Thus Beginneth the National Tour

Ever noticed that all airports seem to be decorated with an airplane theme? It's as though they're worried you'll take a mighty blow to the head and wake up with amnesia, wondering where you are then realize there are airplanes ad nauseum on the carpet, walls, ceiling, artwork, and thus be cured of your memory loss. That's why it's always refreshing to see anything other than planes when traipsing along toward baggage claim . Like this classy thing here:

I'll be doing a lot of flying over the next three months for ophthalmology interviews. I'm trying to think of it as a fantastic national tour. Boston! Denver! San Francisco! Salt Lake! Tucson! Atlanta! Soon I'll be intimately familiar with all of their 2-star bargain hotels!

I just got back from Baltimore, MD, where I did my first ophthalmology interview at Johns Hopkins. It's one of the best programs in the country, nestled in one of the freakiest cities in the country. According to one source, you are statistically more likely to be shot in Baltimore than in the green zone of Baghdad. Yowch. Anyway, in the course of making my way from airport to city light-rail to subway to hospital, I got lost in that glorious wasteland. I eventually found myself on a street corner with this study in contrast:

On one side, there was this inscribed bench with gilded letters and golden dreams.

On the other side, there was this stretch of tenement row-houses.

Ultimately, I decided to ignore the shiny bench propaganda and hustle away from there, wondering if I'd be mugged as a reward for having used my camera in public.

Overnight, I stayed in a dorm room provided on campus, listening to the sirens continuously wailing outside, watching the little spiders skitter across the walls and bedspread, and counting the minutes until my flight home. The kicker is that the ophtho program there is very very very good, which makes up for a multitude of sirens and spiders.

As one last memorial to the trip, here's pictoral evidence of 1 second in Baltimore during which I was neither mugged, robbed, mobbed, or terrorized. The sun was shining, the squirrels were chomping, and the railway connection mercifully came to take me away.

Sherpa's Revenge

State Street is a groovy pedestrian-friendly boulevard down by the Wisconsin state capitol building. I'd been hearing great things about a Himalayan restaurant there, so this weekend I decided to venture to it. It seemed like a simple enough plan. I decided to save myself a two-mile walk by taking the bus. It's a well known fact that I have an enduring love of city buses and the people who ride them. Especially the people who ride them. Some passengers are merely passengers, riding the bus to get where they're going. Some passengers are bona fide Bus People, riding the bus as a mobile vector for their craziness -- they're my favorites. I once rode through downtown Tucson seated next to a middle-aged woman with three wigs securly tied onto her head with a Mickey Mouse necktie, her eyebrows accented with pink lipstick, and a sock on one hand that she used like a puppet to announce all of the upcoming bus stops. It was divine.

For my State Street trip, I waited at the designated bus stop for an hour. A homeless dude sat by me and sang the s...l...o...w...e...s...t version of Swing Low Sweet Chariot I've ever heard, pausing between verses to take drags on a suspiciously-scented cigarette. He wandered away. A college kid (who I came to internally refer to as Bobby the Flatulent) sat by me for a while, freely releasing his gastrointestinal pyrotechnics until the bus bench was uninhabitable, then he mercifully caught another bus. Alone at the bench, I got a little punchy, desperate for ways to entertain myself as I waited for my own bus.

My bus never came.

Busless, I walked to the capitol, passing this garishly blood-red brick castle of Medieval torture on the way. (I later read the sign and learned that it's a University of Wisconsin building. Cancel the torture. Bring on the boring administrative offices instead.)

The capitol is enormous. Madison city law actually stipulates that nothing can be built to stand taller than it does.

From the capitol, I went searching for the fabled Himalayan restaurant, toodling along looking at all the quaint store windows full of antiques and cashmere scarves and artisan cheeses and hand-carved sculptures and... creepy mutilated Halloween Barbies...? I don't know if you can see it in this little picture, but the Ken on the left has been skeletonized and the Barbie further to the right is redone as a Zombie holding a meat cleaver.

I also wandered through this nifty Zen seating area in a quiet little cove between two buildings. It was a tranquil place, except for me sprinting frantically from the camera to the stone in a desperate attempt to hit tree pose before the self-timer ran out while a random dude stared at me and cracked up. He probably thought I was a Bus Person.

