sleeping by the fishes

ok so i tried to make the hubby post something, even going so far as to upload all the pics/videos so that all he needed to add was text... but alas, he expresses no such inclination. anyhoo, here are some pics of a recent weekend getaway to monterey...

we stayed at the intercontinental, which spans cannery row- pictured above, the hubs staring out at the row, and the view. pictured below, the monterey aquarium with all its wonders...

whale-watching adventure- grey whales, dolphins, otters, and sea lions, oh my!

a few pics from the deck of our hotel...

the hubs and i have decided to make a new year's resolution to travel as much as possible... here's to new excursions!

happy new year!!

best wishes to all for a wonderful new year...

and with the new year, comes that bright optimistic burst of energy for resolutions... though it may indeed prove to be just as ephemeral as every other year's resolve, i do have quite a few things i'd like to improve in my life... so i shall say HAHA defiantly in the face of late-january laziness & february fatigue and carry on with these goals!

enough with the blustering, i really just wanted to come up with catchy slogans for these resolutions. with your indulgence, i shall share a few...

1. Get FINE in '09 (oh-nine!) aka Fitness is Mine in '09!! yes, the requisite exercise/diet/weight-loss goal. i suppose it's part of the dream to think that someday, if i lost enough weight, i might not WORRY about weight. but then again i look around at my comparatively emaciated gorgeous friends with similar worries and realize that perhaps it's not just in hollywood that a woman can never be skinny enough. in any case, SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. even my fat fat pants are looking askance at my paunch.

2. Get down with the Big G!! ok, perhaps not so catchy. i'd really like to get more grounded, spiritually, this year. part of the issue has been church- it's been tough to transition from a very supportive church family environment to a new and foreign fellowship, particularly since nearly every weekend someone is post-call, on-call, pre-call, or just plain knackered. the other issue is just a general falling off of spiritual discipline, which went by the wayside along with the other disciplines of avoiding sweets and going to the gym. my soul is hungry- gotta start feeding it some good stuff.

3. Figure out the rest of my [professional] life!! ok, not catchy at all. but still, something i really do need to get done sometime soon. part of why i chose this field is because of its refreshing breadth... except now it's feeling more than a little daunting because i know i have to choose SOMETHING on which to focus. ironic, isn't it? even though i chose what i view as the most primary and generalized of fields, it's kinda necessary to specialize in order to best market myself... and more than marketing, i just can't learn everything there is to know so i do need to pick and choose a bit. which is hard, because i have so many interests and like nearly everything- geriatrics? sure, i love the old folks. disaster psychiatry? awesome! adolescent medicine? cool! delivering babies? shoot, sign me up. psychotherapy? intriguing... gaargh- part of me thinks that i just postponed the hard decisions because i just couldn't do it in med school. anyhoo, hopefully this next half of the year which will be spent in the intern trenches of peds/OB will help me solidify some plans.

and then there are my constant- daily, if you will- goals of trying to be a better wife, daughter, sister, friend, colleague, doctor. striving for excellence- not just a slogan, it's a freakin hard slog. but one that has reaped many often undeserved benefits. as we start this new year, i'm also counting my many blessings and thanking God yet again for providing such a beautiful life... thank you all for being a part of it. :)

bday goodies

gotta give belated pictorial props to the hubs who greeted me with a byootiful bouquet of flowers and some local hand-made chocolates. also featured, cute mug from sis-in-law and MORE chocolate goodness from margaret (thank you!!).

