful that AFN even exists out here to let me watch the games at all. But its hard when forced to be awake at 3 am just to watch the Super Bowl.
As for the actual game, my favorite things were a)the size of Billy Joel's head during the national anthem, b)Rex Grossman being simply awful, and....well, and that's it.
I was too tired to remember much else.
I watched the Super Bowl last night (Monday here), which kicked off at approximately 1 am in the damn morning. Ugh. Having had a long and exhausting weekend, I shunned a couple of parties I was invited to and decided to watch the game miserably from my couch, where I knew it was likely that I'd be napping frequently.
Sure enough, after a flurry of first quarter turnover-based excitement, I found myself yawning more and more frequently until I finally zonked out by the mid-second quarter, only to wake up in a daze (and feeling like crap) to Prince's shimmying hips sometime near the end of half-time.
Last year, I remember watching the Super Bowl here in Germany, at a similar time, but at a friend's house. For Gwen's sake, I was rooting hard for the Steelers, but I remember it wasn't a very good game, being punctuated by poor quarterback play and horrid officiating. By about 3:30 am, I found myself in one of those "moods" one tends to be in when awake needlessly in the middle of the night - bleary-eyed and with headache - and I was even more pissed because I had stayed up so late to see such a mediocre game.
This year wasn't much different. The game was better, or more enjoyable anyway, but by the end I was extremely fatigued and of surly disposition, and found myself half-yelling, half-yawning things like "Just run out the damn clock so I can go to bed you assholes!" while rubbing my eyes in drained disgust.
I was in bed by about 4:30 am. Luckily Landstuhl was kind and gave us all the morning off - literally a Super Bowl holiday - but it doesn't mean that the game is any more pleasant to watch in the middle of the night.
This sort of thing happens all season long, and for the most part, all Sunday and Monday night football games are out. The one exception I make, of course, is for the Giants, and sometimes I can't even manage to watch them, especially if I'm in for a busy day at work the next day. And should I stay up and watch, and should the Giants lose, the depressed anger is amplified because I realize at 5 am that I basically stayed up all night to watch my team lose a football game.
The only other part of my Super Bowl experience that is worth relating is the fact that, like for ALL games I watch out here, I have to watch it on AFN (Armed Forces Network). So instead of getting all the normal Super Bowl mega-commercials (which I hate anyway, come to think of it), I have to suffer through something worse - hours and hours of mind-numbing AFN "ads", which seem extended somehow during the Big Game because there are so many damn TV timeouts.
So rather than watching hot chicks walk around with Dorito bags, I'm relegated to some Air Force Tech Sgt telling me about "Combat Weather Balloons" or some old hag reminding me, in low-budget video, to "eat vegetables every day". There are also a score of ads especially for the Big Game, which consist of NFL players thanking deployed service members for all they do. This is fine, though in standard AFN fashion, they are shown over and over again a MILLION times. (And I can only take Dallas Clark telling me how thankful he is for all that I do - at 3 in the morning - so many times before I want to punch him and every other player right in the face.)
I shouldn't complain TOO much (even though its fun) - I should be thankful that AFN even exists out here to let me watch the games at all. But its hard when forced to be awake at 3 am just to watch the Super Bowl.
As for the actual game, my favorite things were a)the size of Billy Joel's head during the national anthem, b)Rex Grossman being simply awful, and....well, and that's it.
I was too tired to remember much else.
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