Electric Mayhem

dortz @ 2009-10-28T20:22:00

2009-10-29T00:31:59Z

Met with my adviser today. Somewhat cathartic. I picked a good one.

I can't get me a regular flu shot. I went to occupational health today and went away without, though they did call me back as I approached the door to offer me the swine vaccine (there is a supply for pregnant ladies with direct patient care) but I already have that one. Stupid.

Semi-human appearing picture of internal baby can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dortz/

Made salmon with a mushroom sauce today. I think the butter caramelized when I boiled the sauce down, so it was a little sweet and weird. But it was totally edible. Success. I am always surprised how fast fish cooks. This time I was also surprised how long it takes to boil something down.

I walked a lot today, by which I mean several blocks a few times. I thought maybe I was over-doing it, but I think the problem was more well-place (by which I mean poorly placed) kicks. Yikes. Coincidentally backed off when I sat down to drive home.

I work tomorrow night, so I am trying to stay up late tonight, but I am at a loss as to how to entertain myself. I ought to do something productive like study, I suppose. But I was so tired earlier it is hard to be motivated. I guess I am less tired now, but still somewhat likely to fall asleep with my face in the book. Hurm.

dortz @ 2009-10-13T13:35:00

2009-10-13T17:36:11Z

note to self: remember the rage

dortz @ 2009-09-22T23:02:00

2009-09-23T03:04:07Z

Doctors make shitty patients.

Plumb

2009-09-20T21:10:04Z

Today I took apart the sink drain to attempt to control the black goo at its source.
Pretty fun to take apart the sink.
Our drain plug is one that actually is required to be attached to the mechanism to work, so I had never been able to get it out. Today while trying to figure out how to take off the drain pipe I encountered directions to remove the drain plug. Interesting. Mechanism was hidden in back of the drain pipe so I hadn't noticed it when working on drain pipe initially.

I used a bottle cleaner and shoved it from above and below (EGD and colonoscopy!) and black goo sprayed out everyone on the first run. After that I worked on protecting from spray a little more. Very sticky stuff. Pulled a bit of hair + black goo from below and then there was light coming through the drain. Promising. I scrubbed the drain pipe a little with a bleach scrub in hopes of a little more death to the biofilm and put it back together. Not a very noticeable procedure, unfortunately. But I imagine it will keep the goo from growing out of the pipe and into the sink for a little longer than usual. That will be nice. Also, now I know how to get into the drain of a sink. Yay. I could do it with the other sink, but maybe not today. There are other more obvious messes to attack still.

I also got another magic poison toilet bowl tab. Mold in tank is probably why mold keeps growing in the bowl. Kill, kill, kill!

Trying to decide if increased kicks to belly are indication of pleasure, dislike or nonspecific shuffling about.

Going to bribe EP with Legos to take out all the garbages in the house. Lots of recycling scattered about as well. Well, not so scattered anymore, mostly consolidated in two piles. I just noticed that the Lego box sitting on the floor is not the one from the kit I bought him a few weeks ago but another kit, and there is a completed airplane sitting on his desk. Weird. Perhaps I am enabling an addiction.

Still have not embarked on buying baby things. Theoretically viable fetus. I don't know that it meets my standards after working in a NICU for a few weeks. I am a DNR kind of girl, but I can see more and more how that would be a difficult decision given, well, the kicks and the correctly assembled being in the belly. Science is unforgiving. Anyway, I wonder when we should really get down to business and like, make a space in the house for the kiddo. Weird.

Live from the Metro North NYC to NH

2009-08-19T22:26:15Z

Finished up the sicu on a calm and not exciting note. No hitter. The other side didn't manage to drop any lungs for me either so no chest tubes.

It has been good to have jaye and John in town. Always nice to seefamiliar faces who aren't doctors. Ep I imagine has gotten to enjoy it more than me but still nice.

I thought my ultrasound was scheduled for today but it turned out to be scheduled tomorrow for while I am at work. So now it is next week. Turns out I was maybe getting a little excited.

