New York = fabulous.

I conquered NYC. And managed to do it without meds, thank you very much. It helped that I saw and experienced most of it from a double-decker bus and ferry, but I still did it.

I did not get to see any Broadway musicals (it didn’t fit in to plans very well, was horridly expensive, and I hated Times Square so much that the thought of lingering there to try to grub for cheap tickets made me want to cry. Perhaps once it’s closed to automotive traffic, it’ll be more manageable (ha!)), nor any of the museums, so that will have to wait until next time.

I took 569 pictures. The majority of them are crap. Taking pictures from a bus means that I have lovely pictures of stoplights, and people’s heads as we were jolted around. The rest are exposed badly as I moved from shade to bright sunshine and didn’t always remember to correct.

Sam’s baby is delicious. Seriously contemplated sticking her someplace in my luggage, but then realized that since it was all carry-on, I’d be discovered before I made it very far.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. Too short as always.

Select photos can be found here and here

**
This weekend, I am visiting Susan and her own delicious child, Alice, and we are finally, finally going to go country dancing. Susan has also arranged a date for me (!!) with a guy who is excited about the prospect of english dancing(!?!!!), which sounds too good to be true, but I am optimistic nonetheless. And on Sunday night/Monday morning, my parents arrive in town for a week’s vacation. Which means I should have spent tonight cleaning rather than fussing with my pictures, eh?

I went to see Chris this weekend. He moves in just a little over a month. I have so little time off between now and then, that I’m not sure if I will get to see him before he leaves. So I’ve been grabbing whatever chances I have, even if its just a short Sunday afternoon visit. We had lunch with his surgery colleagues, watched a movie (Kramer vs Kramer, which I had never seen. I think the movie’s overall story means less now than it did 25 years ago), looked at pictures from their trip to India, went for a walk, ate decent Mexican food, and just had a quiet visit. My favorite visits with my friends are exactly like this, being immersed in the mundane, everyday moments. Gretchen asked questions about life in medical school, and once I stopped teasing Chris about his “player” reputation, I struggled to answer them. The junior high-like sagas seem so surreal and so long ago, that it’s difficult to find the right words to convey why those events meant so much, changed so much. Without the fallout from Candice, without the literal shunning from that group so that Chris was the only one who talked to me for months, we wouldn’t have been as good of friends and in all likelihood, he’d be decorating my Facebook friend hall of fame, and not much else. Strange how little, stupid things like that can alter an entire life…

Anyway, I attempted to take pictures of Chris and Gretchen, capture them in tender moments. Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be advertising my services any time soon as a professional photographer, as I completely forgot until after I had shot 5-6 pictures that I had adjusted the shutter speed to take pictures in the bright spring sunshine, which didn’t translate very well to florescent lighting. All of the pictures were crap. With the magic tools of photoshop, I did manage to salvage this:

and turn it into this:

Still grainy, but so much improved, I’m rather impressed with myself. 🙂 The others are completely worthless though.

A few other (entirely unedited) pictures from this weekend can be found here.

And now that my headache has finally dissipated, I am returning to bed. I do love the (very, very rare) rotations where coming in just before nine is perfectly reasonable.

A visit to Chicago and meeting my favorite musician, Vienna Teng.

From Vienna Teng

Back to the Grand Geneva resort, this time with my internal medicine peeps. I’m going to miss these people.

From Medicine retreat – 2009

A murder mystery party. There is a serious lack of pencil-thin mustaches these days.

From Great Uncle Seymour’s Birthday Party

I’ve taken over 2000 pictures with my camera since I got in December. To say that I love it is an understatement. If I die, I may end up bequeathing all of my earthly belongings to it. My friend, Vaishali’s husband brought his D300 to the medicine retreat, which is such a massive camera compared to mine (it weighed a ton. I’d never be able to keep it steady) and, it took beautiful pictures, but I think mine does a good job too and will be even better once I get more practice and become a better photographer. He lent me his 50mm f1/8 lens for the evening though, and oh, that is heavenly. It is going to be my next (and likely last as I can’t really see needing anything else) lens, I’m just saving my pennies. My next project is learning how to create high dynamic range landscapes; I took some photos during that rainstorm a couple of weeks ago, when my basement was flooding again and if I had known that HDR existed then, the pictures would have been phenomenal, instead of just pretty.

