Randomness

I'm 3 days into my new role as "resident" and I'm exhausted. We have 14 in-patients that our team is responsible for (a team consistes of two interns, one resident and one attending, plus a couple 3rd year medical students and one 4th year medical student). The patients are divided up between the interns who are responsible for the day to day care of the patients--making sure the right tests are ordered, following up on results, calling all the consult teams to help us out. I supervise the interns, make sure that everything we have discussed gets done, and I help come up with management plans. The attending basically makes sure we don't kill anyone. But my interns had the weekend off, so I had to do everything for the last two days. Plus I was sick yesterday so was not really functioning at 100% (more like 25%). But today is my day off, and so far I'm enjoying it. Coffee, knitting, KEXP.

Interesting (perhaps) things occuring in my life currently, which you may hear more about at later dates:
1. getting my medical license. I passed all 3 steps of the licensing exam! Now I get to fill out a 22 page application and pay $900 and will soon have the ability to write prescriptions.
2. applying for fellowships. I want to be an endocrinologist when I grow up. And I want to go back to Seattle.
3. vacation! I'm off to Austria in about 6 weeks for a 10 jaunt through East Tyrol and Vienna.
4. Yosemite. Potentially--I have 4 days off before I leave for Austria, so Adam and I might take a little road trip.
5. knitting. I have about 6 works in progress. I keep hoping to get all my knitting crap organized, but it's just not happening.
6. Books. I need recommendations for what to read now that I have finished Harry Potter.

That's my life. I like it.

La-La Land

Saturday morning Adam and I headed off to LA for a day of history and music. After several hours touring the Nixon Libaray in Yorba Linda (interestingly enough the Watergate exhibit was "closed for renovations"), we then headed off to the Hollywood Bowl for a concert with the Decemberists. The Hollywood Bowl is a beautiful outdoor amphitheater up in the Hollywood Hills. They let you bring in your own food and bevs (including alcohol!) so we had a lovely picnic up there prior to the show.

The show itself was fabulous. The Decemberists are doing a series of shows on this tour with orchestras, and last night they played with the LA Philharmonic. While there were a few times when the orchestra overpowered the band a bit, it was a great show. I got some pretty bad pictures of the event, but I'll post them anyway:

The amphitheater. If you had the ability to magnify the picture, you'd see the HOLLYWOOD sign up there in the right middle, on that distant hill.

This is a picture of the audience after the band asked everyone to pull out their cell phones and wave them around as if they were waving around lighters. The effect was pretty cool (or silly as Adam put it) but the picture doesn't really capture it. I think the band was having as much, if not more, fun as everyone at the show.

UPDATE: someone got video of the cell phone thing. It's actually the entire encore, when they seemed to be having a great deal of fun. Cell phone thing is about 4 minutes in.

A few You Tube links to songs from the show (I did take some video but it's not worth trying to figure out how to get it online because it's just not that good):




Plus more at You Tube

Words

100 words high school students should know.
I know 70%:

abjure abrogate abstemious acumen antebellum auspicious belie bellicose bowdlerize chicanery chromosome churlish circumlocution circumnavigate deciduous deleterious diffident enervate enfranchise epiphany equinox euro evanescent expurgate facetious

fatuous feckless fiduciary filibuster gamete gauche gerrymander hegemony hemoglobin homogeneous hubris hypotenuse impeach incognito incontrovertible inculcate infrastructure interpolate irony jejune kinetic kowtow laissez faire lexicon loquacious

lugubrious metamorphosis mitosis moiety nanotechnology nihilism nomenclature nonsectarian notarize obsequious oligarchy omnipotent orthography oxidize parabola paradigm parameter pecuniary photosynthesis plagiarize plasma polymer precipitous quasar quotidian

recapitulate reciprocal reparation respiration sanguine soliloquy subjugate suffragist supercilious tautology taxonomy tectonic tempestuous thermodynamics totalitarian unctuous usurp vacuous vehement vortex winnow wrought xenophobe yeoman ziggurat

I knew the words in white; I did not know the words in red. In total, I knew 70 of 100.

How many do you know?

Urban Hiking

My last weekend of vacation so we tried to pack it all in.
Saturday night, a return trip to the fair for some fair food:

and a Pearl Jam cover band. We tried to win me a goldfish (we were going to call him Finn) but $1 later, we still hadn't sunk any balls and figured we could buy one at a pet store for another dollar, so we called it a night.

This morning we tried to get up early to get a hike in at the Mission Trails Regional Park. Given that temps inland can hit 90 by noon we wanted to get an early start. We did manage to get on the trail by 8:30 am. We climbed Cowles Mountain, the San Diego equivilant of Mt. Si. Hiking here is very different than in the northwest: no trees, no water, smaller mountains and very urban.

Adam and the chaparral:
Lovely Santee:
Some distant mountains:
Where the Pacific Ocean would be if the fog weren't there:
Then spent the remainder of the afternoon cleaning, potting plants and finally feeling settled. Tomorrow, it is back to work.