Sarah Meets World

He gave her a truck battery as a present?

2012-02-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

Dave and I were tangentially wandering our way through a conversation when the following exchange occurred:

Dave: "Do you have a favorite sappy sentimental song?"
Me: "Totally. There's a great Garth Brooks song from Hope Floats. *Proceed to mangle the aforementioned song by trying to sing it quietly in a public place.* What about you?"
Dave: "Well, you know that song *proceed to falsetto* I hope you daaaaaance *end falsetto* from about 10 years ago?"
Me: "Oooh! That one was great--very sweet. It's a little sentimental for your tastes, though, isn't it?"
Dave: "My mom really liked it. My brother typed up all the words and framed it as a gift for her. I kind of make fun of him for it. Typing up sappy lyrics and giving them as a present? That's a really lame gift."
Me: "But it was thoughtful. Did she like it?"
Dave: "She loved it."
Me: "Then it was a good gift."
Dave: "Just because she liked it? Her bad taste makes his bad gift a good gift? You can't just frame something and call it a good gift."

He's got a point. There are things a mere frame can't redeem.

So here's the question: What makes a gift good? Does it have to be an intrinsically good thing in order to be a good gift? Can a bad thing be a good present if it's really super appreciated by the person you're giving it to? I say yes!
- Giving a box of laxatives to your date for Valentine's Day, randomly: Bad Gift.
- Giving a box of laxatives to your roommate who's all stopped up and uncomfortable because of the pain meds they're taking after having an appendectomy: Good Gift. Even better if you put a bow on top.

Which makes me wonder if the reverse is true. Can a good thing be a bad gift just because the recipient doesn't appreciate it?

- A shiny new car and fresh-baked cookies and Elizabeth Taylor's awesome emerald and diamond necklace and a bottle full of spritzy stuff imbued with the magical musk of Eli Manning (all the makings of a Good Gift)... If you give them to Veruca Salt, who pouts unhappily because you didn't also include an Oompa Loompa, does that mean it was a Bad Gift?

Snozzberries make great gifts.

Shall we put it to a vote? (Click the poll on the upper right corner of this page)

In order to be a Good Gift, a present must be:

A. A good thing AND thoughtfully given AND well-received

B. Anything, as long as it's thoughtfully given

C. Anything, as long as it's well-received

D. A good thing OR thoughtfully given OR well-received

E. I want an Oompa Loompa!

And then they turned into Old People

2012-02-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

Hi there. We are Old People.

Sarah's parents have joined our ranks.

My parents are wonderful. Eccentric. Delightful. Strange. Pungent. I've known this for as long as I can remember. I expect this from them when I visit.

What I didn't expect on my last visit was to find that they are Old. Officially. Not just the charming graceful aging you see on TV sitcoms or Betty White cameo appearances, but the actual aging that makes you wonder what we'll do for them if/when they decline a bit more.

I found that my mom sits in the same chair all day and tells the same joke. She wakes up at night and isn't sure where the bathroom is in a house she's lived in for over 30 years.

I found that my dad loses his train of thought more often than not, isn't sure where his money goes, takes an afternoon nap that sometimes lasts 8 hours, and several of his teeth have fallen out.

So there you have it: Old. Officially. I am not sure how to handle it, really.

I want them to maintain their independence as much as possible.

I want them to enjoy the remaining days of their lives.

If you come right down to it, I just want them to still be the parents I remember them being, but that defies a few laws of the human existence so I'm not keeping my fingers crossed for that to happen.

Have your parents gotten Old? What on earth do you do about it?

What should you bend over for?

2012-01-24T17:30:00.000-08:00

Last week was remarkable for one reason, and one reason alone: I found a lot of dimes on the sidewalk.

Not all in a cluster together -- one at a time, on separate sidewalks, on separate days.

Amazed? (Probably not, but please ooh and aah anyway.)

It got me to wondering how many people had passed by those sidewalk dimes without bothering to bend over and pick them up. After all, a dime is a lot of money! I remember in college that my monthly budget was measured in Ramen Noodle Equivalents, which cost $0.10 per package at that time. (Go to the theater? Heck no! A movie ticket is 70 Ramen Noodle Equivalents!)

That, in turn, got me to wondering whether it's fiscally worthwhile for me now to take the time to pick up a dime off the sidewalk.

Also by happenstance, I heard that Mitt Romney made $22 million dollars per year for the past two years. That got me to wondering how much money would have to be on the sidewalk for it to be worth his time to pick it up.

And thus is born a new social metric: the Worth Bending Over (WBO) scale.

- First, the time factor: Assuming healthy knees and nimble fingers, it takes about 2 seconds to bend down and pick up a coin. (Also assuming no one has superglued the coin to the ground.) Add in 2 seconds for the momentary slowdown in your gait pre- and post- coin pickup, and another 1 second for the inevitable slight veer to line up your path with the coin. Total time = 5 seconds.

Now on to the People Math:

MITT ROMNEY: $22 million a year, minus his reportedly 14% tax rate, gives a take-home of $18,920,000. Average that over 365 days in the year for $51,835 a day, which is $0.60 per second. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the healthy knees, nimble hands, and lack of superglue pranksters. Running the numbers, there would have to be $3 laying on the ground for it to be worth his time to stop and pick it up. There's no such thing as a $3 bill, and he'd be wasting his time if he stopped at every $1 to pick it up, unroll it, and figure out whether it was actually three $1 dollar bills folded up together, so really to be on the safe side he'd better not stop unless it's a $5. Mitt Romney's WBO = $5.

ME: My income after taxes averages to $103 a day. (Keep in mind, this sometimes involves working 80 hours a week, so my real hourly pay is still hovering just above minimum wage.) Spread that across 24 hours, and I make 7 cents a minute. (Yeesh. My long distance calls cost more per minute than I earn.) That's just over a tenth of a penny per second. Which means that if I stop to pick up a penny, I've just doubled my per-second wages. Which is why finding a bunch of dimes on the sidewalks of St Louis this week was a remarkable windfall, for which I should be heartily congratulated. Sarah's WBO = $... a tenth of a penny

Thoroughly demoralized by my WBO, I will now revert to thinking of my budget in Ramen Noodle Equivalents.

Thursday

2012-01-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

Arizona Goodies

2012-01-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

After New Year's, I had a long-awaited week of vacation, during which I went home to Arizona to visit my parents. Dave came along. (Yikes...I shudder with apprehension at the mere thought of a guy meeting my parents...it's like contemplating a flimsy piece of paper facing a shredder, but I'm never sure whether my parents are the paper or the shredder until after the fact. But all things considered, the Dave/Parents interface part of the trip went really well!) Other things that went well: A hike to the top of a peak overlooking Gates Pass where we enjoyed this view: The gourmet preparation of peanut butter sandwiches on top of the aforementioned mountain peak, despite the lack of a knife to spread the peanut butter with. Luckily, the random detritus at the bottom of Dave's backpack included an old toothbrush, so we used the toothbrush handle to spread the PB. (Life Lesson #574: The venerable toothbrush is still good for food preparation even after its usefulness as a hygeine tool is long gone.) A death-defying river crossing during a hike through Sabino Canyon. A drive through the stunning Salt River Canyon at dawn in a rental car that wouldn't go much more than 40mph uphill.

A moment outside of a gas station in Globe, AZ, when it was suddenly really funny to me that one of our national forests is named "Tonto." For which they sell a "Tonto Pass." Which either serves as a usage permit for the forest lands, or perhaps a permission slip to be Stupid. Or perhaps the pass itself is really Dumb. I'm honestly not sure. I considered purchasing one to explore the matter further, but we were catching a flight back to Missouri that afternoon so there wouldn't have been enough time to really find out.

A homecoming to St Louis, when upon entering my apartment for the first time in 5 days I found out what my cats really do while I'm not home. (I had assumed they organized fancy dinner parties for their elite society friends, listened to NPR, and read Dostoyevski, but I was wrong. It turns out they just hang out in the bathtub.)

The Double-edged Sword of a Beautiful Day

2011-12-31T14:27:00.000-08:00

After 4 years of living in Minnesota, where the spring/summer/fall is the most beautiful 4 months the world could possibly produce, and the winters are the most oppressively endless frigid 8 months imaginable, I am loving the weather in St Louis.

Today, it's 60 degrees outside with a warm sun and a flawless blue sky. (Fine, this is admittedly not typical weather, but by this time of year in Rochester, I would have expected to start seeing freeze-dried squirrels in the growing snowbanks on the side of the road, and grocery stores having frozen meat sidewalk sales, and people wearing fleece-lined gortex-coated floor length winter jumpsuits.)

The only drawback? There's a bizarre phenomenon in healthcare in which the warmer the weather is, the more people manage to injure themselves. (No one rides a 100mph motorcycle wearing only Daisy Dukes, a bikini top, flip flops, and no helmet when it's below zero. They reform their whole life plan and stay home and read Tolstoy instead.)

Adding to that, it's New Year's Eve, which is the annual Go Get Drunkity-Drunk And Do Regrettable Stuff holiday.

Adding to that, I'm on-call tonight, so all the Drunky Shenanigans and risky Christmas gifts that lead to OhNoMyEye Emergencies will go straight to me.

Why, for just one day, couldn't the St Louis weather have been more like Minnesota?

Deep thoughts at Christmas

2011-12-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

I hereby freely and fully admit that I listen to the all-Christmas-music-all-the-time radio station whenever I'm in the car throughout the entire month of December. I also admit that I shriek painfully and turn off the radio when that Pa-rumpa-pum-pum drummer boy song comes on. Call me a spoilsport, but I am convinced that the last thing anyone would want after giving birth in a frigid cattle barn would be to have a kid come play a snare drum relentlessly.

Likes: Going All In

2011-12-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

Hollywood has successfully created a nightmare in my mind: Showing up to a costume party fully dressed up only to find I'm the only one there in costume. (Thanks a lot for making me neurotic about this, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Start the Revolution Without Me, Bridget Jones, Groundhog Day...)

But despite the looming threat of shame and humiliation (...maybe because of it?), I still like the feeling of committing to the theme. Sure, there's a chance that I'll be the only person there sporting bunny ears or a pirate costume, but I like going all in. I've now learned that going all in is even better when you bring along someone who's even more committed to the theme than you are. That way, as you walk toward the fateful front door of the party, wondering if you've been set up for shattered dignity, at least you know you won't be embarrassed alone.

The latest example of this starts with a guy named Jamey, who I went on one date with back in July when I first arrived to St Louis. Nothing came of it from the dating standpoint, but he writes one of my new favorite funny blogs so we've kept in touch. (At the very least, you cannot say you've fully lived until you've read this entry about the Dry Cleaning Lady, and this one about True Survival against all odds.)

Jamey hosts an annual Festivus party (a la Seinfeld), and this year he themed it Trashy or Classy, with instructions to wear either your rattiest trashy clothes, your finest gown or tuxedo, or a half-and-half combo of both.

Thanks to Goodwill (which supplied the shirts, suit pants, exclusive country club necktie, and size 8 women's jeans), my mother (who taught me to sew, but probably never envisioned that those skills would be used for evil rather than good), and Silhouette temporary tattoo paper, here's what we wore on Saturday night:

Oh Billy Ray, you mulletted hunk of man. Sadly, even the confidence instilled in me by having Billy's triumphant trailer park salute emblazoned across my back couldn't keep me from worrying that we'd be the only ones dressed up for this party.

We arrived to the door.

We knocked.

We thought about turning back. It wasn't too late to save Dave's bare thigh from public scrutiny. No one would ever have to know how close we came to ruination.

Then we opened the fateful door and went inside.

Oh, the suspense.

Inside the party, delightful levels of classiness and trashiness abounded. To my list of "Likes," I should add that going all in is even better when you meet other people who have likewise committed.

We even learned that Dave has a soul mate.

Do you ever suffer from the "What if I'm the only one in costume" syndrome? Has it ever turned out badly for you?

McDonald's is Creepier in Canada

2011-11-12T15:37:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a dream in which I came back to my tinypartment to find that absolutely everything I own had been stolen, right down to the last square of toilet paper, except four business suits which were still hanging neatly in my otherwise barren closet.

In the dream, I was utterly convinced of two things:

1. If the burglar had left me four suits, it must mean I was supposed to wear those as I hunted the culprit to the ends of the earth, and that I only had four days to do so.

2. The whole robbery was related to a deeply sinister plot concocted by The Hamburglar, of McDonald's fame.

Not wanting to just chalk up such a thing as irrational dream gibberish, I've been trying to figure out what exactly prompted me to dream it. I think it must have been a combination of the conversation Dave and I were having a few days back about great snippets from The Onion (follow the link for what may be one of the funniest articles I have ever read), and this picture my friend Val sent me of a road sign in Canada:

If cash levitates out of the trunk of your car whenever you open it, you might want to hide the key a bit better than that. Especially if there are gigantic burglar creeps wearing fedoras prowling around. You can't be too careful, you know.

- - - - - - - -

Putting the two together, it's clearly a recipe for a dream about being robbed blind by a hamburger-enthusiast/costumed criminal who then skips the country to head into the great white north with all my pseudo-valuables. I have no way to explain why the suits were featured in the dream. Maybe Hamburglar figured that if he has to dress up, so should I?

Have you ever had a bizarro dream but actually been able to explain what seeded it?

Arch Rivals in the City

2011-10-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

My friend Dar, who's toiling along through plastic surgery residency in Cincinnatti, had an extremely rare weekend off so she came to visit. After relentlessly shaming me for being a St Louis resident but never having been up to the top of the St Louis Arch, we spent most of Saturday afternoon there.

Allow me to specify how "most of Saturday afternoon" breaks down:

- 20 minutes in the arch itself

- 2 hours jumping/cartwheeling/yoga-posing/handstanding on the grass in the park at the base of the arch while fiddling around with the timer on the camera in search of the ultimate shot

- 10 minutes (summed) telling innocent bystanders that we weren't crazy people and denying that we'd been there jumping/cartwheeling/yoga-posing/handstanding for the past 2 hours.

After that, we ate dinner at a sidewalk cafe then went to the venerated, classy, upscale, grown-up St Louis landmark known as City Museum. Picture the best playground from your childhood dreams, build it out of found objects and junkyard steel with questionable engineering tactics, install a 10-story spiral slide, a pipe organ, a live herd of turtles and a gutted airplane, then charge admission and serve pizza. Voila! City Museum! From the bowels of said museum comes a montage I like to call, "Hey Dar, you should try crawling through that."

To which she replied, "Hey Sarah, you found another inanimate boyfriend." (Wow! Printer Man, Wooden Doorstop Man, and Crosswalk Reminder Guy will be so jealous!)

War Paint

2011-10-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

It seems like it's been so long since the Krispy Kreme Challenge. Luckily, there are other equally ridiculous things to do around here: bring on the Warrior Dash!

And now, an exclusive and irrelevant interview about the experience:

How excited was I?

Excited enough to entice me into wearing that very special spandex-and-socks combo in public again.

Excited enough to jump up and down a lot.

Excited enough to render me incapable of preventing the Dork Smile from being captured on film.

How did I train for it?

Um.... good intentions. And zero actual training. In retrospect, that may not have been the strongest regimen.

My friends Justin and Katie ran the Warrior Dash in Minnesota a few months ago amidst their training for much more serious/lengthy races. They were in shape. Oh, so wise.

Are the spandex and socks flammable?

The world may never know.

Did I slip gracelessly into a mud pit and crawl through it on all fours, even though everyone else managed to cross it in a bipedal manner pretty well?

Why yes. Yes, I did.

How did I get clean afterwards?

Bathed publicly with a fire hose while surrounded by throngs of total strangers. Naturally.

Please don't Rhwe in public

2011-10-08T07:20:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across an awesome little article listing words with no English equivalent.

They describe concepts that we're familiar with, but lack word for.

(On that note, please oh please oh please someday let the newly approved words of the year be gender-ambiguous 3rd person singular pronouns meaning him/her, and he/she. We need a singular "they." Please.)

Here's the list, for your enjoyment and new wordification:

1. Shemomedjamo (Georgian)

You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it? The Georgians feel your pain. This word means, “I accidentally ate the whole thing.”

2. Pelinti (Buli, Ghana)Your friend bites into a piece of piping hot pizza, then opens his mouth and sort of tilts his head around while making an “aaaarrrahh” noise. The Ghanaians have a word for that. More specifically, it means “to move hot food around in your mouth.”

3. Layogenic (Tagalog)

Remember in Clueless when Cher describes someone as “a full-on Monet…from far away, it’s OK, but up close it’s a big old mess”? That’s exactly what this word means.

4. Rhwe (Tsonga, South Africa)

College kids, relax. There’s actually a word for “to sleep on the floor without a mat, while drunk and naked.”

5. Zeg (Georgian)

It means “the day after tomorrow.” Seriously, why don’t we have a word for that in English?

