Rainy Saturday

Today was not super productive...I'm cool with that.

This is our Second Look weekend. Now, see, in the cluster of ridiculousness that is the Match, you interview at a program, and you get the interview day experience, so often people go back for a second look to get a more informal view of what the program is like. We here at Baby Blue started my intern year trying to consolidate that experience, so that the kids that did come back could get the best bang for their buck. So we have this weekend when we try to get everyone to come back at the same time, and try to organize things like tours of the state hospital, a real estate tour, case conference, and lots of face time with the residents and faculty. This year, it started Thursday night with a dessert for the applicants and some members of the PGY1-3 classes (not including me, because I have class on Thursday nights now).

Yesterday was, like, holy cow. I started the day...well, I started the day by realizing it was 57 degrees in the apartment and that the heat was out. It took some fussing, but I figured out it was the circuit breaker and fixed it, but needless to say between the getting home ridiculously late Thursday and the cold apartment, I didn't sleep so well. So there was a triple-shot mocha involved in my morning as well. I co-led one of the small groups ("small" being something of a relative term here, I'm noticing. They're, like, 30 students. Mine were 10. But there were still pterodactyls around when I went to med school, so...) for the second year medical students, ran back to the unit, got to rounds late (which was planned), did a discharge, scarfed some lunch, saw my therapy kid, and then went and was part of the panel discussion for the applicants. I had another patient at 3 who took until about 4:30 (I anticipate this about her), then I tried to get as much of my shit together and paperwork done, etc, as I could tolerate before heading off to the dinner party at the chair's house.

At which point it was a monsoon. I mean, really, the standing water was amazing. And of course the chair lives out in a more rural area where "only part of our road is paved" (we estimated about 10 feet of it). So Scott rode over with me, preferring to let me and Joe the Jeep traverse the rivers of mud instead of his decidedly non-4WD car with bald tires. Shortly after we got there, Annie's husband showed up and got his car very stuck in the mud in front of the house. I offered to make an attempt, but, no, no, we've got it, burly men, blah blah blah. So, okay. I wandered off, talked to people, schmoozed a bit. And when they came back in, having failed with all of their manly brute force, I offered again. You know, before they called AAA.

I? Am from Chicago. Where we get stuck in the snow all the time. I got behind the wheel and had their car out in under two minutes.

The party itself was a very good time. I had a lot of fun, both with some of the applicants as well as with my friends. It was a nice excuse for us to hang out in a fairly informal way on the department's dime. Scott and I cut out around 10, which was of course some 16 hours or so after I'd left my house that morning.

Today was much more laid back. We had a brunch for the applicants at one of the fancy hotels near the hospital (so, you know, 30 miles from where I live) and it was really quite lovely. After that I ran a couple of errands and wandered over to Starbucks, where I met up with Matt and we were so very productive that I'm not sure he ever opened the textbook he brought with him. I did manage to get a little bit of work done after he left to go hang out with another friend of his, but decided my table by the door of the 'Bucks was too cold and I left and wandered back to my house.

After that...hmm...I know Maggie and I must've done *something*...in fact, I did accomplish a couple of things, although not as much as I would've liked and nothing work related, but got some important stuff done nonetheless.

Tomorrow is all mine. I have no particular Super Bowl plans (I'm not much of a football fan, but, I do sometimes go to these things and socialize). I'm foreseeing some grocery shopping, a little note writing at Starbucks, and some reading for my class....

...probably along with a nap and some catching up on my DVR, because next week's going to be chaos again.