Ultimately, I reached Himal Chuli and had the best Himalayan food of my life -- Roti, dal, samosa with fresh yogurt, and two peanut dumplings in a hot sweet sauce, all eaten slowly while eavesdropping on the hippies at the next table who were reading aloud to each other from a book about the five great mysteries. Life is good.

Vocabulary at its Finest

Medical term of the day: Pseudocyesis Definition: The appearance of clinical signs and symptoms of pregnancy, although the person is not truly pregnant. I came across this word a few weeks ago during my Psych rotation. I think both that it is phenomenal, and that it should be worked casually into everyday conversations. Allow a brief illustration, for educational purposes: Pregnancy should not be mistaken for a beach ball.

(ball) . . . (baby)

Bulky winter clothes that make a person look a little ...uh..."healthy"... likewise are not a baby. Any coat capable of withstanding a Minnesota winter is bound to be hugemongous, miraculously managing to be size Small on the inside but size Sumo on the outside. Shameful bonus points if it's also roughly the same color as an Easter Peep, as shown here.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this man is not pregnant. On the contrary, he offers objective proof that Santa Claus exists and works as a crossing guard in the off-season.

Eggheads and Cheeseheads

Any clue what this is?

Half-chewed gum? Floppery hunk of bread dough?

Mystery nubbin of unknown origin?

...drumroll... It's the Mighty Cheese Curd of Southern Wisconsin! Unless you count the whole Little Miss Muffet sat on her Tuffet nursery rhyme thing, I had never heard of a cheese curd until I moved to the Midwest. Now that I'm in Madison, though, I'm learning all about this mystical incarnation of cheese.

It comes in multiple colors!

It can be made into cheese fudge! I repeat: Cheese fudge!

It squeaks when you chomp on it! Rest assured that I tested this fact in multiple randomized controlled trials, documented by photographic evidence.

In case it's not patently obvious from this compelling picture, they seriously do squeak as you chew them! It's like the sound made when you run your fingertip across the surface of a phonograph record really fast. (Yes, I just said phonograph. Because I'm like 85 years old.)

In short, now that I know about them, I'm a convert to curds. Thank you Wisconsin. However, to my epic disappointment, I have not learned a thing here about tuffets. Those remain a great unknown.

Sally the Camel

My lovely and talented friend/old roomie, Alison, pointed out that my first mega-post didn't mention the finer points of a trip I took to Arizona in March. I was out there for a rotation at Mayo Scottsdale (site of the hospital unit with the dementia-challenging black car in the hallway. It's actually a nice set-up for physical therapy/rehab. Disorienting nonetheless.) Anyway, while I was in the Phoenix area, my girlyfriends from college (Dorm Girls!) had a weekend reunion!

It consisted of a sleepover, then hiking Camelback Mountain the next morning, then going out for lunch together. (Oh, Arizona food! How I have missed you!)

Having never climbed it before, I had no idea that Camelback is rather major. Admittedly, it doesn't require climbing gear, and there was a 5 year old at the top when we finally reached the summit, but it's still way more than a casual walk up a hill....especially since about half of the girls were either pregnant or had given birth pretty recently.

Only three of us ultimately celebrated our vacant uteruses (uteri? uter... sheesh, have I really learned nothing in medical school? Shame on me. ...Hurry...say something smart to redeem myself... um... The etiology of pontine duret hemorrhages is often basilar artery traction secondary to transtentorial uncal herniation. There, that should make up for plural uterus, and maybe even for the fact that I can't point out Wisconsin on a map.)

Resuming the train of thought now: Only three of us ultimately celebrated our vacant uterusssssssss by reaching the top. The amazing view from up there was worth every step.

Thanks for the get-together and the great memories!

Hypothetically speaking

Imagine for a second that you're delightfully old and more than a little bit demented at baseline. Now also imagine that your geezerly self is very ill, hospitalized, and therefore kind of out of it. All set? Okay.

So, if you stepped out of your hospital room door and saw this in the hall, would you be at least a smidge confused?

Just asking.