From Wisconsin spring

My basement is leaking again. Thankfully, the drain was able to keep up with the amount of water (it really pounded for a while; I thought for sure that they’d back up again). This time, however, the window sills were caulked, the outside drain took most of the water away from my back door, and the walls were dry. It was just that there was a puddle of water that continually drizzled towards the drain–coming from the bathroom. I think it’s seeping up from under the toilet (it’s water, it’s not sewage as far as I can tell). I’m worried that I’m going to need to get a plumber in here. I don’t know how; I have no days off during the week and I don’t get done until after 5 or 6 most nights. It’s times like this that I wish I had a husband or roommate so that I could let them deal with this.

Grrr.

On the bright side, it did not flood and all of my belongings are still safe.

*sigh*

After the symphony, we met up for dinner and drinks. The conversation turned away from surgery and medicine and into the impact that the failing economy was having on us. Chris joked about how when I started residency, he had pushed me to buy a house for the financial investment (it was encouraged to most of us freshly graduated medical students) and a year later, when he was in the same position, he had decided against it and how glad he was that he hadn’t bought a house.

“How much has your house lost in value?” One of the group asked me.

“I don’t know,” I demurred, “I’m not selling it for another two years at least and I figured I’d save my heart the stress test.” Besides, I reasoned, the housing market had never been as profitable in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is very much a blue-collared city and the home values and resell reflect that. Surely, it could weather the storm a little better.

The City of Milwaukee decided, however, that they would have none of this blissful ignorance, thank you very much. Since I am the one paying taxes on the property, they felt it was their duty to inform me of their recent appraisal of my property and sent me a nice official letter (in purple ink. I applaud the creative and aesthetic touch). Net Change: -4,600. Ouch.

My first thought: “Hey, that means my taxes will go down!”

The COM may have thought that they were bringing doom and gloom, but they hadn’t ever encountered the little orphan annie who resides prominently in my frontal lobe. For my raspberry bushes have sprung the first leaves of green this week and I have tiny rhubarb shoots popping through the ground and a garage door that now locks. You just can’t get better than that, even if the CoM has decided that it’s worth less this year.

I’m not doing the English dancing weekend after all. I piddled around, delayed sending in the registration, debated eternally where or not I should go until it was too late. It would have been easier if there was somebody that I was going with… or if the price had been half as much; then I’d have done it without a second thought. In the end, I decided that I could not splurge on it, and I’ll have to find another place to wear my pretty dress. I’m planning on going down to Illinois in May for a English dance so it will be displayed then.

So instead of men in cravats, I’m going to New York to visit Sam and baby Meghan. This is such a huge deal for me and evidence of how much I want to see that wild baby hair. I’m already trembling and have a pit of fear in my stomach. I don’t do tall buildings. That’s the understatement of the year. I become paralyzed under their shadow, frightened to near death that they are going to fall on me (yeah, September 11th was virtually my worst nightmare come to life). And that’s just the comparatively scrawny buildings in SLC. Needless to say, a visit to the Empire State Building/Chrysler Building/Times Square/Ground zero and even the Statue of Liberty are not on the list. Right now, I’m liking the idea of a boat tour of the city: a chance to see the important sights and bridges, but from a distance, where I can practice taking pictures of reflections in the Hudson River. I’m also looking forward to central park and seeing the skyline there.

And if all else fails, I’ll get myself a prescription for some propanolol and/or alprazolam and medicate my way through. The benefit of being a doctor.

So, question to my wise friends out there who have been to NYC: Which are the must see sights, mostly in Manhattan and that won’t frighten me to death? And from those who live there, any hidden nooks that shouldn’t be missed but are often overlooked by the tourists?

