upkeep

a sincere thank you to those of you who've expressed good things regarding my return to the blog (via e-mails, since my comments sections seem to remain empty). it is nice to know that people have been looking out for my words, ideas, and updates.

now my question for you, dear blogfriends:

what about YOUR blogs?

bark

"...and i'll bet she always gets her way," said the round-headed blond stranger to my labmate.

i had to stick up for myself. "naw. i just talk a big game..."

and as we left the room,

"... it's just that people always believe me..."

and down the hall,

"... 'cause it's true."

immunization

i got a shot today.

it was into my muscle, supposedly the most painful kind.

it didn't hurt.

y'all's a bunch of WUSSES!

quote

"i like working with you because you question everything."

— nurse a.

i didn't know that about myself.

not special

i am sad because i want to belong to something meaningful.

hostess gift

i brought champagne to a party this evening. i gave it to the hostess and had her put it in the fridge so it'd stay cold 'til we drank it.

it stayed in the fridge and never came back out.

what is up with that?

a new one:

integrity is expensive.

new sensation

as i've mentioned, my hair is long again.

today i noticed for the first time in years the feeling of my hair down on my shoulders.

it's kind of neat.

work

today my experiment threw off sparks and caught fire.

check me out. i'm a mad scientist!

proposition

months ago, an attending said that he would buy me dinner and cover any expenses involved if one morning i'd show up to do our daily morning report, in front of the whole department, surgeons in the front row, dead serious, wearing a set of these:


well, over the weekend i indeed found several sets of grillz from which to choose. they were in one of the cases at the jewelry store where i had my watch battery changed.

i totally want to do it.

red and blues

i forgot to mention that i am also craving the blues. it's the rain and the heat. it's a drag. i want to celebrate.

so i am craving red and blues. i am not, however, craving the color white. unusual for me. maybe i'm satiated by my lovely blog background.

i do have a crush on a soldier, though. (not following? red, white, and blue. get it?) don't worry, there is NO WAY that's happening. it's not allowed.

hmph. i always did inexplicably like the big dumb ones, now that i think about it.

[shakes head]

the other phone

so sprint has a multimedia phone too. the song for its commercial also opens with a solo guitar line. it also steps up and down an interval on a low string. iiiiiiiinteresting the parallel with the iphone theme song, which has bothered me.

however, the sprint phone theme song features the fifth as the interval, and steps at a lively pace. i don't mind it at all. in fact, i could even like it.

too bad it's a less effective commercial because it doesn't feature the product enough.

oooh!

sooooper cute!


now add long ears and a fluffy tail, and voila! it's meeeeee!

tats

as some of you know, i've had this thought about getting tattooed for a long time. it hasn't been an idea i'd act upon; it was just a thought. to some of you i wondered aloud if thirty would be the age at which i got a tattoo vs. lasik surgery vs. a motorcycle. i also may have described the tat i'd get. that idea had evolved, by the way, to something on the hip/waist and thigh.

but, as they say, times change, and people change.

the other night i was watching "what not to wear" (another fashion makeover show that feeds my inner cat— that meaning it makes me catty— and my need for meaningless things in my life) and the end result turned me off from tattoos for quite a while. the subject was a 34-year old woman who dressed like a teenager, in hoodies and leggings and chucks. stacy and clinton transformed her into the professional she truly ought to have been. she would have looked great— very polished and chic— BUT her tribal arm band and the tattoos on her calves really detracted from the new look. in fact, it made her look ingenuine, as though she was faking either one look or the other. it cheapened her. the tattoos weren't bad in and of themselves, and neither would have been a different look that incorporated them, but they limited her potential to change her image and to be all that she can be (join the army).

and so, i have decided, i am far too fabulous and too much of a style chameleon for a tattoo at this stage in my life.

oh, who am i kidding? i always look prim. (because i am slim and trim.) i can't help it. but even more, then, would a tattoo not work on me. and i'm good with that.

to close, here is a quote about the tramp stamp (aka lower back tattoo) that i find absolutely hilarious. crude, but hilarious.

just because your tattoo has chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. it's right above the crack of your [behind]. and it translates to "beef with broccoli." the last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. you're not spiritual. you're just high. (— bill maher)

ahhhhahahaha!

p.s. i still like that tattoo show on tv. and kat von d as a pinup girl is adorable.

reality show

my colleagues are inspiring. they’re really amazing people, in so many ways.