6. Pålegg (Norweigian)

Sandwich Artists unite! The Norwegians have a non-specific descriptor for anything – ham, cheese, jam, Nutella, mustard, herring, pickles, Doritos, you name it – you might consider putting into a sandwich.

7. Lagom (Swedish)

Maybe Goldilocks was Swedish? This slippery little word is hard to define, but means something like, “Not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.”

8. Tartle (Scots)

The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.

9. Koi No Yokan (Japanese)

The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love.

10. Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)

This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.

11. Fremdschämen (German); Myötähäpeä (Finnish)

The kindler, gentler cousins of Schadenfreude, both these words mean something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.” Or, in other words, that-feeling-you-get-when-you-watch-Meet the Parents.

12. Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese)

Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for “tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair.”

13. Greng-jai (Thai)

That feeling you get when you don’t want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

14. Kaelling (Danish)

You know that woman who stands on her doorstep (or in line at the supermarket, or at the park, or in a restaurant) cursing at her children? The Danes know her, too.

Cardboard Boxes and Sisterhood

2011-09-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

I just spent a 4-day weekend in Utah with my sister, Bonnie. We had a great time doing everything from hiking...

to mall loitering...

to caving...

to wandering aimlessly on a sunny day in her old neighborhood park...

Whenever we hang out, I'm always surprised how many people ask us if we're twins. (One guy asked us if we were "open-minded twins." I think I may or may not have understood what he meant by that.)

Whenever we're together, I'm also reminded that growing up with her as my sister it's amazing I survived to adulthood. So many of the very best bad ideas have involved her. Case in point, she pushed me off the roof twice while we were growing up, both times in a cardboard box.*

#Once. Our parents had just bought a new water heater, and that gigantic cardboard box practically begged to be played in. "We" decided it would make good practice for someday when we would become famous by going off Niagara Falls in a barrel.

#Twice. Our neighbors had just bought a new washing machine. Bonnie and I pooled our brain power as budding engineers and made an airplane cobbled together from the washer box, an old bicycle chain & handlebars, and a box of Cookie Crisp cereal (the trans-continental in-flight meal). "We" decided I could be the solo test pilot for its maiden flight.

Thanks for the great memories and the excellent cardboard-box-free weekend.

I love you, Bon!

*The issue of why we were allowed to play on our roof is a whole other blog post... maybe even a book.

Ooh! Who sent me this?

2011-09-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Do you remember back in junior high when, out of the blue, a note would arrive in your locker from "a secret admirer" and you would swoon through the school hallways for the rest of the day feeling special because someone (may as well presume it's someone cute and awesome) secretly admired you?

Yeah, that never happened to me either.

But instead, yesterday someone identified only as none@nowhere.com emailed me a link to 11 pieces of Hilariously Bad Art. Apparently, there's a Museum of Bad Art in Boston where most of the art was rescued from the trash then proudly displayed in the MOBA as "Art too bad to be ignored."

Thank you, secret admirer of bad art. I feel...uh...special.

A glimpse into the love life of people with impossibly tiny feet, whose clothes match the foliage impeccably.

- - - - - - - - - - - - There is nothing more perfect than a full moon, the Golden Gate Bridge, a menacing fist, an apocalyptic fog, and a shameless bowl cut. I think I saw this pattern woven onto a fuzzy blanket for sale at a roadside swap meet once.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

This one is called "Lucy in the Field with Flowers," and it was the original artwork in the MOBA. I love how it's like we're unexpectedly witnessing a Marilyn Monroe moment from a cranky old broad in sensible shoes. Plus, I've always liked how acid rain from a radioactive yellow sky makes the flowers grow.

Basking in Centuries of Culture

2011-09-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

A few weekends back, I went for a hike out at Pere Marquette, where the top of the hill rewards you with a breathtaking view of the backwater tributaries of the Mississippi river valley. The lobby of the visitor center at Pere Marquette also had something rather...uh...breathtaking.

I can honestly say I've never seen buckskin pants, a fur loin cloth, and a lollipop-feathered headdress all together in one ensemble quite like this.

Although the model shown here is undeniably making it look fierce (not a trace of silly candy-schlepping-salesman-type pandering; simply stoic candy-coated pride), and I'm always a fan of mixed media and quirky cultural intermingling, and I'm sure the suckers are delicious, I have to wonder whether hundreds of years of tribal civilization were *really* supposed to culminate in this.

Ultimately, I give a bewildered salute to the determined sculptor with a sweet tooth who brought us this strange modern masterpiece. Tasty, but not tasteful.

Mergency

2011-09-10T05:25:00.000-07:00

"Some situations are so dire that you don't even have time for vowels."

(Special thanks to Dave for this picture and its awesome caption.)

A quilt is a hug

2011-09-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

How can it possibly already be two weeks since I visited my sister, Janene, and her family in Arkansas? Time flies. It was just a quick weekend visit, but highlights included seeing my two cutie nephews and adorable neice. From left to right here:

- Marc is showing me his favorite blanket.

- Matthew has just informed me he has no intention of wearing clothes at the park. I wonder why 3 year olds all seem to revert to a firm nudist philosophy after spending the first couple of years pretty ambivalent about clothes?

- Miriam is demonstrating that her favorite and best word is "Cheese."

Janene lives on the Air Force base. As an honored guest there, they let me fly one of the planes.

Leaving was bittersweet. My roommates from sophomore year in college may remember Printer Man: Alison's talking printer that spoke in a stale electronic voice to notify you when printing was complete, or when it was time to replace the paper or ink. Naturally (...naturally???), it became a running joke in our apartment that Printer Man was my one and only love. *Swoon.* Alas, Printer Man and I never dated. But since then, Printer Man has been followed by a select but compelling group of other inanimate one-and-only-loves, including the Wooden Doorstop Man in Ghana, and now the plastic Crosswalk Reminder Guy on my sister's streetcorner. We shared tender goodbyes before I left Arkansas.

I may never see him again. But my street-crossing habits are forever changed.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The surprise of the weekend came when Janene started apologizing, saying "I have your favorite old Smurf quilt here from when we were kids, and I'm sorry I haven't given it back to you all these years." I had zero recollection of a favorite old quilt, let alone a Smurf quilt.

Then she pulled this out of the closet and suddenly all the memories of it flooded back. The day our Mom took me to Western Drug (our podunk town's pharmacy/books/decor/taxidermy/fabric store of choice) and let me pick out cloth for her to make into a quilt of my very own. How I carried it around everywhere. How I took it up on the roof once to watch a meteor shower with my Dad. How I threw up all over it once when I had stomach flu. How Smurfette was my beauty icon.

It's funny how something can trigger memories so instantly, so powerfully. Do you have any memory triggers like this?

Kid stuff

2011-08-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

Having spent the past 2 months hanging out in the Children's Hospital, I've been remembering glimmers of childhood that I hadn't thought about in a long time. I'm convinced there are certain archetypes -- certain kids that everyone remembers, no matter which school they went to or which part of the country they lived in, as though the same kid existed everywhere and just went by different names. The three most consistent are:

1. The Girl Who Had Breasts Before Anyone Else (Joyce Udall). While the rest of us 4th graders were muddling around with cooties and crayolas, she suddenly showed up with fascinating secret things like bras. All the boys were suddenly mysteriously aware of her charms (i.e. "Ooh, she must be very smart to have figured out how to grow those. I suddenly want to be her friend.") All the girls pretended it didn't matter. Think back. You know there was a Joyce Udall at your school.

2. The Kid Who Ate Glue and/or Figured Out How to Flip His Eyelids Inside Out Then Chased People Around the Playground (Jim Leveille). Oh, Jim, I had such a 5th-grade crush on you. I know that Ed Hall gave you a run for your money in the glue-eating department for a while there, but you were always the undisputed winner. Ed had to settle for being The Kid Who Carried a Superfluous Briefcase in Elementary School. Was there a Jim Leveille at your school? I've lost track of the one from mine. How did he turn out?

3. The Kid Who Got Glasses First (Sarah Jacobs). I distinctly remember the eye test at the beginning of kindergarten. I couldn't see a dang thing. I was acutely aware that all the other kids apparently could see something on that big white rectangle at the end of the hallway, and I knew I was going to fall short! Disappoint! Fail! So I did the only rational thing that came to mind: I memorized the answers all the kids ahead of me in line gave, then spouted them off when it was my turn. Pass! Huzzah! ...only to fail at the beginning of 1st grade when they re-screened with a different chart. I recall describing that I saw "a brick wall with a flower pot on top and a daisy in it," thinking I'd get bonus points for detail. Alas, it was actually just the letter "F". Glasses for me.

Were you ever one of those kids? And seriously, whatever happened to Jim Leveille?

2011-08-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend I'm visiting my sister's family in Arkansas, epicenter of Wal-Mart in the United States.
The accent here is as contagious as herpes.
After one day here, I'm afraid I'm already talking like them.
By tomorrow, I'll probably be driving a car like this:

Help me.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Masses

2011-08-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

The year was 1989. The movie was Field of Dreams. Every movie-goer thought they had learned a valuable lesson: If you build it, they will come.

I took that statement at face value, never giving it a second thought because (a) I was 8, (b) it was just a movie, and (c) everything sounds more profoundly true when it comes from a disembodied voice whispering across a cornfield.

This weekend, I've been to three very different events where masses of people had come, and it got me to thinking about why they really come. Is it actually just because someone built the event, therefore they felt compelled to come to it, like moths to a bug zapper?

The first event: Friday night's live showing of Bye Bye Birdie at The Muny, which is an outdoor theater in Forest Park. (Finding The Muny was a victory in and of itself. Sometime, ask me to tell you the lost-in-Forest-Park story of the golf cart, the public bathers, and the Unibomber lookalike who knows all.) Thousands of people were at the show on Friday night, and as I stared across the crowd it struck me that even though all of our lives were intersecting there for the same show on the same night, every one of them had a separate reason for being there. Most of the reasons probably boiled down to being either:

- a huge fan of musicals

- someone who hates musicals, but got dragged along by a sadistic fan of musicals

- a girl named Sarah on a doozie of an awkward date with a math teacher... um... just hypothetically speaking, of course.

The second event: Saturday at midnight, another date, this time for an annual bike ride called the Moonlight Ramble in which they close the streets to traffic and let the bikes own the night. 10,000 cyclists showed up and packed the streets for a 15-mile ride in a giant loop around town. In theory and feel, it reminded me of the Krispy Kreme Challenge last February, but mercifully donut-free. Why were we all there?

To ride. To be up way past our bedtimes. To pedal down the center lane of Missouri's busiest freeway system without any cars on it. To feel like a solid mass of people with a common bond. And, okay, maybe to find out whether some people really treat this as a clothes-optional event.

Clothes mandatory!

The third event: Sunday morning in a Catholic church. A new friend of mine let me come along to Mass. I had been to one Mass before this, at midnight on a Christmas 10 years ago, where hundreds of people acted as though they had only come because their mothers would be ashamed if they didn't attend church at least once or twice a year -- They rotely stood/sat/knelt/mumbled stuff. They ate wafers. They left. It had a cold, empty feeling.

Today's Mass was different. There was joy. There was a guy in the choir who smiled every time the piano started to play. There were people there because they liked it; because they chose it. They came because they wanted to come.

Why do you attend what you attend?

Electrifying moments in sporting history

2011-08-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

I just got home from the park. You see, after retiring from the hallowed sport of kickball in the 5th grade, I returned to it today as a substitute for the ophtho department's league team.

The sun was bright. The grass was green. The pitches were underhand, medium speed, medium bouncy. The perfect storm.

After 7 thrilling innings, our team managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, narrowly losing with a score of 6 to 0.

Edge of the seats, folks. Edge of the seats.

A serious and egregious error

2011-08-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Something is horribly wrong with this package of neon sour gummy worms.
Can you spot it?

The packaging's decent. Nothing is spelled wrong. There's no subtle subliminal message.

They're not stale. They taste all gummy and neon and such, exactly as advertised.

There's even the added benefit of fat-freedom, plus the fact that they were only $1. But if you've ever had neon sour gummy worms, think for just a second about what the absolute best flavor combo in the whole package is and then the problem becomes flagrantly obvious.

Somehow, biting the red halves and the blue halves off their respective yellow and orange halves in order to sticky them together and pretend there are red/blue ones just isn't the same. Deep sigh...I tried. So much for the total package.

Wandering around in the dark

2011-08-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I had a chance to drive up to Minnesota to go caving with my friends, Jorge and Val. Apparently, they've been trying to get a spot on the wild/off-route tour of Mystery Cave for several years but it always books solid before they have a chance to sign up. This year, it took a state government shut-down and a complex website stalking operation to finally snag reservations for 3. Our personal thanks go out to Governor Tim Pawlenty and the hard economic times for making the weekend possible.

We geared up in knee pads, elbow guards, helmets, headlamps, lug-boots, and cave packs then followed a man in a blue and orange jumpsuit down a nice sidewalk in search of a cave. Using our impressive skills as master cavers, (i.e. following the clearly marked signs along the paved walkway), we eventually found the cave entrance and then spent 4 hours in the dark, cold underground.

I was impressed by virtually everything about the experience, but a few things especially stood out:

1. Moving through tight spaces. There were places along the passageway where we were flat on our bellies, heads turned sideways because the helmets wouldn't fit vertically, creeping along using fingernails and toe scoots. The human body is remarkably pliable! (Note: When possible, I tried to let Jorge go ahead of me. The wisdom in that was that he's bigger, so I figured that if he fit I would fit. The downside was that he ate a lot of cabbage the day before.)

2. Leadership. A good leader enables his/her followers to feel competent at the task at hand, even if they aren't fully skilled at it. Our guide, Greg, was exceptional at this. He knew every twist, turn, and pebble along the route and gave us plenty of clear advance-notice of what was coming up and how to deal with it. He eased us in via easier routes, getting us really comfortable first before gradually leading us into a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. He gave us candy.

3. Darkness. At one point, we made our way through a narrow channel sloping downward to the edge of a deep drop-off. Shining the headlamps down the chimney, the light couldn't reach its bottom. Greg had us gather there on the edge of the bottomless chasm and turn off all our lights. Total darkness. Sitting there without eyes, I could feel the rest of my senses wake up. My skin picked up the cave moisture and the breath of the caver beside me. I could smell a million years of earth. We could hear a river running 50 feet below us. I would swear that river hadn't existed at all while our lights were on.

4. Caving as a metaphor for life. I'm sure there's something profound to be learned here, but all my attempts to put it together come out awfully heavy-handed. Sometimes, life takes you through your darkest, deepest, worst nightmare where the ground is rocky and your hands are bleeding and the walls are closing in. You come out of it muddy, scraped up, blinking into the light, wearing grubby plastic bags on your feet. But what's the bigger moral to that story? Help me out.

29-ness

2011-08-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I will stop being 29.

According to some fancy math calculations that I worked out on a piece of scratch paper, that means I'll be 30.

Thank you, Bonnie.

I've been trying to decide whether there are any deep thoughts I want to publicize on the verge of turning 30. To keep it from getting too schmaltzy, here are my sincerest hopes, dreams, insights, shortcomings, and goals in exactly 30 words:

Things I've learned

I'll be learning for the rest of my life.

Things I want

Not sure who You is yet

Things I want to improve at

Everything

How to walk a fine line

2011-07-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

For several years, my real goal in life has been to discover by trial and error just how many pagers I can wear to make myself look uber-important but without making my scrub pants fall off.

Four.

If I wore them on a bandolier like Rambo, I think I could push the number higher.

Brace Yourself

2011-07-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

Let July 26, 2011, go down in history as the day of a huge paradigm shift. (It used to have to content itself with being the day that's 2 days after Pioneer Day, but now it might finally get some intrinsic dignity.) Allow me to tell you why:

First, rewind to a month ago when my sister called to ask, "Did the package come yet?" and I said, "No." Two weeks before that phone call, she had sent me a box of fresh, delicious, home-baked cookies. You will always find cookies high on the list of things that make me near-comatose with happiness (along with back scratches and an 80-degree apartment in December), so I spent the next week watching the mail for that package until finally giving it up for dead.

Second, flash forward to today when the box arrived exactly 6 weeks after its postmarked date. I think the US postal mail between Arkansas and St Louis routes through Egypt. To state the obvious, the cookies had seen better days. I cradled them in my arms in their mangled Ziploc bag, wishing there were some way to save them.

That said, on to the groundbreaking paradigm shift!

One of my long-standing theories is that everything looks more alluring in black and white. The theory has never failed me. Models become supermodels in a black and white photo. Cluttered spaces become artsy. I become interesting and mysterious. You become intelligent and well-dressed.

This guy:

...becomes this guy:

But the smashed, decayed, stale remnants of oatmeal butterscotch cookies become mold-spore-ridden props from Night of the Living Dead:

The theory fails at last. The world is changed forever.

