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(I suspect this might be long, so be sure you don't miss the first post from today. In which I solicit money.)

Last night was a really good time. Unfortunately, this is the only postable picture (i.e., sans identifiable humans):

Those aren't all ours, I swear it.

So we started out at this nice Italian place downtown. Sparrow had the forethought to call and make a reservation, but as it turned out we wouldn't have needed it. It was football day - the masses all came in later (Baby Blue won, ps. Sorry, Domers). For dinner it was me, Peng, Ruthie, Sparrow, Faye, June, and Liz (who was my co-intern and sanity anchor on Neuro). Dinner was wonderful, the company was even better. We talked, we laughed, we ate, we watched a very drunk man wander over and pee for an impressively long time on a car in the parking lot. And Faye, Ruthie, Peng, and Sparrow pooled their resources and got me an awesome spa gift certificate. I'm so excited. Soexcited. I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to get, but, I'm going to enjoy myself a lot.

We talked a lot about work, as we tend to do (because, what do we do with all of our time?). Liz, of course, doesn't actually work in our department, but she held her own. And she reminded me of this story, which I'd kind of forgotten...when we were on Neuro, we had this sweet older lady who had myasthenia gravis or ALS, we never were quite sure. Her husband was there, like, all the time, and they were just this very cute old couple, who'd been married way longer than anyone on the team had been alive. She had this thing going on called a pseudobulbar affect, in which you can't really modulate your expression of emotions, and your responses are often very exaggerated (it's often referred to as "emotional incontinence," which is actually a really good description of how it manifests). So anyway. We had respiratory therapy doing these tests on her called NIFs (negative inspiratory force) and FVCs (forced vital capacity). We do these because they often are the first signals that a patient's respiratory musculature is starting to fail, so we can intervene before it becomes emergent or catastrophic. But the point is, for the first you need to suck air in, for the latter you need to blow air out. Our lady couldn't get this, for some reason. She could drink very nicely through a straw, but could not do her NIFs. She would blow every time (I'm guessing she was a whiz at birthday candles). So one day, the whole team is in there - me, Liz, two junior residents, the chief, and our attending, the Pocket Narcissist -and the respiratory therapist is all exasperated, like, she cannot, or will not do this. And we're all coaching her, you know? "Like you're sucking water through a straw," "No, no, you have to suck for this one," etc, etc, and finally her husband says...

"Suck it, woman! Suck it!"

We all sort of froze for a second...her husband was obviously clueless about what he'd just said (and actually continued to be so even after we all started laughing). Liz said last night she remembers standing there thinking, don't look at Kate, don't look at Kate, who was standing next to her repeating a similar mantra of you will not laugh, just don't make eye contact with Liz or Dr. N (because then all non-laughing bets would be totally off)...until the patient just started cracking the hell up.

For months after this, Liz and I would randomly text page each other with "Suck it, woman!"

Gosh, they were so cute. I wonder how that lady's doing....

Anyway. We then wandered across the street to this big swanky hotel in town, which has this nice little bar with leather armchairs and the world's best froofy martinis. Cleo and her husband Tony showed up with a friend of his that I met last year at a party of theirs, and later Tyler and Matt joined us. And we hung out there for probably about four hours. And had a very good time. And everyone kept feeding me liquor, which was also delightful. I'm trying to remember how many martinis I had, but frankly, I just don't. I'm thinking it may have been five. Because the last time, I sent Tyler to the bar for water, and he came back with water...and another martini.

Tyler? Good man.

And I may have talked Matt into being the superego to my id for Halloween. We'll see if that stands up in the sober light of day.

And, I didn't even fall down once, in spite of much alcohol and my FMBs. It seems I need to be unintoxicated and wearing sensible shoes to do that...hmm.

We had such a good time. Did I mention the good time? It was a very lovely evening. I like my friends.

Dude. I'm going to be 30 tomorrow. I kinda like that.