With the introduction of administrative duties to my clinical repertoire, I have come to realize the following:
- I really like seeing patients. (I’m not seeing as many of them now as I once did. I miss the clinical work.)
- I really like teaching.
- I am more skilled at teaching when with a single individual or with a group of less than three people than with a larger crowd. (It is difficult to make education as interactive as the size of the class grows.)
- When working in a large system, one cannot escape politics. I’m not a fan of politics.
- I feel more sympathy for the middle managers of the world. It kinda sucks.
- I don’t avoid conflict as much as I thought I did.
- A lot more people throughout the hierarchy now know about my fondness for cookies. It’s a bit embarrassing at times.
Reminder to self: My (self-perceived) productivity is directly proportional to how busy my schedule is.
29 Aug 2007 | 2 comments.
Link-o-Rama (V).
>> Pile of Index Cards. It’s more like How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think (which I originally linked to back in March) than GTD, but it certainly fits into the spectrum of anal-retentive data collection. (It involves large numbers of index cards. That’s suggestive enough.) The Flickr photoset is amazing. Almost unbelievable. It’s more office supply pornography (cf. Paper-Ya).
>> Fremont Outdoor Movies. A whole bunch of people pack up portable, foldable chairs, beanbags (thanks, Justin!), and blankets and crowd into a parking lot to watch a movie projected onto a whitewashed wall underneath the cloudy, nighttime sky in the quirky neighborhood of Fremont. It’s kitschy fun. My friend (the beanbag provider above) and I watched The Princess Bride. As you wish, indeed.
>> Costas Opa. It’s another restaurant recommendation, though I hesitate to state that the venue serves excellent Greek food, only because I don’t know what constitutes excellent Greek food. To my untrained palate, the food was delicious. Though my tastebuds were buzzing with glee (don’t yours?), I confess that I felt a twinge of guilt while dining at the cute establishment: I had spoken to a good friend (who is Greek) earlier in the day and she dryly commented about the fires on the Peloponnesian Peninsula (try saying that five times, fast): “The home that my dad grew up in is probably burning to the ground right now. That house was over two-hundred years old.” Oy. Good food in Seattle, bad fires in Greece.
>> Cool Running Log. Track how far and fast (or slow) you run. Comment about the weather. See how many miles you’ve put on your shoes. Create silly names for your loops.
>> Etsy.com. Hooray for original, handmade items! I am looking for a necklace to go with my black suit (I heart my suit) for my fellowship interviews. Something colorful, different, and curious, but not too curious—can’t look too liberal for these things. I haven’t found anything that has captured my attention… and there are too many choices. How about a Millefiori donut? or a petal necklace? a puzzle piece? a cookie? Suggestions are welcome. I am incapable of making independent decisions.
27 Aug 2007 | 6 comments.
Visitor.
She peered into the darkened room, unsure if she was permitted to cross the threshold. The nurse was pushing a syringe of clear fluid into the elderly man’s arm. Across the monitor over the nurse’s head floated wavy lines of various colors; they raced each other to the right edge of the screen, but never reached their destinations. Only the sounds of mechanical breathing filled the room.
The nurse caught sight of the woman in the doorway.
“Hi,” he said. Implicit in his greeting was a question of the woman’s identity.
“Hi,” the woman responded. She readjusted the strap of the purse slung over her left shoulder and cleared her throat. “I’m his daughter. I just got in; it took me longer to get across the state than I had hoped.”
“Hi,” the nurse greeted again, satisfied with her answer. “And your name is…?”
After exchanging initial pleasantries, he asked her what she knew.
Her thin fingers fidgeted with the middle button of her dark blazer before she tucked a lock of her dark hair behind her right ear. She rolled her glossy cranberry lips into her mouth and looked down, causing all of her hair to fall forward to obscure her face. She hesitated for a moment before raising her head again, her grey eyes swimming in tears that had yet to fall onto her face.
“My understanding,” she began, her voice quiet and unnaturally composed, “is that a semi-truck slammed into his car on the highway three days ago.”
The nurse nodded and looked at the unconscious man, as if waiting for him to confirm her story.
“The doctors rounded earlier in the day. If you have any questions, I can page them, but they are likely in the operating room right now,” the nurse explained.
“I can wait,” she answered, shifting her weight onto her right leg. The heel of her shoe clicked conspicuously against the tiled floor. “I’d like to know how he’s doing, what the doctors think will happen….”
“I can let them know,” the nurse answered. “He’s had an uneventful stay so far.”