Please join me in a moment of silent mourning for the cookies, or suggest a way to save them.

Brought to you by the letter "P"

2011-07-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

A really great friend of mine was in St Louis last weekend so we went to the farmer's market where he purchased a pair of purple peppers at a farmer's market. Purple peppers? I would never lie about such a thing:We also visited the St Louis Zoo (which is free, and therefore awesome, but also awesome by its own merits). I was surprised by how active the animals were. Even the poor Sloth Bear, which the sign informed me is not merely threatened, but THREATENDED, somehow summoned the will to frolic around instead of fixating on his morose threatended status. In the event that you wonder why the poor Sloth Bear is threatended, maybe it's because dudes in terrifyingly short-shorts keep chasing it around, as shown on this other very informative zoo sign: St Louis is hot and humid -- a sticky, sweaty, drippy heat that I've started ranking in terms of how many showers a day I feel like I need as a result of it. The day we went to the zoo was a 3-shower day. Luckily, the zoo has a penguin house which was a really nice relief from the weather outside. I hope the penguins know how good they have it. The penguins are messy. Fortunately for them, the zoo imported some Oompa Loompas to clean up after them. The very best place of all was the hippopotamus tank. Behold the majesty of the multi-talented hippo as it swims, feeds the fish, and inspires the children: Further educational enrichment:

A Letter to My Cats

2011-07-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Hubble and Mars, I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but if you don't stop scratching my furniture and chewing my power cords I solemnly swear that I will start to retaliate by making you wear stuff like this: Love,

Sarah

What it took to get there

2011-06-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

I cry at weddings. Always. Embarrassing.

It's not a planned reaction -- it always catches me off guard somehow -- but there's just something about weddings that provokes my lacrimal glands.

This weekend, sitting in a little chapel in the southwest quarter of Rochester, MN, I figured out what it is: It's the sheer magnitude of knowing what it took for the couple to get there. Of course, we always seem to focus on the sparkly romance and the dash of destiny that brought two people together into saccharine-sweet happiness. Stuff like, "How did you meet?" "When did you know he/she was The One?" and "How did he propose?" *swooooooooooooon*

But this time, I was thinking more about the long, heart-wrenching backstory that virtually everyone has to go through before the dizzy romantic part comes along.

Who got married this weekend? This (awesomely photoshopped) guy: Justin, one of my best friends. He's brilliant, hard-working, adventurous, tender-hearted, occasionally sassy, and relentlessly dedicated to being a good person. He has fought harder than most people I know to overcome what life has dealt him. So as I sat at his wedding, crying like a goober, it was because I was thinking about the long hard road he had traveled to make it to that day.

Of course he had to find the girl, hang on tight, shave his beard, rent a tux, and say "I do." But way before that, he had to leave his family and his home, decide whether to be a victim or a survivor, define for himself who he is and the kind of man he wants to be, and accept the fact that he's worth loving.

It took nearly 30 years, but the sweetness of that moment was all the richer because of what it took to get there.

Congratulations Justin and Katie.

It's really beautiful to see you happy at the end (and beginning) of this journey.

Whirlwinds of random

2011-06-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

The existential crisis of a blog is that anything interesting enough to post about keeps me too busy to post anything. I always end up with a slurry of pictures and stories and no time to do them justice. Such is the situation now. Guatemala was incredible -- a rollercoaster of cultural immersion, homesickness, serene moments, killer hikes, and freaky colloquial "saints."

...and lots of little old people carrying big heavy things, of course:

As I was coming down from a hike to the top of an active volcano outside of Quetzaltenango, a heavy fog rolled in so I stopped in a meadow where some cows with bells were grazing. As I was sitting there a while appreciating that disembodied feeling of being able to hear but not see, this man and his horse came wandering through the mist. I like how the horse is loaded with about 200 pounds of firewood and the guy is carrying two sticks. Its as though he was loading the horse and thought, "Hmmm...these last two sticks would just make it way too heavy."

Here's the volcano:

And here's me standing on the very tippy top of it. I wanted to be aerodynamic in case it erupted:

Meanwhile, back at the host-family house, this is the showerhead, which was connected with an inline water heater via some sketchy wiring. (Ooh...bare wires and running water...every electrician's dream!) With trial and error, I learned that the trick to getting warm water from this thing was to watch the bare lightbulb on the bathroom ceiling while gradually turning on the water in the shower. As soon as the lightbulb dimmed, that meant there was electric power running to the showerhead. Also with trial and error, I learned to ignore that uneasy, unsafe feeling of imminent electrocution that would rise within me anytime I looked at the showerhead.

My homestay bedroom (which was actually the family's laundry room with a mattress on the floor) had this stunning view of a roof. But not just any roof. It had a roof toilet. Fans of Scrubs, this is your moment to comptemplate the glory of our world:

How could waking up to a view of a roof toilet every morning not make me want to run skipping and dancing through the streets of Guatemala? It was a recipe for inevitable joy. And joyness. And joy. In other random travel news: This mouth full of bling belongs to a lady named Maria who lives in Panajachel on the banks of Lake Atitlan where she weaves blankets and smiles at tourists.

Lago Atitlan itself is ringed by 3 major volcanoes and countless minor cinder cones. There was a morning when I negotiated a kayak rental then paddled around on the lake before anyone else was awake. At one point out on the water I had a moment in which it suddenly hit me just how amazing life really is -- a blinding flash of the obvious when I realized "Holy cow! I'm in Guatemala. Kayaking Lake Atitlan." Even if the whole entire trip had only been for the purpose of having that one moment of realization in which it was so clear to me that I'm happy and content and life is good, it would've been worthwhile.And since we're pondering life's deep existential questions of happiness... If you happened to be starting a vest-wearing Latin music octet, would you name it Oasis de Amor/Love Oasis? Dudes, you'll never have the cool factor of Bruce Springstein with a name like that, regardless of your mullets and matching vests. At least I finally discovered the answer to another important existential question while I was traveling Central America. What is the purpose of Lichi? Behold, an answer at last:

Unfortunately, the world is still plagued by another question: Why is it so easy for children's dolls to cross the threshold from cute to creepy? Does this make you want to buy a soccer uniform for your child at the street market? I felt like I'd be voodoo cursed just for stopping to take a picture of it.

And finally, in the absolutely weirdest thing I´ve ever seen in my whole life, I went with some of the students from my Spanish school on a pilgrimage to see San Simon ¨Maximón.¨ He's a funky little wooden mannequin that sits on a throne, wears sunglasses and a fedora and a black necktie, smokes cigarettes, wears only the most expensive suits, and grants the desires (both good and evil) of all comers.

According to the 500 year old back-story, when the Conquistadors arrived to the region, they were kidnapping and violating the women and children of the villages. Maximón (a real man who hated injustice and abuse of power...and who also happened to really like tobacco and rum and voodoo-ish stuff), went from village to village helping them hide their women and children from the Conquistadors to keep them safe. He was lauded as a hero by the villagers, but the Spaniards were so upset by his defiance that they killed and dismembered him, then spread his body parts across the whole country -- an arm there, a leg here, a head over there. But then, they say that his spirit appeared to people in every village that his body parts had been spread to, so the villagers started worshipping him as a saint. The Catholic church refused to grant him sainthood (no surprise there), so the townspeople have taken turns hosting the idol in their homes ever since. They all worship him in whatever ways they see fit (Catholic prayers, Mayan rituals, animal sacrifices, voodoo dolls, whatever), and he'll help pretty much anyone with pretty much anything from miracles to murders, as long as they sacrifice enough money and votive candles and bottles of his favorite rum at his altar. While I was there, a guy was sitting in one corner doing Tarot card readings, a woman was there praying for her sick child alternating between Hail Mary's and The Lord's Prayer and pleas to Maximón, and this actual Mayan shaaman was knelt down doing a smoke ritual to commune with the dead:

Just think of the blend of Christianity, paganism, coincidental beliefs, humanitarianism, virtues, vices, pyromania, and moneymaking that all had to converge in order to create a belief system like that. It blows my mind.

Congratulations are Overdue!

2011-06-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in Panajachel (a touristy town on the banks of Lake Atitlan), staying the weekend at a sweet little hotel that provides hot water (...oh, how I've missed thee) and WiFi (ditto). All for about $12 US per night. Getting here involved a 2-hour ride through the pouring rain in a refurbished 1970's school bus that was billowing black smoke and loaded with about 80 passengers in a space intended for 40. A middle-aged indigenous lady carrying a huge canvas bag full of radishes essentially sat on my lap most of the way there.

Cost for the bus: $3US.

Value: Priceless.

I love this country.

But first things first!

May 16th, two of my most awesome friends got married on the edge of a cliff in Yosemite National Park. It was one of the prettiest weddings I've ever been to.

Despite the weird May snowstorm:

...And it was certainly the only wedding I've attended in which the bride changed into her dress on a ledge of rock behind a tarp, the happy couple wore safety harnesses, and all the guests had helmets on.

Congratulations Jorge and Val!

As the card said: "May you always be happy campers."

Californiatemala Hiatus

2011-05-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Yosemite for a wedding, then to Guatemala for several weeks right after that, then moving to St Louis immediately thereafter, so there won't be much posting on the blog frontier for the next month or so. In the meantime, please keep your fingers crossed that I don't fall off El Capitan, or get swallowed up by the equatorial jungle, or get one of my kidneys stolen in East St Louis. Past track record being an indicator of future events, I probably will get dysentery, so I won't even bother asking you to cross your fingers against that. I'll just pack the Flagyl and not worry you with the rest of the details.

Have a great summer!

Hip-Hip-Luray!!!!

2011-04-30T11:23:00.001-07:00

You know how sometimes when you're driving along the freeway you see massive billboards for super-duper-uber-awesome tourist attractions that you will probably never visit? Like this one from outside Tucson, AZ, which creeps me out because someone once told me that "The Thing" is some sort of crustified body of unidentified phylogeny. I will never visit The Thing.

Ever since moving to Virginia, I've passed signs for Luray Caverns from time to time. It seemed like a safe bet that Luray Caverns were probably a cave rather than a mummified crusty body thing, so at least it had that in its favor. So last weekend involved a visit.

In a word: Amazing.

My only previous cave experience had been with Peppersauce Cave outside of Tucson, which involved belly-crawling 20 feet through a dark muddy hole in a mountainside in order to reach a dank slimy vaulted room. It was eery to be somewhere so dark and enclosed. A cool experience, but it convinced me I'm not a born spelunker. Alas.

In contrast, Luray is all lit and clean with a slick headphone-guided tour and some of the most surreal rock I've ever seen.

This set of drapery formations was at least 10 feet long. It grows about 1 inch per 100 years.

This is "Dream Lake," which is a perfectly still pool of water about 18 inches deep that reflects all the stalactites from the roof of the cavern and makes it look like there's a valley of stalagmites way down in a valley beneath you.

This cool beastie is a pipe organ that's hooked into a system of solenoids that trigger little rubber mallets to hit certain stalactites throughout the cavern. Each stalactite was specially selected for its musical pitch, so the notes you hit on the organ are actually what you hear back from the corresponding stalactite.

This pool of water is used as a wishing well. The copper from the pennies reacts with the water and turns the underwater stone that green tinge. Every year, they clean out the well and donate all the money to charity. For example, they've donated nearly $200,000 to the American Heart Association.

Dude. Luray Caverns is way better than The Thing could ever be.

The bright side

2011-04-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

My mom was diagnosed with cancer and needed to have surgery. It took several weeks to find a surgeon willing to do the operation for an uninsured patient, and it felt like I spent every minute of free time calling doctors and hospitals trying to find someone to help her. I've never felt so disappointed in the medical system. The bright side of the story is that we did finally find a wonderful doctor at UMC in Tucson. In an unexpected act of kindness, my residency program helped set up a 5-day leave of absence so that I could go help out. (Mom and Dad aren't exactly savvy city folks. The idea of letting them wander around Tucson unchaperoned is sort of terrifying, in and of itself, even without adding the layer of complexity involved in clinic appointments, surgery, post-op care, and hospital billing.) First things first, upon reaching the city two nights before her operation we went to Taco Bell. Mom basically considers this the Holy Land and actually said, "Well, if I had to get cancer, at least I got a taco out of the deal."

The truly beautiful side of the story is that the surgery went perfectly, there was no evidence of cancerous spread to the lymph nodes or elsewhere, and she recovered quickly after the procedure. In fact, by the next afternoon, she was sitting up in a chair cheating at cards again. ...and as of Monday evening, she and my Dad are back in Round Valley, puttering around in the podunk rural paradise they're much better suited for. Couldn't ask for a happier ending.

- - - - - - - - -

No adventure is complete without Murphy's Law, so I should mention that one of the hotel beds collapsed in the middle of the night for absolutely no reason. Focusing on the positive, at least the floor didn't collapse under it, too.

P.S. to Howard Johnson Inn of Tucson:

We'll let the Bed Incident slide as a freakish accident, but this informational sticker posted in the bathroom of Room 108 is just a flagrant lie.

Monday Pants

2011-03-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm tired and stressed and cranky. And it's Monday.

And then these walked through the door:

Courtesy of the medical student on our hospital team. I should specify that even though they might look like scrubs, they're actually a horrific geranium red/pink denim fabric, and he paired them with a button-up shirt and a bright red tie. He calls them "My Monday Pants." He wears them without shame or hesitation.

I officially stand in awe of this phenomenon.

Gee, the traffic is...terrific.

2011-03-19T19:29:00.001-07:00

One morning, Cletus woke up, looked over at his cousin/wife, belched mightily, then said, "I reckon people ain't gon know we's rednecks less'n we advertise it better." Several weeks later, after extensive debate over the proper spelling of Redneck, and heated discussion about whether the additional flag on the truck cab's antenna would be tacky excess or stylistic genius, they settled on a design that was both historically referential and contemporarily distasteful. And behold, as I was on my way to Best Buy to pick up a new power cord for ye olde laptop this evening, I got stuck behind Cletus Redneck's truck as it made its way inexorably to Wal-Mart.

Seriously.

Atlantic to Pacific

2011-03-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

Starting this upcoming Monday, I'm slated for 2 straight months of intense, sleep-deprived, heartbreaking, boundary-stretching inpatient medicine and pediatric rotations, with 80-hour workweeks and 30-hour call shifts and a lot of wondering why I'm doing this. In the calm before the storm, I had some flexible time off last week and went up to Minnesota then out to San Diego for vacations with friends. In Minnesota, I learned that the word "belated" makes up for absolutely any amount of elapsed time, and also that cake is still really tasty no matter what belated occasion you pretend it's for.

I learned that breaking 100 in a bowling game can fill a person with infinite pride.

I also learned that Justin, who was recently fitted for a tuxedo for his upcoming wedding, has similar measurements to most Miss America contestants. It was hard to tell whether he was proud of this fact or not. (For the record, he measures 36-27-34, but he declines to participate in the swimsuit portion of the competition for some reason.)

- - - - - - - - - -

In San Diego, I learned that I make a really pathetic flamingo

and that Dar makes a really pathetic tortoise

but that we would both fit inside the mouth of the (extinct) megalodon shark

or inside the nest of a weaver bird. ...if the weaver bird were 100 times bigger than its actual size.

I learned that this Northern White Rhino is one of only 7 left in the world. There are 2 males and 5 females (4 of whom are too old to breed). It's pretty sobering to look at an animal and realize that it will probably be extinct before our children's generation is old enough to realize it had ever existed at all.

Speaking of breeding, as we walked past the African Gerunuk enclosure, one of them was just standing at the back of the field, ho-hum, casually grazing while giving birth. Holy shmoley, I've never seen anyone or anything act that nonchalant during childbirth! This antelope is my new Icon of Pain Tolerance. (In the picture, you can see its newborn poking its head up out of the grass near the mother's front legs.)

On a side note, anytime I think of animals giving birth, I have a flashback of the night that my sister's friend's chihuahua decided that my face was the best place to have puppies while I was asleep. There's nothing like waking up to find your face inches from amniotic membranes. It ruins the whole "miracle of life" thing.

On an unrelated note, koalas are relentlessly cute:

And SeaWorld is amazing, despite being relentlessly commercialized.

And vacation is a very good thing.

CHOMP!!!!

2011-03-02T13:49:00.000-08:00

And then, in an unprecendented example of rock climbing gone horribly wrong, the cliff face decided to fight back:

Slam!

2011-02-15T14:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, sweetness is in the air. Another Valentine's Day come and gone. I hope you spent yesterday evening receiving and enjoying the chocolate, flowers, fancy dinners, candlelight, diamonds, and shhmoooopy love cards that the holiday entails.

In contrast, my feelings about Valentine's Day are probably adequately summed up by the Zombie Pet Shoppe Playset. So I spent yesterday in Philadelphia with my friend Alyssa, attending a Story Slam.