Today I went to lecture for an hour then escaped to the NYC to go see the show that Brian O is in, with the boys. I also hot to eat a Reuben from Katzs deli. That was some fIne corned beef but I could have used a little more sauce.

Back to working in the emergent department tomorrow. Both excited and dreading a little bein tired. The down time in the sicu was pretty relaxing.

I really want like three pounds of fried mozerella sticks. Chomp chomp chomp.

dortz @ 2009-07-15T10:38:00

2009-07-15T14:40:26Z

It turns out Anya is a very shy kitty.

I had a couple (6) people over last night to watch movies and she was nowhere to be found. For a while I thought she had snuck out the door when people came in so I scoured the house just before we turned on the movie and found her wide awake hiding under the bed. Never came to say hello.

Boo

2009-07-14T17:03:37Z

Just talked to Pregnant Chief who adivsed me not to see any transplant patients due to my cmv negative status. This is a dilemma. There are a lot of transplant patients. Congenital cmv is teh ugly. I very
much wanted this to not actually affect my job and to not be a burden. But as I told my favorite graduated resident a few weeks ago - there is a line and if seeing transplant patients crosses the line then I guess I stop. But disappointing.

PS

2009-07-14T02:06:36Z

if you have any xenon, now is the time to sell as apparently there is a national shortage!

Drip, drip, drip

2009-07-09T18:48:48Z

Moments ago I was peacefully sitting and eating my mid-sleep yogurt (working nights again), watching my birdfeeder with my kitties when I began to hear a drip, drip, drip from the closet. EP was upstairs in the shower, and there is a cut out area of the ceiling in said closet. So of course I envisioned water dripping down from the shower through that existing hole (likely evidence of a prior leak!). I opened up the closet door, and lo! it was water dripping though the hole.

As EP said the other day when we were scraping the deck, we kind of got the somewhat more expensive ready to live in house because it did not appear to need many repairs and there weren't any terribly disclosures by the owner or anything. Turns out...

Projects

2009-07-07T22:04:06Z

The other day I started a list of projects I want to do around the house.

Both safety measures in anticipation of trouble, and also maintenance in anticipation of selling in a few years. It turns out we have a murderous garage without a safety sensor, and silly things like the oven not being bracketed to the wall. The exterior upkeep of the whole complex seems to be pretty crappy. Our neighbor painted both his porches over the last year and frequently suggests that we do the same, so I figured we may as well. So I solicited his advice, as he has the paint forumulations and all.

Today we bleached the mold and mildew off the back porch. Turned out pretty well. Horrifyingly, when I turned on the hose to rinse paint started flying off the railings. I knew we would need to scrape, but I didn't really expect water to get the job started. So it will be a bit bigger job than I had anticipated.

Another surprise we got was that the outside spigot that has never worked does in fact have a valve, and the neighbor showed us where it was. EP turned it, and water started flying across the garage, because the pipe had been cut. There was some evidence of repaired damage in the ceiling of the garage where one would expect the pipe to run, so perhaps there was some nightmarish disaster. So out options are to leave it alone, or have a plumber come in and reattach the pipe and see if disaster recurs and go from there.

I have quite a long list of obvious things that our inspector didn't see. Pretty frustrating. I am composing a letter in my head to our realtor proclaiming the shoddy work by said inspector (sure, they're not supposed to find everything - but an exposed pipe that isn't attached to anything?)

CSA Bandwagon

2009-06-11T02:10:42Z

I was pretty excited to get a farm share for this summer, and found a couple classmates to split it with. Designed for a family of four, we are splitting it three ways, so fairly thin I guess.

Today was finally the first pickup!

One of our sharers was going to go with me to get it, but she worked overnight last night and then got distracted by something this morning and didn't go to bed until afternoon. So I dragged EP.

It is an hour drive to the farm where we must pick up the share, with potential for ugly traffic. Traffic looked like it might be bad on the way home, but really the drive time was about the same.