1st Annual Park Holiday Potluck

so this year, we decided to try and spread some holiday cheer with a potluck... because i think that sharing food is the surest way to encourage bonhomie. we invited our respective classes from residency, as well as the entire combined residency family. et voila- holiday fun! as the title suggests, we hope to make it an annual event, even if we both tend to panic the day before and cook WAAAY too much food (resulting in leftovers ad nauseum). but after witnessing our teeny little house packed with friends and food and warm fuzziness... i think we'll be hosting a few more of these things. some of the photos here are stolen from jeremy, one of my FP classmates- you can quite OBVIOUSLY tell the ones that were taken from my lowly point-and-shoot vs. his paparazzi-ready lens.

so many desserts, we needed another table. mmhmm, my kind of party.

my centerpiece!

pictured, alvin trying to make bryce (the one in the striped hat) smile while also carrying david on his back. awesome.

jeremy & the hubs

merry christmas to all, and to all a good night!!

a night in the life (part dos)

11:01, 12:12, 1:30, 1:45, 2:05, 4:15 - "... thanks for letting me know they were kicking the staff and that they were put in seclusion, here's something to help them calm down...", "ok, i agree that the guy with cocaine intoxication should get something to make him stop spitting at staff"... all the while, i'm hoping not to get the call that i'm dreading- seclusion in the crisis unit- because i can fall asleep fairly quickly with these other calls, albeit often hovering in a strange hallucinatory half-wake state for awhile (e.g. dreaming about pages and patients that i haven't gotten). i don't medicate everyone, however, lest you think all we shrinks do is push pills (or if they're real lucky, injections). sometimes i demur, because clearly not EVERYONE needs to be conked out or quiet, despite the staff's anxiety when they aren't.
5:00am- "that guy who was spitting at staff, he's in seclusion for throwing punches." CRAP. i roll out of my futon bed (in the spare room, so as to spare my poor hubby), throw on something warm, drive slowly to the crisis unit with bleary eyes, walk straight in to examine the patient, fill out my requisite forms, then walk straight out.
5:45am- back in bed, and dreaming about cute little black puppies (wish fulfillment??). they keep getting lost... i must find them! as i fall asleep, i hear the water running in the other bathroom- my hubs must be getting ready for work... maybe i should say good morningzzzzzzzz....
7:00am- ...aaaaaaaand i'm finally stopping the addictive snooze-sleep cycle and waking up to go to work.

a night in the life (part uno)

here's my attempt at liveblogging. call it half-dead-blogging. appropriate, somehow, because i'm on call for the crisis unit (our psychiatric emergency room) and the treatment center tonight. here's what a typical evening looks like:
4:15pm- call down to crisis to ask how things are looking, as i'm heading home from another rotation site (nursing home visits, yippeee)... i ask, how many patients do they have left to see? i hear, "a lot". shucks. guess i'm visiting crisis before i head home...
4:30pm- take a look at the board- not tooooooo bad, but there is this one patient they'd like me to see. "sir, why were you handing out your personal checks to people at your apartment complex?" "i want some tums because i ate too much dinner i guess i asked for the second tray i wanted to buy a car, so i stuck it on everyone's window- it said 'do you want to buy a car?' and i only have $1000 in my bank account but you only need a down payment on those things anyway and lady i need some tylenol can you write so i can get it whenever i want?" hmmmmm.... tough call...
5:15pm- racing home (in rush hour traffic) to meet andy so we can carpool on our way to...
6:15pm- DINNER at the firehouse restaurant in old sac! one of the hub's attendings is giving a talk on daptomycin... mmm, fascinating, and what? free food?? and dessert??? SOLD. we enjoy some tasty appetizers and as the salads are being served, just as i've buttered my hot freshly baked dinner roll...
6:56pm- my first call of the night. someone has walked into the unit and immediately gotten himself into seclusion for threatening staff and otherwise causing a ruckus... *sigh* guess that roll will have to wait.
7:20pm- i stroll into crisis, examine my patient (conked out comfortably thanks to prn meds), field a few more pages from the units, write a few meds for folks, then run out..
7:45pm- just in time for entrees!! mmm, mahi-mahi...
7:49pm- someone needs something for anxiety on the inpt side... done, and DONE.
8:00pm- ahhh dessert! sadly, not so exciting when tasted... solid block of chocolate fashioned in the shape of a cake. meh
8:05pm- ...and someone else has won themselves a trip to the seclusion room in crisis! the spouse and i gracefully bow out of the friendly chitchat and head over to the crisis unit...
8:40pm- finally, heading home. hopefully for the night.
9:14, 9:23, 9:27, 9:27, 9:31 - "... yes, he can have some ambien for sleep as well."