Philly has a very cool organization called First Person Arts that sponsors a story-telling competition each month. They give the audience a theme then let people come up with whatever true life experience they can think of that relates to the theme. Audience members' names get drawn randomly from a bucket, and whoever's name is drawn goes up on the stage to tell their story in 5 minutes or less. It all gets scored by judges from the audience who rate the stories on content and delivery. The winner of the night gets invited back to be part of a summer Grand Slam, which is a massive crazy championship round for all the year's winners.

Last night's extremely Valentine-appropriate theme: The Ex-Files. There were some amazing stories. Terribly odd and awkward tales of high school romances, painful breakups, first kisses, life-changing heartbreaks. Some funny, some sad, most a bittersweet mix of both. One girl talked about the unrequited junior high crush she had on a guy with a rat tail haircut. She's probably still in therapy to this day, if only because feeling attracted to someone with that haircut must undoubtedly scar a person for life.

And then my name got drawn from the bucket.

The rest is a blur.

Here's the story I told:

When a relationship ends, you have an Ex. You also have an Ex-House, which means you need a new place to live. That is how I found myself searching the classifieds for an apartment in Minnesota. After reading plenty of disconcerting listings for overpriced mildewed windowless basements shared with creepy roommates who were probably registered sex-offenders, I found a listing for a "Clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's Hospital. $400/month, all-inclusive."

This was clearly the holy grail of apartment offerings, so I called immediately. A polite, intelligent man answered the phone and explained that he and his wife lived in a very large house on the hillside. It was too much space for the two of them, so they had subdivided it to make the lower level into a separate apartment. They offered it at a low rent rate so that they could catch more interest and thus be more selective of quality tenants, who they welcomed into their home like family. He told me the other current tenant (my prospective roommate) was a very responsible nurse employed by Mayo Clinic. I excitedly asked when I could come take a look at this wonderful place. He said, "How about tonight?"

After work, I rode my bicycle to the "clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's," which turned out to be 3 miles away from St Mary's, all uphill. I was nervous that I would be so sweaty and haggard from the bike ride that they would deem me unfit to rent to. I knew they were highly selective, and I silently pleaded that I'd be found worthy.

I finally arrived to the address (gasping for breath) and feasted my eyes on my prospective future home: a decrepit funky place that looked like a single-wide trailer rendered in brick, thoughtfully landscaped with lots of dead stuff and broken things. The door was gaping open and creaked inward away from me as I tried to knock, revealing a split-level staircase with steps headed up and steps headed down. The landlord came bounding down the stairs, beer-belly flailing side to side, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and a black silk dressing gown with a giant red dragon emblazoned across the back. I wanted to run away. Instead I said, "I called about the apartment." He said, "Come on upstairs and meet the family!"

Upstairs, the living room walls were encrusted with those frightening porcelaine things you buy from the Sunday glossy ads -- the plates with the embossed wolf howling at the moon, and the indian praying to the sky, and dream catchers, and lifelike dolls with beady little eyes watching your every move. I was greeted by a girl who was about 15, dressed in a ratty sportsbra and sweatpants, watching a Blue Man Group concert on TV and maniacally dancing along. I said, "This must be your daughter." She said, "I'm his wife." I said, "Great! Ummmmm...so...uhhhh...awkward...can I see the apartment?"

Dragon Man led me down the stairs, which dead-ended at a piece of plywood. By opening a closet door, shimmying sideways through the closet mess, then passing through a gaping hole they had busted through the back wall of the closet, we arrived in the garage. Taking a 180 turn to circumnavigate the water heater, we came to a door. The door to the "clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment very close to St Mary's." At last.

Dragon Man turned the key in the lock and swung the door open. The air inside was thick with a haze of 40 years of marijuana and hard living. I found myself standing in a kitchen comprised of a laminate countertop propped up on 2x4's, a sink that drained into a bucket instead of pipes (because plumbing is irrelevant), and a stack of dishes full of stagnant water full of organisms that had probably been there long enough evolve into intelligent life.

The bathroom was off the kitchen through a set of flap-hinged saloon doors. It contained a sink and a toilet. When I asked about the shower, Dragon Man pointed to a drain in the floor. You showered by wrapping the curtain around you and hoping for the best as water rained down from a bare pipe in the ceiling.

From the kitchen, gazing ahead through the smoke, I could see the living room. There was a leathery 40-something man with long stringy hair sitting on the couch watching TV and emanating child molester vibes. As a wave of revulsed horror washed over me I asked, "Are you the nurse?"

To my relief, he said, "No."

To my non-relief, he followed that up by saying, "She's my girlfriend. I just come over to sleep with her." And then, setting a new standard for classiness, he finished by saying, "But don't worry. We close the door."

Meanwhile, Dragon Man started listing all the perks of living there. Of note, I would get my entire security deposit back when I moved out as long as I "don't punch any fist holes through the wall, or patch them up yourself if you do." Then he showed me to "my" room. The door only opened about 1/3 of the way because it ran into the bed. The twin bed filled the room. The room had no windows. It also had no closet. Because it was a closet.

At that point, completely overwhelmed, I hastily shook the Dragon's hand (vowing to thoroughly sanitize my entire limb later), and told him what a GREAT place the apartment was but that I had a few more possibilities to check out before I made up my mind. Then I fled from the clean, quiet, shared 2-bedroom apartment, riding my bicycle into the night and honestly contemplating the relative appeal of homelessness.

- - - - - - - - - - -

In related news: Guess who won Philadelphia's Valentine's Day Story Slam...

- - - - - - - - - - -

Do I need this?

2011-02-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

Yes. Yes, I'm pretty sure I do.

The real question (if you can read the fine print there) is whether the fact that this toy has "small parts" is reeeeeeeeeealllly the only thing that makes it "not suitable for children under 3 years old."

Distance running with a soaking wet gorilla

2011-02-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, I can happily report that I survived the Krispy Kreme Challenge this weekend! Despite 4 miles, 12 donuts, 2400 calories, 7500 runners, 34-degree weather and nonstop pouring rain, I survived! Everyone had to arrive an hour early for pre-race registration. Mostly that involved standing around shivering in the rain, wondering why the heck I signed up for this event. On the plus side, I met a lot of phenomenal people! Including Elvis (...ish), the two guys from Dumb & Dumber (...ish), a guy wearing nothing but black body paint and two strategically-placed Frisbees (...yeek), and a guy in a full gorilla costume which had to have weighed 40 pounds when you include the amount of rainwater it had absorbed.

(Sorry it's blurry. I was shivering uncontrollably at this point.)

I haven't competed in a cross-country/road race since the state championships my freshman year of high school, and I've never been in a race with thousands of runners like this one has. There were so many people lined up at the starting line, it took over 5 minutes from the time the starting gun went off to the time my part of the crowd actually made it up to the line to truly start the race.

A few quick miles later, I arrived at Krispy Kreme, passed through a chute to pick up a boxed dozen donuts... ...and then crouched down in the Krispy Kreme parking lot with all these other runners and ate until I lost my will to live. I learned that if you stack up 3 donuts then smash them flat, you can pretend it's just one really dense donut and eat it all at once. That's a life skill that will probably never come in handy, but a life skill nonetheless. Things went well until donut #9, at which point I thought I heard my stomach audibly beg, "Please, don't hurt me anymore." I mercilessly fed it 3 more donuts, showed my empty box to the gate judge, and starting running again. I had thought running with a dozen donuts in my stomach would make me feel ralphy. But actually, eating the donuts had been so unpleasant that resuming running felt like a relief by comparison. The worst part was seeing the splattered donut remnants on the pavement all the way back to the finish line; mementos of the people whose GI tracts hadn't been so lucky. Ultimately, I had a fantastic amount of fun, didn't yammer, and didn't freeze to death! Plus, I finished in the top 100 women out of about 3,000! Wheeeee! ...totally never doing that again.

Run, Munch, Run!

2011-01-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

My current passion in life:

http://krispykremechallenge.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krispy_Kreme_Challenge

Like a 10K, but with more donuts and more runners dressed as Elvis.

Wish me luck on Feb 5th!

Nature conservancy = A bed frame in a forest

2011-01-16T05:28:00.000-08:00

When it gets cold outside, my instant reflex is "couch, pajamas, netflix." (Which is, incidentally, also becoming my reflex for days off work, lonely Friday nights, post-call afternoons, and perhaps every evening ending in the letter y.) In contrast, hiking in the winter is something I don't do nearly enough of. My friend Catherine (who is a surgery intern, and thus has neither slept nor been praised since July 1, 2010) was going hiking in a nature conservancy in the mountains outside of town and I went along. The trail wound through the forest, down a mountainside, and ended at the edge of a sheer cliff overlooking a frozen waterfall on the other side of the ravine. It was gorgeous, and this picture does it zero justice: Now, if only we'd had a sled with us, this blog post could have been far more interesting... But alas, we just settled for a picture at the edge of the cliff.

Non Sequitur Edible

2011-01-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

In the cafeteria at the hospital where I work, there's a section called Star City Creations where the food prep staff come up with their own ideas. It's the perfect storm, with so much freedom giving rise to so much eccentricity in the menu items. For example: - Caesar salad served in a bread bowl, with a side of baked beans - Chicken fajitas paired with couscous and some tater tots - Baby spinach served in a taco salad shell, topped with pepperoni My personal theory is that they just sit down and play MadLibs when planning meals. In their defense, it's usually tasty. Even when it's not, it's at least so random that it's funny. If there were a contest for food irony, they came up with a championship entry on January 6, 2011. It was indeed so stellar that I felt compelled to take a picture of the grandeur: There's nothing quite like taking the sacred cow of India and serving it as steak on Indian naan bread.

Moon Safety, and other Vacation Lessons

2011-01-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, on account of my good behavior, I get time off work! (Well, actually it's on account of the legally-mandated vacation rules set forth by the residency accreditation board, but regardless: I get time off work!) Here's the whirlwind tour of goodness that was packed into New Year's week: A quick trip to Washington DC with Matt, my best friend from med school. We learned a lot of the real stories behind the landmarks and museums.

The Capitol Building, which is the nation's official manufacturing site for all of the capital letters used in all the publications throughout the whole country. Each member of Congress gets his/her own desk, a stack of colored paper, and a pair of safety scissors to cut out the letters with. I think maybe some kind of government work might happen there, as well, but I'm not sure.

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The Washington Monument, which marks the site where the state of Washington was originally intended to be located, until they realized there wasn't enough room for it there so they had to move it to the west coast.

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The steering helm of a naval vessel at the National Air and Space Museum, We made a great effort to hijack it to sail to Panama, but eventually realized it wasn't connected to an actual ship.

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The actual caption on this item says: "Michael Collins used these scissors to open food packages." What it should say is: "Who the heck is Michael Collins? ...Oh yeah, he's that third guy from the Apollo 11 mission. The one who had to stay up in the orbiter opening food packages while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon."

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Survival Knife from the Apollo space mission.

Used for killing the Moon People.

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We wandered over to China Town for lunch at a little hole in the wall where a remarkable Chinese noodle man stands in the front window making fresh noodles all day. (Follow the link and scroll the video forward to about the 0:50 mark. Prepare to be astounded and amazed by the noodlery.)

----------------------------

We also toured the National Botanical Garden, where they grow some truly incredible things...

...including the Stripey-Legged Gothica Touristica, which can usually only be found in parts of Asia, urban university campus bars, and Oz.

-------------------------------

After the DC trip, in a really lucky convergence of events, I was able to drive to Kentucky and spend New Year's Eve with two of my siblings (Ford and Janene) and their families!

My lovely niece, Megan, is shown here modeling a carrot that looks eerily like an index finger.

--------------------------

Ford and his daughter, Melinda. Notice Ford has no poker face (a family trait which I also inherited). Also notice the ship on the mantle in the background, which the family convinced me had been made as an art project at school. Closer examination revealed that "art project at school" = "Made in China." --------------------------

For about the last 5 years, Janene's been claiming she's married to a guy named Mark, but in all that time I had never met him. It turns out he does exist! And he's as cool as she always claimed.

----------------------

Also, Janene has the most infectious, least inhibited laugh in the world!

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Last but not least, an important Public Safety Announcement:

According to my cutie-patootie nephew, Matthew, there are

dinosaurs living outside in your yard.

Be on the lookout.

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Thoughts at the end of a long year

2010-12-23T03:46:00.000-08:00

"For it must needs be there is an opposition in all things. If it were not so...righteousness could not be brought to pass, nor wickedness...neither corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility."

Somehow, inconceivably, 2010 is almost over. Of all the lessons I've learned in the past year (and especially during the last 6 months), it is that life is defined by opposites. In every experience, one end of the spectrum gives meaning to the other end of the spectrum.

On an overnight shift a few weeks ago, I was called to come pronounce a man dead. He had been a healthy 91 year old, then he fell at home and caused bleeding in his brain which the neurosurgeons couldn't repair. He was still in the hospital doing poorly weeks after it happened, so his family met together, decided he wouldn't have wanted to live that way, and he was put on palliative comfort care. That night, he drew one deep breath then quietly died as the nurse was changing his bedding.

It was the first death I have had to pronounce. I had never met him; never known who he was or what he was like as a living person. I stood there alone in his room, like the world was on pause, hit by the clarity of the fact that his body was still there but he definitely was not. Taking up a corner of the room, there was a big custom blanket printed with a life-sized picture of his children and grandchildren, which made it look like he was surrounded by loved ones even though the room was actually chilly and empty, full of death.

Just a few days later, I was taking care of a new patient: a young woman who was 6 months pregnant and having abdominal pain. Her OB was worried she might have an infected gallbladder which would need surgery. While I listened to her abdomen, I had a hand on my stethoscope and the other on her belly. Suddenly, there was one strong, perfectly-aimed kick from a tiny foot against my hand. Full of life.

About a week after that, a little old man came to collect a bag of his wife's clothes that had been accidentally left at the hospital when she was transferred to a nursing home. He wanted to tell me they have been married 68 years. He's had a stroke and she had been taking care of him at home until she got sick. He wanted to ask me whether she would ever completely recover. He wanted to tell me that he's afraid she will die and leave him alone here without her. He wanted to know if she'll be okay and if he'll be okay. Full of fear, seeking hope.

Every day in that hospital, people are being born and others are dying. People are struggling and suffering, but others are healing and recovering. One family in the waiting room is sobbing and a kid is coming to terms with how real death is when it happens to someone you know. One family in the waiting room is crying tears of joy that their son walked away from a triple-rollover car accident with only a few stitches. People dealing with stress or with relief. They're relying on faith or losing their faith. They're praying or they're cursing God or they're not sure He even exists. They're feeling joy because it could have been pain. They're heartbroken because they had hoped for happy news that never came. They're overwhelmed and feeling nothing at all yet. And I'm there for long hours and late nights and anxious questions and whichever end of the spectrum happens to be occurring.

I don't tend to write much about the hospital or work because things that strike me deeply tend to come across sounding overwrought and cliche in writing, but I do feel humbled and blessed to be here as a part of this. The whole messy soup of opposites and contradictions and joy and pain is an elegant place to be. Full of lessons.

Welcome to Random, Can I sell you some junk?

2010-12-16T03:49:00.000-08:00

On my day off, I left my car at the dealership for some maintenance and went over to Roanoke's finest Ghetto Mall while I was waiting for it to get done. Unlike most malls, which only offer the generic JC Penny/Macy's/GameStop/Food Court standard stores, it turns out that the Ghetto Mall seems to specialize in little entrepreneurial upstarts. Behold:

It is a widely known fact that putting the extra "PE" on the end of "SHOPPE" makes it instantly classier. This store is classy. Classy, dang it! CLASSY!

It's the holiday season, and you've been wondering what to get for the people you love. Well, the classy Shoppe Around The Corner has... um... stuff. I can honestly say I've never seen a place where, all in one small store, you can buy:

Camouflage hunting gear -AND- college sports logo T-shirts:

-AND- plenty of merchandise with Fairies, Dragons, and Skulls on it:

-AND- life-size cardboard cut-outs of Nascar drivers:

-AND- this ceramic drunk rooster thingy:

-AND- I didn't get a picture of it, but they also have a special section selling diabetic foot care supplies, -AND- a small curio cabinet full of King Tut/Egypt souvenir knicknacks! Woo!

Is that not the product assortment of your dreams? A place that redefines your Christmas list? All in one shop? ...um...I mean SHOPPE...?