(written this afternoon. The hospital’s firewall prevented me from posting)

I realized yesterday, as I was looking at my schedule for next year, that while I’ve been feeling like I’ve been doing residency forever, I still have 10 months of internal medicine left to go. 10 months. Since I’m doing a combined residency, I have 30 months of medicine and 30 months of neurology, compared to my colleagues who do 36 months of medicine or neurology. Not only am I missing out on six months of training, but as it is, I’ve still got a third of my training left. I’ve been comparing myself pretty harshly to my fellow residents, especially the medicine residents as they are graduating in 2 months and I certainly have not felt that I’m at that point and was quite discouraged. Yesterday, I was dispondant after getting lectured by one of my friends about a disease presentation that I didn’t know anything about, but he was rattling off all of the clinical symptoms and signs and I felt like an idiot. I feel a little better now, realizing that I still have time to learn it all.

I’m on neurology consults this month (I think I mentioned that) and it’s also been an opportunity for me to appreciate how much I have learned as well. I was on this same rotation two years ago as an intern and it was one of the hardest months of that year (the other 2 being the inpatient neurology wards). I didn’t know anything. I felt like I was struggling every day to ever come up with one idea of what exactly was causing the altered mental status/weakness/seizure/what have you, much less come up with a differential diagnosis or a diagnostic and treatment plan. Now, I at least know where to go and read about it, or know the common workup for common problems and can generate some reasonable ideas about where to go next. My attending actually commented on it. It was his last day, so he was giving me feedback, and he stated that he could see the growth and knowledge maturity. I feel more optimistic that by the time these next two years are over, there may be a middling fair neurologist in me. And that’s better than what I’ve been feeling in a long time.

On a related note, I’m still struggling on the decision for a career path after graduation. Unfortunately, the decision about fellowship needs to be made relatively soon, so that I can get research projects started to beef up my slim and rather non-impressive CV, as well as trying to go to conferences so I can start networking etc. I change my mind on an hourly basis. It’s a sad state of affairs. I’ve decided to give myself until June. Someday, I’ll do a big long post about the positives and negatives about the decision. Maybe it’ll help me think through things.

**
I am quite smitten with one of my attendings. I worked with him briefly last month and had butterflies during every patient presentation. Recently, I’ve gotten to interact with him more because our teams have been consulted on the same patients. When he greets me with a half smirk and razzes me about my treatment ideas, I get swoony. You think music is the language of love? For me, it’s vestibular neuritis due to colistimethate (don’t worry, I hadn’t even heard of the drug before, either!). I’m almost seeking out consults, just so I can have those few minutes of conversation.

I’ve missed having a work crush. It’s been a long time since CuteIntern disappeared into the dark coves of the hospital and I have not had a good flirtation since then. I think, however, that all of the period dramas that I’ve been watching these past weeks have affected my mind and I’m ready to see romance from every random corner. It’ll pass, I’m sure.

**
The hospital has a repeating playlist of songs that are piped over the hospital. It includes a piano version of the theme to Titantic and it plays Every. Single. Day. Usually around 10 or 11 in the morning. I went the entire day today without hearing it… until I returned a phone call just now and got placed on hold to that song. Grrr.

**
Vienna Teng is performing in Chicago this Friday and I’m so excited. She’ll never come to Milwaukee again; poor attendance for two concerts would convince anybody not to come again, but I’m grateful that I live so close to Chicago so I still can see her.

**
I realize that everybody has probably seen this video, but I couldn’t resist sharing. I love Britains Got Talent; it has a way of tugging at your heart strings. Paul Potts the first year, Andrew Johnston the second and then this year, Susan Boyle. Just lovely, I was seriously in tears.

Today was one of the most exhausting days I’ve had in a long time (boy, I’ve been spoiled). It was endless pages and endless consults (I had 5 before 1 pm and another after that), haggling with radiology to get an MRI done (if I hear one more time that’s its protocol… I understand that you don’t want a patient with metallic things getting an MRI done as those metallic things can come ripping out. However, when I tell you that this patient had a MRI done 1 week ago and survived it just fine, I think we can forgo all of the drama, okay?), managing a patient in status (poor intern had no idea what to do), answering questions about the dozen patients that I thought I could finally sign off (and got pulled back into their disease) and somehow still seeing all of the patients that we are still actively following as well. I didn’t leave until after 7:30 (and still came home to a glimmer of daylight! I love spring!). Good thing I didn’t have plans tonight (this is the reason that while I’m going down to Chicago next Friday to see Vienna Teng in concert, I’m buying tickets for the 10:00 show, rather than the 7:00 show. I may be driving home at 3 in the morning, but at least I’m mostly guaranteed to make it).