Anyway, we picked up the share, and it was somehow somewhat less than I was hoping for. The list of produce to expect is pretty long, so I am hoping that it is just a function of being the first crops of the season, etc and that things just aren't up and running fully yet. For example, their farm stand doesn't open for another few days.

We got a head of red lettuce, tatsoi, "braising greens" and a pint of strawberries. And an adorable basil plant. Adorable. Mini.

I dutifully split these things equally, with the exception of the basil plant, as it doesn't split. I appropriated that and made the unilateral decision that first dibs on unique indivisible items should go to the driver. I imagine there could be more.

They are all nice looking veggies, so that's good. And certainly there is more tatsoi and braising greens than I know what to do with already...

It is a weekly pickup, so pretty driving intensive and hopefully EP doesn't get defaulted too many times because how painful for him to be a slave to my whim!

dortz @ 2009-06-08T18:39:00

2009-06-08T22:41:24Z

Refilled the birdfeeder again on Saturday.

Today I saw a squirrel terrifyingly close to it. Like, if squirrels can walk across the three foot long one inch wide metal pole and land on the feeder suspended 18 inches below it then they are certainly dining on my seeds.

But I also saw two birds at the feeder, first two birds ever!

We shall see.

Do Not Like

2009-06-07T14:40:20Z

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/47071262.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:U0ckkD:aEyKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

Mystery

2009-06-03T20:14:34Z

Our house came with a birdfeeder. It turned out to be crappy. As in the food doesn't come out the bottom like it is supposed to.

Last week I replaced it with a functional birdfeeder. Within the week all the food was gone. I refilled it two days ago.

I have never seen a bird at the feeder.
The closest I came was watching my cats' heads turning to watch something fly by as I approached.

dortz @ 2009-05-30T10:32:00

2009-05-30T14:36:13Z

I love my car and all, but sometimes it is just crazy.

Yesterday as I was driving home I would see this flicker out of the corner of my eye, but was unable to catch it. I briefly considered it might be a glint of sunlight reflecting somewhere or some silliness, but it was too...something. So I kept driving and trying to look at the corner of the dash it seemed to be flashing, coincidentally, she corner with all the various lights on it, like "out of gas", "battery dead" "check engine" etc.

Eventually I managed to catch it, and find that it was the battery light! A fraction of a second it would flick on, barely long enough to recognize what it was.

Car started fine, didn't stall at all on the way home, and after I turned it off at home, started fine again. Perhaps there is a loose connection? Still some rage that they put an ill-fitting battery in my car and left the "spare parts" that they removed from my car innocently sitting on my windshield for me to discover later.

dortz @ 2009-05-16T17:35:00

2009-05-16T21:37:47Z

Was going to see Star Trek again with a co-intern, but he couldn't go so EP and I saw Wolverine instead. Would have rather seen Star Trek again.

And you know, I've been a doctor for like a year now, and I had no idea that hydrochlorothiazide would do that!

dortz @ 2009-05-10T21:03:00

2009-05-11T01:06:12Z

best idea ever: baked fingerling potatoes. Increased skin:flesh ratio, small enough to not leave half a potato uneaten and delicious.

star trek: clever device, hate shaky-cam, nearly wept openly for no reason

did not leave the call room between 11pm and 6am except for using the bathroom; awesome.

dortz @ 2009-04-26T22:25:00

2009-04-27T02:31:03Z

Have arrived back in New Haven. The drive was long long long, longer than the drive to NOLA, but at least a little different. It poured on us in Chicago which made for traffic, and I gave up the wheel somewhere beyond Gary, IN. Oddly, I wasn't tired of driving until then. Usually we end up doing ~4 hour shifts. Slept near the far end of Ohio, and made it to pick up my car around 330pm, and home around 430pm today. My brother who has expressed a desire to be called Jack, flew to NYC yesterday and met us here, arriving about 10 minutes before I did. Scout continues to remember and hate him. Sad.