Relentlessly awesome. That's what that is.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Giblets

2010-12-11T11:27:00.000-08:00

Disgraced by my lack of an ice scraper, I went to Walmart to buy one. I went in determined to make a bee-line for the auto aisle, grab a scraper, hit the express checkout, and be on my merry way in 10 minutes or less. Phase 1 of that plan went beautifully. I wasn't even flummoxed by the ice scraper assortment (Skip the $0.79 cheapie. Smile at the $18.99 reinforced telescoping handle 3-footer with built-in snow brush and ice chipper that I would've seriously considered buying in Minnesota. Pick the sensible ergonomic $2.09 one.) Quick decision, and onward to Phase 2. It was right around the moment that I arrived to the checkout area that I realized Phase 2 of the plan was doomed to failure. Why did all of the unwed babymammas of Roanoke decide they needed to do their lifetime worth of shopping at 6:42pm on a Thursday? How did they have the impeccable synchronized timing to descend on all 14 checkstands en masse in front of me? Moreover, why did they all decide it was the great social event of the evening to yell back and forth at each other from all their various checkout lines with a running commentary on every purchase they were making? "Girrrl! Did you see Pampers cost $10 now?" "Girrrrl! What you doing getting the 3-pack of onesies? They got the 5-pack on sale!" "Girrrrrrrrrrrl! Call me! I've got frozen pizzas!" The ultimate question is probably this: Why did I stand in line for nearly 40 minutes in order to buy a $2.09 ice scraper? Answer: Because the forecast predicted I'd need it. And the forecast was right. I woke up to this a day or so later:

Snow. And cats baffled by snow.

Snow means it's officially the Christmas season! I decorated! I've got little twinkle lights all around the living room and dining room ceilings, plus a tree, plus a nativity, plus candles, plus a wreath on the front door. To complete the holy glow, Freaky Beady Rasta Santa is on the shelf watching over everything.

And my friend Val sent me Christmas cookies! Cute little gingerbread men. Well, one of them is cute, anyway. The other one...well...I'm not sure what's going on with that one. She must have had "help" decorating.

Gingerbread puppy wagging its tail?

Ginger person running away without any pants?

Ginger David Bowie in a veil and a spandex bodysuit...oh my gosh Labyrinth scarred me for life?

My Christmas wish is to know what's going on here.

What kind of goober doesn't own an ice scraper?

2010-11-29T16:36:00.000-08:00

Being a Transitional Resident essentially means that I'm on loan to various specialties for this entire year. It turns out that you get treated a little differently when you're on loan instead of owned -- kind of a like a rental car that gets driven hard, used recklessly, filled with the cheapest gas possible, then passed along to the next renter. In other words, being a TY is like being the bastard stepchild of every hospital service that I'm on. Currently, that service is Surgery and I'm taking a daily beating of unparalleled proportions. The beatdown starts dark-n-early every morning.

Icing on the cake: This morning, as I went out to my car at 4:15am, realized there was frost on the windshield, subsequently realized I somehow don't own an ice scraper anymore, then frantically used my bare frigid fingertips to scratch a teensy-weensy peephole through the ice on the driver's side at eye level so that I could get to work, I realized that winter still exists. Even in Virginia.

An 80+ hour workweek I can handle. But winter? Again? Seriously? Sigh. Can't we just agree to cancel that this year?

People Math

2010-11-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

Mathematics has long been established as the language of science. Venerated nerdy disciplines like physics, chemistry, population genetics, astronomy, physiology, and computing are all modeled on it, and their major discoveries are communicated through it. You know one place where math is lacking? A domain with only rare lukewarm math usage? The domain of human personalities and social interactions. I say the time has come for social math! Let's start with two new mathematic ratios:

1. The Bang to Talk Ratio (BTR). Credit for this first theory goes to my former classmate, Fima. He's smart, educated, and social, with an occasional dash of smarmy. Clearly one of the great sociologic thinkers of our era:

(In all fairness, he doesn't usually wear a purple and teal poly-vinyl track suit. This was at an 80's night party our class had. Normally, the smarm isn't so flagrant. And normally, I'm not wearing a side-ponytail plus a denim jacket from the Lisa Turtle Collection.)

The Bang to Talk Ratio describes how often two people physically interact with each other compared to how often they actually talk to each other. It can describe any social dyad. Every human relationship falls somewhere on the continuum.

For example, two professional co-workers would have a

BTR of 0:1 = 0 = All talk.

The two vapid, hormonal, subintellectuals who are always making out on the park bench when I'm walking to the library, who never even come up for air and may as well be mute because they probably don't verbally communicate at all, would have a BTR of 1:0 = infinite = All bang.

Fima was in a long-distance relationship when he came up with the concept of the BTR. The BTR of two people in a long-distance relationship varies wildly, depending whether you ask them when they're in separate cities (pegged at 0), or visiting each other in the same city (veering toward infinity).

Simple social math at its finest! Thank you, Fima!

* * * * *

2. The Sportsbra to Lacy Undies Ratio (SLUR). This one arose from a conversation with my sister, Bonnie, as a way of characterizing any post-adolescent female. If you look in any gal's drawer, you will find a varied mixture of inner-wear. Some of the items will be spandex/dri-fit/lycra/Nike/Reebok. Some of the items will be lacy/animal-printed/impossibly tiny. The number of items in the former category compared to the latter category constitutes the Sportsbra to Lacy Undies Ratio.

A higher SLUR means more sportsbras: practical, sturdy, not maximally flattering but a definite hint at all kinds of fun, sporty, awesome adventures.

A SLUR nearer to 0 means more stuff that's alluring and pretty but deliberately useless.

You can tell a lot about a girl by her SLUR. For example, the 1976 East German Women's Swim Team may have had a

SLUR nearing 1:0 = infinite = All sportsbra.

Generations of "Is that a dude?" jokes resulted.

I'll go out on a limb and say Paris Hilton's SLUR = 0 = All senseless fluff.

This lady is anybody's guess, but she's awesome regardless.

Dragon's Tooth

2010-11-12T19:55:00.000-08:00

My friend, Michelle, recently mentioned a quote from Marjorie Hinckley:

"How did a nice girl like me get into a mess like this?"

Yesterday I went hiking on part of the Appalachian Trail called Dragon's Tooth. I came across this remarkable tree next to the trail and it made me think of that quote. The base of the tree is twisted and deformed, crushed down sideways along the hillside. It must have gotten knocked down by a storm or another fallen tree, probably about 50 years ago judging by its size. What a mess. But instead of just dying there on the ground, for some reason that nice tree decided to take a 90-degree angle to grow right back up toward the sky and keep on living. That tree officially has my admiration.

The Dragon's Tooth hike itself was great. It's named after a massive spire of rock on top of the final ridge.

The tooth just begged to be climbed. The back side isn't quite as steep, so it was easier than it looks. (No near-death experiences were had!) But since the camera self-timer maxes out at 20 seconds, this is the only photographic evidence of reaching the top: As further proof of reaching the top, you know the archetype of a person seeking knowledge who climbs a sharp mountain peak and counsults with a wise guru? Based on what I found at the top of Dragon's Tooth, apparently the meaning of life involves writing on rock with a Sharpie.

Nothing screams "This relationship has the shelf life of a banana" quite like declaring your love with trail graffiti.

I ate lunch at the tippy-top of the spire, and then the boulders at its base begged to be climbed, too.

It was just a beautiful day to be walking, thinking, and playing outdoors . ...Especially since I discovered the meaning of life.

The Patented Minnesota Ab Workout

2010-11-08T17:18:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I went back to the frozen north to visit some of my best friends in the entire world! There's nothing quite like 4 years of shared academic torment to solidify enduring friendships.

After a shift in the ER on Thursday, I flew into Milwaukee and arrived at midnight. Matt picked me up at 1am after he finished his own ER shift. In the morning, we drove to Rochester to meet up with everyone else. We stopped off along the way at a psychadelic, animatronic, seizure-inducingly wickedawesome restaurant in Madison, WI, called Ella's Deli. It has its own carousel out front. Need I say more?

In Rochester, we all hung out, went to the rock climbing gym, had dinner, played games...

Katie, Justin, Di, Zac, Jorge, Val, Matt (Please note that even though it looks like Justin's head could fit about 7 of Zac's heads inside of it, this is due to the magic of panoramic photo distortion, not because Justin is a macrocephalic FLK.) * * *

And then on the last day, for random reasons that none of us fully understand, the visit took a strange tangent. Jorge's back was sore, so his fiancee Val was stretching it.

It turns out that Val is freakishly strong:

And that Jorge is freakishly fearless:

And then we discovered that Matt can make me fly:

And that I'm an epic failure at lifting anything:

Then Jorge wanted us all to try a 4-way push-up. Val was worried we'd accidentally kick a hole through the very nice flat screen TV, so we had to take our amateur enthusiasm outside. But her dog poops like a champion all over the back yard, so we ended up in the front yard.

Then Val found a website chock full of stupid human tricks for us to try. It had a bunch of pictures sort of like this, and we dedicated a good chunk of the morning to attempting them all. Many wipeouts ensued.

Translation: We spent a good chunk of the morning in the front yard convincing the neighbors that we're a bunch of nut jobs.

Justin and Katie recently got engaged. I think this should be their wedding announcement photo, don't you?

The three-person push-up stack wasn't so tough. We decided to try four, but I guess four is the magic threshold for structural collapse. You can see the trouble brewing here:

...wait for it....wait for it...

FAIL!

But with a surprising number of other moves:

SUCCESS!

This isn't an acro-yoga move. Sometimes the guys just like to hum the Superman theme song and make Justin fly around.

The morals to the story:

- Friends are amazing.

- Amateur acro-yoga causes extremely sore abs.

- Jorge's neighbors probably considered calling the cops.

It's been awfully windy lately...

2010-11-04T08:43:00.001-07:00

Philadelphia

2010-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

Part of my reasoning behind stranding myself in Virginia for the first year of residency was that I've never lived near the east coast before. I had all these big dreams of exploring my way up and down the Atlantic seaboard seeing some of the great American cities. At some point during the past two weeks, as I wallowed in post break-up mode (pajamas, chocolate, cats, movies with Julia Roberts), I realized I was wasting the golden opportunity. Then serendipitously, my Philadelphia-dwelling friend Alyssa invited me to come visit for the weekend! I should note that prior to this trip, my closest tie to Philadelphia was the fact that when I was 5 years old, I played summer T-Ball on a team called the Phillies. My experience with the Phillies convinced me that my fondest dream was to grow up to be a pro baseball player. My sister, Bonnie, even helped me "train" for the professional league by throwing baseballs at my head in the back yard. Clearly, that dream died young. But fast forward 20-something years and there I was in the city itself.

The famous Love sculpture. Oh, irony.

I didn't have much time in Philly, but it was action packed! We visited a museum collection of Rodin sculptures, including a jolly good time at the Gates of Hell. We visited a fall festival at Reading Station, where I learned that donuts are made with a rolling donut-press weilded by a jaded middle-aged dude (not cut out with tiny scissors weilded by wee little elves, as I had previously assumed). I also learned that the Jolly Green Giant's little buddy, Sprout, is a man-eating monster. I'm sure of this fact, because I could see the face of his last victim peaking out of his mouth when we took a picture together. And I learned about a baked wonder called The Pumpplet. It's a slice of pumpkin pie baked inside a chocolate cake, layered with a slice of apple pie baked inside a vanilla cake, spackled together with a lethal dose of buttercream frosting, then doused with colored candy sprinkles. While naturally intimidated by such a ferocious creature, I still calmed my nerves long enough to take a picture of it in its natural habitat. Furthermore, I learned that from the city center, the Liberty Bell is in the exact opposite direction from the Philadelphia Art Museum, and that we only had time to make it to one of the two sites on Saturday afternoon. Like any conscientious, patriotic, historically-minded American, I chose the art museum. Why?

Because:

As a bonus, the art museum overlooks an awesome green space plaza with this monument in it. Technically, I doubt we were supposed to the ride the moose.

Finally, to avoid receiving the label of Totally History-ignorant Git, it should be duly noted that the Liberty Bell was officially visited before I left the city.

Adventures with a camera self-timer

2010-10-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

The Setting: Peaks of Otter, Jefferson National Forest, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia a.k.a. The place where black-leather-clad spiked-helmet tough Harley riders get in touch with their granola-patchouli-organic-nature-loving side. I bet the other Hell's Angels will be so jealous. The Event: Alone on a mountain on a nice fall day.

The Thought Process:

The Deed: Take a picture with a beautiful background.

a.k.a. Ten poorly thought out seconds and two pre-set timed camera flashes.

The Internal Monologue: Ooh, I made it in time! And Frick...I'm stuck in a tree, my camera's on a cliff, this branch is cracking, and...well... "Frick" just about sums it up. The Happily Ever Aftermath: a.k.a. Did not die. Not even once.

Moo.

2010-10-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

You may not have realized this previously, but when you're out and about in the world your #1 concern should be falling cows.

Could this sign possibly get any better?

Yes. Yes it could get better.

Because it also exists as a T-shirt.

A T-shirt that I need to own.

I've had the blues, the reds, and the pinks

2010-10-13T19:05:00.001-07:00

If I've learned anything from the cautionary tale that is Jessica Simpson, it's to never comment publicly about my love life. Suffice it to say, vaguely, that love stinks. Now if you'll kindly excuse me, I'll be in my room watching vapid rom-coms and blankly eating a pint of ice cream for the next several months while I recover from recent events. Tangentially, how is Mr. Floppy Baldmullet Man on Pogo Stick Playing Two Trumpets supposed to somehow convey the message of that video? I don't bring it up to detract in any way from my key thesis about love's utter stankness, but merely as an existential question.

Feel free

to ponder it

with me if you like.

What I did this weekend

2010-10-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

This!

...with some key differences:

a) That's not me. b) I've never been wherever that gorgeous place is. c) I was on a slackline less than 3 feet off the ground in a city park. d) I have yet to make it more than 10 feet along the line. e) That person does not appear to be squealing, wiping out, grass stained, or bleeding. Otherwise, it was totally identical!

My new ACCL membership

2010-10-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Sarah,

Welcome to the Association for Crazy Cat Ladies.* Enclosed, please find your membership card, a litterbox scooper, a tiny catnip-scented toy ball with a jinglebell inside (retail price: an inexplicable $4.99), and a large unflattering muumuu** which you'll mysteriously yet inevitably feel compelled to wear as you revel in the joys of living alone and owning multiple cats.***

Sincerely,

ACCL Governing Board

Hubble****

and Marzipan*****

*The ACCL Association name was originated by Alyssa, who is awesome, proudly owns infinite cats, and has thoroughly convinced me that having two kitties will be waaaaaaaaaaay better than just one.

**No, Bonnie, I won't actually wear the crazy cat lady muumuu. Nor will I hang up the calendar you gave me. Nor will I end up with 12 cats someday.

***Yes, Bob Barker, my pets have been spayed or neutered. (A further safety measure against the aforementioned 12 cats.)

****Yes, he's named after the coolest space telescope in the universe! I dare you to even try saying "Ultra Deep Field Image" without feeling smart! Nerds, unite!

*****Renamed again, inspired by almond paste artwork and Homestar Runner. Mars for short. (Renamed? Again? What other names did I try out, you ask? Well, there was the name they assigned her at the animal shelter: "Hannah Montana." A travesty, really. We won't speak of that again. And there was "Zosyn," which I shamelessly love as the best combination antibiotic ever invented, and therefore thought would make a great name, but it just didn't fit her no matter how enthusiastically I tried. And there was "Poppy," which stuck for a whole week before it started seeming like she was named after someone's father. And there was "Vee," because for some reason I'm certain that when this cat thinks her internal monologues to herself, she has a thick Russian accent and uses the imperial first person as her pronoun of choice: "Vee are not amused. Vee do not approve of zis kitty litter. Vee demand somesing better; more verthy of our vonderful excellence. You have deesappointed us for ze last time. Meow.") Oh gosh, I'm imagining what the cat would say if it could talk. Sigh. Maybe the muumuu is inevitable after all.

Kids, Random Objects, and the Fate of the Human Race

2010-09-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

If there's any piece of medical knowledge I'm utterly certain about, it is this:

Little Homo sapiens invariably go through a phase around age 2-3 during which they feel compelled to swallow random inedible objects and/or stick stuff up their noses.

I have now seen what can only be described as a staggering number of children with beads jammed into nostrils, crayola chunks corked into lung bronchi, pennies meandering through intestinal tracts, and baby wipes burrowed into ear canals. I honestly don't understand how this makes sense as a developmental phase, but every single one of them seems to go through it. We obviously haven't gone extinct from it. On the contrary, this behavior is so pervasive in the human population, it's almost as though it was willfully bred in. So what could possibly be the evolutionary advantage? Did survival of the fittest involve having a rock irretrievably lodged up one nostril? Was there some distant ancestor who conquered the world and dominated the gene pool by virtue of the corn kernel wedged firmly inside his ear? Are the leaders of the future seriously out there right now, as toddlers, seeing if they can make the little red plastic hotel from the Monopoly game fit up their nose? Seeing whether they can inhale hotwheels cars and crayons instead of oxygen? Seeing if they can put all the change from mom's coin purse into their mouth...and...oops down it goes for a 2-day odyssey through the digestive tract? Is that the secret to survival as earth's dominant race? Honestly???