I came home to a lovely little package on my front porch though, which made the whole day better:

It’s wrinkled (muslin wrinkles like nothing else) and I didn’t wear any makeup at all today, so the big pimples that I’ve been fighting for the last week are quite prominent, (and we’ll entirely ignore the weight issue, shall we?) but I love the dress! I’m still fighting with the neckline (you can make out my divotted and scar-ridden right shoulder on the second picture), but I think if I pin it to the underslip (and maybe the bra), it should look better. Chris brought me home this gorgeous lilac silk shawl from India, which matches my dress perfectly, giving it just the perfect elegant touch.

Next is figuring out how to do my drab hair (the new haircut lost its luster pretty quickly). And finding my fancy jewelry. And then actually sending in the registration for the weekend of dance.

Today, I woke up and thought to myself that for the first time in almost three years, I like neurology again. I’ve taken care of some really interesting patients with diverse diseases; I’ve come up with diagnostics and differentials that my attending agreed with; and I had a chance to read so I was starting to feel like I understood the difference between polyradiculopathy and polyradiculoneuropathy (don’t ask). It didn’t hurt that we had maybe 1 consult a day, so I could really sit and think about my patients care.

Of course, right after I thought that, my pager went off nonstop all morning with new consults and complicated questions (as well as stupid questions), making me feel like a freshly chopped chicken and the love faded. It’s still there, dimly trying to stay alive. Who knows, if I manage to survive tomorrow and clinic, it might take up permanent lodging; that would be nice.

Other thing going on in my life:

• I have just about caught up with all of the little requirements that residency piles on me. I completed the last of my dictations (it was nine months old, but, as I discovered when I dictated it, I had never even taken care of the patient and it really wasn’t my responsibility. So I suppose that evens out). I finished all of my evaluations. I’ve stayed caught up on my clinic notes (that will probably change tomorrow). So I’ve finally been able to concentrate on something else: my house. It’s been a disaster since January when I got sick for a month and was working close to the 80 hours/week limit. But this week, I went through all of the papers that I’ve collected and recycled three entire boxes of junk mail and have collected another 3 boxes of patient information that I need to bring back to the hospital for shredding. No wonder I felt like I was drowning. I’m focusing on the progress and ignoring for now the pile of dishes, the laundry that needs to be washed and all of the sweeping. All in due time.
• My beloved mommy finished my Regency dress this weekend and mailed it on Monday. I hope to get it tomorrow. There will be pictures. 🙂
• I had a fabulous weekend, visiting Chris and his friends. We went to the symphony (incredible pianist!) and out to eat and then made crepes the next morning as we watched Sicko. Three years ago, as a fresh idealistic medical student, the documentary might have inflamed me to action. Now, after experiencing the multiple complexities of the medical system, I am become more cynical about the likelihood of success with medical reform. Doesn’t mean that I don’t support efforts to do so, but I see much more of the pros and cons of all of the proposals. Surprisingly, Chris was as conservative about the movie’s premises as I; residency has changed him as well.
• In any case, there is some pictorial documentation of the weekend at my Picasa site. It already hurts thinking how much I’m going to miss this.
• I’m getting an elliptical machine and a bench press from my friend who is also moving away (*sniff*). I’m so excited to have my own little gym. Now, the bitter cold of Milwaukee won’t be an excuse to keep me from exercising AND I won’t have to endure endless ball games. As soon as my house is in order (I’m hoping this weekend) I’ll get to retrieve it.
• It’s actually been really hard recently, thinking about all of the friends that are leaving this year. My medicine resident buddies are graduating and going on to fellowships and careers, leaving me behind for another two years.
• I am trying to get the courage to buy tickets to visit Sam and her little one in New York over Memorial weekend. In New York. I start hyperventilating at the thought (serious phobia issues here!) but I think my love for baby Meghan’s poofy hair might win out over my fears. I may not see anything more than central park and in the inside of her apartment, and I may just be one quivering jellyfish the entire trip, but it’d be worth it. Right?