in fact, i think we ought to be in a reality show together. we could all be a team, pitted against a team of, oh, i don’t know, lawyers or something. or athletes (jocks vs. docs has a nice ring to it). we’d have to do all these challenges not related to our field to see who’s the most capable/well-rounded/who rocks the hardest overall. like what? i don’t know, like, everything. cooking, dancing, building stuff, selling stuff, modeling, surviving in the wilderness, makeovers, etc. all kinds of crap. whatever. we'd totally rock.

you’d watch it, right?

did i mention my colleagues are hot?

you’d watch it, right?

break for fashion nonsense

as you know i usually save the best part for last (e.g. the last word of my previous post. yes, i blogged the word "fart"), but this time i'd like to open with the high point of the post.


admit it. they're beautiful. they've converted me to the t-strap.

yesterday in my clinical investigation class i saw two girls sporting the cardigan sweater with a-line skirt look. i involuntarily, reflexively rolled my eyes. why? i don't really know. because i can be super catty sometimes i guess. here's the thing. or the things.

1) that look has been done to death, and now it's being done by people who don't know how to use it. see below

2) that look has its place, but an evening class on medical research is not one of them. maybe a garden party, a sunday brunch, a sock hop, or the community of stepford would be. just kidding. i'm sure there are more occasions where it would work just fine. i just can't think of them right now.

3) a nice a-line skirt can be so lovely, but grown women must be careful in them. firstly, the a-line is not an unconditionally flattering style. if the skirt is the wrong length, it can make one look stumpy and dumpy. or like a little girl. or like a hausfrau. patterns can emphasize your hips, and pleats/gathers? they will fluff you up. so please. just be careful.

i personally am a pencil skirt girl but am perfectly aware not everyone can be. and that's okay. i do feel fortunate.

i have also been doing the shirtdress thing for a while, so imagine my dismay when gap suddenly calls it a "must-have trend". [gags] why must they keep taking the looks i'm working and turning them into trends?

am i done yet? just about.

here's a picture of some red shoes.


now i'm done.

spoiled

i am so.

spoiled.

i don't like this fact, but i'm pretty sure i don't want to endure the hardships associated with the alternative.

so.

[guilt]

passage

oppressive and dank, the summer night pressed in from all sides; heat and humidity had ripened the smells of the city to their most pungent, such that exiting the shelter of the building was much as if walking into a fart.

question

the question is,

if i were to spend the time it would take to get my "stuff" together

would i really be any happier?

work

i am in the lab now.

haven't seen a patient since last wednesday on call.

wowwwww. it has been a decade since i have been in a basic science laboratory. literally, ten years.

and now it's weighing out chemicals, making buffers, aliquotting enzymes, running electrophoresis gels, and pipetting. pipetting!

as you probably guessed, i have a labby personality in some ways. detail-oriented and meticulous and whatnot. i have a history of doing well in the lab.

ahem. i have also spent some time cleaning and reorganizing. significantly. today i opened the blinds in there for the first time in probably months. i even inspired the p.i. to clear an area of the desks that had been covered in three feet of catalogues and other papers for likely months to years.

i also turned on some music.

i guess i am good for some things.

unreasonable

there is something about the song played on the iphone commercial that i just cannot stand. i hear that commercial come on and it makes me feel... i don't know. perturbed. it may be the dull, plodding guitar line, up and down the third on a low string, at the beginning. it connotes something dumb.

i know it's unreasonable. i'm just saying.

craving

yes, posts entitled "craving" usually go on the prickly pineapple site. this craving, however, is a bit different.

i crave red.

i don't know why or what it would do for me. i just find myself reaching for red things (red ink, red clothing/shoes, red laboratory tape. red wine. just not red nail polish or lipstick) and wanting the color around me.

of course, it has to be real red. there is real red, and there is cheap knockoff red. like an orangey, watered down red. that red annoys me.

puffintoad once discussed it with me. "let me ask you though, how does it make you feel? i mean, the color red. it's very stimulating, which i personally think is good."

i don't know how it makes me feel; i haven't really analyzed it. i think maybe "stimulating" is the best word for it. it keeps me going. sustains momentum. i guess i've always been a red personality, identifying with burgundy, gravitating toward fire and its allusions, unable to be cool (because i'm hot. haha).

usually when it's a hot and humid summer (and what summer for me hasn't been?), i like pale blue. something may have changed, for right now, i crave red.

