Cleaning House

I returned from a short trip to Seattle/Portland last night, and spent the day trying to get my life in order before year two of residency begins on Monday. Annoyingly (is that a word?), I could not do half the tasks I set out to complete since I do not know my employee ID number. Apparently my social security number is not sufficient for identification, so now I have to track down my employee ID number before I can get a new ID or a parking pass.

But frustrations aside, I also spent the day unpacking, doing laundry and finally downloading the pictures from my camera. Today we have something of a hodge-podge post.

First, why I love California:

Produce! Isn't it lovely? Strawberries are nearing the end of their season, and I bought some gorgeous ones at the farmers' market last week:

They made for some tasty shortcake.

On the knitting front, I finally finished what is affectionately known as "the ugly sweater." It was a gift for Michelle's 30th b-day. The green turned out to be, well, a lot more green than I had thought. But I still think it turned out quite nice as far as hand-knitted sweaters go. For my next one (Kate has asked for one, but not in green) I think I'll take in the waist a bit more and make the body a tad longer. Michelle says she will actually wear it, which is why I made it for her. Of all the people I know, she is most likely to wear a hand-knitted sweater (that's a compliment, really!).

And finally, doctoring. For those of you keeping track, I have now finished my internship. I am officially a resident. I will be a resident for two years. Then I will be done. The main difference between internship and residency is the type of responsibility. As an intern, you deal with the day to day details of patient care. You order the medications, you deal with nurses and patients and families, you deal with the logistics of patient care. As a resident, you are in charge of the interns. You do more of the decision making and management. Most importantly, you get more out-patient months which do not have over night call and have weekends off! I start with out-patient allergy, so I will not yet have the full resident experience until August, my first in-patient month. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Magic Ingredient

One of the wonderful things about Seattle, one that I miss very much, is the plentiful supply of delicious Thai restaurants. Here, not so much with the Thai food. I have yet to find a place with decent noodles. Over the years I've been on a quest to find a recipe for Pad Thai, because really, how hard could it be to make it myself? Save the $8 a week I was spending on Thai food. Now that I have no access to the delicious wonderfulness that is Pad Thai, it had become more of a necessity. The problem is, the available Pad Thai recipes suck. Seriously, ketchup? Blech. Brown sugar and fish sauce? With vinegar? Certainly doesn't smell like anything I'd want to eat. And the boxes of Pad Thai, or the frozen stuff from Trader Joes? Not horrible, but it just doesn't taste like the stuff in the restaurant.Then I stumbled upon this. I'm not sure how I found it, followed a link from one of the blogs I read, to another, then another, before I know it I'm reading the intimate details of some stranger's life. But more importantly, I discovered the secret ingredient to making Pad Thai that actually tastes like Pad Thai.

Tamarind paste. Available in your local Asian market.

Tonight, I made Pad Thai. The real stuff, that tastes like what you would get in a good Thai restaurant. Even Adam thought it was good. He was very complimentary. He doesn't give out compliments easily. He didn't even complain about the number of dishes I left for him to clean. That means it was really really good.

Yes, I'm Back.

It was a rough last month--I was on an ICU rotation, on call every 3rd night. Which didn't leave much time for eating or sleeping, much less blogging. But I'm on outpatient now, and my schedule is far from full. The move to the new place is almost complete, just waiting for the couch and chair which are scheduled for delivery this weekend. It's nice having something resembling a normal life. In fact this month, I've worked fewer hours than Adam.

It's been beautiful here the last few days, no more June Gloom. The sun is out every day, I have views of palm trees from my window, and it smells like California. There's some sort of tree here that smells like my grandparents house, and it always makes me think of California. It's amazing the power of smells to invoke memories.

So now with more free time, I hope to have more interesting tales to tell. And I'll try to take pictures too. Everything is more interesting with pictures. Plan this weekend is for a trip to the San Diego County Fair. Pig racing! Deep fried avocados! Then I'm headed back to Seattle/Portland for a short visit, before officially starting residency. Luckily I start off residency with an outpatient month, which allows for trips to LA to see the Decemberists with the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, and we're going to see Avenue Q here in San Diego. And of course, lots of time for knitting.

Hiking in the Heat

I had an entire weekend off and so Adam and I decided to do our first hike here in Southern California. Important lesson learned: when hiking in the desert, must start by 7 am or I will die of heat stroke. Needless to say, hiking between the hours of 1pm and 4pm, I was suffering in the heat. But it was a lovely hike nonetheless. We drove out to Julien, and small town about 90 minutes from San Diego. It's your typical quaint touristy town, famous for their apple pie. Then we drove about 20 minutes into the hills. I was surprised at how green it was for most of the drive. There was a huge fire in this area in 2003; 30,000 acres burned, 15 people died, 3000 homes were destroyed, many of them in Scripps Ranch which is a neighborhood just a few miles from where we live now. You wouldn't know there had been a fire here if you didn't know what it looked like before. Everything is growing back now and there is green everywhere.

We eventually got to the trailhead at a deep valley, very desert-like in appearance. Our destination was a waterfall along one of the upper tributaries of the San Diego River. You would never suspect there was water out here, until you notice the greenery at the bottom of the valley:

From there we made our way down to the creek where we suddenly found ourselves at the top of a 90 ft waterfall, with a swimming hole at the bottom. It looked very inviting, given it was in the 80's and I was hot. But we couldn't fiugre out how the get down, so we just enjoyed the view, then made our way back to the car.

We then drove back to San Diego, and decided to try to go to the Padres game, despite its being sold-out. That was an adventure in itself, which Adam will be telling you about. Here's a link to the rest of the hiking pictures, as well as a few from the game:

Joey and Sugar

I realize I have not yet introduced you to the lovely dogs we are sharing our home with. So allow me to do so,meet Sugar (the brindle who poses so nicely for the camera) and Joey (going to town on the Nylabone):

They really are sweet pups. Sugar likes to sit on your lap if you are down on her level. If you are sitting in a chair, she will come put her head in your lap and just gaze at you until you pet her. Joey has really bad breath and sheds like no dog I have ever me, but he is also a very sweet dog. He enjoys leaning and eating sticks, but we are trying to distract him from eating sticks by providing him with Nylabones. So far so good. Joey loves Adam and food. Sugar loves everything and everyone. We will definitely miss them when our house-sitting gig is over, but I can honestly say I will not miss the shedding. How can they lose so much hair and still not be bald??

Adventures in Felting

I know I haven't had much to say about work lately. That's because I've pretty much had it with being an intern. I just finished a couple of blocks (month-long rotations) of in-patient, which entails admitting patients to the hospital every other day, figuring out what is (or more often is not) wrong with them and sending them home (unless it is the VA Hospital in which case we send them to a nursing home or to a homeless shelter because anyone who has a home usually has health insurance and does not come to the VA hospital for healthcare). Next month I'm on ICU, which is basically the same except the patients are sicker and we never send them home. We just send them out of the ICU and the the in-patient teams send them to their home/nursing home/shelter. And as of June 22nd, I will be done with this year, and I will get to be a resident and (hopefully) life will be good.

Meanwhile, I knit. My latest adventure: felting. You take a nice non-washable wool. Make something about three times larger than you want it to be, then throw it in the wash and wash it in hot water until it shrinks. I recently made a felted hand-bag:

All it needs is the handles and voila! So much more fun than being a doctor.

Welcome.

Welcome to my new location. Same boring information about my day to day life (and knitting!) but new stealth web address. Enjoy your visit.

Only two more months of internship! I think I'm going to make it!