And that’s all folks. Tune in next time for another addition of Glimpses of Julia’s Oh So Boring Life.

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.
cut to be nice to your bandwidth! Click to read and see more!

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many path and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
~ JRR Tolkien.

I am done (mostly) with call for the next 3 months AND I’ll have weekends off as well, as I’m on a stretch where I’m doing more consult work than taking care of my own team/patients. It’s going to be a nice change of pace, aka, freaking fabulous. I’m already booking stuff for every weekend until June, let me tell you.

I’m trying very, very hard to talk myself out of signing up for this: http://www.folklorevillage.org/t2/user_file/English%202009.pdf. An entire weekend of English country dancing. Let me say that again. An entire weekend of English country dancing. Granted, the price is somewhat outrageous (okay, it’s outrageous), but… it’s an entire weekend of English country dancing!! Hopefully, people can show up just for the Saturday night dance. (Must finish, aka start, dress!)

This place also holds monthly barn dances. I’m hoping to drag a few friends out to one of these this summer. So much fun!

I have vacation starting on Friday night. I’m just about to the point where I’m counting down the hours. I need a vacation sooo badly. Even my hair seems fried to the ends (it could be because I haven’t had a haircut since October, I think). It’s been a hard winter. I’ve never really been one who has seasonal affective disorder; I usually like winter, but this one has been brutally cold and everlasting and I’m ready for some sunshine.

I have a pseudo-date-thingy on Thursday. A boy from church and I were talking months ago about finding some good ethnic food around here and he stated that we absolutely had to go out and find some. Last week, he facebooked me (funny how that’s becoming a verb) and mentioned the idea again and we confirmed plans today. It’s a pseudo-date because the guy is somewhat weird and for all I know he could be bringing the entire ward with him. He did say that he wanted this to be a monthly thing, so who knows. My expectations of the evening really consist of hoping that I’ll have lots of good stories to share when I go home. Good or bad.

Oh, and Trouble’s back in town. Apparently his version of “never to return” meant gone for 4 months and then back for a month, then gone for another month and then back for 2 weeks and then, never to return. He’s as much as a flirt as ever, which, since the other flirt in the ward got a girlfriend has been in short supply. Did I tell you that March is going to be fabulous? Somehow, though, I don’t think I’m going to be convincing him that a weekend of English country dancing is just want he needs. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try!

Lastly, on a complete change of topic: every year, since the LOTR fandom sank quietly into oblivion after the movies (it’s okay by me, I like the quiet fandoms just fine, thank you), various groups sponsored a “Back to Middle-Earth Month” in March. I’ve never participated, but I’ve really been missing LOTR. It’s been probably 2 years or more since I’ve seen the movies, longer since I’ve read the books. My poor little discussion group has long since been overgrown with briars and thorns. My website sits unfinished; I felt so guilty about paying the hosting fees every year, but couldn’t convince myself to let it go. I’ve now transferred my blog over there, so it’s not wasted space any longer (it’ll be officially introduced to the public soon), but I’d love to redo the section of the discussions properly.

More importantly, I made some really good friends on my discussion group, that I’ve missed a lot. I’ve missed talking about LOTR, the in-depth analysis of Tolkien and his works. We had a great deal of fun, for over 2 years, until medical school consumed me.

Anyway. For B2ME month, I’m re-reading LOTR and will be posting some of my favorite quotes or thoughts or maybe drabbles throughout the month. For old-times sake.

Anybody out there know any good tutorials on how to figure out aperture, shutter speed, f-stops and ISO? So far, I’ve read Ken Rockwell’s tutorials on how to set up the Nikon D40 and how to use the different menus, which was very helpful, and Pioneer Woman’s tutorials, but I think I need a step-by-step explanation. What I’d really like to do is take a class through the college, but I have neither the time nor the money for that. So online it is.

I got some lovely pictures during my weekend with Susan:

but I’d like to learn how to blur the background more. And take better pictures of flying model airplanes.

Beuller? Beuller?