She gingerly placed her slender hand onto her father’s arm. It was warm and puffy; his skin felt like spongy, heated rubber. Her eyes surveyed his body: Numerous black wires sprung from his chest; a clear, segmented tube slithered out of his slackened mouth to a machine at the side of his bed; several bags holding solutions of various pale colors dangled from the pole at the head of the bed; his right arm was wrapped in a thick, ivory cast; a black, opened-toed boot peeked out from under the sheet at the foot of the bed. The left half of her father’s face was purple and blue. His dark hair, greasy and thick, was swept out of his face.
She listened to the machine breathe for her father.
Her fingers stroked his warm skin and with each movement of her hand, the sapphire stone on her index finger glittered in the dim light. She let her purse tumble from her shoulder and, continuing to watch her father’s stony face, deftly caught it before placing it on the table behind her.
The nurse, sensing the unspoken cue, quietly slipped out of the room.
As his footfalls faded into the ambient noise in the hallway, she looked over her shoulder. Her eyes then glanced up at the monitor with the wavy lines and different colored numbers. Her hand continued to caress his arm.
She cleared her throat and leaned forward. Her dark hair spilled onto his chest as she whispered into his ear.
“I hope you can hear me, Dad,” she began, carefully enunciating each word. “I want you to hear this.”
She paused.
“I hope you die,” she quietly continued. “I hope you are in pain. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to hear that you were in a car accident. I was so disappointed to learn that you didn’t die. I didn’t come right away because I hoped that you wouldn’t survive. The only reason why I am here now is because everyone insisted that I come to see you.”
Her raisin-colored fingernails dug into his rubbery skin. She tightened her grip on his arm.
“I don’t want you to live. I am going to do everything in my power to make the doctors pull the plug on you—the sooner, the better.”
Overhead, the turquoise number indicating the patient’s pulse slowly increased.
“I hope you burn in hell.”
The nurse ambled back into the room and spied her leaning over her father. He silently sighed, wishing that he could offer her hope and comfort about her father’s condition. She was obviously distressed about this event.
She heard the nurse’s footsteps and instantaneously released her grip. Noticing the deep, red indentations from her fingernails on his arm, she slowly rubbed her father’s skin and sniffed loudly for effect.
Her eyes were glassy and a single tear trickled down her face when she looked at the nurse. She continued to gently rub her father’s arm and, in a wavering voice, said, “Thank you.”
The nurse nodded with sympathy. She looked one last time at her father before rushing out of the room, sniffling into her arm.
25 Aug 2007 | 11 comments.
Depeche Mode.
On the cover of the September issue of Elle magazine is a blonde Lindsay Lohan wearing a purple dress.
This thick magazine had been sitting in the “oversized” mail container in the lobby of the building. I had noticed Linday Lohan making eyes at me for the past two days whenever I entered the building. I thought very little about it; I perhaps wondered, I wonder why no one has picked up the mag. It’s the only thing left in the oversized container.
This morning, as I passed through the lobby while basking in the sweaty, accomplished glow of running three miles without dying or otherwise experiencing cardiovascular failure, I saw Lindsay Lohan looking at me again with those aquamarine eyes. A light bulb flickered over my head and I leaned closer to see to whom the magazine was addressed.
It turns out that Lindsay Lohan has been looking at me for the past few days, wondering why I wasn’t picking her up.
I had completely forgotten that my dear friend, a radiology resident in California who has excellent fashion sense and a wardrobe that all the women in medical school admired, had given me this subscription for my birthday a few months ago due to our intermittent discussions about fashion—what is it? who determines it? who influences it? I arguably have style, but I’m definitely not a student of fashion. As someone who has never subscribed to a fashion or beauty magazine before, I had automatically assumed that the magazine was for another person in the building.
Man. I now have “590+ pages” of “the best dresses, bags, jackets, coats, and shoes for right now and all fall” waiting for my attention. Grand.
24 Aug 2007 | 8 comments.
A Thank You to the Leads.
Sometimes other dancers and I discuss the importance of dating someone who is also a dancer.
People speculate:
- “Well, I’d prefer to date someone who dances.”
- “She has to be willing to learn how to dance.”
- “He doesn’t have to lindy hop, but he has to enjoy some type of dancing.”
- “She can do whatever kind of dancing she wants, but I’m still gonna lindy hop.”
- “I’d feel bad if he didn’t dance, too, since I enjoy it so much.”
When I dance, I often feel a joy that is similar to the exuberance of being in love. It’s wonderful.
We all want to share this feeling that comes from the delightful experience of dancing with someone special.
People continue to hope.
And, in the meantime, we continue to dance.
23 Aug 2007 | 6 comments.