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28th March 2009

-blows off dust-

Mom has a lists of blogs from family members that she follows on a regular basis. I don’t think she’s quite ready to tackle blogging herself (I can set you up if you are, Mom!) but she enjoys staying involved in the lives of family who live far away. Of course, that doesn’t work very well when the blogs don’t get updated. My sister updated her blog Feb 18 (even though she had plenty exciting news to tell), my cousins the early part of March, and me, well, I haven’t updated this since March 1. So much for my goals of writing about Tolkien.

Thanks to Mom’s persistent pestering, you now all get to hear about my very busy life.

The first part of March, I actually went on vacation. As a resident, I get 4 weeks of vacation a year (which I have to plan out a year in advance. I also have to plan out my 4-days-off-a-month 3 months in advance, which makes spontaneous outings nigh unto impossible) and I haven’t had any vacation since October. I was pretty ready for some time off, believe me.

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My nine days off were a whirlwind, spent mostly traveling all over Utah and then down to Arizona: seeing family and friends; playing with babies and puppies; and soaking up mountains and sunshine. It was, as always, too short and there were several people that I didn’t get to see. One of these days I’ll have time to linger.

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I took lots of badly overexposed and out-of-focus pictures. This camera certainly is a learning experience! The good pictures can be found here: Utah. Arizona and the full (completely unedited and original) sets can be found here and here.

Last weekend was the annual Neurology retreat, where the neurology department treats the residents to a weekend at a resort, with delectable food, fun outings (spa or paintballing). This year, they didn’t even have any lectures; it was a weekend of pure fun. I was sicksicksick with an upper/lower respiratory syndrome that I’m only now recovering from (I actually missed a day of work for the first time ever); I missed out on dancing, sumo wrestling and playing board games because I was too exhausted and ill (and not wanting to make it worse by inhaling cigarette smoke), but it was still enjoyable. I love my coworkers. We hadn’t socialized with each other in a really long time and it was a nice reminder of how much I enjoy (and miss) their company.

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I got a facial and a hair cut at the retreat, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me. She took only a half inch off, but she evened out some of my freakish layers from the last (horrible) haircut, so at least it looks somewhat smooth now. I also got my eyebrows waxed for the first time in my life. They probably do look better, but that was a lot of pain and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever have that done again!

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I’ve been on the infectious disease service for the past month which has been a blast. We’ve had several interesting patients with interesting diseases, including a case of hantevirus, which I never thought I’d see in Wisconsin! My attending is my internal medicine program director (remember I’m doing two residencies in one, so I have two program directors) and it has been so much fun working with him. He teaches so well (we had a great discussion last night about temperatures and fevers). I appreciated the chance to work with him, as he now knows personally that I am a hard worker and a reasonably competent resident, rather than just relying on the heresy of other attendings.

Mom and I worked on my Regency dress while I was home. We got the bodice mostly finished; it doesn’t fit quite as I would want: the style with the scoping neck is completely unforgiving for my sloping/scar-ridden shoulder, so it slips down there, but otherwise it’s beautiful. Mom is finishing it up; as soon as I have it in my hands, there’ll be pictures for all. I still haven’t quite made up my mind of whether or not I’m going to the English Country Dancing weekend. Like so much in my life (ie my future career goals), I waffle hour by hour. Right now, it’s yes. It sounds fun, I’m eager to meet others who would pay for the experience, it’s an entire weekend of dancing, I need the exercise, I want an excuse to wear my new dress, and on and on. But tht doesn’t stop the doubts: the cost, the uncertainty of whether I could even make it on Friday night (work and all), the idea of not knowing anybody, etc. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Better yet, anybody wanna come along?

dsc_0176This dress is in need of a ball.

I spent most of today playing around with my photos and photoshop, which is entirely too addicting. I need to go grocery shopping and my house is in desperate need of attention (both cleaning-wise and maintenance-wise). It’s snowing outside; we’re supposed to get 5-7 inches of snow. One last big hooray from Mother Winter, I suppose.

And I think that’s it! Whew.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 10:24 pm and is filed under All About Me, Family, Photography, Social Life, Those Rare Days Off. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Comments


  • Warning: file_get_contents(http://claidheamhmor.livejournal.com/profile): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in /home/lotrinkl/www/redheadsnippet/wp-content/plugins/also-lj-avatar/also-lj-avatar.php on line 118
    claidheamhmor@livejournal says:

    Heh. I like baby’s huge, surprised blue eyes. 🙂 The retreat certainly sounded very nice!


  • Warning: file_get_contents(http://bjorks_defender.livejournal.com/profile): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in /home/lotrinkl/www/redheadsnippet/wp-content/plugins/also-lj-avatar/also-lj-avatar.php on line 118
    bjorks_defender@livejournal says:

    A few things:

    1. Your new haircut looks cute, but your hair in the picture with the baby looks SUPER-cute! I love how you pulled it back, and it looks so shiny and healthy and pretty!

    2. I’ve recently been thinking about getting my eyebrows waxed, but after reading about your experience, maybe not? Was it really that bad? -bites lip-

    3. You should go to the dancing weekend. -firm nod- I can’t wait to see pictures of the entire dress!!!

    4. I’m glad you had such a good vacation! It looks like it really was busy but fun!

    Miss you! <3

  • Anonymous says:

    You’re gorgeous! That hair cut picture is proof.

    Holy cow… two residencies simultaneously? You’re crazy! I’m glad you were able to show him how dang smart you are 🙂 and he doesn’t have to worry so much about ya!

    The last time I read up on ya I learned about the English Country Dance weekend. I didn’t realize though that you’ve got a dress in-the-making that could possibly be for that occasion! How fun! I hope you go. I’d go, you wouldn’t want me to (if you saw my dancing skills), but that would be so fun!!

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