is it vacation yet?

blurgh. insomnia. a familiar friend on any inpatient service. i guess peds is no different.

this swine flu thing is nuts- we're swabbing all sorts of kiddos on the ward who have any hint of upper respiratory infection. is it bad to wish i had a suspected case of swine flu to get a few days off?

clearly, it's about time for a vacation. only 13 more days to go.

we've had a few visitors over the past few weekends- alice came up with our doggy-niece lucy; below, a pic of the park siblings in mckinley park.

and jermo spent a few days in town, mulling over his decision to come here for med school and attending a "second look". puahaha... slowly but surely, my subliminal subconscious hocus-pocus ESP skills will lure all of my friends to sacto...

night shift musings

why does fried food taste soo good in the middle of the night? why do people bring their healthy kids to the ER? the world may never know...

i'm sick. twas inevitable, i suppose, despite developing severely chapped hands in response to obsessive hand-washing and decontaminating with alcohol gel/foam. darned kids and their darned viral URIs!!!!! blurgpghtfttt.

i imagine if purgatory existed, it would look a lot like the waiting room of an ED.

overheard them calling "code blue- CCU" 5 times over the course of 2 hours. that's gotta be someone's worst call ever.

can't...stay...awake...any...longer.

a lovely weekend

so i'm finally done with my month of intern OB... and what a way to end. i started my last day on L&D, went to clinic in the afternoon, then came back for the night shift! friday morning (cesar chavez day!), i drove home and quickly got ready for a weekend of fun & sun! i was working with about 4 hours of sleep, so i spent most of that day in a state of pleasant sleep-deprived delirium.
i slept in the car, and woke up in this pleasant little town- los gatos! margaret, my generous chauffeur, also chose an excellent place for lunch- Trevese. they have a michelin star. i didn't want to leave...

but alas, we had responsibilities to fulfill. margaret, shannon and i had prepared a talk about "jane"- a fictional patient with psychiatric issues and many, many medical issues throughout her lifetime. and at 4pm on friday evening, we gave that talk. twas my very first public speaking gig in a professional venue. i'm so glad it's over!

the rest of the weekend was spent tooling about santa cruz- here's the view from the hotel:

dessert @ chocolate in downtown santa cruz with margaret, shannon, liz and alvin

hiking by our hotel- the chaminade...

and to finish off a fabulous weekend, date night with my hubby- dinner at the grange, and a 3D IMAX experience - monsters vs. aliens!

life is soooo good. i'm on peds-ER, so enjoying the pleasantness of interspersed shifts and plenty of time off. mm, can't wait for vacation.

granlibakken = good times

2nd year is undoubtedly better than 1st year of residency... why? well, for one thing, somehow i now have time to attend conferences- like the uc davis family medicine network conference in tahoe a few weekends ago. we stayed at the granlibakken lodge, and reveled in the snow...
here are mehrdad and shannon giving a case presentation...

andy & i struggling to pose in time with the 30 second timer function on the camera while getting just the right exposure...

and the karaoke night, which shall live on in infamy...

and a little clip of our first attempt at snow-shoeing.

I couldn't do this without...

My house hubby.. who also brings home the bacon. This picture makes me happy ;)

word to your mother

i'm on ob right now, so it's actually past my bedtime but just wanted to post my thoughts on motherhood... i cannot believe our moms had to go through this crap. labor is NOT PRETTY! aughgh... granted, i am a little shell-shocked after coming off several months of psych and then gyn/blocktime but MAN. it's only the second day, and i'm kinda dreading the next 4 weeks. i'm working long hours, feeling incompetent all the time, and scared out of my crocs that something horrible will happen to these moms and babies. yes yes, joy of birth, etc... this really was more enjoyable as a med student with minimal responsibilities and all the time in the world to learn, which by the way was THREE YEARS AGO (since my 3rd year OB rotation). i trudged to my car today and yesterday through the drizzle and wind, thinking... i am a bad intern. also thinking, thank goodness i'm fp/psych.

i can survive anything for a month. i think.

retreat? RETREAT!!

went to my first work-related retreat yesterday... in napa! got to eat dinner again at uva trattoria, spend some time with my combined residency friends, and sit through lots of presentations. fun! the hubby got to come up as well, and spent his time doing considerably funner things like playing tennis and buying cookies at butter cream bakery (as rachael ray might say, deeelish!!). i think i'd much prefer being the "spouse" at future conferences/retreats. spouses get to eat better food ;) feeling a little guilty as i ducked out early to come home and work on a presentation, but truly couldn't take another day of people talking... and talking... and talking. thus, i retreated. :P

we did need to make a presentation to introduce ourselves for the retreat, so i put together this little slideshow. i spent way too much time on it, so to extend its shelf-life, so to speak, i'm gonna post it here. enjoy. or not. i'm just happy to have another place to put it! hehe...

too much of a good thing?

have i mentioned how much i love ice cream? i guess it's a little bit of a fear/love relationship, given my increasingly distressing lactose intolerance... but with my handy lactaid packets at the ready, there's rarely an ice cream dish i won't try. though this little sundae did give me the slightest pause:my good HS friend jermo was interviewing for med school and visited- he needed to buy his friend (pictured above) some ice cream, so i recommended Leatherby's. they like to go big with their sundaes. and yes, we finished. all of it. mmm...
jermo's visit happened to coincide with Dine Downtown, a restaurant promo for 3 course $30 dinners. andy and i had gone out for dinner with the takagi family at 58 degrees, then when jermo came it gave me a convenient excuse to try another restaurant- chanterelle. margaret and shannon, my combined residency colleagues and sacto besties, joined us for dinner, then ALSO accompanied me for the THIRD dessert of the evening- at rick's dessert diner. twas a good day. but i do think i've learned something very important- there is such a thing as too much dessert. three was my limit. good to know.

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. :)