Swell. In that case, I present you with the secret formula for success:

Nostril plus bead equals total evolutionary advantage.

Why is this a jaded blog post?

2010-09-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

Because by Tuesday, I had already worked 42 hours this week.

Because my friends & family live everywhere but Virginia.

Because I'll work an 80-hour week during Christmas.

Because Thanksgiving is likewise canceled.

Because I volunteered for this.

Wow, that was misguided.

On the bright side, I'm thinking of adopting a cat.

Unyielding Cyclists Beware!

2010-09-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

I always appreciate when a road sign provides a detailed threat of exactly how you could die. For example, you might be about to ride your bicycle through a trapezoid-shaped pot hole, thereby crumpling the rim of your front tire and pitching you headfirst along the dotted line in a perfect parabolic trajectory (physics reigns supreme in the world of road signs), ultimately landing on your back on top of four large rocks that mysteriously float on the water. (Hmm...floating rocks. Cancel what I just said about physics.) Yield to the hazardous bridge...or else!

Ode to a rockstar sister

2010-09-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

Check out this super cute scrapbook paper! I'm not exactly a scrapbooker. By not exactly, I mean not at all. There's an unconfirmed rumor that scrapbooking gives me hives and a facial tic. And, even so, I still think this paper is cute!

Guess who designed this awesome stationery set?

My sister, Bonnie Bell!

Ooh! And this one is hers, too!

And this one! This ridiculously adorable, estrogen-inducing one! Hers!

Did I mention that they're produced by a major company label (Me and My Big Ideas) and that they're for sale nationwide? In stores that even an un-crafter like me has probably heard of, like Michael's crafts!

Did I mention that Bonnie is talented, creative, and generally amazing?

Congratulations sisterpants! I'm really proud of you!

Random Good Times

2010-09-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

Ooh, boy! One last round-up of other random good times in Africa: Got dancing lessons from the kids in Kasei... Saw Hannah Montana on tour... (I love how it looks like the guy in white is about to vomit out the bus window all over poor Hannah.) Swung, dangled, flipped... Learned the 12 semi-redundant secrets to healthy dentition... Did you know that Ghanaian toothpaste gives stronger teeth and strengthens enamel? Fights germs as you brush, after you brush, and maintains healthy teeth? Maintains healthy gums and helps prevent gum problems? WOW! Leapt... Became Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon... Dilated one of my roommate's eyes for practice and discovered that Julie is a very slow metabolizer of tropicamide. Oops. She still looked like this two days later...

Dabbled in sustainable development... And somewhere during all of that, actually did some real work...

It's not a medieval torture device!

It's a medical instrument! I swear!

Beady-eyed souvenirs

2010-08-31T05:37:00.000-07:00

It is a well known fact that my dad hates Santa Claus. HATES. Vigorously!

His theory is that "The Santa Claus Religion" was invented as a diabolical plot to distract people from the true meaning of Christmas. Hmmm...Maybe that's why it bothers him so much when I call it "Santa-mas," or when I pray to Heavenly Santa, or when I gave him that ornament of Santa in a manger a few years back.

I have another working theory that maybe Dad believed in Santa until he was, like, 15 years old or something, and the embarrassment when he found out he'd been duped has haunted him for the rest of his life. It happens to the best of us.

It is a well known fact that knick-knacks give me the heeby-jeebies. And yet, I find myself collecting them here and there, especially if they're hideous. Case in point: this knitted finger puppet made by a nearly-blind lady in La Paz, Bolivia, who probably likes to hear the children shriek in terror.

Sponge Bob Squarepants eats brains

That said, my trip to Africa gave me the chance to add a singularly freaky knick-knack to the collection. Not only is it creeptastic in its 3-dimensional beaded glory, but I think it also sheds some light on the true nature of Santa Claus. For example, Santa has Rastafari dreadlocks for a beard. I bet you didn't know that. He also has crab claws for hands. Fact.

I made friends with Willis, the bead artist who made Santa. He makes a lot of beautiful things, too, like beaded sculptures of African wildlife and sweet little guardian angel charms. He carves impressive tribal figurines from solid rock. He paints.

He laughed when I told him that the little beaded Santa will probably give me nightmares, then he said, "Wait. I show you something really scary, then."

High up on a shelf, tucked safely behind a painting, he keeps the biggest, baddest, knick-knackiest nightmare of all:

As I said before, Merry Christmas, Dad!

Tales of a Failed Foreign Foodie

2010-08-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

In Bolivia, they have a proud saying, "No comemos para vivir. Vivimos para comer," which means "We don't eat to live. We live to eat." They love their food and they eat for the enjoyment of it as much as for the sustenance. In sharp contrast, the food in Africa holds no joy for me.

The last time I was in Ghana, I was staying up north and totally at the mercy of the kitchen ladies who cooked for our volunteer group. I'd been a little sick, but everyone gets a little sick. Then one day, I saw the kitchen ladies washing slaughtered chickens in the irrigation ditch water (downstream from the people bathing, bathrooming, and laundering), then they left the raw, wet, half-plucked chickens in a heap outside for the remainder of the sweltering, fly-buzzing afternoon. I'm honestly not a picky eater, and I really do like to try everything when I'm traveling, but in that moment I suddenly reached a limit. My mind told me that I wanted to be truly immersed in the lifestyle there, but my colon was terrified by the sight of those chicken carcasses wavering somewhere between dessication and decomposition under the afternoon sun. Thus, my colon and I stayed in my room that night and had a bagel for supper instead.

When I didn't show up for dinner, the kitchen ladies formed a vigilante search party that came and found me, weilding weapons of guilt and plates of chicken (panic sets in), fufu (balls made of boiled starchy yam paste, with a consistency like Play Dough admixed with Gak) swimming in shit-o (oily red sauce, which really does have a pleasant flavor but enough palm oil to grease all 20 feet of your intestines. And no, I'm not kidding about the name.) They sat and watched me like prison guards to make sure I would eat. Cornered and defeated fair and square, I embraced my Salmonella-laced destiny and ate it.

Their mercenary tactics continued for the remainder of my stay. I could run but I couldn't hide. They'd hunt me down. It was a vanishingly rare victory when I managed to dodge their oily red vendetta. Meals became a scheduled ritualistic torment of calorie intake and silent prayers to the food poisoning gods. ("Please subvert the laws of the universe in order to prevent me from getting dysentery. Amen.")

Whenever I found good food on that trip, it was such a big event that I usually took a picture of it! That happened exactly...twice.

Ground nut soup with goat and fufu

(Good, minus the fufu.)

Red-red (black-eyed beans in a mild curry) with fried plantain

and a plastic pouch of drinking water.

- - - - - - - -

The food on my more recent trip was better. In South Africa, our group went to an awesome traditional restaurant one night (the one with the face painting). We each got something different and then shared it around the table.

Curried crocodile. Looks like pork, tastes like chicken, textured like beef.

Gourd (pumpkin) dumplings in tomato cream sauce, with naan bread.

Sometimes, you just want to skip the jollof rice and starchy pasty banku and the tilapia whose eyes stare back at you as you eat it. Sometimes you want something familiar. That's why, at a seaside restaurant in Cape Coast, Ghana, I ordered chicken nuggets. That's how I found out that "chicken nuggets" there are actually "chicken balls" which are actually a mash of unidentified leftover chicken "bits," veggies, and a heaping scoop of salt, mashed together then breaded and fried.

Exactly what part of the chicken is the nugget, anyway?

But the niftiest new food of the whole trip was this little lovely, which one of our in-country friends picked off a tree on a roadside in Ghana:

Fresh cocoa pod

Fresh raw cocoa is not what I expected at all. It's not that I thought we'd break open the pod and find Hershey bars inside, but I did sort of expect something vaguely chocolate-flavored or at least brownish-colored. Instead, it was full of pulpy white kernels suspended in stickysweet slime. The texture can only be described as alien autopsy, but the flavor was really nice -- kind of banana/pear/mango/mucous.

If you bit into the white kernels, you could see a dark brown paste inside, but it still tasted nothing like chocolate. How or why anyone ever came up with the process of harvesting, fermenting, roasting, sweetening, and somehow 'chocolatizing' those pulpy goobers is beyond my imagination, but I admired their ingenuity and perseverance as I gagged on my cocoa kernel and looked for the nearest place to spit it out.

Delicious.

Rainbow Nation

2010-08-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

My week in South Africa went by in a blur of conference lectures, swanky meet and greets, and a few amazing tours. One night, our group got all dressed up for a gala, then realized we didn't actually have tickets to it. But looking on the bright side, that gave us an All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go photo opportunity, so at least you can see who I was traveling with:

Bjorn and Amanda, Me, Dr. Kraft, Jeremy and Alyssa.

Amanda and I had essentially matching black dresses, which gave me flashbacks of the dress code for high school band/orchestra concerts, then subsequent flashbacks of that vein in Ms. Wallace's forehead that would stand out so prominently when the flute section was playing out of tune.

Not wanting to waste the formal attire, we went out to eat at an African restaurant in Nelson Mandela square. They came to the table and did face painting while we were waiting for our food. The result was somewhere between awesome indiginous springbok...and...Frida Kahlo. Never has a unibrow been rendered so nicely.

On our last weekend in the country, some of us went on a tour of Soweto (South Western Township), which was the home of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu before imprisonment on Robben Island. Soweto was originally established as a black slum during Apartheid. Since then, it has struggled with crime, violence, and poverty, but it's becoming more and more of a cultural center and living history site as time goes on.

Nelson Mandela's old house in Soweto

Hector Pieterson Memorial, dedicated to the memory of over 500 people who died in a riot that broke out while school children were peacefully protesting the Afrikaaner government's attempt to force Afrikaans as the language in the education system. Hector was the first person killed; a little boy shot to death by a policeman who was there to "keep the peace."

The thing that caught my attention about Soweto (and Johannesburg at large, for that matter) was the way that the people seem to take the unfair things that happen and coopt them into something meaningful and valuable. For example, these two towers used to be a dirty ugly power plant. The ruling class in central Johannesburg didn't want the pollution in their own neighborhood, so they plopped it in Soweto instead. It was later shut down, and now it's been totally painted over with gorgeous murals showing the history and traditions of the people in Soweto.

Bonus points: they strung a bridge between the towers for bungee jumping. I really wanted to do it, but it was cost-prohibitive (...also, perhaps, life-prohibitive).

Johannesburg Congressional Court (Supreme Court). The building stands on the site of an old Apartheid-era prison, purposefully reusing some of the prison bricks in the construction. They chose the site as a deliberate reminder of the past inequalities and of their current commitment to protect human rights. A reminder that human dignity is fragile.

- - - - - - - - -

We also took a day-trip to a game park in Pretoria. The game park is a pseudo-wilderness with hundreds of acres that have been converted into a safe park where the lions are served pre-killed nutritious meat portions at photo-opportune sites along the tourist roadway, and the zebras are protected, fat, and sassy, feasting on hay in a big, predator-free wonderland range. It's like a dream come true if you happen to be an exceptionally lazy animal who wants all the perks of free-range living but without any of that messy "nature, red in tooth and claw" business. The animals aren't tame by any means, but they're not exactly wild, either.

One very small section of the park is fenced off with little enclosures where the young animals are raised and where the wild birds hang out.

This maribou stork hates small children -- I actually saw him chasing some of them down, with a lethal carnivorous gleam in his beady red eyes.

Not much of a conversationalist, either.

Highlight of the park (maybe of my life):

For about $4 US, I got to play with the lion cubs. They had surprisingly soft fur, and these huge paws. They seemed so sweet and sleepy, it was easy to see why people get lured into raising them as pets. Cuddling with them, it's hard to think they'll be massive alpha predators within a year. On a related note, I came away with all my fingers still attached, which is the true mark of a successful wild animal encounter.

Aaaaaaaaaa! ...frica

2010-08-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the US! Safe, sound, and even relatively gastroenterologically intact!

There are scads of stories and pictures, which I'll post over the next week or so when I've recharged a bit, but in the meantime here's my trip summarized into a kitschy numeric nutshell:

Ten airplane connections.

Nine mosquito bites.

(Malaria! Dengue fever! Hypochondriac gone wild!)

Eight interesting travel companions

(doctors...social advocates...an elphant trainer).

Seven eye surgeries

(Aided by some old-school cautery involving a hot poker and an open flame. Not even kidding.)

Six rope bridges suspended a hundred feet above the rainforest floor.

(Plus acrobatics, tree climbing, and my brief stint as a small-business owner selling coconuts, honey, and palm oil in the jungle.)

Five astoundingly skilled cab drivers

(only one of whom hit a stray goat in traffic).

Four wooden carvings hawked by delightful shysters.

("Say me your best price, my sistah!")

Three lion cubs.

(So soft. So cuddly. So happy I didn't get mauled.)

Two phenomally ugly beaded effigies of Santa Claus.

(Merry Christmas, Dad!)

One distressed child rescued from strangulation on the Johannesburg airport's moving walkway.

Back to Africa!

2010-07-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

I get to go back to Africa in August for an international health rotation!

I leave on Sunday (...um...if my travel visa gets processed...fingers crossed, breath held, lucky penny clenched...) First, I'll be in Johannesburg, South Africa, for about a week to attend an international pediatric conference. (Jeffrey Sachs might be there! Millenium Villages! Nerdy swoon of admiration!)

After that, I'll be back in Ghana for the subsequent few weeks to work with a non-profit organization called Kimoyo and to volunteer with Unite for Sight again.

Oh, Ghana! Home of this guy:

And home of the two best business signs I've ever seen in my entire life:

It's nice to know that my raging case of dysentery on the last trip to Ghana was apparently an act of divine intervention.

This? Welllll...It's either a very unfortunate abbreviation, or a cause for very deep concern about the inventory at this establishment.

And home of the most candid marriage proposal of all time, courtesy of this guy in the middle. He turned out to be named "Black Pepper," maker of African drums, part-time teacher of dance to German tourist groups. Cool dude, actually. Alas, it simply wasn't meant to be. ;-)

"Hey. You! I want a white wife. You be it. What's your name?"

And home of Unite for Sight!

I can't wait to go back there! I'll probably be out of touch until the end of August. Have a great month!

German Autobahn meets Virginia

2010-07-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Best. Road sign. Ever. I especially appreciate his exceptionally good posture. If you're going to take the family tractor out for a spin on the highway, you must realize that all eyes will be admiring you and your classy wheels as you go zooming by at 2mph. Therefore, it is important to set a fine example by sitting up straight, wearing your best straw hat, and responsibly holding your tractor wheel with your elbows at right angles and your hands at 10-and-2. Well done, Tractor Sign Man. I salute you.

Edge of the world

2010-07-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Appalachian Trail practically runs through my backyard! Suddenly, I'm inexplicably tempted to postpone my life for 6 months and become a sweaty, smelly, unkempt, skin-cancer-prone "through hiker." True, you can smell them coming long before you see them, but the people who hike the whole 2175 miles from Georgia to Maine just seem to be generally awesome and unusually wise. They're totally marinaded in deep thoughts, and zen, and body odor, and insight to life's great mysteries. (Perhaps the majority of their expertise relates to granola bars, sleeping bags, and GI illnesses, but that falls into the category of life's great mysteries, doesn't it?)

For lack of 6 months, I'm trying to get out and hike bits of the AT whenever I get the chance. Here's the first excursion. I went along with two great transition year residents (Amanda and Jaimie) and their husbands (Bjorn and Matt), plus Jaimie's vocal 2-year-old son who rode in a carry-on backpack and served as noisemaker/bear repellant. I'm not kidding about the bear repellant comment: as soon as the kid got quiet because he fell asleep, we came straight into a black bear sitting on the trail getting fat on wild raspberries. Jaimie screamed and it ran away, but we were within 50 feet of it before we noticed it or it noticed us.

We hiked to McAfee's Knob, which is one of the most stunning, most photographed spots on the whole AT. You come up to a ridge after about 4 miles of uphill hiking, turn a few meters off the trail, and suddenly it's like arriving at the edge of the world -- nothing but gray rock and blue sky. The view of the valley is stunning from the edge of the cliff overhang.