The weather is beautiful.

One more day off before I return to the q4 grid, replete with Swine Flu.

Possibilities: Pepe's Pizza, beach, Rhode Island beach, doing my favorite nothing.

I am attempting a new hobby, or at least a new something to do. I got this sewing machine for my birthday, and it is pretty nice. I swung by Crafty Planet in the Mpls and picked up some robot fabric and am constructing what may turn out to be a small (starter-sized) robot quilt. It is my birthright after all. I laid out the pieces a bit ago and put nine squares together to make a bigger square. It appears to have worked and is roughly the correct dimensions. Roughly. So maybe I will put some more squares together tomorrow.

My cats are nice, but I think they have been lonely.

dortz @ 2009-04-20T17:14:00

2009-04-20T22:18:32Z

Typin on z phone.
Cannot make the Yale VPN go.
Want more access to complete my life
Tomorrow: breakfast with Brea lunch and ultrasound fun dinner with sonja maybe see mikey in the evening or never. Doh.

Vorpal!

Better late than never

2009-04-18T06:08:08Z

Grilling at my parents' house on Sunday starting 4ish

A haircut for my teeth

2009-04-15T21:47:41Z

Today is my first day of my last vacation as an intern. In celebration, I went back to the dentist. I was having all this weird shooting, brief, electricity-like pain when I flossed where my new filling was. It took me five weeks to get time to make an appointment, and over the last week I had been less irritated by my teeth. I flossed it last night just to be sure it was still annoying and sure enough, it was.

My dentist called after I made the appointment seeming all caring and whatnot, but I felt also desperate not to lose my business. But maybe I am just jaded. She did say "you know it is with someone else, right?" towards the end of the conversation. Not exactly, like, confidence inspiring.

So today I went and saw her associate, who was entirely pleasant and didn't call me Dr. W_, which was nice. I think it is a little strange that other doctors do that. I am supposed to be playing the role of patient, not doctor. Give me a little paternalism, people!

He started by doing what I find myself doing - explaining what I think the problem is, prior to doing any testing. It is a good exercise I think. Apparently there can be some freakish reaction in which the "tooth colored" fillings bind very strongly with the enamel and then when it is "activated by flossing" it can cause pain. This activation intrigues me. I plan to read about this phenomenon. Of course, my fear was that the filling was disrupted in some way and my nerve was sticking out somewhere. So we did the x-ray. The filling material is squarely embedded in enamel, at least as far as a 2-D image can represent. He looked in my mouth and confirmed it is all there.

Then we moved on to the bite, which had also been less irritating over the last few days, but still warranted a look. Then he ground down the filling some, as apparently every time I closed my teeth together on that side I was slamming in to the filling. He was also kind enough to smooth the edges to make flossing easier (not that the pain will disappear...) which I also appreciate as both the areas of my mouth my dentist messed with were very tight to floss. The front still will be. So hopefully that is better. I still notice the bite some, but probably today just because it is a little different than it was.

I was in and out in half an hour with no sticking and only a little painless grinding.

dortz @ 2009-04-15T15:30:00

2009-04-15T19:31:34Z

Aforementioned Keith Olberman segment - it warms up around 1:30.

http://www.wikio.com/video/1022384

dortz @ 2009-04-14T20:04:00

2009-04-15T00:04:57Z

Whoever wrote Keith Olberman's tea-bagging segment - wow.

Gathering?

2009-04-10T17:41:14Z

So with EP and me coming back to Minneapolis on the 16th - and only being in town for one weekend really, and some people having regular jobs - what are the chances of people being available Sunday afternoon/evening for some kind of grilling and hanging out, probably at my parents' place because the weather doesn't look promising enough to hit a park. There are all kinds of babies to meet and that would be nice, in addition to just seeing people.

So, are you available on Sunday, April 19?

dortz @ 2009-03-29T19:44:00

2009-03-29T23:45:22Z

New Depeche Mode makes a happy Laura.

I can almost smell freedom.