... TO BE CONTINUED

egads!

who knew that underripe persimmons are like POISON??!!!

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best comedy show ever: whose line is it anyway... they just don't make 'em like they used to.

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a word to the wise- DON'T SPEED IN ROSEVILLE. apparently the traffic cops don't have anything better to do than to patrol the streets/freeways like VULTURES. blurgh.

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thanks to all for happy bday wishes- i'll start celebrating again when i hit 30... whenever that will be ;)

gobble gobble all the way home

ahhhh thanksgiving. time for glorious, guiltless consumption. it's fast becoming one of my favorite holidays. this year, we were actually able to take a little 4-day vacation to socal and spend t-day with my folks. my bro and i were responsible for the dinner:

he took the meats (turkey + roast), and i took the sides (cornbread/hawaiian bread stuffing, mashed potatoes/parsnips/rutabaga, mushrooms + green beans, baked acorn squash

thanksgiving football!

the thing we were most thankful for? having a home. here are some pics of the ravaged shrubbery around our house...

here's to many, many Thanksgivings to come at home :)

stigma

a family medicine colleague of mine curbsided me on a patient of hers... it's such a familiar story- on meds, but unknown dosages, hasn't been taking them for months but actually does really need them... then she mentioned that the patient had "schizophrenia?" in their medical history, though it was not obvious on exam... she asked, why would someone put that on their chart if she didn't have it? to which i answered, well some people just don't know any better... and then she asked, why would someone do that if she didn't really have it? it must be so hard to get that off her record, that's so awful... i thought, well yes it's not appropriate to have an incorrect diagnosis on one's chart, but what is so bad about schizophrenia as opposed to something like 'palpitations' or an incorrect drug allergy that one would want to get it off their medical record as soon as possible? oh yeah... it's a mental illness. and not the "ok" kind, like depressive disorder or anxiety. it's one of those that you don't want anyone to know about. because you wouldn't want people to think you were psycho or crazy.

*sigh*

the freeway complex fire

i was just about to doze off on a lazy saturday afternoon when i got a call from my mom, calmly informing me that they had just evacuated my house and that the hills in our backyard were ablaze. needless to say, i wasn't sleepy anymore. let me just give away the punchline right now, and say- my family is safe, and against all odds, our home is still standing too... this story has a happy ending, though incredibly improbable and unexpected.
i talked with my brother, who described a frantic dash out of the house with embers flying in the air as they rushed into the cars. watching the shrubbery burn through his bedroom window. my family drove away that afternoon thinking that our house was gone- a lost cause. up in our neck of the woods, i was frantically trolling all of the socal tv station websites, watching the live feeds and hoping that i wouldn't see my childhood home razed to the ground.
we don't know exactly how our house was spared- like in many other areas, the damage was seemingly arbitrary. our neighbor 3 houses down the street was not so lucky. however, some family friends of ours did report seeing some heroic neighbors fighting a blaze on our hilltop with garden hoses... by the time my parents drove back to help, after hearing that people were trying to save our house, everyone had left but our house was untouched. our hills were scorched, with layers of ash everywhere, but... THE HOUSE IS STILL THERE. by the grace of God and good neighbors.
i guess it's a common mental exercise- "what would you take if you had to evacuate?" and i realized that the things that i worried about the most, after i knew my family was safe, were memories- the piano that suffered through years of painful dissonant practice, our photo albums, my summer cooling spot on the living room couch directly in line with the AC vent, the collection of disney videotapes that helped us survive the years without tv. i can't even imagine what all of those who lost their homes this past week must be feeling. but there is hope- those phantom neighbors really reaffirmed my faith in humanity... we'll all pull together and rebuild.