Me and Jaimie -- first timers on the Appalachian Trail

McAfee's Knob

Nukes and Ninjas

2010-07-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

Hi. My name is Sarah, and I'm a weirdo magnet. *Whew* It feels good to get that off my chest. Remember the laundry room lady who told me all about her bra preferences and her methods for protecting her undies from petty theft? Or the guy on the bus in Cleveland who told me all about why the impending end of the world is intrinsically connected to the sagging economy, Egyptian nuclear technology, and the gay olympics? The one on the inner city subway train who politely offered to pee on me? The all-camouflage-clad dude with the all-chrome teeth who wanted to know where I lived, apparently so he could help take my trash to the curb every Thursday? (I never told you about him? Well, take my word for it: weird.) The very disheveled woman who walks her dog past my house every afternoon? The one who inexplicably knows my name, and says she should give me one of her numerous BMW's because I should be her daughter? These people find me. Single me out and talk to me. Tell me their intimate business. Offer advice, cautionary predictions, urine, and cars. In the latest episode of this, I was walking toward the gym downtown a few days ago. As I passed the public library, I heard a voice way off in the distance along a row of park benches. At first it just said, "Eaaaaaah. EAAAaaAh!" like a larynx that had grown rusty from years of disuse. Then it said, "Wweeeaaaayt. WAYyT!" like a tongue just learning to form words for the first time. "WAIT!" it repeated, with all the joy and urgency of someone who has finally cracked the code and figured out how to communicate with the human race around him. "WAIT! I love you! Wait! LOVE!" So...um...either I have a soul mate and he sleeps outside the public library, or... I am a weirdo magnet. With years of consideration, I've concluded it's a genetically heritable condition because my Dad totally has it, too. Except he's more like a supermagnet. After all, he found the lady who thought she was a Native American medicine woman, demanded that everyone call her GrayFox, swore that ninjas were attacking the roof of her trailer at night, and insisted that she had given birth to hundreds of children in her sleep but they all grew up and scampered away before she awoke in the morning. Compared to that, my magnetism is (thankfully) weak sauce at best.

Virginia Shur Is Purty, Ain't It?

2010-07-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

I've been here less than a month, and I think I'm inadvertantly starting to pick up a drawl already. Oh dear. That means I'm on pace to be driving a beat up old pick-up truck with a confederate flag in the back window by December. I'll do my best to fight the good fight and continue sounding like a decent Arizonnesota resident, but it's going to be hard. I actually noticed my insidiously developing southern accent during a weekend hike. Our group came to a lovely waterfall sheeting over a soft green mossy bluff, and what I meant to say was something along the lines of, "Wow, what a beautiful waterfall." Sadly, I'm afraid that what actually came out of my mouth was, "That shur is purty." But it's just as true either way you say it: Virginia is an unbelievably pretty place to live. Here are some pictures from the hike, including the "purty" waterfall, and also the much bigger and badder waterfall at the end of the trail. The pool at its base is a great swimming hole (as evidenced by the wee little fleshy blobs you see in the last photo, each of which is an over-sunburned, under-clothed local out for a swim).

I Hope...

2010-07-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

One of God's greatest gifts to us is that life always moves on. Regardless of what happened in the past, and regardless of what is happening in this instant, there's a future beyond it because life will move forward.

This has been on my mind because he's getting married Saturday. You know who I mean. It's beautiful that life has moved on for both of us, putting us each in a happier place than we were before. It's beautiful that I can watch him moving on but not feel any bitterness; only hope.

I hope they have so much love and joy that they can't comprehend it all.

I hope they laugh together.

I hope that when they cry, it's together instead of alone.

I hope they grow old together, and look beyond the wrinkles to see that he's still handsome and she's still pretty.

I hope the personal demons he struggled with and the secrets he kept are in the past, and he starts this fresh and clean.

I hope he can give her what he couldn't give me.

I hope she can give him what I couldn't give him.

I hope they build windows into each other

instead of walls between each other.

I hope they have a song, and that they dance.

I hope they have children.

I hope they have hilarious inside jokes that no one else thinks are funny.

I hope she is proud of him, and I desperately hope he is proud of her.

I hope they protect each other, and find their safest place in togetherness.

I hope she is never afraid.

I hope they know that moving on is beautiful.

What's Brown and Sticky?

2010-06-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

My friend Katy's favorite riddle: "What's brown and sticky?"

Katy would usually start laughing before she ever even reached the punch line, which was:

"A stick."

Try telling this joke sometime. You'll find it gets funnier and funnier (to you, at least) every time you tell it. You'll also find that whoever you tell it to will think it's a really lame joke. For some reason, that's part of the fun.

On Friday afternoon, I found something brown and sticky waiting on my porch. It wasn't a stick. It was a gigantic cardboard box covered in sticky tape.

So here's a new riddle: What comes in a brown and sticky cardboard box?

*** Oh, the suspense... ***

***

Answer: This!

I missed my old beastie piano really badly, so early last week I went on an urgent mission to find something to fill the void. The result is this digital Casio keyboard. It produces really gorgeous grand piano sound, will never need tuning, and it's hammer-weighted so it feels a lot like playing a real piano, but it's light enough for me to lift by myself so it will be super easy to move. (No more dying wildebeest tragedies!)

It arrived by UPS on Friday afternoon, just after I got home from a pediatric advanced life support training session. I spent the rest of the evening setting it up and giving it plenty of musical pounding. It's amazing how this place feels so much more like home now that there's a piano in it!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Speaking of this place, here's a little tour of my apartment now that I'm all settled in. It's got a lot of old-world charm, and reallyreallyreally tall ceilings that make even my tallest bookshelves look like teensyweensy dollhouse furniture. And the more I look at it, the more the carved scrollwork on the fireplace mantle looks like Santa Claus. Am I crazy, or is there an uncanny resemblance there?! If you're ever in the mood to see Virginia, (...or, um, Santa Claus) you're welcome to visit me here anytime!

Getting your hands dirty

2010-06-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, Jorge had a steeply-sloped front lawn that caused him to weep, wail, and gnash his teeth whenever it needed to be mowed.

Meanwhile, in a land far, far away, Val was trying to sell her house (a multi-acre horse property 15 minutes north of town) because she and Jorge are engaged. Sadly, she was regretting that she'd have to give up all the plants in her flower garden when the house eventually sells.

Solution? A bunch of us got together and dug out the slope in Jorge's yard to make a terraced landscape, then transplanted Val's favorite perennials into it. We made the retaining walls out of fieldstone salvaged from the foundation of a demolished old barn on her property. With all of us working, the bulk of the project was done in a single Saturday afternoon! Even better, since the only thing that had to be purchased was the woodchip mulch, the cost for the whole project was under $15. The village rejoices!

All of this happened over a month ago, but I just barely unpacked the cable today to connect the camera to my computer, and found these pictures in the process of transferring the images over. I've decided that finding forgotten photos on a camera is kind of like finding $5 in the pocket of your jeans when you're sorting the laundry. It's just nice.

Surreal

2010-06-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

. ...And then an airplane crashed into my high school. - Click this link for pictures - .

Mourn the Downed Wildebeest

2010-06-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

The move is done and I'm in Roanoke now. To tell the truth, I'm kind of having a rough time of it. I keep telling myself it's going to get better, and I'm sure it really is going to get better, but for the first time in my life I'm honestly homesick. Embarrassingly so. Bordering on huddle-in-a-blanket-and-cry-on-the-floor homesick. Making matters worse, I lost a dear friend on moving day: My piano. If you've ever known me, you've known my funky old piano. My dad bought it at an army surplus auction when I was about 3 years old and brought it home on the back of his big orange work truck. It turns out that before it was auctioned to dad, it had been through the Korean war, the Viet Nam war, then got sold a few different times over the years to a few different military families who each painted it a different hideous shade of brown or green. It was a dismal burnt-caramel brown color when it finally came to live with us. The auction lot number was still written on the front in black magic marker, and took many years to fully scrub off. I was the only kid in my family who ever really learned to play it, plus I spent several long messy days stripping off all those hideous paint layers, so when I finished high school my parents gave the piano to me. It has moved with me 8 times since then. From Eagar to Tucson, then to another apartment in Tucson, a house in Tucson, an apartment in Rochester, a house in Rochester, another apartment in Rochester, and another one after that. At the second Rochester apartment, it lost a wheel in the process of going down 9 steps when I moved in or perhaps while coming back up those 9 steps when I moved out (...my deepest apologies to the inevitable hernias induced in the 3 guys who helped get it back up those stairs). And then it made its final move to Roanoke, where even though the landlord had promised the apartment would be ground floor and the piano would roll right in, there were five steps to climb up to reach the door. There was no way to get it in. I don't know 3 strong guys here. There was no affordable way to put it in storage. So it sat in the moving truck, homeless, for a full day while I thought about how to avoid saying goodbye to it. I didn't win. I decided to donate it to Goodwill. As a final insult to injury, during the drive to Goodwill it suddenly spun around in the otherwise-empty truck and fell down flat on its back on the floor. BOOM. Looking at it like that -- with all of its keys lifted out of place like old yellowed teeth trying to fall out of an old brown mouth, and its lid flown open, and its front panel popped from its hinges, and its legs in the air -- it looked like a dying wildebeest. I found some highway maintenance workers mowing grass on the nearby roadside and asked them to help me stand it back up (...my sincerest apologies yet again, for causing three more hernias, but my sincerest thanks to these three pallbearers). Then I rolled it into Goodwill. They said they're going to auction it off. Maybe at the auction the high bidder will be a hard-working man who'll drive it home on the back of his big orange work truck and let his 3-year-old daughter learn to play it. Maybe. I want to go home.

Reunited and it's understood...

2010-06-09T13:14:00.001-07:00

Lots going on here, but not much time to write about it... Medical School Graduation at the Mayo Clinic! Surreal. Thank you to everyone who sent happy thoughts my way. :-)

Jacobs family reunion! It's been over ten years since we've all been together, but my whole family came to Minnesota for graduation! It meant a lot to me to have them here. I love them so much.

Camping trip to a deserted island! Look up the fascinating history of Rock Island, WI, if you have a chance.

Next up: Moving to Virginia tomorrow to start residency. I'm guessing this blog will be out of commission for a little while until I'm settled in there. Wish me luck!

The Bachelorette Cake

2010-05-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

This is my friend/classmate Erin. She's getting married in 10 days.

(No, not to this guy, despite his oaken viking allure.)Naturally, we threw her a bachelorette party. (1960's themed because she loves the Beatles) Naturally, there were games at the party. The best one was inspired by cake. You see, as another friend of ours had been planning her own wedding a few years ago, she came across this designer cake. Yes, those are funky gray mushrooms plunked onto an otherwise okay cake. She thought it was the most hideous thing she'd ever laid eyes on. Inspired by the horrid mushroom cake, our bachelorette party game challenge was to make the ugliest wedding cake imaginable with a $5 budget, 45 minutes, a pre-cooked sheetcake, a tub of frosting, and variety pack of food coloring. Our group decided to make a replica of this outstanding Rochester, MN, landmark: The Corn Water Tower

We even smashed real corn into the frosting to give it the authenticity that any true cake masterpiece needs.

After an exciting judging by the party hostess' upstairs neighbor, Guido (an archetypically foreign middle-aged man wearing spandex shorts, a linen shirt unbuttoned halfway down, and a leather newsboy cap), we were declared the winners. Ugly cake prizes for all!

Here's the runner-up entry, complete with a Dollar Store cake topper in which the bride is pregnant:

Spider Man

2010-05-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

I came home from the hospital today, went to punch in the front door code for the apartment building, and suddenly encountered this foul beast behind the plastic in the right-hand side of the display:

Can't see the grossness? Let me zoom in.

And zoom again.

Although I have to admire the ingenuity of the little guy -- what with finding a way off the ground, through the wall, behind the box wiring, and into the enclosed display screen, then having the audacity to build a web there -- the fact still remains that he's a fat, repusively beige, loathesome arachnid.

I honestly can't decide whether I'm impressed or grossed out.

Baby shower, and Speed-eating power!

2010-05-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

The awesome girlies in my class will take any opportunity to get together. And if we're getting together, there's usually a costume theme. These pics are from Erica's baby shower. Since she's a classy girl from Tennessee the theme was Southern Belle (hence the flowered dresses and froofy garden-party hats). Not everyone had a southern belle outfit, but Erica also likes horses so we expanded the theme to include that (hence the cowgirl costumes). And I didn't have either type of costume, so I went as Taco Bell instead of Southern Belle (hence the packet of mild sauce pinned to my shirt). The coolest part of the shower was that she requested that we write our messages in children's books instead of on cards, so she came away from the baby shower with a great little library of books to read to the baby. It's such a great idea! She liked the cake!

We also played a new twist on the classic baby shower game -- you know, the one in which you taste a mystery baby food and guess the flavor? Except they made it into competitive speed-eating, where one teammate has to feed the other one the mystery baby food as fast as possible.

This is Molly, who mercilessly shoveled plum-apple goop down my throat. That look on my face is a mix of strangulation and competitiveness (it's hard to do Eye of the Tiger when you're choking on baby goop). Meanwhile, the look on Molly's face is pure sadistic joy.

And we clenched the victory!

Cake Fair, Mendelssohn Aire, and the Handy-Dandy Bedside Chair

2010-05-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

1. Diaper Cake My classmate's wife is having a baby girl, and what could be more practical than diapers as a baby shower gift? Thank you for teaching me how to to make this diaper cake, Bonnie! 2. Opera Lite My church group went to see Mendelssohn's oratorio, "Elijah," this weekend. An oratorio is basically an opera, but without the costumes or choreography -- during Mendelssohn's time, the Catholic church frowned on gaudy pageantry during Lent, so the theatre houses came up with oratorios as a way to fill the season. I'm not normally into opera, but this one was amazing! They had a 50-piece orchestra, 100-person choir, and the program had every music lyric referenced back to the Bible verse it came from. 3. My new job as a delivery truck driver My friends have started to refer to my car as "The Hot Nazi," because of its German roots. (Maybe this new nickname is bad kharma coming back to bite me for all those times I referred to Katy's Z-car with the red velvet/leather interior as "The Brothel.") Anyway, this week, I was working with Mayo's home hospice department and they asked me if I could take my car to deliver something to one of the hospice patients' houses. After I agreed, I found out that the cargo was an adult bedside commode chair, and the delivery site was a farm way out in the boondocks at the end of a 6-mile dirt road. I'm happy to report that the Hot Nazi did just fine with this glamorous task. Potty delivery mission accomplished!

Redwing, Jenga Fling, Cookie Thing

2010-04-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my life is lame, so even the highlights are kind of beige instead of neon. That disclaimer stated, here are some highlights from the past week anyhow:

1. Rock climbing outdoors

You may have heard a vicious rumor that Minnesota has no actual mountains. Well, it's true. But Redwing, MN, does have an awesome cliff-faced bluff with about a hundred different bolted sport climbs like these:

2. Dinner and game night

It turns out that my friends Jorge and Val play a really hard-core version of Jenga in which you stack the removed blocks back on top as badly and haphazardly as possible. Hence, the helically-skewed, triple-piled, antennae-topped wreck you see here, moments before it crashed to its death:

3. This hand-lettered sign for cookies

An innocent descriptor of the cookie variety? Or an ominous warning about where these cookies have been? I don't know. All I know is that there's a very unfortunate space in the middle of that first word there. And yes, I realize that giggling about this in the middle of the convenience store (...and then taking a picture of it, no less) makes me, like, 6 years old.

My Pseudo-Disney Non-Vacation

2010-04-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of that getting-to-know-you game called "I've Never"? A group of people sit in a circle of chairs with one less chair than the number of people, then the leftover person has to stand in the middle of the circle and say something they've never done. Anyone sitting down who has done the stated activity has to get out of their chair and scramble into a new one, leaving a new person leftover in the middle of the circle. Well, my go-to statement for that game has always been that I've Never been to a Disney theme park. And even though I spent the last 4 days in Orlando, FL, it's still true. I was there for a research conference, but didn't actually get to do anything legitimately Disney. Instead, I had a pseudo-Disney vacation during breaks between conference lectures! Wooo-hooooo, Behold! I took a picture of a Disney park transportation bus as it drove by! I explored the boardwalk studded with tacky souvenir shops near Disney World! I snapped a shot of Disney's Epcot Center! (...from the highway, across a parking lot, while lost, moments before doing a U-turn in my rental car in order to avoid having to actually pay to get inside the official park). Squint and look in the middle of the picture just above the treeline! I went inside of a Disney resort hotel! The Swan & Dolphin! (...it's where the conference was held. My actual hotel lodgings were much less Disney and much less dinero.) Swan: Dolphin: And by the way: I'm no marine biologist, but that's no dolphin. Maybe they didn't think "The Swan & Trout" sounded as classy.

In a suspenseful pseudo-Disney climax, I presented my research project at the biggest national pediatric eye conference of the year!

The project was on acquired nonaccommodative esotropia (translation: kids who suddenly go cross-eyed even though their eyes were straight before, and the crossing can't be fixed with strong glasses).

And in a super pseudo-Disney happy ending, my poster won an award for Best in Show! (Look closely at the upper left corner of the picture and you'll see a cute little blue ribbon on the display board.) The last time I won anything "Best in Show" was at the poultry barn of the 1995 county fair for a pair of cantankerous geese. The fair folks gave me a $3 prize. The ophtho research conference folks only gave me a hearty handshake. Apparently, the more lucrative career is in poultry, not medicine.