i also am craving ceviche.

allure; affair

"i love it. i love everything about it."

i've said it aloud to two or three people now. once to a guy i hardly know, once to a coworker or two.

it's true. and the more i think about it, the more true it becomes.

i am drawn to everything musical. i adore its ins and outs— hauling equipment, setting up and tearing down (wrapping cords!), talking theory, working publicity, booking gigs, hours and hours and hours of practice— i love it. i don't even mind sitting through a guitarist's trippy tangents during practice (i think they still like to call it "jamming". by the way, remember jams? and by that i mean those weird colorful long shorts, not fruity spreads. i never owned a pair of jams, and felt very awkward on "jams day" in elementary school. i do remember being stung by a bee that day. on my left thumb. it sucked) if we end up making good music in the end.

i currently feel no such unconditional love for medicine. i can't say that i love everything about practicing it. i don't like paperwork, i don't like having to answer pages, i detest inter- and intradepartmental politics. i don't like my hours. i don't like cardiologists' bad attitudes. i don't like being "junior". (and i REALLY don't like being called "nurse", but that's a different story for another day.) i don't like it when my patients' families are crazy or manipulative or abusive or even excessively needy. i don't like spending hours on end in the icu. i don't like wearing lead and standing for hours in one little spot in a stifling hot catheterization laboratory.

or do i?

i am still proud to be a doctor, after all, and i love helping sick kids. the question is, would i have it any other way? would i be happy in anything else? i can honestly say that at every step along the way— in medical school, throughout residency, while i was an attending pediatrician, and now— i've wondered if i could ever leave medicine for music. is it just that i know medicine too well, and am all too familiar with its flaws? is it like when people get married, and they really get to know each others' flaws, and suddenly their spouses are not as appealing and their eyes and hearts begin to wander? were i to become so intimately acquainted with musicianship, would i become disillusioned with it as well?

probably.

guess i'll never know.

but still,

i'm getting a piano.

isn't that wonderful news?

[grin]

hi there

here i am, folks.

and i'm in a bloggy state of mind.

i'm a little bit older now, having turned that round corner of a zero ending the number thirty.

and still i'm the same person, and learning just how much that person i still am. so much so that i feel younger than i used to.

i've discovered my insecurity, wrapped like a blanket around me, and am contemplating just what i should do with it, knowing that it has its utility in my life and in making me a better person.

i am learning truths i've always known.

i am really, really busy all the time. at least, i like to think so.

my hair is long again.

so far our little musical group has gotten together twice.

i am tired of dealing with crap, and fighting momentous battles, and am wondering what has to happen in my professional life to allow my personal life to begin.

i have a vault of unposted blog entries i should share with you, but that would be a little contrived, or would it?

i haven't bought any new fabulous shoes since the last time we talked. just a pair of comfort clogs for work.

i would like to take a vacation. but can't 'til october-november or so. but that's okay. because i don't feel as though i have the money to travel appropriately (san diego, london?).

i recently had a truly horrific experience with maggots. yes, maggots.

i think i just may actually truly be the jeans and t-shirt girl i originally suspected i was. last night a group of women and i went to this club, walked directly to the front of the very long line, and were allowed in immediately just because. and it is just so not my scene, high heels and big hair and social smoking and men who can't dance to the beat. blah.

i miss chatting with my cousin ray. hi, ray!

i am recently obsessed with purchasing a swatch watch.

i am learning the portuguese lyrics to "girl from ipanema". right now, as i type. finally. and to think i used to be so digusted by them and by that song in general.

i miss you, my friends.

that's all for now.

madrigal

april is in my mistress' face
and july in her eyes hath place
within her bosom is september
but in her heart,
a cold december

weekend

hi.

this is my first free weekend in many weekends.

what should i wear?

job offer

Hey [Bunny],

Where do you now live?

I've got the perfect gig I could hire you for on 7/21. It's only ca. 90 minutes of standards. Because [this other dude] & I sing & do instrumentals, you would only have to sing maybe 6 songs. they want a female vocalist to do some of the tunes.

how great would that be?!

alas, i no longer live in that city and what i would get paid for the gig wouldn't cover a last-minute ticket from here to there.

i have to admit i thought briefly about taking the financial hit and doing it anyway.

but no. i oughtn't.

dangit.

milestone

as of today,

i am no longer a first-year fellow.

i'm done!