Clichés about life

2010-04-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to fully appreciate Spring unless you've lived in Minnesota. The wintertime here is so long and bitterly cold -- months of frigid wind and ice, all the trees bare, all the ground covered with 2 feet of accumulated snow from November to March. If you go outside for 30 seconds with wet hair, it flash freezes into crunchy icicles (...hair-cicles?). The piles of plowed snow on the sides of the road are taller than I am, and all full of muck and road salt and little things that froze to death. There is nothing alive out there. It's inconceivable that anything could possibly survive. Then suddenly one day the sun comes out and the snow melts. The next day, the grass is green. The next week, the great outdoors is packed with squirrels, bunnies, and little chirpy birds like something straight out of a Disney cartoon. The week after that, the trees bust out into so many flowers they weigh the branches down. It's like life returns with a vengeance, desperate to prove that it's vigorous and vital, even after what it had to endure all winter. Spring here is more than a season, it's a resurrection. Never ceases to amaze me.

Mohawk mornings

2010-04-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of having short hair is that when I roll out of bed every morning, I get to encounter this in the mirror and laugh:

It's like a wee little squirrel nests in it while I'm asleep.

Laundry Day

2010-04-09T14:25:00.000-07:00

In my whole life, I've only lived in maybe two places that had a truly reliable washer and dryer inside the house. The rest of the time, I've shared the joy of a communal laundry room or a public laundromat. There's nothing quite as riveting as watching the folks who come through to do their laundry on an average Saturday morning. And there's nothing quite as frustrating as coming downstairs to retrieve your clothes only to find that they were prematurely evicted from the dryer and piled in a wet heap on the floor so that someone else can dry a pair of shorts and a single sock.

Today as I was in my apartment building's laundry room, adding my last scoop of detergent, an old lady came in to move her clothes from the washer to the dryer. Suddenly deciding that this was an ideal setting for female bonding and the passage of wisdom, she pulled out a bra from her laundry load and told me "This is my best bra. Look at it. It's a good one. Lots of support. I never leave it down here to go through the dryer because someone will take it. That's what people will do with a good bra -- they'll steal it."

Beware the bra thieves. You can't be too careful these days.

I'm going to miss this

2010-04-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to graduate in 1 month 15 days. Yeek. The fact that I'll suddenly be a doctor at the end of May feels like an elaborate practical joke that the medical school is playing on me and on society.

While trying to wrap my head around this, I'm also trying to get ready for a cross-country move. Mainly that involves sitting ineptly in my apartment, looking around at all the stuff I'll have to pack. On my super-motivated days, I scheme about which department store alleys I might be able to hoarde some moving boxes from.

The problem is partly exhaustion caused by the freaky random night shifts I'm scheduled for during the Emergency Medicine rotation I'm on, but mostly it's that I really like this apartment and would happily just cuddle into it for a very long time. I'm going to miss this place. The landlady let me pick the paint myself. There's even a little tucked-away spot for my funky old piano. And for the first time in my life, I've been unable to kill the house plants because kitchen gets so much light!

I found this dining room set on Craigs list. The whole thing had to be disassembled -- even the chairs -- in order to fit it all into the back of my friend's little car to drive it back from the Twin Cities.

Sigh. Moving on.

Another Match Day!

2010-03-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

All of the hullaballoo about the Match back in January was to determine where I'll do my ophthalmology training (during the three years from 2011-2014). But before I start in St. Louis, I have to do a more generalized transitional year of medical training first (2010-2011).

The match results for the transitional year were released yesterday, and I'll be going to Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, VA!

Okay, you've probably never heard of Carilion Clinic. It's a bit smaller than Mayo Clinic, but modeled after the same principles. I absolutely loved it when I went for the interview visit because the program and faculty are amazing. So even though it means I'll have to move twice, I'm really excited to be going to Virginia for a year

...Plus, a quick perusal of Google Images tells me that I can look forward to some serious awesomeness from the people of Virginia near the Appalachian Trail!

I'm eagerly anticipating a year of frequent sunburned belly sightings:

And many rousing games of Redneck Horseshoes:

More importantly, today's Match was a really big deal for all of my non-ophtho classmates, because they found out their match results for the first time! Everyone in the class matched at a program they're really happy about, most people matched at their top choice, so the rest of the day (and the rest of the weekend...and the rest of the school year...) is essentially one big continuous celebration! We ate, we danced, we laughed, we stayed up all night, and it felt like we could all relax a little for the first time in 4 years.

17 years later

2010-03-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

When I was a wee little wunkin, I had a root canal on one of my molars because of an abscessed tooth. Dr. Calderwood put a flashy gold cap on it and sent me out to impress the world with my bling. Seventeen years later, I finally traded the bling out for a tooth-colored porcelain crown! Now it's just a question of what to do with the gold tooth. - Sell it to a gold dealer? ($15) - Save it for the Tooth Fairy? (Years of fruitless waiting.) - Wear it as jewelry? (Tooth necklace. Classy.) - Give it to somone as the worst birthday gift ever? (Katy? You turned 29 recently, right?)

Because I couldn't afford a Hyundai

2010-03-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

I've been car-less (...un-carred? ...in pedestrian purgatory?...) for the last year and a half. I've walked through blazing sunshine, pounding rainstorms, and freakish Minnesota blizzards. Walked to clinics, classes, hospitals, grocery stores, and get-togethers. Fortunately, Rochester is small enough and my car-owning classmates are friendly enough that it's been pretty easy to get by. Unfortunately, I'm moving on to bigger, scarier places where I'll need to drive. Thus, yesterday morning I set out to buy a sensible, affordable, no-fuss, no-nonsense car that will get me through the next 10 years. Criteria: - New-ish (>2003) - Low miles-ish (<60k)

- Fuel efficient-ish

- Very safe

- Rock solid reliable

- Affordable. Something I could buy outright and not have to make payments on.

...And by "affordable," I mean cheap enough for someone who's been an unemployed student for the last 4 years.

...And by "cheap enough," I mean please let me pay for it with Ramen noodles and $0.28 cents in loose change.

I didn't care if it was ugly. I didn't care if it smelled like funky foot cheese.

Result:

- Five dealerships. Zero cars fitting what I needed.

- The flickering hope that if I was lucky and drove a hard bargain I might be able to afford a 2003 Kia Rio with 85K miles on it.

- A tragic moment when I sorely missed my old 1985 Escort, 1996 Accent, 2003 Neon, and even the 1995 bane-of-existence-Sportage. I would never have anything like them again. I would be a pedestrian forever.

And then the clouds parted and there it was at the sixth dealership:

Somehow, I hit the sale of the century on this trade-in! Its engine was replaced 3 years ago after the first owner drove it into a low, washed-out spot in the road during a rainstorm, which means it has a Rebuilt title. Although there can be all kinds of variation in quality and condition for cars with a rebuilt title, this one has been meticulously inspected and has driven perfectly since the new engine was put in. If anything, it's in better condition than the same car of the same age that hasn't been through a rebuild.

Here's why I got lucky: Since most banks won't finance loans for cars with Rebuilt titles, a person who can buy it without needing a loan has a lot of bargaining room. That's how -- somehow, ridiculously, even laughably...

...I bought a Mercedes-Benz because I couldn't afford a Hyundai.

Shampoo Conservation: Doing my part

2010-03-11T19:05:00.001-08:00

When my sisters and I were growing up, my mom usually left our hair long. However, there was one fatally catastrophic day when we were all inflicted with hideous haircuts that subsequently lived in infamy because they were captured on film. In the known universe, there are about eight pictures of me between age 0 and 12. One of them is the first-grade school picture taken shortly after The Haircut. (A haircut so bad that it has become a definitive proper noun in my mind: The Haircut.) The Haircut was bad enough that when you look at the photo, The Haircut actually distracts you from the fact that I'm wearing a narsty blaze-yellow-tropical-floral shirt and that said shirt is buttoned wrong. The next time I risked a haircut was right around the time of high school graduation. Goodbye to 15 inches of hair. Hello cute bob. Then came a "trim" to maintain the cute bob, which horrifically converted itself into a butch manly pixie because the stylist was feeling adventurous and twitchy. I worked at Taco Bell that summer, where even the grand honor of being the Employee of the Week didn't make up for the fact that the unisex uniform + the bad pixie made me look like a dude. Many years of cutting my hair and growing it out and cutting it again ensued. Last Saturday, I risked a pixie cut once again. Pictures coming soon-ish. In the meantime, tell me your haircut successes and horror stories so we can commiserate in the comments!

Better After

2010-02-27T06:45:00.000-08:00

My friend Lindsey started a supersweet website where she profiles renovations, refurbishing projects, and home makeovers. (Shameless pimp: Better After.) Each posting centers around a "before" picture that only gives a glimpse of the potential, then the amazing "after" picture that shows the finished product looking even better than you could ever imagine. In the spirit of Better After, here's my favorite renovation ever:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Glove inflated as a balloon = indisputably awesome toy.

Sweet little girl + indisputably awesome toy = happy.

Journal Notes from Heaven and Hell

2010-02-25T14:46:00.000-08:00

11:45pm February 13, La Descubierta, Dominican Republic

We drove through fire to get here tonight. As a protest against the government, some people in one of the villages along the way had stacked a pile of tree branches across the road and set fire to them. Our driver got out of the bus and pulled burning logs from the fire until it was only about knee-high, then he got back in the bus and we drove straight through the wall of flames. Our tires smoked for miles. Welcome to the Dominican Republic.

February 14 - 15, Jimani

Our group is working at a tent hospital near the Haitian border. At four weeks out from the earthquake, the medical relief focus has shifted from treating acute injuries to dealing with infections, bone stabilization surgeries, and rehabilitation for the amputees. This place is like a United Nations meeting -- there are teams from all over the world, flags flying, doctors and nurses and Peace Corps workers, and everyone speaking multiple languages while the translators help link everyone together. There are too many stories to tell.

I first met this little girl in the intensive care section of the hospital. She was orphaned, then abused by the people who took her in after the earthquake, then dropped off at our hospital to treat her burns. When I first met her, she didn't even cry when we poked her to start the IV. By the last time I saw her, she would actually smile.

This woman was crushed under a collapsed building for several days, causing a huge wound on the back of her upper thigh. She was brought to the hospital by the guy who's next to her in this picture. He stayed by her side every minute, feeding her, cleaning her, and comforting her. I thought he was her husband or maybe her brother. Later, I found out that he is actually a total stranger, but he's the one who pulled her from the rubble and he has never left her since then. Of all the chaos and tragedy here, that's the only thing that has made me cry. The world needs more beautiful acts of selfless love like this:

February 16, Los Piños

Way up on top of a mountain via a primitive road (primitive = scary), there's a village of farmers and goat herders. The International Medical Alliance group I'm working with visits the village every year to take care of chronic illnesses and acute infections. Six of us went up today. We saw patients for seven straight hours, then as we were loading the gear back onto a truck to go back down the mountain one of the pasantes asked us to go see an old debilitated woman at one of the houses in the village. Her name is Ramona, and she's been so disabled by arthritis and vascular disease that she can't even leave her house anymore. She was my first-ever house call, and one of the sweetest souls I've met in a long time.

February 17, Villa Jaragua

Today our group commandeered an open-air discoteca to turn it into a clinic. The lady in the video who is up-close to my right is Choín, a local volunteer who helped register patients all day. She was three scoops of weird, but in a delightful middle-aged old lady way. As a highlight of the evening after clinic had finished up, she told me I was excessively old ("Cuantos años tienes? Veintiuno? Veintidós?" My reply: "Veintiocho." Her response: a horrified gasp.) but that I needn't worry because despite the fact that I'm a shriveled old spinster she'll help me out. ("Conozco muchos hombres Dominicanos que son muy potente, muy fuerte, quien podrían embarazarte.") She proceeded to give me her phone number so that the matchmaking and impregnating could commence as soon as possible.

February 18, Batey Seven

We held an outreach clinic at Batey Seven today. A Batey is a small community of impoverished farm laborers. Years ago, the Dominican government established sugar cane plantations, built a minimal amount of infrastructure (a schoolhouse, a dirt road to connect the fields to the railway that hauls the harvested cane stalks away, and a few dwellings) at each plantation site, then overfilled the site with workers (mostly Haitians) who have subsisted there ever since.

Some of the Batey sites are more prosperous than others, and Seven is pretty well off. Their kids have real teachers up to 5th grade, and they get clean water and a nourishing meal every day that they go to school. That's an incentive for the parents to let them go to class instead of bringing them out to work in the fields -- it's one less mouth to feed if they're in school. They were amazed that I would let them use a whole page of my notebook just to draw on.

An organization donated hundreds of beanie babies for our group to give out to the kids. By the time these two girlies came through, all I had left was a little gray wolf puppy (adorable) and a big black spider (yick). I expected them to both want the wolf, but much to my surprise the spider was the coveted item.

February 19, Batay Nine

Batey Nine was heartbreaking. There's nothing more to say.

February 20-22, Santo Domingo

We made it back to the capital city around mid-day on Saturday, which meant we got to spend a few hours at the beach. After the way we've been living for the past week, it was strange to suddenly find ourselves lazing around in paradise surrounded by privileged vacationers. I really struggled with the self-indulgence of it, but truly did appreciate having a chance to rest a little.

As a beach-related word of advice: Buying a popsicle from a grown man in a neon jumpsuit pushing a roadside stand is probably not a good idea (unless you're hoping to acquire a diarrheal illness). However, buying a fresh-cut coconut from this guy is an experience you won't regret:

That night, we explored the cultural center of the city, which includes the Catholic chapel where they say Christopher Columbus was originally entombed.

Then, starting at 4am the next morning, there came 42 hours of flight delays and cancellations as we tried to make it back to the United States. In the meantime, here's how to entertain yourself in an airport for that long:And if you happen to wonder about your BMI during your airport stranding, just pay 5 pesos and refer to the helpful diagrams.

Freeze, Thaw, Work

2010-02-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was spent in this:

This weekend, I'll be flying out to spend 9 days in this:

Okay, it's not exactly for a vacation at the beach.

A group of med students and doctors are going down to the Dominican Republic near the Haitian border to volunteer with the medical and surgical teams helping the earthquake refugees. By the reports our team has gotten, the site we'll be at has about 1800 sick or injured people who've been streaming in from Haiti since mid-January. The refugees have been living there homeless for weeks while they await their turn to be seen. The workers that are already down there are doing as much as they can, as fast as they can.

We'll be bringing 25 people and about a thousand pounds of medications and supplies in duffel bags, sleeping on the roof of a warehouse, and using a set of local school classrooms as a makeshift hospital. It's probably going to be one of the rougher international missions I've done, but I just feel really fortunate to have a chance to be able to help.

Please keep the earthquake victims in your prayers.

Bar codes and Baggers

2010-02-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to

Supermarket Employees

Everywhere:

Dear checkout clerks and grocery baggers,

Today I used the self-checkout at the store and realized that the automated checkout computer is the devil incarnate, and you are all mere pawns in its plot. The ill-fated encounter went like this:

Me: La, la, la...toodling through the store...some apples...a few boxes of cereal...discretely slip some lady-time supplies into the deepest, hiddenest, bottom-most recesses of the cart...gallon of milk.

Checkout dude: BWAAAHAAHAAAA! I can't wait until she comes through my line so I can make those lady-time supplies obvious to all bystanders. Oooh, yes, I'll call a price check. It will be my finest hour.

Me: Foiled again, checkout dude! I'll pay for them in the privacy of self-checkout!

Self-checkout computer: Exxxxx-cellent. Even better.

Me: La, la, la...this is going well. Cereal box -- scan, beep, bag. Another cereal box -- scan, beep, bag. Okay, here's the big test. Lady box -- scan...no beep...scan again...no beep... Scan, scan, scan; beep, beep, beep; error, error, error. Panic sets in.

Self-checkout computer: Exxxxx-cellent. Now cue the creepy dude at checkout to come "help."

Me: Frick. The creepy dude from checkout is coming to help.

Checkout dude: Having trouble *smirk* with your *snark* purchase? We'll just have to go scan this at customer service. (Lifting the box high above his head like a torch to lead the way.) Follow me.

Me: Defeat.

As I followed helplessly, watching my ladybox parade approximately a half mile through several lines of curiously attentive shoppers, I could have sworn I heard the demonic sound of computerized laughter from the vicinity of self-checkout.

In conclusion, my dear checkout clerks and grocery baggers, beware the automated self-checkout. Today, it takes over my dignity. Tomorrow, it takes over the world.

Sincerely,

sarah

Organic produce makes toys angry

2010-01-30T17:57:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this blog in two whole weeks. I'm sure you've been hemorrhaging curiosity about what I've been up to. According to the recent dreams of my awesome friend, Katy, my recent adventures have involved "toys-attacking-you-at-the-farmer's-market-family-reunion-boxing-matches." Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I've been up to.